Paid to Take Control

by Romilly King

  “And Brio, he takes no prisoners if he’s not getting what he needs, and he’s a fucking neural biologist who can turn your brain inside out within seconds. He will spot your pressure point and he’ll ram his thumb in it until you are screaming. So yeah, cute fantasy animal, not so much!”

  “And the, ‘out there’ needs?” Richard prompted,

  “He’s an extreme submissive as you know,” Ash said and Brio could hear his fingers drumming on the steering wheel, “But more than that his needs change day to day, he is like a multiple personality disorder of kink. As a baseline he needs domestic discipline, if he’s deep into the research he needs to be reminded to eat and exercise and sleep, a daily spanking seemed to help him with that at one point.

  “But that is not the sum total of his kinks – on any given day Brio could need anything from pain and impact play to edging with no chance of orgasm, to complex shibari, to hand feeding and vanilla sex, to pet play. All these different things fulfill some particular portion of his psyche but there is no telling when each area will activate next. All we know is that going without those needs being met leads to nights like this, where he goes out and puts himself in the way of as much sexual degradation as he can find. And trust me, when you look like he does that’s pretty easy to find!”

  “Why not just have several Doms to meet Brio’s various needs?” Richard suggested.

  “Tried that,” said Ash, “At one point we had a rotating team on speed dial. It didn’t work, because he doesn’t know what he needs until he needs it,”

  “So what we need is a psychic Venditor,” mused Richard, “Someone who not only has these kinks himself but can form a connection with Brio strong enough to anticipate them,”

  “That would be an option but it’s practically impossible to arrange. Safe scenes require planning and Brio isn’t waiting around whilst some professional Dom flips through their playbook.”

  They were both silent for a moment then Richard asked, “Did the new version of the algorithm throw up any possibilities at Delphic?”

  “One,” and Brio could almost hear the eye roll in Ash’s voice when he added, “And Ms. Sara threw a fucking fit when I approached her about it. Said she had offered specialist contracts to the guy before but he will only take one-off vanilla contracts and apart from that he was the laziest Venditor they had on the books. She’d have kicked him in to touch years ago but in the ten years he has been a Venditor he has barely been out of a contract because he has the highest possible satisfaction ratings.”

  “Really?” Brio stifled a smile at the irony in Richard’s tone, “Why don’t you replay what you just said and run it thought that massive data crunching brain of yours and see if you can drag something useful out of it.”

  Brio could only imagine the glare Ash would be shooting his husband but there was a moment's silence as Ash did what Richard suggested.

  “Fuck,” Ash breathed, “Cognitive dissonance towards his Dom persona. He has a Dom inside him, the algorithm can see it, but he can’t or won’t. Being lazy would normally kill him in the satisfaction stakes but he must have a high empathy rating to give the Emptores exactly what they want and so they rate him top of the scale. And the satisfaction he gets from the caretaker part of being a Venditor is enough to keep his Dom persona quiet if not fully satisfied.”

  “There you go,” Richard sounded smug, “You’re not just a pretty face are you,”

  “And you are going into chastity for two weeks,” said Ash brightly

  “It still doesn’t solve the problem though,” said Richard grumpily, “The guy is just an on-paper potential match, he has no experience and an obvious mental block on his kinks, and on a side note Brio hasn’t consented to anything.”

  “You were just an on-paper potential match!” Ash pointed out.

  Score for Ash thought Brio sleepily.

  “And I did say if we couldn’t find Brio a Dom I would make one for him,” Ash added.

  “Yeah and that’s bound to go well,” Brio heard Richard mutter but he must have said it quietly because otherwise Ash would have upped his chastity punishment.

  Brio smirked to himself, the drugs were kicking in and the itch under his skin had faded away leaving just soreness. The road noise was now a thrumming lullaby. He tucked his hands between his thighs and curled up tighter. He imagined the Dom Ash would make for him. He wanted a nice one, one with a heavy hand and a hug that wrapped around him like a soft blanket, a rope man with patience and nimble fingers who would praise Brio whilst he hurt him. Brio sighed and slipped into sleep.

