The Virgin Master (15 page)

“You’ll get tired of him. Bring him by the house some Friday night for dinner.”

Evan
hid
his expression of disgust. Frank’s “dinners” were famous. It seemed “dinner” was Frank speak for orgy. Everyone brought a personal slave who was then restrained for all the guests to use. All the guests tried to fuck or otherwise enjoy all the slaves. Some of Frank’s closest friends had peculiar ideas of “enjoyment.” Evan knew of at least two occasions when one of the slaves so used ended up in the hospital. Another had died.

Evan held Frank’s challenging stare. “I know where you live.”

Frank winked at Evan, nodded to Allen and made his way out of
he
board room. Allen shook his head ruefully at Evan and followed.

Once they were alone, Evan sat down on the floor next to Jeremy and put his arm around him. Jeremy had looked impervious to the fondling and lewd remarks, but he trembled under Evan’s touch. Evan had trouble controlling his breathing. His heart fluttered as his mind replayed Frank’s hands on Jeremy’s body. Possessiveness and an urgent need to protect Jeremy swamped his senses. He wrapped his body around Jeremy’s without volition and held him close. Jeremy relaxed into him.

“I didn’t know that would happen. I didn’t know how to make them stop. I really didn’t know what to do about Frank.”

“I’ll live, Ev.”

Evan
looked up and
Jeremy’s
lips were right
there
, less than two inches from his own. Evan leaned a little harder into Jeremy and Jeremy leaned forward and gently brushed his lips across Evan’s, slow electric fire trailing along with the touch. Evan leaned in deepening the kiss and they were both caught up in the soft,
delicious, perfect pleasure of it for a moment. Then Evan pushed away suddenly.

“No. I’m not going to take advantage of this situation, Jeremy. I promised you.”

“I kissed
you.
”

“
I know, but you’re straight…so…”

“You don’t know as much as you think you do, Ev.”

Evan wouldn’t look at him, guilt already squirming in his guts even as his lips still tingled from Jeremy’s kiss and he longed for more.

“Let’s go home, Jer.”

The first thing Evan did when he got into his office the following Monday, was call Sandy, prepared to beg her to come back. When he had explained what had been happening with him, she agreed to return and promised she would give notice the next day. In the meantime, Jeremy answered his phone and took care of his calendar with effortless efficiency.

Evan gave Jeremy the initial task of finding a new target for Evan’s acquisition team. By the end of the week Jeremy found five and presented Evan with spreadsheets showing the positive
and negative aspects of each buy-out and recommendations on whether to retain the company as a going concern or to dismantle and sell its assets. Evan, astonished by the thoroughness and the familiar layout of the report, asked Jeremy, who blushingly admitted that he had gone through several of Evan’s old board proposals and determined that he had a particular set of questions he wanted answered in a particular order. Jeremy simply structured his reports along the template he made of Evan’s old proposals. Evan and Jeff selected the best of the
five;
with Jeremy concurring in private consultation
.
Evan gave a successful presentation at the next board meeting.

Evan scrupulously kept office hours to a regular nine-to-five schedule. He made sure everyone got a lunch hour and took
breaks. He took time to talk to his employees and express a personal interest. He also studied how they seemed to feel about Jeremy by monitoring their reactions.

Jeremy almost never left his office. Since Evan had his own bathroom, and the door between their offices stayed open, there was no reason for Jeremy to leave the office suite. Evan and Jeremy arrived at their offices before most of the other employees and left after almost everyone else. When they used the gym, it was late at night, when no one else was there. Lunch was delivered. A few employees saw them together, but what they saw was Jeremy following Evan in perfect slave
posture and spacing. A few of them noted the absence of a leash; but they were indoors.

In short, Evan’s life seemed back on track. The only difficulty he had was keeping a neutral attitude toward Jeremy. He steadfastly tried to keep an image of Justin firmly in his mind whenever they were alone. Jeremy, without being obviously flirtatious seemed to find reasons to touch Evan often. Each time, Evan’s body flared into arousal at the slightest brush of skin on skin. He wondered if some anonymous meaningless sex would cool him off any, but quailed at what he would have to do to get it. His affair with his right hand took on new urgency.

He had remembered to take the vasectomy certification down to the Slave Registry. During his trip downtown, Evan keenly observed all the master/slave interactions he could. Before Jeremy he consciously avoided watching slaves. He saw one altercation where a slave had purportedly brushed against a citizen while standing in line to get coffee for his master. The offended citizen took the slave off around a corner.

Evan followed, as unobtrusively as possible and found a series of small open cubicles labeled “Public Discipline”. He looked into an unoccupied cubicle and saw a small white-tiled room with a drain in the center. The walls, ceiling and floor were studded with large staples. There were two black tiles centered near the edge of the floor of the little room. Evan tried to imagine why the cubicle was laid out this way, when, with a sudden stab of fear, he realized that the corner of his laundry room looked just like this.

