“I didn’t know you wanted to be a trainer, Matt.” Alayne’s voice was alive with sing-song.
He stroked Lily’s hair. “She’s responding so well to me.”
Alayne was silent for a few moments. “Could you pick up the receiver?”
He picked up the receiver and Lily waited with her head bowed. Matson did not know if she heard Alayne’s next comment or not but he liked to think not. His Lily was surely trying to block out the sound of her private comments.
What Alayne said was “That’s...a sudden proposition, Matson. It may be as much work for me to supervise you than to train her myself.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve known me for a long time, Alayne.”
“That’s true. I’d like to talk it over with a colleague, though.”
“Fine. But you know I will not disappoint you.”
He hung up the phone and slid down beside her on the floor, burying his lips in the dark smoothness of her hair.
* * * *
He had been training her since the first day, he decided. He took her to public parties and was pleased at the way her eyes rarely strayed from him, her attention always on his needs. She learned he hated cilantro and cooked with basil instead. When he left her free to her own devices, she did things for him that he did not even know he needed, like replacing the batteries in his smoke detectors and retacking the playroom carpet where old nails had begun to come up.
Alayne visited from time to time, but never stayed longer than a meal or a brief evening, and as time passed, Matson spoke on the phone with other people in the Marketplace as well, or so Lily overheard. He was unconcerned that she should hear what might be her own fate, and made sure that she knew that one evening their guests would be special, that several trainers would be coming to evaluate her performance. “I’m sure you will make me proud,” he said.
* * * *
The night arrived only a few days later, giving him plenty of opportunities to push her. If anything he was harder on her then than he had been at any other time, priming her with severe canings and merciless sex. He marveled at how even after beating her across the back with the dog whip and then fucking her long and hard for over an hour, when he told her immediately afterward that she had free time, that she spent that free hour doing the things she knew he loved after a scene, pouring his cognac, rubbing his feet. God, she was everything he had ever wanted, he realized. He wanted her more than he wanted to become a trainer, more than he wanted the respect and approval of the others.
And, if all went right according to his plan, he would have both.
The trainers arrived in ones and twos on an evening pouring rain. Lily, clad in nothing, shook wet raincoats and hung them to dry, fetched clean socks, and stowed umbrellas. Once everyone was gathered, all total four men and two women: two of the men and one of the women trainers, the other three possibly some kind of slaves themselves, Matson seated them all in the living room and began to run Lily through her paces. They observed while the female slave and she were made to spank each other, while the two male slaves were made to put her through various acrobatic sexual positions. But the physical portion of this was easy. Then came the interviews. They sat in a circle around her, sunk into plush couches or leaning forward with elbows on knees, while Matson stood behind her in shadow.
“Lily, do you understand fully what we say when we mean entering into service in the Marketplace?” Alayne began.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And do you feel you’re ready to enter service?” This from a man off to her left, his face unclear to her.
“I feel I am already in service,” she answered. “And yes, I feel I am ready to enter the Marketplace.”
“Nice answer,” said another man, she could make out his longish hair and knew he was the one called Gerard, who had been the last to arrive.
“Or nicely coached,” continued the man on her left. “Why do you think you crave this lifestyle? What drew you to it?”
Lily spoke clearly, but not so quickly that she seemed to have canned answers. “There’s very little honor in the world, very little to believe in. I was unhappy when I had no direction, no focus. Through service, I have something to believe in, a reason to be.” She did not fidget where she knelt but looked down at the carpet instead of into the darkened faces. “As to your second question, I...”
“Tell the truth, Lily,” Matson commanded.
“I came into the scene looking for someone special. But I’m not looking anymore.”
Matson’s heart pounded to hear her say it. When the questioning was done, he locked her in the playroom and said good-bye to everyone else himself.
* * * *
When he entered the playroom, she was kneeling in the center of the carpet, as he’d taught her to do. There were indentations in the carpet that fit her knees.
He knelt in front of her, his hands clasped together. Candles burned at the periphery of the room. He inhaled as if to settle his stomach in that moment that felt so holy, so right.
“Did I please them, sir?” she said. Asking a question was always allowed.
“Oh, yes, you pleased them. They would take you into the Marketplace in a flat second.” He lifted her chin and held her gaze. “But, consider this, my sweet Lily...” He interrupted himself to kiss her, to bury his tongue deep in her and smother himself in her scent. “Consider this.” He held in his hands a length of chain, a collar. “Consider that you are mine. I know you want to make me proud. But, Lily, you do not have to go into the Marketplace to do that. You have proved you can pass muster, that you can stand with the finest slaves on Earth. That has made me more proud than you know. But you can stay here with me. You need never leave my service.”
He held up the chain with two hands, a near beatific smile on his face.
* * * *
We can only suppose what he must have been thinking. Perhaps he was expecting a moment of triumph, when she would at last set aside her calm to declare how much she loved him, how deeply she knew she had found the right master and need look no further. As he held the collar out to her, though, her eyes did not light with joy and his smile faded a bit as she asked a question, “Are you offering me a choice, sir?”
He stammered, as if he had not expected there to be choice involved. “I... I want to hear it from you. You know what would please me most.”
Her head stayed where it was but her eyes seemed to focus past him. “I thought... I thought you wanted to train me for sale. Sir?”
“Yes, Lily, I acted as your trainer, but did you come to me looking for a trainer, or a master?” He fairly growled with growing frustration and confusion. “I am not a trainer.” He proffered the collar again.
