Page 64 of Shamefully Trained

I exhaled and reached for my phone on the bedside table. A notification from the SA app dominated the screen.

My finger shook a little as I opened it. Porter’s message was brief and exact, in the tone he seemed able to use whether discussing legislation, dinner, or what degradation should befall my body next.

A: I’ve been called into an early meeting. You may take out your plug. You have an appointment at 11 at the salon on the ground floor of the building, for waxing per my preferences. I’ll be back around 4. I want you in the white lingerie set. Nothing else. P.

I stared at the message until the words stopped feeling like words.

You may take out your plug.

Waxing.

White lingerie set.

Nothing else.

A slow pulse went through me low in my belly, shameful enough that I nearly tossed the phone aside. How could he do that to me so efficiently, in perfectly grammatical sentences. Not even his voice. Not his hands. Just instructions, and my body had already begun to answer.

I set the phone down and lay there for another moment, gathering myself, or trying to. In truth there was less self to gather than I would have preferred. Porter seemed able to reduce my rationality to a thin layer floating over sensation, and the worst part was that something inside me kept helping him do it. I could tell myself, with some justice, that my circumstances left me little room. I needed the apartment. I needed the money. I had agreed to his rules by not walking away. All of that was true.

It was also true that when he wrote I was allowed to remove the plug, my first reaction had not been relief alone. It had been something more complicated and more humiliating: the feeling of being cared for inside the same structure that controlled me.

I sat up slowly.

The movement made everything below my waist announce itself again. The plug pressed differently at the new angle, and my breath caught. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood carefully. For one dizzy second the room seemed to tilt. Then it settled.

In the bathroom mirror I saw a woman with sleep-swollen eyes, red hair in a wild cloud, flushed cheeks, and a look I did not much care for. It suggested that she might be amenable to the dramatic, humiliating changes the world had just brought into her life.

I looked down at my own naked body and felt the heat rise again. Breasts marked faintly where I had lain against sheets and pillow. Thighs pale and bare. Between them, curls that would not be there by noon… if I obeyed my sponsor.

When I obeyed my sponsor, I corrected silently, because I already knew I would.

I braced myself with one hand on the marble counter and reached back with the other. Even touching the base of the plug made me inhale sharply. It felt intimate in a way that still shocked me, as if I had gone to sleep with his hand still there in absent form. I hesitated.

Then, because he had said I could, I began to pull.

The sensation was immediate and alarming: a drag of fullness, then a stretch that made my knees soften. I bit my lip. The thing had not seemed so large after a night inside me, but removal proved otherwise. I went slowly, pulse thudding in my throat, my body resisting with little involuntary contractions that made it harder. By the time the widest part slipped free, I let out a sound half gasp, half whimper.

Then it was out.

I stood very still with it in my hand, breathing through my mouth.

My body felt abruptly, strangely empty. Not better at once. Just aware of an absence where a demand had been. I looked at the black silicone for one stupid second, as if it might explain me to myself, then washed it thoroughly, trying not to look at it too closely. I set it carefully on the counter because something inside me wondered if Porter would punish me for concealing it, for pretending in any way that my anus didn’t belong to him, wasn’t susceptible to his training whenever he chose.

There was a faint ache in my bottom, tender and secret. I could feel how open my sponsor had made me. That realization sent a new flush over my skin.

I showered longer than I needed to, partly because hot water soothed me and partly because I dreaded the rest of the morning. The water ran over my breasts, my stomach, between my legs. When my hand passed lightly over my pussy, I discovered with appalling clarity that I was still sensitive from the night before. More than sensitive. The briefest contact sent a small hot shiver through me. I snatched my hand away at once as if I had been caught.

No touching myself without permission. I hadn’t forgotten.

The rule had settled into me with frightening speed. It was one thing to be forbidden some abstract liberty. It was another to stand alone in a shower and obey because his voice had taught my body that disobedience would bring harsh discipline.

Afterward I wrapped myself in a towel and made coffee in the little kitchen. The apartment’s systems seemed already to know I had gotten up. A screen on the refrigerator displayed time, weather, some cheery suggested breakfast, and a discreet reminder of my eleven o’clock appointment. I nearly rolled my eyes at that, but I kept the tiny rebellion inside, thinking I had to preserve some kind of privacy at least.

I drank coffee by the window in one of the two robes that hung in the bathroom, looking out over the city and trying to feel like an adult with choices. The robe was soft. It somehow made me feel dressed in his intentions. I thought of the two robes again.

For the convenience of my sponsor.

Every few minutes my mind slid back to the appointment that waited below. Waxing. Not merely my bikini line. My sponsor wanted me smooth. He had said… he had said my anus too, in that matter-of-fact voice that left no room to pretend he had misspoken.