CONTENTS
Chapter One: The Diner
The Mercedes needed new spark plugs. Anne had known it for weeks. She could feel it in the slight hesitation on cold starts, and in the occasional roughness at idle that smoothed out once the engine warmed. She’d been ignoring it the way she ignored most things that required attention: by filling her days with work so completely that there was no room left for maintenance, reflection, or anything that might crack the careful architecture of her routine she had built around herself for the past two years.
St. Helena to Vallejo at 7:30 AM. Vallejo to St. Helena at 6:45 PM. The blue 300 SEL traced the same route back and forth every day, so reliably that the regulars along Highway 29 could set their watches by it. Sometimes it cruised by on the way back to St. Helena earlier, and sometimes later, depending on whether there were many house calls – but always along the same route, and always driven by the same woman bearing a composed, unreadable expression that showed nothing of the pain that lay beneath it.
Her name was Anne Marquez, and the letters after it in her business card, M.D., had defined her for two decades. At forty-one, she had a bustling practice that spanned the valley, from the old farming families in Calistoga to the new money in Yountville, all of them trusting her with their most intimate secrets and their fears about mortality.
She was good at this work. She had always been good at it. The structure of the medical process – anamnesis, diagnosis, treatment, prognosis – was a framework that imposed order and structure on the messy chaos of slowly failing human bodies.
Anne’s focus on her work, however, was not driven by a financially based need to increase her consult from the relatively small pool of affluent patients she saw. Deep down, she knew her focus on work was because of a still-open wound, one she had deferred treating, because only thinking about it made her reel in anguish.
Anne no longer counted the days consciously, but her soul kept the tally anyway: two years, three months, and eleven days since Julia had passed. The anniversary made itself felt as a tide of self-reproach, sorrow and guilt, an ache that waxed sharp and burdensome in November, and waned through spring and summer, but never disappeared.
Julia had been Anne’s slave for fifteen years: her property, her responsibility, her joy, her purpose beyond her professional practice. When the blinding, crippling headaches had started, and the MRI had shown the glioblastoma spreading through Julia’s brain like frost across a window, Anne had moved all the levers she had known, to try to do something against that mortal foe. Within eight months, however, Anne had watched helplessly as the woman she owned and loved became a shadow of herself… and then nothing at all.
Anne’s knowledge about what was happening to Julia had been the cruellest part of it all. She understood exactly what was happening. She could read the scans and the bloodwork results like a text written in a language she’d spent decades mastering.
She also knew when the treatments stopped working. She knew, before Julia did, that the finite time they had been given after her diagnosis was now being counted in days rather than weeks. She had held that knowledge within herself, and her pride prevented her from sharing it – or from putting it down.
Julia had asked to spend her last days at home, in their bed. This had been a hard choice for Anne to grant – her medical knowledge screamed that she should remain in a controlled environment, but her humanity prevailed, and she had granted that request. She was with Julia through those last times; and she had watched as the monitors ticked, removing one less bead from Julia’s life.
When Julia closed her eyes for the last time, Anne’s face was the last thing she saw.
Two years, three months, eleven days ago, fifteen years of service and trust – of a surrender so complete that Anne had come to assume it’d never end – were over.
That day, Anne’s world had shattered – and she wasn’t sure whether it could ever be made whole again.
Sometimes the house in St. Helena still felt and smelled like Julia was there, as if there was some olfactory or emotional ghost that Anne’s memory conjured in quiet, lonely moments that had been populated with her slave’s presence, almost as if there was a phantom pain of the soul.
Work became Anne’s coping mechanism. She buried herself in medical studies, conferences, specialisation courses and seminars, attempting to drown that part of herself that clamoured loudly to shatter, wail, grieve, and slowly, painfully put itself back together again.
She kept Julia’s collar, carefully preserved in a wooden box within Anne’s closet. She had soldered it around her slave’s throat on their fifth anniversary and had cut it from Julia’s cold neck with her own hands before the cremation, eyes stinging with long-held tears.
The severed metal circlet was now a mute witness to a broken loop of service, love, and devotion. Anne could not bear to look at it, but neither could she throw it away.
She had not wanted to take another servant since then. The hunger for guiding someone, for shaping them, moulding them to be an image of her will that had defined her for fifteen years was now numb, curled up and hurting in the deepest, most tender recesses of her heart – and Anne let it sleep.
The diner appeared on her right, the same squat building she passed twice daily without stopping. Marge’s, according to the hand-painted sign, though Anne had never learned whether Marge was the owner, a former owner, or simply a name someone had liked the sound of. It was the kind of place that existed outside the wine country’s carefully curated dining ecosystem. It had no tasting menus, nor did it boast of farm-to-table directness. Marge’s offered coffee, pancakes, eggs, and hash browns – sturdy, reliably comforting food that made no apologies for itself.
Anne’s stomach growled. She’d skipped breakfast again. She had been skipping it for months, actually – and her body was beginning to register complaints she couldn’t ignore forever. The hesitation lasted only a moment. She signalled, slowed down, and pulled her classic Mercedes into the worn asphalt that paved the diner’s lot.
Inside, the eatery was nearly empty. Two older men at the counter, locals by the look of them, nursed coffee and the remnants of a conversation. A family of tourists, in a corner booth, consulted a map with the focused, hurried intensity of people who had somewhere else to be sooner rather than later. Anne chose a table by the window, positioning herself with her back to the wall – an old habit which she’d never managed to break, a remnant from her early days as a servant in Master Roger’s dungeon, where the smallest mistake was punished with a robust paddling – and reached for the laminated menu, tucked at an awkward angle behind the napkin dispenser.
After a few minutes where Anne half consulted the menu and half reminisced about the times she had been to places just like this when she was in college on her way to southern California during the summer, a clear, soprano voice broke the air.
“May I take your order, Miss? Would you like some coffee?”
Anne blinked and looked up, focussing on the presence who had startled her reverie.
The waitress in front of her was young, in her mid-twenties, perhaps, sporting honey-blonde hair pulled back in a low ponytail and bright, sparkling, spring-sky blue eyes. She was certainly pretty, but that wasn’t what caught Anne’s attention. It was the way in which the girl stood: her weight balanced evenly, shoulders relaxed but not slack, chin slightly lowered in a posture that was attentive without being overly obsequious.
And there was something more.
It was the way she’d said “Miss” – not “ma’am,” “honey,” “darling,” or the other commonplace endearments that jaded service workers usually deployed like armour. “Miss,” clear and unaffected, as if it were the most natural form of address in the world.
“Yes, please,” Anne said. “Make it black, no sugar. Thank you.”
The girl, whose nametag read AMY in uppercase block letters, nodded and turned toward the coffee station. Anne watched her go, cataloguing details with the same automatic precision she brought to a patient’s assessment. The slight sway of her hips, unconscious and unhurried. The way her hands moved as she poured, economical and sure. The soft curve of her neck above the collar of her uniform shirt, pale and unmarked.
Unmarked.
That word surfaced unbidden, and Anne pushed it back down.
Amy returned with the coffee, setting it down with a small, careful motion that placed the cup’s handle at a perfect angle for Anne’s right hand. “Miss, do you know what you’d like, or do you need a little longer?”
“Pancakes, please,” Anne said. “And scrambled eggs. Not too dry, if possible.”
“Hash browns?”
“Definitely.”
Amy wrote nothing down. She simply nodded, memorising everything Anne said, and her blue eyes met Anne’s for a moment. They were open and unguarded, with none of the wariness that usually creeps into the jaded gazes of service personnel.
“Coming right up, Miss.”
Then she was gone, moving toward the kitchen with unhurried grace.
Anne wrapped her hands around the coffee cup, letting the heat seep into her palms, pondering about what she had just witnessed.
The girl was submissive. Anne would have staked her medical licence on it.
She was not trained, and was almost certainly not conscious of her nature, but the markers were unmistakable to anyone who knew how to read them. Her attentiveness was natural – instinctive, even, with no trace of it being forced or rehearsed in advance.
She clearly took pleasure in service, which was evident in how her expression had softened into a barely sketched smile when she’d set down the cup. Furthermore, her demeanour was right – she’d deferred without diminishing herself and had been respectful without being servile.
Anne’s observations, though, were clinical, and meant nothing emotionally – at least, not at first.
She saw submissives everywhere – at the grocery store, in her waiting room, at the petrol station where she filled the Mercedes twice a week. The world was full of people whose natures went unrecognized, even by themselves. But that was none of Anne’s business.
She had no interest in taking on a new servant – much less a slave. She felt she had no capacity left in her for the emotional investment it would require. She was here for pancakes, nothing more.
The food arrived ten minutes later, presented with the same quiet competence Amy had shown throughout. The eggs were perfect – soft, slightly glossy curds, exactly the texture Anne preferred. The pancakes were golden and uniform. The hash browns were crisp at the edges and tender within. It was diner food, with the right amount of greasy sheen, unpretentious and honest, and Anne found herself eating with more appetite than she’d felt in months.
Amy checked on Anne once, halfway through the meal, with a simple enquiry: “Is everything okay, Miss?” Anne, caught mid-bite, nodded to the girl and sipped some coffee to wash down the hash browns she was consuming. Amy returned to her rounds, and, as she consumed her meal, Anne watched Amy work in brief glimpses.
The family in the corner booth had settled for breakfast, and Anne quietly assessed how Amy handled them. Longing crept into Anne’s heart as she watched the young woman engaging with the children, patient and warm but without being condescending. It made her think of Julia. She had been good with children too. She had been good handling everyone, but it was with children where she had particularly shined. Perhaps that is why she had chosen child psychology as her career path.
When the check came, Anne left a twenty-dollar bill on a twelve-dollar tab. It was too much – and conspicuously so – but she found she didn’t care. The food had been good, the diner’s ambiance had been comforting, and Amy had been a most excellent servant. No, not servant, server, Anne caught herself thinking.
A few moments later, she was out the door and into the parking lot before she could second-guess herself, her heels clicking on the old asphalt as she made her way to her Mercedes.
The engine caught on the first try, the hesitation less pronounced in the midday warmth. Anne pulled back onto the highway, heading north toward her first appointment of the afternoon: a retired vintner with gout and a stubborn refusal to modify his diet. She had the conversation memorized by now, almost like a ritual: the mild warnings, recommendations, and gentle reminders about what would happen if he didn’t cut back on shrimp, eggs and his own wine. He would nod, promise to do better, and be back in six weeks with the same complaints. Visiting him gave her practice a predictable and oddly comforting rhythm.
As miles unwound beneath her wheels, though, Anne found her thoughts drifting back to Marge’s diner. Back to the girl with the honey-blonde hair and the sky-blue eyes; to the way she’d said “Miss,” to the way her hands had moved when she poured the coffee, and the unmarked curve of her throat above the collar of her shirt.
Stop it, Anne told herself. You’re not in the market. You’re not ready for this. You may never be ready for this again. What are you thinking?
Those thoughts continued anyway, persistent like a low-grade fever, all the way to Calistoga and back.
Anne returned to the diner three days later.
It wasn’t a conscious decision, or at least that was what Anne told herself. She had a gap in her schedule, an hour between appointments that she usually spent catching up on paperwork in her car. But the paperwork could wait, and she hadn’t eaten since the night before, and the diner was right there, and –
And she wanted to see if the girl would remember her.
Amy did. Her face brightened when Anne walked in, a genuine warmth that had nothing performative about it. “Good afternoon, Miss. Same table?”
“Please.”
Anne settled into the seat by the window, accepted the coffee Amy poured without being asked, and ordered a club sandwich she didn’t particularly want. She ate slowly, watching Amy work the room. The lunch rush was busier than the morning had been – lorry drivers, construction workers, a few wine tourists who’d wandered off the beaten path – and Amy navigated the rush with fluid poise, attending to each customer as if they were the only person in the room.
There was an older man in the kitchen, visible through the pass-through window, a big Black man with forearms like hams and a gentle face. Anne heard Amy call him Gus. She heard Gus, calling Amy “sweetheart,” but the word carried only easy-going affection. She heard Amy laugh at something one of the lorry drivers said, the sound bright and unforced, and Anne felt something shift in her chest, something that she didn’t want to examine too closely.
When the check came, Anne left another excessive tip. Amy caught her at the door.
“Miss? You left too much again.”
Anne turned. Amy was holding the twenty, her expression uncertain, as if she couldn’t decide whether to be grateful or concerned.
“I left exactly what I intended to leave,” Anne said.
“But … “
“You’re good at your job.” Anne held Amy’s gaze, letting the words settle. “Take the money.”
A spark flickered in Amy’s blue eyes – surprise? Pleasure? Anne could not asy – and a hint of colour rose in the young woman’s cheeks. She lowered her chin in a small nod that was almost a curtsey. “Thank you, Miss.”
Anne drove north with the image of that nod burned into her memory. The slight dip of the head. The softening of the shoulders. The brief, slight bend of her knees. It was an unconscious, graceful display of submission, offered without understanding, and received by most without acknowledgment. But it resonated with Anne – and much louder that she was willing to admit.
Anne attempted to beat down the curiosity she felt.
You’re playing with fire, she told herself. You’re going to get burned, or you’re going to burn her, and either way someone ends up hurt. Walk away, now!
She went back the next day anyway.
And the day after that.
And the day after that.
By the end of the second week, Anne had learned the following: Amy was twenty-four. She was from San Francisco originally, had come to Yountville to help her uncle through his final illness, and had stayed to settle his affairs after he died. The diner job was temporary – she was covering for a woman named Maria who was on maternity leave – and paid just enough to cover the rent on her uncle’s old house while she sorted out the estate. She was supposed to go back to San Francisco eventually, to finish her degree at UC Berkeley, but there was a vagueness to her plans that suggested she wasn’t entirely sure what she was going back to.
Anne had learned most of this in fragments, pieced together from brief exchanges at the table, from overheard conversations with Gus, from the small details Amy let slip without seeming to realize she was sharing them. Amy was not guarded, not exactly, but there was a loneliness to her that Anne recognized – the particular isolation of someone who had never quite fit into the life they’d been given.
What Amy had learned about Anne was considerably less. Anne had offered her name, her profession in the vaguest terms, her appreciation for the food. She had not mentioned the house in St. Helena, or the practice that kept her driving up and down the valley, or the wooden box in her closet that contained a collar she couldn’t bear to touch. She had not mentioned Julia.
It was dishonest, this asymmetry, and Anne knew it. She was gathering information the way a predator gathers intelligence about prey, learning vulnerabilities and preferences and patterns while revealing nothing of her own. It was unfair. It was potentially dangerous. And she couldn’t seem to stop.
“You’re here a lot, Miss,” Amy observed one afternoon, refilling Anne’s coffee with that same careful attention to the angle of the handle. “I mean – it’s not like I mind. I just… noticed.”
“I pass through frequently,” Anne said. “For work.”
“What kind of work?”
“I’m a doctor. Internal medicine, mostly. House calls, for patients who can’t easily travel.”
Amy’s eyebrows rose. “House calls? I didn’t think doctors did that anymore.”
“Most don’t. I find it suits me.”
“Is it the driving, Miss?”
“In part… But what I most value is the autonomy.” Anne took a sip of her coffee, watching Amy over the rim of the cup. “I prefer to work on my own terms.”
Something in Amy’s expression shifted – a flicker of recognition, perhaps. Or was it longing? Anne could not dissect that. “That must be nice,” she said quietly, “to have that kind of control over your life…”
Control.
The word hung in the air between them.
Anne felt its weight settle into the conversation like a stone dropped into still water. Amy didn’t seem to notice what she’d said, or what it might reveal, but Anne noticed. Anne noticed everything.
“It has its compensations,” Anne said carefully. “And its costs.”
“What kind of costs, Miss?”
Anne thought of Julia. Of the empty house and the untouched collar and the two years she’d spent building walls so high she could barely see over them. Before she could stop herself, she set the cup down with a heartfelt sigh, and, in a tone that was much too longing for the setting, Anne said, “Loneliness. Sometimes.”
Amy nodded slowly, her blue eyes soft with understanding. “Yeah,” she said. “I know about that.”
The moment stretched, fragile and charged, then the bell over the door jangled and a group of tourists spilled in, loud and demanding, and Amy was gone, moving to greet them with that same patient grace she brought to everything.
Anne finished her coffee. She paid her check, left her tip, and walked out into the late afternoon sun. The Mercedes was warm from sitting in the lot, the leather seats almost too hot to touch, and she sat for a moment with her hands on the wheel, not starting the engine, not moving at all.
Loneliness, she had said. Sometimes.
It was the most honest thing she’d told Amy since they’d met. And she had no idea what to do with the fact that she’d said it – or with the answering recognition she’d seen in Amy’s eyes.
Julia would have known what to do. Julia had always known, had read Anne’s moods and needs with an intuition that felt almost supernatural. But Julia was gone, and Anne was alone, and somewhere in that diner was a girl who didn’t know what she was, who had no idea what Anne was, who smiled when Anne walked in as if her arrival were a gift – and the effect that young girl was having on Anne… was terrifying.
Anne started the car and drove home.
She didn’t stop at the diner the next day.
Or the day after that.
But on the third day, when she found herself inventing reasons to take the long route between appointments, she knew she had lost.
Chapter Two: The Ride Home
It was past nine when Anne pulled into Marge’s parking lot for what she told herself would be the last time.
She had a reason, of course. She always had reasons. This one involved a patient in Yountville whose blood pressure had spiked alarmingly during an afternoon check-up, necessitating a return visit to ensure the new medication was taking effect. The visit had run long, as the patient was anxious and overly talkative, and by the time Anne extracted herself the sun had already slipped behind the western hills, leaving the valley bathed in the blue-grey light of early evening.
The diner was on her way home. She was hungry. These were facts, and facts were safe things to hold onto.
What she had not expected was to find Amy standing outside the building, alone, her arms wrapped around herself against the cooling air. The girl was still in her work clothes, a light cardigan thrown over her uniform shirt, and she was staring down the empty road with the resigned patience of someone who had been waiting for a long time and expected to wait longer still.
Anne slowed the Mercedes and pulled into the lot. She lowered the passenger window.
“Amy? Is everything all right?”
The girl turned, and her face cycled through surprise, recognition, and something that looked almost like relief. “Miss? I… I didn’t expect to see you tonight.”
“I had a late appointment.” Anne studied her for a moment. “Are you waiting for someone?”
“The bus.” Amy smiled, nervously. “I usually catch the 5:15 back to Yountville, but we were short-staffed today and I couldn’t leave until closing. The next one isn’t until…” She trailed off, glancing at her watch. “Um… Tomorrow morning, apparently.”
“You were planning to wait here all night?”
“I… I was going to call a taxi.” More softly, Amy said, “… eventually…” The nervousness cracked, revealing embarrassment beneath. “I… I keep telling myself I need to get a car, but between the rent and the lawyer’s fees for my uncle’s estate, there’s never quite enough left over.”
Anne considered her options. The sensible thing would be to wish Amy a good evening and drive away. The sensible thing would be to maintain the careful distance she had been cultivating, to keep their interactions confined to the neutral territory of coffee and pancakes and excessive tips.
The sensible thing had stopped mattering since around the third day she’d caught herself making up reasons to visit Marge’s.
“Get in,” Anne said. “I’ll take you home.”
Amy hesitated, and Anne watched the calculation play across her features: the ingrained wariness of accepting rides from relative strangers weighed against the prospect of the not wholly truthful statement about waiting alone at night in a dark parking lot for a taxi. Yet Anne did not rush her. This had to be Amy’s choice, freely made.
“Are you sure?” Amy asked. “I don’t want to take you out of your way.”
“Yountville is on my route. I pass through it twice a day.” Anne reached across and pushed open the passenger door. “Please. I insist.”
Amy climbed in, settling into the leather seat with a small sound of appreciation. “This car is beautiful,” she said, running her fingers along the wood grain of the dashboard. “It feels like something out of a film.”
“It was my father’s.” Anne pulled out of the lot and turned south onto the highway. “A 1970 Mercedes 300 SEL. He bought it the year I was born and drove it until the day he died. I inherited it along with his stubbornness and his tendency to hold onto things long past the point of practicality.”
“That’s not impractical. That’s… I don’t know. Faithful, maybe.”
The word landed strangely in Anne’s chest. She kept her eyes on the road.
“Where in Yountville?” she asked.
Amy gave her an address on the outskirts of town, a road Anne recognised as one of the older residential areas, far from the tasting rooms and boutique hotels that had transformed the village’s centre. They drove in comfortable silence for a few minutes, the Mercedes humming along the darkening highway, until Amy spoke again.
“Can I ask you something, Miss?”
“Anne. Please.”
“… Anne…” Amy tested the name as if learning its weight. “You’ve been coming to Marge’s quite often now. I’m not complaining, you know, but I’ve noticed that you don’t seem like the diner type. You’re…” She paused, searching for the right word. “You’re too refined, I suppose. There must be better restaurants between Vallejo and St. Helena.”
“Yes, there are. I know several of the owners on a first-name basis, too.”
“So why Marge’s?”
Anne considered several responses, most of them evasive. But Amy had asked the question directly, and something in her tone suggested she genuinely wanted to understand, not merely to make conversation.
“The food is honest,” Anne said finally. “There’s no performative hubris, which is refreshing, and it does not experiment with weird fusions, either. Marge’s is true blue, honest, hometown cooking, no more, no less. And besides, the service has been exceptional.”
She felt Amy’s dark blush in the halting, embarrassed tone of the girl’s voice. “… Y-you, um… you know, um, y-you d-don’t… h-have to s-say that…”
“I don’t say things I don’t mean, Amy. It wastes time, mine and other people’s.” Anne glanced over briefly. “You’re very good at what you do. You have a gift for anticipating what people need and providing it without being asked. That’s rarer than you might think.”
Amy was quiet for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was softer. “My uncle used to say something like that. He said I was born to take care of people. I never knew whether he meant it as a compliment or a warning.”
“Perhaps both.”
“Y-yeah.” Amy softly giggled, but with a nervous edge Anne did not fail to recognise. “… Perhaps both.”
They turned off the highway onto a smaller road that wound through vineyards before giving way to older houses set back from the street. The properties here had been modest once, working-class homes for the people who actually laboured in the fields and wineries, before the influx of money had transformed Napa Valley into a gentrified quasi-suburban garden, unrecognisable to those who remembered what it had been. Some of the houses had been renovated, their original character buried beneath fresh paint and modern additions. Others remained as they had always been, slowly surrendering to time and neglect.
The house at Amy’s address was one of the latter.
It was a single-storey structure, its paint faded to an indeterminate grey, front lawn more brown than green. A rusted mailbox leaned at an angle near the road, and the porch light was dark. The only illumination came from a single window at the side of the house, a yellow glow that suggested someone had left a lamp burning against the night.
Amy’s hand went to the door handle, then stopped. “I-it’s not much,” she said in a small voice, a defensive note creeping into her words. “… M-my uncle wasn’t much for upkeep, even… even before he got sick, and I’ve been so busy with work and the estate that I haven’t had time to … “
“Amy… Shh. Stop.” Anne’s eyes, for the first time, intently gazed into Amy, who held the stare for a moment before averting her eyes. “… You… don’t owe me an explanation.”
Amy looked at her. In the dim light of the car’s interior, her eyes were darker than Anne remembered, their blue deepened to something closer to indigo. “… I… I know. I just… I don’t usually bring people here. It’s embarrassing.”
“It’s a house. It has walls and a roof, and it keeps you dry when it rains. There’s nothing embarrassing about that.”
“You… you’re very practical, aren’t you, M… Anne?”
“I’m a doctor. Practicality is a professional requirement.” Anne paused, then added, more gently: “Your uncle was fortunate that you were with him.” In a softer, more emotional voice, Anne continued, “Not everyone has someone who’s willing to put their own life on hold to…” Anne paused, pursed her lips, and then said, composedly, “… to be with them… at the end…”
Amy’s breath caught. For a moment, Anne thought she might cry. But she swallowed whatever emotion had risen in her throat and managed a small, tight smile. “T… thank you… f-for saying that. Most people just tell me I should sell the house and move on. They don’t… They don’t understand that it’s not that simple.”
“Grief… is never simple. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying… or they have never lost someone they loved.”
The words hung in the air between them. Amy studied Anne’s face intently, and Anne held her ground against the scrutiny. She had said more than she had intended; and had let a part of her unsolved grief slip through the careful walls she’d built, but now… now it was too late to take it back.
“You’ve lost someone,” Amy said. It wasn’t a question.
Anne sighed. The tight, soft “yes” elicited from her mouth carried a pang of pain, never fully healed or resolved.
“Recently?”
“… Two years ago… And three months…. And eleven days.” Anne heard herself speak the numbers and felt her chest tighten. “But who’s counting?”
Amy reached out and touched Anne’s hand where it rested on the gear lever. The contact was brief, barely more than a brush of fingertips, but it sent a jolt through Anne’s body that she felt all the way to her spine. She forced herself not to react, not to pull away, not to lean into the touch the way some starving part of her wanted to.
“I’m sorry,” Amy said. “That’s not long at all.”
“No. It isn’t.”
They sat in silence for a moment, the engine idling, the dashboard lights casting soft shadows across their faces. Then Amy withdrew her hand and reached for the door.
“Thank you for the ride, Miss Anne. I really appreciate it.”
“It was no trouble.” Anne reached into her purse and withdrew a business card, one of the simple cream-coloured ones she kept for personal use rather than the more formal cards she distributed to patients. “If you ever need anything, or if you’d like to talk, please call me. Any time.”
Amy took the card and studied it.
Anne Marquez, M.D.
Internal Medicine and Surgery
By Appointment Only.
She looked up. “Is this your way of telling me, ‘Call me,’ Miss Anne?”
The question was innocent, but something in Amy’s tone gave it an edge that might have been flirtatious.
“… Maybe,” Anne said, with a hint of flirtatiousness to her own voice. “Or… maybe… it’s my way of telling you that you have a friend in the valley, if you want one. Moving to a new place and managing what you have to manage is hard enough. You… don’t have to do it alone.”
“I’m not alone. There’s Gus, at the diner. And Maria checks in on me sometimes, even though she’s got her own baby to deal with.” Amy tucked the card into her pocket. “But thank you. It means a lot.”
She opened the door and stepped out into the cool evening air. Anne watched her walk up the cracked concrete path to the front door, watched her fumble with her keys in the dim light, watched the door open and the yellow lamplight spill out to greet her.
Amy turned before going inside. She raised a hand in a small wave, and Anne returned it. Then the door closed, and Anne was alone.
She sat in the driveway for far longer than she should have, staring at the dark house, feeling the weight of what she’d just said and done settle over her like a heavy blanket. She had offered friendship. She had given Amy her number. She had opened a door that she knew, with absolute certainty, should have remained closed.
What are you doing? she asked herself. What do you think is going to happen here?
She had no answer. Or rather, she had too many answers, and all of them frightened and to a lesser extent titillated her.
Anne put the car in reverse and backed out of the driveway. She drove back home through the darkness, past the vineyards, the tasting rooms and the expensive restaurants where people paid two hundred dollars for a meal that wasn’t half as satisfying as Marge’s pancakes, and she tried not to think about the girl she’d just left behind at a dark house in the middle of nowhere, California.
She failed.
The house in St. Helena was dark when Anne arrived. She had forgotten to leave a light on that morning, and she stood for a moment in the entryway, listening to the silence that greeted her.
It had been different when Julia was alive. She had always left lights burning and had music playing softly in the background, filling the house with the sounds and movements of a life being lived with someone. Coming home had meant coming home to someone, to warmth and presence and the particular kind of peace that came from knowing you were expected and wanted.
That that someone also waited kneeling at the door, all but nude in a diaphanous, sheer shift that both concealed and exalted her womanly form, a minimal, steel collar permanently adorning her slender neck… was one hell of a perk for the Mistress of the house.
Now?
Now… Coming home meant walking into darkness and turning on lights one by one, each switch a small acknowledgment that there was no one else but her to do it.
Anne moved through the house mechanically, illuminating rooms she hadn’t used in years, trying to dispel the emptiness with the glare of artificial light. She poured herself a glass of wine from a bottle she’d opened three days ago, tasted it, found it had turned, and poured it down the sink with a disheartened sigh. She stood by the French windows leading from the kitchen to the garden and looked out at the herb plot Julia had planted, now overgrown with weeds Anne couldn’t bring herself to pull.
Her phone sat on the counter where she’d left it that morning. She picked it up and scrolled through the day’s messages: appointment confirmations, a note from her accountant about quarterly taxes, a reminder about a medical conference she had no intention of attending. There was nothing from Amy. Of course there was nothing, she had only just given the girl her number, what did she expect!?
She found herself hoping anyway.
This is pathetic, Anne thought. You’re forty-one years old. You’ve built a life, a career, and a reputation. Yet here you are, pining, checking your phone waiting for something from a girl you barely know and who just got your phone number twenty minutes ago, just like a teenager waiting for a crush to call.
Anne shook her head in disapproval, set the phone down and walked to her bedroom.
The walk-in closet was divided the way it had always been. Anne’s side was to the right, Julia’s to the left. Anne used her side every day, reaching for blouses and slacks, but without ever looking across the narrow space to where Julia’s clothes still hung, preserved in garment bags, and her shoes were still lined up in neat rows. Her jewellery box sat, unopened, on the built-in dresser, beside the small, wooden box that held the most poignant relic yet of her late servant.
Anne had not opened that small, rosewood box since the day when, devastated, she had placed the severed collar inside it. She had not yet been able to bring herself to look at that broken metal circlet and confront what its presence represented.
Tonight, however, for reasons she couldn’t quite articulate, she found herself standing on Julia’s side of the closet, her hand hovering over the rosewood box’s lid.
She didn’t open it. Not tonight.
But she did stand there for a long time, breathing in the faint ghost of Julia’s perfume that still clung to the garment bags, and wondered. Would she ever be ready to face the implications of confronting what lay inside that symbolic urn?
In Yountville, Amy sat on the floor of her uncle’s living room, surrounded by boxes she still hadn’t unpacked, and stared at the business card in her hand.
Anne Marquez, M.D.
She traced the letters with her finger, remembering the way Anne had looked at her in the car, that strange intensity in her dark eyes that made Amy feel seen in a way she couldn’t quite explain. Anne looked at her the way no one had ever looked at her before, as if Amy were a puzzle worth solving, a book worth reading.
It should have been unsettling. In some ways it was, very much so.
Underneath the unease, however, there was something else, deep, and dark, and confusing in its turbulence.
When Anne had told her she was good at her job, Amy had felt a rush of pleasure that was entirely out of proportion to the compliment; and when Anne had said she didn’t waste time saying things she didn’t mean, Amy had believed her absolutely, unquestionably, in a way in which she never had believed anyone. Then, when Anne had touched on her own loss, in that brief, unguarded, vulnerable moment, breaking through her composed exterior, Amy had wanted nothing more than to reach out and comfort her.
The impulse had been overwhelming, almost physical in its intensity, and Amy had barely managed to limit herself to that brief touch on Anne’s hand.
What was that about?
More poignantly… What did it mean to her? What did it say about her?
Was this a new side to herself she hadn’t realised existed?
Amy didn’t have an answer. She only knew that something had shifted tonight. An invisible line had been crossed, and she wasn’t sure whether to be excited… or afraid. Perhaps she was *both* excited _and_ afraid. She could not tell. It was too soon to give this a name.
She looked again at Anne’s card, almost as if wanting to memorise what had happened, and at length she tucked it into her wallet, in the slot behind her driver’s licence, where she could see it every day. Then she got up, turned off the lamp, and went to bed.
That night, she dreamt of dark eyes, and a voice that said Miss like it meant something more.
Chapter Three: The Broken Car
The Mercedes had been making a halting noise for the past three days.
It was subtle at first, a faint hiccup from somewhere deep in the engine bay that Anne could almost convince herself she was imagining. By the second day it had become a hesitation when idling, a slight roughness when she shifted gears, a sluggishness when she pressed on the accelerator. By the third day, Anne knew she was on borrowed time.
She should have taken the car to the trusted shop she had always taken it. There, the mechanics specialised in classics and understood that a 1970 300 SEL was not merely a means of transportation but a piece of history, a connection to something irreplaceable. The shop, however, would take several days to repair the car, and Anne found herself unwilling to be without her classic for that long.
It was not the inconvenience that troubled her. She had other vehicles – a practical Volvo estate for house calls on rough roads she could not possibly take her classic through, and a soft-top BMW convertible she almost never drove.
That blue Mercedes was not about practicality.
It was about holding on to things that mattered, even when the world around her insisted they should be let go.
And, if she was being honest with herself, that Mercedes was also about Marge’s Diner, the route that took her past it twice a day, and about that girl who worked there, whose smile made Anne feel something she had thought herself incapable of feeling ever again.
It was nearly nine in the evening when the classic’s engine finally gave up.
Anne had just dropped Amy at her house in Yountville. It was the fourth time this week, and those rides had become a quiet ritual neither of them acknowledged. Anne was backing out of the driveway when the Mercedes shuddered, coughed twice, and died.
She tried the ignition. Nothing. With a heavy sigh, she tried again. The starter clicked and the engine turned over, but it would not come to life.
