The Trainer (22 page)

She panicked for a moment, and he stared at
her. The coffee shop was full of other people from the conference
some in collars and harnesses, but no one was actually on the
floor. Waitresses bustled by, pouring coffee. Silver clanked in
bins, and the sizzle of bacon frying seemed louder than ever. Karen
stirred, but still didn’t leave her seat. She bit her lip.

“Or don’t,” Michael said with a shrug. “It
does matter to me, because if you don’t, I’m paying the bill and
leaving. If you do, we can discuss when we can meet again. Unless
you make me wait too long.”

He had gotten the idea from a mainstream
book about two people having a doomed SM love affair. As he saw the
fear and shame register in her eyes, he knew it was a terrific
test. When he saw her rise and then hunker down onto her knees
beside him, taking care to pull her legs from the aisle so that no
one would trip over her, he smiled. He cut a piece of her waffle
off, dipped it in a pool of syrup from his plate, and fed it to her
by hand. When she ate it and licked his fingers, he could barely
keep himself from taking her back up to the room to reward her with
some more personal attention. It was just like what Geoff had shown
him that night at dinner, with the arching male slave! Wouldn’t
Geoff be pleased to see how well Mike had taken to his
teachings?

But instead, he fed her three more pieces,
enjoying the envious looks from both men and women, and then told
her to take her seat back and finish her breakfast. A few people
rolled their eyes. A tourist or two stared in shocked silence. The
waitress looked a little tired of all this leather silliness as she
refilled his coffee.

But Karen looked as though she had
discovered paradise. He knew that look, having seen it in his own
mirror. There was no longer any shred of doubt that she would be
his first soft-world-to-Marketplace slave, and that she would bring
him the start of fame and fortune. He smiled at her with all the
patience and fondness he could feel, imagining Geoff’s paternal
pride. Oh yes. His future was assured, sitting right here at
breakfast.

It took him three months to teach her the
very basics. He knew the timing on that was far from ideal.
Technically, you were supposed to be able to train a total novice
to the level of a first public sale in about three months. Only
special-use slaves, trained as cooks, or guards. or teachers. or
large household managers. and other, more complicated services,
were supposed to take longer. And that was only because they needed
the time to work in their fields.

For a general purpose slave, all they needed
to know were a few positions, a few dozen rules of behavior, and
how to cultivate and maintain the correct attitude toward their
service, their owners, and themselves. Attitude was Karen’s weakest
point, followed by her faulty memory between training periods. But
that wasn’t her fault, not entirely. Partly at fault was that
Michael didn’t have access to her full time—even weekends would be
problematic, since he was never guaranteed every weekend off from
his work at Geoff’s place. But partly it was that Michael had never
trained someone so out of context before. It took him a week just
to get past the first minor roadblock in their relationship.

Wanting to ease her into the world of the
Marketplace, he had decided not to tell her about it before she was
fully ready to present to Geoff. Making her ready meant setting up
a false kind of relationship with her. She lived a good 80 miles
away, so it was easy to explain that he wasn’t going to be spending
a lot of leisure time with her. But neither could she stay with
him, or contact him when he was at work. He tried to establish
these conditions as ones created by his right as her master, but
she was no Marketplace slave yet. All she knew was that she had
found herself a lover who was hiding his life from her.

“Are you married?” she asked, lowering her
eyes. “If you are, that’s okay, but I’d really like to know.”

“Listen, I told you I’m not the marrying
kind. These are just the rules of the relationship—take them or
leave them.”

She leveled her eyes up to meet his and
sighed. “Then—I have to think about it,” she said carefully. “I
want what you offer, I really do. But how do I know if I can really
trust you? Playing for a weekend is one thing—committing myself to
a new lifestyle takes real trust.”

At first, he had been furious. “You trusted
me enough to do whatever I wanted with you!” he yelled. “I could
have tied you up and had you gang-raped, and you would have gone
along with it!”

“This is my life you’re talking about,
Mike,” she insisted, tears coming to her eyes. “I’d be stupid if I
just signed it all away based on nothing!”