“But,” she said, trying to make her words slow and cautious, “I thought that until I enter the Marketplace, no one owns me.”
“I own you!” he bellowed then, and leapt upon her.
Lily was a strong woman, but small and caught unawares. The struggle was brief as he wrestled her into bonds that locked her hands behind her back. The struggle only seemed to excite him. The resistance he had expected from her in the beginning was finally showing itself and it was time to remind her of his tenets.
He forced her to stand and clipped her bonds to a chain hanging from the ceiling, so that she stood on her feet, her back bent over horizontal and her ass displayed for him. First, pain, to reinforce the conviction that her body was his and not her own. Her flesh was still sore from that week’s beatings, and he went directly for the cane, not waiting for her to count or ask, merely laying it on while she cried and cried.
Then humiliation, to distance her from her ego and her sense of self. He lowered the chain and cuffed her ankles apart, and set about trying to find what would humiliate her most. An hour ago, he would have said nothing would humiliate her other than to catch her making a mistake—she would submit willingly to any activity or attention. But she was no longer playing willing. She needed to be overcome, he decided, this was not so far off from his original plan, and through this they would be cemented and bonded forever. He squatted down in front of her.
“Yes, Lily, you are mine, just as Marketplace slaves belong to their owners, to use, or abuse, as we see fit.” And he...
* * * *
The young woman stopped and looked at the people around her. Many had stopped eating, others had taken their quiet conversations into other rooms. Michael had left half of his ice-cream to melt, and the bowl had vanished without his noticing.
“Go on,” Ken urged, her face a mask of scandal.
“Can we just say that it does not matter what he did next? Pick the most horrible thing you can think of one human being doing to another short of murder. Whatever it is you are each thinking, hold that thought.”
* * * *
Lily had not been quiet through all this. After she was put in bondage she tried from time to time to talk to him, to explain what was going on in her mind, but it was clear that they had vastly divergent opinions of what was transpiring, and anything she said only served to egg him on. Eventually she saved her breath, waiting for him to tire and knowing that he could not keep her a prisoner forever. In the morning perhaps, she could leave.
Beyond a certain point, once she gave up talking to him, she had not even thought to hope for anything to happen other than to wait for him to simply stop. So can you imagine how her heart leapt when she heard the sound of the doorbell ringing. The playroom, remember, was directly off the main foyer, that long-ago space where he had stripped her. Matson ignored the bell. But after it rang several more times, and knocks and thumps came on the door, he threw on a robe and went to answer it.
So complete was his delusion that he was mastering Lily he did not even think to close the dungeon door nor expect that she would cry out for help. At the door it was one of the male slaves who had apparently left something very important at the house and had come back to see about getting it before his own ass was in the proverbial or literal sling. As the front door opened, Lily screamed for help. And maybe it was her scream, or maybe it was the look on the slave’s face, or maybe it was whatever incriminating evidence of his unspeakable act that showed on his hands or his body or wherever, but Matson’s charade ended then and there.
As he put the shaking, injured, and angry Lily into the hands of that slave he said, “I thought you loved me.”
“Maybe I did,” she answered.
“I thought... I thought you were doing it all for me, because of me. I loved you...”
Lily tried to pull away but he held onto the elbow of the slave who waited a moment more. “Matson,” she said, “You lied to me. We started out as play partners. I started to feel things for you, of course. But the moment you told me about the Marketplace, that was the moment it became real for me. Don’t you see? You showed me there’s a world of reality beyond the play. But you didn’t own me in the Marketplace. You told me you wanted to be a trainer.” She began to sob but held her ground. “I thought I was doing what you wanted. You wanted a slave to train and sell, isn’t that what you said? You wanted to raise your status...”
“No, no...” Matson was saying, mostly to himself.
“If what you wanted was for me never to forget you, then you can be sure I am serving you still,” she said, her voice low and bitter and almost lost in the sound of the rain. “If what you wanted was someone who loved you more than the service itself then... then...” Her voice caught on her tears and the slave who held a raincoat over her shoulders finished the sentence for her:
“Then you don’t belong in the Marketplace. Sir.”
* * * *
“And he has not been numbered among us since then,” came a voice from the doorway. Michael snapped his head and scrambled up to his feet as he heard that voice.
“It is a cautionary tale,” Ken agreed, glancing up at Chris Parker. “Most valuable to hear. Thank you for telling it, cherie.”
The young woman nodded in acknowledgment and rose elegantly to pass her bowl to the slave who had been approaching her to retrieve it.
“I didn’t see you come in, sir,” Michael said. Chris was wearing the long cotton robe and Japanese sandals, and looked a little better rested, but hardly tousled from sleep.
“That’s all right, Michael, I didn’t want to interrupt the story.”
“Indeed, you are the one who most often tells it,” Ken said, stretching and sitting up again. “The evil nature of impudent, undisciplined spotters, no?”
“In fact,” Chris said softly, “I often tell it to illustrate how trainers can allow hubris and lust to destroy their own work. And how important it is to have standards upon which to base our behavior.”
Michael watched as the tale-telling young woman quietly exited the room with a brief half-bow toward Chris, who nodded as she slid by.
“You—you were there, weren’t you?” Michael asked, as he moved up next to Chris in the doorway.
“But of course he was,” Ken laughed. “He is the rescuer, oui?”
“You read too many trashy novels,” was all Chris said. “I barely knew the man. Sorry to interrupt your evening, I was just getting some tea.” He raised the little pot and cup to the room and got a few salutes back, and then turned back into the hallway, with Michael trailing behind him.