“Damn,” Anne muttered, and then, because she was alone and the night was dark and the universe seemed to be conspiring against her in ways both large and small, she added a salty phrase that would have made her father raise an eyebrow in disapproval and her mother blush.
She sighed a deep, frustrated sigh and sat in the silent car for a long moment, staring at the dark house where Amy had disappeared into, her hands resting on the steering wheel. The porch light was still off. The only illumination came from that same side window, the yellow glow of a lamp left burning against the night.
Anne could call a tow. She could also call a taxi. She could call any number of people who would come and rescue her from this minor automotive catastrophe.
As Fates would have it, Anne’s phone, too, conspired against her, deciding that there was not enough coverage at that moment for her to place any calls.
And so it was that that night Anne found herself humbly walking up the cracked concrete path that led to Amy’s front door.
Amy answered on the second knock, still wearing her work clothes, her honey-blonde hair loose around her shoulders. Her eyes widened when she saw Anne standing on her doorstep.
“Miss Anne? Is everything…”
She looked past Anne to the Mercedes, sitting dark and silent in the driveway. “Oh no. Did it…?”
“It did,” Anne said, managing a meek, rueful smile. “And, to top it all off, my phone mocks me by denying me service when I need it the most. I apologise for the intrusion. I was wondering if I might use your phone to call for a tow?”
“At this hour?” Amy said. “They’ll charge you a fortune!”
Amy stepped back, holding the door open. “Please, come in. I know someone who might be able to help – he’s not a mechanic per se, but he knows his way around old cars. He won’t charge you half a year’s salary, either.”
Anne hesitated on the threshold. She was acutely aware that crossing it would move them from the neutral territory of diners and car rides into something far more intimate. This was Amy’s space, Amy’s *life* that she was stepping into.
“I don’t want to impose,” Anne said.
“You’re not imposing.” Amy’s voice was soft but certain. “Please, come in, Miss Anne.”
Anne stepped inside.
The house was smaller than it had appeared from the outside, or perhaps it only felt that way because of what filled it. Boxes were stacked along one wall, some opened and half-unpacked, others still sealed with packing tape and marked in faded handwriting. The furniture was old but good quality – a worn leather sofa, an oak coffee table with water rings from decades of use, bookshelves filled with volumes that looked as if they had been read and reread until their spines cracked.
“I’m sorry about the mess,” Amy said, moving ahead of Anne to clear a stack of papers from the sofa. “I keep meaning to finish unpacking, but every time I start I get… distracted.”
“By what?”
Amy paused, a stack of old magazines in her hands. “By him, I suppose. My uncle, I mean. Rather, by his presence, even if he’s no longer with us. Every box I open, I find something of his, and then I start remembering, and then…” She helplessly shrugged and added, “It’s… it’s hard to let go.”
“Yes,” Anne said quietly. “It is.”
She looked around the room with a physician’s eye for detail. One immediately caught her attention: a Poul Henningsen Artichoke lamp hung from the ceiling. Unless she was very wrong about it, it was an original, and worth more than everything else in the room combined.
The photographs on the mantle were faded images of a man she assumed was Amy’s uncle at various ages, sometimes alone, sometimes with family members whose faces she did not recognise. A half-empty bottle of wine stood on the kitchen counter; its cork was awkwardly pushed back in at an angle.
And there was Amy herself, standing in the middle of it all, still holding that stack of magazines, as if she had forgotten what she meant to do with them.
“The lamp,” Anne said. “Is that a genuine Poul Henningsen?”
Amy looked up at it, surprised. “I… I don’t know, actually. It was my uncle’s. He never said where he got it.”
“If it’s authentic, it’s worth quite a bit of money.”
“Really?” Amy looked at the lamp with new eyes, then shook her head. “Ah… I c-couldn’t sell it. It was his. It would feel like…” She trailed off, unable to find the right word.
“Like letting go,” Anne supplied.
“Yes,” Amy said, meeting her eyes, then concluded, “exactly like that.”
The phone call to Joe Hampton was brief. Amy explained the situation, gave him the address, and listened for a moment before thanking him and hanging up.
“He’ll come by tomorrow around noon,” she said. “He thinks it might be the fuel pump, but he won’t know until he looks at it.” She hesitated. “He said… he said you shouldn’t try to start it again tonight. Something about flooding the engine.”
“Sound advice.” Anne looked out the window at the Mercedes, a dark shape in the deeper darkness. “I should call a taxi and get out of your hair. It’s late for you, isn’t it?”
“At this hour? No way. The nearest taxi company is up in Napa. It would take them forty minutes just to get here, and then another forty to get you home.” Amy then bit her lip and against her better judgment found herself saying, “Miss Anne? I… I have a couch where you could sleep in tonight. It’s not much, but it’s comfortable… a-and I have spare blankets.”
Anne should have refused. She knew she should have refused. Every *sensible* instinct she possessed was screaming at her to keep her distance and contain their relationship to coffee, car rides and the safe, neutral space of public interaction.
But Amy was looking at her with those spring-sky eyes, and the house was warm, and outside the night was dark and cold, and Anne was so… so very *tired* of being *sensible*.
“… I don’t want to be any trouble,” she said.
“You’re not trouble, Miss Anne.” Amy smiled, and something in Anne’s chest turned over. Then, she felt butterflies in her stomach when Amy said, in a very small voice, so softly that it was hard to hear, “You’re never any trouble.”
“Have you eaten, Miss Anne?”
The question caught Anne off guard. She had been standing by the window, looking out at the Mercedes, lost in thought. When she turned, Amy was in the kitchen doorway, an apron tied around her waist.
“Huh? Ah, I… n-no, actually. I was going to stop somewhere on the way home, but…” She gestured vaguely at the broken car.
“I was just about to make dinner. Nothing fancy, just pasta and meatballs. There’s plenty for two, if you’d like.”
“I couldn’t ask you to … “
“You’re not asking, Miss Anne. I’m offering.” Amy’s chin lifted slightly, a hint of stubbornness entering her voice. “Please… let me do this. F-for… for you.”
There was a deliberate weight to the words Amy had uttered; it went beyond the simple act of hospitality at a time of need.
Anne studied her for a moment, reading the subtle tension in her shoulders, the way her hands twisted in the apron strings.
“Alright,” Anne said. “But please, let me help. I… know a thing or two around the kitchen.”
Amy’s face lit up. “Really? You don’t have to…”
“I want to,” Anne said as she moved toward the kitchen. “Put me to work.”
The kitchen was small, with barely enough room for two people to move without bumping into each other, but functional, nonetheless. Anne found herself acutely aware of every accidental touch – Amy’s shoulder brushing hers as she reached for a pan, their hands meeting briefly over the cutting board, the warmth of Amy’s body when they stood side by side at the counter.
“You can start by mixing the meat,” Amy said, pointing to a bowl containing ground beef and Italian sausage. “There’s onion and garlic in the fridge. I usually add some breadcrumbs and an egg to bind it.”
Anne said, “Yes, Chef” and proceeded to thoroughly wash her hands, a professional habit she could not break, before setting herself to work. She found the onion and garlic and peeled and chopped them with precise, economical movements, then mixed them into the meat with her fingers, kneading them in precisely.
“You’re good at that,” Amy observed, watching her form the mixture into small, uniform balls with just three fingers.
“Years of practice,” Anne said, smiling slightly. “Not with meatballs, specifically. But… medicine does teach you to be precise with your hands.”
“I never thought of it that way,” Amy said whilst stirring a pot of tomato sauce, adding herbs and spices with the casual confidence of someone who had made this dish many times before. “I always imagined doctors were closer to scientists than to artists.”
Anne gently chuckled. “Don’t say that to a prosthetics specialist, or to a reconstructive surgeon. They’ll kill you, you know. Jokes apart, their work – to remake maimed faces, missing eyes, ears, noses, or limbs, in a way that blends harmoniously and aesthetically with a patient’s remaining features… is a form of medicine that borders on the artistic.” Anne then paused, a meatball half-formed in her hands. She continued, “I digress, though. In my specialty, we are trained to read the human body. It’s amazing, what the body can tell you. It speaks in a language of its own, one that goes beyond words – or consciousness.”
Amy went still. “W-what do you mean?”
Anne resumed her work, keeping her voice carefully neutral. “I mean I am trained to read and interpret body language. I can infer many things about someone by their micro-expressions, the way they hold themselves, how they move, how they behave, even down to the words they choose… and avoid.” She then glanced at Amy. “You’d be surprised at what you can learn about a person, just by paying attention.”
Amy’s next question was in part curiosity and in part a tease. “And… what have you learned about me?”
The words hung in the air between them for a few moments. Anne took her time collecting her thoughts before answering, placing the last meatball on the tray and washing her hands again before she spoke.
“I’ve learned that you’re a genuinely kind and caring person,” she said. “There’s not one bit of performance to you. You genuinely care about people – strangers, even – in a way that costs you something.
“I’ve learned that you’re stronger than you look. You’ve been through the loss of someone very meaningful to you recently and, though hurt, you’re still standing.
“I’ve also learned that you’re searching for something, though I’m not sure you know what it is yet.”
Amy’s cheeks flushed pink. She turned back to the sauce, stirring it with unnecessary vigour. “That’s… that’s very observant of you.”
“It’s my job to observe,” Anne said as she dried her hands on a towel. “What else can I do?”
“Please get the pasta water going. There’s a big pot in the cabinet next to the stove. It should be salted already…” Anne smiled and said, “Yes, Chef”, and for a while they worked in silence, Anne filling the pot and setting it to boil while Amy browned the meatballs in a buttered pan. The kitchen filled with the smell of cooking meat, garlic and herbs, homey and warm.
At length, Amy broke the silence, which had stretched like a thin gauze veil.
“Miss Anne?” Amy’s voice was small. “C-could I, um… ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Do you… do you know any psychiatrists? Being a doctor and all.”
Anne turned to look at Amy. She was focused intently on the meatballs, not meeting her eyes. Anne’s clinical experience told her right away that there was something within this girl that was begging to come out.
“I know several,” Anne said carefully. “Why do you ask?”
“I… um… I’ve… b-been… um… having some t-trouble lately. With… with feelings. A-and… w-with dreams.” Amy’s voice dropped to barely above a whisper, with a tone Anne had not heretofore heard in the young woman, vulnerable and scared. “I… I was hoping maybe I could talk to someone about that.”
“What kind of dreams?”
Amy was silent for a long moment. The meatballs sizzled in the pan. The pasta water began to bubble.
“Strange ones,” she finally said. “Disturbing ones. Dreams that make me… um… f-feel things I… I was always told were… w-wrong…”
Anne leaned against the counter, giving Amy space but remaining present and emotionally close to her. “Would you like to tell me about them? I am not a psychiatrist, but I do have some psychiatric knowledge. After all,” Anne concluded, “a doctor does need to identify a basket case so they can refer them to a psychiatrist.” At her quip, Anne grinned wryly.
“I… I don’t know if I can.” Amy’s hands had stopped moving. She stood frozen over the stove, shoulders tense. “You’ll think I’m crazy. Heck, I think I am crazy.”
“I’m a doctor, Amy. I’ve heard a great many things that people thought would make them sound crazy. Very few of them actually were.” Anne paused. “And even if I weren’t a doctor, I would hope you’d know by now that you can talk to me about *any*thing.”
Amy turned off the burner. She stood there for a moment, her back to Anne, breathing fast and shallowly, and then she spoke, in a rush, as if the words had been dammed up inside her for too long.
“I… Last week… I… I had a dream. I was back at my uncle’s ranch – he had horses, before he got sick – and I was in the barn, and there were a stallion and a mare, and they were…” She swallowed hard. “The stallion was mounting her. And I couldn’t look away. I watched the whole thing, and I felt… I felt…”
“What did you feel?”
“Excited.” The word came out strangled. “N-no… t-that… that’s not it… I… I felt… a-aroused… God help me, I felt I was the mare… being mounted… A-and… and there was… s-something else, the mare just… accepted it. The way she let it happen… H-how she lowered her head and…” Amy’s voice broke. “I woke up and I was… I had to… and afterwards I felt so ashamed, Miss Anne. What kind of person dreams about something like that and feels that way about it?”
Anne was quiet for a moment, processing. Then she said, gently, “A human person, Amy. A person with feelings and desires that she’s only beginning to understand, and that come out in their dreams, sometimes in… unexpected, unexplained ways.”
“But it’s not… normal… I-is it?”
“Define normal.” Anne moved closer, though she was careful not to crowd her. “There are a great many things that society tells us are abnormal that are, in fact, quite common. The only difference is that most people are too ashamed to talk about them.”
Amy turned to face her, and Anne could see the tears threatening to spill from her eyes. “… T-there… there’s… m-more,” she whispered. “S… something happened a few weeks ago… at the diner…”
“Tell me.”
“I… I was taking out the rubbish. It was… it was late, after closing. A-and a man… a man grabbed me. H-he… he dragged me… behind the dumpster. He… he had a knife, a-and he… he told me that… a-and…”
Amy was looking down, stumbling over her words so badly that she couldn’t finish the sentence. “G-Gus came out before anything happened… A-and the police caught the guy. N-nothing happened… a-and I’m fine…”
“…But something about your reaction frightened you,” Anne said quietly for Amy. “Didn’t it?”
Amy’s face crumpled. “Miss Anne… I… I was not scared, and that frightened me. I should have been terrified, I should have been screaming and fighting, but instead I… I felt… I was… a-aroused… A-about… about him…”
She couldn’t bring herself to finish, but she didn’t need to. Anne understood where Amy was going. She reached out, took Amy’s hands in hers, and found she was trembling.
“Amy… please listen to me.” Anne’s voice was calm, steady, the voice she used with patients who were on the verge of panic. “What you’re describing – these feelings, these reactions – they don’t make you broken. They don’t make you crazy. They make you someone who is only now discovering a part of herself that has always been there, waiting to be understood.”
“H-how… w-what… what do you mean?”
“Amy… I’ve spent over twenty years living a lifestyle that most people don’t know exists.”
Anne held Amy’s gaze. “It is a lifestyle where the feelings you’re describing are not only understood, but cherished. Where people like you are not freaks to be fixed, but treasures to be cultivated.”
Amy stared at her. “W-what… what are you talking about?”
Anne took a breath. This was the moment. The threshold she had been approaching since the first time Amy had called her Miss at Marge’s.
“I think,” Anne said slowly, “that you and I need to have a longer conversation about that, when our heads are clear, and your soul and mind at ease. Now we should finish preparing our pasta and eat it. We’re cooking a beautiful meal, and… it would be a shame to let it get cold, don’t you think?”
She released Amy’s hands and turned toward the stove, where she poured the spaghetti into the pasta water, now at a rolling boil.
Behind her, she heard Amy whisper, “Yes, Miss Anne.”
The words sent a shiver down Anne’s spine.
They ate in the living room, on the worn leather sofa, plates balanced on their knees. The pasta was simple but delicious, and the small meatballs Anne had made were tender and flavourful. They had made enough for a small army, and Anne found herself eating more than she had in months.
“This is excellent,” Anne said through a mouthful of pasta and meatballs, propriety be damned. And she meant it too.
Amy ducked her head, pleasure flushing her cheeks. “It’s nothing special. Just something my mother taught me. And I had help. My meatballs are huge. Yours instead are the perfect size, Miss Anne.”
“Regardless, your mother taught you well. Was she Italian by any chance?”
“Yes Miss Anne, third generation, from a region called Umbria.”
The two women ate in comfortable silence for a while. Outside, the night pressed against the windows. Inside, the yellow lamplight cast warm shadows across the room, making the cluttered space feel intimate and cosy.
“Miss Anne?” Amy set down her fork. “What you said earlier, about a lifestyle where… where people like me are understood. What did you mean?”
Anne finished chewing, took a sip of water, and set down her own plate. She had known this question was coming and had been preparing for it.
“I meant,” she said carefully, “that what you’re experiencing – these feelings of wanting to yield, of being aroused at the prospect of being used, at the idea of surrendering… they have a name. That name is submission, and there are people who have devoted their lives to understand and explore them safely, consensually, with partners who share and complement those needs.”
“You’re talking about… BDSM?” Amy’s voice was uncertain. “Like, leather and whips and… I’ve seen things online, but it all seemed so…”
“Theatrical?” Anne smiled slightly. “Much of what you see online is staged performance. The reality is both more mundane that that – and at the same time more profound.” She paused, considering how much to reveal. “Take it from me, Amy. I have lived within the BDSM lifestyle for most of my adult life.”
Amy’s eyes went wide. “You… you’re…”
“I’m what’s called a Dominant. It means I’m someone who takes the lead in certain kinds of relationships. I provide structure, guidance, control, and discipline to people who need… and want… those things.” Anne held Amy’s gaze. “And you, Amy, unless I’m very much mistaken, are what’s called a submissive. You are someone who finds peace, fulfilment, and meaning in yielding control over themselves to someone they can trust.”
Amy was silent for a long moment. Anne watched her as a whirlwind of conflicting emotions flickered across her face – confusion, recognition, fear… and underneath it all? hope.
“H-how…” Amy’s voice was barely audible. “H-how did you know?”
“I told you, didn’t I? The body speaks with a language of its own.” Anne leaned back against the sofa cushions. “And you were screaming ‘I am a servant’ in the way you move when you serve someone, in the pleasure you take in anticipating needs, and in the way you say Miss – not ma’am, not lady, but Miss, like it means something more than just a conventional form of address. Not to mention the way you responded to my… observations, earlier, and the disproportionate pleasure you showed when I praised you.”
“Y-you noticed all that?”
“I notice everything, Amy,” said Anne. “It’s both a gift and a curse.” Anne’s expression softened into a kind, understanding smile. “I noticed you from the very first day. And I’ve been… struggling, ever since, with what to do about it.”
“Why struggling?”
Anne was quiet for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was tenderer than she intended.
“Because the last slave I owned… was my Julia. She died two years ago, and I thought that, after her passing, part of my life was over forever.” Anne closed her eyes briefly. “And then… I walked into a roadside diner, and a beautiful girl with honey-blonde hair called me Miss, and something inside me that I thought dead woke up. And to be perfectly honest with you, Amy… I have been terrified ever since.”
Amy reached out and touched Anne’s hand. The contact was tentative, questioning.
“I’m sorry about Julia,” Amy said softly. “I… I didn’t know.”
“How could you? I never told you,” Anne said, and turned her hand over, letting Amy’s fingers rest in her palm. “But I’m telling you about it now. Because… if this is going to be anything more than a strange conversation on a strange night… you deserve to know what you’d be getting into… and who you’d be getting into it *with*.”
“A woman who’s still grieving.”
“Yes.”
“A woman who’s scared.”
“Yes.”
“A woman who…” Amy hesitated. “Who maybe sees something in me that I’m only starting to see in myself?”
Anne looked at Amy, really looked at her, and felt something shift in her chest, like a lock turning, or a door opening.
“Yes,” she said. “That too.”
They sat there in the lamplight, hands loosely clasped, the remains of dinner cooling on the coffee table. Outside, the Mercedes sat dark and silent in the driveway, waiting for morning and repair. Inside, something fragile and new was taking its first tentative breath.
“What happens now?” Amy asked.
Anne considered the question. There were conversations to be had about so many things… long, involved negotiations about consent, limits, expectations, training, protocols…
But tonight was not about any of that.
“Now we clean up from dinner,” Anne said. “And then, we sleep. Tomorrow, when the car is fixed and the sun is up and the world looks less strange… we have a proper chat about what all of this means, and what, if anything, we want to do about it.”
Anne stood and began gathering the plates. After a moment, Amy rose to help her.
They washed the dishes together in companionable silence, shoulders brushing in the narrow kitchen, and if Anne noticed the way Amy instinctively deferred to her – waiting for direction, anticipating needs, moving to complement her rather than compete with her – she did not remark on it.
There would be time for that tomorrow.
The couch was more comfortable than it looked. Amy had provided a thick, handmade quilt for cover, with careful and precise stitching, and a pillow that smelled faintly of lavender.
Anne lay in the darkness, listening to the unfamiliar sounds of the house settling around her. Somewhere down the hall, she could hear Amy moving in her bedroom, the soft sounds of someone preparing for sleep.
She thought about Julia. About the rosewood box in her closet, unopened for more than two years. About the collar inside it, severed, broken, a symbol of everything she had lost.
She thought about Amy. About the way she had knelt and submitted, metaphorically if not literally, throughout the entire evening. About the hunger in her eyes when Anne had named what she was. About the way she had whispered “Yes, Miss Anne,” almost as if it was a prayer.
Anne thought about fear, and about hope, and about the strange alchemy that sometimes transformed one into the other.
She did not sleep for a long time.
When she finally did fade, she dreamt of honey-blonde hair and spring-sky eyes, and a voice that said Miss like it meant something more.
And in her dream, for the first time in two years, four months, and fifteen days… she smiled.
Chapter Four: The Learning
Anne woke to the smell of freshly brewed coffee and the sound of an empty house. For a moment, through the morning fog, she did not know where she was. The ceiling was not her home’s; the light came through the windows at an unfamiliar angle; and the quilt wrapped around her smelled of lavender rather than the faint trace of Julia’s perfume that still clung to the linens at home. Then, Anne’s memory returned: the broken-down Mercedes, the cracked concrete path, Amy’s spring-sky eyes looking into her as Anne named what she was.
Submissive.
Anne sat up slowly, running a hand through her long, dishevelled hair. Her bust felt oddly loose, and she felt nothing covering her groin. She did not remember having put a maxi-shirt on the night before, nor removing her undergarments – and yet she was wearing a maxi-shirt, with nothing underneath, by the looks of it.
A thought flashed through Anne’s mind.
Did Amy do this? Did she…?
The evidence strongly supported her suspicion, but Anne needed to be sure.
A quick walk around the house confirmed it: Anne’s clothes had been ironed, and her undergarments washed. The faint lavender scent on the quilt now also permeated her lingerie.
It took a moment for Anne to fully register and reconstruct what had likely happened. She had fallen asleep, clothed, on the couch. Amy had cared for her. Somehow, that girl had managed to undress, change, and tuck Anne in without disturbing her sleep.
Oh my God, Anne thought. Could it be that…
Could it be that Amy was a natural slave? The thought was mind-boggling, and yet quite plausible.
The house was quiet, and the rich, dark scent of coffee filled it. Anne’s body ached for it the way it always did in the morning.
She found the kitchen easily enough. On the counter, next to a full pot of coffee, was a note written in careful, rounded handwriting:
Dear Miss Anne,
I hope you slept well.
I had to leave for work early. There’s fresh coffee in the pot and some fruit in the fridge. Joe Hampton will come by at around noon to look at your car – I left his number on the back of this note in case you need to reach him.
–Amy
P.S. Thank you. For everything. – A.
Anne read the note twice, then folded it carefully and tucked it into her purse’s pocket. She poured herself a cup of black, unsweetened coffee and stood by the kitchen window, looking out at the overgrown yard and the blue Mercedes sitting silent in the driveway.
Thank you. For everything.
Such a small phrase… and yet, it was one that carried much weight.
Joe Hampton was as good as his word.
He arrived at quarter past twelve, driving a battered tow that looked older than Anne’s Mercedes. He was a large, broad-shouldered, sun-weathered man, with hands that spoke of decades of honest work. Anne liked him immediately.
“Amy called me last night,” he said, already popping the Mercedes’s bonnet. “She said you had some trouble with this beautiful 300 SEL. What year is she?”
“She is from 1970.”
Joe whistled appreciatively. “Don’t see many of these anymore. Most of them got scrapped or modified beyond recognition.” He leaned into the engine bay, his practiced eyes scanning the components. “You’ve kept her original. That’s… rare.”
“She used to be my father’s. I… I couldn’t bring myself to touch her.”
“I understand that.” Joe’s voice was muffled as he reached deeper into the engine. “Some things are worth holding on to, even if it seems like they’re more trouble than they’re worth.”
Anne said nothing, but she thought of Julia, and of Amy, and of the strange territory she had suddenly found herself navigating, a weird, bedazzling mix of grief and hope.
After twenty minutes of examination, Joe emerged with a diagnosis. “Her fuel pump gave out. I can get you a replacement, but it’ll take a few days to source one that’s period correct. In the meantime, I could jury-rig something that’ll get you home, but I wouldn’t trust it for long distances.”
“How long for the proper repair?”
“Three, maybe four days. I know a guy in Sacramento who specialises in vintage Mercedes parts. He owes me a favour.”
Anne considered her options. She could take the jury-rigged repair and drive home, then bring the car back when the part arrived. She could also leave the Mercedes here and find another way back to St. Helena.
Or… she could stay.
“Do what you need to do,” she said. “I’ll make some arrangements to stay at Amy’s while you find the part and fix her up.”
Three days after that night in Amy’s kitchen, Joe called to say the fuel pump had arrived from Sacramento. By noon, the Mercedes was purring again, its engine smooth and steady as if nothing had ever been wrong.
“She’ll give you another fifty thousand miles, easy,” Joe said, wiping his hands on a rag. “Maybe more, if you treat her right.”
Anne paid him generously. In fact, she paid him more than he had asked for. He tried to refuse, but Anne insisted upon it. When Joe left, Anne was left alone, standing in Amy’s driveway, car keys in hand, contemplating the road home.
She had spent three days in that small house in Yountville. Three days of quiet conversations, shared meals, carefully maintained boundaries, and unspoken possibilities. Amy had gone to work each morning and returned each evening, and Anne had found herself waiting for the sound of the door and the soft “Miss Anne?” that announced Amy’s return.
It had felt, against all reason, like coming home.
But this wasn’t home. Home was in St. Helena, where a house that still echoed with Julia’s absence awaited her. Where a rosewood box sat unopened in a closet, and a life waited to be resumed.
After leaving a note on Amy’s counter, written in round, feminine calligraphy, thanking her for her gracious hospitality, Anne got in the car and drove back.
On the note, there were also two lines that she had written in a different, less studied hand:
*P.S. I’ll never forget these past days. —A.*
*P.P.S. Don’t be a stranger! Call me whenever you feel like talking. —A.*
The house in St. Helena was exactly as she had left it – dark, silent, and empty.
Anne moved through the rooms, turned on the lights, and opened the windows to let in the autumn air. She poured herself a glass of wine, from a fresh bottle this time, and stood in the kitchen, looking out at Julia’s overgrown herb garden. Then, unexpectedly, her phone buzzed in her pocket.
I hope you got home safely, Miss Anne. Thank you again for everything.
Anne stared at the message for a long moment. Then she typed a reply:
I did. Thank you for your careful hospitality. The meatballs were exceptional.
Three dots appeared, disappeared, appeared again.
Maybe I could make them for you again sometime?
Anne smiled despite herself. Her reply came hot on the heels of Amy’s last message:
I would like that.
The calls began three days later.
Anne told herself she was simply checking in, the way any responsible adult might check on a young woman living alone. She told herself it was professional concern – after all, Amy had confided private and somewhat worrying things to her, and it would be irresponsible to simply walk away from that. She told herself many things – she had grown close to Amy, she could not let someone so young live all by herself, Amy was at risk – but none of those justifications were even close to the truth, which fluttered around the edges of Anne’s justifications like a small, chaotic butterfly: In spite of herself, Amy had entered Anne’s life and heart… and she was *letting her in.*
“How was your day?” Anne would ask at the start of her calls, and Amy would tell her about the customers at Marge’s, about Gus’s terrible jokes, about the small victories and minor frustrations of waitressing in a roadside diner; Anne listened, really listened, in a way she hadn’t listened to anyone since… since Julia.
“You sound tired,” Anne said one evening, perhaps a week after she’d left Yountville.
“I… I might be stretched a bit thin, Miss Anne,” Amy admitted. “Maria’s been coming in late and leaving early. Her baby is colicky, and… and I’ve been, you know, um… v-volunteering to pick up the slack…”
“Have you been eating properly?”
A pause. “… Define properly?”
“Amy…” Anne’s voice tightened and rose without her intending it to. She sighed softly, and continued, “you cannot take care of others if you don’t take care of yourself first, pet. What did you have for dinner?”
“I, uh… I was going to… make some ramen?” The questioning tone did not escape Anne’s hearing. She thought, is she asking me for permission?
“Ramen? … that’s not a meal, love… that is a sodium delivery system,” Anne said, emphasising perhaps a bit more than she should have, and realising how she had spoken to Amy a little too late for her to unsay it.
“Listen… When we’re done, you’re going to go to the kitchen, pick up a chicken breast, peppers and green beans, and you, young lady, are going to make yourself a proper meal. Can you do that for me?” Her professional tone kicked in, but her delivery was caring, even a bit maternal.
Amy replied in a small voice: “Yes, Miss Anne.”
“Good girl. Call me when you’re done dining and tell me what you made. Now go and take care of yourself, young lady.”
There was a moment of silence on the other end, where Anne’s clinically trained ear caught the faintest gasp of a breath suspended. Then, in a tone Anne had not heard before, came Amy’s voice, small, soft, and pregnant with deference: “Yes, Miss Anne. I will.”
Anne hung up and sat in the darkness of her living room, her heart pounding, only then realising what she had said.
Good girl.
The words had slipped out of her mouth without thought, as natural as breathing, and Amy had responded to them. Even over the phone, Anne had heard her catching her breath, and had noticed how easily, how instinctively Amy had softened her tone to deference.
What are you doing? Anne asked herself. What do you think you’re doing?
She didn’t have an answer. No, that was not right. She was starting to have an answer… but the realisation that after two years of grieving the answer to her own questioning was, I am allowing myself to live and love again still felt terrifyingly extraneous and alien to her.
Two weeks after the night in Amy’s kitchen, Anne returned to Marge’s.
She had not planned to do so again. Indeed, she had told herself she would maintain a professional distance and limit her contact with Amy to phone calls and the occasional text message. Days earlier, Amy had surprised her when she had said, over the phone, that she wanted to know more about service. Anne had been noncommittal at first, then she justified her consent by saying to herself “what she was going to teach her was not specific to D/s protocol, but applied to all people who provided a service,” and so she had started to gently steer Amy towards taking better care of herself, her posture, and her nutrition.
Today, she had a patient in Yountville – a legitimate one, an elderly man with a heart condition who needed regular monitoring – and when the consultation was finished, Anne found herself driving past the diner just as the evening shift was ending.
Amy was standing outside, waiting for a bus that wouldn’t come for another two hours.
Anne pulled into the lot and lowered the window. “Hello, Amy. Come, get in. I’ll take you home.”
Amy’s face lit up. “Miss Anne! I didn’t know you were…”
“Get in, pet.”
Amy caught her breath, said breathlessly “Yes, Miss Anne,” and rushed to get in the car.
They drove in silence for a few minutes, the Mercedes humming along the darkening highway. Anne was acutely aware of Amy’s presence beside her – the vanilla scent of her shampoo, the nervous energy radiating from her body, the way her hands twisted in her lap.
“You’ve been skipping meals again,” Anne said. It wasn’t a question.
Amy’s cheeks flushed and her hands twisted in her lap more intently. “H-how… did you…”
“You’ve lost weight. Your uniform is looser than it was two weeks ago, and there are shadows under your eyes that weren’t there before.” Anne glanced at her. “I notice everything, Amy. I told you that.”
“I… I’ve been busy, Miss Anne. Maria’s still…”
“Maria’s situation is not your responsibility. Your health is.” Anne’s voice was firm but not unkind. “When we get to your house, you’re going to show me what’s in your refrigerator. Then, you’re going to make a shopping list, and tomorrow you’re going to fill it. Is that understood?”
Amy was quiet for a moment. Then, in a small voice, she said: “Yes, Miss Anne.”
“Good.”
They drove on. The sun slipped below the horizon, painting the sky in shades of orange and purple. When they reached Amy’s house, Anne parked in the driveway and turned off the engine.
“Miss Anne?” Amy’s voice was small. “Are you… are you staying?”
“Yes, I am staying for dinner.” Anne opened her door. “You’re going to cook, and I’m going to supervise. Consider it a lesson.”
“A lesson? About what, Miss Anne?”
Anne looked at her. The smile that crossed her lips was kind, protective, and brightened her face in a way even Anne could not fail to notice. “In taking care of yourself,” she replied. “It’s the first thing a servant must learn, Amy. You cannot serve anyone properly when you’re running on empty.”
Amy’s breath caught. It was the first time Anne had used the word servant referring to her since that night in the kitchen, and it hung in the air between them like a promise.
“Yes, Mist… Miss Anne,” Amy whispered, correcting a ‘Mistress’ at the last possible moment. “I… I understand.”
The lessons started small.
Anne’s tactful, discrete guidance took little, easy paths to follow. Slight posture corrections when Amy stood, gentle reminders to eat breakfast before her shift, guidance on how to manage her time and energy. Then, the guidance became more substantial – long, deep conversations about boundaries and limits, about what submission meant and what it didn’t, about the difference between service, servitude, and abuse.
Anne visited Yountville twice a week, then three times a week; she always had a legitimate reason – a patient to see, an errand to run – but no matter what, at the end of the day she always ended up at Amy’s door.
They cooked together, talked for hours, sat on Amy’s worn leather sofa, and watched old films; and if Amy’s head sometimes drifted to Anne’s shoulder… it was not pushed away.
