A Lady Plays A New Tune

A self-diagnosed perfectionist, Leslie found it unsettling that her life was sorely lacking in any sort of perfection. Maybe it was perfectly chaotic? She thought about everything that had gone wrong, and everything that might yet go wrong. Both lists were much longer than she cared to admit. She felt messy and jumbled and panicky inside. It hurt in the wrong way and she hated it.

Leslie needed to distract herself from the mess she was becoming. She thought of masturbating, but the little shot of dopamine from an orgasm seemed unlikely to set her right. Besides, she didn’t feel the least bit horny. She’d probably rub herself raw trying to get off. With that thought in mind, she retrieved a single die from the junk drawer. She had once used it to set a quota for the number of orgasms she had to give Alex when she was his ‘whore for a day’. Today she would be setting the quota for herself. Leslie rolled the die on the kitchen counter. Her roll was five. She went upstairs to get what she’d need to rub herself raw.

When she got to the bedroom, she retrieved several items from a box in the back of the closet and placed them on the bed. She quickly stripped to the skin and started her preparations. She placed each foot on the bed, cuffing her ankles in turn. Those were followed by wrist cuffs. She wasn’t sure how long this would take, so she took a moment to void her bladder.

Still nude except for her cuffs, Leslie carried the rest of her items down to the living room and placed them on the coffee table. She opened the curtains fully and turned on the lights. At this time of year, the afternoon sun illuminated the front of her house like a spotlight. The previous owners installed glass with a light tint in the picture window to mitigate it. From planning her previous ordeals, Leslie knew that the setting sun on the tinted Window would prevent anyone from seeing clearly into her house from the street. However, after sunset, and with the curtains open and lights on, her living room would be lit up like a stage. She realized that people might be able to see inside even now if they came up the front walk to where the angle was better. Leslie wasn’t expecting anyone, but random deliveries, solicitors, and evangelists were always a possibility. A final, wicked thought occurred to her that she couldn’t ignore. Leslie ran back upstairs and retrieved several condoms from her underwear drawer. She displayed these neatly on the coffee table. She then unlocked her front door and opened it just slightly so that it wasn’t latched. Anyone standing on her front step, or even a gust of wind could push it open easily.

She retrieved Alex’s noise-canceling headphones from the hall closet, spread an old throw on the couch, and sat down. She locked her ankle cuffs together, then locked a leather blindfold onto her head. She donned the noise-canceling headphones. Lastly, she locked her wrist cuffs together in front of her. She had left the keys upstairs on her comforter, so there would be no running out of the living room. To unlock herself, she would have to shuffle and crawl across the house blindfolded. 

Leslie would force herself to have five orgasms here on her couch. She hoped to accomplish this before sunset, which would expose her to anyone driving or walking outside. She had robbed herself of sight and hearing, so she wouldn’t know whether her activities remained private, or if she’d drawn a crowd. Her final measure of unlatching the door created the possibility of someone coming into the room with her. What that meant for her would depend entirely on who it was. The condoms might serve as both an invitation and provide protection, assuming they were used.

Blindfolded, she wouldn’t be able to tell how much time passed toward sunset. She needed to hurry. Feeling around on the coffee table, she gripped the last two items. The first was a vibrator, and the second was an oversized dildo with balls and a suction cup base. She owned smaller dildos, but she had chosen this one to create an additional challenge for herself. Since she hadn’t provided herself with any lube, she would be relying on what her body produced. A quick check confirmed that she would be starting basically dry.

She put the toys down next to her so that she could start with her fingers. She brought them to her mouth, coated them with saliva, and then began to rub slow circles around her clit. Her body responded slowly, but steadily. She applied more spit. After a few minutes of manual stimulation, she fumbled for the vibrator with her cuffed hands and switched it to a low setting. The sensation was uncomfortable at first, but she quickly grew used to it. Leslie found her rhythm, moving the vibrator up and down her slit. On each stroke, she paused briefly at the top to stimulate her clit.

She whimpered when her slow-building first orgasm hit her, but her world remained in silence. She tried to calculate how long it had taken. Too long, she was sure. She had to step up her pace. Leslie tried adding some internal stimulation with the big dildo, but it just wasn’t going in. Fortunately, orgasm number two came quickly while she fucked herself with a couple of fingers from one hand and held the vibrator against her clit with her other hand.

Her third orgasm was more of a challenge. She went back to trying to insert the dildo, but the size and weight made it awkward to manipulate both toys with her cuffed hands. She pulled her feet in toward her hips and braced the suction cup against her heels. She aligned the bulbous head with her opening and pushed. It didn’t go in right away, so she began to wiggle and bounce against it as she used the vibrator. When the head finally slipped into her, she experienced a jolt of mixed pain and pleasure, but she still couldn’t find the sweet spot until she hurt herself again by shoving a couple of fingers deep into her ass while she fucked the big toy.

She was past the halfway point, but she couldn’t help but feel the press of time. Was it getting dark by now? Had her neighbors already gathered outside to see the spectacle she was making of herself? She had no way of knowing. She pressed on.

