A Controlled Descent Ch. 08

Literotic asexstories – A Controlled Descent Ch. 08 by angeline_dc,angeline_dc
Finished this chapter a while back, but I’ve been too apprehensive to publish until now. After Chapter Seven, I knew what had to come next in order to be true. This is a chapter that centers aftercare and negotiation. If you don’t find that sexy (I do) then it won’t be for you. No hard feelings if not, but I hope that if you’ve come this far with Mackenzie that you’ll be willing to come a little further.

I want to thank K., N., and P. for their encouragement as well as everyone moved to respond to the earlier chapters either in comments or by email. It’s meant a lot to me.

– A.

_______________________________________________________

Jack looks me over, seeing more clearly than the x-ray machine at the airport.

“Have you eaten anything today?” From his tone, he already knows the answer.

“I had some airplane pretzels?”

“So that’s a no. Alright, we’ll start there,” he says, stowing my bag just inside the front door as if he’s already planning my departure.

“I’m not really hungry.”

“I didn’t ask if you were hungry,” he says in that Jack tone that brooks no disagreement.

“Yes Jack.” I’ll eat anything he wants if it means I can stay a little while. Anyway, I’m dead wrong and devour everything he puts in front of me. He also makes me drink two huge glasses of water and shakes out three Tylenol into my palm. It freaks me out that he can tell I have a headache, or maybe he just assumes I do based on the everything about me. Once he has me fed and watered, he steps into the next room to make a call. I catch just enough to remember it’s Saturday night and that he looks dressed to go out. He’s on the phone cancelling his plans because of me, and now I feel wretched all over again. Probably some beautiful young girl who does exactly what he wants without freaking out in restaurants. When he returns, I apologize and offer to leave.

“I feel better. I think I just needed to eat something. I can go.”

Jack looks at the living room, realizing he’d been within earshot. “Do I get a say here?”

“Of course.”

“Then you’re not going anywhere, not tonight.”

All my emotions gather on the mosh pit of my face. “Yes Jack.”

He leads me upstairs, collecting my suitcase on the way. We pass the master suite on the way to the guest bedroom at the end of the hall. It’s really nice, but my heart sinks a little that I won’t be sleeping with him. He flips on the lights and shows me where everything is.

“So what now?” I ask, bracing for an onslaught of questions about last night.

“So what now is you take a shower.”

“I already showered this morning.”

“Well this will be number two then,” he says matter-of-factly. “I’ll be upstairs when you’re done,”

I don’t really feel like taking a shower, so I figure I’ll just wait a bit, change clothes, and Jack will be none the wiser. To maintain the illusion, I run the water and stand at the vanity staring at myself in the mirror until the glass fogs over. I’ve always been an insubordinate bitch. My father complains that if he told me to breathe I’d suffocate just to spite him. Is that how it’s going to be with Jack? Do as he says when he’s watching and as I please when alone. Why even come to him for help if I’m just going to undermine him at the first opportunity? Jack told me to shower, so why not just do it? I saw where defiance got me on Friday. Maybe it’s time to give obedience a shot.

Despite my reticence, Jack turns out to be right yet again – a shower is exactly what I need. After its ordeal last night, my body is bone-tired and sore in ways I didn’t know possible. The hot water feels wonderful, and I brace my hands against the wall to let the spray pound my shoulders and back. My emotions have been largely bottled up since I woke on the bathroom floor in Boston this morning, but out of nowhere I take a sharp, hitched breath as though surfacing after swimming too far down. A second passes, and then I begin to sob. I know there’s no stopping it and don’t think I would even if it were possible. Cautiously, I lower myself down to the tiles, hugging my arms around my legs and let nature take its course.

When my tears subside, I shut off the shower and wrap a towel around myself. I take forever moisturizing, combing my hair, and generally taking an inventory of all things Mackenzie. My vagina is battered, and after peeing I’m pretty sure that I have a urinary tract infection. No less than I deserve after fucking five men. UTIs terrify me after one turned into a kidney infection in college, and I have a standing prescription for nitrofurantoin that I sometimes take as a preventative. But it has been so long since I’ve had sex that I didn’t think to take it to Boston. Well, ride the ride, take your chances.

My attention turns to what to wear for Jack. I packed light for the wedding, so my wardrobe options are severely limited. I don’t have anything casually cute and feel sure that just panties wouldn’t be appreciated at the moment. Eventually, I settle on leggings and an oversized Lana Del Rey Ultraviolence t-shirt. Then I dither around the bedroom instead of going to Jack. It’s not that I don’t want to talk to him, I do, that’s why I’m here. But for the first time all day my mind isn’t being bombarded with images of what happened in Boston. I know this respite will be brief. Reality will coming crashing down soon enough, and I just want to enjoy the calm while I have it.

I know that’s not up to me though and climb the stairs to the third floor where I find Jack with his feet up on a huge sectional couch, a copy of the Atlantic open on his lap. It’s very on brand that he reads paper copies of magazines, and I find it endearing. On the coffee table is a huge bowl of popcorn, and the room smells like melted butter. A wall-mounted television is paused on the Miramax logo.

“There you are,” he says, putting down his magazine. “How was the shower?”

“It was a good idea,” I admit. “I feel much better.”

I haven’t moved from the doorway, and he pats the couch beside him. “Come sit.”

Tentatively, I perch on the edge of the couch arms crossed, shoulders hunched, resigned to answer all of his difficult questions.

Instead, he says, “I know we have a lot to talk about, But I thought maybe that could wait until tomorrow after you’ve had a chance to rest. How do you feel about just watching a movie tonight. I made popcorn.”

The man is a goddamn mind reader, and I could cry…again. “That sounds amazing.”

“Good, well come on and get comfortable,” he says reaching for the remote.

“Is it okay if I’m touching you?” I desperately want to curl up against him but am worried that’s against the rules.

He smiles kindly. “That sounds nice. Why don’t you grab that blanket off the chair.”

