The Trainer (38 page)

Michael was about to say that Joan didn’t
always coordinate his clothing the way he would have preferred, but
he kept his mouth shut and nodded.

“I’ll rearrange your schedule today, and
we’ll begin officially on Friday morning. And Mike—you will learn
how to do everything we’ve been teaching the clients. I hope you
are prepared to act—as you’ve put it—like a slave. Because in my
school—those who teach must be able to do.”

“You got it, boss.”

“You’ve got it, Chris,” Chris corrected. “I
will see you on Friday. If you feel you cannot run because of your
physical condition, I suggest you bring a doctor’s note.”

Michael stared at the closed door after
Chris left and realized that the pounding in his head had subsided
a little. But that did nothing to relieve the butterflies doing
sorties through his stomach. What had he thought after his first
big gaffe here? That it was imperative that he not screw up any
more? And how many times had he made that promise to himself since
coming here? Twice more? Four times? A dozen?

He stood up and went back to the mirror.
Carefully, he inclined his shoulders, bowing his head a fraction,
cocking it to one side. It looked right but his back was too
rounded. Again—should he briefly close his eyes? Yes, it added a
touch of humility. Again, this time with the robe off, so he could
see the angle of his shoulders better. Again...

No promises this time.

* * * *

Anderson pushed the back door open, allowing
the light from the kitchen to spill out over the steps and the rich
scent of the budding garden to come wafting toward her in exchange.
It was mingled with a more acrid scent, and she sneezed.

“Gesundheit, Trainer,” Chris said. She
looked down—he was seated on the top step, his legs kicked out in
front of him. Smoke trailed out of his mouth as he spoke. He was in
his jeans, thank goodness—the back steps had to be damp and a
little grimy. She made a mental note to have Lorens clean them
tomorrow. If he was going to insist on sneaking a smoke, there was
no reason to get dirty doing so.

“I wondered where you were,” she said,
stepping outside.

He took a drag on the cigarette and politely
expelled the smoke away from her. “And here I am,” he said. “You
know, Trainer—eavesdropping is not generally regarded as the height
of good manners.”

She chuckled. “Are you lecturing me?”

“Oh, no, of course not.”

“The Trainer hears everything, my dear—as
you well know. So do the slaves. The only one who deals in
ignorance is the master. My, that’s an old one.” She looked down,
and then sighed. Tucking her skirt under her, she took a seat
beside him.

“He had already put me in a difficult
position—now, you’ve committed me. And I wonder who put that idea
into his head to begin with?” More smoke shot out, followed by a
short, harsh cough.

“Not I,” Anderson insisted. “And that’s the
truth, Parker. You know he’s been dancing around the solution for
weeks now. All he needed was a push.”

“Or a concussion.”

“You seem to be prone to handing those out
this year. Is the strap out of order?”

“Not a lecture from you too, please. Dr.
Quigley has already scolded me quite harshly. I have promised to go
to the gym more often and consider adjusting my meds again.” He
flicked some ash off his knee. “Yes, the strap still works—but I
think my own warranty may be running out.”

“Since you’ve already gotten the lecture,
perhaps I should do something more... direct.”

He blinked slowly, and then one eyebrow
raised in a come-hither look that Anderson couldn’t help but laugh
at. Chris snorted in amusement himself and sighed.

“This further limits your options, you
know.”

“Of course I know.” He ground out the
cigarette and pulled another from the pack. He used a kitchen match
to light it, and flipped the match into the garden still lit. They
followed the descent, and the sputtering death of the light.

“I detest that habit,” Anderson said.

“Tell me to stop!”

They stared at each other as he took another
drag. The end of the cigarette glowed, and he turned his head away,
breaking the intensity of their contact to add more white smoke to
the air.

“Give it to me.”

He immediately plucked it out of his mouth
and passed it to her. She examined it for a moment, and turned it
around in her fingers. “It’s a disgusting thing to do,” she said,
tapping ashes off. “Unhealthy. And it’s inconsiderate to do it in
front of non-smokers. Give me your hand.”