But they did not touch beyond the accidental brush of fingers or the casual contact of bodies in a small kitchen. Anne was deliberate about this, and Amy, sensing the boundary, did not dare cross it. In time, the head restfully propped on Anne’s shoulder became the head restfully laid on Anne’s lap, and whenever that happened, Anne found herself combing Amy’s honey-blonde hair with her fingers.
“Miss Anne?” Amy asked one evening, three weeks into whatever this was.
They had just finished dinner – a proper one, consisting of a plate of chicken and vegetables that Amy had prepared under Anne’s watchful eye – and were quietly enjoying their time together in the living room, watching a romantic comedy about how to lose a guy in ten days and fail spectacularly into love in the process.
“Yes, pet?” Anne’s eyes looked down and met Amy’s. Her fingers were attentively combing the young woman’s hair.
“Um… Miss Anne? W-why haven’t you… you know…” Amy trailed off, her cheeks reddening. “Ah, I mean, by now… other people… would have… um…”
“Other people are not me,” Anne said, setting down her tea. “Listen, Amy. What we’re building here isn’t about physical intimacy, not yet. It’s about trust and understanding. It’s about making sure that if and when we do take that step it will be because we’re both ready for it.”
“But how will I know when I’m ready?”
“You’ll know.” Anne reached out and tucked a strand of honey-blonde hair behind Amy’s ear. “And more importantly, I’ll know. That’s part of what a Dominant does, love. We read our servants. We understand them, sometimes better than they understand themselves. And we don’t push them faster than they are ready to go.”
Amy leaned into the touch, her eyes fluttering closed. “I trust you, Miss Anne.”
“I know you do. I… I care about you, Amy, and I do not want to break that trust. That is why we’re taking our time.”
There it is again! That word… love! thought Anne, once she had realised that she had thought it with the same ease of someone who feels in love. How dare it infiltrate itself into this conversation!? I am being serious here!
A small part of herself, one she had not heard in two years, five months and five days, with Julia’s loving, teasing, ever ironic voice, added itself unbidden to the internal monologue.
Oh, come off it, darling. You care about this girl. For God’s sake, stop moping and moaning about my being gone and live! It’s what I would have wanted, you know. You knew me well enough to know that is true. My brain bug didn’t let me tell you, but I did want you to move on after I was no longer by your side. I wanted you to live… to love… to feel. I still want you to do that. And if you screw up, my darling Mistress… I’m living in your head rent-free, and you bet your beautiful, worship-worthy butt I will mercilessly mock you for it.
Anne shook her head and gently scoffed at her own, nonsensical mental monologue.
“Hm?” said Amy.
Anne allowed herself to touch Amy’s forehead with her lips in a tender, soft, gentle kiss. “Nothing, pet. Wool gathering.”
A month after the night in the kitchen, Anne invited Amy to St. Helena.
“I want to show you where I live,” she said. “I want you to see my world, the way I’ve seen yours.”
Amy arrived on a Saturday afternoon, driving an ancient Honda borrowed from Gus, which he had insisted she take. She stood in Anne’s driveway, looking up at the house with wide eyes.
“It’s beautiful,” she breathed.
“It’s home.” Anne took her hand. “Come. Let me show you around.”
The tour was thorough. Anne showed Amy the kitchen, the living room, and the study where she did her medical reading. She then showed her the garden Julia had planted, still overgrown but less wild than it had been. Anne had started pulling weeds, slowly, tentatively, in the weeks since Yountville.
Finally, she showed Amy the bedroom.
“This is the walk-in closet,” Anne said, her voice carefully neutral. “My side is on the right. Julia’s… Julia’s side is on the left.”
Amy looked at the garment bags, the neatly arranged shoes, the jewellery box on the built-in dresser. And beside the jewellery box, a small rosewood box, closed and silent.
“Is that…?”
“… Yes.” Anne’s throat tightened. “That’s where I keep her collar. The one I cut from her neck, before…” She couldn’t finish the sentence.
Amy reached out and took Anne’s hand. She didn’t speak. She didn’t need to.
They stood there together, in the doorway between Anne’s side and Julia’s. Amy looked up at Anne at the same time as Anne looked down at her. Hands held, fingers intertwined, they both spoke at the same time.
“Miss Anne?” “Amy?”
Amy blushed, then gathering courage she managed to say, “Thank you for showing me, Miss Anne,” Amy said softly. “Thank you for trusting me with this.”
Anne squeezed her hand. “Thank you for being worth trusting.”
Their lips gently brushed in a gentle, soft kiss. It was a moment, and then it ended, as fleetingly as it had started.
That evening, after dinner, both women sat together on Anne’s sofa. The house was warm, filled with the lingering smell of the meal Amy had cooked – her grandmother’s recipe for ossobuco, learned from her Umbrian mother. Outside, the sun was setting, painting the valley in shades of gold and copper.
Amy’s voice, hesitant and small, broke the gentle quiet that had descended upon them like a comforting blanket of cosy closeness that made words needless.
“Miss Anne?”
“Yes, pet?”
“I… I have been thinking about what you said, about being a servant and about what it means.”
“I’m listening. Go on.”
“I… I feel that we have… these past weeks… it has been service to you, Miss Anne. I… I know it’s not, you know, formal, like, Julia’s service was, with a collar, a-and all that. But… I feel the service I give you, Miss Anne. I… I want to please you; I want to make you proud of me. I… I’ve noticed how the way I wait for your guidance makes me feel… a-and your approval… it, um… it’s… ah, a-arousing, Miss Anne…” Amy looked up at her. “Is that… is that what service is supposed to feel like?”
Anne’s heart swelled. “Yes, Amy. That’s exactly what it’s supposed to feel like.”
“Then…” Amy slipped off the sofa and knelt on the floor at Anne’s feet. It was her first time kneeling, so the results were clumsy, but the emotion behind the act was genuine, and Anne appreciated the emotional honesty.
“I… I want to ask you something, Miss Anne,” Amy said, her blue eyes bright with unshed tears. “I want to ask if… if you would… please… consider… formally…”
She couldn’t finish. The words stuck in her throat, too large and too frightening to speak. The tears in Amy’s eyes rolled down her cheeks, and, in that moment, Anne knew it. She had been given an offer she could not possibly refuse.
Anne reached down and cupped Amy’s face in her hands. “Are you asking to be my servant, Amy?”
Amy nodded, tears spilling down her cheeks. “Yes, Miss Anne. If… if you’ll have me.”
Anne was silent for a long moment. She thought about Julia, about the rosewood box in the closet, and the broken collar inside it. She thought about the two years, six months, and nineteen days she had spent in mourning solitude, existing in the grey half-life of unsolved grief.
And she thought about Amy and her honey-blonde hair and spring-sky eyes. She thought about the way she said Miss Anne like it was a prayer, and about the slow, careful trust they had built over the past weeks, brick by brick, conversation by conversation, meal by shared meal.
“Wait here,” Anne said.
She rose and hurried back to the bedroom and to Julia’s side of the closet. Her hand hovered over the rosewood box for a moment before she opened the smaller drawer beneath it and withdrew something else – a slim leather collar, supple and dark, with a small silver buckle.
It was Julia’s first collar, the one that Anne had given her twenty years ago, when they were both younger and the world was full of possibility. Anne had kept it, all these years, without knowing why.
Now she knew.
She returned to the living room, where Amy still knelt, waiting, looking up with wide, anxious eyes.
“This collar belonged to Julia,” Anne said, holding it so Amy could see. “It was the first one I ever gave her, before we knew what we would become to each other. I’ve kept it for twenty years, waiting for…” Her voice caught. “Waiting, I think, for you.”
Amy’s eyes widened. “Miss Anne, I couldn’t…”
“You can. And you will.” Anne knelt in front of Amy, bringing them to the same level. “This is my consideration collar, Amy. It marks you as mine to teach, guide, and protect. It’s a question: are we right for each other? It is also a promise: while you wear it, I will care for you as if you were already mine.”
“And if… if we’re right for each other? What happens then?”
“Then we take the next step, together.” Anne held up the collar. “Do you accept?”
Amy didn’t hesitate. “Yes, Miss Anne. I accept.”
“Then lift your hair. And from now on… it’s Mistress.”
Amy gathered her honey-blonde hair and held it away from her neck. Anne moved behind her and brought the collar around, fastening it carefully, adjusting until it sat snug but comfortable against Amy’s throat.
“There,” Anne said softly. “It suits you.”
Amy’s hand rose to touch the leather, tracing its edges, feeling her own pulse beating against it. “I… I can feel my heartbeat against the collar, M-Mistress.”
“Good. Let it remind you that your heart is the heart of a servant, and that you live to serve.” Anne moved to face her again. “You are now under my consideration, Amy. You are mine to protect, to teach and to guide. Wear it with pride.”
“I will, Mistress,” Amy said, voice thick with emotion. “I promise, I will.”
Anne pulled her into an embrace, and Amy melted against her, her young body wracked by soft sobs, trembling with relief, joy, and the feeling that she had found a place she could call home.
Outside, the last light faded from the sky. Inside, something new had begun.
That night, Amy slept in Anne’s bed.
She did not sleep in it as a lover, not yet. That would come later, when the time was right. That night, for the first time she slept with the realisation she had discovered something perhaps even more intimate than love: a purpose, as a servant under her Mistress’s protection, held safe in the circle of Anne’s arms.
Anne lay awake for a while, feeling Amy’s warmth against her form.
Julia, she thought, I hope you understand. I hope you know this doesn’t mean I loved you any less.
And in the quiet of her heart, she could hear Julia’s voice, warm and teasing:
I always knew, my darling brooding Mistress. And it’s about damn time, my love. About damn time.
Anne smiled, pressed a kiss to the top of Amy’s head, and, at last, let herself sleep.
That night, she did not dream about the past.
She dreamt about tomorrow.
Chapter Five: The Training
The collar changed everything.
Amy discovered this on her first morning as Anne’s consideration servant, when she woke in the grey pre-dawn light with the leather still snug against her throat and Anne’s arm draped warm and heavy across her waist. For a moment she lay still, afraid to move, afraid to breathe, afraid that any motion might shatter the fragile reality of what had happened.
Then Anne stirred, and her arm tightened, and her lips brushed the back of Amy’s neck just above the collar’s edge.
“Good morning, pet.”
“Good morning, Mistress.” The word still felt strange in Amy’s mouth, too large and too formal, but it also felt right in a way she couldn’t explain.
“How did you sleep?”
“Better than I have in… in a long time, Mistress.”
Anne’s hand moved to Amy’s throat, fingers tracing the leather. “How does your collar feel?”
Amy considered the question. “It feels… present. I’m constantly aware of it. Every time I swallow, every time I turn my head…” She paused. “Is… is that… normal?”
“For the first few days, yes. Eventually it will become part of you, and you’ll feel naked without it.” Anne’s voice was soft, remembering. “Julia used to say it felt like wearing her own heartbeat.” Then, with a rueful smile, she added, “For me… the collar was a yoke. I felt strangled by it. Master Roger paddled the heck out of me because I was always trying to stretch it.”
The mention of Julia sent a small tremor through Amy. She had known, intellectually, that she was not Anne’s first. But lying here in Anne’s bed, wearing Julia’s collar, the reality of it settled into her bones. Anne’s mention that *she* had been in her position, collared as someone’s servant, suddenly gave Amy a broader, deeper picture of who her Mistress was, and what had she gone through to be where she was now.
“Mistress? May I ask you something?”
“You may always ask. I may not always answer.”
“What was she like? Julia, I mean. And… how was your Master?”
Anne was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice was rough with old grief. “She was… a brilliant, extraordinary woman. She was a child psychologist; did I tell you that? She could read people the way I read bodies. She knew what they needed before they knew it themselves.” Anne paused and sighed as memory flooded back. “She was also impossibly stubborn. She would argue with me about everything, and half the time she was right, too, which was infuriating.”
“She sounds wonderful.”
“She was.” Anne pressed a kiss to Amy’s shoulder. “And she would have liked you, I think. She always said I needed someone to take care of, that I withered without purpose.”
There was another pause as Anne remembered further back in time. “Master Roger was… a stern man with a heart of gold and a strict sense of propriety and discipline that came from years in the military. I was his slave for five years. That was my punishment for trying to steal his wallet. Being his property rescued me, you know. Without him, I would have probably ended up dead of an overdose in an Oakland back alley. I was broken, and Master fixed me. Thanks to him, I could go to medical school and find my calling in healing people, which in a way is a continuation of my service to him, to heal others like he healed me, I guess.”
As memory went back to more recent years, Anne drew a heavier sigh. “After Julia died, I thought… I thought that part of me died with her. I tried to lock it away and forget it existed.”
“What changed?”
“You.” Anne’s arm tightened around her. “You, your spring-sky eyes and your *Miss* that meant something more. You woke up something I thought dead, Amy. And I’ve been terrified ever since.”
Amy turned in Anne’s arms, facing her. In the grey morning light, Anne’s face was unguarded, vulnerable in a way Amy had never seen.
“I’m scared too, Mistress,” Amy whispered. “But I’m more scared of going back to who I was before. Before you. Before… this.”
Anne cupped her face, thumbed away a tear Amy hadn’t realised she’d shed.
“Then we’ll be scared together,” Anne said. “And we’ll learn together. Starting today.”
The training began with kneeling.
They were in Anne’s living room, the morning sun slanting through the windows, coffee cooling on the side table.
Amy was to present herself to her Mistress wearing nothing but her underwear. When she did, the blush on Amy’s cheeks was almost nuclear red, and she felt her cheeks would soon catch on fire. It was the first time anyone had seen her wearing so little.
“How do you feel, pet?” said Anne.
“… M-m-mortified, Mistress… a-a-and… um… e-em… embarrassed too. You are the first person who sees me like… um… l-like… this…”
Anne nodded and came close to Amy. She then caressed her cheek, kindly, and said, “Go put on a house robe, pet. You and I have more or less the same size, so you can use one of mine. It’s in the bathroom, hanging on a hook behind the door. When you’re ready, we’ll do without it.”
A few minutes later, Amy returned, wearing one of Anne’s satin silk house robes that reached to mid-thigh and flattered her younger body.
“How do you feel now, pet?” said Anne.
“Better, Mistress. T-thank you.” Amy’s voice was still flustered, but the crippling embarrassment was gone.
“Good. Then, we can begin.” Anne then knelt easily and fluidly, showing Amy the pose she expected of her.
“There are many kneeling positions,” Anne explained while holding the position with a calm grace and poise that spoke of weeks spent practising it and assuming it on command. “Different households use different protocols. The pose I am in is the one I taught Julia, and the one which was taught to me when I served.”
Amy knelt on the carpet, trying to hold herself the way Anne had shown her – back straight, knees apart, hands resting palm-up on her thighs. It was harder than it looked. Her muscles ached with the effort of stillness.
“This is called present,” Anne said, circling her slowly. “It’s your default position when you’re awaiting instructions. Back straight – yes, like that. Chin level, eyes down unless given permission to look up. Hands open, resting palms up on your thighs, to show you’re ready to receive.”
“Receive what, Mistress?”
“Whatever I choose to give you. Instruction… praise… or correction.” Anne’s hand brushed the top of Amy’s head with a fleeting touch. “The position communicates readiness, openness and trust.”
Amy felt herself settling into the posture, her breathing slowing, her mind quieting. There was something almost meditative about it, about the deliberate surrender of agency.
“Good,” Anne murmured. “You’re a natural. Most people fidget for weeks before they can hold still like this.”
The praise washed through Amy like warm water. She felt herself flush, felt her breath catch.
Anne noticed the change in Amy’s state and rested a hand on hers. “Remember this state you’re in, pet. It is what we call subspace or headspace. It’s what we call the altered state that comes from deeply, intensely getting into your submission. Some servants describe it as floating. Others as sinking. It’s different for everyone.”
Amy’s voice was thready and soft. She stuttered less while in headspace, but her voice took on a dreamy, entranced timbre, which made Anne hyperaware about the young woman.
“It feels like… like everything else fades away. Like there’s only you and me and this moment.”
“Yes. That’s exactly right.” Anne knelt in front of her, bringing their faces level. “Subspace is a gift, Amy. It’s also a responsibility. When you’re deep in it, you may not be able to advocate for yourself. That’s why trust matters so much. That’s why having a Dominant is a necessity. That’s why we’re taking this slowly.”
“I understand, Mistress.”
“Do you?” Anne’s eyes searched hers. “Tell me your safety word.”
“Geronimo, Mistress.”
“And if you can’t speak?”
“I tap three times, and then three more. On you, on the floor, on whatever’s closest.”
“Good girl.”
The praise hit differently this time, deeper, resonating in some part of Amy she hadn’t known existed. Her eyes fluttered closed.
“Stay with me,” Anne said gently. “Not too deep. Not yet. We’re just beginning.”
The days took on a new rhythm.
Anne had a practice to maintain. Amy had her shifts at Marge’s. They couldn’t be together every moment, much as both of them might have wished it. But the collar was a constant presence, a reminder that Amy was no longer alone.
She wore it under her uniform, hidden beneath the collar of her blouse. No one at the diner noticed – or, if they did, they didn’t comment. But Amy knew it was there. With every swallow, with every turn of her head, the leather whispered against her skin: You belong to someone. You have a purpose. You are not lost.
Anne called every evening at nine o’clock, without fail.
“How was your day, pet?”
“Long, Mistress. We were short-staffed again. Maria’s baby has an ear infection.”
“Did you eat properly?”
“Yes, Mistress. I had chicken salad for lunch and made pasta with tomato sauce when I got home.”
“Good girl. And your exercises?”
Amy had been given homework. She had to practice kneeling for twenty minutes each morning, and dedicate an hour each evening to journaling, jotting down her thoughts, feelings, and writing down any questions that arose. There were also some readings Anne had assigned, about the psychology of power exchange, the ethics of consent, and the history of their lifestyle.
“I did them, Mistress. I have some questions about the readings, for when we see each other.”
“We’ll tackle your questions on Saturday,” Anne promised. “I’ll pick you up after your shift. I have a feeling we will have much to talk about.”
Saturday came with a phone call Amy hadn’t expected.
She was in the middle of her morning kneeling practice, collar on, eyes closed, mind drifting toward that head space Anne had shown her, when her phone buzzed on the nightstand. She ignored it at first – practice was Amy’s sacred time, Anne had said, and it was not to be interrupted for anything short of emergency.
Nevertheless, the phone kept buzzing. Three calls in a row. Then a string of text messages.
Amy broke position and reached for the phone, her heart already sinking.
Mom – 7:23 AM
Amy honey call me back
Mom – 7:24 AM
Your aunt says you’ve been seeing someone???
Mom – 7:25 AM
Why didn’t you tell us???
Mom – 7:26 AM
Your father wants to know who he is
Mom – 7:27 AM
AMY CALL ME PLS
Amy stared at the screen, and as she read the stream of text that had made her phone blow up, blood drained from her face.
Aunt Rosa. She’d completely forgotten about her.
Aunt Rosa lived in Napa and was the kind of person that knew people who knew people. In Napa Valley… that meant gossip reached Aunt Rosa fast.
Amy should have been more careful. She should have been more discreet. But how could she have hidden the way her face lit up when Anne picked her up from work, or the way she leaned into the Mercedes like it was a sanctuary?
Her phone buzzed again.
Mom – 7:28 AM
Your father is very upset
Mom – 7:28 AM
He’s talking about driving up there
Mom – 7:29 AM
Please just call us
Amy’s hands shook as she typed a reply.
I’m fine Mom. I’ll call you tonight. Please don’t let Dad drive up. Everything is okay.
She sent the message, then sat on her bed, collar heavy around her throat, and tried to remember how to breathe.
Anne knew something was wrong the moment Amy got in the car.
“What happened?”
Amy told her everything – about her mother’s phone calls and texts, about Aunt Rosa the valley gossip, and about her father threatening to drive up from San Francisco.
Anne listened in silence, her face unreadable.
“What did you tell them?” she asked when Amy finished.
“Nothing yet. I said I’d call tonight.” Amy twisted her hands in her lap. “I don’t know what to say. I can’t tell them the truth, they… they wouldn’t understand. My father… he’s a very traditional Catholic. He thinks anything outside of marriage between man and woman is a sin.”
“And your mother?”
“She follows his lead. She always has.” Amy’s voice cracked. “They… they’re going to want to meet you. They’re going to want to know who you are, what your intentions are, whether we’re… a-about… why… I’m… s-seeing…”
“…A woman?”
Amy nodded miserably.
“I… I never told them about that part of me. I always dated boys, both in high school and college. It was easier. Safer.” She looked at Anne with wet eyes.
“F-forgive me, Mistress… I… I should have warned you. I should have…”
“Stop.”
Anne’s voice was firm but not unkind. She pulled the car to the side of the road and turned to face Amy fully.
“You have nothing to apologise for. Your family, your past, your secrets – those are yours to share or keep as you see fit. I don’t require you to out yourself to anyone. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Mistress.”
“What I do require is honesty between us. I want no secrets that might affect our dynamic, nothing that could harm what we’re building.”
Anne reached out and touched Amy’s collar through her blouse.
“This is between you and me. The rest of the world doesn’t get a vote.”
“But what do I tell them?”
Anne was quiet for a moment.
“That depends on what you want, Amy. What kind of relationship do you want with your family? What are you willing to sacrifice? What are you willing to fight for?”
“I… I don’t know, Mistress,” Amy whispered. “I’ve never had anything worth fighting for before.”
Anne’s hand moved from the collar to Amy’s cheek.
“Then perhaps it’s time you figured that out. And whatever you decide, I’ll support you. That’s what a Mistress does.”
Amy leaned into the touch, closing her eyes.
“Even if it means…”
Even if it means being apart from you? Amy did not dare voice that question fully, but Anne could read between the lines.
“Yes. Even then. I would not be worth my salt If I told you otherwise.”
“Thank you, Mistress.”
“Don’t thank me yet. We haven’t even begun to navigate this.” Anne started the car again. “But we will. Together.”
That evening, Amy called her mother.
She sat on Anne’s sofa, the phone pressed to her ear, with Anne close enough to provide moral support with her presence but giving her space to have the conversation alone.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Amy! Finally! We’ve been worried sick. Your aunt said she saw you getting into a fancy car with some older woman? She said you looked… happy, Amy… and I guess your father and I just want to know…”
“I am happy, Mom.” The words came out stronger than Amy had expected. “I am happier than I’ve been in a long time.”
A pause on the other end. “Who is she?”
“Her name is Anne. She’s a doctor and lives in St. Helena.”
“A doctor.” Her mother’s voice was carefully neutral. “And you two are… what, exactly?”
Amy looked at Anne, who nodded encouragingly.
“We’re… dating, I suppose. Maybe more. It’s complicated.”
“You’re dating a woman.”
“Yes, Mom. I’m dating a woman.”
Silence stretched across the line. Amy could hear her father’s voice in the background, demanding to know what was being said.
“Your father wants to talk to you,” her mother said finally.
“I know he does. But I’m not ready for that conversation yet.”
Amy took a breath.
“I… I just wanted you to know that I’m okay. I’m safe. I’m seeing a girl, Mom. I’m not hanging out with Charles Manson or anything like that. I’m with someone who cares about me and treats me well. Can that be enough for now?”
There was another long, pregnant pause. “I don’t understand any of this, Amy…”
“I know, Mom. I’m still figuring it out myself.”
Amy felt tears threatening.
“I’m not asking you to understand. I’m just asking you to trust that I know what I’m doing.”
“Do you? Do you really?”
Amy looked at Anne again. At her dark eyes, her steady presence, her hand resting just inches away, ready to offer comfort if needed.
“Yes, Mom, I do,” Amy said. “I really do.”
After the call ended, Amy sat in the silence for a long moment. Then she turned to Anne.
“I… I couldn’t tell her everything, Mistress.”
“I know.”
“I… I don’t know whether I will be able to, Mistress. Not yet. Maybe not ever.”
“That’s entirely your choice to make, my pet.” Anne opened her arms, and Amy fell into them gratefully. “You did well. That was very brave of you.”
“I didn’t feel brave. I felt terrified, Mistress.”
“Bravery usually does come together with a good dose of terror, pet,” said Anne, stroking Amy’s hair. “How do you feel now?”
“Shaky… Relieved… Guilty too, Mistress.” Amy pressed her face into Anne’s shoulder. “But I also feel like I’ve just taken the first step off a cliff, and I don’t know whether I’m going to fly… or fall.”
“Then I’ll be here to catch you,” Anne said. “That’s my promise. I will be there *for you*, whatever happens.”
Amy clung to her, the collar pressing against her throat like a heartbeat, and let herself believe it.
Outside, the valley darkened into night. Inside, two women held each other, navigating the first tremors of a storm that was only beginning to gather.
The training would continue. The challenges would multiply. But for now, in this moment, they had each other.
It was enough.
It had to be.
Chapter Six: The Test
Three weeks after the phone call, Amy’s mother came to visit.
She arrived on a Tuesday afternoon, without warning, driving a rented Toyota up Anne’s driveway.
Amy was alone in the house – Anne had a patient in Calistoga, the vintner with gout who still refused to modify his diet – and she answered the door clad in her house robe and nothing else, her collar visible, the sheerness of the robe hinting at her nudity under it, and completely unprepared for what was about to unfold.
“Mom?”
Elena Castillo was a small woman in her mid-fifties, with Amy’s honey-blonde hair gone grey at the temples and eyes that were the same spring-sky blue but harder, more guarded. She stood on the doorstep holding her purse like a shield, taking in the house, the grounds, and her daughter’s state of undress with a single sweeping glance.
“You weren’t answering your phone,” she said. “I got worried.”
“I was…” Amy moved to touch her collar instinctively, then caught herself. “I was doing chores. I didn’t hear it ring.”
A more poignant question gnawed at Amy’s mind, though. How did my mother get this address? I left no forwarding address in Yountville or at the diner…
“You were doing chores, dressed like that? basically butt naked? in the middle of the afternoon?”
“It’s a house robe, Mom. And yes, I was doing chores. I live here now, you know.” Amy’s voice grew tense, defensive.
The words hung between them. Amy hadn’t meant to announce it quite so baldly, but there it was. She had moved her things from the Yountville house two weeks ago. Her uncle’s estate was finally settled; the house in Yountville had been vacated and put up for sale, and Maria was back full-time at the diner.
Anne had made the invitation without making it seem like charity.
You belong here, with me, Anne had said.
I do, Mistress, Amy had said.
Besides, it felt right.
Elena’s eyes moved past Amy to the interior of the house – the high ceilings, the art on the walls, the view of the valley through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Something shifted in her expression, too quick to name.
“May I come in?”
They sat in the living room after Amy put on proper clothes and made a white tea that neither of them touched.
Elena perched on the edge of Anne’s sofa like a bird ready for flight, her eyes cataloguing everything: the quality of the furniture, the number and quality of the paintings, and the photographs on the mantle, all still featuring Anne and Julia prominently.
“So… This is where your… friend… lives?”
“Her name is Anne, Mom, and… she’s more than a friend.”
“Yes. Your aunt made that quite clear.”
Elena’s mouth thinned.
“The whole valley is talking, Amy. Do you have any idea about what people are saying?”
“I don’t care about that, Mom.”
“Well, I do. Your father does, too. We have a reputation…”
“A reputation?” Amy felt a hot stab of anger rising within her chest. She drew a sharp breath in, then said, “You didn’t care about reputation when Uncle Cyrus was dying. None of you came. None of you helped. I was the only one who…”
“Cyrus made his choices.” Elena’s voice was flat. “He knew what he was doing when he cut himself out from the family.”
“He didn’t cut himself out. You cut him out. Because he was gay, because he wouldn’t pretend to be something he wasn’t, because he never fell into your schemes…”
“And look where that got him. He died alone, in that awful little house, with nothing to show for his life but debts and that ridiculous lamp!”
Amy went very still. “That ‘ridiculous lamp’ is worth more than your car, Mom.”
Elena’s eyes sharpened.
“Is it?”
Elena’s tone made Amy’s stomach turn.
There it was. The old Elena Castillo play. She always wanted to attach herself to money, only to somehow make some of it line her pockets.
Amy recognised it at once. No wonder her stomach had turned.
She thought back about the questions her mother had asked over the past weeks – they seemed like casual questions, slipped into phone conversations like afterthoughts.
‘What does Anne do exactly?’
‘Where did she go to medical school?’
‘Does she own the house outright?’
Amy had answered without thinking. She’d been so grateful for the renewed contact, so hungry for some *sign* that her family might accept her new life, that she hadn’t noticed the pattern.
“Why are you really here, Mom?”
Elena set down her untouched tea. “I’m here because I’m worried about you, Amy. You’ve dropped out of school and moved in with a woman twice your age. You’re wearing…” she gestured at Amy’s throat, where the collar was visible above her blouse, “—whatever that is. This… This isn’t you.”
“This is exactly me, Mom. This is more like me than I’ve ever been.”
“You’re twenty-four years old. You don’t know who you are yet.”
“I know I’m happy. Isn’t that enough?”
Elena scoffed. “Happy.” She spat out the word as if it tasted sour. “Happy doesn’t pay bills, Amy. Happy doesn’t build a future. What happens when this… this woman gets tired of you? What happens when she finds someone younger, prettier, more… whatever it is she’s looking for? Where will you be then?”
“Anne isn’t going to…”
“She’s done it before, hasn’t she?” Elena nodded toward the photographs on the mantle. “What about the other one… Julia? How long were they together before she died?”
Amy felt her anger rise again, the blood rushing to her face. “That’s none of your business, Mom. How’d you find out about Julia, anyway?”
“I know a lot of things, sweetheart.” Elena’s voice softened, but her eyes remained hard. “I know this house is worth two million dollars. I know Anne’s practice brings in four hundred thousand a year. I know she has investments, properties, a trust fund from her family…”
“Stop.”
“—and I know she’s forty-one years old, unmarried, and vulnerable to someone who knows how to play the long game.”
Amy stood up so fast she nearly knocked over the tea service. “Get out, Mother.”
“Amy…”
“Get out of this house, Mom. Now.”
Elena didn’t move. “Think about what you’re throwing away. Think about your family. Think about your future. Thnk about us. Your inheritance…”
“What inheritance, Mom? Uncle Cyrus left me nothing but that house and the lamp because none of you wanted anything to do with him. And he was worth ten of all of you.”
“He was a fool who died alone. Is that what you want?”
“I’d rather die alone than live like you.” Amy’s voice cracked. “I… I can’t believe you. All the phone calls, all the contact you had with me… was because you were measuring Anne’s worth? Because you were going to play your little game of ‘let’s get rich quick by embezzling from my family’s loved ones?’ again? is that why you came? To scope out Anne’s assets? To see if there was something worth extracting?” Amy did not realise it, but her growing fury was seeping through to the tone of her voice, which was growing harder, and louder, with every passing moment.
Elena rose, gathering her purse with studied, performative dignity, and sniffed. “I came because you’re my daughter, and I was worried. Clearly, that was a mistake.”
Amy’s voice had gone low, taut, like a rope under too much tension, ready to snap. “No. Coming here to try to turn me into a… a honey trap for my own girlfriend – that was the mistake.”
“Girlfriend.” Elena spat out that word. “Tch! is that what you think you are? Look at yourself, Amy. Look at what you’re wearing around your neck. You’re not her girlfriend. You’re her pet.”
The word was meant to land like a slap. Amy felt it reverberate through her, but it gave her strength, because it was true – and her mother would never understand why that truth was anything but shameful.
“Yes,” Amy said quietly. “I am. And I’ve never been happier.”
Elena stood and stared at Amy for a long moment. Amy stood up too. Her mother’s lips opened to retort, but Amy raised a hand and said, “Not another word from you.”
Her eyes stung. Tears – of pain, of fury, of heartache, of loss – were welling up. Taking a deep breath, Amy said, deadly serious, “I am going to ask you one last time, Mother. Get out of this house, or I will call the police. You… and Dad…” she balled her hands like fists and tightened her jaw before saying, “are dead to me.”
Amy’s words landed on Elena like a slap. Amy was breathing deep, looking at her mother with cold fury in her eyes. Elena tried to say something, but Amy screamed, “OUT!”
Then Elena turned and walked to the door without another word.
Amy didn’t follow her. She stood in the living room, trembling, breathing hard, listening to the sound of the rental car starting and pulling away. Tears started flowing down her cheeks. She took her phone and blocked both of her parents’ phone numbers and landlines and did the same in her social media. By then the rented Toyota’s engine noise had faded completely. Then, she let herself sink to her knees on the carpet, exactly where she’d first learned to present herself to Anne.
The tears that had welled up in her eyes flowed like rivers. She knelt there for a long time, sobbing her soul out. Then, when it was all over, she cleaned herself, and went back to her kneel, hands on her thighs, palms up, breathing slowly, waiting.
Anne found her like that when she came home an hour later. She knew immediately that something had happened.
“Amy?” Anne’s keys clattered onto the side table. She crossed the room quickly, kneeling in front of her servant. “Amy, what happened? What’s wrong, pet?”
