Found

"Congratulations," Lexa said when she slid into the booth.

"Too soon for that," she replied, picking up the menu.

"It looked pretty well established to me." Lexa took a sip of the water the waiter set down in front of her then wiped the condensation off her hand onto her napkin. "How is the reality measuring up to the fantasy?"

"Even though it wasn't my fantasy to have things go the way they did when I went home with him from the bar, I wasn't exactly surprised by how they went," she started, spinning the straw in her iced tea. Since she was fourteen she had fantasized about what a night with him would be like. But back then the fantasies were juvenile. The unrealistic musings of an inexperienced girl. Now she was older, and her desires had changed. "I was surprised when he showed up on my doorstep, though. I hadn't been very nice to him."

"Amazing what hurt pride will do to a man," Lexa said, her teeth peeking through the curve of her lips. "That was the plan, though. You tested him and he passed."

"Yeah, he did. I mean, to show up on my doorstep twice—"

"Twice?" Lexa cut her off. "I thought it was only once."

"That's because I didn't tell you about the second time." She looked away from Lexa's narrowed eyes, pretending to take in the scenery of the room.

"Why?" Lexa asked, the domme coming out in her voice.

"He was drunk, and he..." she paused, trying to think of a mitigating way to phrase it. "He attempted to take something he didn't have permission to have."

"He assaulted you?" Lexa's pale eyes shot through her.

"No—"

"Morgan, I told you to trust your gut. You can get hurt—"

"I did trust my gut," she fired back. These were the games she and Lexa sometimes played, and never once had she ignored her intuition. "He showed up at my house at night and I live alone in the middle of nowhere. My options were limited."

Lexa sat back, crossing her arms over her chest. "So what happened?"

"Things got a little... strange." It wasn't that these games always went as planned, but she never anticipated this one ending the way it had. But much like correlation did not equal causation, improbability was not equal to impossibility, and nothing in life was impossible.

"Strange?" Lexa asked, raising her eyebrow.

"Well, I whipped him to get him away from me—"

"Whipped him with what?" Lexa interrupted.

"A leather strap. Kind of like a belt but a little wider." She held up her hand and squared her pointer finger and thumb, demonstrating the width. "I only hit him a few times, until he was on his elbows and knees with his hands covering his head..." A soft tingle started in her stomach when the image chased the rest of the thought from her mind.

"And?" Lexa prompted, leaning towards her.

"And I may have accidentally shed my sheep's clothing earlier than I had wanted." It wasn't supposed to happen the way it had, but she was more than willing to adapt to the scene as it unfolded. "The male thought process never ceases to amaze me," she continued. "Even given all that had happened up to that point, he still couldn't resist the sight of my nipples showing through my dress."

Lexa stared at her silently for a moment, then laughter burst from her lips. "You didn't let him come, did you? He hasn't earned that privilege yet."

"I may have..." she replied, stuffing a forkfull of salad into her mouth.

"I raised you better than that," Lexa scolded.

"And I made a decision in the moment based on my expertise in the field of behavior. And clearly it worked since he showed up on my doorstep a third time."

Lexa slowly chewed on a piece of french bread, her expression taut. "I still don't understand how you went to high school with this man for four years and he doesn't have a clue who you are."

"Three years. He was a year ahead of me," she replied, breathing out the tension she had held in anticipation of a lecture. "And nobody knew me."

"How do you manage to go to a small town high school for four years and have nobody remember you?"

"It's not that difficult, really." For all the secrets they had shared, she had never spoken much about her high school experience. Finn was the only piece from that part of her life she had told Lexa about, and there hadn't been much to tell. He was popular, a charming womanizer, and a star athlete in their high school rodeo district. He had never wronged her. Never even spoken to her, which made her predicament even worse. Not knowing him personally made it easy for her to morph him into whatever she wanted him to be.

"I run a classroom full of kindergarteners and they all know who their classmates are, as well as who the kids in the other two kindergarten classes at the school are," said Lexa, raising a spoon of potato soup to her lips.