He and Justin had tried and tried to figure out what
it might be for, and in the end gave up.  Justin’s family had the same opinion about slavery as Evan’s
so
Justin had never been around personal slaves and had refused to socialize with those who did. Evan had made vague plans to redo that corner, but he never did laundry and he just forgot about it. About that time, he heard the resounding crack of a paddle and a low cry of pain. He returned to his office with alacrity.

As he walked by the reception desk, he saw that Jeremy had already collected the mail and sorted it into
‘
needs answers now,
’
‘
can wait
,’
and
‘
possible junk
.’
Only one envelope lay in the pile set out for immediate answer and the blood froze in Evan’s veins as he saw it was from the Office of Slave Regulation. The brown envelope lurked accusingly in the middle of the desk and Evan’s hand shook as he picked it up, his breath hitching with fear. Had he already been reported for inappropriate emotional attachment? No one had seen them together except his father, Jeff and the board. Well and the vet at the slave clinic. And Tom Hatcher.

His mind racing and his heart thudding, he thought immediately about Jeremy, who must be as
anxious
. He went into his office and straight on through into Jeremy’s. Jeremy knelt by his work station, head down, totally still. Evan dropped to the floor next to him and, cupping his chin, pulled Jeremy around to face him. Unsurprisingly he looked at Evan with eyes wide in fear.

“I thought we s
hould read this together,” Evan m
urmured waving the envelope. Jeremy nodded mutely and they both just stared at it for a minute. Shaking himself, Evan tore open the envelope and extracted the
letter.

“
July 1, 2
3
15

Dear Mr. James:

Because you are a first time slave owner the law requires this agency to certify that you have the ability
to
a
ppropriately
manage your new slave. In order to establish that you can maintain and control your new slave appropriately, Inspector Steven
Hubbard
will be visiting you at your residence on Saturday, July 10, at 10:00 am
,
to
instruct and test you on disciplining your slave. Please
 
make sure that you and your slave are both at home for his visit. Failure to pass this inspection will result in a repetition. Failure a second time will result in removal and resale of your slave.

Should this time be inconvenient due to (1) funeral attendance,(2) marriage attendance, please call this office to reschedule.

Regards,

Victor
Rosenblum

Victor
Rosenblum
, Commissioner

Office of Slave Regulation”

“Does this mean what I think it means,” Evan asked Jeremy.

“
Sounds like he’s going to teach you how to beat me.”

“I can’t do this.”

This time when Jeremy reached out and palmed Evan’s face, Evan leaned into his touch, longing to turn his head and kiss Jeremy’s palm.

“Evan…you have to do it and I have to take it.  Look, if we fail
,
they’ll take me away from you. I swear to you I can’t stand that.”

Evan drew Jeremy into a hug. “I promised you I’d never hurt you.”

“That was before we knew what we were doing. This won’t really be
you
hurting me. It will be the
state
hurting me, using you as its
instrument. I know you don’t want to do this
…
but you have to do it and do the best job you can. For both of us. We’ll get through this and maybe we won’t ever have to go through anything else like it.”

The two men huddled on the floor, holding each other tight
ly
for a few more minutes. Evan finally pulled away, wiping his eyes. It was Monday. They had this thing hanging over them for the rest of the week. He could see the same thought in Jeremy’s eyes as they stared at each other.

“Well, those financial statements won’t analyze themselves.”

Jeremy smiled gently. “Work is the best antidote to dread, I guess. See you later.”

*****

Evan rose to his feet, crumpling the letter in his hand with much more force than warranted, and went back to his desk. Jeremy continued trying to work, but all he could think about
was being stripped and restrained with some bureaucrat making Evan hit him. Oddly, he felt a great deal sorrier for Evan than he felt for himself.

*****

T
he week crawled by. Neither man m
ade any significant
progress in
his
work projects. Friday evening, they found themselves sitting glumly on the sofa looking at Evan’s
brand new “instruments of discipline.” They couldn’t read
. T
hey couldn’t find a safe topic of conversation
.
T
hey didn’t feel like playing video games or watching movies. Finally Evan put the box of whips down on the table and just held Jeremy. They leaned into one another, Evan atte
mpting to silently apologize in
advance and Jeremy trying to make his forgiveness known. Without a sound, they separated and went to their separate bedrooms to lie awake until morning.

*****

Jeremy decided to forego breakfast on Saturday morning. He took a long, very thorough shower, feeling certain that all his most intimate parts would be on full display.

Evan was jumpy and started at every sound. When Marta showed up, he released part of his anxiety by explaining what he had to do that day.
He embarrassed himself by bursting into tears as he tried to explain it to her. She hugged him and told him that Jeremy understood and would forgive him; but the Inspector wouldn’t understand this outburst of emotion at disciplining a slave. Evan nodded and prayed he could hold it together.

*****

Jeremy lingered in his room, waiting for Evan to call him.
He stayed in his robe as he thought it would create a better impression if he appeared willing and ready as well as sparing Evan
the necessity of ordering him to strip.