Amy looked up. Her eyes were dry, but her eyelids were puffy, the sclera was still a bit red, and something in them had changed – there was a clarity in Amy’s gaze that hadn’t been there before.
“… My mother came to visit, Mistress,” she said.
Anne listened in silence as Amy told her everything, from her mother’s unannounced arrival to the revelation that her family had been researching Anne’s finances. Then, she told her about the accusations, the confrontation, and the final, ugly exchange.
When Amy finished, Anne was quiet for a long moment.
“I’m sorry that you had to face that alone, pet.”
“I’m not.” Amy said, her voice still tremulous. “I’m glad I did. I needed to see my family clearly. I needed to know what they really wanted.”
“And now you know.”
“Yes, Mistress. Now I know.” Amy reached up and touched her collar. “They see this as leverage on you, Mistress. They see it as an in, as a way to access your money, to get rich by association, to… to siphon off resources from you and… and keep up a lifestyle they cannot sustain, Mistress.” Amy felt her eyes sting. Stupid tears, not now! Amy thought. Her eyes did not obey her, though, and tears did flow once more, moistening Anne’s cream blouse with darker drops of moisture. “T-they… they don’t see this collar for what it really is.”
“What is it really?”
Amy met Anne’s eyes. Anne’s warm proximity calmed Amy and helped lessen her distress. Her voice still cracked, though, when she said “It’s a symbol of freedom, Mistress. I’ve never been freer than I am right now, kneeling at your feet. D-does that make sense?”
“Yes,” Anne said softly. “It makes perfect sense.”
She helped Amy to her feet, then held her close again. Amy pressed her face into Anne’s shoulder, breathing in the familiar scent of her – sandalwood, antiseptic, and the enticingly sweet hint of a scent underneath it all that was purely Anne.
“I don’t have a family anymore,” Amy whispered.
“You have me, mine.”
“Is that enough?”
Anne pulled back to look at her. “I don’t know, pet. Is it?”
Amy considered the question seriously. She thought about her mother’s face, hard with calculation. She remembered her father’s voice on the phone, demanding answers he wasn’t entitled to. She remembered the years of feeling like an outsider in her own home, of being the black sheep’s niece, the one who never quite fit.
“Yes, Mistress,” she said. “It’s enough. It is way more than enough.”
That night, Anne couldn’t sleep.
She lay in the dark, listening to Amy’s breathing, feeling the warmth of her servant’s body curled against her side. Amy slept deeply, exhausted by the day’s confrontation, but Anne’s mind wouldn’t quiet. Amy’s words haunted her.
They see this as leverage on you, Mistress. They see it as an in, as a way to access your money, to get rich by association, to… to siphon off resources from you and… and keep up a lifestyle they cannot sustain. they don’t see this collar for what it really is.
Those words circled tirelessly within her mind. She was not worried about Amy – the girl had proven herself today with flying colours. She had chosen Anne over her own blood in a way that still made Anne’s chest ache. Those words had stirred something else within her, though, a malaise that would not subside. Knowing herself, Anne knew she would not be able to sleep until she faced it with the same kind of courage that her servant had showed against her own kin.
What do you think you’re doing? she asked herself. Look at yourself, taking in a girl half your age, and dressing her in Julia’s collar too? You… You’re playing house like the past two years never happened!
She slipped out of bed carefully, not wanting to wake Amy, and padded barefoot down the hall to the walk-in closet.
Julia’s side was exactly as she’d left it. The garment bags, the shoes lined in neat rows, the jewellery box… And beside it, the rosewood box that Anne hadn’t dared to open in over two years.
She stood there, in darkness, her hand hovering over the lid.
You’re using her, the voice in her head said. It sounded like Julia at her most cutting, in the tone she’d use when Anne was being stubborn or self-deceptive. You’re using this girl to avoid dealing with me. To pretend you’ve moved on when we both know you haven’t, my beautiful, pig-headed Mistress.
“That’s not true,” Anne whispered.
Isn’t it? Then why haven’t you opened this box, hm? Why is my collar still in here, untouched, while you dress another woman in my training collar and call her yours?
“Because I can’t…” Anne’s voice cracked. “Because if I open it, if I look at it, then you’re really gone. And…”
Gahh… good God, Mistress! You’ve had two years. Two years, six months, and however many damn days you’ve been counting. How much longer do you need?
Anne closed her eyes. The tears came, silent and hot, sliding down her cheeks in the darkness.
“I… Jules… I… I don’t… I don’t know how to let you go,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion. “I… I don’t know how to stop loving you!”
You don’t have to stop loving me, my beautiful, dumbass, stubborn Mistress! You just have to stop hiding behind me!
Anne opened the box.
The collar lay inside, exactly as she’d left it – the one she’d soldered around Julia’s throat on their fifth anniversary. The one Anne had cut from Julia’s cold neck before the cremation. The metal was cleanly cleaved, a mute witness to a broken loop of service, love and devotion.
Anne picked it up. The metal was cold in her hands. She traced the cut edge with her thumb, feeling where her own saw had bitten through.
“I miss you, Jules,” Anne said. “I miss you, every… fucking… day. I miss your laugh… and your stubbornness… and the way you argued with me about everything. I miss the sound of your breathing at night. I miss your smell. I miss coming home to you.”
The collar didn’t answer. It was just a metal circlet, cool and inert.
“But you must know something, my Jules. She’s not you.” Anne’s voice steadied. “And you know what? I don’t want her to be you. Why would I want another cantankerous, hot tempered, stubborn, beautiful redhead in my life? One of you is enough for a lifetime. Or two. Or ten. Amy… is something different. Something new. And… and I think… that something new is allowing me to live again, a better life, a life after you.”
She stood there for a long time, holding the severed collar, quietly letting the resolution of her grief wash through her, without trying to stop it or control it in the least. When the tears finally subsided, Anne felt the catharsis coming to fruition. She felt… lighter, as if something that had been clenched tight inside her had finally let go.
Anne returned the collar to its box and closed the lid. This time, though, instead of putting the box back on the shelf by the jewellery box, she placed it in Julia’s side of the closet, setting it down among the preserved remnants of an absent beloved.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “For everything. For saving me. For teaching me, again, even if it meant bashing my thick skull again with your words. Thank you, for loving me and for holding my hand until I learned how to love again.”
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and walked back to the bedroom. Julia’s things would need to go to storage soon, Anne thought. After all, that side of the closet belonged to someone else.
Amy was still sleeping, her honey-blonde hair spread across the pillow, her collar dark against her milky throat. Anne slipped back into bed, gathered her close, and Amy murmured something indistinct and pressed closer without waking.
“I’m going to do this properly,” Anne whispered into the darkness. “No more hiding. No more half-measures. If you’re going to be mine, you deserve all of me. Not just the parts I feel safe giving.”
Amy’s breathing didn’t change. Anne then gently tightened an arm around Amy’s waist and closed her eyes.
For the first time in over two years, she slept a guiltless sleep.
In the morning, Amy woke to find Anne sitting on the edge of the bed, watching her.
“Mistress?” Amy sat up, rubbing her eyes. “Is something wrong?”
“No.” Anne reached out and touched Amy’s face, tracing the line of her cheekbone. “Something is finally right.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t need to. Not yet.” Anne smiled, and Amy noticed that there was something different in that smile, a lightness that she had never seen before. It was as if a weight she hadn’t known Anne was carrying had been lifted.
“Amy… I want you to know that whatever happens with your family, whatever choices you have to make, I’m not going anywhere. This isn’t a temporary fling. You’re not a replacement for someone I lost. You’re you, and that’s enough. That’s *more* than enough.”
Amy felt tears prick her eyes. “Mistress…”
“I finally opened the box,” Anne said quietly. “I did it last night, while you were sleeping. I found the strength to say goodbye to her. For good.”
Amy didn’t have to ask which box. She took Anne’s hand and pressed it to her lips.
“It was your fault too, pet.”
“My fault. Mistress?”
“Yes. The confrontation with your mother showed me the way. It turns out that my pet is way braver than I am.” Anne grinned saying that, and Amy blushed.
“Does that mean I am now your guardian bitch too, Mistress?”
“Only if you want to, pet.”
“I’ll settle with ‘devoted kick-ass servant,’ Mistress. That and a good doghouse if and when I misbehave.”
Anne smiled a soft, tender smile, and stroked Amy’s face.
“Are you okay, Anne?”
“I am now, Amy.” Anne then pulled Amy into her arms. “I am now.”
They held each other in the morning light, as two women who had each lost something important to them – Amy her family, Anne the ghost of her grief – and found that what remained was brighter than what they had.
Outside, the valley stretched gold and green under the autumn sun. Inside, something new was taking root.
Amy’s training would continue. The challenges would multiply. The world would intrude with its judgments and demands.
But for now, in this moment, they had each other.
And that meant everything.
Chapter Seven: The Becoming
The first days and weeks at Anne’s were the hardest.
The training regimen wasn’t the issue. Amy had expected that it would be difficult, and it was, in the way that learning any new skill was difficult. The kneeling positions, the protocols, the small rituals that structured their days… those were challenges that she could meet, with effort and attention.
What was hard about her new reality was the silence.
Amy had grown up surrounded by noise: the San Francisco apartment that had seen the first years of her life, with its thin walls and neighbours with even thinner patience; the clatter of the diner; and the constant hum of other people’s lives pressing against her own.
Anne’s house in St. Helena was almost aggressively quiet. The only sounds were birdsong, wind in the oaks, and the soft tick of the grandfather clock in the hallway.
In that silence, Amy could hear herself think. And thinking, she was discovering, was a treacherous road, which could very easily lead her down outright dangerous trains of thought.
What are you doing here?* the thoughts would whisper, usually in the early morning when Anne was still asleep and Amy lay awake, feeling the leather collar against her throat. You’re playing house with a woman twice your age that you’ve known for three months. You’ve abandoned your degree, cut your family off, and upended your life… For what? For this?
For this, she would answer herself, reaching unconsciously to touch her collar. For its weight on her neck; for the way Anne seemed to look not so much at Amy, but through her, with those dark, penetrating eyes that dissected her the moment they set their intense gaze on her form, laying her bare in front of her Mistress. For the inner peace that washed over the young woman whenever she knelt.
But the self-doubt persisted, circling like a vulture at the edge of Amy’s resolve, waiting for a sign of weakness.
“You’re thinking too loudly,” Anne said one morning, a week after Amy had moved in.
They were in the kitchen. Amy was making coffee – she had memorised how Anne liked it within the first two days, black and strong, served in the blue ceramic mug with the chipped handle that had been Julia’s favourite – and Anne was watching her from the doorway, still in her robe, her dark hair loose around her shoulders.
“I’m sorry, Mistress?”
“Your shoulders are up around your ears. You’re grinding your teeth so hard I can hear it, and you’ve been staring at that coffee pot like it owes you *money*.” Anne crossed the kitchen and put her hands on Amy’s shoulders, thumbs pressing into the knots of tension. “What’s wrong, mine?”
Amy wanted to lie. She wanted to say nothing, Mistress, and smile, and be the perfect servant she was supposed to be. But Anne’s rule one was to have no secrets, and Anne would know anyway. Anne always knew, God knows how, but she knew. So, Amy told the truth.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do all day, Mistress.”
Anne’s hands stilled. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…” Amy paused and turned around, her hands resting on the edge of the counter. She was wearing the silk robe Anne had given her, firmly tied at the waist. It cinched her form attractively, and its length stopped just above the buttock curve, leaving a small part of it exposed. With a deep breath, the young woman said, “… At the diner, I had a purpose, Anne. I had tables to serve, orders to remember, people to take care of. Here…” Amy paused and thought a moment, realising how vulnerable she felt. “Here… I clean things that are already spotlessly clean. I cook meals that take an hour to make. I practice my positions…” She looked down at her hands, and closed them into light fists as she continued, “and then… I sit, and wait, and think… and the thinking… is not good.”
“What do you think about, Amy? Talk to me. Please.”
“Whether I belong here. Whether I’m good enough. Whether you’ll get tired of me.” Amy’s voice cracked. “Whether I… whether I made a terrible mistake.”
“Did you, Amy?”
“I… I don’t know.” The tears came before Amy could stop them. “I don’t know anything anymore, Anne. I used to have a plan. I was going to finish my degree, get a job, live a normal life. And now I’m here, in this beautiful house, with this beautiful collar around my neck, and yet… I don’t know who I am anymore.”
Anne pulled her close. Amy buried her face in the warm cotton of Anne’s robe and let herself cry – ugly, heaving sobs that shook her whole body. Anne held her through it, one hand stroking her hair, murmuring soft nonsense sounds that meant nothing and everything.
When the storm passed, Anne led Amy to the living room and sat her on the sofa. She then… changed. Her Dominant aura was all but gone. The woman came out. And Anne, the woman, knelt in front of Amy, and lovingly took her hands. It was a stunning reversal that made Amy’s breath catch for a few moments. Never had she seen Anne so … fragile.
“Amy… please listen to me carefully.” Amy realised Anne’s tone was much different than her usual, calm, confident voice. It was warm, small, and intimate. She was not hearing her Mistress, but the woman – small, vulnerable, and human, all too human.
“What you’re feeling… is normal. It has a name: transition shock. I lived it too, many years ago, before I was who I am now.
“When I was scarcely more than a teenager, my family was going through a hard time. I rebelled. I ran away, lived on the streets, and… did things I later came to regret.
“I pilfered the odd wallet, and gave the occasional ‘service’ to men, all for the thrill of the forbidden, all to feel alive. Then, one day, a man caught me red-handed as I was trying to steal his wallet. I had no need for the money, but I needed the thrill.”
Amy shifted a little and looked at Anne intently as she paused and struggled with the recollection.
“When he grabbed my wrist with his hand, I froze and my heart stopped. I could have sworn he would have broken my wrist in two. But he… he looked at me… no… through me, and said, ‘You, young lady, are in trouble. We can do this the official way… or we can do it my way. One destroys your life. The other doesn’t. Choose.’”
Amy noticed Anne was struggling with this. Instinctively, without thinking, she reached and stroked Anne’s hair as she paused and took a deep breath, steadying herself with a hand resting on her chest, as if to still her racing heart.
“That man… was Roger. My Master. He made me call my family, tell them what I had done, and then he said to them, ‘I can help. Will you allow me to?’ They said ‘yes,’ and the next day Roger made me his servant. It was not a choice, you see. It was that, or jail.”
“Mistress… Anne… y-you don’t have to…”
“I do,” said Anne. “I need you to hear this, Amy. Please… bear with me for a bit more.”
“I… never wore a permanent collar, like Julia did,” Anne said, continuing her reveal. “But there was no question that I was, very much, Roger’s servant. For five years, that man expected me to go straight to him after school. I had no liberty to do otherwise. My family knew I was being ‘set straight’ so they approved – and enforced it.”
Anne felt her eyes sting as tears welled unbidden.
“Roger tore me apart. His discipline was hard. For a week he gave me 20 paddle strikes, right here, on my butt, as soon as I entered his place, until I got it through my thick skull that as soon as I crossed his threshold, I was to strip to my underwear, wear a leather collar he had for me, and kneel to greet him: ‘greetings, Master, this slave is ready to accept your training.’”
Anne breathed out, then in, then out again, trying to bring her anguish back to a more manageable state.
“About three weeks into his service, everything I had done up to then came tumbling down on me. The plight of my family; my running away from them; my choice to seek cheap thrills, which had ultimately led me to being Roger’s servant until he deemed I was no longer a threat to myself or to others. That day… When I had properly greeted him… he bade me to get up. I tried, but couldn’t do it.”
Amy’s head came close to Anne’s. The two were facing each other, foreheads touching, sharing breath, and anguish.
“Please… Anne…”
Anne took Amy’s hand and their fingers intertwined.
“The weight of my choices nailed me to the floor. It was too much at the same time, and I… I felt… much like you are feeling right now, Amy.”
After a pause where Anne dried her eyes and breathed deeply to steady her racing heart, she continued, “Roger went for his paddle when he saw I was not standing on command. I knew I had messed up that day, and deserved to be paddled, but… but Roger dropped the paddle when he saw my face. He knelt, and held me, and said, ‘Let it out, Anne.’”
“I… don’t know how long I cried that day. When I realised it was over… the sun had set, and it was almost time to return to my family.
“Before I left that day, Roger said, ‘Today was an important day, Anne. It will only get better moving forward.’ And he was right. It got better.
“He went on to teach me everything I know about this lifestyle, and got me hooked on it. He never was sexual with me. That was not his goal. His goal was to fix me where I had gone awry, and turn me into someone useful to society. That… took five years, Amy. Five years of getting my ass paddled red, and failing, and stumbling, and learning, and doing it again, until Roger said ‘Good, slave.’
“When he finally was happy with what I had become, he called me to him one day, unclasped the leather collar from my neck, and said, ‘You’re free now, Ms. Marquez. Your last, and only standing task remaining, is to pay it forward.’
“Months later, I entered medical school.
“So… just like I was told, when I was broken, and overwhelmed, and drowning in self doubt, I can tell you, Amy… Today was an important day for you. It’ll take time, but it will get better moving forward.”
Gently, slowly, Anne’s Dominant aura came back, with a firmer, more authoritative voice, but still very much a reflection of Anne’s humanity.
“Amy… I told you a very, very private part of me, so you know I understand the place where you are right now. Your brain is overwhelmed. You’ve made enormous changes to your life in a very short time. You’ve left your job and your home, and you cut your family out of your life. You’ve entered a new relationship, a new dynamic, a new you. Your brain is trying to catch up, and it’s frightened, and frightened brains lie to us, to protect themselves.”
“What kind of lies?”
“That we don’t belong. That we’re not good enough. That everything we’ve built will crumble if we look at it sideways.” Anne squeezed Amy’s hands ever so gently. “I heard those lies for two years after Julia died. They told me that I would never love, have a servant, or feel again.
“They were wrong.”
Amy sniffled. “How did you make them stop? How did you silence them, Mistress?”
“Those lies never stop, Amy. They get softer, or louder, but they never fall silent. What I did was, I refused to believe them.” Anne smiled, soft and sad. “It takes time, practice… and purpose.
“You are absolutely right, Amy. You need something to do, something that’s yours, that gives you a reason to get up in the morning, something larger than yourself, something that goes beyond waiting for me to come home.”
“Like what, Mistress?”
Anne was quiet for a moment, her dark eyes thoughtful. Then she said, “What were you studying at Berkeley?”
“Art history. With a minor in studio practice.”
“Did you enjoy that?”
Amy considered the question. “I loved to understand a canvas. I loved standing in front of a painting and trying to figure out what the artist was seeing and feeling. I loved the way art could make me give form to emotions I didn’t have words for.
“The academic part was harder. It felt like I was being made to dissect something that was alive to me.”
“What about the creative side, the studio practice?”
“I…” Amy trailed off. She had almost forgotten. “I used to draw when I was younger. I liked to draw faces, mostly. I would sit in cafés and sketch the people around me, trying to capture something true about them.” She looked down at her hands, then softly said, “I stopped when I started college. There wasn’t time, and it seemed… frivolous… and… and childish.”
“Show me.”
“I don’t have any of my old sketchbooks. They’re in storage in San Francisco, with everything else I couldn’t fit in my uncle’s house.”
“Then you should start new ones.” Anne stood, pulling Amy up with her. “Come with me.”
The art supply store in downtown St. Helena was small but well-stocked, catering to the wine country tourists who fancied themselves painters after a few glasses of Cabernet. Anne walked besides Amy through the aisles, watching her face as she touched the paper, the pencils, the charcoals and pastels in their neat wooden boxes. The contact with the world of tempera, gouache, pastels, charcoal, pencils, canvas and paper seemed to brighten Amy’s face to a younger version of herself, delighted in the sensorial exploration of all that media and materials.
“Choose whatever calls to you,” Anne said.
Amy hesitated.
“Mistress, these are expensive…”
“I didn’t say ‘choose whatever’s cheapest,’ Amy. I said, ‘choose whatever calls to you,’ didn’t I?”
“… You did say that, Mistress.”
“So, choose.”
Amy chose a large sketchbook with heavy, cream-coloured paper, a set of graphite pencils ranging from 6H to 8B, charcoal sticks, both vine and compressed, and a kneaded eraser that felt like putty in her hands. She also chose a portable easel that folded flat for carrying.
At the register, the total made Amy wince, but Anne handed over her card without flinching.
“You did say I could choose whatever called to me, Mistress,” said Amy, with a playful, mischievous lilt to her voice.
Anne chuckled. “I did. And I’ll remember next time I give you carte blanche.”
Amy just giggled with the most innocent face in the world.
“Now,” Anne said as they walked back to the car, “you have tools. I suggest you start using them, my pet”
Amy started drawing the following morning.
She set up the easel in the living room, facing the large windows that looked out over the valley, and began with what was in front of her: the view. Rolling hills, rows of grapevines, and distant, haze-blue mountains.
Her hand was rusty at first, and it showed in hesitating, tentative lines; but muscle memory returned quickly. By the time Anne came home from her afternoon house calls, Amy had filled three pages.
“Mistress!” said Amy, going to meet her at the threshold and warmly hugging her.
Anne smiled and warmly hugged Amy back. “Hello, pet. How are you?”
There was a small, endearing, awkward moment when both Mistress and pet asked, “how was your day?” at the same time.
Anne smiled and cupped Amy’s cheek.
“You go first.”
“I’ve been drawing all morning, Mistress,” said Amy.
“May I see?” Anne asked.
Amy showed her. Anne studied each drawing carefully, taking her time, treating them with the seriousness they deserved.
“These are good,” she said finally. “You have a real eye for composition. But they’re safe.”
“Safe?”
“Landscapes are easy. They don’t look back at you. They don’t challenge you.” Anne set the sketchbook down. “Tomorrow, I want you to draw something harder.”
“Like what?”
Anne smiled, and there was something in that smile that made Amy’s stomach flutter. “We’ll see.”
Amy bit her lower lip, and then said, with the most innocent tone and the most innocent smile, “I love it when you are all brooding and mysterious, Mistress.”
Anne’s raised eyebrow spoke volumes. So did Amy’s squeal, after Anne gave her a spank.
The next morning, Anne woke Amy early.
“Get up, pet. We’re going to try something new.”
Amy followed Anne to the living room, still fuzzy with sleep. The curtains were drawn, and Anne had set up a single lamp in the corner, its light soft and golden. In the centre of the room, she had placed the armchair from her study, angled to catch the light.
“Sit,” Anne said, gesturing to the chair.
Amy sat, confused. Anne circled her slowly, studying her the way she might study a patient.
“Take off your robe, mine.”
Amy’s hands went to the sash automatically, then stopped. She was wearing nothing underneath the robe. Anne had been gradually reducing her sleepwear over the past week, from pyjamas to a nightgown to underwear to just the robe, and the thought of sitting in the nude in this staged, deliberate way made her skin prickle with anxiety.
“Mistress, I…”
“I know.” Anne’s voice was gentle, but unquestionable in her authority. “That’s why we’re doing this. Take off your robe, pet.”
Amy untied the sash. Her hands were trembling. She let the silk slide off her shoulders, pool around her waist, and then, with an effort that felt enormous, she stood, let it fall to the floor, and sat back down.
For the first time, Amy was naked for her Mistress, under the glare of a lamplight, and Anne was looking at her – not with desire, though that was there too, tightly coiled and restrained, lurking under the surface like a snake ready to strike.
Anne was looking at her the way she had looked at the sketchbook: carefully, thoroughly, with focussed attention.
“You’re beautiful,” Anne said.
Amy made a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob. “I… I’m not…”
“Don’t.” Anne’s voice sharpened. “Don’t argue with me about what I can see with my own eyes. You are beautiful, Amy, and… you’re going to learn to see it.”
Anne retrieved Amy’s sketchbook and pencils. She pressed them into Amy’s hands and said, “draw yourself.”
Amy stared at Anne with a deer-in-headlamp gaze that showed just how utterly unprepared she was for her Mistress’s plan. “W… what…?”
“There’s a mirror in the hallway. I’m going to bring it in here and set it up in front of you, and you, my beautiful, shy girl, are going to draw what you see.” Anne held her gaze on Amy, becoming intensely earnest in her words. “I do not want you to draw what you think you should see; nor do I want you to render what you’re afraid you’ll see. I want what’s actually there.”
“I… I can’t…”
“You can. And you will.”
Anne then touched Amy’s cheek, her thumb brushing away a tear she hadn’t realised she’d shed.
“This is training, for both your body and mind. You’ve spent your whole life hiding from yourself. Today… we start to change that. Together.”
The mirror cast back to Amy the image of a nude, elegantly slender, young woman, her honey-blonde hair loose around her shoulders. Her milky-fair skin was marked with the faint pink of a blush that spread from her cheeks and down her throat to her chest. She had small, B-cup breasts, high and firm, their nipples a darker, redder shade of rose against the surrounding, fair skin. Her belly had a soft, barely perceptible curve to it. Her Venus gap was hidden, as her thighs were tightly pressed together in instinctive modesty. Her pubic hair was a darker, browner shade of blonde, and peeked out from the joined legs. The black leather collar at her throat starkly popped out in contrast against the fairness of her features.
That’s me, Amy thought. That’s what I look like.
She had avoided mirrors for years. She was perfectly comfortable in giving a quick glance at herself to check her hair or makeup, but she had never, ever dared to really look at herself. Years of berating by her mother and father had led Amy to believe she was ugly, deformed, or both. She didn’t want to confront the body she inhabited. But once her choice not to confront herself was removed, what Amy saw in the mirror was neither ugly nor deformed. Anne Was right. She was beautiful. Anxiety crept into Amy as she realised Anne watched, expecting her to draw herself. She picked up a pencil and began to draw.
Her first attempt was terrible.
Amy’s hand kept flinching away from the truth, softening the lines, avoiding little unflattering details.
When she was done, Anne looked at the draft, shook her head, ripped the page out and tore it in half.
“Again, pet.”
After a quick water and snack break, Amy set out to work once more.
The second attempt was worse.
Amy overcompensated to a hyper-realistic extreme, almost to the point of making herself uglier than she was, punishing the image for existing.
When Anne saw the draft, she frowned, shook her head, ripped the page out, and tore it in half.
“Again, pet.”
Before starting her third attempt, Amy gave herself a few minutes to collect herself. As the charcoal started, she stopped reacting to what she saw, and gave her hand, and herself, the freedom to follow what her eyes saw, responding to it instead.
She drew the curve of her shoulder, the hollow of her collarbone, the gentle swell of her perky breasts.
She drew the small mole beneath her left nipple that she had always hated.
She drew her thighs, full and well-formed; her knees; and the delicate bones of her feet.
She drew her face as she saw it: the uncertainty in her eyes, the nervousness in her mind frozen in an anxious, endearing lip bite, and the fear and determination in her eyes, fighting for dominance.
When she finished the third attempt, afternoon was yielding to twilight. Her hand ached, and her back ached from holding still. On the page there was a woman. She was not just beautiful – she also was there, human, present.
“I think it’s ready, Mistress.”
“May I see it, pet?”
Amy handed over the sketchbook.
Anne studied the drawing for a long time. This time, her hand did not reach to rip the page off. “This,” she said finally, “is a beginning.”
The body work continued over the following days.
Each morning, Anne would have Amy pose nude differently – on her back, lying on her side, kneeling, sitting down. Her task was always the same: to draw herself in that pose.
As the posing sessions continued, the shame began to ever so gradually recede – so gradually that Amy almost didn’t notice it happening.
It didn’t fully disappear. It was always there, lurking around the outer rim of Amy’s conscious mind, always ready to spread its familiar poison once more.
The exposure, though, made it quieter, tamer, easier to ignore… which made other things grow louder – the pride she felt when Anne praised a drawing; the peace that settled over her when she knelt; the warmth that spread through her chest when she heard Anne’s car in the driveway, or when she hurried to her position by the door, and awaited for her Mistress to come home.
It was thanks to the exposure therapy Amy was finally able to perform the greeting ritual, which quickly became Amy’s favourite part of the day.
Ten minutes before Anne was due to arrive, Amy would kneel in the entryway, wearing nothing but her collar, proudly on display on her throat, on the present position Anne had first taught her.
Amy would breathe slowly, letting the anticipation build, letting her mind empty of everything except for the waiting, the wanting, the absolute certainty that Anne would walk through that door and find her exactly where she was supposed to be.
When the door opened, Amy would lower her eyes and say, “Good evening, Mistress. I hope your day was serene and productive. Your pet Amy welcomes you to your home.” Then… she would bend forward and kiss Anne’s left foot.
The first time she’d performed that ritual, she had blushed so hard she felt faint. The act had seemed absurd, degrading, even ridiculous – a grown woman, kissing another grown woman’s foot like a supplicant before a queen? Preposterous.
But that first time that Amy managed to perform the ritual without the crutch of the house robe, Anne’s hand had come down to stroke her hair, and she had said, “Good girl. I’m happy to be home.”
It was then that Amy understood.
The ritual was not about degradation at all.
It was about devotion.
It was a gift freely given and received with gratitude – A moment in time that said: I am yours. I have been waiting for you. You are the centre of my world.
By the end of the second week, Amy craved it like air.
On the sixteenth day, Anne took Amy to San Francisco.
“There’s an exhibition at the de Young,” Anne said over breakfast. “It’s about nineteenth-century French painting. I think you should see it.”
Amy could not say “Yes!” fast enough.
They drove down together, Anne’s blue Mercedes eating up the miles of Highway 101. Amy wore a simple cream sundress, with nothing underneath – Anne had forbidden her from wearing undergarments, so that Amy was acutely aware that she was not really dressed, but merely clothed. The collar stayed hidden beneath a white silk scarf.
Amy watched the landscape change from vineyard to suburb to city. She wiggled nervously, embarrassment and excitement vying for dominance over her emotional state.
When they got there, the museum was cool and quiet, its galleries hushed with the particular reverence that art demanded. Anne led Amy through the rooms, past Impressionist landscapes and portraits of socialites, until they reached a smaller gallery at the back.
“Here we are,” Anne said.
The paintings in this room were different. They all portrayed women in various stages of undress, lounging on divans, bathing in copper tubs, sleeping in rumpled beds, or surrounded by bolts of fantastic fabrics. The style ranged from classical to provocative, but they all shared a common quality: the women in those paintings seemed utterly at ease in their bodies.
Amy stood in front of one painting for a long time. It showed a woman reclining on a velvet chaise, her body turned toward the viewer, one arm draped behind her head. She was not thin – her belly curved softly, her thighs were full, and her cleavage suggested buxom breasts – but she was present in a way that made Amy’s breath catch. She inhabited her body completely. She had nothing to hide.
“This painting was made by Carolus-Duran in the 1870s. The model was probably a prostitute. In that era, only women of that profession would pose nude.”
“She looks so… peaceful…”
“She looks like she knows something, doesn’t she, mine?” Anne said as she moved to stand behind Amy, close enough that she could feel her Mistress’s warmth. “What do you think she knows?”
Amy considered. “That she’s beautiful?”
“Maybe. What else?”
“That… that her body isn’t something to be ashamed of. That it’s worthy of being seen. Worthy of being…” Amy searched for the word. After a short while, she said, “… celebrated.”
“Yes.” Anne’s hand came to rest on the small of Amy’s back. “That’s what I want you to know, pet. That’s what we’ve been working toward. Your body isn’t something to hide from. It’s something to honour, something to fully inhabit and offer completely, when, where and to whomever you choose, as the most beautiful of presents.”
Amy felt tears prick her eyes. She blinked them back, keeping her gaze on the painting.
“I’m doing my best, Mistress.”
“I know you are. And you’re making much progress.” Anne’s hand moved in slow circles. “The first time I asked you to draw yourself, you couldn’t look at yourself. Remember? You couldn’t sit still. You drew yourself like a punishment.”
“I remember.”
“This morning, you knelt for me without a trace of shame. You met my eyes. You smiled.” Anne leaned closer, her lips brushing Amy’s ear. “You’re becoming who you were meant to be, mine. It just takes time.”
That evening, back in St. Helena, Amy asked to draw Anne.
It was the first time she had asked for anything during her training. Before, Anne had directed, and Amy had followed. But the paintings at the museum had stirred something in the young woman, a hunger to create, to capture, to give something instead of only just receiving.
Anne considered the request. Then she smiled.
“Yes,” she said. “You may draw me.”
Anne sat on the armchair where Amy had first confronted her own reflection. Then, with a calm, gentle gesture, she loosened her robe, uncovering herself to Amy for the first time. The pose she chose was almost academic: hands on her lap, legs crossed, dark hair tumbling over one shoulder. The loose robe covered the more intimate parts but left everything else in view. Her expression was calm, imperious, utterly Anne – the physician, the Dominant, the woman who had pulled Amy from the wreckage of her life and offered her something better.
Amy drew for two hours, responding to the stunningly, hauntingly beautiful model posing for her.
She drew the lines at the corners of Anne’s eyes – lines of laughter, grief, and years lived fully. She drew the elegant bones of her face, the curve of her throat, the strength in her hands. She drew the way the lamplight cast a brighter cone across her skin, highlighting her face and casting a shadow beneath her collarbone; she carefully rendered the swell of her breasts, the hint of softness at her belly that spoke of age, comfort, and a body that had learned to accept itself.