"Well, first you have to have a mother who believes the small town elementary and middle school are full of incompetent morons, so she drives you to a private school in a city thirty minutes away," she explained. "Then, when you're forced to go to the small town high school starting freshman year because your parents get a divorce, everyone knows everyone else but you."

"And by then the cohorts are already set," Lexa said, nodding in understanding.

"Exactly. After that, staying incognito is easy." She took a sip of water and pushed her plate to the side. "All you have to do is make sure to enroll in every advanced placement class the school offers, and have a few big brothers to drive you to the junior college two towns over to take them, since the school in your town is too small to have them on campus."

"Ah yes, three very attractive big brothers..." Lexa interjected.

"Yes, three very attractive and incredibly non-submissive brothers," she replied, knowing Lexa would never try to enslave anyone without her blessing.

"No worries. I'm a married woman now, remember?" Lexa winked at her, then used the opportunity to once again flash the rock on her ring finger. "Anyways, continue..."

She sighed and rolled her eyes at the ring, knowing full well the most important ring in the marriage was the one Lexa had pierced through her husband's perineum. "For the one or two periods you actually have to take at the high school, you make sure to sit in the left corner of the front row while everyone else sits in the back because you always forget your glasses and have a hard time seeing the whiteboard. Oh, and make sure not to wear attention seeking clothing. Plus, you have the fact that teenagers are incredibly self absorbed to help you out."

"Sounds pretty simple." Lexa tossed her napkin into her empty bowl. "So, what's your plan for him?"

"I don't know." She had been trying to formulate one all day just in case he showed up at her door a fourth time.

"He seems interested in the lifestyle, and he didn't run screaming from the château last night," Lexa pointed out.

"Curiosity is what got him there. When you're caught up in the moment it's sometimes easy to agree to things you wouldn't normally agree to." Even now she had a hard time believing he hadn't safeworded the minute he figured out where she was going to stick her finger.

"But I watched him." Lexa snagged the bill and flopped a credit card down on top of it. "His dick was about to rip through his jeans. You can't tell me you're still questioning whether or not the idea of being dominated arouses him."

It was true. She remembered him fidgeting in discomfort at her feet while the images of all the ways she wanted to make him squirm had been racing through her mind. "If he comes back and wants to submit, I'll start teaching him how to be obedient and how to please," she replied. "I don't know how far he's willing to go outside his vanilla box."

"And what happens if he wants to be a slave?" Lexa pried.

"That will never happen." He may enjoy being dominated, but that didn't mean he cared about providing pleasure to the woman holding the whip.

"How do you know?" Lexa questioned.

"I just don't see that happening. I don't even know if he'll make it through training," she said, then held her tongue until the waiter was done picking up the bill. "But if it does happen, then that's what I'll prepare him for. After he chooses a twenty-four/seven collar, I'll find an appropriate owner for him or hand him over to the community dependent on which he chooses."

"Or..." Lexa prompted, standing up.

"Or what?" she asked, following behind her through the maze of tables to the door.

"Or you could keep him as your own personal slave," Lexa said, holding the door open for her.

"You know I don't keep slaves."

She opened the door to her Camaro and flinched when the black leather burned the exposed skin on her thighs. She turned the air on full blast, sticking her palms in front of the vents. When cool air started to fill the car she gingerly placed one hand on the hot steering wheel and shifted it into gear with the other.

Every move she had made so far with Finn was wrong. She had never had a problem maintaining control, but there was an irrepressible need that radiated through her every time she saw him on his knees. The fantasy had been haunting her for the past few months, ever since she had seen his truck in town.

Much like his truck, he was supposed to have aged. He was supposed to be disrespectful and obnoxious, like how she remembered him. He should never have shown up on her doorstep trying to redeem himself. He was supposed to be too proud or too uncaring to worry about the opinion of one girl. The reality wasn't supposed to trump the fantasy. He wasn't supposed to allow her to tie him down. He wasn't supposed to allow her to put a collar around his neck. But he had, and it was an image she couldn't get out of her head. It made her need soak through her underwear, leaving her to walk around wet for the remainder of her workday.