He had left her crying that night, shouting
that she could have her world of fakes if she wanted, but he needed
total and absolute trust or nothing. But on the long drive back to
Geoff’s place, his heart sank, and he knew she was perfectly right.
No one was brought into the Marketplace unknowing; they had to want
to be there. And the only way to want it was to know it existed.
She would in fact have to be a fool to trust him when he had given
her nothing but good sex with attitude.

But how to manage it all? She still had
potential—hell, her insistence on knowing what she was getting into
was even stronger proof of that. But how could he train her without
being in full training mode? Could he really act like her
boyfriend/lover and still manage to instill in her the basic
requirements of a Marketplace slave?

And what would he tell Geoff? That he had a
girlfriend? It would seem odd to say the least. He had all the sex
he could possibly want, and it was very rare for someone working in
the Marketplace to date outside of it—there were too many things
you had to keep secret. Hell, just coming up with reasons why he
was leaving the house for his time off would be something new.
There weren’t a lot of times when he felt that a weekend away would
be any better than what he had there, even if he did end up working
a little.

Damn—one lie could lead to dozens. But he
had to have her, had to fashion his own client from scratch. It
would be just the thing to elevate him from the status of Geoff’s
trainee to an independent man. Surely, that would get the attention
he wanted, establish him. Once that was done, he could call this
Anderson and get himself apprenticed to her for just long enough to
be a high level trainer like those people he had met in England. Or
hell, maybe she’d be looking for him.

He sent roses to Karen the following week,
and took out a voice mail account, giving her a telephone number to
call. He told her that he worked for a reclusive millionaire as a
personal assistant. He figured it wasn’t too far away from the
truth. And he told Geoff that he had found a new girlfriend, which
led to jokes made about his age and the energy of youth, and,
unexpectedly, a grant of even more time off.

You won’t regret that, Michael thought, as
he started marking out days to spend training Karen. And you won’t
be angry at this little white lie when I tell you what I’ve
done.

He repeated those sentiments over and over
again, as if to reassure himself that they were true.

“Good morning, Vicente,” Michael said,
breaking a yawn. “God, you’re up early.”

“Oh yeah,” the big man said. “Early to bed,
early to rise, so they say.” He was pristine, as he always was in
the morning, black and white checkered pants and shiny black shoes,
white chef’s coat—the perfect chef. Later on, as the day wore on,
he would change clothing, become dusty with flour or dotted with
tomato sauce, or even grimy with newsprint and ink. But every
morning, he looked like he stepped out of a movie set. “You’re up
early too,” he noted, glancing at the clock. “Bad sleep?”

Michael nodded and dropped his butt on the
stool. He looked at the cabinet where the coffee cups were, but
before he could open it, Vicente pulled a cup out of the drain
basket and filled it. “Here you are,” he said, sliding it across
the counter. Michael smiled weary thanks and breathed in the
aroma.

“Mmmm.” It smelled strong. “Colombian?”

“Brazilian,” Vicente said. “Like me!”

“Oh, that’s where you’re from. I couldn’t
figure out the accent.”

“Accent? I don’t have one!” He laughed and
poured some coffee for himself. “You do. You all do.”

“Well, I guess you have a point.” Michael
breathed in more coffee and took a sip. God, what a night. His
sleeping problems had started during his third week—he would stay
up for hours just waiting to get drowsy, and then wake up every
hour or so until dawn. Since Emil had asked him about his sleeping
patterns, he had examined them more carefully, and was a little
shocked at how many times he’d not gotten a good night’s sleep. He
couldn’t figure out what was happening—he always slept well before.
He cut out the coffee after dinner, asking for decaf, but that
didn’t seem to change anything.

“You worry too much,” the cook counseled. He
checked the wall clock and pulled up another stool. Raising one
finger, he wagged it earnestly in Michael’s direction. “Always, you
are frowning, looking here, looking there, always looking for—what?
Someone to jump out at you?”

“It’s tough being a student of the Trainer
of Trainers,” Michael said. He forced a grin, trying to make it
seem like a joke.