I do, and we get cozy on the couch. I lean happily into Jack feeling like a small woodland animal who just made it back to the warm safety of its burrow. He presses play and puts an arm around me, popcorn bowl balanced in his lap. Against a backdrop of math equations, the names of the stars appear on screen one at a time: Robin Williams, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck. I realize we’re about to watch Good Will Hunting even though I’ve never actually seen it. When I confess that to Jack, he hits pause so he can give me a scandalized look.

“How have you never seen Good Will Hunting? It’s been on cable every day for the last twenty-five years.”

“I didn’t have a tv growing up,” I say defensively.

“Never? Were your parents in a cult?”

“College professors.”

“Ah, same thing,” Jack says with a wry smile.

“They just didn’t believe in television. It was a whole thing with them.”

“But you do know what a movie is, right? Moving pictures that tell a story?” He is trying to look very serious but can’t hide his amusement.

“I’ve seen lots of movies,” I say, sounding like someone who has definitely done no such thing. “I mean I know what Good Will Hunting is about. I just never actually sat down and watched it.”

“Well we are remedying that right now,” he says hitting play again. “Have some popcorn.”

I do just that, and it might ruin me for all other popcorn. Jack made it with a little truffle salt and grated Romano cheese on top. Fuck me, it’s delicious. And the movie is good, too. I see why people love it. It’s about this sad boy genius who is angry at the world and is squandering his potential by getting in fights all the time. An MIT professor makes him go to a psychiatrist played by Robin Williams who helps him come to terms with his anger. I get teary a bunch of times especially when Robin Williams gives Will this stern lecture on a park bench. Then he does this whole, “it’s not your fault” thing near the end that makes me legit cry. I am happy when the movie has a hopeful ending even if a melancholy Elliot Smith song plays over the closing credits as Will drives away to go see about a girl, about letting himself be loved.

“What did you think?” Jack asks as the credits roll.

“Am I supposed to be Will?”

He looks at me appraisingly. “Is that how you see yourself?”

“Minus the genius part,” I amend, realizing I’ve accidentally paid myself a compliment. Can’t have that.

“Don’t do that, Mackenzie. You’re a very smart girl. I wouldn’t have been interested in you if you weren’t.”

I try not to fixate on his use of the past tense. “Really?”

“Really. There’s no challenge in dominating stupid.”

That makes me smile. “I hadn’t thought about it that way.”

“And I have no idea if you’re Will Hunting, but I like you asking the question.”

“Why?” I ask, suddenly wary I’ve wandered into a trap.

“Because Will figures it out in the end.”

“Oh,” I say, realizing what he means. If I am Will Hunting, I’m still at the beginning of my movie. It’s a depressing thought.

I must be making a long face, because he tells me to knock it off. “You realize that’s about the most positive thing you’ve said about yourself since I’ve known you?”

“I guess,” I say with a mopey shrug.

He rolls his eyes at me. “Alright, I think it’s bedtime. Ready?”

I say no while stifling a yawn like a like a little kid who just wants to stay up with the grownups. It makes Jack smile, but he shoos me to my feet anyway. I help clean up, and he turns off the lights behind us. Downstairs at my bedroom door, he wishes me goodnight.

“I really can’t sleep with you?” I ask. “I’ll be good.”

“I know you would but no. You’re sleeping here.”

“Okay,” I say, giving him my biggest, saddest eyes.

“Nice try,” he replies. “Now go brush your teeth, and I’ll tuck you in.”

I haven’t been put to bed since I was a kid, and it’s nice the way he fusses over me and makes sure I have everything I need.

“I’m sorry I messed up your evening,” I say after he finishes arranging the covers around me.

“Don’t worry about that, I’m just glad you came.”

“Me too,” I say through another yawn. It’s been a hard twenty-four hours, and I feel it catching up to me now in a rush.

He brushes the hair away from my eyes. “Sleep in tomorrow if you can. You probably need it.”

“I will,” I say and drift off to Jack gently petting my hair.

◊◊◊

It’s the middle of the afternoon when I wake. Because I’m a masochist, I reach for my phone. Aliyah has replied to my text and says she hopes my mom is alright, so I guess she bought my cover story for bailing out early. The only other text from anyone at the wedding is Trey Ward apologizing for “breaking my mom’s hip” and wishing her a speedy recovery. Then he has the audacity to remind me that he’ll be in DC next month. He’s such a monumental prick, and I hate that his presumption makes me a little wet. I compose several crude replies but in the end say nothing.

It does make me wonder though which version of events will take root. History is written by the victors, so it’s up to the men who fucked me in that hotel room to decide. Can they keep their mouths shut, or will the need to tell someone win out? I laugh for being naïve enough to even wonder. The only real question is how long will it take to get back to Aliyah? Her newly minted husband will never tell, but eventually someone will whisper the truth in her ear. Some fourth-hand account: the friend of a friend of a friend of one of the guys who gangbanged Mackenzie Teague the night before the wedding while her fiancé stood by and watched. I give it six months tops. Just enough time to move to Argentina and change my name.

A visit to the bathroom is a rude reminder of how bad my UTI is. Cranberry juice ain’t fixing this mess. As I grimace my way through peeing, I try not to ponder why it turns me on that none of the men who used me are suffering the same way this morning.

I pad down to the kitchen where Jack is sitting in the sunshine reading the newspaper and listening to music – so old school cool that a girl could get spontaneously pregnant at the mere sight of him. He smiles over his shoulder at me and gestures to the fresh pot of coffee on the counter. Bless you my liege, I think pouring a huge cup. He says to help myself to anything in his enormous refrigerator, so I fix a bowl of fresh berries with yogurt, granola and a little honey. A song comes on I don’t recognize. The man sings softly, begging to get what he wants. I stand there leaning against the counter transfixed until the song finishes with a line about it being the first time.

Why is everything in this house carefully curated to punch me in the feels?