Playing with her ass became less painful and less effective as she struggled to reach her fourth orgasm. Leslie growled in frustration and got off the couch. She shuffled forward and found the edge of the coffee table. After a couple of tries, she was able to affix the dildo’s suction cup to the side of the heavy coffee table so that it was mounted horizontally. She got on her hands and knees with her feet under the table and slowly backed her now tender pussy onto it. She started rocking back and forth, sliding her sex along the toy’s length. Her hands were still cuffed, so to use the vibrator, she rested her cheek and shoulders on the floor in an ass-up, face-down position. She switched the vibrator to its highest setting and went to work on her clit. Leslie kept working the dildo in deeper until with each backward thrust, she could feel it painfully brushing her cervix. Once again, it was the mix of pain and pleasure that sent her over the edge. Her fourth orgasm was intense. Leslie needed a break from the stimulation, so she scooted forward to dislodge the toy. She felt empty and her pussy spasmed as if it were trying to grip something.

She was sure it must be dark by now. Leslie needed to finish before she was seen. She wondered how she might look from outside. Insane, she was sure. Time was critical. Leslie pushed back against the outsized toy. This time, it slid right in. She began to thrust her hips again, hoping to hit her g-spot, but the angle was completely wrong. As a masochist, the line between pain and pleasure was blurred for her, but she wasn’t getting enough of either. Leslie tried crushing her nipples between her fingers. It was a good hurt, but her cuffed wrists meant moving the vibrator away from her clit to do it. That threw her off several times. She needed something else.

In desperation, she brought her fingers to her mouth and pushed them toward the back of her tongue. She coated her fingers with as much slimy ‘throat spit’ as she could gather and stretched her cuffed hands between her legs and shifted her hips so that she could smear as much of her saliva and secretions onto her asshole as possible. She lined the dildo up against her back door. Pressing back steadily, she felt her sphincter stretch painfully. The ridiculous toy wouldn’t go in. She tried to relax and breathe as she pushed her resisting asshole against it. When she thought she was stretched to her limit, she felt with her fingers and was dismayed to find that the head of the dildo was only halfway in. She began to gently rock against it. After another minute, the shock of the head finally popping inside made her fumble the vibrator. Deaf and blind, she had no idea where it might have landed. Her reach was limited and she couldn’t feel the vibrator when she swept her cuffed hands around.

It took too much effort to get the big piece of rubber into her ass. There was no way she could remove it, crawl around searching for the vibrator, and then start over with the dildo dry. Instead, she started to pinch her clit while she dragged her asshole along the length of the big dildo. She would pinch as she pushed back, then release on the forward stroke. Everything she was doing hurt, but it was the right kind of pain. She established a rhythm and could feel her orgasm building. She worked the dildo deeper into herself. She needed to finish.

She imagined that it was Alex’s cock in her ass. His wasn’t the longest or the thickest that she’d seen, but his had a nice big head that hit all the right spots. His member probably had the most overall ‘displacement’ of her lovers. Until recently, it had been displacing her for years. Leslie remembered him bending her over the couch and taking her ass. She screamed his name as she came.

Leslie went slack with relief. She inched forward as she reached up to knock the headphones off. The invader in her ass was disgorged painfully, with a wet sucking sound. Leslie began to scoot toward the stairs. The vibrator was still making a muffled buzzing noise from wherever it had fallen, but she didn’t hear any voices or footsteps. The only sounds were the hum of her refrigerator, the susurrus of a car passing outside, and the more distant hum of the city. Maybe she’d been fast enough.

When she got to the bedroom, Leslie felt for the keys on the bed and managed to unlock her wrists with some difficulty. Hands freed, her blindfold went more quickly. She looked toward her bedroom window and was horrified to see that it was almost completely dark outside. It would be a miracle if someone hadn’t seen her violently sodomizing herself a few moments ago. She removed her cuffs and moved to the mirror to try to inspect her bruised asshole. She found a smear of blood, but not much. She gently felt around her tender opening and decided that she wasn’t too badly damaged. She then remembered the big rubber cock stuck to her coffee table in front of her open front window.

Leslie threw on a robe and ran downstairs. The sight that greeted her made her blood run cold. Her curtains were closed, and her front door was firmly shut. Someone had been in the room with her while she abused herself. She tiptoed to the coat closet and cautiously opened it. No one was inside, so she grabbed the baseball bat kept there for moments like this. She thought of calling the police, but couldn’t imagine how to explain. She moved through her house silently, peeking around corners and checking every room. She was a terrified, bathrobe-clad ninja. Her heart rate slowly came down as she realized that no one was in the house and that nothing had been disturbed. The last thing she did was peek out the front door. An Amazon delivery box smiled mischievously at her from her porch. She closed, locked, and dead-bolted the door without stepping out to retrieve the package.

The deliveryman had almost certainly seen her. Had it been he who closed her curtains and door, or had someone else been there as well? She wondered how much of the show her visitor had seen. A woman might have arranged for her privacy and quickly left. A man almost certainly would have watched for a while. Would they have photographed her so that their friends would believe the incredible story they were sure to be telling tomorrow? She would be difficult to recognize with the thick leather blindfold covering most of her face, but her visitor knew where she lived. Whoever it was hadn’t done her any harm when they'd had the opportunity. She hoped that their better nature would hold.