  Chapter Two

  Painter and the boyfriend experience

  Hiding his hangover behind full mirrored Raybans Painter cautiously walked along the long corridor to psych evaluation. His head hurt so badly that his usual loping stride would have been enough to make him throw up. Resting his forehead against the wall he peered over his glasses and keyed his personal code into the control panel on the door and slid in, slumping into the seat before the familiar screen.

  “Good morning, Painter,” the AI had a pleasant male voice, “Please, remove your sunglasses and insert your whole hand into the glove,” Painter blinked, the AI sounded different. If he didn’t know better it sounded saucy.

  “What the hell,” Painter muttered, “Another upgrade,” He slipped his glasses into his top pocket and slid his right hand and wrist into the glove attachment on the chair, wriggling his fingers to settle them against the sensor pads. The glove blinked LEDs at him three times and the grip on his wrist tightened against his pulse.

  Painter yawned and settled in the chair, stretching his long legs out and blinking tiredly. Surely, he didn’t need to go through psych eval again. It was only three weeks, just before his last contract, that he had been through his full annual physical and mental check-up. He didn’t know why he needed an additional AI exam now. But this was the Delphic Agency, they prided themselves on being the best, and if they wanted another test he sat another test and didn’t moan about it.

  Take the line of least resistance, that was Painter’s motto, no point in rocking any boats.

  The lights in the small room dimmed, a low-level color sequence danced around the perimeter, red chased green, yellow chased blue. “Just relax,” murmured the AI, “Just watch the screen Sir and let me take care of you.”

  That’s odd, thought Painter as the screen in front of him pulsed and the images began to flicker faster than the naked eye could grasp, it’s never called me sir before.

  ◆◆◆

  Two days later Painter was back at Delphic for a meeting with Ms. Sara.

  “Hey gorgeous,” Painter smirked at her in a way he knew drove her crazy as he slid into her bright sunny office and threw himself into a chair, “What ya got for me? Who needs the boyfriend experience next?”

  Ms. Sara glared at him and raised one perfect eyebrow, “Jeans, Painter? Is your suit at the dry cleaners?”

  “We’ve known each other long enough,” Painter winked at her, just a reminder of years gone by, “We don’t need to play formal after all this time, do we?” He threw a long leg over the arm of the chair and grinned obnoxiously. Driving Ms. Sara nuts was one of the highlights of his job.

  “It would have been helpful if you had been appropriately dressed today, Painter,” she sighed and shuffled folders on her desk, “We have a meeting with an Emptor’s representative shortly, we have a specialist contract we’d like to offer you,”

  “I don’t do specialist contracts,” Painter said easily, this was an old familiar argument, “You know the score Sara, in and out, boyfriend experience, short, sweet, vanilla, never the same one twice.”

  “I appreciate that Painter, god knows I’ve been dealing with your contracts for long enough, but I’m afraid I’m going to need to insist on you consider this, particularly given your most recent psych eval.

  “The new software upgrade has reassessed your scores and you are now showing as aggressively sexually dominant, we
can’t offer you vanilla contracts anymore, Painter, you’re a risk,”

  What the fuck? The smirk slid from Painter’s face and putting both feet on the floor he leaned forward, “What the hell Sara? You’ve known me for a decade, I’m no dominant, I don’t do kink at all!”

  “Your markers say you are a high level dominant,”

  “My markers can go fuck themselves,” Painter said pleasantly, “I’ve been offered these in the past and they are not my thing, truly.”

  “Think of it as a career progression,” Ms. Sara was trying to sell this and Painter didn’t understand why. The energy he was getting from her was excessive, she felt stressed and desperate. Their normal interactions were baiting and bitchy, not this intense, “There will be training, full training,” she added, “We’d never let you go in unprepared, we value our Venditores. And then there’s the pay, contracts like this one fall outside of government pay scales so the remuneration will be twice what you normally get,”

  Painter stared at her, trying to work out the angle here.

