Reaching out to the desk, she extracted yet another unfiltered cigarette from the rapidly depleting pack. As with each one before this, she slipped the end between her lips and then set it alight with the expiring ember of its predecessor.
Crushing out the spent butt in an overflowing ashtray, she took a drag from the fresh one then curled the end of her tongue, allowing the nicotine-laden smoke to waft slowly upward as she French inhaled. Her throat was already becoming raw, and in the back of her mind, she knew she would be paying for this.
After all, she didn’t actually smoke. She did.
It was her doing the smoking, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
And, of course, whenever she did anything, it was to excess. The stronger the cigarette, the better; the more cigarettes, the better; and as always, when she was here, things had to be done her way.
Following the cloudy exhale, she lifted a tumbler and took a swig of expensive rum. This, also, had been going on to excess ever since she’d returned to the room forty-five minutes ago. Considering what she’d already imbibed and how little sleep she’d had, she should be passed out where she sat. But no, as amazing as it seemed, she was sober. Stone cold sober.
She took another drink. The rum was good. It wasn’t the best, but it was good nonetheless. Of course, there was still a bottle of Barbancourt in her luggage, but it would remain sealed for the time being. It would be a luxury now, but it was going to be an absolute necessity later.
Setting the tumbler aside, she dropped her hand down to a computer mouse and then absently slid it across the surface of the desk. With a click, she opened a window on the notebook computer’s liquid crystal display. It was plain and stark, displaying as nothing more than a simple, black rectangle with a grey-white border and a cursor winking rhythmically in the upper left-hand corner.
However, as simplistic as it appeared, it was actually a somewhat sophisticated bit of code. It was, for her and the ones she accepted into her service, a hidden chat room. A private and secure slice of cyberspace, residing on an innocuous server, behind spoofed addresses and randomly forwarded routers. It was for the most part untraceable and accessible only by a chosen few.
She glanced at the clock in the corner of the screen and did a mental calculation. She had paged him quite some time ago, and she was beginning to grow impatient.
Logically, she knew the wait was to be expected. It was the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, and surely he was at work, which was probably why he had not answered yet. He was, after all, a cop, albeit a cop with a fetish for leggy, dominant women and stiletto heels.
It was too bad for him that his wife had insisted on a divorce because of it. She knew the whole story. Those in her service never failed to confess what brought them to her in the first place, and he had been no different. Imagine, after years together, finally getting up the courage to confess your kink to the woman you love, and to have her crush you like that. It had been painful for him.
She felt the tickle begin to rise in her belly even as she thought about it. What delicious pain it must have been. Not for him, of course, but for his wife. To have him broken and groveling before her like that, she had to have relished it. How could she not?
That was the only explanation that made sense. All she had to do was loosen up a bit, and it would have saved their marriage. But, she didn’t take that path. No, that must not have been what she knew would fulfill her. How she must have truly gotten off by destroying his world that way!
She must have.
She would have.
The tickle continued to grow, and she closed her eyes as she imagined the scene. Her earlier anger was gone, and even her fleeting remorse over her personal servitude to a greater power was a distant memory. She was in control now, and that was all that mattered.
A soft “ding” emitted from the computer’s speakers, and she opened her eyes, looking upward across the screen to the formerly blank chat window. The cursor was continuing to blink at her from the darkness but was now positioned below a short string of text. The glowing words reading simply, “Sorry i am late, Mistress.”
He had taken great care not to capitalize the pronoun describing himself, as he understood his station beneath her.
Leaning forward, she carefully tapped out a reply on the keyboard. “You will need to be punished for that, little man.”
A third line of text instantly appeared. “Yes, Mistress Miranda.”
She began typing again. “What is your fondest dream, slave?”
“To serve you, Mistress” the words appeared.
“To serve me how?”
“How, Mistress?”
“As mere words on a screen, or…” She left the rest untyped but for the periods of the ellipsis.
“IRL, Mistress.”
She knew the abbreviated jargon well. IRL: in real life. She’d seen it more than once and from every slave with whom she chatted. And, in this case, it was exactly what she sought.
She paused a moment before typing her reply. A wave of delightful anticipation rolling through her stomach as she gently caressed the keyboard.
She had to wonder what he must have been feeling when he read the words, “Tonight your dream comes true.”
Tuesday, November 8
11:27 P.M.
St. Louis, Missouri