Leslie retrieved her dildo and condoms, and her still-buzzing vibrator from under the couch. Its battery was running low as she switched it off. She went upstairs to soak her tender bits in a hot bath.

As she soaked, Leslie took time to appreciate the clarity and focus of mind that her self-flagellation and brought her. She tried to rank her problems in order of severity and to devise possible solutions. She put those on a timeline of when they could be implemented. She focused her attention on the first one.

The evening was still relatively young when Leslie stepped out of the bath. Before she dressed, she sent a couple of text messages to a contact she should have deleted months ago.

While she waited for a response, she put on loose-fitting blue jeans and a shapeless green sweater. She pulled her hair back into a ponytail and applied no makeup. Leslie didn't want the person she hoped to meet thinking that she’d dressed for him.

Black texted her his address and here she was. He’d watched her pull up and park to be sure that she was alone, and he’d checked through the peephole to be sure that she was unarmed.  Her jaw was set and she wore an intense, determined look.  He noted that she was dressed very casually as he looked her over for any bulges that might indicate the presence of a gun or knife. “Hello, Leslie. What can I do for you?”

Leslie was chilled standing out on the porch. “May I please come in?”

Black didn’t agree right away. Instead, he surprised her by asking, “Is there a gun in your purse?”

Leslie was pleased by Black’s concern. It was only right that he should feel a tiny bit of the fear that he’d caused her to feel. She held open her purse to show him that it contained only her wallet, keys, phone, a few makeup items, and an emergency tampon. When he stepped aside and gestured for her to enter, she couldn’t help but throw out “Relax. If I were here to take my revenge, you’d never have seen me coming.” He didn’t know if she were serious or not. He closed the door and she followed him into the house.

The hallway and home office were tastefully and expensively decorated. The whole place smelled of wood polish and something citrus. In the office, books were neatly arranged on shelves with library style labels affixed to the spines. A classic oversized wooden desk and leather wingback chair were juxtaposed with a modern-looking desk chair. A laptop was the only item on the desk. Classical music played softly from a sleek little speaker on one of the bookshelves. Leslie found herself liking Black’s house more than she expected.

Black gestured for Leslie to sit while he moved around the desk. He folded his hands in front of him and asked for the second time “What can I do for you?”

Leslie told him succinctly, “I want you to delete the rape video.”

Leslie expected Black to ask “Why should I?” or maybe “What’s in it for me?” Either response would start the negotiation that would most likely lead to more suffering for her. Her expectations were subverted when he simply said: “OK, let’s do that right now.”

Black centered the laptop on his desk and typed a password. “I want you to be sure that this is done right and that it’s gone forever. I’ll walk you through it.” He then stood from his chair and asked Leslie to sit down at the computer. Over the next few minutes, he explained which app to use to connect to the server, how to navigate to the file, and then how to delete it, along with the proof she had been required to upload during this part of her punishment. He then showed her which folder on his computer contained the master copy of the video, along with the original captures from each man’s camera. When those were deleted, he reminded her to empty the recycle bin. He then showed her how to use a utility to ensure that deleted files can’t be recovered.

“Please wait here,” he said as he left the room, leaving her at the keyboard. She took the opportunity to quickly scan through his files, but she found no other copies of the video or her pictures. Every other file seemed to be related to either researching or teaching biology. She was about to check his Internet history when she heard footsteps approaching. She placed her hands on the desk and waited.

When Black entered, he gave her an odd look but said nothing. He placed on the desk the four small cameras with head harnesses that the men wore during her last hunt and her subsequent rape. “I’ve already formatted these memory cards,” he said as he removed them from the cameras one by one. “I want you to be confident that the footage is gone, though. Please take these with you when you leave. Smash them with a hammer when you get home. Don’t worry, they’re not expensive to replace.” Leslie took the tiny memory cards as she stood. She walked over to her purse and put them inside. 

Her head was spinning with what had just happened. There was no way it should have been this easy. She was full of questions.

Leslie turned to study Black’s face for any hint of deceit and asked “Is that it? Are all of the copies gone? What about the other men?”

Black shook his head. “I bought the cameras, so I took them home after the hunt. I promised to send copies of the video to the other hunters after editing, but I didn’t follow through. I told them that I’d deleted the footage because it would look bad for us if you ever went back on your word and tried to press charges. Even with your emails and texts as evidence, the law might ask ‘What would a reasonable person do?’ I’m sure you remember that the only reasonable person in the forest that day walked away. Also, recall that Professor Watson did the same when confronted with the choice.”

“They were disappointed, of course. I may also have suggested that I had done them a big favor because their dicks looked small on camera. Leslie, you and I are the only two people to ever see those recordings.”

“If that’s true, why did you make that video at all? Why even take the cameras out there?”

