Chapter 62

Lucca removed the blindfold first, gently unwinding the PVC tape from Valerie’s head. The tape stuck only to itself; so, mercifully, it did not pull on her skin or hair as they peeled it off. They untied the knots holding her in place on the bed next, tossing aside each length of rope to tidy up later.

Though rid of her bonds, she did not immediately make use of her freedom; her mind was still slowly reintegrating into the real world. She stared blissfully at the ceiling, occasionally following Lucca with her eyes when they passed near enough her field of vision.

Her reward, as it turned out, was a repeat of the previous weekend’s orgasms.

Her libido had not grown quite as unmanageably that week. This was a relief, but simultaneously an ill omen for the week to come. Valerie had noticed that Dana tended to cycle her hormone regimen. Whatever the purpose of the cycling, one of the effects was that her mind and body could never fully acclimate to the altered state.

The low points could be almost restful, but they were always tainted with the anxious knowledge that the high points would be that much higher because of the respite.

Still, the tattoo and bondage were more than enough extra stimulation for her to reach similar peaks as she had before, even if the knots were soft and slack. They still held her arms and legs as she twisted and convulsed; restraints, however gentle, and physical reminders of her submission, however consensual.

After the third orgasm, she lost count. She lost the ability to count. The ultimate number did not seem important, anyway.

Suddenly remembering the tattoo, she lifted her head to try and look at it, a monumental effort in her current state. Despite her view being upside-down, she could make it out clearly enough, about palm-sized, the top of it just low enough on her chest that a tank top would cover it.

It was a simple design, as Lucca had promised, though carefully executed: a heart symbol rendered with a single continuous black contour, as though they had merely taken a ballpoint pen to her skin.

A layer of something like plastic wrap covered it, a shiny rectangle with rounded corners.

“Second skin,” Lucca explained; they had noticed her inspecting it. “Keeps bacteria out, helps it heal faster and cleaner.”

“Can I…”

She moved one of her newly-freed hands up to the tattoo, fingers extended.

“Touch it, yeah,” Lucca answered. “Shower with it, even. Probably best if you don’t run for a few days, sorry. The movement and sweat could compromise the seal early. No baths.”

She gently ran her fingertips across the plastic. The skin along the black line was raised from the trauma of the process, and hurt just slightly.

“Why a heart?”

“Well, you asked for meaning.”

Ever cryptic.

“What’s the meaning?”

“Nothing; it’s empty. You have to figure out what goes in there; what to fill it with. What you are, inside. I can’t, and won’t, decide that for you.”

Valerie silently digested their words. She let her head fall back and stared at the ceiling.

“Yeah,” she replied, eventually, as much sigh as speech.

Valerie’s parents, very explicitly, had wanted her to be someone else, and something else. Her mother grieved the perceived loss of a dutiful son, and she blamed Valerie for it.

Heather, too, had grown increasingly hostile as Valerie grew and became more herself. Before transition, she had played a malleable and eager gamer boy, happy for someone to shape her into something, as long as it meant she had a place to belong. In those days, it did not matter how small and constrained and stifling that place was.

Their fights had been less about whose turn it was to do dishes and more about Valerie slowly uncovering a real person beneath the mask. Valerie no longer fit into the miniscule bit part that Heather had cast her in.

Now, it was Dana who was cold and distant after finding that Valerie was not the perfect play thing the contract called for. Dissatisfied, Valerie thought, that she had the temerity to have emotional needs, however clumsily.

Lucca watched her stare at the ceiling for a long moment before speaking.

“From everything you’ve told me, just as soon as you get free from someone telling you who to be, you find someone else that wants to mold you like putty. You think you didn’t have any other choice than Dana, and maybe you didn’t, but it still fits the pattern.”

Valerie pulled herself up into a seated position, knees hugged close against her chest. Sadness at the accuracy of Lucca’s assessment mingled with prickling annoyance at how they seemed to have read her mind.

Lucca silently coiled the lengths of rope into neat hanks, and stored them in one of the drawers of their beside table. They spoke again after a couple minutes.

“I’m not criticizing, don’t take it like that. Glass houses and all. What I’m trying to say, girl, is that you can’t keep letting other people tell you how to fill your heart. You have to choose. That’s how you get to your third act.”

“I don’t get a lot of choices, these days.”

“You have more thank you think. Choose carefully.”

“Yeah,” Valerie agreed, reluctantly, after a long pause.

“Take as much time as you need in here. Grab a shower, if you want. Don’t scrub the second skin too much, if you do. Come find me when you’re ready and we’ll figure out dinner.”

The crate arrived on Thursday afternoon. Valerie had been working quietly, trying not to think about how her time at Lucca’s was almost over, when she was startled by a sound she didn’t recognize, something in between a doorbell and a telephone ringing.

“Gate intercom,” Lucca explained, as they stood and walked to the front door, where the terminal was mounted. “I’m not expecting anything…”

The vehicle at the gate was an unmarked white commercial van, with a driver and a passenger. After some discussion with Lucca while Valerie watched peeking through a window, the driver backed the van up to Lucca’s hangar, and the two men unloaded something like a large trunk or case from the back of the van, where it had been tied down with a trio of ratchet straps.

Lucca signed some paperwork and took a copy, and then the van disappeared again down the road vaguely back toward Reno.

Valerie joined Lucca in the hangar to get a closer look.

The box resembled the kind of case used to transport sound equipment, albeit without the wheels such cases normally had. It was about three and a half feet long, two wide, and two high. The main material was shiny, featureless, and piano black; wood coated in layers of paint and lacquer. Metal fittings along every edge and corner gleamed silver. They looked machined rather than pressed or bent from sheet metal. There was a seam about three inches from the top, and hinges on one side, clearly showing that the box could open somehow, but there was no obvious means to accomplish this.

Lucca leafed through the paperwork, and found a printed page that, even from a distance, Valerie recognized as a letter of some kind.

“Sent by who I think?” Valerie asked, standing about ten feet back from Lucca and the crate, like it was dangerous.

“Yeah,” Lucca confirmed, with a grunt of annoyance.

They read through the letter quietly for a few moments, other than that they occasionally swore under their breath.

“Okay, listen, it’s another set of instructions that she doesn’t want you to know.”

They frowned, staring at the letter, evidently intent on saying more but uncertain how to proceed.

“I am still not going to hold you to that. It’s up to you. But. Let me talk to Dana first. This… this is too much.”

Valerie nodded quietly. A sick, worried feeling was rising from the pit of her stomach as she considered the crate, the length of the letter in Lucca’s hands, and their expression of tight-eyed anger, tinged with disgust.

“Are you done working for the day?”

Nominally, there were a couple hours left in the work day; but it was close to the end of Valerie’s project, and her part had been functionally complete for days. She had spent the extra time improving documentation and looking for other places that she could help, however small.

“There’s more I could do, but…” Valerie responded, with a shrug.

But there’s always more, and what I need to do is done. She had kept Lucca up to date with her progress, and trusted that they understood her meaning.

“Do you think you can get dinner started without me? I’m going to call Dana.”

Valerie blinked in surprise; the cooking lessons had continued off and on, but she had always had Lucca close at hand to catch any mistakes and answer any questions.

And she had never seen Lucca place a phone call, preferring text or email for everything possible.

“No promises, we might have to order pizza, but… I can try.”

“Go on, then,” Lucca nodded and gestured back toward the kitchen. “Find a recipe, read it twice, don’t rush, and do one thing at a time.”

Valerie retreated to the kitchen, but the situation seemed ominous. She flipped through one of Lucca’s cookbooks, looking for something they could make with the ingredients that they had on hand.

She could not stop thinking about the black box.