Chris extended his right hand, his arm
crossing in front of his body. Deliberately, he turned it palm
up.

Anderson raised the cigarette to her own
lips and drew smoke into her mouth. The tip glowed, and she let the
smoke billow out, as she tapped ashes away one more time. She
turned the glow downward, and aimed it at the center of Chris’s
palm. He remained still, his eyes on hers, and there was only the
slightest stiffening of his body as the heat from the tip came
closer to his skin.

Anderson lifted the cigarette away and
ground it out on the step. “You didn’t make your obeisance,” she
said softly.

“No, I suppose I didn’t.” Chris brought his
hand away slowly, curling his fingers into his palm. “Was that a
decision?”

“There is no drive more compelling than the
drive to serve, my friend. My dear friend. If you are everything
you’ve struggled for, there was never any decision to make.” She
stood up, stretched, and brushed her skirt off. “I’ll see you in
the morning.”

“Good night,” he said as she walked back in
the house. He stayed where he was, gazing out onto the garden, for
a long time. The night grew a little more chilly, but he didn’t
move; somewhere in the matted grass, a match lay, a twist of burnt
ash.

He lit another one, and pulled a cigarette
out of the pack. The tip glowed amber and copper, and smoke
billowed up again. The second match joined the first, and he pushed
his back up against the house, drawing his knees up to his body. He
stayed there until the pack was finished.

It took another week to get the nuances of
that one acknowledgment bow down exactly. Michael worked alongside
Joan now, and she acted as a teacher more often than not. It was
humiliating at first. Michael burned with fantasies about what she
thought of him now—the cocky trainer apprentice now reduced to
following her around and doing the very same exercises she did,
only clumsily. And while Chris wasn’t quite as snippy as he had
been before, there was a strong, underlying feeling to it all, as
though this was what should have been.

It wasn’t exactly starting from the
beginning. Knowing the feel of the house came in handy, and so did
knowing what tasks were routinely assigned to the clients and which
ones Chris and Vicente took care of. And oddly, after all the
reading and note-taking he had done, only now did some of it begin
to sink in. How training and skill led to confidence, which led to
pride, for example. It was all very good on paper. But it was also
contradictory—slaves weren’t supposed to show pride, except in the
smallest of ways, and too much confidence was often interpreted as
arrogance. How was a client supposed to strike a proper balance? It
was impossible to describe before, and didn’t get much easier as he
learned. But each time he repeated a task or movement, or figured
out the correct way to say something, another gram of understanding
seemed to click into place.

It didn’t always happen like that. Far from
it. And there were parts of Chris’s methods which were still
maddening, especially his insistence on full formality when they
were at “work.” There were times when it all seemed silly,
exercises in role-playing for someone long used to acting. And
there were times when he was alone with the mirror, mouthing words
and making moves, and wondering how someone could behave like this
all the time. What could he say to someone to inspire them to this
level of service?

He asked Anderson over dinner.

“I don’t know,” she said thoughtfully. “I
never had to inspire anyone—they all came to me. I always figured
that some people just had it in them—not only the potential, but
the need. Like a person who grows up always knowing they have to be
a soldier. You don’t need a war to get them, just an army that
takes recruits. And they may never want out—they’ll be in uniform
until they are forced out, and then they’ll hang out with old
soldiers until they die. No one goes out and gets those people—they
just show up to the recruiting station with their kit bags and
never look back. That’s what the best slaves do, too. They keep
showing up, until someone takes them in.”

“But what if it’s not that obvious?” Mike
asked. “What if it’s buried inside? Do you think someone can really
not know it’s there? And if they don’t, do you?”

“Sometimes,” she admitted. “Sure, it can be
latent, waiting to be popped out. Chris sees it more often than me,
I guess. He’s got a good record in spotting.”

“Really? You’ve been a spotter?” Mike’s eyes
widened.

Chris nodded. “I’ve been everything,” he
said.

