Chapter 35

Valerie finished tidying, and Dana and Lucca still had not returned. She showered, and between the caffeine from her tea and the almost-scalding water, she felt fully awake afterward; if not entirely clear-headed. Her time with Lucca had left her exhausted and something like sated; but another day and night had passed and with nothing left to occupy the time, her mind wandered.

The things Lucca had done to her — with her — on that prior night felt surreal; but the metal through her aching septum and equally tender nipples was all too concrete evidence that they had truly happened. Her arousal may have burned itself out at Lucca’s hands, but now the memories, blurry and fragmented in some ways but all too sharp in others, were the embers of a new smoldering heat.

Thoughts of the modifications Lucca had made to her body were small flames flickering at the corners of her rational thoughts, threatening to catch and engulf them entirely. Lucca had changed her body because they wanted to, for their own enjoyment; not without her consent, but certainly without her agency. Every twinge from the new piercings reminded her of her role as toy; or, in Lucca’s words, as pet.

She silently begged Dana and Lucca to come back quickly; even their expert teasing was preferable to the quiet boredom, when all she could do is was think, imagine, and hunger; and struggle to force her hands not to satisfy her body’s cravings. Time moved very slowly for her.

Valerie curled up on one of the comfortable love seats with a long view towards the bay; it was fully shrouded in chilly, gray fog; there was no sign of the city she presumed still existed in the distance.

Valerie sometimes found it meditative to watch the cars crawling by, barely visible in the day time as dark dots crawling along grey asphalt. She could not find that quiet place in her mind, as she lay there, arms wrapped around her midsection to keep her hands out of trouble. She tried and failed not to think about the cool silk of Dana’s voice, the strength of Lucca’s hands, and the utter helplessness and seemingly endless desire that they had both shown themselves capable of inflicting on her, at a whim.

The chime of the house’s alarm startled her out of a fugue state that had nothing to do with the car traffic on the distant freeway. She untangled herself from the love seat and found Dana standing in the front doorway; she didn’t see Lucca, but she heard the rumble of a gasoline engine and the crunch of tires on gravel. She was surprised how much it hurt that Lucca had not come in to say goodbye. She pushed that thought aside to figure out later.

“Hi, you.”

Valerie heard a note of quiet sadness in Dana’s velvety tones; but despite that, the way Dana said you was rich with so much focused attention that Valerie blushed under its weight.

“Hi, mistress.”

The last few days had been a strange disruption in her life, new as it was. The step back into her very unusual normalcy felt awkward, and she had the sense that Dana was struggling with something, as well.

“I think we have some things to talk about.”

Valerie felt suddenly shy— small, scared, and vulnerable. The memory of Lucca’s promise from a few days before to talk to Dana about therapy resurfaced unbidden. She felt nervous, suddenly, uncertain what else Lucca had talked to Dana about; but the result seemed a certain grimness in Dana’s mien that made Valerie’s anxiety twist and writhe.

“I— um.. okay? I mean.. yes, mistress.”

She couldn’t understand why she suddenly felt like a misbehaving child being sent to the principal’s office. She hugged her arms; the still-open front door let the chill outside air in, and her naked skin puckered with goosebumps.

Dana stepped fully into the house and shut the door. She stepped forward and touched Valerie lightly on the shoulder, guiding her to turn and head back inside; they ended up once again seated around the coffee table. Dana perched on the edge of the couch, leaning slightly forward with her elbows on her knees. Her gaze, as she regarded Valerie, was contemplative.

Valerie sat tensely in the armchair Lucca had favored, a cold trickle of anxious fear starting to well up in her the longer that Dana didn’t start talking. Valerie couldn’t tell whether her mistress was searching for the right words, debating whether to say them at all, or simply stretching the moment out for reasons she couldn’t discern.

“I paid off your debts,” Dana eventually stated, without preamble.

Valerie had been watching the woman think for so long that when she actually spoke, it was a surprise. Her mind had been busy trying to predict what Dana would say, but none of the options she had come up with were remotely close to correct.

“You— what?”

She responded before she had fully processed the words she had heard. She had wondered, on occasion, what Dana was going to do with her various credit cards and student loans— if she would continue to make payments on them, negotiate some kind of forbearance, or simply let them languish. It had not seemed important— she would walk away with enough money to pay them off, even with late fees and interest, if it came to that.

Her mind only slowly worked through the implications of Dana having simply paid them off; they would remain paid off, even if she chose to leave early.

“Paid off your debts,” Dana repeated, patiently.

Valerie nodded, and drew in a slightly shaky breath. This is good news, she told herself, but she still found herself anxious about what else Dana had to say. The conversation didn’t feel like a good news conversation.

“Thank you, mistress,” she replied softly. “Why?”

Dana waved the question away.

“And… if you decide to leave, if you use your safe word… I’ll make sure you have some place to stay. An apartment or a hotel, for a few months. Some runway.”

Dana fell silent, after that, looking at Valerie expectantly. Valerie was stunned into silence, initially, while she added that new fact to her internal equations.

“Okay..” Valerie eventually replied hesitantly. “Thank you. Uhm… why?”

She asked the question a second time, although she didn’t expect any more of an answer than her first attempt had elicited.

Dana looked pensive, and somewhat to Valerie’s surprise, the woman looked away. Valerie had only ever known Dana to be confident and in-control, and the shyness felt strange and vulnerable.

“I never wanted to keep you here with fear. I never meant for that. I didn’t think of it from your perspective… what you would be going back to if you left.”

Valerie nodded, but her thoughts and feelings were an anxious and worried tangle. Dana still seemed pensive, and Valerie worried there was something darker coming to justify her mistress’s mood.

“You deserve better,” Dana said, eventually, with a sigh. “People don’t get what they deserve— the world doesn’t work that way. But that doesn’t mean I have to make it worse.”

Intellectually, she agreed with Dana. Evil prospered too readily in the world to believe that people received their just desserts. Without that tether to some kind of justice, though, she felt adrift; not relieved of a burden, like she might have hoped.

Valerie used to wonder, late at night, what she had done to deserve the course her life had taken. She reflected, in that moment, on the tacit assumption that she had deserved it. She had felt that, at least if she deserved what was happening to her, then that meant there was some kind of justice in the world; some kind of meaning.

It was latent christian guilt that her parents had imperfectly imprinted on her, she supposed. The backward assumption that, if their god punished sin, then punishment indicated the presence of sin.

“I got caught up in—” Dana gestured around the two of them, as she turned her gaze back toward Valerie, “—in all of this. In the fantasy. In you,” she said, with a small, gentle smile. “And I lost sight of myself. I almost lost much more.”

Dana drew in a shaky breath, and Valerie was terrified that she was about to see the woman break down sobbing; but Dana steadied herself with a long, slow exhale.

“Maybe I already did.”

Valerie listened to the explanation quietly. She felt inexplicably sad, the weight of it heavy in her chest. She wasn’t certain why, but the conversation felt like an ending; and she didn’t know how to respond.

Valerie reached a hand up to nervously rub at the back of her own neck. Her hand brushed the collar, unremovable from her neck, and she thought again of what she did or did not deserve. She felt small, sitting there in front of Dana— even her generosity was a reminder of how much wealth she had; how much power she held.

“Those… are the major things,” Dana concluded, after a few moments of waiting for Valerie to respond more directly. Valerie nodded in silent acknowledgment.

“Do you—” Dana started, and paused.

Valerie was struck by the rare sense of hesitation from Dana. The woman almost seemed afraid of the question.

“Do you want to use your safe word, now?”