Several hours later she turned onto her street, her Camaro bouncing through the potholes. It didn't belong on country roads, and she pressed down on the brake to slowly roll up her driveway. The small yellow house with white trim was even further dwarfed by the red barn behind it. True to its country location, it had a wrap around porch and two rocking chairs by the front window.

She had said she would never come back to where she came from other than to visit her family, but life didn't always take a person where they wanted to go. Her mother's unexpected death a year ago brought her back, and even after twelve months she still wasn't ready to move out of her house.

Finding work wasn't difficult given her experience and all the letters that followed her name, and the forty minute commute gave her time to blast herself with music and decompress. She and Lexa had been inseparable for eight years before the move. Lexa lasted three weeks before packing her bags and showing up on the doorstep of the farmhouse with an offer from a domme who was stepping down from her position as head mistress of a nearby château.

The house was quiet when she walked inside, as it always was. Besides her, it was empty. Lexa always begged her to let one of the community slaves move in because it was unsafe to live by herself. But besides having one come every Tuesday morning to clean, she wasn't interested in having any slaves in her home.

She sat down on the couch and grabbed the remote but didn't turn on the television. Instead she stared out the large window overlooking the long driveway and empty front pasture. There was no grey Dodge in sight.

The longer she waited in one spot the further her mind wandered away, eventually stopping at the memory of the first time she had ever seen a man in chains. It had been nine years since Lexa had found her, and it took two more for her to truly find herself. She had met Lexa in a Sensation and Perception class her Junior year of college. Lexa was a Child Development major, whereas she was studying Psychology with the intent to become a behaviorist. She had never had many friends, but from the first time she and Lexa spoke, it was like she had been missing Lexa her entire life.

Their class had been cancelled one Monday due to the professor being sick, so Lexa asked if she wanted to come to her apartment to watch a movie. When Exit to Eden started playing on the screen, she couldn't look away from the minute Mistress Lisa drew the red X on Elliott's back. Elliott was the sexiest male character she had ever seen, and Mistress Lisa was everything she had ever wanted to be- strong, intelligent, in control, and unforgettable. Their romance was far from vanilla, and she realized how much she wanted to try the other flavors she didn't even know existed.

"Do you think there are really places out there where people do that kind of stuff?" she had asked when the movie was over.

"Of course there are," Lexa replied. "And I'll take you to one."

Twenty minutes later she was staring out the window of Lexa's old blue Honda, her eyes and mouth wide. The mansion loomed before her, painted an intimidating gray, it's white trim glowing in the moonlight.

"What is this place?" she asked.

"An alternate universe. The matrix. The portal to a worm hole that once you walk through you can never come back from," Lexa replied. Then she got out of the car and began walking up the front steps.

"Seriously, what is this place?" she asked again, hurrying out of the car. She looked back at the iron gate they had come through, contemplating running for it before it closed and locked her inside.

"I am being serious." Lexa knocked on the massive wooden door. It swung open almost immediately.

She ran up the steps to catch up, stopping mid stride when she noticed the naked man holding open the door. A collar of shining silver was locked around his neck, a circle engraved into the metal.

"Lexa!" she hissed, reaching out to grab the back of her shirt.

"Uh oh... You're not shy, are you?" Lexa mocked, leading her down a long hallway. She stopped in front of a pair of white doors, then put her hands on both handles and pulled them open.

The sound of the woman's black boots on the floor made her heart pound. Scrape...Clomp...Scrape...Clomp...Scrape... She stood frozen three steps from the doors they had walked through, trying to comprehend the scene she was witnessing.

Scrape...Clomp...Scrape... The woman was deliberately exaggerating her walk, dragging her heal before slamming her whole foot back down to the floor. Her long black braid lightly swayed with each step, brushing against the backs of her thighs just below where her short black dress ended.

Scrape...Clomp...Scrape... The man she circled shifted in the chains that shackled his feet to the floor and his hands to the ceiling. Beads of sweat dripped down his forehead, running into the black blindfold covering his eyes. The muscles in his arms contracted, pulling against the chains. Red stripes and welts covered him starting just below his waist and continued down both sides of his thighs, ending just above his knees.