When she finished, Amy was practically shaking with the fierce, bright energy of creative oestrus. She had drawn her first real nude.
“May I see?” Anne asked.
Amy handed over the sketchbook.
Anne looked at the drawing for a long time. Her expression shifted and her eyes moistened.
“Is this how you see me?” she asked.
“Yes, Mistress.”
Anne intently looked at the sketchbook, almost as if she were memorising every line and shade of that drawing. Then, she set the sketchbook down, walked up to Amy, and pulled her into a kiss so intense, deep and thorough that Amy forgot how to breathe.
“Thank you, pet,” Anne whispered against her lips. “This is the most beautiful gift anyone has ever given me.”
That night, Anne took Amy to bed.
It was not the first time by far, since they had been sleeping in the same bed since Amy moved in, their bodies curled around each other in the dark. But tonight was different. Tonight, Anne had purpose in her eyes.
“Lie down on your back, mine.”
Amy obeyed, her heart already quickening. She was naked, having grown finally comfortable with it, but this felt different.
Anne was looking at her with that clinical attention she usually reserved for patients once again.
“Tonight,” Anne said, settling beside her, “we begin a different kind of training.”
“Mistress?”
“You’ve learned to see and accept your body without reeling at its sight.”
Anne’s hand came to rest on Amy’s sternum, warm and still.
“Now, you need to learn to feel it. To understand what it wants, what it responds to, what makes it sing – and what leaves it silent.”
Amy swallowed. “I… I don’t know much about… I mean, I’ve touched myself, Mistress, b-but…”
“Shh.” Anne’s thumb traced a slow circle on Amy’s skin. “That’s why we’re doing this. I’m going to touch you everywhere, mine. And you’re going to tell me what you feel. Not what you think you should feel, or what you think I want to hear. I want the truth. Always, only the truth.”
“Yes, Mistress.”
Anne began with Amy’s face. Her fingertips traced Amy’s eyebrows, the bridge of her nose, the curve of her cheekbones. She was clinical and methodical about it, as if she was mapping unknown territory.
“How does this feel?”
“It feels… Nice. Gentle. It’s like… like being looked at, but with hands.”
Anne’s fingers moved to Amy’s lips, tracing the cupid’s bow and the fullness of the lower lip. Amy’s breath caught.
“And this?”
“More… more present. I can feel my heartbeat in my lips.”
“Good.” Anne’s hand drifted lower, to Amy’s throat, encircling it in a light, safe hold. “And this?”
Amy’s eyes fluttered closed. “I… that’s… that’s different.”
“Different how?”
“It makes me feel… s-small… a-and helpless… like… like you could do anything, a-and I couldn’t stop you.” Amy’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I… I l-like it.”
Anne filed that away. Her hand moved on, to Amy’s shoulders, her collarbones, the soft skin of her upper chest. She catalogued Amy’s responses: the slight shivers, the changes in breathing, the moments when Amy’s body leaned into the touch versus the moments when it merely accepted it.
“Your body is an instrument,” Anne said, her fingers circling Amy’s breast without touching the nipple. “Every part of it has its own voice. Some parts whisper. Some parts sing. And some parts…” Her thumb brushed across Amy’s nipple, and she gasped. “…some parts scream.”
“Mistress…”
“Tell me.”
“It’s… it’s like electricity. But not just there. It goes… down.”
“Where?”
Amy blushed, even now, even after weeks of mirror work and nude kneeling. “My… between my legs.”
“Say it properly, mine. You need to be able to name your own body.”
“I-it… g-goes… straight… s-straight d-down… t-to… to my… my p-pussy, Mistress.”
“Good girl.”
Anne’s fingers continued their slow exploration, mapping Amy’s ribs, belly, and the soft curve below her navel. She paused at the crease where Amy’s thigh met her hip. “This is one of the most sensitive places on a woman’s body. Most people don’t know that.”
She stroked along the crease, light as breath, and Amy whimpered.
“What do you feel, pet?”
“Like… like I want you to go further. But also like I want you to stay right there… f-forever…”
“That’s called anticipation, pet. It’s one of the most powerful tools in erotic play. The wanting. The waiting. The almost.” Anne’s fingers moved to Amy’s inner thigh, drawing slow spirals. “Sometimes the almost is better than the having.”
Amy was trembling now, her hands fisted in the sheets. “Mistress, I… I need…”
“What do you need?”
“Ah… I, M, Mistress… I… I don’t… I don’t know… I just… I feel like I’m about to… to fly… a-apart.”
Anne leaned down and pressed a kiss to Amy’s forehead. “That’s arousal, pet. Real arousal, not the quick, guilty kind you give yourself in the dark. This is what it feels like when someone takes their time with you. And it is how it should feel when you masturbate as well.”
She moved her hand away from Amy’s thigh, and even as she made a sound of protest Anne placed her hand flat on Amy’s belly.
“Now… I’m going to ask you some questions, and I want honest answers. Not what you think a good servant should say. I want what felt true to you.”
“Y-yes, Mistress.”
“When I touched your throat, did that frighten you, or excite you?”
“… B-both, Mistress. B-but it e-excited me… m-more…”
“When I touched your nipple, did it feel like it was too much, too little, or just right?”
Amy considered. “Maybe… a little too little, Mistress… I… I wanted… I needed… m-more.”
“A harder touch? Or more time?”
“Both, I think, Mistress.”
Anne nodded, storing the information. “What about your inner thigh? Did you want me to move inward, or were you content with where I was?”
“I wanted… I wanted you to … to… t-to touch my… m-my…. my p-p-pussy… But I was also scared.”
“Scared of what?”
Amy was quiet for a moment. “I… I was… S-scared of what I might feel. Scared of it being too much. Terrified about me being… y-you know… too… n-needy, too…” She struggled for the word. “…too h-h-hungry.”
Anne’s expression softened into the kindest smile. She said, in an infinitely soft, maternal tone, “Amy… Amy, Look at me, pet.”
Amy opened her eyes.
“Your hunger is not a flaw. It’s not something to be ashamed of. It’s a gift to yourself, and to whoever is fortunate enough to receive it.”
Anne’s hand moved up to cup Amy’s face. “I want you to be hungry. I want you to want things, and ask for them, and allow yourself to have them. That’s what this training is for. To make you whole.”
Amy felt tears prickle her eyes. “I… I d-don’t know how to want things, Mistress. I spent my whole life trying not to want.”
“I know, pet. That’s why we’re going slowly. That’s why tonight was about discovery, not satisfaction.” Anne kissed her gently. “We have time. We have all the time in the world.”
Afterwards, the women lay together, Amy’s head on Anne’s shoulder, Anne’s fingers tracing idle patterns on Amy’s arm.
“Mistress?”
“Yes, pet?”
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
Amy hesitated. “What… what do you like? What makes you feel the way I felt tonight?”
Anne was quiet for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was thoughtful.
“I like to be in control. That won’t surprise you. I like knowing that someone has given themselves to me, completely, without reservation.” Her fingers stilled. “But there’s more to it than that. I like… I like to shape a person. I enjoy taking someone apart slowly, learn what makes them weak on their legs, what makes them tremble and gasp, and then putting them back together in a way that makes them stronger. That’s what arouses me more than any touch.”
“So… tonight was… for you too?”
“Very much so.” Anne pressed a kiss to Amy’s hair. “Watching you learn your own body, hearing you name what you feel, seeing you starting to understand what you want? That was more erotic to me than anything we could have done with hands, mouths – or toys.”
Amy considered this. “So… your pleasure comes from my pleasure?”
“In part. But also, from the whole process of teaching and shaping you.” Anne’s voice dropped lower. “When you finally beg me to take you carnally, it won’t just be about the physical act of claiming you, mine. It will be about everything we’ve built to get there: every lesson, every discovery, and every moment of trust.”
Amy shivered. “I want that, Mistress. I want to be ready for you.”
“In time, you will be, pet.”
They lay in silence for a while, breathing together, heartbeats slowly synchronizing.
“Mistress?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you… for being patient with me.”
Anne’s arm tightened around her. “Thank you, Amy, for being worth the patience.”
The weeks settled into a steady, soothing rhythm.
Each morning, Amy woke before Anne and made coffee. She knelt, nude, to present it – a ritual Anne had instituted in the second week, one that Amy had grown to love. The cold floor against her knees, the warmth of the mug in her hands, the sleepy gratitude in Anne’s eyes as she accepted the offering.
Training came soon after coffee. Positions and protocols were reinforced daily – and there were also lessons about the thousand small rituals that structured a servant’s day.
Amy was a quick study, and Anne was a patient teacher. Gradually, what had once felt awkward became natural, instinctive, right.
After training, Anne would leave for her house calls, and Amy would have the day to herself.
She drew constantly. Her sketches included many subjects: the view from the windows, the flowers in Julia’s garden that Amy had begun, tentatively, to tend, and the cats that Anne had rescued: Shadow, a black tom with one torn ear, and Tiger, a marmalade tabby missing half her tail.
She drew herself, too, whenever the old shame whispered too loudly. She would set up the mirror and look, really look, until the whispers quieted.
She also started to “talk” to Julia.
It had started by accident.
Amy had been cleaning Anne’s closet, handling the garment bags with careful reverence, when she had found herself speaking aloud.
“I hope you don’t mind me being here,” she had said to the empty room. “I know I’m not you. I know I can never replace what you had with her. But I promise I’ll take care of her. I promise I’ll try to make her happy.”
There had been no answer, of course. Julia was dead, her ashes scattered in the valley she had loved. But Amy had felt something, a sense of having been heard.
After that, she “talked” to Julia more often. Not every day, but when the mood struck – particularly whenever she was uncertain, lonely, or overwhelmed by the strangeness of her new life.
“She misses you,” Amy said one afternoon, sitting cross-legged on the closet floor, the rosewood box in her lap. “She tries to hide it, but I can tell. Sometimes she looks at me, and I know she’s seeing you. I don’t mind. I think it means she has room in her heart for both of us.”
She traced the lid of the box with her fingertip.
“I hope I’m doing this right. I hope you’d approve. She says you would have liked me, but how could she know? You were you, and I’m just… me, an accidental waitress from a diner who didn’t know what she was until your Mistress showed her.”
A breeze came through the window, stirring the garment bags. Amy smiled.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
At the end of the third week, Anne sat Amy down for a conversation.
“We need to talk about your future, mine.”
Amy felt a flutter of panic. “Have I done something wrong, Mistress?”
“No. Quite the opposite.” Anne took her hand. “You’ve thrived here. Your drawings have become remarkable, and your service is impeccable. You’ve embraced your training with more grace than I could have hoped for.”
“Then… why…?”
“Because this isn’t enough for you.”
Anne’s voice was gentle but firm.
“You need more than just being my servant, Amy. You need something that’s yours. A purpose. A direction. A life outside these walls.”
“I have a life, Mistress. I… I have you!”
“And you always will have me, mine. But I’m forty-one years old, pet. I have a career, colleagues, and decades of experience to draw on. My life is complete.
“You’re twenty-four. You have your whole life ahead of you, and I won’t let you spend it just waiting for me to come home. It isn’t fair, and it doesn’t let you be your best you.”
Amy wanted to argue. She wanted to say that waiting for Anne to come home was all she needed, that serving her was enough, that she had never been happier than she was right now.
But deep down, Amy knew.
Anne was right.
She had felt it herself, in the early days – the restlessness, the doubt, the sense of being adrift…
Drawing had helped, giving her an occupation, but drawing for the sake of drawing wasn’t a future. It was… a distraction, a hobby, not a future.
“… W-what do you want me to do, Mistress?” she asked.
“I want you to think about going back to school.”
Amy blinked. “School?”
“Not necessarily to Berkeley. There are excellent art programmes closer to home – Sonoma State, UC Davis… heck, even Napa Valley College has a strong studio programme.”
Anne squeezed Amy’s hand.
“You have talent, Amy. Real talent. Without proper training, though, talent does not become anything. It stays cocooned as just… a potential. I want to help you become the best version of you.”
“Me… an artist?”
“Yes, if that’s what you want. Or you could be an art historian, a teacher, or something else entirely. That’s the whole point, mine. It has to be your choice, your path. I can support and guide you; I can even point you to what I think your path can be… but I can’t walk it for you, pet.”
Amy was quiet for a long moment. She thought about the sketchbook full of drawings, the hours spent in front of the mirror learning to see herself, and about those nudes she had seen at the museum, where the models seemed so utterly at home in their own skin.
“Can I think about it?” she asked.
“Of course. Take all the time you need.”
Amy thought about it for a week.
She researched programmes, read course catalogues, and looked at the work of artists she admired. She also “talked” to Julia about it, alone in the closet with the garment bags and the rosewood box.
“What do you think?” she asked. “Should I do it? Should I go back to school and try to be a real artist? Or is that just… ego? Would I be pretending I’m something I’m not?”
The garment bags rustled. A beam of sunlight fell across the floor, warming Amy’s bare feet.
“You’re not being helpful, you know,” Amy said, pouting, but then she smiled.
That night, she knelt before Anne and made her request.
“I… I want to apply to Sonoma State, Mistress. They have a studio art programme with a focus on drawing and painting. It’s only forty-five minutes from here, so I could commute. I could still be here to serve you, and… and still be yours. If you’ll allow it.”
Anne looked at her for a long time. Her expression was unreadable.
“You’re asking my permission?”
“Yes, Mistress.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re my Mistress. Because my life is yours to direct. Because I…” Amy faltered. “Because I need to know that you approve. That you want this for me. That it’s not just… running away.”
Anne reached out and touched Amy’s face. Her thumb traced the line of her cheekbone and the curve of her lip. Her eyes were moist with unshed tears.
“I’m so proud of you, pet,” she said softly. “You have no idea how proud I am.”
“Is that a yes, Mistress?”
Anne laughed as tears streamed from her eyes. It was a heartfelt laugh, warm and bright. “Yes, Amy. That’s a yes.”
“Then I guess that means I did a good job when I bookmarked the application page, Mistress?”
Anne’s laugh reverberated around the living room. “You little…”
“… Brat? Yes Mistress, your little brat, at your service!”
Amy squealed when Anne spanked her after that comment. She went on to squeal louder, and, the next day, she had a sore backside – and a big grin.
That night, the valley stretched without, dark and quiet under a sky full of stars. Within, two women held each other, breathing in unison, heartbeats slowly synchronising after another time spent exploring each other’s sensations.
Amy’s eyes were closed. The collar was warm against her throat, and her body still hummed with the echoes of Anne’s gentle touching. It still wasn’t sexual interplay, but the sessions took Amy to a heightened kind of awareness. She had become aware of her own body; and in ways she hadn’t known before.
She understood now what Anne meant about anticipation. About the “almost” being better than the “having.”
She wasn’t ready yet. But she was becoming ready.
And that, she was learning, was its own kind of pleasure.
In the morning, Amy woke before dawn.
She slipped out of bed, careful not to disturb Anne, who was still deeply asleep, and padded naked to the living room.
The day’s first light was just beginning to touch the hills, painting them in shades of rose and gold.
Amy set up her easel, and retrieved her sketchbook, pencils and charcoals.
Then… she drew.
The outline taking shape in the blank surface, though, was not hers or Anne’s.
It wasn’t a vista of the valley either; nor was it a sumi-e style drawing of their cats, or a sketch of the flowers once again blooming in Julia’s garden.
Amy drew a woman she had never met.
It was a woman with flowing red hair, sharp eyes, and a smile that suggested she knew secrets no one else did.
She drew her from imagination, Anne’s stories, the photographs on the mantle, and the love letters Amy had found, tucked away in a drawer, written in a hand that had been steady at first and hesitant and shaky toward the end.
She drew Julia.
When Anne woke and found her, Amy was crying as the drawing was being finished. Her quiet, silent tears fell onto the paper, smudging the charcoal and adding their own marks to the portrait.
Anne stopped dead in her tracks and looked at the drawing for a long time, tears filling her eyes with renewed grief – and solace.
“Oh… Amy…” she softly said, her voice breaking with emotion. “You’ve captured her perfectly.”
Amy jumped and turned, nearly ruining the drawing in the process.
“Mistress! I… f-forgive me, you startled me…”
Anne walked over to where Amy was. Her eyes were shiny with unshed tears.
“May I see it?” she asked.
“O-of course, Mistress, it… it’s for you, after all.”
As Anne observed Amy’s rendition of Julia, she rushed to explain herself. “I… I wanted you to have… something from me… Something that showed… I… I understand.”
When Anne finished looking at Julia’s drawing, her smile was unlike any that the young woman had ever seen adorn her Mistress’s face.
Without a word, Anne came close and pulled Amy into a tight, loving, maternal, heartfelt hug. They stood together like that for a long while in the morning light, three women, two living and one remembered, bound together by love, loss and the stubborn human insistence on connection.
Amy did not hear Anne cry; but she felt the warmth of tears drip on her skin. When Anne finally let her go, her eyes were puffy and red, and her visage was at the same time a mask of happiness, grief, and closure.
“Julia would be so pleased, pet. I… I am so thankful for this gift. I will treasure it.”
And somewhere, Amy was certain, Julia was smiling.
Chapter Eight: The Ceremony
Autumn had deepened into winter, and winter had softened into the first, tentative stirrings of spring.
Amy remarked the change of season in small ways: the gradually shifting angle of the light flooding the studio windows at Sonoma State, the shift from bare branches to budding green along the commute from St. Helena, and the gradual warming of the earth in what she had come to think of as Julia’s garden.
She had planted bulbs there in November, kneeling in the cold soil with dirt under her fingernails, Anne watching from the kitchen window, cradling a mug of hot tea. Now, in late February, the first crocuses were pushing through, small, defiant sparks of purple, white and gold, against the lingering chill.
It had been six months since the night when Anne had fastened Julia’s consideration collar around Amy’s throat.
In some ways, it felt as if no time had passed between then and now; in others, it felt like a lifetime ago – as if that girl who had been serving pancakes, eggs and hash browns at Marge’s Diner was a character in a novel Amy had read, a fictional person Amy understood, but could never inhabit.
School was starting its second semester now. The studio art programme at Sonoma State was rigorous in ways Amy hadn’t anticipated, demanding not just technical skill but also a willingness to be seen, to put her inner self on canvas and have it scrutinised by professors and peers alike.
It was terrifying.
It was exhilarating.
It was, Amy was discovering, exactly what she needed.
Just last week, Professor Chen had said, “Your line work has gotten even more confident, Miss Castillo,” speaking as he studied Amy’s latest figure drawing – a woman reclining on a chaise, her body rendered in bold charcoal strokes that captured weight and presence without apology. “You’re not reacting to the form at all. You’re responding to it.”
Amy had ducked her head, embarrassment and pleasure flushing her cheeks, and thought of Anne. She remembered the hours spent in front of mirrors, learning to look. She remembered all the body acceptance work that had seemed impossible at first and now felt as natural as breathing.
Yes.
She wasn’t reacting to the human form anymore. She was responding to it, thanks to Anne, who had pushed her to see she needed to stop responding and start reacting.
Anne noticed the change too.
She noticed it in the way Amy moved through the house now, without the nervous self-consciousness that had characterised her first weeks of service. She noticed it in the way Amy held herself during their evening rituals – back straight, shoulders relaxed, chin level, as if kneeling were simply another way of standing. She noticed it in the drawings that accumulated in Amy’s sketchbook, images that had progressed from tentative landscapes to bold studies of the human form, including several of Anne herself that made her breath catch whenever she looked at them.
But most of all, Anne noticed it in Amy’s eyes.
The uncertainty was gone. In its place was something steadier, something that met Anne’s gaze without flinching and held it with quiet assurance. It was the look of someone who knew who she was and had chosen, deliberately and without reservation, to be exactly that.
It was the look of a servant ready to become a slave.
Anne had been watching for it, waiting for it, the way a physician watches for the signs that tell her a patient has turned a corner. She had learned, in her years within the lifestyle, that this moment could not be rushed. A collar given too early was a burden; a collar given at the right time was a benediction.
The right time, she was beginning to believe, was now.
The goldsmith’s workshop was in a converted barn outside Healdsburg, down a winding road that seemed designed to discourage casual visitors.
Anne had found him through channels that predated her relationship with Julia – a network of artisans who understood that some commissions required discretion and others required something more: an understanding of what the object being created would mean to the people who would wear and bestow it.
Marcus Webb was in his sixties, with silver hair pulled back in a ponytail and hands that bore the scars of four decades working with precious metals. His workshop smelled of solder and flux and the particular mineral tang of metal being shaped by fire.
“Dr. Marquez! How good to see you again, darling.”
He rose from his workbench as Anne entered, wiping his hands on a leather apron. “It’s been a long time, Anne”
“Too long, Marcus.” Anne clasped his offered hand. “I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner. After Julia…”
“I understood. We all did.” Marcus’s eyes were kind. “Grief has its own timeline. It doesn’t care about social niceties.”
“Yes, it doesn’t.”
He gestured to a stool near his bench, and Anne sat, watching as he returned to his work – a delicate filigree bracelet that seemed to be assembling itself under his fingers.
“You’re here about a collar,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
“Am I that transparent, Marcus?”
“Now that you mention it, yes.”
Both laughed good-naturedly.
“You’re right, though. I am here about a collar.”
“For the young lady who wears Julia’s consideration collar?”
Anne wasn’t surprised that he knew. Marcus had made Julia’s permanent collar, fifteen years ago. He had also cut a segment from it after Julia’s death, reshaping the metal sliver into a small pendant that now hung on a chain in Anne’s jewellery box – a keepsake she could wear close to her heart without the weight of the full collar’s meaning.
“Yes. Her name is Amy,” Anne said. “She’s… she’s ready.”
Marcus set down his tools and turned to face her fully. “Are you?”
The question landed with the precision of a surgical instrument. Anne felt it probe at something tender, something she had thought healed but which still ached when pressed.
“I am,” she said, and found, as she said it, that it was true. “I’ve been ready for a while now. I guess… I was just waiting for her to catch up.”
“Riiiight.” Marcus teased as he smiled, poking gentle fun at Anne’s notorious stubbornness.
“Tell me about her.”
Anne talked for nearly an hour. She described Amy’s journey from unconscious submissive to confident servant, her struggles with her family, her artistic awakening, her growing ease in her own skin. She described the way Amy knelt now, the way she served, the way she looked at Anne with eyes that held no doubt.
She described, without quite meaning to, the way Amy had drawn Julia from nothing but photographs and love letters, and how that drawing now hung in Anne’s study, a gift that had healed something Anne hadn’t known was still broken.
When she finished, Marcus was quiet for a long moment.
“Yellow gold will be a good metal for her,” he said finally. “It’ll be warm against her skin, and it’ll not be hard to pass the collar off as a choker. I think the most appropriate design for her is a flat band, perhaps three-eighths of an inch wide, with a subtle bevel on the edges so it sits comfortably.”
“I like that idea. Make it not completely snug too. Give it a little give, enough that she can slip a finger or two between the collar and her neck. Hygiene, you know.”
“Good point. And the engraving?”
Anne had thought about this. She had considered elaborate inscriptions, symbols, dates. But in the end, the answer had been simple.
“The engraving has to be discrete, Marcus. She goes to college, so it’ll have to be small, so that only someone in close proximity to her can see it. It should simply read Amy – Anne Marquez’s Slave. And on the clasp, an infinity symbol.”
Marcus nodded slowly. “It will take three weeks. Perhaps four. I don’t rush this kind of work.”
“I don’t want you to.”
“And the ceremony? Have you decided how you want to do it?”
Anne had been thinking about this too. The lifestyle community she had once been part of expected certain things – formal ceremonies at established venues, witnesses from the community, protocols observed and traditions honoured. Julia’s collaring had been at the Twin Roses, surrounded by friends and fellow practitioners, a public declaration of private commitment.
But Amy was not Julia. Their relationship was not the same. And Anne, after two years of solitude and six months of rebuilding, was not the same woman who had stood in that club twenty years ago, trembling with the weight of what she was about to do.
“I’d like it small, Marcus. Small… and private. It can be at my home, with people who matter.”
She thought of the names, counting them on her fingers. “Thomas and Evelyn – they’ve known me since before Julia. Michael, if he can travel from Seattle. You, of course; and…” She hesitated. “And Master Roger, if he’s willing and still amongst us. I… lost touch with him.”
“Roger? Oh, he’s still around, alright. He’s semi-retired now, but still as sharp and smart as ever.” Anne smiled faintly hearing Marcus say so. She said, “he’s the one who… who saved me, who made me who I am. I’d like him to… to see what I’ve become, thanks to him.”
“I’ll reach out,” Marcus said. “We’ve kept in touch over the years. He speaks of you often, you know. His greatest success, he calls you.”
Anne felt her eyes sting. “I… I didn’t know that.”
“He’s a private man. But he is proud of you, Anne. Very proud.”
The weeks that followed were strange ones.
Anne had decided not to tell Amy about the collar. It was, she knew, a calculated choice – submission thrived on structure and certainty, and surprising a servant with something this significant could be destabilising. But there was a difference between a surprise and a revelation, and Anne wanted this to be the latter: a moment when Amy would look back and see that everything had been leading here, that the path had been clear all along even if she hadn’t been able to see it.
So, Anne continued their routines, rituals, quiet evenings and intimate mornings. She continued to train Amy, pushing her, praising her when she exceeded expectations and correcting her when she fell short.
She watched Amy drive off to school each morning, and welcomed her home each evening, holding the secret of what was coming like a coal in her chest, warm, bright, and waiting to ignite.
Amy noticed something, of course. By now, she was much too attuned to Anne’s moods for her not to notice.
“You’re different lately, Mistress,” she said one evening as she comfortably sat at Anne’s feet, legs tucked under her body, while Anne read through medical journals. “Not in a bad way, though. Just… different.”
“Different how?”
Amy considered the question, her fingers tracing idle patterns on Anne’s ankle. “Lighter, maybe? Like you’re looking forward to something.”
“Perhaps I am.”
“Will you tell me what it is?”
“When the time is right.”
“That is very ‘International Man of Mystery,’ Mistress.”
“I’ve been told I might have a flair for the… dramatic.”
“I would not know, Mistress, I have not seen you perform,” Amy said with a complicit smile, accepting Anne’s caginess.
“Yes, you have, mine. Or… should I remind you what happens to your cheeks when you give me cheek?”
Six months ago, she would have pressed for information, worried, and spun anxious narratives about what Anne might be hiding. Now? she simply trusted Anne and giggled at the humorous innuendo.
It was, Anne thought, the most beautiful thing she had ever witnessed: trust, freely given, without conditions or reservations.
Soon, mine, she promised silently. Very soon.
The collar arrived on a Thursday afternoon in late March.
Marcus delivered it himself, driving up from Healdsburg in his battered pickup truck, the precious cargo secured in a leather case that he handed to Anne with the solemnity of a priest presenting a chalice.
“It’s some of my best work,” he said. “I think Julia would have approved.”
Anne opened the case, and the world stopped.
The collar lay on black velvet, gleaming in the afternoon light. It was exactly as she had imagined: a band of warm yellow gold, simple and elegant, with a concealed hinge on one side and a small, precise clasp on the other. The metal had been polished to a mirror finish, and when Anne lifted it, it caught the light and threw golden reflections across the walls.
She turned it counterclockwise. On the front, towards the right, Marcus’s careful engraving had etched Amy – Anne Marquez’s Slave in lettering small enough that one had to be within kissing distance to read them well. On the clasp, the infinity symbol was neatly etched into the metal as well, about as large as the lettering was.
“It’s perfect,” she breathed.
“There’s something else.” Marcus reached into his pocket and withdrew a smaller box. “A matching piece for you.”
Anne opened the box. Inside was a ring made from the same warm metal as the collar, with the infinity symbol engraved on the outside and, on the inside, words that made her heart stop.
Anne Marquez – Amy’s Mistress.
“Marcus…”
“The collar binds her to you,” he said quietly. “This binds you to her. Ownership goes both ways, Anne. You taught me that, years ago, when you commissioned Julia’s collar. I thought you might want to remember that.”
Anne slipped the ring onto her finger. It fit perfectly, as if it had been made for her – which, of course, it had.
“Thank you,” she said. “For everything.”
“Thank me by being happy. That’s all the payment I need.”
The ceremony was set for a Saturday evening in early April.
Amy knew something was happening. Anne had told her that much – she had instructed her to keep the evening free, to prepare herself as she would for a formal occasion, and to trust that what was coming was good. But she hadn’t told her what, and Amy hadn’t asked.
The day itself dawned clear and warm, one of those California spring days that felt like a promise of summer. Amy spent the morning at the house, tidying rooms that were already immaculate, arranging flowers freshly picked from Julia’s garden in vases throughout the first floor.
Anne had gone out early, running mysterious errands that she refused to explain, and wouldn’t return until late in the afternoon.
Impatient, nervous, and worried, Amy sifted through her clothes, trying to choose one that would be fitting for a formal occasion, flattered her form, revealed enough to be sexy without being overly slutty, and allowed her freedom of movement for when she served. She settled at last for a simple, white, above-the-knee pencil dress that let her shoulders and upper chest bare, showing just the right amount of cleavage. At her feet, a pair of strappy high heel sandals that went well with the dress.
As usual, she wore nothing under the outfit. It had become her default way to clothe herself, even when she went to class. The only exception to this rule was when she was having her cycle, or when Anne told her to be dressed.
The training collar starkly contrasted with the candid garment. Amy brushed it with her fingertips. By now, it had become a trusty addition to her neck, one she had grown to love.
At about 3 PM, Amy went down. She had been told to expect guests starting at that time, so she waited, and waited, and waited.
As she paced back and forth along the living room, she did not notice a soft knock on the door and, when she did not answer, the slight creak it made when opened.
“You’re going to wear a groove in the floor,” said a voice from the doorway.
“Ah!”
Amy turned, startled. A calm, strong man in his mid-sixties stood at the threshold, with close-cropped grey hair and the compact, economical build of someone who had maintained discipline over his body for decades.
He wore an impeccably tailored, simple black suit, and carried himself with the quiet authority of someone who had never needed to raise his voice to be obeyed.
“Forgive me, Sir” Amy said, kneeling to present at once, her servant’s instincts surfacing immediately. “I didn’t hear you come in. How may I serve?”
The man’s smile was slight but warm, crinkling the corners of eyes that seemed to catalogue everything they saw. “It’s been a long time since anyone called me Sir. I’m Roger. Roger Fukuyama. Anne’s…”
“You’re Anne’s Master,” Amy breathed, recognising the name at once.
“Yes. I was her Master,” Roger corrected gently. “That was a long time ago, though. Now… I’m just a man who wanted to see what his best student has been up to.”
He moved into the room with the easy grace of someone entirely comfortable in his own skin. “You must be Amy.”
“Yes, Sir.” Roger made a slight upward sign with a hand. Amy immediately stood up and went close to him.
“She talks about you all the time when she calls me, you know,” Roger said as his gaze inspected Amy with a thoroughness and care that only comes to someone who had spent a lifetime reading people.
“For two years after Julia, she didn’t call at all. Grief, when unresolved, can be more deadly than the worst illness. I thought I’d lost her.” He stopped in front of Amy, crouched, and his expression softened. “Then, six weeks ago, she called. And… she was alive again, Because of you. How glad I am she found someone who helped her come out of her bereavement cocoon. How glad I am that she found you.”
Amy felt tears threatening. “I… I didn’t do anything, Sir. She saved me, not the other way around.”
“That’s how it works, when it works well.” Roger reached out and touched the consideration collar at Amy’s throat – Julia’s collar, worn smooth by months of constant contact. “You save each other. That’s the whole point.”
The others arrived as the sun began its descent toward the western hills.
Thomas came first, a broad-shouldered Black man in his late fifties with a shaved head and a laugh that seemed to start somewhere around his belly and work its way up. He had been Anne’s first friend in the lifestyle, she would later learn – a fellow newcomer at a munch in San Francisco thirty years ago, both of them too nervous to speak to anyone until they’d found each other by the punch bowl. He swept Amy into a hug before she could offer her hand.
“So, you’re the one,” he said, holding her at arm’s length to look at her. “Anne said you were special. She undersold it.”
“Thomas, stop overwhelming the poor girl.” Evelyn appeared behind him, a willowy woman with silver-streaked auburn hair and the kind of bone structure that suggested she had been devastating in her youth and had only grown more striking with age. Where Thomas was warmth and volume, Evelyn was precision and poise. “You’ll have plenty of time to interrogate her later.”
“I wasn’t interrogating. I was appreciating.”
“You were being a puppy,” Evelyn said. She then kissed Amy’s cheek, her perfume something subtle and expensive. “Don’t mind him, dear. He gets excited.” She pressed a small package into Amy’s hands – a box wrapped in deep blue velvet, tied with silver ribbon. “For later. A gift from the community. From those of us who remember what it means to kneel for the first time and mean it forever.”
Marcus was next, wearing a clean, black leather jacket, dark blue jeans, old, well worn combat boots, and a soft smile that softened even more when he saw the company gathered there. Roger and him soon went off to a side, catching up, drinking whisky on ice, and reminiscing.