“To be honest with you, an actual video was never the point of the cameras. I thought it would be more humiliating for you if you thought that your rape was being recorded for others to watch. I knew all along that what we were doing was risky and that I didn’t want any evidence around. I wouldn’t even have put memory cards in the cameras except that I wanted the others to believe as you did that there would be a recording. I thought that it might both inspire their performance and keep them under control. My plan when we started running that day was to smash those memory cards on my way home.”

“Why didn’t you do that? Why all this?”

“Why do you do the things that you do, Leslie? Why do you invent the games and go through with the punishments? Once you make a promise to yourself or someone else, you follow through no matter what. It’s almost compulsive for you. Am I right?”

Black didn’t wait for her answer before going on “It’s like that for me, too. You forced me to go off-script by negotiating an alternative to being branded. I was ad-libbing, trying to come up with something as bad or worse. Masturbating to a video of your rape seemed to fit the bill. Once we’d made the deal, I had to make the video, just as you had to run that day. You’re the only one who needed to see the video for the agreed-upon consequence, though.”

Leslie could understand that and even had to give Black a little respect for following through. It was awful, but it was right in its perverse way. It both comforted and disappointed her to know that at least some of what happened that day had been inauthentic, conceived to elicit a specific response from her. She had to know, “If I hadn’t negotiated another punishment, would you really have branded me?”

“Yes. The scenario that you’ve devised for your hunts is unbelievably exciting. It was probably a once in a lifetime experience for me. The idea of commemorating it by marking you held a lot of appeal for me. Again, once I decide to do something, I always follow through.

”Almost always.” Leslie corrected. “I don’t have a brand on my ass. Why did you stop?”

“If you’re registering a complaint, I’d be glad to make amends...”

Leslie’s ice-cold expression derailed that train of thought.

“You weren’t enjoying yourself, but you hadn’t expected to. I saw that as ‘consensual non-consent’. When you saw the brands, your reaction was visceral. I was afraid you would seriously injure yourself trying to escape. It seemed like I’d hit on something that you deeply did not want to happen. 

What was going on in your head?”

“It was something that happened with Alex a long time ago.”

“Can you tell me about it?” Black prompted.

“No.”

He decided to let it go for now. “Whatever it was, I understood that the switch had been flipped to absolute non-consent. I should have just ended things then, but I couldn’t go from sixty to zero that quickly. It seemed like it would have ruined everything. Does that make sense?”

Leslie nodded. They sat in silence for a moment. Black finally said “If that’s all you wanted, I need to create three new essay questions for an upcoming exam. Can you find your way out?”

Leslie had been dismissed.

While she was glad to have crossed an item off her list, Leslie felt unsatisfied with the encounter. She expected Black to at least negotiate an additional punishment for her in exchange for deleting the video. Was she disappointed that he wasn’t going to abuse her? Was she crazy?

The next item on Leslie's list was meant to address that very question. Before going to bed, she researched kink-friendly therapists in the area.

By Friday night, Leslie had sealed five new punishments into envelopes, packed a bag with a few things, and driven herself to the home of a sadistic rapist for the second time in as many nights.

Black greeted her warmly at his door with a handshake “It’s nice to see you again, Leslie.” He was dressed simply in jeans and a burgundy t-shirt with the university logo on it. His feet were bare. He pushed his glasses up his nose as he ushered her in.

Leslie wore her hair loose but had otherwise dressed much the same as the previous night. She still didn’t want to give Black the impression that she’d dressed for him. This wasn’t that type of thing. She also reasoned that if she lost, her clothes wouldn’t matter because she wouldn’t be wearing them. She didn’t like Black, but she knew from experience that he could be counted on to deliver the types of punishments that she had designed for herself.

They walked back to his office and sat in the same chairs as the night before.

Once they were settled, Black prompted “I have to admit that I was intrigued by your call.”

“I’m glad that you’re available to help me.”

“How does this work?” Black asked.

Leslie retrieved the five numbered envelopes and handed them across the desk to Black “Don’t open these yet, just hold them for now. The contents of each envelope describe a punishment that I may be serving soon. The envelopes are numbered from what I consider least to most severe. They are painful and humiliating. The higher-numbered envelopes are terrible. Number five is potentially life-altering. I don’t want to serve any of them, but I absolutely will if I fail my task.

“I’m going to play five games of backgammon on the Internet against random strangers. For each game that I win, one envelope will be discarded, starting with the highest number in your hand. If I win all five games, I’ll bid you goodnight. If you’re holding any envelopes after five games, I will serve those punishments in order. If necessary, I should be able to complete four before Monday morning. The fifth will be ongoing. Do you have any questions before we get started?”

“You’re just fascinating, aren’t you?”

“I suppose I must be. Any other questions?”

“No, I think you’ve described the process sufficiently.”

“May I use your computer?”

Black turned his laptop around and slid it toward Leslie, who pulled her chair closer to the desk. She opened the browser and logged onto a site for online backgammon players. She held her breath and joined the queue for a random match. The game started a moment later. Black didn’t bother coming around the desk to watch the game. He instead studied Leslie’s every expression and gesture.