There are two stacks of newspapers on the kitchen table – read and unread. I sit across from Jack and help myself to the front page of the Post from his read pile. Neither of us has spoken and neither of us does for a long while. It feels so peaceful. A picture book moment from a deeply romantic film. I lean back in my chair, rest my coffee against my chest, and gaze out the window at his garden. It has to end eventually – my story isn’t a romance – but I won’t be the first to break this elegant silence.

Jack finishes the book section and puts it aside with an air of finality that makes me nervous.

“Do you feel up to talking?” he asks.

“Not really,” I admit. “But I know it’s time.”

“Here, or on the couch in the living room?”

“Here. The sunshine’s nice.”

That settled, Jack clears the kitchen table and refills his coffee. When he comes back to the table, he has a pen and a leatherbound notebook. He opens it to the first page and writes my name. Why does this suddenly feel like a deposition?

“I don’t know where to begin.”

“The morning after the steakhouse. Start there,” he prompts.

“So the beginning beginning…” I say with a resigned nod, my mind drifting back to that awful morning. Waking up alone in my pee-stained sheets and the enveloping numbness that I thought was the new normal. I tell Jack everything: talking to a psychiatrist about my panic attack at the restaurant; the fear of a repeat episode that kept me largely housebound for two months; my gradual return to going out in public; the wedding invitation arriving in the mail. I tell him about how my sex drive completely evaporated after the panic attack and thinking maybe it was gone forever.

“So not even masturbation?”

“Nothing,” I say. “Like it had never even been there at all.”

“And how did that feel?”

“It was a relief,” I admit.

“Good to have the monkey off your back?”

“Well the monkey is an asshole.”

He nods as if that makes perfect sense to him. “But it didn’t last.”

“To put it mildly,” I say and take a shivering breath. “I flew to Boston on Friday for a wedding. Aliyah. A girlfriend from college”

“Tell me what happened.”

“Five guys fucked me in their suite,” I say, ripping off the band aid.

Jack reacts as though I said I’d spent the evening playing checkers, which is to say not at all. What kind of life must he live to be that blasé about a gangbang? It’s nice though knowing that there’s likely nothing I can say that he hasn’t heard before, so I tell him how Aliyah’s fiancé, Nathan Crowder called me a whore. How no one came to my defense and how furious their hypocrisy made me. The way Trey Ward and I goaded each other. How I got down on my knees, taunting Trey to prove he was a man.

“Doesn’t sound like a safe situation,” Jack observes.

“It wasn’t.”

“Did they cross the line?”

I think about that and shake my head. “No.”

“But part of you wishes they had,” he says not as an accusation just a statement of fact. I hadn’t even admitted that to myself but know he’s right. His perceptiveness intimidates me.

I answer eventually but can’t look him in the eye when I do. “Yeah.”

“Tell me why.”

“So they would feel bad about themselves.”

“Misery loves company,” Jack says plainly. “But there are easier ways to make people feel bad, Mackenzie.”

“I’m not sure I know how to do easy.”

A wry smile crosses Jack’s face. Tell me something I don’t know, it seems to say. “So what happened next.”

“Everything?”

“Everything, Mackenzie.”

I take a deep breath and does as he asks. It’s slow going because much of that night is a blur to me now. My body knows the cumulative effect intimately, but my mind can’t or won’t remember the who and the what and the how long. Plus it’s just not an easy story to tell in the cold light of day, not with Jack taking notes as I tell him one sordid detail after another. There’s still no judgment on his face though, and if you were watching us from the backyard, you’d think we were discussing the weather. The only time his expression changes is when I tell him how Nathan threatened to kill me if I came near Aliyah again and something dark passes across Jack’s eyes.

“Then I rang your doorbell,” I say coming to the end of my tale of woe. “And now we’re here.”

“And now we’re here,” he echoes. “Thank you for entrusting me with that. It’s quite a story. So how did that take you from wanting nothing to do with me to needing to belong to me?”

It’s a really good question. “Yesterday was really hard.”

“Harder than the actual event in some ways, I imagine.”

“So much harder. Coming home, I had to sit in the airport for hours with nothing to do but live with it. I felt so messed up but just knew that if I could tell you that I wouldn’t feel that way quite so much.” As I am talking, I realize everything Jack did last night has been by design. Instead of the immediate interrogation I’d expected, he made me something to eat and sent me to take a long shower. We watched a movie, cuddled, and ate popcorn. He tucked me in and let me sleep as late as I needed and when I woke up we had coffee and read paper. He created space for me to decompress and feel human again. I hadn’t known that was what I needed, but somehow Jack did. It’s like a miracle. “You just make me feel better about being me.”

“And that’s what you want? To feel better about being you?”

It’s such an odd question that at first I think he’s being sarcastic. “Doesn’t everyone?”

“I think you know the answer to that.”

I don’t know how to respond to that but think about it a lot in the weeks and months to come.

“I still don’t know why I did what I did though. It feels like there’s another me in here.” I touch the side of my head. “Sometimes she just takes over, and all I can do is watch her wreck everything in her path. I thought maybe my panic attack had killed her, and I would just be numb forever. But obviously that was just wishful thinking. This is what I am, and I don’t know how to control it.”

“Do you even want to control it?”

That stumps me. “I don’t know, but I think that’s why I want to belong to you.”

“Thank you for being honest,” he says, putting down his pen. “How do you feel now?”

“Scared.”

“Of?”

“Of you sending me away.”

“Why would I do that, Mackenzie?”

“Because I’m more trouble than I’m worth.”

“Well I think we can both agree you’re not a reliable judge of your worth,” Jack says and sits back with a thoughtful expression. “But before we go any further, I owe you an apology.”

Given a thousand guesses I wouldn’t have picked those as his next words. “Apologize to me?”

“Yes you. I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on what happened. I realize that I wanted you too much and that clouded my judgment. I should never have let you go with Robert at the Kennedy Center.”

“No, no, no, that wasn’t it,” I protest. The idea of sharing the blame is antithetical to my sense of self.

