Chapter 39

Dana lay beside Valerie for most of an hour while the girl cried herself out. Valerie would have preferred to be alone in her sorrow, even if that meant curled on the bare mattress in the cell. Telling Dana to go away was not a choice she felt foolish enough to even consider.

Her emotions felt deeper than the simple flushing of endorphins after a scene; as though she were grieving for something lost, but she did not know what.

She mastered her tears, eventually, or simply exhausted her ability to produce them, and by degrees her breathing calmed. Her head ached from crying, but so too did her shoulders, wrists, ankles, and the tired muscles of her jaw and tongue.

Dana stretched, relaxed and catlike, beside her.

“That was a lot,” Dana murmured softly, as the crying subsided. She pet Valerie’s hair gently. “Are you okay?”

Okay. Valerie struggled to process the question, against the enormity of her life, the shape of her world. What kind of response could she offer that might do any kind of justice to her lived experience?

She nodded. There could be no worthy response.

“I’m okay,” she whispered back, all the vocal strength she could muster.

“Atta girl,” Dana smiled down at her, and stroked the pad of her thumb across one of the girl’s eyebrows. “Go rinse off in the shower and I’ll pick out an outfit for you, then come find me downstairs.”

Valerie nodded again, taking in and releasing a shuddering breath. She did not imagine Dana’s outfit choice for her would be comfortable pajamas, but it was not as though she had a choice. She rose, obedient, and disappeared into the bathroom.

She was grateful for time alone under the flow of hot water, a small blessing.

The cage’s shock ring had left a circle of angry red welts on her pubic mound; the minor burns were sensitive and stung when the water washed over them, but they seemed superficial; they would not last as long as the whip marks that still marred her back. Much less the nipple piercings, she thought. They ached after Dana’s flicking and squeezing.

She sagged against the wall of the shower and forced herself not to descend again into crying.

She cut the shower off and her skin goose-bumped in the relative chill of the air. She massaged a leave-in conditioner into her hair and wrapped it in a towel to help kick-start the air-drying. She thought about whether a deadened existence of night-black depression in rural Oregon would be so much worse— but she knew the answer to that already.

She found a pile of tangled black latex awaiting her on the bed, and she added another frustration to the pile. Her skin felt soft, clean, and dry after the shower, and she did not relish the idea of immediately covering herself with the amount of silicone dressing aid it would take to pull on a catsuit. She was relieved to discover, untangling the pile, that Dana had selected merely a mini-dress and stockings.

Along with the latex, she found a set of leather cuffs and locks. She counted six cuffs, a pair each for ankles, thighs, and wrists. The ankle cuffs had an extra loop to lock around the heels and stop her from removing them, once she was fully attired. There were nine locks in total— one for each cuff to lock it onto her body, and one more for each pair to lock them together.

The locks were open, and no keys were present. Dana had not, so far, ever let a key into Valerie’s possession.

Her earlier relief was tempered as she examined the heels that accompanied the outfit — stilettos, the highest yet, and she felt barely able to balance in shorter pairs.

She had a sinking feeling, anticipating the frustration that would come with leaving the bedroom and descending the stairs. With her ankles and thighs locked together, walking downstairs would be a chore. Without the heels, she might have made faster progress by hopping, but she was barely sure she could stand in them, much less bunny hop down a flight of stairs.

She wondered whether she could get away with waiting until the last step down to close the final lock, but it was a gamble. Dana would not be amused by the willful noncompliance. She resolved herself, disaffectedly, to the thousand tiny mincing steps awaiting her.

A quarter hour later, she descended the stairs carefully. From past experience, she knew her wrists were meant to be cuffed behind her back, and she had done so last of all, quietly pondering the fact that she had obeyed in advance of any explicit directive. Is it wisdom, to avoid the certainty of Dana’s displeasure, she wondered, or am I just a coward?

The locked cuffs on her ankles and the steepness of the heels did not leave her enough range of motion to descend the stairs with ordinary steps; and she was so unsteady in the heels that she did not trust her balance for a less cautious descent. Ultimately, she lowered herself to a seated position, tailbone landing with a jarring thump on the hard wood floor. She did not think Dana would begrudge her the graceless technique— given that the most likely alternative seemed to be head trauma, concussion, and a hospital visit from the inevitable tumbling down the stairs without even the use of her arms to break her fall.