After a few rolls, she said “Would you please stop staring? It’s distracting.”

“I’m sorry. Please continue. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Distractions or no, the first game went horribly. The dice did not favor Leslie at all. She lost just as Black re-entered the room with a sheaf of papers under his arm and two cups of tea on saucers. He set one next to Leslie and took the other back to his seat.

A pit formed in Leslie’s stomach. She felt queasy and didn’t dare touch the tea. She had hoped to take that fifth envelope out of play right away. She didn’t need a therapist to tell her she was crazy for dreaming up that particular punishment. Her hands shook as she joined the queue again. If every game went like that, she would be extremely fucked both figuratively and literally. “That’s one punishment for me” she reported.

Black nodded but generally seemed to be ignoring the panicking woman across the desk from him. He reviewed the papers he’d brought to grade.

Leslie’s second match went much better. Her opponent must have been new to the game and barely seemed to understand the rules. When it was over, she held out her hand “I won. I’ll take back that fifth envelope now.” Black handed it over and Leslie breathed a sigh of relief as she tore it into the tiniest pieces she could manage and dropped them into the wastebasket next to the desk.

“What was in that one?” Black asked.

“Fortunately for me, you’ll never know.”

Leslie’s third game was a better match, but she managed to stay ahead throughout and won. She collected the fourth envelope from Black and gave it the same treatment as the fifth. Black didn’t ask, but Leslie was secretly relieved that branding was out of play. She began to calm down and was able to drink some of her tea as she waited in the queue.

For the fourth game, fate smiled on her and she was matched with the same new player from the second game. Again, she beat them easily. For their sake, she hoped that they weren’t playing for punishments. When it was over, she collected the third envelope from Black and tore it up. If necessary, she’d be able to serve the remaining penalties without leaving Black’s house.

Things were looking good for her as she entered the queue for the final game until she was matched against a player with the handle “Petropoulos62”. That was the name and approximate age of the ringer that Alex had pitted against her. That match had resulted in a year of sexual slavery for Leslie, followed by a year of cuckoldry for Alex when she seduced his ringer. Nick Petropoulos was a master player who had beaten Leslie soundly when they faced off. He wouldn’t recognize her handle, and she wouldn’t bother trying to chat. They hadn’t parted on the best terms, and she had nothing to say to him. She knew what she was up against, but tried not to psych herself out. Leslie played her best game against Nick yet, but in the end, it wasn’t good enough to win.

The fifth game ended with Black holding two envelopes. Leslie knew what was coming. The first penalty would be painful, but hot terrible unless Black managed to twist it somehow. She’d been through worse. The second penalty would likely be more humiliating and degrading than painful. She clenched her jaw as she thought about serving that particular penalty with Black, but she would get through it. If things went as planned, she would be sleeping in her own bed by tomorrow night.

What happens now?” Black asked.

“Now you open the first envelope and read the instructions inside.”

Black retrieved a letter opener from his desk drawer and neatly slit the envelope. He removed the single piece of paper and began to read.

Black read through the penalty twice. It was clear to him that she was keen to avoid violence and injury. That was understandable of course, but it was also notable that she felt the need to point it out so explicitly. She also didn’t want to be robbed of her senses with him. He wondered if she weren’t afraid of him because of what he’d done to her in the woods.

When Black turned his attention back to her, Leslie stood and began to remove her clothes as non-erotically as she could manage. She toed off her canvas sneakers, put her socks inside, then placed them neatly next to her chair. She unbuttoned her jeans and wiggled them over her hips, then slid them down her shapely runner’s legs. She folded the jeans and placed them atop her shoes. Next, she pulled her sweater off over her head, folded it, and placed it on her growing pile of clothes. As she removed her tank top, Black couldn’t help but appreciate the toned, flat stomach that was revealed between her striped cotton panties and her bra. Her bra was white, simple, and not particularly sexy, but it was efficiently discarded revealing full, round breasts with perky brown nipples at the tips. She finally slid her panties down her legs, folded them into a neat square, and placed them atop her clothes. When she stood, Black could see a neatly-trimmed landing strip of light-colored pubic hair that did little to conceal her vulva. Leslie felt self-conscious standing nude in front of this man’s desk, but she didn’t try to cover herself with her hands. She had no secrets from him, he’d seen every part of her before.

Unzipping her bag, Leslie began to place items on Black’s desk. Several coiled lengths of rope, a set of wrist and ankle cuffs, a thick men's belt with the buckle removed, a small leather paddle, a riding crop, and a flogger. Black watched silently with a strange smirk on his face. When she finished, she asked, “What do you want to do first?”

“First,” he replied “I would like to take you upstairs. Leave those things where they are. I’ll come back for them if I need to.” Black rose from his chair and walked past the naked woman “Please follow me.”