“Let me finish,” he says holding up a hand for silence. “One of the knocks on Dominants is that we’re allergic to admitting mistakes, so you should probably enjoy this because it doesn’t happen often. Part of the whole Dom mystique is the illusion that we’re never wrong. I tend to believe that delusions of infallibility is a recipe for a bad Dom, so I’m going to take my own advice and own up to my culpability. The truth is, I made more than one mistake when it came to you. The first was deciding you were a submissive before you reached that conclusion for yourself. That was pure arrogance on my part.

“I was so confident that if I eased you in, if I laid out a trail of breadcrumbs, that you would follow them to the truth about yourself. So, I foolishly let you keep one foot in my world and one foot out, which turned our dynamic into a game of hide and seek. You were already deeply conflicted, and my ego created even more confusion. I realize now that I was waiting for a sign. A lightbulb moment when it all clicked into place for you. So when you got down on your knees in the Kennedy Center, I convinced myself that was it. I was so happy and, let’s be honest, pleased with myself for being so fucking right about you that I got carried away. I let you go with Robert when I should have protected you. That’s my responsibility, and I failed you. I am sorry, Mackenzie.”

Being apologized to by a man is not really something I have experienced firsthand, but it’s about the sexiest thing ever. Seriously, there should be niche porn that is nothing but men apologizing without becoming hostile or shitty. I’m at a loss for words and want so badly to hug him, show my gratitude in some way, but that’s not where we are. I resolve in that moment to make this all worth it to him.

“The Kennedy Center isn’t why I had a panic attack,” I say.

“Doesn’t matter. It was still too much, too soon. And I should’ve known better,” Jack replies. “But tell me why you think you did.”

“Because I started to see what it actually means to be a submissive. All the reading you had me do covered the how, but it didn’t really get into the why. I found that really frustrating, but I realize now that the books couldn’t tell me why because the why is probably different for everyone.”

“That’s very astute,” Jack says with an approving nod. “As much as boys on the internet want to pontificate about what it means to be a ‘real’ submissive, the truth is there are as many kinds of subs as there are girls.”

It feels good to hear him confirm my suspicions and gives me confidence to go on. “Well, at the restaurant, when I told you what happened in Robert’s box I caught a glimpse of the kind of sub I am. It just made me feel better that what I’d done at the Kennedy Center had been for someone. For you. It gave it purpose and meaning. I felt safe that you saw me for what I am and didn’t flinch away.”

“But…” Jack says, leading the witness.

“But what if I came to depend on your acceptance?”

“Ah,” Jack says, seeing it now. “And what if I took it away…”

“Right. I mean my life is a mess, but at least it’s my mess. I figured I managed okay by myself, not great but okay, so why risk it, you know?”

“Until Boston.”

“Yeah.” I pause here trying to steel myself. “I hate myself for Friday, but I think I’d feel different if I’d done it for you.”

“How would you feel?”

“It depends if you were proud of me or not.” Out of sight under the kitchen table, my hands are rubbing together like I’m trying to scrub off a stubborn stain.

“You want to get gangbanged for me, Mackenzie?”

I blush like arterial spray and speak the nine hardest words of my life. “I think I want to do everything for you.”

“And if I send you away instead?”

“I’ll just keep doing it anyway, on my own, feeling the way I did when I showed upon your doorstep last night. I won’t stop. Not ever. I know that now. ”

Jack puts down his pen and sits back. “Thank you, Mackenzie. That was incredibly brave.”

“Thanks,” I say meekly waiting for him to deliver his verdict.

“So the short answer is I do want you back,” he says but cuts me off before I get too excited. “But I have several conditions. None are negotiable.”

My heart leaps, but I keep it together, just barely. “Of course. Anything you want.”

“I’d be careful saying that to men like me,” he cautions.

“Yes Jack. Sorry.”

“From what I see, you’re in no state to make this kind of commitment. Not today anyway. So we’re going to wait and give you time to recuperate.”

My heart’s rise reaches its apex and threatens to come crashing down to earth. “For how long?”

“Two weeks.”

The idea of waiting that long frightens me since it just gives him more time to come to his senses. “But I’m ready now.”

“Well I’m not,” Jack replies sharply. “I need you of sound mind and body.”

“I am,” I plead.

“Did any of those men use condoms?”

That shuts me down hard. “No.”

“Exactly,” Jack says without malice. “This isn’t a punishment, Mackenzie. This is so we can both look back and know you made an informed decision. You’ve had a hell of a time the last few months, and my guess is you’d give me a kidney right now if I made that a condition.”

“Probably,” I admit and sheepishly tell him about my UTI from hell.

He tells me to wait and goes upstairs. When he comes back, he hands me a prescription bottle. “Those should still be good.”

I read the label in amazement: Ciprofloxacin, which is similar to nitrofurantoin. “How?”

“I’m a well-stocked Dom,” he says. “What can I say?”

“You’re amazing,” I say, shaking out a pill.

“You will make an appointment to be tested for STDs at the end of the week. That should be enough time for most things to show up on a panel. We’ll have you screened again in three months to be absolutely sure.”

This is the second time I’ve had to get tested for him, which kind of tells the whole story. “Yes Jack.”

“I’d also like you to stay here at the house for the next two weeks so I can keep an eye on you. You will have a schedule and list of responsibilities.”

“Like what?” I ask.

“Like whatever I say.”

I feel his finality all the way down my spine. “Yes Jack.”

“If you are still interested in becoming my submissive at the end of the two weeks, we will discuss it then.”

“Yes Jack.”

“I want to be clear though. This time around will be different. If you ask to be my sub, there will be no coddling. All the way in, or all the way out. I won’t repeat my mistake.”

“Yes Jack. I want to be your submissive. All the way.”

“We shall see,” he says. “But there’s one other hurdle we need to clear first.”

“There is?” I say and hear a whistling in my ear as if that other shoe, the one I’ve been looking for since showing up on Jack’s doorstep, is at last dropping.

