Thank you for the positive responses and ratings to the first chapter. As always, I appreciate the feedback and the ratings.
A warning that I probably should have included in chapter 1: this story delves very quickly into some extreme fetish play. This chapter has play involving food, and watersports are coming down the line. Apologies if that disappoints people.
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Alexa Calloway is very brazen, almost the complete opposite of Rose in many ways. When she walks into the room, she seems to be bouncing. The joke to make would refer to parts of her anatomy bouncing as well, but her breasts are modest and held in place by a very fashionable sports bra, though it is tight enough that I can make out her nipples. Her athletic shorts are also tight enough that barely anything is left to the imagination; the material hugs her backside tightly and the swells and shapes of both cheeks are easy to follow, and a distinctive crease in the fabric between her legs suggests she either isn't wearing anything under the shorts, or the elastic pull is so strong it's pushing her panties up into her.
The clothes aren't just to show off her body either, at least based on how that body looks. Alexa is toned, with muscles visible in her arms, legs, and abs as she walks. She doesn't have creases and bulges like a bodybuilder, but it's clear she works out regularly and keeps her body fit and trim. Her dirty blonde hair (dyed if her eyebrows are a clue) is in a tight braid that stops just below her shoulder blades.
I meet with her at 1:00pm, suggested (or directed) again by Xander Talbot. The second of four interviews requested and required by Talbot to get a view into his world. He suggested Alexa next, and no one felt led to argue with him. I find myself willing to do the interview, but I wonder what I'm going to see that I haven't already. Rose's situation shocked me at first, then I came to see the appeal for her, and I understood the larger symbiosis it creates between dom and sub, master and slave. I wonder if there's much more for me to learn in that vein or if Talbot simply wants to try getting a rise out of the naΓ―ve journalist some more.
Alexa would be the type to do it. She reminds me of those girls in school who are the most aggressive. They ask the boys (or girls) out, they're the ones who want sex on the first date and will brag to their friends about it, and they wear labels like "slut" and "harpy" as badges of honor. The phrase "get on my level" seems made for girls like Alexa.
I feel like she would have straddled the chair backward for the interview except it was a high-back armchair, so it would have completely blocked our views. Instead she sits in it cross-legged, her knees resting on the armrests, daring me either to look or not to.
To my surprise, she begins with, "Just so you know, I have a hard stop at 2:30."
"Does Mr. Talbot need you for something?" I ask.
"No, I have a client I have to go meet," she replies.
A nonverbal duel starts right then. We both know because of her status and the atmosphere what assumption I'm supposed to make, and she's daring me to accuse her of being a prostitute. But I didn't get to be a lead anchor at the network just because I look pretty.
"So you do personal training?" I finally reply.
She smiles, her eyes telling me she's frustrated she couldn't trap me and impressed at the same time. "Yeah. I have to do all of them off-site, obviously, and I'm not connected to Master's name in any way. I built my own business, and it's still my own business. I have to be careful about what clients I take; I have a meeting with Master every time I take on someone new to make sure there's no conflict."
"Doesn't your control and ownership of the business interfere with your slave status?" I ask.
Alexa shrugs. "It's all because of legal bullshit. If Master had direct control over anything, there'd be no way to separate the business from him. People would find out, and it would be 'Xander Talbot's personal training service,' not mine. He still handles most of the administrative stuff, and my money goes into accounts that I don't touch, just like Rose and Sally."
Sally is Xander Talbot's third BDSM slave, whom I hadn't met yet.
"Isn't that...an unusual amount of freedom for a sex slave?" I ask.
"Not all sex slaves are like Rose and Sally," Alexa tells me, "I'm a free spirit. I'm high energy. An extrovert. I need people, I need excitement. That's what got me into trouble, actually. When I got to college it took me one semester to flunk out. My parents told me to come home to Missouri so they could find me a nice boy from my church and start making babies with him. My response to them was to send them a picture of me naked, smoking a joint while being fucked by a frat brother, flipping two birds at the camera. Four months later I was living in an apartment with six other people, drunk all the time, smoking some dangerous shit, and debating whether I wanted to start turning tricks or make a go at porn. I'm not equating those two, by the way, but the porn I had an 'in' for wasn't the mainstream stuff you find on Pornhub. This was back alley, 'if they don't like it, give them roofies until they can't say no' type shit."