Leslie wasn’t sure what Black had in mind. Maybe he wanted to tie her to his bed? She hadn’t specified where her penalty should occur, so she followed his instructions as she’d promised in her punishment letter. It was uncomfortable to be walking through the strange space nude, but if it were an odd occurrence for a naked woman to parade through his house, Black gave no indication. Leslie took the opportunity to get a better look at Castle Black. On the way to the stairs, they passed a professional-quality kitchen full of stainless steel and granite that made Leslie long to stop and cook something. The stairs themselves were wide with a polished wood railing adjacent to a formal living room. The wall next to the stairs had framed pictures of people who she assumed were Black’s family members. In particular, she noticed several pictures of a younger Black with an attractive woman of about the same age. Black wasn’t wearing a ring and hadn’t ever mentioned a wife, so Leslie surmised that the woman in the pictures was a sister or an ex. The doors in the upstairs hallway were all open, save for double doors at the far end. They walked past a couple of nicely furnished bedrooms without linens on the beds. Leslie glimpsed what might have been the nicest bathroom she’d ever seen. “Nice house,” she said.

“Thank you. It belonged to my parents. My dad was the president of the university before he retired. I inherited the place when they passed.”

“I’m sorry,” she said as they stopped in front of the closed door.

“It was some time ago. It was cancer for my mom and a broken heart for my dad. After she died, he…withered.”

The thought of growing old with someone caused Leslie to have involuntary thoughts of what she’d lost with Alex.

It was awkward to be standing naked in the hallway while Black talked about his dead parents, so she nodded toward the closed doors, “Are we going in?”

“I can barely afford the taxes and upkeep on my professor's salary.” Black said as he fished a key from his pocket and fitted it into the handle, “It’s really too much house for a Bachelor, but it’s close to work, and I’m sentimental about it.”

Black opened the door and went through. Leslie started to follow but stopped short in the doorway. She was dumbstruck by what she saw. The room was as large as at least two good sized bedrooms and had high ceilings. It was full of bondage furniture, restraints, and implements. There were benches, a pillory, stocks, a St. Andrew's cross, and a couple of things that Leslie couldn’t identify. The walls had rows of pegs and hooks from which hung all manner of tack. The room looked like a mix between a gym and a torture chamber. After gawping for a few moments, she managed to ask 

“Why do you have all of this?”

“I’m active in the BDSM community,” he explained. “It’s nice to get together with people and be able to discuss my more…obscure interests. I’m surprised that you haven’t been involved with the community yourself. We sometimes have classes or demonstrations where we discuss proper techniques and swap tips on the things that we like to do. Our meetings rarely involve any actual sex, though.”

“If you’re not having sex at your meetings, what is this room for?”

“Well, I’ve entertained a few women who I’ve met through the community here. Sometimes it’s just a beating they want, but not usually. I’ve also let some couples I know well use the room. I’ve taught a few classes and thrown a few really excellent parties here. Please take a moment to look around. When you’re done, kneel here.” Black indicated a place on the floor.

Leslie would never have imagined that the reedy, slightly soft, and bespectacled professor would have his very own torture chamber, but she had to admit that the signs were there. She walked around the room taking it in. There was the smell of leather and polished wood, and something vaguely antiseptic. Black’s collection was all quality. The good stuff. It must have cost a fortune. He retrieved some small items from a cabinet, then activated hidden speakers. Soft instrumental music filled the space. It occurred to her that she was about to receive a beating from an experienced enthusiast and she felt butterflies in her stomach.

When she finished her circuit, Black was sitting on a padded leather bench that had multiple attachment points next to where she was supposed to kneel. She would comply with his instructions by kneeling, but if he thought he was about to get a blowjob, he was going to be disappointed.

“Face away from me,” he instructed.

Leslie reluctantly turned her back to him, pivoting awkwardly on her knees. She felt Black’s hands in her hair, gently combing it back with his fingers.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m going to braid your hair so that it doesn’t get in my way.”

Leslie realized that she had become part of a ritual and guessed at what the next rite would be.

Black took his time. Having her hair braided felt nice. Relaxing. He finished off the braid with an elastic tie that he’d placed around his wrist while Leslie had been touring the room.

“Your instructions specified that you would provide the restraints and implements. Would you like for me to get yours, or are mine acceptable?” He gestured broadly around them.

“We don’t have to use mine.” she allowed. Her meager collection was laughable in this room.

Black stood and retrieved some restraints from the wall. Leslie stood facing him as he buckled a black leather cuff onto each of her wrists and then she placed one foot at a time on his bench so that he could cuff each ankle as well. Taking her by the elbow, he led her to an oddly shaped piece of furniture. It was padded and upholstered in black, with a wide rectangular pad raised above a longer narrow pad on each side. Leslie placed her knees on the two narrow pads, then draped her torso along the length of the wide pad so that her elbows rested in front of her knees on the narrow pads. The wide pad was sloped so that her hips were just slightly higher than her head, presenting her backside. Black used the cuffs to affix her wrists and ankles to the bench so that her hands and feet were just off the ends of the pads. Her weight was well-supported along her torso, on her knees and shins, and on her elbows and forearms. She was restrained in what was basically the ‘doggy’ position by the shape and structure of the bench. She had to shift around a bit so that her breasts weren’t squashed, but she was otherwise comfortable, albeit nervous.