The last to arrive was Michael – tall, quiet, with the weathered handsomeness of someone who spent more time outdoors than in. He had flown in from Seattle, and there was something careful in the way he moved through the house, as if he were navigating a space full of memories.
He stopped at the mantle, looking at the photographs there, showing Anne and Julia at various ages, in various places, always with that particular energy between them that spoke of a connection deeper than the photographs could capture.
Amy met and greeted all the people who had gathered, then found a place near Julia’s photos, close to Michael.
“Julia… talked a lot about Anne during those last months, when she knew she was dying.” His voice was quiet, meant only for Amy. “She wasn’t afraid for herself. She was afraid for Anne, and of what would happen to her when she was gone.” He turned, finally, and his eyes were bright with unshed tears. “She’d be… so glad to know Anne found you.”
Amy didn’t know what to say. She reached out and touched his arm, and Michael covered her hand with his own.
“Take care of her,” he said. “That’s all any of us want. Just… take care of her.”
“I will,” Amy promised. “I swear I will.”
Finally, Anne came home.
She came through the front door as the last light was painting the valley in shades of amber and rose, and Amy’s breath caught at the sight of her. She wore deep burgundy dress, simple in cut but devastating in effect, and her dark hair was swept up to reveal the elegant line of her neck. She moved through the room greeting her guests, and accepting their embraces, but her eyes always kept returning to Amy.
“Come with me,” Anne said finally, extending her hand. “It’s time.”
“Time for what, Mistress?”
This time, Anne’s caginess was gone. Anne said, “It is time for you to take your place, mine.”
Amy’s legs almost buckled under her. The pieces fell together all of a sudden in her mind, and the weight of what Anne was about to do sank in Amy’s heart.
Anne was about to give her a slave’s collar. The last one she’d ever wear. Trembling, she said, “I… it will be my honour to take it, Mistress.”
The ceremony took place in the dining room, with the windows thrown open to the spring evening and the scent of jasmine drifting in from the garden.
Anne had arranged the space with care: candles on every surface, casting warm, flickering light; chairs arranged in a loose semicircle for the witnesses; and, at the centre, a single cushion where Amy would kneel.
Leaning to Amy, she said, “Are you ready, my girl?”
“As ready as I will ever be, Mistress.”
Roger had agreed to officiate, his voice carrying the weight of decades as he spoke the traditional words – questions of intent, declarations of commitment, the formal language of the lifestyle given shape and gravity by his presence.
“Anne Marquez,” he said, “do you come here freely, without coercion, to claim this woman as your slave?”
“I do, Master.”
“Do you understand the weight of what you undertake? The responsibility of absolute ownership, the duty of care and protection, the commitment to guide and nurture and discipline as needed?”
“I understand, Master.”
“And do you swear, before these witnesses and whatever powers you acknowledge, that you will honour this bond as sacred, maintaining it with integrity until such time as it is dissolved by mutual consent or the absence of one of you two?”
“I swear it, Master.”
Roger then turned to Amy.
“Amy Castillo, do you come here freely, without coercion, to surrender yourself to this woman as her slave?”
Amy’s voice was steady. “I do, Master.”
“Do you understand that you are surrendering your body, your will, and your service into your Mistress’s keeping, to be shaped and directed according to her wisdom?”
“I understand, Master.”
“And do you swear, before these witnesses and whatever powers you acknowledge, that you will honour this bond as sacred, serving with devotion and obedience until such time as it is dissolved by mutual consent or the absence of one of you two?”
“I swear it, Master.”
Roger nodded slowly. “Let the slave’s collar be presented.”
Anne stepped forward, and in her hands was a leather case that Amy had never seen before. She opened it, and Amy’s breath left her entirely.
In it, a collar gleamed in reflections that reminisced a summer dawn, warm under the candlelight, simple, perfect and unmistakably permanent. This was not a leather strap that could be unbuckled. The solid grace of the metal circlet that would embrace Amy’s throat, and stay there, was a statement that none could question or challenge without consequence.
“This collar,” Anne said, her voice thick with emotion, “was made for you, Amy. It carries your name, and mine, and a promise that will bind us together for as long as we both shall live.” She moved closer, Roger holding the collar case between them like an offering. “Amy… I ask you one last time… Are you certain? Once this collar closes, there is no going back. You will be my slave – wholly, completely, irrevocably mine. Is this what your heart wants?”
Amy looked at the collar, then at Anne. She thought about the girl she had been six months ago – lost, uncertain, waiting for something she couldn’t name. She thought about the woman she had become, confident, and most importantly, purposeful.
“Yes, Mistress,” she said. “This… is everything my heart wants.”
Anne reached for Julia’s consideration collar – the leather strap that had been the first tangible proof of Amy’s path to a new life. Her fingers found the clasp, and she paused.
“Thank you,” Anne said softly, speaking to the collar, to the woman who had worn it first. “Thank you for letting me borrow it. Thank you for leading me to her.”
She removed the collar and set it aside with reverence. Amy’s neck felt strange without it, bare and vulnerable, and she shivered in the warm evening air.
Then Anne brought the gold collar to Amy’s throat.
The metal was startlingly cool at first against Amy’s warm skin. She shivered a little, starting to realise how final this act was.
Anne positioned the collar carefully, the concealed hinge on the left side, the clasp on the right, and then, with a soft, precise click, it was locked.
The sound was quiet, but it echoed through Amy like a thunderclap.
The collar was neither tight nor loose. It fit perfectly, as if it had been designed around the exact measurements of her neck, which, Amy realised, it had been. The gold band warmed quickly against her skin, taking on her body heat until it felt less like something worn and more like something grown, an extension of herself that had always been there, waiting to be revealed.
Amy reached up to touch it, fingers tracing the smooth metal, finding the slight ridge where the clasp had sealed, and the slight groove of the engraving on the collar.
“There is no key, mine,” Anne said. Then, with a grin, she says. “No, there is a key – it is my heart.” She then took Amy’s hand and pressed something into her palm.
“And this… is for you.”
Amy looked down. It was a ring, made of the same material as her collar, with an infinity symbol engraved on the outside, the same that was on the collar’s clasp..
“Look inside,” Anne said.
Amy turned the ring toward the candlelight and read:
Anne Marquez – Amy’s Mistress.
The tears came then, hot and unstoppable, streaming down Amy’s face as she understood what Anne was saying. This was not just an act of taking ownership, but of affirming that Anne belonged with Amy just as much as Amy belonged with Anne.
The ring meant so much more than possession. it meant commitment.
The collar marked Amy as Anne’s slave – but the ring marked Anne as Amy’s Mistress, binding both of them together, surely, permanently.
“Will you put it on me, mine?” Anne asked, her own voice unsteady.
Amy’s hands trembled as she took Anne’s left hand and slipped the ring onto her finger. It fit perfectly, of course. Marcus had made sure of that.
“By the authority invested in me by tradition and trust,” Roger said, his voice carrying the words with the gravity they deserved, “I declare this bond sealed. Amy Castillo is now and forevermore the slave of Anne Marquez. May their bond bring them joy, growth, and the peace that comes from knowing one’s place in the world.”
The witnesses applauded softly, but Amy barely heard them. She was looking at Anne, at the tears on her Mistress’s cheeks, at the ring gleaming on her finger, at the love in her dark eyes.
“Hello, Mine,” Anne said softly.
“Hello, my Mistress,” Amy whispered back. “I… I am home.”
The formal part of the evening had ended, and the gathering had melded into a gathering of old friends with glasses in hand, their voices overlapping, enjoying the evening with the particular ease that came from years of shared history and understanding.
Amy stood by the window, still touching her collar every few seconds as if to confirm it was real. The gold was warm now, indistinguishable from her own skin temperature, and yet she couldn’t stop reaching for it and feel the engraving.
All of a sudden, she caught Anne out of the corner of her eye, discretely waving. When Amy beheld her from across the room, Anne… winked.
It was such a small, playful, conspiratorial gesture that Amy giggled, discretely covering her mouth.
This woman, who had just claimed her as property with solemn words and metal, who had slipped a ring onto her own finger in declaration of mutual belonging, was winking at her like a schoolgirl with a secret. She even put a finger to her lips!
Then Anne began to move.
She drifted through the small gathering with apparent aimlessness, making small talk with all. With Michael first, reminiscing about their mutual absent friend; then pausing to touch Thomas’s arm, and murmur something that made him smile. But Amy, watching, saw the trajectory and spotted Anne’s mark.
Master Roger stood with his back to the room, deep in conversation with Evelyn about something that required emphatic hand gestures on her part. He didn’t see Anne approaching. He didn’t see her grin sharpen into something mischievous.
He didn’t see her hand drift toward his jacket pocket in a gesture so theatrical it belonged in a silent film.
But he felt it.
Roger’s hand came down and caught Anne’s wrist – an interception so casual it spoke of decades of practice. He didn’t even break his conversation with Evelyn. He simply held Anne’s wrist a few more moments and turned her to face him.
“Anne…” His voice carried the particular weight of a Master addressing a former charge. “… Do you remember what happened last time you tried to pilfer something from me?”
Anne’s expression was utterly unrepentant. “I was your slave for five years, Master – and that saved me.”
“Well, don’t pilfer from me… or I will have to punish you again.”
“I quake in fear, Master.” Anne pressed a hand to her chest in mock terror. “What could you possibly do to little old me?”
Roger opened his mouth, closed it, and then burst in a warm and heartfelt guffaw. Everybody else, who had turned to watch Anne’s shenanigans, was laughing heartily as well.
“You’re right, damn it. I can’t do anything to you anymore.” His eyes crinkled with affection as he glanced past Anne to where Amy stood watching. “Besides, having Amy as your charge is punishment enough.”
“Hey,” Amy said, before she could stop herself.
The room turned to look at her. For a moment, Amy felt the old panic rise – she had spoken out of turn, she had interrupted, she had —
But everyone was smiling – and laughing. Even Evelyn, whom Amy had found slightly terrifying.
“She has spirit, Anne,” Roger observed. Then, to Amy, he said, “I like your attitude, child. You’ll need it, too. Your Mistress is…” He searched for the word.
“Incorrigible?” Evelyn supplied.
“I was going to say relentless, but… Yeah. Incorrigible and relentless. A real pest, in short.”
“I heard that!” said a very heartily smiling Anne. She then crossed back to Amy and slipped an arm around her waist. “Don’t listen to them, mine,” she whispered. “They’re just jealous.”
“Of what?” Amy asked.
Anne pressed a kiss to her temple. “Of how lucky I am.”
Later, after the guests had departed with embraces and well-wishes, after the candles had burned low and the spring night had deepened into darkness, Anne led Amy to their bedroom.
“How does it feel?” Anne asked, her fingers tracing the collar that would now never leave Amy’s throat.
“Like it was always there,” Amy said. “Like I was born with it and just didn’t know.”
Anne kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her lips. “I have one more gift for you. Close your eyes.”
Amy obeyed. She heard Anne move across the room, heard a drawer open and close, heard footsteps returning.
“Open them.”
Anne stood before her, holding a frame. Inside the frame was a drawing – Amy’s drawing, the portrait of Julia she had made on that morning months ago, now matted and preserved behind glass.
“I want to hang it here, in our bedroom,” Anne said. “So that she can see us and be part of this, even now.” She met Amy’s eyes. “Is that all right?”
Amy thought about Julia. About the woman who had loved Anne first, who had served her and challenged her and made her who she was. About the ghost who had haunted this house and who had, somehow, made room for Amy to belong here too.
“Yes, Mistress,” she said. “That’s perfect.”
Anne hung the portrait on the wall opposite the bed, where the morning light would touch it first. Then she turned back to Amy, her expression shifting into something deeper, something hungry.
“My slave,” Anne said, and the word was different now – not a term of endearment but a statement of fact, a truth written in gold around Amy’s throat. “My beautiful, perfect, owned slave.”
“Yours, Mistress. Completely yours.”
Anne pulled her close. The collar pressed between them, warm metal against warm skin, and Amy felt herself dissolving into the embrace, into the certainty of belonging, into the peace she had spent her whole life searching for without knowing it.
With a naughty smile, Amy said, “Does this mean I get a nicer doghouse now, my beloved, kleptomaniac Mistress?”
Anne’s laugh came from the heart, loud and sincere.
“You… you… you impossible creature!”
“Yes, Mistress – but not just an impossible creature. I am your impossible creature.”
Outside, the valley lay quiet under a sky full of stars. Inside, two women held each other, bound together by gold and promises and the stubborn human insistence on connection.
Chapter Nine: The Claiming
Amy woke to the weight of metal on her throat.
For a moment, suspended in the mental fog between sleep and wakefulness, she didn’t understand what had changed.
The bedroom was the same; the morning light slanted through the windows, and the valley stretched in green and gold beyond the glass, while the soft warmth of Anne’s body curved against her back. Everything was familiar, everything was right.
Then her fingers found the collar, and the *memory* of the previous night flooded back – the ceremony, the vows, the click of metal sealing around her throat like the physical form of a promise kept.
The collar had enough space around her neck to allow her to gently play with it by hooking a finger around it.
And when she came close to the mirror, she could read the engraving.
The words moved through her like a current, settling into her bones.
This was real.
She was no longer Anne’s servant under consideration.
She was Anne’s property now – wholly, completely, irrevocably owned, and the gold band, warming against her pulse, was definitive proof of that.
Amy kept tracing the smooth metal with her fingertips, feeling the slight ridge where the clasp had sealed. There was no escaping it.
“You’re thinking very loudly, mine,” Anne murmured against her shoulder.
“Forgive me, Mistress. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t, Amy.” Anne’s arm tightened around her waist. “I’ve been awake for a while, watching you sleep.” Her lips brushed the back of Amy’s neck, just above where the collar sat. “And I was watching the collar catch the morning light. My collar, on my slave.”
The possessive weight in those words sent a shiver through Amy that had nothing to do with the morning chill.
Anne let her words decant a few minutes, then asked, “How does it feel, now that you’ve slept with it, mine? How do you feel, now that your wish became *real*?”
Amy considered the question. The leather collar had felt like a question, a possibility, a door held open. This felt different. This felt like an answer.
“It… It feels… like I’ve always been wearing it, Mistress,” said Amy softly. “Like… like it was always there, waiting for me to grow into it.”
Anne pressed a kiss to her shoulder.
“Good. Because if you ever want it off… there is no way to do it, other than cutting it off of your cold, dead body, or a 6-hour surgery.”
“I know, Mistress.” Amy turned in Anne’s arms, facing her. In the morning light, Anne’s dark eyes were soft, unguarded. “I… I don’t ever want to wish your collar removed.”
They had breakfast on the patio, looking out over Julia’s garden.
The crocuses had given way to tulips now, and the first roses were beginning to bud on the trellis Anne had built years ago. Amy sat in her silk robe, bare underneath, the collar catching the sunlight every time she moved. Anne watched her over the rim of her coffee cup. Amy knew at once that her Mistress was plotting something.
“I want to take you somewhere today, mine,” Anne said.
“Where to, Mistress?”
“I want to go with you to Bodega Bay. There’s a restaurant there I used to visit with Julia. I’d like to share it with you.” Anne set down her cup. “But first… I have some instructions for you.”
Amy felt herself straighten, her body responding to the shift in Anne’s tone before her mind had fully registered it.
“You’re going to go upstairs and have a shower,” Anne said. “Then, you’re going to clothe yourself with that cute, new, white blouse and mid-thigh skirt outfit you bought a couple of weeks ago.” Her eyes held Amy’s. “Remember, mine. Clothed, not dressed.”
Amy’s breath caught. “Yes, Mistress.”
“Oh, and Amy?” Anne’s voice stopped her at the door. “Leave the scarf today. The collar stays visible.”
The drive to Bodega Bay took them down Highway 101, through Petaluma and into the rolling hills that led to the coast.
Anne had chosen to use the BMW convertible for the trip – the soft-top she almost never drove, the one that had sat in the garage gathering dust for years.
Today, however, with the top down and the spring air rushing over them, using the convertible felt like a declaration: this is a day for new things.
Amy sat in the passenger seat, acutely aware of her body in ways she had never been before. The thin cotton of her clothing was the only thing between her skin and the world.
The leather seat’s warmth against the back of her thighs, the blouse’s slight sheerness, and every shift of her hips reminded Amy of the fact that she was wearing nothing under her garments, and anyone who looked a little closely would notice it.
And Anne’s collar sat bright and unmistakable against Amy’s throat, catching the midmorning light and reflecting it back like a shiny beacon.
Ten minutes into the drive, Anne’s hand left the steering wheel and came to rest on Amy’s thigh.
“Spread your legs, mine.”
Amy obeyed and parted her knees. Anne’s hand slid to rest on Amy’s thigh, then moved to caress along it, lower, then higher, the fingertips tracing lazy patterns on the soft skin of her inner thigh.
“Does it excite you to be displayed like this, mine?” Anne asked, her eyes still on the road.
“Yes, Mistress.” Amy’s voice was barely a whisper.
“Tell me what you’re feeling.”
“I… I f-feel… exposed.” Amy swallowed, catching her breath, feeling her pulse beat rapidly against the collar. “A-anyone looking down from a lorry could see your hand on me, and… and realise…. that I’m… that I’m your slave, Mistress.”
“It excites you.” Anne’s words were not a question.
“…Y-yes, Mistress. It… it does.” Amy’s confession sounded like a capitulation.
Anne smiled – that small, knowing smile that always made Amy’s stomach flip.
She said, “As it should be, mine. You were made for this, Amy. You were made to be seen, to be shown, to be owned.” Her hand slid higher still, fingertips brushing the crease where thigh met hip. “You… were made to be mine.”
A lorry rumbled past, its cabin high enough that the driver could have looked down and seen Anne’s hand disappearing beneath Amy’s skirt, her flushed cheeks, and the gold circlet gleaming at the young woman’s throat.
Amy didn’t know if he looked. She didn’t care. All she knew was the heat building between her legs, and the steady certainty of Anne’s touch.
“M… Mistress? P-please… “
“Yes, mine?”
“P-please… a-angh… I, I… mnn… I n-need…”
“I… know… what you need, my slave,” said Anne as her hand withdrew, and Amy almost sobbed at the loss of that erotically charged contact. “But… not yet. We have somewhere to be first.”
They stopped for petrol in Petaluma.
Anne pulled into the station and turned off the engine. She reached into her purse and took out from it an expensive-looking tube of crushed cherry coloured lipstick.
“Put this on,” she said. “Then, go inside and pay for twenty dollars on pump three.”
Amy took the lipstick with trembling fingers. “Y-yes, Mistress.” As she painted her lips with a light coat of that intensely coloured lip gloss, Anne said in her slave’s ear, “By the way… the hem of your skirt is too low.”
Before Amy could respond, Anne reached over and gathered the skirt up, like Japanese schoolgirls do, folding the waistband down and pulling up the skirt until the hem rested right at the curve of Amy’s buttocks.
“Theeere,” Anne said, satisfaction warming her voice. “Much better.”
Amy’s cheeks had gone from milky white to rose-coloured pink to light red as Anne fixed her outfit. She then looked at her slave and, brushing a fingertip along the young woman’s jawline, said, in a soft, tantalising whisper, “you’re so pretty when you blush… mine.”
Amy’s face felt as if it was burning as she stepped out of the car. The morning air was cool against her bare thighs and the exposed curve of her bottom that the shortened skirt barely managed to conceal. She could *feel* the weight of eyes on her as she walked across the forecourt. Whether those eyes on her were real or imagined, she couldn’t tell – and, in honesty, she no longer cared.
It no longer was her place to care.
The collar at her throat, unblocked by the scarf she usually wore; the skirt that exposed more than it concealed; and the dew already making her slick at her most intimate, everything conspired against Amy to incredibly arouse and embarrass her at the same time.
It was infuriating.
It was also making her… horny.
Inside the convenience store, Amy stood at the counter, hyperaware of every inch of exposed skin. The clerk – a younger woman with dyed black hair, tattoos and piercings on her ears, eyebrows and nose septum – glanced at her as she rang up the gas, and softly said “cute cosplay” with a shy smile, but the man browsing the crisps aisle looked intently at her.
Amy saw his eyes travel from her legs to her throat, saw them catch on the gold circlet around her neck, and the small furrow of confusion as he tried to understand what he was seeing.
Amy’s eyes caught the man’s discomfort and she heard a soft, frustrated grunt coming from him. A thought came, unbidden, and it surprised her with its fierceness.
That’s right, I’m dressed like a slutty Japanese schoolgirl, mate. Someone made me put this on and fixed my skirt to make me look even sluttier. I’m mortified, I’m dripping… and I… don’t care. Because I belong to that someone. Because I belong to her.
Amy paid for the petrol and, as she walked back to the car, she noticed the man adjusting himself.
She had aroused him to discomfort!
Amy suddenly had a naughty thought.
With the slightest smile, battling her raging embarrassment, she walked right past him.
She could hear him grunt in frustration as she did.
When she slid back into the passenger seat, her thighs were dewy and her heart pounding.
“Good girl,” Anne said, and the praise washed through Amy like sunlight. “You did beautifully.”
Amy blushed crimson and told Anne everything that had happened in the store.
“You… naughty tart…” said Anne, impressed. “That… that was brilliant. How did you feel, mine?”
“M-mortally embarrassed, Mistress…. a-and also… um… utterly aroused.”
Anne smiled enigmatically, then said, “We’ll just have to do something about it later, then, no?”
“Y-y-yes, Mistress.”
“Good.”
They ate lunch at a table by the window. Anne had fish chowder and soft-shell crab, whilst Amy chose steamed littlenecks and grilled bluefish, all washed down with a crisp, mineral white wine that tasted like the sea.
Anne had let Amy fix her skirt before they went in, but the collar remained visible, drawing occasional glances from other diners that Amy pretended not to notice.
“Julia loved this place,” Anne said, looking out at the waves. “We used to come here on our anniversary. She said the view made her feel small in all the right ways.”
“I can see why, Mistress. I feel the same.”
Amy reached across the table and touched Anne’s hand – the one that now wore a gold ring on its fourth finger. “Thank you for sharing it with me.”
“Thank you for being someone worth sharing it with.”
Anne lightly held Amy’s hand over hers.
“I wasn’t sure I’d ever bring anyone else here. For a long time, I thought this place belonged to her – to us, to what we’d been.” She paused. “But being with you taught me something, Amy.
“Grief and love aren’t opposites. Making room for someone new in your life doesn’t mean betraying what came before.”
“I think Julia knew that, Anne,” Amy said softly. “I think she’d be glad.”
“I think so too.” Anne squeezed her hand. “I know so.”
The drive home was different.
Anne had given Amy a gift before they left the restaurant – a small velvet box that contained something that made Amy’s breath catch.
It was a silvery egg, smooth and cool, attached to a slim remote.
“This little thing goes inside you, mine,” Anne had said, matter-of-factly. “It’ll be a way to remind you about… anticipation.
“You are going to hold it inside your pussy for the drive home, and I will control when it pulses and when it stops. You mustn’t orgasm. Is that clear, mine?”
Amy’s face ignited in embarrassment.
“Y-y-yes… Yes, Mistress.”
Now, forty minutes into the drive back, Amy was positively damp.
The egg had hummed and vibrated inside her in unpredictable patterns during the drive back. Sometimes it was a steady, low vibration that made her squirm in frustration against the leather seat; other times she had felt sharp pulses that took her breath away and almost caused her to fail her order not to orgasm; and sometimes there was nothing at all, just the maddening awareness of it being *there*, inside Amy, lurking.
Everything was made worse by the fact that, whilst the drive out had been smooth, the drive back was anything but, snarled by droves of day trippers and tourists returning to their abodes or hotels.
Anne confronted the gridlock with patience, with one hand on the wheel and the other on the remote, watching the road with apparent calm while Amy fell apart beside her.
“Mistress… please…” Amy gasped, pleading, after a particularly intense burst. “I… I can’t…”
“You can.” Anne’s voice was steady. “You can, and you will, because I say so, because you’re mine.”
“I… Yes, Mistress, I am,” Amy whimpered. “I am yours, Mistress, but please…”
“Not yet.” Anne’s thumb moved on the remote, and the vibration dropped to a barely-there hum. “Soon. But not yet.”
By the time they pulled into the driveway in St. Helena, Amy was shaking, her thighs were slick with her dew, and her mind awash in a fog of desperate need. Anne turned off the engine and sat for a moment, studying her.
“You did well,” she said finally. “You pleased me.”
“… T-t-thank… you… Mn… M-m-mistress…” The words came out broken and tight out of Amy’s mouth.
“Now…” Anne said as soon as she opened Amy’s door. “Go to our bedroom, strip, and lie on the bed, on your back. Wait for me. Don’t touch yourself.”
Amy rushed upstairs to obey her.
The bedroom was cool and dim, the curtains drawn against the late afternoon sun.
Amy quickly took off her clothing and went to lay on the bed as instructed.
Her skirt and blouse lay on the ground, forgotten by the urgency the girl was feeling. The egg still hummed inside her.
Amy stared at the ceiling and at Julia’s portrait, watching from the opposite wall, and tried to remember how to breathe.
The egg suddenly stopped.
Amy heard Anne’s footsteps in the hall outside the bedroom, then the creak of a drawer opening and the soft clink of something being lifted and examined.
Then Anne was in the doorway, and Amy’s breath stopped entirely.
Her Mistress had changed. She wore a black silk robe, loosely tied around her waist, and, in her hands, she held something Amy had never seen before.
It was a harness made out of supple leather.
Cradled within it, there was a deep burgundy shaft, smooth, and curved, and unmistakable in its purpose.
“I’m going to take you now, mine.”
Anne said that with a soft, low voice.
“I’ve been waiting to take you since the day you first knelt at my feet, mine. Today, we fulfil that.”
She moved to the edge of the bed.
“Your body belongs to me, Amy. Every part of it. I intend to take possession of it, including the parts no one has ever touched.”
Amy felt tears prick her eyes. This moment felt right. This moment was right.
She whispered, “Yes, Mistress.”
“I’m going to be gentle this time,” Anne said as she sat beside her, one hand coming to rest on Amy’s stomach. “Because I know it’s your first time, because I love you, and because you deserve to be cherished, even when I’m using my tart like she richly deserves – especially after that naughtiness she did with some rando at a petrol station on the way to lunch with her Mistress.”
Anne’s hand slid lower. Their fingers intertwined.
“Yes, Mistress.” Amy’s voice was a whisper, and her cheeks felt positively nuclear as they came together. “Please. I want… I want all of me to belong to you Mistress. Please, Mistress… I… I… I beg you … p-p-please… take me. Please… f-f-fuck… me…”
Anne leaned down and kissed her – deep and slow and thorough, a kiss that said mine in every movement. When she pulled back, her eyes were dark with something that made Amy’s heart flutter.
And Anne showed Amy what it felt to be utterly taken.
Later, Anne asked, “How do you feel, love?” as her fingers traced the gold collar, both basking in the gentle daze of afterglow.
Amy considered the question. She thought about the girl she had been eight months ago, that waitress at Marge’s Diner, the one who said “Miss” without knowing why, the one who had never understood the hunger that lived in her own bones.
That girl was gone.
In her place was a woman.
To be sure, in many aspects, this new Amy was still quite girlish in her demeanour and manners; but the fulfilment, completeness, and maturity of her being today was much richer, beautiful, and cherished than she’d ever been.
“I feel…” Amy searched for the word. “I feel completed, Love. And I wonder how I was even functioning before. It’s like… Like everything I was before was… sketches of myself.”
Anne pressed a kiss to Amy’s forehead.
“You’ve grown a lot; and learned many things, Amy. It’s natural that you feel like that.”
“Anne, my love, my Mistress, don’t deny yourself the credit due to you. You took me under your wing and taught me to find myself. You unmade me, and remade me, as a stronger, better, more aware version of me. You… truly, truly saved me, Anne. And don’t say I also saved you, love. I know you too well. Saving me saved you.”
Outside, the sun was setting over the valley, painting the sky in shades of rose and gold. Inside, two women held each other, bound by metal and promises and the stubborn human need to belong.
Julia’s portrait watched from the wall, her painted eyes soft with something that in a living person might have been approval; and somewhere in the quiet of Anne’s heart – in the place where Julia’s voice had once argued, teased, and pushed – there was the silence of acceptance.
Thank you, Anne thought, though she wasn’t sure anymore whom was she thanking.
A new voice was starting to finish Anne’s thoughts – and it had Amy’s name in it.
Chapter Ten: The Peer
Spring bloomed into the warm embrace of summer, and summer settled into the first chills of autumn.
Amy’s days had taken on a shape and cadence that she could not have imagined a year ago. She usually woke at six, unless the previous night Mistress had plucked Amy, or disciplined her, for reasons sometimes apparent only to herself; then, she did not leave bed until seven. She slipped out of bed while Anne still slept, and padded nude to the kitchen to start the morning coffee. By the time Anne emerged, still dishevelled by the night’s sleep, her hair loose on her shoulders, and a robe loosely girdled at her waist, Amy would be already kneeling at present in the living room, having already readied a tray holding Anne’s favourite mug and a pot full of freshly brewed coffee. This was Amy’s favourite time for sketching, taking advantage of the morning light slanting through the windows.
“Good morning, Mistress.”
“Good morning, mine.”
The words were both convivial and ritual now, massaged to tender familiarity by repetition, and yet… their utterance never lost its weight. Every morning, Amy felt the gold collar warm against her throat, and the particular peace that came from knowing exactly where she belonged.
Tuesdays and Thursdays, she drove to Sonoma State.
The commute had become its own kind of meditation – forty-five minutes each way through the wine country, past vineyards that shifted with the seasons and the small towns and tasting rooms that dotted Highway 12.
Amy had learned to love that drive, the way it framed her days, giving her time to transition between her two selves: on one hand, the art student who debated colour theory with Professor Chen and argued about composition with her classmates; and on the other, the slave who knelt at Anne’s feet and found her truth in service and surrender.
She had learned to dress around her collar for school, using high-necked blouses and scarves in winter, or strategically draped necklaces that drew the eye away from the gold band at her throat.
Most people never noticed. Those who did, usually assumed it was a fashion statement.
But sometimes, someone looked closer.
It happened on a Thursday in late September.
Amy was in the campus coffee shop, waiting for her latte, scrolling through her phone. The barista called her name, and she stepped forward to collect her drink – and found herself face to face with a woman she vaguely recognized from her Figure Drawing II class. She was a tall, dark-haired, slender young woman, with an undercut hairstyle, botanical tattoo sleeves that Amy had admired from across the studio, and a cute, leather bracelet intertwined with silver strands. Today she was wearing a cardigan, covering her beautiful tattoo sleeves.
“Hey,” the woman said. “Amy, right? I’m Dani. We’re in Chen’s class together.”
“Oh! Hi!” Amy smiled, tucking her phone away. “Your gesture drawings are incredible, by the way. The one you did last week, of the model in contrapposto? – the line quality was… insane!”
Dani’s face lit up. “Thanks! I’ve been working on loosening up my wrist.” She rotated her hand as she said it, and the cardigan sleeve hiked up a bit. Amy caught a glimpse of fading, tightly parallel lines on the inside of her forearm, marks that signalled that the young woman’s flesh had been tightly tied with rope restraints – and then released. “… Chen keeps telling me I’m too controlled.” She smiled, a little embarrassed, then tilted her head, her eyes drifting down to Amy’s throat.
The world suddenly slowed down to a crawl.
The scarf she’d worn that morning had slipped loose. The collar was visible – not entirely, but enough. The gold caught the light from the window, unmistakable.
“T-that’s beautiful,” Dani said. “Is… is that… bespoke?”
Amy’s heart hammered. A year ago – heck, six months ago! – this moment would have sent her spiralling into a panic. She would have made excuses, adjusted her scarf, and done her best to change the subject entirely. She would have felt the shame her mother had tried to instil in her, the fear of being seen as different, as a deviant, as wrong. But she wasn’t that girl anymore – and her mother no longer existed, as far as she was concerned.
“Uh… y-yes,” Amy said. Her voice faltered a little, but steadied almost at once. “It was made for me by a goldsmith in Healdsburg.” Amy felt her cheeks warm as a light flush spread through them.
Dani’s eyebrows rose slightly. Amy could almost see the cogs in the other woman’s mind grinding, processing what she saw – the size of the metal band, the way in which the “choker” sat flush against Amy’s skin, the fact that there was no visible clasp.
“Is that… permanent?” Dani asked, her voice suddenly softening to a slightly conspiratorial tone that hinted recognition.
“…Yes, it’s there for good.”
There was a fluttering moment of silence. Then, silently, Dani’s hand moved in an unconscious gesture, peeling her cardigan’s left sleeve up a little and revealing the slim leather band she always wore, half-hidden beneath the cuff.
Amy could finally see the bracelet up close. The silver thread held both sides of the bracelet fast, and the ring threaded through the place where a clasp would normally be.
Oh.
Dani lightly blushed, and smiled, and the affection in the other woman’s eyes transformed her face.
“Good for you,” she said simply. “It suits you so well.”
“Y-yours too,” Amy said, before she could stop herself.
Dani’s smile widened. “Her name’s Margot. Perhaps we should all get dinner sometime.”