"So how does a woman in that position end up with Xander Talbot?" I ask.
She shrugs again. "I'll admit; it was blind luck. I had a hookup at a major LA hotel, one of my girls worked at the desk. Master was staying at the hotel and something came up where he had to stay longer. He didn't want to skip his workout, but his trainer was back here, so he asked if the hotel could hook him up. My girl called me in."
"So do you see that as him saving you, or you just happened to fall into the hole he was in charge of?"
The question is sort of my comeback for trapping me with the potential prostitute angle from before, but Alexa either doesn't notice or doesn't want to play anymore.
"Look, this was not easy, for either of us. He...I don't care if you know what this means or if you misinterpret it, but he broke me. And I needed breaking. He broke me, and he still breaks me. I need someone to do that. Every time I think I've got it all together I do stupid shit. Master keeps me from that. I'd say he's like a daddy to me, and yeah, he's a daddy who fucks me, but I don't care if you want to twist that around like you did with poor Samantha."
At this point Alexa has tears in her eyes, and the heavy eyeliner she put on is beginning to run. I offer her a tissue and she dabs her eyes.
"I'd be so done talking to you if Master didn't tell me I have to do this," she says.
"So is that how your relationship is different? You don't actually want to be here, but he makes you, and you know it's good for you so you stay?"
"No, no that's not it. Master makes me wait. He makes me stop, and think, and be...he calls it 'intentional.' I was all 'ready, fire, aim' with my life. Now it's like I'm always ready but he's got his hand on the gun and the trigger. He aims me, and he tells me when to fire," she says.
"But when you fire a gun, there's kickback," I continue, sticking with her analogy.
"Oh yeah. But it's...I need that too. I need it to bring me back down. I don't know any other way to describe it. You'll see tonight. That's why he brought you here tonight, right? The party?"
I stop in shock, because I haven't heard anything about a party. I say as much to Alexa.
"Well I bet he wants you there. It'll...you'll get it. You'll see what I'm about. What it's all about. Now I gotta get ready for my client. Come on with."
The next couple of hours I spend with Alexa are the most mundane and ordinary of my experience so far. She goes to the client's house, and the client actually recognizes me. My cover story (which Alexa provided and said Talbot suggested) is that I'm doing a story on in-home vs in-gym personal training. I watch as they go through a typical workout and spend some time chatting with the client afterward. She spends a lot of time comparing and contrasting Alexa visiting her as opposed to her having to go to the gym. I ask some related questions trying to indicate subtly if the woman has any clue what her trainer's home life is like, but she seems oblivious. She was referred to Alexa by a friend, and Alexa tells me on the way back to Talbot's estate that most of her business comes via referral, though she does have a web site and contact information there.
Returning to the house, Alexa tells me I should go to the dining room. Xander Talbot intercepts me before I get there and leads me off into a sitting room where he has a selection of drinks for aperitifs. I make do with water; other than Alexa's outfit, the day so far has been totally BDSM and even sex-free, but I don't expect that to last and I want a clear head. Talbot talks to me about the news, expressing his opinions and soliciting mine on a few different current events the station has been covering lately.
Finally he tells me dinner is ready. I ask how he knows and he simply responds, "Dinner is at 5:00."
The casual confidence surprises me again, but given how I saw him treat Rose the other day I assume if dinner is not ready at 5:00 there is hell to pay for the people involved.
At the door to the dining room I finally meet Sally, though it would be more accurate to say I see Sally; we don't exchange even a single word. She is of Asian descent, probably Japanese, though her outfit is heavily biased that way so it may just be the aesthetic. Her hair is gathered in a bun at the top of her head and appears to be held in place with chopsticks or rods. Her clothing is a silky kimono style garment (I'm not enough of an expert to say if it's an actual kimono or not) tied at the waist, colored red with a lot of gold patterning on it.