“So here’s the thing,” he begins. “I haven’t seen you for three months and honestly had given up on ever hearing from you again. A girl approached me a month ago asking to be trained.”

“Oh,” I say feeling stupid because of course she did. “I can just go.”

“Hold on a second, hold on. We didn’t have this discussion as a preamble to my throwing you out. I want to be clear it’s not a deal breaker for me, Mackenzie. I’ve trained multiple girls in the past, and it can actually be beneficial. So the choice is yours.”

I chew on my lip wanting desperately for it not to be up to me. “Don’t you have to check with her first?”

“No, she consented to this possibility when I took her on.”

Damn, she’s already cooler than me. “Do I get to meet her first?”

“You’ll see her next week if you agree. Chloe is traveling for work now.”

“Wow, that’s a lot,” I say, trying not to hate this Chloe person on general principle. The idea of sharing Jack is painful, and I realize there is some small part of me that thinks of him as mine. It’s irrational but that’s how I feel.

“It is, and you have two weeks to think it over. If at the end of that time, you decide this isn’t for you then you can go on your way. No pressure. No hard feelings. But for now I’d like you to stay, recover, regroup, and give yourself time to think. Will you do that for me?”

“I will,” I say feeling much less certain of my answer two weeks from now.

◊◊◊

After our talk, Jack drives me home to pack. I suggest he wait downstairs, that I’ll only be a minute, but he insists on coming up with me. Resigned, I fob us into my building. It’s not his company, I just don’t want him to see how I’ve been living without him. He looks genuinely horrified at the state of my apartment.

“Sorry,” I say vaguely.

“That’s alright. My shots are up to date.”

Fair. Harsh, but fair.

Jack follows me while I throw together two large bags of clothes, most dirty, as well as toiletries and everything I’ll need for work. It feels like I am packing for a stint at rehab under the watchful eye of a counselor who doesn’t want me sneaking any contraband. It’s a bad metaphor though – my addiction doesn’t need any gear.

Back at his house, Jack makes dinner, and we eat at the kitchen table. He asks me a thousand questions about a typical week in the life of a free-range Mackenzie. How much sleep do I need? What food do I keep at home? What are my hours at work? How much exercise do I need to feel good? On a similar note, how much do I masturbate? What about a social life? How do I spend evenings at home? What are my bad habits when I’m feeling down. It goes on and on like that. All my answers scrupulously recorded in his notebook.

When he’s satisfied, he has me clean up while he makes some kind of list. When I’m done, he has me wait quietly while he finishes like he’s an accountant tabulating my enormous tax bill. He underlines something at the bottom of his page and puts down his pen with great solemnity.

“Alright Mackenzie, this is your schedule for the week. You’ll go to work every day as normal. In addition, you will exercise a minimum of four days a week. We will have dinner together each night except when you make plans with friends, which you will do at least once. Other than that, I expect you here. Lights out at eleven.”

That’s the most structure I’ve had since I was a kid and feel myself chafe at it. “Yes Jack.”

“When you are here, your cellphone will be powered off and given to me. If you need it for a specific reason, you may ask to use it.”

I silently kick myself for telling him how much time I spend doomscrolling TikTok when I’m sad. “Yes Jack.”

“You may not watch television without permission, but you may read as much as you like. My home will be kept to my standards not yours. That means your bed will be made every morning, and your room tidy at all times. If I can tell where you’ve been in my house, there will be consequences. I have a working dishwasher, and there will be no dishes left on counters or in the sink.”

Fuck… Is that how Hercules felt? “Yes Jack.”

“I don’t expect you’ll get through it all but start laundry tonight. Clean laundry will be folded and either hung up or put in drawers. Chairs are for sitting.”

“Yes Jack,” I say guiltily.

“Do you cook?”

“I can make a few things.”

“Thursday evening you will cook for us. Tell me what ingredients you need, and I’ll add it to the grocery order. I’ll also makes space on a shelf in the refrigerator for you.”

That sounds like a lot of pressure, but it also sounds nice to be able to do something for him. “Yes Jack.”

He makes himself a drink and gives me a tour of the house, showing me where everything is. I ask him what’s down in the basement and jokingly ask if that’s his sex dungeon.

“Yes,” he says matter-of-factly. “But that’s off-limits for now.”

I give the basement door a lingering look and follow him up through the house. The tour finishes at the washer and drier, which are hidden in an alcove along the hallway between our two bedrooms. He tells me to find him when I’m done and leaves me to start the first of many loads of laundry. When I am squared away, I take a shower and go upstairs where Jack is watching a movie with his feet up in his preferred spot on the couch. I will come to know that he is a cinephile but rarely watches television otherwise. Tonight is an old Robert Altman western called McCabe and Mrs. Miller. Jack hasn’t seen it since college and says it’s been on his list to rewatch. Rewatching movies is one of his favorite things. He catches me up on the plot, but I’m exhausted and fall asleep. Snoozing against him while he rewatches old movies and pets my hair may be one of my new favorite things. When the movie is over, he wakes me gently, supervises while I switch my laundry to the drier, and then tucks me into bed.

And that’s how that first week goes. Every day, I go to work and then the gym. Jack does a daily inspection of my room, but I am evangelical about following his rules. In the evening, we have dinner and then talk or read or watch a movie. Gradually, my body recovers and my head clears. I’m still not ready to confront what happened in Boston, but the cringe inducing flashbacks diminish. On Wednesday night, I go out with Tommy and some of his friends to a new bar in Penn Quarter. On Thursday, I cook for Jack. Steak Caesar salads that I learn how to make from a YouTube video. It wasn’t technically a lie when I said I could make a few things, but I don’t think instant Ramen a la Mackenzie is what he has in mind.