“Oh, yes. But it is better than being a
carpenter, yes? Better than working at the Waldbaums store.” He
jerked his head in the general direction of the local supermarket
and made a face. Michael laughed—Vicente’s hatred for the huge,
brightly lit shopping center was now quite well known. Helping out
with the shopping had become almost automatic now that Michael knew
where it was and had proven adept at fulfilling an order.
Sometimes, he took Tara with him, but to her, this was old hat. She
could probably make the list for Vicente without even taking a
kitchen inventory. But she did come in handy to carry the bags.

“Sure, this is the life,” Michael agreed,
sipping the hot coffee cautiously. “I bet the fringe benefits of
this job were kind of a surprise to you, huh?”

Vicente frowned himself, digesting the
question. Before Michael thought to define “fringe benefits,” the
man brightened and nodded, and then shook his head. “No, Mr.
Michael, I take no fringe benefits. Ms. Anders’, she used to offer,
but I don’t need all these women. I have my girlfriend, yes? She is
enough for me.”

“No kidding? Well, that’s, um, great. I hope
she appreciates you.”

“I think so, I think that she do. She is
good for me, too, and that is as it should be. All this playing
with many girls—or boys, yes?—that is for the young.” He pointed at
Michael and laughed. “Like you—young and ready for everyone, all
the time. And look what happens—you don’t get good sleep! Not like
Mr. Chris, no, he sleeps damn good. Isn’t that right, Miss
Joan?”

Joan stood in the doorway, smiling at the
sally. “Good morning, Vicente, good morning, sir.”

Michael grunted. “What, does everyone get up
earlier than me?”

“Oh no, Anders’, she sleeps when she likes.
It’s Mr. Chris who gets up real early, like a farmer. Don’t he,
Miss Joan?”

“After sleeping very well, Vicente.” She
looked expectantly toward the back door that led to the postage
stamp porch and the narrow, fenced in backyard. Michael found
himself looking too, and saw the shadow of someone coming up the
steps. Hell, he probably was the only one who usually slept past
eight, the great Trainer notwithstanding.

Joan poured a fresh cup of coffee, added a
dollop of milk to it and opened the door. Chris came in, breathing
heavily and shaking droplets of icy cold moisture from his
shoulders. The weather had taken one final nasty turn, even as the
trees outside showed tiny green tips. He was dressed for cold
weather jogging, in heavy sweats and an insulated vest, all gray,
with a pair of heavy black gloves. A scarf was twisted around his
neck. His hair was wet, curled up on the sides and in the back.
There was a rolled up newspaper under one arm.

He looked surprised at Michael’s presence,
but nodded to him before handing the newspaper and his gloves to
Joan. She took them neatly in one hand and passed him the hot
coffee. It had all the look of a regular ritual—certainly they had
had time to establish it. Michael wondered whether Tara had done
similar duties for him, earlier.

“Lay out some clothing for me and get on
with your duties,” Chris finally said. Joan dipped her head and
body slightly in acknowledgment and left. The three men watched her
exit, and then Chris turned to Michael. “Good morning.”

“Same to you. How does she know what you
want to wear?”

“From observation, hopefully. If she ever
expects to rise from housemaid to chambermaid, and then on to
personal maid, she’d better learn to judge a person’s habits and
tastes within a relatively short period of time. Ten years can
actually see her rise to housekeeper if she’s attentive enough, or,
she may be the companion and personal maid for one of the ladies of
her household.”

It had all the sound of a lecture, and
Michael compressed his lips as he nodded. He always wanted to know
why things were being done, and how the training went on, and it
was just dandy that Chris was the one who spent more time answering
the questions. Just dandy. Also dandy that Joan was learning about
Chris’s habits and not Michael’s.

Fact was, it was galling that he had to ask
these things of Chris. And Chris made things worse by always being
so carefully patient, quick with an answer, never acting like it
was a bother. Yet under all that patience and good temper was a
veneer of contempt, just a hint of condescension. It was almost
like Michael was beneath him, a kid who needed remedial education
and soft words. Someone from whom you could expect very little.