“I’ll tell Anne, and if she allows it… it’s a date.”
Amy felt relief expanding in her chest, and suddenly realised she hadn’t even known she had been holding herself stiff – until then. Her mind also just now registered the fact that they had been already introduced to each other by a common thread that linked them both – the thread of service.
The relief she was feeling now, spreading through all of her, did not come from having been seen without judgment.
It came from the realisation that she was not alone.
There were other people her own age navigating this same lifestyle, balancing school and service, hiding in plain sight like a secret society.
“I… I’d like that,” Amy said softly. “I’d really like that.”
“Then give me your number. I’ll text you.”
They exchanged numbers, and then Dani collected her drink and walked away with a wave. Amy stood there, the latte warming her hands, feeling the weight of what had just happened.
She had been seen. Truly seen. She had not hidden.
And she had found, unexpectedly, a friend – and a fellow slave.
That evening, she told Anne everything.
“She’s owned too,” Amy said, her head resting in Anne’s lap as Anne’s fingers gently combed through her hair. “Her collar is a leather bracelet on her wrist, with a ring through it and silver thread woven through. There were fading rope marks on her arm as well. I could see them clearly enough. She has a Mistress named Margot.”
“Margot…” Anne’s hand stilled for a moment, thoughtful. “The name is not familiar to me. She’s probably not part of the community I know.”
“Maybe she’s a newcomer? Or perhaps she has a different circle?”
Amy shifted slightly, looking up at Anne’s face.
“Also, um, Dani wants us to have dinner together. All four of us.”
“Does she now.” Anne said, her voice warm with amusement. “And how do you feel about that?”
“Terrified,” Amy admitted. “And… excited? I’ve never had a friend who… who knows and lives our life. It’s… um… it’s refreshing to have someone with whom I don’t have to…”
“… to show performative normalcy to,” said Anne, completing Amy’s thoughts as if she had read her slave’s mind.
“Yes… yes, Mistress, exactly that.” Amy turned her face into Anne’s thigh, breathing in her familiar scent, made of sandalwood, cotton, the lingering freshness of the Hermès perfume she loved to use, and at the end the faint trace of the handmade lavender soap they both washed with. “With Dani, I didn’t have to explain anything. She just… saw, and understood. And I saw and understood her, too.”
Anne’s fingers resumed their gentle motion through Amy’s hair. “It’s a rare thing to find someone your own age who is in this lifestyle.”
“… Mistress? Is it okay?” then, more intimately, Amy said, “… Is it okay that I want this, Anne?”
“More than okay, mine.” Anne pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “It means you’re building your own life, with your own people, not just borrowing mine, Amy.”
“I like your people too, Mistress. Master Roger, and Evelyn, and…”
“I know you do, and they adore you.” Anne’s voice softened. “But they’re part of my generation, love. You deserve friends who walk the same path you are on at the same time. You need peers, Amy, not just elders.”
Amy was quiet for a moment, feeling the truth of it settle into her bones – and marvelling at how close her Mistress’s thoughts cleaved to her own.
“So… dinner?”
Anne laughed. “Absolutely, mine. Set it up. I’m curious to meet this Margot.”
The dinner happened two weeks later, at a small Italian restaurant in Petaluma that Margot had suggested – neutral ground, she’d said.
Amy spent an hour getting ready, cycling through three outfits before Anne finally intervened.
“Put on the burgundy dress, mine,” Anne said, watching from the doorway with undisguised amusement. “Combine it with the pearl earrings. And stop fussing – you look beautiful.”
“What if they don’t like me? What if Margot thinks I’m too young, or… or too new, or…”
“Then we’ll have a pleasant meal and never see them again.” Anne crossed the room and took Amy’s face in her hands. “But I don’t think that’s going to happen. Dani saw you, mine. She saw something worth knowing. Trust her judgment.”
Amy took a breath. “Yes, Mistress.”
“Good girl. Now finish getting dressed. We leave in twenty minutes.”
Amy’s heart jumped. She was being told to get dressed, not clothed.
Margot was not what Amy had expected.
She’d imagined someone like Anne – a polished, controlled woman, with the particular stillness she knew so well in her Mistress and that she now automatically linked to a seasoned Dominant. Instead, the woman who rose to greet them was warm and animated, with laugh lines around her eyes and silver streaking through her dark curls. She wore jeans and a blazer over a slightly sheer balconette top, wore simple gold studs on her ears, and, when she laughed, her whole face participated.
“Anne, Amy, I’m so glad to meet you both.” She clasped Anne’s hand first, then Amy’s, her grip firm and sincere. “I’ve heard so much about you, Amy. Dani hasn’t stopped talking about you since the coffee shop.”
“Mistress…” Dani’s voice carried a note of fond warning. “You promised…”
“I promised not to embarrass you. I said nothing about not embarrassing myself.” Margot pulled out a chair for Dani with an ease that spoke of long practice. “Please, sit. I’ve already ordered wine – I hope you don’t mind. I’ve been told the Barbera here is exceptional.”
Neither Anne nor Amy minded.
The first hour was careful, threaded with the standards of polite conversation – how long had they been together, how did they meet, and so on. Amy learned that Margot was a psychotherapist with a specialisation in alternative relationships, that she and Dani had met at a munch in Santa Rosa two years ago, and that Dani had been the one to approach her.
“I saw her across the room,” Dani said, her fingers absently tracing the leather band at her wrist, “and I just… knew. I walked up to her and said, ‘I think you’re supposed to be mine.’”
“Bold move,” Anne observed, one eyebrow raised.
“A ridiculous one,” Margot said, but her eyes were soft. “She was twenty-two. I was forty-six. I told her she was out of her mind.”
“And then?”
“And then she stalked me. Somehow, she kept showing up wherever I went. I saw her at munches, at workshops, at the coffee shop where I got my morning espresso…”
“Hey…” Dani said, feigning hurt.
Margot grinned and teasingly smiled, then with a wry, complicit grin she said, “What could I do? She wore me down.”
“I prefer to think of it as persistence,” Dani said primly.
Amy felt something loosen in her chest. This was familiar – the gentle teasing, the obvious devotion beneath the banter. It was how she and Anne were, when they forgot to be formal.
“Amy was the one who approached me, too,” Anne said, and Amy startled.
Now it was Amy’s turn to say “Hey…”
Anne just grinned and gave her a playful wink.
“I – I didn’t…”
“You said ‘Miss.’” Anne’s hand found hers under the table. “That first day, at the diner. You called me ‘Miss,’ and you had no idea what you were doing, and I couldn’t stop thinking about you for weeks.”
“That’s not approaching,” Amy protested, her cheeks warming. “That’s just… being polite.”
“It’s recognition,” Margot said quietly. “Sometimes, the soul sees what the mind hasn’t quite caught up to yet.”
The second hour was easier. The wine helped to loosen the tongues and lighten the mood, but it was more than that. It was the relief that came from being in the company of people to whom nothing needed to be explained or justified. When Dani mentioned that Margot had her on a new training protocol, no one blinked. When Anne casually referenced Amy’s morning kneeling practice, Margot nodded in recognition.
“We do something similar,” she said. “Though Dani’s routine is in the evenings. She needs the transition time at the end of the day.”
“I process the day when I kneel,” Dani explained. “It’s my way of letting it go. By the time I rise, I’ve left everything I need to leave behind outside our door.”
Amy thought about her own morning ritual – making Anne’s coffee, the kneeling meditation, the sketches she drew in her pad every morning. She realised then that the ritual centred her, so she could face the day ahead and its multiple chances to scatter her again.
“It’s like… resetting,” she said slowly. “Coming back to what’s true.”
Dani met her eyes across the table and smiled. “Exactly.”
The conversation drifted to training philosophies – differences between their households, how their protocols compared, and how different places saw power exchange in different ways. Margot spoke about her approach and how it had been shaped by her years on the East Coast.
“The New York scene is so different from here,” she said, refilling her wine glass. “It’s way more intense, in some ways. And the European scene is a completely different thing, too. I spent time in London and Berlin, learning from people who’d been in the lifestyle for decades, and I was lost in the complexities of their rituals. Shibari, though…” Her eyes softened. “I learned it in New York, from a rigger who’d trained in Tokyo. That changed everything for me. Once you go rope… you don’t go back.”
Amy noticed Dani’s fingers drift unconsciously to her forearm, where the fading rope marks lay hidden beneath her cardigan.
“It’s a different language,” Margot continued. “Rope speaks directly to the body. There’s no room for the mind to interfere.”
“Do you do suspension?” Anne asked, and something in her voice made Amy look at her with curiosity.
“Seldom. Dani prefers floor work – she likes to be held down rather than lifted up. But suspension…” Margot smiled. “There’s nothing quite like it. It’s about the complete surrender of weight. When done right… it’s as if gravity became irrelevant.”
Anne’s face did something Amy couldn’t quite read. A quickly controlled wince of both pain and longing that came and went before anyone but Amy noticed.
“Yes,” Anne said quietly. “I know.”
Amy filed that away, uncertain about what it meant.
“You’ve worked with suspension before,” Margot said. It was not a question, and the tone of her voice showed her interest was clearly piqued.
“A long time ago. With…” Anne paused. “With my Julia. She… she loved to fly.”
The table went still for a moment. Amy reached under the table, found Anne’s hand, and gently squeezed. Margot’s expression shifted to one of empathic understanding.
“Was she your partner?” Margot said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.” Anne’s voice was steady, but Amy could feel the slight tension in her fingers. “… She was… everything to me. We were together fifteen years.”
“Fifteen years…” Margot nodded slowly. “That’s a significant bond.” She paused, seeming to weigh something. “I was with my first Mistress for six years. She taught me everything I know about this life, and I still think of my service with her rather fondly, I must say. I can’t even begin to imagine how fifteen years of partnership feels.”
Anne looked up, curious. “Who was she? Perhaps I know her – the community here is small.”
“Evelyn,” Margot said. “Evelyn Rourke.”
Anne’s hand went very still in Amy’s.
“Evelyn!?” she repeated. “You were Evelyn’s?”
“You know her!?”
“She’s… she’s practically family! She was at Julia’s collaring, and she was at Amy’s collaring too. She and Roger have been part of my life since… since prehistory, give or take an aeon or two.” Anne shook her head slowly. “This world of ours is too small.”
Margot laughed, delighted. “It is, isn’t it? I reconnected with her when I moved back to the West Coast. She mentioned she had a friend who was going through a difficult time, who’d lost her partner. I didn’t realize until now that she was talking about you.”
“She never mentioned your name either.”
“She wouldn’t. Evelyn is… discreet.”
“Pathologically so.” Anne’s voice warmed with affection. “Do you remember what she used to say when someone was being impatient?”
Margot’s eyes lit up with recognition. “‘You’re being…’”
“‘… ‘a puppy,’” they said together, and both burst into laughter.
Amy watched, astonished, as Anne transformed. The careful reserve she always carried in public melted away. She saw Anne becoming younger, lighter. The interaction with Margot was not one between strangers – it was almost like a meeting of siblings.
“She said that to me all the time,” Margot said, wiping her eyes. “Every time I wanted to skip ahead in my training, she’d smack my butt and say, ‘You’re being a puppy, Margot. Puppies don’t get to run before they can walk.’”
“She said it to me too. When I was Roger’s, before I became who I am now.” Anne shook her head, marvelling. “This is going to sound odd, but… to me, it feels as if you and I are sisters, Margot.”
“It does seem that way, doesn’t it?”
The two Mistresses looked at each other with new eyes, and Amy felt the world shift. There was recognition between Margot and Anne, the same kind of recognition that had happened between Dani and herself.
Dani looked at Amy. Amy looked at Dani. Both looked at their Mistresses.
“… We’re in trouble now,” Dani murmured.
“… The best kind of trouble,” Amy whispered back. Both girls shared a conspiratorial smile.
Margot and Anne looked at their girls, and both grinned.
“We should do this more often,” Margot said. “Not just for the girls. For us, too.”
“Yes,” Anne agreed. “I think we should.”
After dinner, they walked to a nearby park, the autumn air crisp and clear. Margot and Anne had fallen into easy conversation now, comparing notes on Evelyn’s training methods, sharing stories Amy and Dani had never heard. Amy found herself trailing behind Anne, walking beside Dani. Both watched their Mistresses walk ahead, bantering and exchanging jokes and innuendo like old friends.
“Did you know about Anne’s connection to Evelyn?”
“Not specifically. But I knew Margot had history here. That’s part of why she wanted to come back – to reconnect with her roots.” Dani smiled. “I didn’t expect them to click like this, though. Look at them.”
Amy looked. Anne was gesturing as she spoke, more animated than Amy usually saw her in public. Margot was laughing at something, her hand briefly touching Anne’s arm.
Anne had told Amy, you need peers, not just elders. Watching Anne now, animated and laughing with Margot, Amy understood what her Mistress was talking about – and realised that it went both ways. Anne had Roger and Evelyn, yes – but they were the generation above hers, the teachers, the roots. Margot was Anne’s age. They related with each other, like branches from the same tree.
“So,” Dani said, her voice shifting. “What do you think?”
“I think…” Amy paused, searching for the right words. “I think I didn’t know how much I needed to connect with someone my age who gets it.”
“Me too.” Dani bumped her shoulder gently. “The community’s great, but everyone’s so much older. It’s nice to have someone to text when your Mistress is being impossible and you need to vent.”
Amy laughed. “Is Margot impossible?”
“Frequently so. Lovingly so. Impossibly so.” Dani’s smile was fond. “Yours?”
“The same.” Both girls giggled. Amy then glanced ahead to where Anne was walking, her hands moving as she spoke, that particular animation she got when she was engaged.
“I wouldn’t have her any other way, though.”
“Good answer,” Dani said.
They walked in comfortable silence for a moment. Then Dani said, “I think we should hang out. You could come over sometime, you know. Margot makes an amazing paella, and we have a hot tub.”
“I’d like that.” Amy meant it. “I’d really like that.”
Ahead of them, Anne turned. She had taken off her high heel sandals, and was walking barefoot on the grass, holding them in one finger by the ankle straps. Her eyes found Amy’s across the distance, then she smiled that particular smile that she saved just for Amy and held out her hand.
“Come, mine. It’s getting late.”
Amy and Dani went to join their Mistresses. Amy hugged Dani and curtsied to Margot. Both Dominants warmly hugged, with promises to keep in touch. Amy then went to her Mistress’s side, and Anne’s arm wrapped around her shoulders, warm and sure. Both couples went their separate ways.
“I like them,” Anne murmured as they walked toward the car.
“So do I, Mistress.”
“Good. Then I am sure that we’ll see them again.”
They did see them again. And again. And again.
What had started as a single dinner became a rhythm – monthly gatherings that rotated between houses. Sometimes the evenings were formal, with Margot’s paella and Anne’s wine pairings; sometimes they sprawled across living room floors with takeaway containers and conversations that stretched past midnight.
Anne and Margot discovered they had more in common than their shared lineage through Evelyn. They argued about the same frustrations with their professions – the insurance bureaucracies, the patients who wouldn’t take their medications, the particular exhaustion of holding space for other people’s pain. After the second glass of wine, they discovered they had the same dark, dry sense of humour about it all.
Amy and Dani became inseparable.
Between lectures, they met for coffee. In the library, they studied side by side, their sketchbooks open, critiquing each other’s work with the particular honesty that came from genuine respect. Amy learned that Dani’s sumi-e training made her impatient with overworking; Dani learned that Amy’s classical foundation made her terrified of empty space.
They also discovered they shared a love for Anselm Kiefer.
This was ridiculous, on the face of it. Both of them drew delicately – Amy had classical, Western training, while Dani’s art was heavily influenced by Japanese sumi-e – and yet… they were both obsessed with an artist who built enormous pieces in lead, straw and ash that weighed a thousand pounds, ponderous monuments to chaos, devastation, and what rises from it.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Amy said one afternoon. They were sprawled on the floor of Dani’s apartment, the latest issue of the Arts Newspaper spread between them, cups of cold tea forgotten on the coffee table. “We draw like air. Why do we love work that’s made of lead?”
“Maybe that’s exactly why.” Dani traced her finger over the image of one of Kiefer’s monumental pieces. “We live in delicacy. We love what we can’t be.”
Amy thought about that. She thought about the collar at her throat, light as a breath. About the ropes that held Dani down, precise and careful. About the way they both lived in structures of control – and how they were drawn to art that looked like the aftermath of an explosion.
“This retrospective is opening soon at the SFMOMA,” Dani said, pointing to the ad she was fingering.
Amy leaned closer to look, and her hand brushed Dani’s on the newsprint.
They both went still.
Amy looked at Dani. Dani looked at Amy. The air between them suddenly became charged with a possibility that hadn’t been there a moment before.
Dani blushed. A real blush, starting at her cheeks and spreading down her neck – visible even through her tan.
Amy felt her own cheeks warming in response.
This was different from the coffee shop, from the dinner, from all the casual touches they’d exchanged over the past weeks. This was… awareness. The sudden, startling recognition that they were two women, alone, and that something more than friendship was humming between them.
“Dani…” Amy started, not sure what she was going to say.
Then… Dani kissed her.
It was a soft, tentative kiss, a question rather than a statement. Amy’s breath caught… and then she was kissing back, gently, lightly, her hand coming up to cup Dani’s face, feeling the warmth of her skin, and the slight tremble in her jaw.
When they broke apart, both of them were breathing harder than they should have been, and their cheeks were both redder than they should be.
“I…” Dani’s voice was unsteady. “I should probably ask permission before… you know…”
“… Yeah… me too.” Amy laughed, a little shakily. “We should both… probably ask…”
They looked at each other. And then they were both laughing, the tension breaking into something lighter.
“We should go together to the opening,” Amy said.
“Like… a date?”
“Like a date, if they allow it,” Amy said, biting her lip.
“I’ll ask Margot tonight.”
“I’ll ask Anne.”
They looked at each other again, and Amy felt affection stirring within her. It wasn’t replacing what she had with Anne. Rather, it felt like a flower blossoming alongside what was already there. The same kind of intimacy, but different.
“I… should probably go… before we do anything else that requires, y’know, permission…”
Dani laughed. “… You’re probably right.” The wink she exchanged with Amy was completely conspiratorial.
At the door, Dani caught her hand. “Amy… whatever happens… I’m glad we found each other. Even if this is all it ever is.”
“Me too.” Amy squeezed her fingers. “But I hope it’s not.”
Anne said yes.
She said it simply, without hesitation, as if Amy had asked for something obvious rather than permission to take another woman on a date.
“Margot and I discussed this possibility,” Anne said. They were in bed, Amy curled against her side, the conversation happening in the dark where hard things became easier. “We both think it could be good for both of you.”
“You’re not… jealous?”
Anne was quiet for a moment. “Jealousy implies ownership without trust. I own you completely, Amy – and that means that I trust you completely. What you share with Dani doesn’t diminish what you have with me. It’s a different language, that’s all.”
“Margot said something similar. About rope being a different language.”
“She’s right.” Anne’s hand stroked slowly down Amy’s arm. “There are things Dani can give you that I can’t – the friendship of an equal, the understanding and complicity of someone walking the same path as you are… and, perhaps, the kind of intimacy we have, but with a different accent.”
Amy turned her face into Anne’s shoulder. “I love you, Mistress. That won’t change.”
“I know, mine. That’s why I’m saying yes.”
The vernissage was on a Thursday evening.
Amy met Dani outside the museum, both of them dressed more carefully than usual – Amy in a simple black dress, Dani in tailored slacks and a silk blouse that showed the leather band at her wrist. They looked at each other, nervous and excited, and laughed at their own formality.
“Ready?” Dani asked.
“Ready.”
The Kiefer retrospective was overwhelming in the best way. Room after room of massive books made of giant lead sheets and overwhelming installations that transformed the galleries into a cathedral of chaos and memory. Amy and Dani moved through it slowly, stopping in front of each piece, sometimes talking, sometimes just standing together in silent awe.
In front of a particularly large piece made out of burned straw, ash and oil, reminiscent of a post-apocalyptic landscape, Amy found herself reaching for Dani’s hand.
Dani took it, held it, and didn’t let go.
“It’s beautiful,” Amy whispered. “It’s devastating and it’s beautiful.”
“That’s what I love about him,” Dani said. “He doesn’t pretend the devastation didn’t happen. He builds with it.”
They stood there for a long time, hands intertwined, looking at a painting about destruction and survival.
Later, they found a quiet bench in a less-crowded gallery, and talked about what they’d seen. They talked about how strange it was to love something so heavy when they both drew with such light hands.
“Maybe we need the weight,” Dani said. “Maybe that’s why we’re drawn to it, because our lives are so much about delicacy and precision – and Kiefer is the polar opposite. He’s chaos made permanent.”
Amy thought about her collar, about Anne’s careful hands, and about the structure that had saved her.
“Is that what the ropes are for you?” she asked quietly. “Chaos made permanent?”
Dani was quiet for a moment. “The ropes are… safety. They’re about being held tight, so tight that I can’t fly apart. Some people fly. I need to be held down. Those are both paths to the same place.”
“The same place?”
“Both lead to surrender, Amy,” Dani said in a low, soft voice. “Both lead to letting go of everything except sensation.”
Amy felt something tighten in her chest. It was fear. But it also was curiosity.
“I’ve never…” She stopped, not sure how to say it. “Anne hasn’t… We don’t do bondage. I don’t know if I can.”
Dani turned to look at her, eyes gentle. “Why not?”
“I don’t know.” That wasn’t quite true, and they both knew it. Amy tried again. “I’m afraid of… not coming back. Of dissolving completely. Of losing myself.”
“You’re scared of being annihilated,” Dani said quietly.
“Yes.” Amy’s voice was barely audible. “Exactly.”
Dani was quiet for a long moment. Then she said, “I understand that fear. I had it too, at the beginning. Before Margot.”
“How did you get past it?”
“I didn’t, exactly. It’s still there. But…” Dani paused, choosing her words carefully. “The first time Margot tied me… I mean really tied me, not just playing… I was petrified. I thought I would panic, I thought I would say my safe word, I thought… I thought I would prove I wasn’t cut out for it.”
“What happened?”
“I surrendered.” Dani’s eyes were distant, remembering. “But I did not surrender to the ropes. I surrendered… to her.”
“To Margot.”
“To Margot.” Dani’s fingers traced the leather at her wrist. “And I discovered… that you don’t dissolve. Everything else falls away, and what’s left is just… you. The essential you.”
“But how do you know?” Amy’s voice was very small. “How do you know you’ll come back?”
Dani was quiet for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was gentle. “You come back. You always come back. That’s the point – you go deep, and then you’re brought back up. And when you surface…” She smiled. “You’re more yourself than before. Not less.”
Amy sat with that for a long moment. The gallery was quiet around them. Somewhere in the distance, other patrons murmured over masterpieces of ash and lead.
“Thank you for sharing that,” she said finally. “Thank you for trusting me with it.”
Dani squeezed her hand. “Whatever you decide – whether you ever try it or not – it doesn’t change who you are. Some people fly. Some people are held down. Some people find their surrender in other ways.”
“Like kneeling.”
“Like kneeling.” Dani smiled. “You’ve already found one language. Maybe you’ll find others. Maybe you won’t. Either way… you’re still you.”
Amy looked at Dani – this woman she was only beginning to know, who understood her in ways that felt almost impossible. This peer, this friend, this… whatever they were becoming.
“Can we go somewhere?” Amy asked. “Somewhere private?”
Dani’s breath caught. “Yes.”
They left the museum together and went to Dani’s home.
It was different from being with Anne – softer, more tentative, two bodies learning each other’s rhythms without the anchoring weight of power exchange. Dani’s hands were gentle on Amy’s skin, questioning rather than commanding, and Amy found herself responding in kind, her touches exploratory, curious, unhurried.
They discovered each other slowly, with the particular care of two people who understood that intimacy could be a gift rather than a taking.
Afterward, they lay tangled together in the sheets, breathing shallowly, awash in the afterglow. Amy traced lazy patterns on Dani’s skin. Dani’s leather bracelet felt almost alive against her fingers. The room was quiet, the city humming distantly beyond the windows.
“Dani?”
“Mm?”
“Thank you… for what you said earlier. About coming back.”
Dani turned her head, her eyes soft in the low light. “You’re thinking about trying it, aren’t you?”
“I… I don’t know.” Amy paused. “Maybe. Someday.” She bit her lip. “There’s… a room in the house I haven’t been invited to yet. I’ve never asked about it, and she’s never offered.”
“Oh?”
“I think it’s where she… where she and Julia…” Amy couldn’t finish the sentence.
“Where Julia flew,” Dani finished gently.
“Yes.”
Dani was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “When you’re ready for it, you’ll know. And Anne will know too. That’s how it works. The right moment finds you.”
Amy pressed closer, feeling Dani’s heartbeat against her own. The world felt very distant as they lay in the aftermath of intimacy, talking about fear and flight.
“I’m glad I have you to talk about these things,” Amy whispered.
“Me too.” Dani kissed her forehead. “That’s what friends are for.”
“I think it’s safe to say we’re more than friends now, Dani.”
Dani laughed softly. “I think it’s safe to say you’re right.”
Amy felt the connection between them – built from shared bonds of service, from understanding, from this new tenderness they had discovered together. For their Mistresses… and for each other.
And Amy, at last, started to feel like she was no longer hiding in plain sight, but was simply, finally, living.
The house in Yountville had not sold.
This was not, technically, a surprise. Amy had known, even as she’d signed the listing agreement, that the property was a hard sell. The roof needed replacing. The plumbing was original 1950s lead pipes. The electrical system was a tangle of outdated wiring that made every inspector wince. An electrician who had come to repair the fuse box even made a dark joke about the house’s wiring being so out of code he couldn’t even touch it. The lawn had been dead for so long that it had given up even the pretence of trying to grow.
What surprised her was how relieved she felt when Meredith, her realtor, called to deliver the news.
“We’ve had three walkthroughs,” Meredith said, her voice carefully professional. “But the repair estimates are scaring people off. I think we need to either lower the price significantly or consider taking it off the market.”
Amy sat at Anne’s kitchen table, phone pressed to her ear, staring out at the garden where Julia’s roses were putting out their second bloom of the season.
“What if I kept it?” she heard herself say.
“I’m sorry?”
“What if I fixed it up and rented it out?”
The idea was taking shape even as she spoke it, its pieces clicking together like a puzzle she hadn’t known she was solving.
“It’s in a good location, close to the wineries. If it were in better shape, it could be a vacation rental, or a long-term lease for someone who works in the valley.”
“That’s… certainly an option.” Meredith’s tone shifted, warming with newfound respect. “It would be a significant investment, though, both in time and money.”
“I know. Let me think about it, Meredith. Bye.”
Amy hung up and sat for a long moment, mulling the idea in her mind.
Uncle Cyrus’s house.
The place where she had watched him die, slowly at first, and then all at once.
The place where Anne had first seen her clearly, in a kitchen full of unpacked boxes, under the glow of a lamp worth more than everything else in the room.
The place where she had discovered who she was meant to be.
She couldn’t let that house go, not anymore. She simply could not bear selling it to strangers who would tear it down or gut it beyond recognition, nor to flippers who would see only the lot value and the proximity to wine country money.
She couldn’t keep it as it was, though – a slowly crumbling shrine to the grief of a man exiled from his family.
What if she made it into something new?
That evening, she knelt before Anne and made her case.
“It would take time to do it properly,” she said. “A year, maybe two. I’d have to learn about contractors and permits and… and all of it. But I have the lamp money – I mean, I could have the lamp money, if I sold it. A-and if I did the project management myself… and if I managed to keep the costs down…”
Anne listened without interrupting, her expression thoughtful.
“You’ve thought about this,” she said when Amy finished.
“I have, Mistress.”
“And the lamp? Are you prepared to sell it?”
Amy hesitated. This was the part she hadn’t fully resolved, the piece that snagged every time she tried to smooth out the plan.
“I… I don’t know,” she admitted. “I know it’s the practical choice. The lamp is worth enough to fund most of the renovation. But every time I think about actually doing it, actually letting it go…”
“It was his.”
“Yes.” Amy’s voice was small. “It… it was the only beautiful thing he had, Anne. The only thing in that whole sad house that suggested he had ever cared about something other than just… surviving. And… and he left it to me. He left it to me, when he could have left it to anyone, even… even my mother or her sisters, who would have fought each other tooth and nail over it if they’d known what it was worth.” She looked up at Anne, eyes bright with unshed tears. “H… how… how can I sell that?”
Anne was quiet for a long moment.
“You can’t,” she said finally.
“But the renovation…”
“We’ll find another way.” Anne reached down and cupped Amy’s face in her hands. “The lamp matters to you. It connects you to someone who saw something in you worth leaving a legacy to. That’s not something you sell for convenience, mine. That’s something you keep.”
“But where would I even put it? It’s huge, Anne. It’s not like I can just…”
“Put it in the dining room, love.”
Amy blinked. “W-what?”
“There’s a lamp in our dining room,” Anne said, a wry smile tugging at her lips. “A floor lamp, in the corner. You know the one. The brass monstrosity with a fringed shade?”
Amy did. She had noticed it early in her time at St. Helena, had wondered at it, because it was so utterly unlike everything else in the house – chunky where the other furnishings were elegant, dated where everything else was timeless.
“It’s… not my favourite,” Amy said carefully.
Anne laughed. “It’s hideous. Julia hated it. I’ve hated it for thirteen years. But it was a gift from a patient, someone who’d passed away, and I could never bring myself to replace it.” She stroked Amy’s cheek with her thumb. “I think it’s time. Don’t you?”
The lamp arrived on a Saturday in October.
Amy had arranged for professional movers – the Henningsen was too valuable, too fragile, too important to trust to her own uncertain hands. She stood in Anne’s dining room, watching two very careful men in white gloves manoeuvre the copper-leafed sculpture of light through the doorway, and felt her heart hammering against her ribs.
“A little to the left,” she said. “No – sorry – the other left. Yes. There.”
The men stepped back. The lamp hung in its new home, its layered leaves catching the afternoon light that streamed through the windows, casting patterns of gold and shadow across the table where Amy and Anne shared their meals.
“That’s something,” one of the movers said, shaking his head in admiration. “Don’t see many of those outside museums.”
“It was my uncle’s,” Amy said, and the words felt different now – like an acknowledgment.
After the movers left, Amy stood alone in the dining room for a long time, looking at the lamp.
It wasn’t just an object anymore. It was a bridge – between Cyrus and her, between the house where she had discovered herself and the home where she had been remade, between the person she had been and the person she was becoming.
She heard Anne’s footsteps behind her, felt arms wrap around her waist, a chin come to rest on her shoulder.
“It’s beautiful,” Anne said softly. “It belongs here.”
“So do I,” Amy said.
The renovation of the Yountville house began in November and did not end until spring.
Amy threw herself into it with the same focus she brought to her art – researching contractors, comparing bids, learning to read blueprints and negotiate timelines. Anne helped where she could, but this… This was Amy’s inheritance, hers to reshape.
Of course, there were setbacks. The electrician disappeared mid-job, which made her scramble for a new one; and there was a permit delay that caused a six-week stoppage.
One February evening, Amy knelt at Anne’s feet and wept because the plumber had found yet another problem with Cyrus’s ancient pipes, and she didn’t know if she could keep going.
“You can,” Anne had said, her hand steady on Amy’s hair. “You will. Because when you set your mind to something, you carry it out to the end, and, apparently, I have a preference for stubborn people.”
Amy had laughed through her tears.
“You’re not very pliant either, my beloved Mistress,” said Amy all teases and affection.
“I heard that, my brat.” Anne shook her head and gently swatted Amy’s backside.
The next morning, Amy called the plumber.
By April, the house was ready.
Amy stood in the doorway of the renovated house, looking at the space where she had once sat surrounded by unpacked boxes and memories.
It was unrecognizable. And yet, somehow, it was still Cyrus’s house – his bones beneath the new skin, his legacy made fresh.
“What would you think?” she asked the empty room. “Did I do okay?”
There was no answer, of course. But the afternoon light slanted through the new windows, warm and golden, and Amy chose to believe that somewhere, somehow, her uncle was pleased.
The first tenant moved in on a Sunday in April.
Her name was Grace, a sommelier who worked at one of the larger wineries and had been commuting from Santa Rosa. She walked through the house with wide eyes, running her fingers over the restored woodwork, exclaiming over the garden Amy had planted in the small backyard.
“This is perfect,” she said. “I can’t believe I get to live here.”
“Take care of it,” Amy said, handing over the keys. “It… it belonged to someone who mattered to me.”
Grace looked at her – really looked, with the particular attention of someone who understood that objects and places could carry weight beyond their material form.
“I will,” she promised. “I can feel that, you know. That someone loved this place.”
Amy thought about Cyrus, alone in this house for years, surrounded by his own particular kind of grief. She thought about herself, drowning in boxes and uncertainty, not knowing that her whole life was about to change.
“Someone did,” she said. “Someone does.”
That night, Amy knelt in the living room in St. Helena, the evening light painting the walls in shades of rose and gold.
The Henningsen lamp glowed softly through the archway to the dining room, its copper leaves catching the last of the sunset. Julia’s portrait watched from the study wall. The garden outside was in full bloom, roses and lavender and the herbs that Julia had planted years ago, finally tended, finally thriving.