On Saturday morning, he calls me into the kitchen and tells me that the state of my apartment is wholly unacceptable. He gives me until Sunday at six to make it “fit for human life.” There will be an inspection and repercussions if it’s not up to his standards. I’ve done well keeping my room tidy but actual cleaning is a whole other basket of dirty socks. I don’t own a vacuum cleaner or really any cleaning supplies beyond Clorox wipes and a roll of paper towels. When I tell Jack that, his eyes roll so far back into his head I almost call an ambulance. He makes me a list of supplies to buy, loans me a DustBuster, and sends me on my way.

I spend the first hour back at my apartment procrastinating because I loathe cleaning and because the size of the job is so daunting. I’m being silly and stubborn though. The sooner it’s done, the sooner I can see Jack. Plus the idea of disappointing him makes me sad. Get to work, I tell myself. Laundry will take the longest, so I get a load started and then tackle the kitchen foolishly thinking it will be easiest. I have to run the dishwasher twice and probably drop four garbage bags stuffed with old takeout and expired food down the building’s trash shoot. Every time I think I’m done in the kitchen, I find more hidden dirt, and it’s after five before I finally start on the living room. By the time I call a car at ten, I only have my bedroom and bathroom left to tackle tomorrow.

Jack is working when I get home, so I go straight to bed. In the morning, I’m up and out the door by six. I have a suspicion that the bathroom will be my nemesis, so armed with a venti latte and a muffin I assess the carnage. My shower has a definite mold situation and by the time I am done scrubbing the tiles, I am a sweaty mess. To save time, I strip off my clothes and work in bra and panties. My last two loads of laundry are my sheets and bedding. I remake the bed and vacuum every room, pausing to order a proper vacuum cleaner online. A DustBuster might be handy for a small mess but it’s a medieval torture device for an entire apartment. After that I just wander around looking for anything I missed, or more to the point, anything that Jack would notice. There’s no way it’s perfect; I just want him to know I tried my hardest.

My phone rings – it’s Jack downstairs at the call box. How is it six already? I buzz him in and make a frantic lap around the apartment straightening things I’ve already straightened twice. When he knocks, I audibly yelp like I’ve just been caught disposing of a body in a shallow grave. It’s only when I let him in and feel his eyes travel the length of my body do I remember my clothes are piled in the bathroom.

“Sorry, I can go get dressed real quick,” I offer.

“Don’t be silly,” he says and leads me from room to room inspecting my work. I trot along behind him looking up at his face intently for any reaction. He gives nothing away. Drawers and closets are opened. He takes all the cushions off my couch, which I didn’t think to do. There is a grotesque amount of food and assorted crap under there. I run get the DustBuster, and he waits while I vacuum everything. Then it’s off to the bedroom where he even gets down and looks under my bed. My refrigerator and freezer get a thorough going over that seems to go on forever. Eventually, he moves back to the living room and sits on the couch, patting the cushion beside him for me. I sit on the literal edge of my seat waiting for his verdict.

“The top of your refrigerator is a mess,” he says.

I shoot a guilty look into the kitchen. I’m so short it never occurred to me that refrigerators even had tops or that they could get dirty. “Sorry.”

“I would also like to see you give some more thought to organizing your clothes. The space under your bed is not for shoving things.”

“I will.”

“And I don’t think the DustBuster cut it. You’re going to need a real vacuum cleaner.”

“I already ordered one.”

That catches him off-guard, and he smiles a small half-smile. “Good girl.”

That feels good to hear, but the suspense is killing me. “So did I pass?”

“It’s like a completely different apartment. I barely recognize it.”

His praise is like the sun coming out after two weeks of rain. “Really?”

“Really. Always room for improvement, but given where you started on Saturday, it’s outstanding.”

My shoulders sag in relief. “Thank you.”

“Going forward, this is how I expect your apartment to be kept. If I stop by and find a mess, there will be consequences,” he says. “That is, if you ask to be my submissive again in seven days. If not, you can live however you wish.”

Ugh. “Yes Jack.”

“Come here,” he says, pulling me into his lap. His arms encircle me and hold me tight. “You did good.”

I puddle in his embrace. Crack isn’t this addictive.

◊◊◊

As much as I am loathe to admit it, Jack’s regimented schedule really helps. It seems counterintuitive, but instead of constrained I feel unexpectedly free. The part of my brain usually occupied with locating the next shiny distraction suddenly has time to think about other things or, even better, not think at all. By the beginning of the second week, I am feeling reasonably whole. The only problem is that my sex drive is climbing into the red. I am a petite brunette Chernobyl floating through my days in a state of terminal horniness made all the worse by the object of my lust refusing to even touch me. I hint, unsubtly, that I don’t need two weeks and am ready to take the next step. But Jack just smiles and says, “Saturday.” Saturday might as well be a decade away as far as my aching pussy knows. It’s so unfair.

On Tuesday, the results of my STD panel arrive. Miraculously, I am negative for everything. I show Jack the results, hoping that it will sway him to take pity on me. It does not. Wednesday, I go to a show at the 9:30 with friends, and on Thursday I cook for Jack again – broiled salmon and asparagus. It was overly ambitious of me, and I completely overcook and burn the salmon. I’m almost in tears, but Jack is unphased. He shows me what I did wrong and says I can try again. Then we order takeout and watch Running on Empty, which I think I would have liked more if sitting close to Jack wasn’t such torture. It doesn’t help that I’m ninety-nine percent sure that he knows exactly what he’s doing to me.

It’s been a crazy week at work, and Friday is no exception. By the time I leave to walk up to Union Station and catch the Red Line, I am exhausted. Thank God it isn’t a gym day. I am keenly aware that tomorrow marks two weeks. No matter how things go, it will be an intense day, and I just want to rest up. Something in Jack’s eyes when he meets me at the front door tells me that’s not on the menu.

“Chloe is back.”

Chloe – his other submissive. No scratch that, his only submissive. I’m just some girl staying in his guest room.

“She’s on her way over,” he tells me, putting my phone away in the kitchen cubbyhole.

“Right now?”

“In a few minutes. Will you be okay.”

“Sure,” I say trying to sound breezy while my anxiety spikes.