“Then you can tell me!” Mike struggled to
keep the insistent sound out of his voice. “I’ve been wondering
since—since Karen—” He paused, swallowed, and continued. “When do
you tell them? You see it in them, you draw them out, do the
preliminary interviews, and play with them a little—but when do you
let them know about the Marketplace?”

“You don’t have to let them know,” Chris
said. “Most of them believed in it long before they met you. And if
they didn’t believe it existed, they will the minute you tell
them.”

Mike’s face fell. “Then I was really wrong
about her.”

“She would have made a very nice
girlfriend-slave,” Anderson said strongly. “Probably a lot of fun.
You would have been the envy of all your friends in the Leather
Forever world, and I’ve no doubt you’d pierce her nipples as a
wedding gift.” She seemed to be making fun, but her voice was
gentle. “You spotted the wrong level, that’s all. What interested
me was that after you, she seems to have made a career out of
complaining about the lack of real masters in that community. It
will be intriguing to see if she comes to us later on.”

“You—you’ve followed up on her?” Michael
exclaimed.

“I’m not as isolated as I look,” Anderson
said. “And when it affects one of my students, I learn anything I
can.”

Michael didn’t know what to say. He had
never looked into what Karen was doing! Should he have? He looked
up into Anderson’s eyes again and asked, “And do you think she
really will come back to us one day? Actually get into the
Marketplace?”

“No,” Anderson and Chris said at the same
time. They both smiled, and Anderson coughed politely. “No, I think
she’s also proven that she can’t be trusted. If she had made a
stronger effort to find you before airing her complaints in public,
perhaps. But no decent trainer would take her on, knowing that she
tried to air our doings in public.”

“Perhaps an indecent one will,” Chris
noted.

Michael, for once, kept his mouth shut.

The change in training style also meant a
new dry period sexually. Lorens was declared off limits again, and
Michael found himself dreaming of pumping his cock between those
powerful thighs, grasping the man’s heavy dick and twisting it in
order to hear the cries of pain and feel the tensing of the anal
muscles. He also dreamed of Karen, her sweet mouth working in his
crotch while her hands were tied behind her back and a vibrator
buzzed away between her legs. The surprise came when he dreamed of
being on the bottom.

He dreamed of that dominatrix from ages ago,
whipping his back and running her long fingernails down his flanks.
Only this time, they continued around to his balls, and the
pinching tightness as they drew his nuts up and together made him
moan out loud even as something sharp started to slide between his
own asscheeks—

And then he woke up. Sweating under the
blanket, his cock erect and his heart beating so hard he thought he
was having an attack of some kind. He kicked the covers off and lay
there naked, allowing the sweat to evaporate off his body as he
stroked his cock, back and forth, pulling at the skin. It was hard
to concentrate on his usual images, so he went back to the dream,
to the woman in leather, the scratch of her nails, the probing of
his ass, the cool rush of air against his exposed anus, and then
the touch, the pressure...

He shot his orgasm up almost without
thinking, and groaned. Warmth splattered his hand and belly, and
then turned rapidly cool. He shivered and pulled the blanket on top
of him again, not caring about the damp spots he was going to
leave. He was more concerned with that dream, and the force of his
pleasure. He fell asleep again, the scent of his semen surrounding
him, and didn’t remember any more dreams when he woke up.

* * * *

“Chris, what’s a classic?” Michael
asked.

“A classic what?”

They were taking a breather by the park
Chris ran through every morning. Michael had a much longer stride
and covered ground quicker, but he lacked the stamina that the
smaller man had. He needed to rest more often.

“Anderson said that you should start me like
a classic. What does that mean?”

“Ah.” Chris patted sweat off his forehead.
“That’s old guard. Classic training, as in the way she was taught,
the way I was. The way no one is taught any more.”

“Really? Why not?”

“Because it’s too time-consuming. Too
demanding. It lacks the all-important element of immediate
gratification.” He stretched a little. “But don’t worry—you won’t
be expected to undergo the whole training process.”