Anne sat in her chair, a glass of wine in her hand, watching her slave with eyes that held something Amy had learned to recognise pride, love, and a fierce, quiet joy.
“You did it, mine,” Anne said. “You really did it.”
“We did it, Mistress.” Amy smiled. “I couldn’t have done any of it without you.”
“Yes, you could have.” Anne’s voice was firm. “You would have found your way. You were always going to find your way, Amy. I just… held the lamp while you looked for the path.”
Amy laughed at that – the accidental pun, the lightness of it, the truth beneath the humour.
“Speaking of lamps,” she said, “I still can’t believe you kept that awful brass thing for thirteen years.”
“Guilt is a powerful motivator.”
“So is love, apparently. After all, you let me replace it.”
Anne set down her wine glass and reached for Amy’s hand, drawing her up from her kneeling position, and pulling her onto the chair and into her lap.
“Love,” Anne said, pressing a kiss to her forehead, “is the only motivator that matters, in the end.”
Outside, the sun sank below the hills, painting the sky in colours that no artist could quite capture. Inside, two women held each other, surrounded by the evidence of lives intertwined – a lamp that had travelled from a dying man’s house to a living woman’s home, a portrait of someone gone but not forgotten, a collar that marked belonging and a ring that promised forever.
Amy closed her eyes and let herself be held.
She had come to Napa Valley to watch her uncle die. She had stayed to discover who she was. And now, finally, she was home.
And somewhere in the house, behind a door Amy had not yet opened, there was still one room waiting.
Chapter Eleven: A New Beginning
Six weeks had passed since the Anselm Kiefer exhibition.
In that time, Amy’s life had acquired new dimensions she was still learning to manage. School continued, with Professor Chen’s increasingly demanding assignments, the camaraderie of the studio, and the commutes to and from campus that bracketed her days like meditation. Her service routine continued, with the morning coffee ritual, the kneeling sessions, and the other rituals that anchored her to Anne – and to herself.
And now there was also Dani.
They saw each other twice a week, sometimes more.
Sometimes they met for coffee between classes, or for study sessions that dissolved into conversation. Others, for afternoons at Dani’s apartment that began with the comparing of sketchbooks and ended with tangled limbs and shared heartbeats.
And there was another thing, something that Amy had discovered quite unexpectedly during one of those afternoons.
It had started small, with Dani asking to be held a certain way. Amy responded instinctively, and Dani asked for more.
One evening, as they kissed, Dani asked for Amy to hold her wrists down into the mattress and tell her to stay still.
“Is this okay?” Amy had asked the first time, uncertain. “I’m not… I don’t know if I should…”
“Love… you’re not dominating me,” Dani had said, looking tenderly into Amy’s eyes. “You’re taking care of me in the way I need to be taken care of right now. Margot knows, and she is okay with it.”
And Amy had understood. This wasn’t about power, not the way it was with Anne. This was about rising to meet what Dani needed in the same way that Anne rose to meet what Amy needed.
Service, it turned out, could flow in many directions.
Anne smiled when, later, Amy told her about what had happened.
“You’re growing, mine,” she said. “You are finding sides to yourself you didn’t know existed, and that is exactly as it should be, love.”
“It doesn’t… bother you?”
“Why would it? You’re still mine. What you give Dani doesn’t diminish what you give me – if anything, it broadens your perspective and knowledge… And that makes for a better, richer service.”
Amy dissolved at Anne’s feet that night, overwhelmed with gratitude for a Mistress who understood her better than she understood herself.
The anniversary fell on a Tuesday.
Amy knew the date, of course. She’d known it since the first time Anne had spoken to her about Julia, by counting backward about two years from that day; but she hadn’t marked it on any calendar. It felt presumptuous, somehow; this wasn’t Amy’s grief to carry, it belonged to Anne, and it pained Amy that that memory was something she could bear witness to… but never fully share.
That morning, she woke to find Anne already gone from the bed. This was unusual, for Anne typically slept later than Amy, and surfaced from the warmth of their bed only when the smell of coffee drew her from her reveries. This morning, though, the sheets on her side were cold, and the house had an emptiness to it that made the skin on the back of Amy’s neck prickle.
She found Anne’s robe on the bathroom hook, and her slippers by the bed. Wherever she’d gone, she’d gone naked, or nearly so. I better bring her a bra and her robe, Amy thought, picking up both from the bathroom and Anne’s side of the closet. I don’t want her to catch cold.
Amy made the ritual morning coffee and knelt in the living room with the tray prepared.
She waited.
And waited.
An hour passed, and the coffee grew cold.
Amy rose, worry gnawing at the mouth of her stomach like a nervous animal. She moved around the house with her senses open, checking the kitchen, the study, and the garden where Julia’s roses were putting out their last autumn blooms. No Anne anywhere.
Then she noticed that door.
It was at the end of the hallway, past the guest bedroom, in a corner of the house Amy rarely visited.
She’d seen it before, of course, and had assumed it was storage or a utility closet. It had always been closed.
Today, it stood ajar.
A whisper of cool air drifted through the gap, carrying the distinctive, slightly dank scent of old, still air. Wherever that door led to, it had been shuttered for a long time and was only now beginning to breathe again.
Amy’s first thought was that she should wait. She should go back to the living room and kneel and trust that Anne would come to her when she was ready. That was what a good slave did. That’s what she usually did. Today, though, something pulled her forward anyway.
The door opened onto stairs descending into darkness. Amy found a light switch on the wall and flipped it; dim bulbs flickered to life, casting more shadow than light.
She went down slowly, one hand trailing along the cool wall, her bare feet silent on the wooden steps.
The basement was larger than she’d expected. The ceiling was high, higher than seemed possible given the architecture of the house above. The walls were painted a deep burgundy that swallowed light. And the room was not empty.
There was equipment here.
Amy’s eyes moved over it slowly, cataloguing. A padded bench along one wall. Rings and hooks set into the ceiling at various heights. A cabinet with closed doors that she suspected held things she couldn’t yet imagine. And in the centre of the room stood a heavy steel frame, elegant in its brutalism, with cuffs dangling from chains at wrist-height and above.
It was a suspension frame.
This was where Julia flew.
And beneath it, sitting on the floor with her back towards Amy, was Anne.
She was wearing only a thin slip, her feet bare, her hair loose and tangled. Her head was bowed, but Amy could see her shoulders shaking, and she could hear, in the basement’s stillness, the soft broken sounds of weeping.
“I… I still miss you,” Anne was saying, softly, to no one Amy could see. “I miss you every day, but today… God, Julia, it’s been three years today, and… and suddenly it’s like the first week after you were gone, all over again… I… I thought it would get easier. Everyone said it would get easier…”
Amy’s heart shrank in pain. Unshed tears stung her eyes, and Amy clutched the garments she had brought for Anne close to her chest.
She knew this. She’d done this, sitting on the floor of the closet with the garment bags, talking to a ghost, asking questions that would never be answered.
I should leave, Amy thought. This was Anne’s private catharsis, the one day a year she allowed herself to fall apart.
Instead, she spoke.
“…Mistress? Anne?”
Anne’s head came up sharply. For a moment, her face was naked, red-eyed, tear-streaked, utterly unguarded. Then the mask began to reassemble, the Dominant reaching for her armour. But it began falling apart again almost at once.
“Amy… honey, I didn’t… you… you shouldn’t be down here.”
“… Are you okay, love? I, I brought you clothes, you… I… “
It was such a simple question, and such an unguarded statement – and an inadequate one at that. But it was what Amy had, and she offered it without artifice.
Anne’s face crumpled, the mask shattered with those simple, affectionate gestures of heartfelt care.
“…No,” she whispered, anguish in her voice. “No, I’m not okay. I’m not… I can’t…”
Amy crossed the room and knelt beside her, holding Anne, the way any person would hold someone who was breaking.
“I’m here, Anne,” she said. “I’m here, love.”
Anne looked at her, really looked, without the filter of their power exchange or the roles that usually structured their every interaction. Right now, she was just a woman in pain, looking at another woman who loved her.
“It’s not… fair,” Anne said. “She should be here, sitting where you are. She should be the one who… who…”
“I know, love. It’s not fair, like it wasn’t fair when uncle Cyrus died.”
Amy breathed deeply, fighting back her own sorrow and heartache; then, she took Anne’s hand, and lovingly kissed it.
“I know I’m not her. I’ll never be her. But I’m here. I’m yours, and I’m not going anywhere.”
Something broke in Anne then. The last of the armour fell away, and she collapsed into Amy’s arms, sobbing with a rawness that Amy had never witnessed, great wrenching sounds that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than her body. Amy held her, stroked her hair, and said nothing else, because there was nothing more to say.
When the storm finally passed, Anne pulled back, wiping her eyes with the heel of her hand.
“I’m sorry, love,” she said. “You shouldn’t have to see me like this.”
“Yes, I should.” Amy’s voice was firm. “Julia… is part of you, part of us. If I can’t hold this, I can’t hold any of it.”
Anne stared at her for a long moment. Then, slowly, she nodded.
“You’ve grown so much,” she said softly. “When did you become this person?”
“You made me.”
“No.” Anne shook her head. “I guided you. You became.”
They sat in silence for a while, leaning against the suspension frame, surrounded by the tools of a kind of surrender Amy had never experienced. The cool air settled around them like a presence.
“What is this place?” Amy asked finally.
“You know what it is.”
“I know what I think it is. I want to hear you tell me.”
Anne was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “This… is where Julia flew. Where she became weightless. Where we…” She stopped, swallowed. “Where we found something together that I’ve never found anywhere else.”
Amy looked up at the cuffs dangling from their chains, and at the frame, solid and waiting for a guest to inhabit it.
“I’m… terrified of this,” she said. “I’ve been terrified of it since Dani first mentioned rope, since I saw her marks and understood what they meant.”
“I know.”
“You’ve never pushed.”
“It’s not something that can be pushed. Making you go around with no panties on is something that can be pushed. This… this has to be chosen. And if it’s never chosen…” Anne’s hand found Amy’s and gently squeezed it. “Then it’s never chosen. You’re no less mine for having limits.”
Amy sat with that for a moment. Then she said, “Will you show me how it works? What it feels like?”
Anne turned to look at her. “What are you asking, mine?”
“I’m asking…” Amy took a breath. “I’m asking you to teach me, the way you always teach me, by showing and by letting me see.”
“You want me to demonstrate this to you.”
“Yes.”
The silence stretched. Amy could feel Anne’s pulse in the hand she held, quick and uncertain. This was not a dynamic they’d navigated before.
“There’s a bench against the wall,” Anne said finally. “It’s… a safe choice for showing you.”
What followed was unlike anything in Amy’s experience.
Anne rose and moved to the cabinet, opening it to reveal neat rows of equipment: cuffs, straps, blindfolds, and other tools, tools that Amy couldn’t name. She selected items with careful deliberation, laying them on the padded bench.
Then she turned to face Amy.
“I’m going lie down, and you’re going to restrain me. I’ll guide you through each step while you set me up, but afterwards… it’ll be up to you, Amy. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Mistress.”
“Right now, I’m not your Mistress, love. I am Anne, and I’m trusting you with something I’ve never trusted anyone with since Julia died.”
Amy’s breath caught. “Yes, Anne.”
Anne’s hands went to the thin straps of her slip. She slid them down her shoulders and let the fabric pool at her feet, then stepped out of it and stood naked in the dim light of the basement, vulnerable, beautiful, and more human than Amy had ever seen her.
She lay down on the bench, positioning herself carefully, her arms extended above her head, her ankles at the lower corners.
“The cuffs go first,” she said. “Put them on me and make sure they are not too tight. You should be able to slide a finger underneath.”
Amy’s hands trembled as she lifted the first cuff. She’d never imagined doing this, but Anne’s voice was steady, guiding her through each step, and gradually the trembling eased.
She fastened the wrists first, then the ankles, the cuffs’ soft leather settled around Anne’s limbs, and the buckles clicked into place.
“Now put the blindfold on.”
Amy lifted the silk from the bench. It was the silk scarf gifted her at her collaring, smooth, shimmering, electric blue silk, wide enough to block all light.
“Anne… are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Amy settled the fabric over Anne’s eyes, tying it gently at the back of her head. Anne’s breath quickened slightly at the loss of sight.
“And now the gag. My safe gesture is this:” Anne knocked on the bench three times, then patted it three times, then knocked again.
The gag was a soft, red rubber ball attached to leather straps. Amy hesitated.
“It’s okay,” Anne said. “I want this. I…” Her voice caught, then Anne said, opening herself up to Amy, “I… I need to not be in charge, for a while.”
Amy understood then. This wasn’t just about showing her the equipment. This was also about release, about bringing balance back to Anne. She had been holding everything, so close, for so long, that she was drained. And Anne… was asking Amy to hold it for her.
“Open your mouth, love,” Amy said softly.
Anne obeyed.
The gag settled into place, silencing her, and Amy fastened the straps with careful attention. Anne couldn’t see, speak or move. She could only be.
Amy pulled a chair close to the bench and sat; one hand resting gently on Anne’s stomach, feeling the rise and fall of her breath. She didn’t speak, nor did she try to control Anne. She simply held the space, the way Anne had held it for her a hundred times.
Minutes passed. Amy watched Anne’s body slowly release its tension. The tight muscles of her shoulders softened. Her jaw, clenched around the gag, gradually relaxed. Her breathing deepened and slowed.
And then something changed.
It was subtle at first, a shift in the quality of Anne’s stillness. A softening of her posture, a letting-go that went deeper than physical relaxation.
Anne had slipped into a headspace.
Amy recognised it because she’d been there herself, that floating, drifting place where thought dissolved and only sensation remained. She’d never imagined Anne could go there, assuming it was a submissive’s territory, inaccessible to those who held the power.
But here was Anne, sinking into that quiet place, trusting Amy to watch over her.
Amy’s eyes stung with unexpected tears.
She stayed perfectly still, keeping her hand on Anne’s stomach, anchoring her. Time became elastic, then meaningless. The basement was silent except for Anne’s slow breathing.
When Anne began to surface, Amy could see it happening in the gradual return of tension to her muscles and the slight quickening of her breathing. She was ready.
She removed the gag first, carefully, giving Anne back her voice. Anne’s lips moved, but no sound came out.
Then the blindfold came off. Amy lifted it slowly, giving Anne’s eyes time to adjust to the dim light.
Anne blinked up at her. Her expression was open and unguarded, bearing the same pained rawness she bore when Amy had found her weeping, but peaceful.
“I’m here,” she said softly. “You’re safe. Take your time.”
“You caught me,” Anne whispered.
“Always,” Amy said. “Always.”
It was 3 in the afternoon. Nine hours had passed where Amy and Anne, and Anne and Amy, had melded in a moment more intimate than love itself.
Later, after Amy had unfastened the cuffs and helped Anne sit up, after they’d climbed the stairs together and Anne had wrapped herself in a robe, and after they’d sat in the living room for a long time, quietly caring for each other, they were in the kitchen, drinking tea as the afternoon light faded.
Anne spoke first.
“What happened down there… that’s not something I’ve let myself feel in a very long time.”
“Since Julia?”
“Yes, love, since Julia. Since her diagnosis, really.” Anne’s hands wrapped around her mug. “Roger taught me to submit; I was young, and I needed structure more than I needed release. With Julia… we tried, a few times. But I could never let go. There was always a part of me watching, assessing, staying in control.”
“What was different this time?”
Anne looked at her for a long moment.
“You,” she said simply. “You were different. You let me fall without trying to catch me too quickly. You trusted that I would find my way back.”
“You taught me that. All those times you brought me down and back up again.”
“I suppose I did.” Anne smiled faintly. “It seems like my lessons have borne a fruit I didn’t anticipate.”
“Is this… going to happen again?”
Anne considered the question.
“I think it might need to. I am who I am, and that won’t change. But there will be days when I need to trust someone else to hold the weight of the world for me.”
“Then we need a signal,” Amy said. “Something you can say that tells me what you need, love.”
“Yes.” Anne nodded slowly. “We need something simple, that doesn’t require me to explain or justify. Something that only you and I know what it means.” She thought for a moment. Then she spoke again:
“When I say, ‘The armour needs to come off’…”
“Then I say, ‘Yes, Mistress,’ and we go downstairs, and I hold you.”
“Yes.” Anne’s eyes were bright. “Yes, exactly.”
Amy reached across the table and took her hand.
“Thank you,” she said. “For trusting me with this.”
“Thank you for being worthy of the trust.”
The next morning, Anne paddled Amy.
It wasn’t punishment, because Amy had done nothing wrong.
It was a reset.
The dynamic had flexed, bending to accommodate something extraordinary, and now it needed to return to its proper shape.
Anne was thorough. The paddle was firm leather, well-worn from years of use, and Anne wielded it with precision, attention and love. Each stroke landed exactly where she intended, building heat and sting in layers.
Amy counted as she’d been taught, thanking her Mistress for each stroke, letting the tears come when they needed to.
And when it was over, when she lay across Anne’s lap with her bottom burning and her heart full, she felt herself settle back into her proper place. The flex hadn’t broken anything; it had proven how strong they really were.
“Good girl,” Anne murmured as she applied a lotion to Amy’s reddened backside and stroked her hair. “My good, brave, beautiful girl.”
Amy floated in the praise, in the peace of being exactly where she belonged.
Later, when she could sit again, albeit gingerly, she settled at Anne’s feet in the living room.
“Mistress?”
“Yes, mine?”
“W-will… um, will you… please… t-teach me… h-how to… f-fly?”
Anne went very still.
“What… did you say?”
“I… I n-need… to understand, Mistress… I… I need to feel what she felt… when… when she was … w-weightless… in your hands.”
“…Amy…” Anne’s voice was soft, and thick with emotion. “You… you said you were terrified of bondage.”
“I… I still am terrified, Mistress.”
Amy looked up at her.
“I would not be the best slave to you if I told you I was not scared, Mistress. Yesterday, though… I watched you go somewhere deep and quiet, and I held you while you were there, and I brought you back.”
Anne slowly stroked Amy’s hair, listening, present for her.
“I thought…”
She paused, steadying herself.
“I thought maybe now I understand what it means to let go and trust someone to catch you.”
Anne calmly said, “This isn’t something to rush into, mine. It takes preparation and training. Your body needs to be ready.”
“Then… prepare me. Train me. Please.”
Amy held Anne’s gaze.
“Please teach me how to fly, Mistress. Teach me the way you’ve taught me everything else.”
Anne was silent for a long moment. Her eyes were bright with grief, and fear, and joy all at once.
“Yes,” she said finally. “Yes, mine. I’ll teach you.”
And Amy felt something bloom within her, something that cocooned her fear and made it small. Something that felt like budding wings.
The preparation took three days.
Anne was meticulous, as she was with everything. There were stretches Amy had to learn, positions her body had to become comfortable with. There were conversations about sensations, and signs, and about what to expect and do if it became too much.
“The mind goes first,” Anne explained. “Before the body even leaves the ground, the mind starts to lift. That’s the headspace. It will feel like falling and floating at the same time. Don’t fight it.”
“How will I know if I’m okay?”
“You’ll know because I’ll be there, watching and holding the ropes. You’ll hear my voice, and you’ll know you’re safe.”
Amy practised the positions on the bench first. The way her arms would be held, the way her weight would distribute. Anne showed her the cuffs, different from the ones she’d used that day, lined with thick fleece, designed to bear weight without cutting into skin.
“These were Julia’s,” Anne said quietly. “I’ve kept them oiled and ready. I don’t know why. Maybe I was waiting.”
“For me?”
“For someone I could trust with this part of myself again.”
On the third day, Anne said, “Tonight. If you’re ready.”
Amy’s stomach fluttered with fear and anticipation. “I’m ready, my Mistress.”
The basement was different in the evening.
Anne had lit candles, dozens of them arranged along the walls and on surfaces, their flames casting dancing shadows. The harsh utility of the space was transformed into something softer and more intimate. The air smelled of sandalwood and something else, something Amy couldn’t name but that made her think of old churches and older rituals.
“Undress, mine,” Anne said.
Amy obeyed. Her fingers trembled on buttons and zippers, but she didn’t hesitate. The cool air raised goosebumps on her nudity.
Anne was wearing the black silk robe Amy loved, her hair loose, her feet bare. She moved through the space with quiet authority, checking equipment, adjusting candles, creating the conditions for what was to come.
“Come, my slave.”
Anne shed her robe, and it was then that Amy’s heart stopped.
Under the robe, Anne wore a supple leather harness, exposing her completely, except for her nipples and her intimacy, which were covered by smooth, black silk triangles. Everything else was in full display.
Amy walked to the centre of the room, to the base of the suspension frame. It loomed above her, beautiful and terrifying.
“Give me your hands, mine.”
Amy raised her arms. Her wrists shivered, and her hands were trembling.
Anne’s fingers were gentle as she fastened the cuffs, checked their fit, and adjusted the buckles where needed for safety. The fleece lining was soft against Amy’s wrists.
“These chains will take your weight,” Anne said. “When I lift you, you’ll feel pressure here,” and she touched Amy’s wrists, “but no pain. If there’s pain, you tell me immediately.”
“Yes, Mistress.”
“What is your safe word, my slave?”
“Geronimo, Mistress.”
“And if you can’t speak?”
“Three taps, and then three more, Mistress.”
“Good girl.” Anne moved behind her, and Amy felt hands at her waist as a belt was set, and at her calves as ankle cuffs were fastened to her body.
“You’re going to feel yourself rising. Your instincts will scream at you to tense, to fight it. Don’t. Let your body relax. Let me carry you.”
“Yes, Mistress.”
Anne’s hands ran up Amy’s body to steady and ground her.
“Do you want to see, mine?”
“N-no, Mistress.”
Anne nodded, and the electric blue scarf went around Amy’s head, robbing her of vision. Then, Anne moved to the mechanism at the side of the frame, and Amy heard the soft clink of chains.
“Breathe, mine,” Anne said. “Rise.”
The chains tightened. Amy’s arms lifted, drawn upward by forces she couldn’t see. Her weight shifted from her feet to her wrists, gradually, carefully.
And then she was rising.
It happened slowly, inches at a time. Her toes left the ground first, then her heels. She swung gently, finding equilibrium.
Her first thought was that she was going to fall. Her second was that there was nothing to fall from.
Anne’s voice came from somewhere below and beside her. “Keep breathing, mine. Let go.”
Amy closed her eyes under the blindfold. The fear was there, huge and present, clawing at her consciousness, screaming at her that she was trapped and helpless, that she was going to dissolve and never come back.
And then something shifted.
It was like that moment in meditation when the chattering mind finally stills, or the moment between wakefulness and sleep, when the body forgets its boundaries, but longer, sustained, almost endless in its expanse.
Amy was afloat, a being made of nothing but breath, heartbeat and the dim but ever-present awareness of Anne’s hands turning her gently, keeping her safe while she spread her wings… and flew.
What was left was quiet and infinitely peaceful.
She came back slowly, in stages. Sensation returned first: the pressure at her wrists, the cool air on her skin, the distant warmth of candlelight. Then sound, Anne’s voice soft and steady, calling her home. Then her body, feet touching ground, weight returning, muscles remembering how to hold her upright.
Anne’s arms were around her, strong and warm.
“I have you,” Anne was saying. “I have you. You’re safe. You came back.”
Amy’s voice, when she found it, was barely a whisper.
“I flew.”
“Yes, mine.” Anne’s voice was thick with emotion. “You flew.”
They stood together for a long time, Amy leaning into Anne’s strength, feeling herself slowly reassemble. The fear was not gone, but it had transformed. She understood now what Dani had meant. You come back. You always come back. And what you bring back with you is something you couldn’t have found any other way.
“Thank you,” Amy whispered. “Thank you, Mistress.”
Anne pressed a kiss to her forehead.
“Welcome back, mine. Welcome back.”
A week later, Amy sat on the ground in Dani’s apartment, legs tucked under herself, a length of soft rope in her hands.
“You’re sure about this?” she asked.
Dani smiled up at her from the cushions where she sat. “I’m sure. Margot taught you well, and I trust you.”
Amy had spent three evenings learning basic ties from Margot, nothing elaborate, nothing weight-bearing – simple restraints that would hold Dani safely to the ground. It felt strange, being on this side of the rope. Strange… and right, at the same time.
“Lie back,” Amy said. “Arms above your head.”
Dani obeyed.
Amy’s fingers found the rhythm of the ties, wrapping Dani’s wrists together and securing them to the leg of the heavy couch. Then her ankles, spread slightly, fastened to opposite corners.
“How does it feel?” Amy asked.
“Like… like I can finally stop holding on.”
Amy understood. She sat beside Dani, one hand resting on her stomach, feeling the rise and fall of her breath. She simply held the space, the way Anne had held it for her, the way she had held it for Anne.
Dani’s eyes fluttered closed. Her breathing slowed. And Amy watched her sink into that quiet place, marvelling at the trust it required, at the gift she’d been given.
Later, after Amy had untied her and held her through the surfacing, Dani curled against her side.
“You’re different since your Mistress showed you how to fly,” Dani said. “I can feel it.”
“Different? How?”
“Steadier. Like you found something you were missing.”
Amy thought back about that day.
“I did,” she said. “I found out I could let go and still be me. I finally got it through my thick head that dissolution isn’t annihilation.”
“I told you, didn’t I?” Dani said, her smile soft as silk. “You always come back.”
“I know that now,” Amy responded, planting a gentle kiss to her lover’s forehead. “Thank you for telling me first.”
Later that week, Anne and Amy were invited to an impromptu gathering at Margot’s house, a sprawling ranch outside Santa Rosa. It began as it usually did, with wine, conversation, and the easy comfort of people who understood each other.
Amy watched Anne and Margot settle into their banter, with the occasional teasing and flashes of flirtatiousness that never quite crossed any lines.
After dinner, Margot said, “I thought we might go to the studio, if everyone’s interested.”
Amy’s pulse quickened. She looked at Anne, who gave an almost imperceptible nod.
“I’d like that,” Anne said.
The studio was warm and softly lit, the floor covered in thick tatami mats, and hooks and rings were set into the ceiling and walls. Margot moved through the space with the ease of long familiarity, adjusting lights and selecting ropes from a carefully organised cabinet.
“Dani,” Margot said softly, “come here, mine.”
Dani went to her and shed the short, red robe that girdled her form. What followed was like watching a dervish dance.
Margot’s hands moved with quick precision and grace, wrapping Dani in rope that seemed to flow like water over her nudity. The ties were intricate and beautiful, crossing and recrossing in patterns that held Dani’s body in a sensual embrace of hemp and strategically placed knots.
When Margot finished, Dani had no choice but to exist as a kneeling bound form on the mat, bound from shoulders to thighs in a web of rope so snug that each breath was visible, shallow and measured.
“Your turn, mine,” murmured Anne to her slave.
The suspension rig in Margot’s studio was different from Anne’s, more elaborate, with more attachment points. But the cuffs were the same, fleece-lined and gentle, and Anne’s hands were the same, sure and careful as she fastened them around Amy’s wrists and ankles.
“Ready?” Anne asked.
Amy looked down at Dani, wrapped in rope, eyes already distant with headspace, then at Margot standing over her girl with quiet pride; and, finally, she looked at Anne, her Mistress, her partner, the woman who had taught her to fly.
“Yes, Mistress,” she said; and Amy flew.
Time passed differently when she was suspended. She was only dimly aware of the studio around her, of Dani, shallow breathing below her, and of Margot and Anne talking in low voices. But most of all she was aware of sensation: the pressure at her wrists, the weightlessness of her body, the vast quiet that filled her mind.
She let herself go, to merely float in surrender.
Below her, two Mistresses watched their slaves with eyes full of pride and love. Amy couldn’t hear their words and didn’t need to, but she could feel the warmth of their attention, the safety of being witnessed by people who understood.
At some point, she heard laughter: Anne’s, warm and genuine, followed by Margot’s, brasher and wider. The sound drifted up to her like incense. She didn’t know what they were saying, and it didn’t matter. What mattered was that they were there, two women who had found each other across the strange geography of their lives, who had become friends and who held each other – and their slaves – in mutual respect, trust, and care.
In that moment, as Amy floated, with Dani bound beside her and their Mistresses standing watch, Amy understood something she couldn’t have understood before.
This was what it meant to belong: not just to Anne, though Amy was Anne’s, utterly and completely, but to something larger: a web of trust as intricate as Margot’s ropework, holding them all in place.
Eventually, Anne lowered her, and Margot untied Dani; and all four of them sat together on the mats, wrapped in warm blankets as Amy and Dani basked in the warm cocoon of aftercare, their Mistresses attentively caring for them and talking quietly about nothing in particular whilst their girls slowly returned from their headspaces.
Spring came early that year.
Julia’s garden burst into bloom almost before Amy was ready for it, crocuses first, then daffodils, then the roses that Julia had planted years ago and that Anne had finally, properly, tended back to health.
On a morning in late March, Anne came to Amy holding the box. She seemed composed, quiet, but also resolute, like someone who is about to close a long left unfinished chapter of a book.
“Amy, please come with me,” she said.
They walked together to the garden; they walked past the herbs and the roses to a corner near the back wall, where a small Japanese maple spread its branches.
“Julia… loved this tree,” Anne said. “She used to sit under it in the summer, reading. She said the leaves made the light look like water.”
Amy looked up at the branches, still bare but beginning to bud with the promise of red.
Anne opened the box. Inside was a small urn, simple, elegant, and unmarked.
“I’ve been keeping her in the closet, along with her clothes and collar,” Anne said. “I thought… that I needed to keep her close. But I think…” Her voice wavered. “I think she’d rather be here, in her garden, where she was happiest.”
Amy took her hand and just nodded. “You got this, love,” she whispered. “No… scratch that. We got this.”
Together, they scattered Julia’s ashes beneath the maple tree. The grey dust settled on the soil and disappeared between the roots, becoming part of the earth that would feed the flowers she had planted.
“Thank you,” Anne whispered to the memory of the woman who had taught her how to love.
Amy said nothing. She simply held Anne’s hand, bearing witness, sharing the weight of that moment. Because some griefs never end. They only transform.
That evening, Amy knelt in the living room as the sunset painted the walls in rose and gold.
The Henningsen lamp glowed softly in the dining room, its copper leaves catching the last of the light. Julia’s portrait watched from the study wall, not a haunting anymore, but a presence, a blessing. The garden outside was in full bloom.
Anne sat in her chair, watching her slave with eyes full of quiet joy.
“You know,” she said, “I used to drive this valley every day, feeling like I was running from something: this empty house, the silence, the weight of everything I’d lost.”
“And now?”
Anne smiled. “Now? Now I drive home.”
Amy felt her heart swell.
Home.
This was her home, in this house, with this woman, living this life they’d built together.
“Mistress?”
“Yes, mine?”
“Thank you. For all of it. For seeing me when I was just a waitress saying ‘Miss.’ For teaching me who I was. For letting me see who you are.”
Anne rose from her chair and came to where Amy knelt. She cupped Amy’s face in her hands, the way she had a hundred times before, and looked into her eyes.
“Thank you for saving me,” she said.
“Don’t say that. You saved yourself. I just…”
“Held the lamp while I looked for the path?” Anne’s smile was wry. “Mine, you were the lamp. You were the light in the window. You were the reason I stopped at that diner and started coming back to life.”
Amy felt tears prick her eyes.
“I love you, Mistress,” she said. Then, she said, “I love you, Anne.”
“I love you too, mine. More than I know how to say.”
Anne kissed her, softly, deeply, with a kiss that said everything words couldn’t.
Outside, the sun sank below the hills. Inside, two women held each other, embraced by the threads of their intertwined lives.
The next morning, Amy woke before dawn.
She slipped out of bed, careful not to disturb Anne, and padded to the living room. The first light was just beginning to touch the hills, painting them in shades of rose and gold.
She set up her easel by the window and retrieved her sketchbook and pencils, and drew.
It was the portrait of a young woman, kneeling nude in morning light, a golden collar gleaming at her throat, honey-blonde hair gently floating as her eyes turned toward a window where the sun was rising.
It was a woman who had been lost and found, who had been terrified of flying – and had learned to fly; who had been broken and remade into something stronger.
She drew that woman until the sun cleared the hills, until the light shifted from rose to gold to clear morning white.
That woman was herself.
Then she set down her pencil, touched the collar at her throat, and smiled.
Somewhere in the house, she heard Anne stirring, heard footsteps in the hallway and the familiar rhythm of the day beginning.
She left the drawing on the coffee table, and rose to make coffee for her Mistress.
Later that morning, Anne was driving the Mercedes down Highway 29.
The spark plugs were new, the engine ran smooth, and the road unwound before her like a promise. She wasn’t running from anything anymore. She was driving toward the valley she loved, toward the practice that gave her purpose, toward the house where Amy would be waiting with her collar gleaming and her smile bright as dawn.
The sun was warm through the windshield. The vineyards stretched green on either side of the road. Somewhere ahead, there was a future waiting, messy, beautiful and full of possibility.
Anne smiled, and pressed on the accelerator, and drove towards it.