  “If it turns out down the line that you aren’t fully comfortable with kink contracts then you could switch to training. Once you had the requisite experience you could get out of fieldwork, chill out, kick back, have a steady salary.”

  Painter narrowed his eyes; there was a desperation about this that set off all his alarm bells.

  “I think there must be some mistake, Sara,” he tried to keep his tone even, “I know Delphic have suggested kink contracts for me in the past but turning them down has never been a problem. I’m a nice guy Sara, okay I’m a little lazy and laid back and I have sex for money, but everyone leaves happy, nobody gets hurt,”

  Painter was very aware that being a nice guy was pretty much all he had going for him. He fell into working for Delphic straight out of college to pay off student loans on his pointless degree – Marine biology - who knew how few jobs that qualified you for! Venditor work turned out to be easy and profitable and he never got around to formulating an exit strategy. He wasn’t interested in career progression though and he sure as hell wasn’t going to get a proper job with his resume, but to go into a contract where he hurt people for money, no way, that wasn’t nice!

  “I can’t hurt someone,” he stated bluntly.

  “I think you’ll find you probably can once you feel the results,” Ms. Sara replied, her voice bland, her tone level, her eyes saying something he didn’t understand. Was that revulsion?

  “Consent goes both ways, that’s how we work,” Painter was angry and that was an emotion he had suppressed for years. Never get angry, never get aggressive, “Why are you trying to force me into this?”

  “Because you are bloody lying to yourself, you know you want this and you are pretending otherwise.”

  Painter looked up, shocked.

  “Look at your test results Painter,” Ms. Sara leaned forward and slid a folder across the desk, “See where you are on the dominance graph and then read the report.” She sighed and settled back into her chair as Painter reluctantly pulled the paperwork towards himself.

  “I am all about consent Painter, I always have been, and I am not forcing you to do this,” she used both hands to push tiny strands of hair that had escaped her hairstyle back up from her forehead, “But even if you don’t take this particular contract I can’t let you do vanilla contracts anymore based on these results, it wouldn’t be good for you and it could lead to a bad result with an Emptor. “

  “So if I don’t do this you’re cutting me loose?” his stomach churned, this was all he was good for, he didn’t know what he could do if he wasn’t fucking for money.

  “Read the fucking report, Painter,” Ms. Sara sighed wearily, “And then I will explain your options.”

  Painter scanned the report, phrases jumped out at him randomly – sadism in 85th percentile – dominant to 97th percentile – kink markers for bondage including predicament – heavy impact play. He felt himself getting more and more lightheaded. He felt naked. Exposed.

  He looked up from the treacherous report when a tall man entered the room with only the briefest of knocks and settled himself in a chair as if he owned the place.

  “Painter, this is Mr. Ash Gannon,” Ms. Sara said, “He works with us on technology development and he is the representative of the Emptor we would like to offer your services to,”

  Painter glanced at him, taking in the tailored suit, the handmade shoes, and the air of significant money that as an experienced Venditor he could sniff out a mile away.

  “I’m afraid there has been a mistake,” Painter said, “I think there must have been a glitch in the system or something because I don’t do specialist contracts,”

  “There are no glitches in my systems,” the man’s voice was even but his eyes raked over Painter, assessing him, logging everything.

  Painter reined in the dark aggression that simmered inside him and dragged out his winning smile, “Well honestly Mr. Gannon, if you have someone who matches this,” he placed his damning report on the desk, “They don’t need a Venditor they need a therapist,”

  “I think you should take the information in the report on board,” Ms. Sara said, “Your markers for sexual dominance have been increasing over the years Painter, you’ve always turned down BDSM and kink contracts but it seems that you would be perfect for them,” her tone was placating and it pissed Painter off.

  “This isn’t me,” Painter slammed his hand down on the report, “This is not fucking me, or me fucking, this is not who I am!”