The woman dropped her hand to her side, letting the cane she was holding drag across the floor behind her. Scrape...Clomp...Scrape... She ran her nails over his bare shoulders as she walked behind him, leaving red streaks trailing across his skin.

He shivered when she gently ran the cane up the inside of his legs, teasing the sac that hung helplessly between them with the hard bamboo.

She flinched when the woman brought the cane up hard and watched the man's knees buckle beneath him. But the chains holding his hands to the ceiling were strong, keeping him in place while the cane came up again on his most sensitive area.

"Madame, please..." he gasped.

"No." The woman's voice was harsh, and the cane came down across the back of his thigh. A red line rose up from his skin like a streak of blood on the pale flesh.

"Please... Madame..." His words were desperate, his breath harsh and rough when it snuck through his lips.

"No."

She watched, hypnotized by every deliberate step, every conscious gesture, every purposeful breath. The woman's self awareness was exquisite, and each nerve ending in her captive's body was connected to her every move.

His muscles clenched in anticipation, his seed starting to drip to the floor. "Madame...Please, Madame..."

She held her breath then let it out slowly, terrified the sound would break their bond.

"Madame...Please..." The words repeated frantically from his mouth over and over.

The woman's lips turned up at the corner just enough to soften her face. She laid the cane on the ground then reached forward and lifted the blindfold off his face. She grabbed under his chin, forcing his eyes to meet hers. "You were a good boy..." she praised.

"Please—" he started, his tear streaked eyes avoiding hers.

"You were a good boy, but now we're done." Her voice was soft, her hands wiping away the tears that streaked his face. "You need to learn to wait."

"Yes, Madame."

"Good boy." She walked to the wall and pushed a button. A few minutes later, three other women walked in. They began to unchain him and covered him with a blanket.

She blinked, forcing herself to look away. She felt a knot tighten in her stomach, realizing she had intruded on a private interaction. When she turned towards Lexa, she found Lexa's eyes watching her.

"Mistress Lexi." The woman's voice made her jump, and her heart pounded at the sound of the boots approaching them.

"Madame Alaina," Lexa said, then leaned forward to accept her embrace. "This is my friend, Morgan. I think she would fit in well with our community."

Madame Alaina reached towards her. She held still while french tipped fingernails ran through her hair, pushing it away from her face.

"Do you have any experience?" Madame Alaina asked.

"I don't think she even knew this world existed," Lexa answered for her.

"Mistress Leah," Madame Alaina called over her shoulder.

"Yes, Madame Alaina?" one of the girls said, leaving the other two to escort the man out of the room.

"Bring me a line-up."

"Yes, Madame," she replied, then hurried from the room.

Within minutes she was back, five men following behind her in silver collars and tan pants.

"Pick one," Madame Alaina said.

She stared at the men, curious which one would be chosen. But when the room remained silent, she realized the three women were staring at her. "Me?" she balked, pressing her finger into her chest.

Madame Alaina and Lexa nodded in response.

She ran her eyes over the five men, but the one to the far left was where her gaze wanted to stay. His lean frame, sandy hair and sky colored eyes reminded her of her high school crush.

"You, stay and strip," Madame Alaina said, reading the unspoken request. "The rest of you can go back to your rooms."

The man immediately unbuttoned his pants, pushing them to the floor. Then he stood, waiting.

"Hands," Lexa said, approaching him. He held them out to her and she put wrist restraints on him, then ran a chain through them. She reached up and pulled a hook down from the ceiling, pushing it through the chain.

Madame Alaina held her finger over another button on the wall and the hook started to ascend back into the ceiling, pulling the man's arms up over his head. She stopped when he had just enough slack to keep his feet flat on the floor.

Lexa shoved a wooden beam between his ankles, forcing them apart, then shackled him to it before chaining it to the floor. By the time they were done, he had been rendered immobile.

Madame Alaina walked towards her, stopping beside her. "Do you want to touch him?"

She stared at his naked body shifting uncomfortably in the chains. An unfamiliar pulse started in her stomach, vibrating down her legs. "Can I?"

"Of course you can. That's what he's here for," Madame Alaina replied.