Black moved behind her, and she felt his hands on her ass, spreading her open. Leslie was dismayed to have to endure being fucked so soon. She mentally prepared to feel his cock pressing into her, but he released his grip and moved away.

“I’m not a medical doctor, but your ass looks OK to me. Well, your ass looks amazing to me,” he amended. “What I mean is that I don’t see any external trauma to your sphincter. Do you have any other injuries that I should know about before we begin?”

His frank evaluation and his question surprised her. “No, I’m fine. My ass just needs a break. No anal.”

“Understood,” he agreed.

When Black returned, he was holding a leather strap similar to a belt. He laid it gently across her waist and moved to the front of the bench where he squatted down so that he was at her eye level. The slight weight of the strap resting across her lower back made it suddenly seem very real, and she felt something between fear and arousal as her muscles tensed in anticipation.

“Your instructions mentioned a ‘lesson’. That was probably just wordplay because I’m an educator, but I like the idea. You didn’t specify a subject, so let’s see if I can teach you something about yourself.”

Leslie wasn’t sure what that meant, but she wasn’t in any position to argue.

“I’m going to ask you some personal questions. You will answer loudly and clearly. If I feel that an answer is lacking in honesty or completeness, or if the answer is too long in coming, I will issue a correction. Do you understand?”

Leslie nodded and realized her mistake immediately. Black stood, picked up the strap, and brought it down hard between her shoulder blades. Bright, hot pain blossomed across her upper back. She saw spots before her eyes. Black wasn’t fooling around.

“Do you understand?” he repeated.

“Yes. I understand.” She said through clenched teeth.

And so Leslie’s beating began. Black began to develop her sexual history. At what age did she first have sex? With who? Had she loved him? First handjob? First blowjob? First anal? How many men did she sleep with before 18? Before Marriage? During her marriage? Since her divorce? Total? Has she ever been with a woman? Favorite sex act? Favorite position? The questions went on. If she hesitated to answer, or couldn’t remember, or if he didn’t believe her, he would strike her savagely and accurately, always across a previous mark, multiplying the pain. He formed a lattice of stripes down her back, over the globes of her ass, and down the back of each leg. Leslie was a masochist who found a certain solace in pain, but it still hurt. She soon found herself answering quickly and truthfully to avoid the blows.

When Leslie answered several questions without a correction, Black dropped the strap and unfastened Leslie from the bench. He led her to the cross. It was the shape of a giant ‘X’, and it was slightly tilted. Black fastened her to it with her arms above her head and her legs apart. Her tender back was against the cross, which was both a blessing and a curse. The pressure on her fresh stripes was uncomfortable, but at least her back was protected from further abuse.

This time, Black chose a flogger. The questions focused on Leslie’s masochism. What was her earliest experience of hurting herself? When did she realize that it sexually aroused her? Could she function sexually without pain or humiliation? When did she hurt herself? Why did she hurt herself? Did she prefer to hurt herself, or did she prefer for others to hurt her? Why did she play games to decide punishments? When did she start? Did she prefer pain to humiliation? What humiliated her? This time, each unsatisfactory answer would earn her two strokes of the flogger: one backhand, and one forehand. Black started at the inside of one her arms and worked his way down her chest, over her breasts, stomach, hips, mons, then down her thigh to her knee. He never seemed to tire or run out of questions.

When Black finally put the flogger down, Leslie’s was dripping sweat. The entire front of her from elbows to knees was covered in reddening marks. Black released her, forcing her to peel her injured back from where it had stuck to the leather. Black gave her a drink of water and announced that they were going to do something ‘fun’.

Black made her stand on a low platform and secured her hands behind her. Between her feet was a flange to which Black secured a telescoping rod. He then retrieved a black dildo from a cabinet. It was longer than wide with a bullet-shaped head and ribs along its length. He explained, “My insertables are medical-grade silicone, which is non-porous to prevent bacteria. I personally clean and disinfect them after use. Even so, they are always used with a condom.”

Black affixed the dildo to the end of the rod between Leslie’s legs, applied a condom, then lubed it up. He extended the rod until the tip of the dildo was at her opening, then slowly inserted the dildo. He paused frequently so that she could adjust to it. By the time he decided that enough of it was inside of her, Leslie’s breathing was labored and she was involuntarily clenching on the dildo. Black locked the rod in place and regarded Leslie silently for a moment.

He then produced a pair of nipple clamps from the pocket of his jeans. They were wicked little devices with screw posts to tighten them. They each had a small silver bell attached that inspired visions of Christmas in hell. The first clamp was affixed to her left nipple and tightened excruciatingly slowly. When he was satisfied, Black flicked it with his finger experimentally. Her nipple throbbed and she bit her lip to keep from crying out. The right nipple was even worse because she knew what was coming.

Black then released her hands, admonishing her not to touch the clamps that were now crushing her nipples. Leslie could move her arms and legs, but she was rooted in place by the floor-mounted dildo inside of her. Her downward movement was restricted by the depth of her vagina. Her upward movement was restricted by how high she could get on her tiptoes. She couldn’t rise high enough to get off of the dildo, and she couldn’t reach low enough to release the rod that held it. She found that she could slightly lift one foot or the other, but couldn’t lean to either side far enough to dislodge the dildo. Leslie’s limbs were unrestrained, but she was trapped by her own vagina.