  “Oh, I really fucking think it is,” Ash Gannon’s voice was calm and unyielding, “It takes one to know one,” He turned to Ms. Sara, “Painter and I are going to go and have a private discussion, I’ll speak to you later Sara,”

  Painter was astonished at Ms. Sara’s easy acceptance when she nodded sharply and Ash got to his feet. He shot his cuffs and rolled his shoulders as if to release tension, “Come with me,” he said and didn’t look to see if Painter was behind him as he left the room.

  ◆◆◆

  Painter followed Ash down one of the Agency’s endless pale green corridors, Ash paused and knocked briefly on a nondescript door and without waiting for an answer opened it and stuck his head inside, “I need you to join me in Conference Room 3. Can you bring Brio’s file and his latest compatible charter? Great, thanks,” He closed the door and without explaining himself to Painter strode off. Painter trailed behind him feeling off-center and irritated.

  Conference Room 3 turned out to be an unexpectedly sunny room which must recently have been used for a training session. Wide windows overlooked the tranquil lake that was the centerpiece of the Agency grounds and on the whiteboard that took up a third of one wall a bullet point list of pre-contract assessment criteria was written in a scrawling hand. Ash looked at it and snorted a sarcastic laugh, “Sit,” he said to Painter and scratched irritably at the designer scruff on his cheeks.

  Painter glared at him but took a seat, he crossed one long leg over the other and attempted to appear nonchalant. Ash silently paced back and forth in front of the window as they waited for whoever the fuck it was they are waiting for. Painter ignored the uncomfortable silence that Ash allowed to build. He ostentatiously pulled his phone out and less obviously ran a search for Ash Gannon. Know thy enemy and all that.

  It turned out Ash Gannon was famous as an expert in computer algorithms and co-founder of ManMindMaps, the team compatibility software, that even Painter had heard of – he remembered some Football team hitting the headlines a few years ago when they sacked their entire squad and rebuilt a new team from cheaper players that then went on to win the European League. He remembered reading an article about it whilst on a yacht in the Aegean. He had been on contract for a wealthy fashion designer and he had been bored one night when the slow rocking of the yacht couldn’t send him to sleep. The Football team had put their success down to the team compatibility software ManMindMaps had built for them.

  Wikipedia di
dn’t explain why a computer expert would be stamping around Delphic like he owned the place.

  A memory flickered, falling loose from a stack in the back of Painter’s head. He thought again about that night in the Aegean. It had been a shitty contract, he hadn’t liked the fashion designer, but the real reason he couldn’t sleep that night had been because of how his skin itched and his mind refused to settle after he had fucked his Emptor into a deep dreamless sleep.

  He remembered the thought that had crossed his mind when he read the article, shame we don’t use this shit at Delphic, then I wouldn’t get matched to guys like this who do nothing for me. This gig would be way more fun if we all wanted each other.

  Fuck, things started to fall into place.

  The changing psych tests over the years.

  The kink contracts he was repeatedly offered and which he repeatedly turned down.

  The bullshit psych report he just read.

  He looked up to see Ash staring at him, “And there it is,” Ash said snarkily, “The light dawns,”

  The door to the room opened and a tousle-haired man with black glasses pushed his way in. He had a laptop bag slung over his shoulder and carried a folder in the standard Delphic pink for Emptores. He wore suit pants and an open-collared white shirt with the tie dragged loose and low and the sleeves rolled up. “Sorry,” he muttered, “I had to log out of the system and I was in deep,”

  Ash stepped forward and Painter rose to his feet. Ash took the folder from the other man and slung it on the small conference table, “Thanks for coming, I’m having trouble getting through to this one,” he said.

  Painter was getting increasingly pissed. He felt very much out of his depth at this point. Between the offers of contracts he didn’t want to a psych report that laid out in black and white exactly how deviant he would be if he ever let the shadow brother in his brain take a turn around the room, he had just about had enough for one day.