“Sure?” he repeats.

I shrug. “What do you want me to say?”

“Let’s start with the truth,” he says sternly.

The truth…. That turns out to be a bit complicated. I realize that to make peace with Chloe’s existence I’ve turned her into an abstraction. Sharing Jack with a hypothetical girl seemed doable, but will I feel the same way when the flesh and blood Chloe walks through the door? I just don’t know.

“Nervous as hell,” I admit.

“That’s natural, but you’re not going to have to do anything today. This is just a conversation,” Jack says calmly. “Are you up to that?”

If Chloe can do it then so can I. “Yes Jack.”

I’m still telling myself that when the doorbell rings. Jack points to the couch and tells me to sit. I do as I’m told while he answers the door. She follows him into the living room, and I catch my first glimpse of the competition. That’s not a constructive way to think about her, but I can’t help myself. My first feeling is one of relief. Chloe is not unattractive, but I’m objectively much prettier. My smugness doesn’t last though because that’s not all there is to her. I might be the beautiful one, but it’s debatable who is more attractive. Not in the ways that matter to men.

I would guess she’s a few years older, maybe twenty-five or six with shoulder length blonde hair and wide, knowing green eyes. Where I am athletic and slender, she is naturally curvier. I immediately hate the way her tits strain the buttons of her white button down. More than that though, a raw sexuality just comes off her in waves that could capsize a battleship. An undefinable but blatant quality that dares you to look away. Her lips are the reason other women get filler, and I don’t know a straight man whose thoughts wouldn’t drift to blowjobs at the sight of them. A guy once told me that a woman could be beautiful but not sexy. He said that’s why he liked to meet girls at clubs, calling it his dance test. If she can dance then she can fuck, he explained. Well, I would bet real money that Chloe can dance her shapely ass off. There is a loose double-jointedness to the way her hips move when she walks that is both a threat and a promise.

Jack sits back down beside me, and Chloe stands in front of him. Without being prompted, she removes her shoes and places them side by side on the floor to her left. Unzipping her knee-length black skirt, she steps out, folds it neatly, and sets it beside her shoes. Next she unbuttons her shirt, not seductively though, it’s just a practical task. That she also folds and places atop her skirt followed by her bra and panties. When she’s naked apart from a link chain necklace, she puts her shoes on top of her clothes, scoops it all up, and stores it all in a cabinet behind her. She comes back and slips to her knees in front of Jack, shoulders back, palms resting on her thighs. Her kneel is not as smooth or graceful as Linda at the Kennedy Center, but I can tell that they’ve both studied at the school of Jack. She waits there patiently, gazing at his feet. I note glumly that her breasts look even better out of clothes.

“Mackenzie, this is Chloe. She’s been with me for a month,” Jack says. “Chloe, this is Mackenzie.”

“Yes Sir,” Chloe says with a soft southern accent, not acknowledging me directly.

“Tell me what you know about her,” he says.

Chloe takes a deep breath and picks her words carefully. “Mackenzie is the girl from before this girl. Sir had high hopes for her, but it ended badly. There was an incident, but Sir didn’t go into it with this girl. Sir waited, hoping Mackenzie would reconsider, but eventually he decided it was time to move on. That’s when Sir took on this girl for training.”

“And are you happy with your training?”

“Oh, yes Sir. Very,” Chloe says, eyes darting up shyly to Jack’s face.

“But now I am considering rocking the boat.”

“Yes Sir.”

“Tell me how.”

“Mackenzie is going to ask to be Sir’s again tomorrow.”

Jack nods. “And how do you feel about that?”

Chloe bites her bottom lip nervously.

“What’s on your mind?” Jack prompts.

“I don’t want to say,” she says and winces at her mistake. “This girl doesn’t want to say, Sir.”

“Tell me.”

“This girl feels insecure.”

“Good girl and that’s okay,” Jack says. “Why?”

“This girl is afraid Sir won’t want this girl anymore now that Mackenzie is back.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Because Mackenzie is beautiful,” she says, not as a compliment to me but as a statement of fact. I find her honesty profoundly moving and can’t imagine being this vulnerable in front of a total stranger. Especially not one who I viewed as a threat.

“And what are you?” Jack asks.

“This girl isn’t allowed to say.”

“You have my permission this once.”

A tear falls down Chloe’s cheek. “Ugly.”

I feel like an awful, judgmental, capital-B bitch. Chloe might be the competition, but she’s anything but ugly.

Jack smiles at Chloe. “Well we disagree strongly about that, but I’m proud of your honesty.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

“We did talk about this possibility though,” he says. “And you consented at the time.”

“Yes Sir. This girl was very excited about having a sister.”

“But not this sister.”

Chloe swallows guiltily. “This girl remembers how you talked about Mackenzie. It’s intimidating.”

“Would it help if I gave you my word that your place in this house is entirely between us. It has nothing to do with Mackenzie and never will.”

Chloe nods but without much confidence.

“Look at me,” Jack tells her.

Chloe looks up at him with those huge eyes of hers.

“You’ve done exceptionally well in your first month, and I have zero intention of abandoning you. I want you here, but it is up to you. Will you stay even if Mackenzie does?”

Chloe nods vehemently, eyes rimmed with tears. “Yes Sir.”

“Good girl. Come here.”

Chloe crawls forward on her knees and rests her forehead against Jack’s knee. He leans forward and cups her face in his hand, meeting her eyes. Something intimate passes between them; Chloe smiles up at him gratefully. Here’s how much of an idiot I am – I actually thought that because I got to keep my clothes and sit on the couch beside Jack that I held the power. Watching them share this private moment, I realize that I am the powerless one. I’m on the couch because I haven’t earned the privilege of kneeling naked at Jack’s feet. Jealousy isn’t really something I do, and I’ve always prided myself on being too evolved for such petty emotions. It’s obvious that I’ve just never let myself want anyone badly enough to feel possessive of them. I get jealousy now, and for the first time I feel the queasy, unsettling, desperate sting of loss. Because I belonged to Jack and threw it away. I gave up my place at his feet, and Chloe eagerly took it. Try as I might, I can’t blame her. Kill her, yes. Blame her, no.

