This story takes place in the year 2029. America is a very different place. New laws have abolished personal bankruptcies and debtors' prisons have been revived. Janie, our twentysomething heroine, was about to be sentenced to just such a prison when she was tricked into signing up for a pilot program that keeps her in a kind of chemical captivity. Medicine released within her body causes debilitating nausea and other symptoms every 48 hours, unless she is administered a rescue dose of another medicine. The rescue dose is delivered through the ejaculation of the man for whom she will be a personal domestic servant, a latter-day concubine. In this episode, Janie's concubinage takes on a decidedly submissive tone, and no one is more surprised than Janie at how much she enjoys it.
Read the earlier chapters if you want to know how Janie got to this point.
***
"Janie, I need you to attend my bath."
"Hello. Here's a different angle," I said to myself, even as I felt the humid, hairy cavern between my legs grow suddenly very moist. What does it mean to "attend" a bath? Where I come from, a party is what you attend. Or a concert. Or a college class. Never a bath.
Another text followed hard on the heels of that one: "Wear your collar. Nothing else."
I smiled. So this is what it's come to. In little more than a month, I've gone from an independent-minded working girl, struggling to make her own way in the big city, to an erotic version of one of Pavlov's dogs. The virtual bell rings, and my cunt starts to drip. Go figure.
A word like "cunt" would have seldom entered my mind, in days gone by -- unless it was part of some rest-room graffiti I'd idly read while sitting on the john, balled-up toilet paper in hand, or an insult I'd heard some man mutter under his breath. I always thought it an especially vulgar shard of vocabulary. Now, it was fast become one of my anatomical terms of choice. My master, Richard Balfour, didn't teach me to use it. It seemed to well up from my very being, as my sexual servitude grew deeper.
"Cunt" is a word tailor-made for women like me. Not that I consider myself "a cunt" -- that's a truly demeaning expression I don't think I'll ever get comfortable with -- but it does evoke the image of a body part exquisitely designed, complete with its own efficient lubrication system, for sheathing an erect cock. ("Cock" isn't a word I would have used much in my former life, either, but things do change when your entire body has become the playground of hormones, aphrodisiacs, and God knows what else Halliburton has mixed up, shaken and poured out into that blessed chemical cocktail.)
Without a word, I began to walk towards the cedar closet, the one whose concealed inner door opened into my master's closet.
As I walked, I began to shed my clothing. First, the Hooters t-shirt -- a little joke of Gilpin, the butler, who had helped stock my wardrobe, and was one of the few members of the household staff who knew my work as the boss' gal Friday came "with benefits."
Then, the lacy black bra.
Then, I unsnapped my pair of hip-hugging denim pedal-pushers, stopping for a moment to wiggle my tight little butt out of them. There I let 'em lie, right in the middle of the carpet.
I stepped out of the flip-flops on my feet.
Finally, I hooked two thumbs inside my tighty-whitey panties and, in a practiced gesture, pulled them down to my knees, stepping out of them as well.
By the time I'd done this, I was in front of the closet door. Opening it, I flipped on the light and stepped inside. Reaching up to a high shelf, I found the dog collar and buckled it around my neck. Thus clad -- or unclad -- I felt ready for my session of bath-attendance, whatever that meant.
As I pushed the hanging clothing aside and opened the door into Mr. Balfour's expansive bedroom -- which was more like some grand apartment, entire unto itself -- I saw Himself sitting at the computer desk, talking on his cell phone.
He raised his eyebrows a little, at the sound of the opening door, and glanced up at me for just a moment, before looking down again at his work. He waved his arm in a vague gesture, directing me to his private bathroom.
As I walked away from him towards the bathroom door, I could feel his eyes on my back -- or, my backside, to be more precise. I gave those rounded cheeks of mine a little extra swing, as I leisurely strolled away from him. Nothing too obvious. Just a slight flourish, to distract him from that phone call that was so important, it had intruded on his personal nookie-time.
I knew he was watching, that old horn-dog.
That's OK, I thought to myself. I wasn't ready for him, anyway. Even with its state-of-the-plumber's-art pumps and jets, that huge, marble tub took a fair amount of time to fill.
Which is exactly what I did next: turning on the gold-plated taps, testing the water temperature, selecting something very special from the array of bath-salts bottles and jars arrayed on the shelf, lighting a scented candle or two. A touch-panel on the wall let me choose from a series of music playlists especially chosen -- by Gilpin? By a former wife or lover? By Balfour himself? -- to enhance the Chairman's bathing experience.