She was surprisingly winded at the bottom of the stairs, and her tailbone felt bruised from the thump that each of the steps had entailed— her arms were all but useless, locked behind her back. She struggled to her feet with the handrail’s help, and shuffled the final few feet from the stairs into Dana’s office— it was laborious, but not taxing, and she had caught her breath by the time she stood, pink-faced, in front of Dana’s desk.

Dana ignored Valerie and continued to work, not even glancing up to acknowledge her presence. Her entrance had not been especially quiet, and Valerie was sure the woman knew she was there. She furrowed her brows in consternation but did not dare to make a noise that Dana might construe as a distraction. She simply stood, the balls of her feet starting to ache as they held her entire weight in the new heels. Her shoulders ached from the hours of bondage earlier in the day as well as her arms’ current position, cuffed behind her back.

After an uncountable amount of time, which might have been minutes or even an hour or two, Dana looked up from her workstation. She placed her elbows on the desk in front of her, and rested her chin on top of her overlapped hands. She spent the next several minutes simply looking at Valerie.

For all her tumultuous emotions that day, Valerie was still flustered by Dana’s dark, pretty eyes. She returned the look for only a few seconds, before turning her gaze downward, unconsciously chewing on her lower lip.

“I can’t,” Dana spoke, amusement audible in her voice, “when you make that face. It’s too cute.”

“Wha—” Valerie glanced upward in mild confusion, unaware she had been making a face.

She cut herself off with a slight, nervous grimace, unsure whether she was allowed to speak. Dana waved her hand in a dismissive gesture.

“That dress looks good on you,” Dana said.

As good as it can, Valerie thought. She thought it unflattering to her figure, too tight around her waist, and hanging loosely around her too-narrow hips. She knew that if she said as much, Dana would chastise her for failing to accept a compliment. She averted her gaze again, instead.

“Thank you,” she murmured, shifting uneasily, which brought a clinking of tiny brass padlocks.

“You’re starting therapy next week,” Dana stated matter of factly.

Valerie’s head snapped up again; she had hoped Lucca had not followed through on their promise. Her cheeks burned with humiliation.

“If she doesn’t seem like a good fit,” Dana continued, “let me know, and we’ll try someone else.”

“I— um. Okay,” Valerie stammered, “Yeah. Um. Thank you, mistress.”

She glanced around the office, her mind stutteringly thinking through implications, and logistics. She imagined a dark wood-paneled office, a chaise lounge, a stern woman with a clipboard. She had never been to therapy.

“Where— uhm..”

“It’s remote, you can attend sessions in here. I’ll give you privacy.”

“Oh. Yeah, okay. That makes sense. What about, uhm…”

Valerie glanced down at her dress, and awkwardly swung her cuffed arms around one side.

“I’ll unlock you, if need be.”

“I mean.. the latex? On camera? Or.. I mean.. sometimes you don’t give me anything to wear.. b— but if you…”

“We can get some of your clothes out of storage,” Dana shrugged. “I think I can let you wear a t-shirt one hour a week.”

Valerie was quiet for a long time. It was a challenge for her to maintain a single, coherent train of thought. She thought about her old t-shirts, most of them mementos of what had been bright moments in her past, shows or events that had brought glimmers of joy. She thought of her other things, most of them cheap and in ill repair, but a few with sentimental value nonetheless.

“Could, uhm..”

Dana raised an eyebrow, and waited for Valerie to finish. She blushed; she wasn’t sure if she had asked Dana for anything since she had asked to stay with her, that night in her apartment; and that had been indirect, and still awkward.

“I had, uhm, a stuffed shark. With my things… If— if you’re getting clothes anyway…”

Dana laughed, the sound was rich and warm. Valerie blushed crimson; her chest felt tight and her skin crawled. She felt embarrassed and childish for asking, and took Dana’s laughter for mockery. She looked away again, and a few tears slipped down her cheeks despite her best efforts.

“Yes, Valerie. You’ve been… mostly good. My little toy can have her little toy.”