Jack produces a key from his pocket and gives it to Chloe. “Wait downstairs. I’ll be along shortly.”

“Yes Sir,” she says and stands up from her knees without hands touching the ground.

When she’s gone, Jack turns to look at me. “So that’s Chloe.”

“That was intense. I thought I was going to meet her.”

“No, I said you would see her. Meeting comes later assuming you still want to have our conversation tomorrow. The two weeks are up.”

“Are they?”

“Funny,” he says without laughing. “Do you?”

I’m filled with swirling doubt, but I tell him that I do. This is no time for my weakness. Somehow I’ve finagled a second chance. There won’t be a third.

“Good. So, I will be occupied this evening with Chloe. You are restricted to the second and third floor. Your dinner is on the coffee table upstairs, and you have permission to watch television until eleven. Lights out by midnight. We will talk in the morning.”

“Yes Jack.”

“Good girl,” he says and squeezes my thigh. “Off you go.”

With nothing left to do but demonstrate my obedience, I get up and trudge upstairs. Jack ordered me sushi, but it’s a long time before I have appetite to eat. Instead, I sit there in the dark fighting the urge to sneak downstairs and press my ear to the basement door. I flinch at every sound, certain that it must be Chloe wracked with the pleasure I want for myself. Eventually I put on old episodes of Friends just to drown out the world. It doesn’t do anything to stifle my imagination though, which has always been my worst enemy. My lights are off well before eleven, but I lay there sleepless until I hear them both come up the stairs and go into Jack’s bedroom. I scream into my pillow at the thought of her sleeping in his arms.

◊◊◊

The next morning, Jack and I are sitting at the kitchen table just the two of us.

“You’ve had a satisfactory two weeks,” Jack says. “Better than expected to be frank. You did everything I asked and did it well. How are you feeling?”

“Good,” I say and find it’s the truth.

“So today is the day. You still believe this is the right step for you?”

“Yes Jack.”

“Then tell me what you want.”

“I want to belong to you.”

“And you’ll be able to coexist with Chloe?” Jack asks.

I woke up this morning asking myself that same question. What I decided is that I don’t have a choice. My need for Jack is profound. There are things I have to learn, and I don’t know anyone else capable of teaching me. So if the price of those lessons is sharing him with Chloe then that’s the price. And to be brutally honest, there is part of me that might actually prefer it that way. Sometimes I get confused and start to believe that I might matter. It’s obviously foolish, but Jack’s attention feels so wonderful that I make that mistake a lot around him. Chloe will be a constant reminder that I don’t mean anything. I’m just another girl in his modern-day harem.

“Yes Jack.”

“And this is what you want?”

My head is nodding before he finishes his question. “So much.”

“I want to be clear about something first. The last two weeks have been cuddling and movies and reading the paper over breakfast. That was to give you time to heal and recover safely. Those days are over.”

The way he says the last word makes me swallow involuntarily. “Yes Jack.”

“Also, as we’ve discussed there are as many different kinds of submissives as there are girls. So while there will be some overlap, Chloe’s training and rules will be different from yours. You are two very different girls with two very different sets of needs and goals. Understood?”

That all feels very above my paygrade, but I nod. “Yes Jack.”

“And let’s also be clear that if you’re looking to be saved from yourself then you’ve come to the wrong place. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t.”

“I don’t want to be saved.”

“What do you want?”

I don’t even need to think about it. “Acceptance.”

“Then you’re mine,” he says simply.

“That’s it?”

“You want I should make it more complicated?” Jack asks.

I assure him in no uncertain terms that I do not, which makes him chuckle.

“So what now?” I ask.

Jack opens his notebook to a page bookmarked by a fine link chain necklace. It’s identical to the one Chloe wears. I stare at it like it’s a four-carat diamond.

“Would you like this?” Jack asks.

“More than anything.”

“Do you remember the way Chloe undressed? Were you paying attention?”

“I think so.”

“Show me,” he says and turns his chair out to the middle of the kitchen.

I get up from the table and step around so I’m in front of him. Shoes were first, but I’m not wearing shoes. My mind blanks: bottom or top next? Shoes first must mean bottom second, right? Pressed for time, I hope I’m right and shimmy out of my leggings. Jack says nothing, but I don’t know if that means anything. I fold the leggings and set them on the floor to my right, no my left. Next I remove my t-shirt, fold it crisply and add it to my pile. I’m not wearing a bra, so my panties are the last to go. Then I take my clothes out to the living room and put them in the cabinet just as Chloe did yesterday.

When I return, Jack points to the floor at his feet. I kneel, hating how clumsy I am. Why didn’t I practice this week in anticipation of this moment? I’m so useless. Jack seems unperturbed and makes a spinning motion with his finger. I shuffle around on my knees until I’m facing away from him.

“Lift your hair,” he says.

I gather it in a loose ponytail and hold it over my head. Gently, he lays the necklace across my throat. The metal is cold and goosebumps race from my shoulder blades to my wrists. He reaches around to show me the Allen wrench in his hand.

“Whose?” he asks.

“Yours.”

“Mine,” he agrees.

I feel him latch the necklace and then lock it in place using the wrench. He tells me to let down my hair and arranges it around my shoulders until he is satisfied. It is the most his hands have touched me since I’ve been in his house. My breathing shudders, and I all but purr.

He has me turn around again and he looks me over, his eyes on my body like prison searchlights.

“That’s better,” he says.

“Yes Daddy,” I say, the word falling out accidentally and without any thought behind it. It feels right though, and that it does makes me blush.

“Oh,” he says. “Well that answers my next questions. Are you quite sure?”

After a moment’s hesitation, I answer him. “Yes Daddy.”

“Good. Let’s get started.”