This time Black chose a riding crop. His questions were about emotions. He started with her first crush. Who had she liked? Who had she loved? How did she feel about various men that she’d been intimate with? Did she associate love with physical intimacy? Did she prefer men who gave her pain or pleasure? What sort of lover had her ex-husband been? Who was the best she’d ever had? Why?

Black’s strikes were almost playful. He would aim for a sensitive spot, and she would try to evade him with her limited motion. Each time she dodged or flinched, her hips would move slightly, causing her to fuck herself with the dildo. Sometimes her breasts would bounce, causing the little bells to ring. The sensations became distracting and then intense. Black walked around her, causing Leslie to rotate on the dildo inside of her. Sometimes he didn’t even ask a question. He just ordered her to ring the bells, forcing her to bounce. She tried to tilt her hips to stimulate her clit, but couldn’t get the right angle. The more aroused she became, the harder it was to concentrate on Black’s questions. At one point, she resorted to rubbing her clit with one hand and fending off blows with the other, ringing the bells all the while. As she struggled to come, she could barely interpret what Black was saying, and she was sure that her answers were gibberish. The crop stung her again and again. Black eventually called a halt and ordered Leslie to compose herself with her hands behind her back. She was a ragged mess. She actually hoped that Black would fuck her now just so that she could get some relief. When he approached her, he surprised her by swatting her hard across the backside. The shock of the sudden pain caused her to clench hard, triggering a leg-shaking orgasm. Black supported her as she trembled and came. When Leslie began to calm, Black retracted the rod, sliding the dildo from her overstimulated pussy. She collapsed and curled up on the platform with her hands at her crotch.

Black gave Leslie only a moment before ordering her to a kneeling position with her arms crossed behind her back, her breasts thrust forward. He removed the first nipple clamp and fire bloomed in her breast as sensation returned to her bruised nipple. The pain was much worse than when he had applied the clamp. She wanted to scream and cover herself with her hands, but Black ordered her to hold the position. He waited until she calmed down and her breathing returned to normal. Then, he removed the other nipple clamp.

When Black removed her wrist cuffs, Leslie thought her ordeal was finally over. Her heart sank when he began to buckle on another pair. The new cuffs each had a thick extension across her palm that she could grip. The extensions ended in heavy steel rings. Suspension cuffs. He led Leslie to the middle of the room where he quickly attached a cable to the cuffs and hoisted her hands over her head. He then attached a short spreader bar to her ankle cuffs so that she couldn’t close her legs. He spent a long time just looking at her, inspecting the latticework of marks that he’d already laid on her body as he contemplated his next indulgence. Black stood in front of Leslie and looked into her eyes as he ran his hands slowly over her restrained body. She flinched when he pinched her bruised nipples. She gasped and had to stifle a moan when he began to roughly pinch, pull, and twist her labia. It throbbed, making her pant through the pain. He stopped after only a minute. Leslie wished he hadn’t. “God you’re beautiful,” he said as he stepped away.

Leslie fully expected that her one-time rapist what about to have his way with her again. Instead, he went to the wall and returned with a short whip less than two feet long that ended in two wide leather ‘tails’. He raised the cable that held her hands so that she was barely touching the ground. She could either try to stand on her tiptoes or hold her weight with her arms and shoulders. Neither was comfortable for very long.

“Why are you here?” he asked?

“Because I’m tied to the ceiling?” Leslie snarked.

Pain blossomed across her hip where Black struck her fast as a snake, all wrist. It was ice-cold, then hot, and then it stung and throbbed like hell.

“Don’t be a smart ass. Tell me why you’re here tonight.”

That whip was wicked and Leslie wasn’t eager for another stroke. “I need to suffer,” she gasped just as Black prepared to strike again.

Black paused. “Why?”

Leslie was caught off guard. “I... don't know.”

A lash to the other hip. Leslie gasped and tried to breathe through the pain.

Black waited until she recovered enough to hold eye contact with him, “Why do you need to suffer tonight?”

Leslie didn’t understand what he was getting at, but she tried again, “Sometimes I just need to suffer. It helps me.”

A lash to her abdomen this time. She’d have curled into a ball if she weren’t restrained. Her shoulders were hurting, so she tried to push down with her toes more.

Black was pacing, frustrated. “I think I understand by now that you’re a masochist, Leslie. I want to know the specific reason that you need to suffer here and now.”

Leslie’s mind was a blank. She didn’t consider ‘why’, she just knew. She knew her answer would earn her another stripe. “I don’t know,” she almost whispered as she braced for another blow.

Instead, Black surprised her with a change of tack, “When did you injure your asshole, Leslie?”

This one was easier, “Yesterday afternoon.”

“Tell me how that happened.”

Leslie didn’t want to, but that whip was pure hell. She relented. “I fucked my ass with a huge dildo.”

Black’s face briefly registered surprise, but Leslie wasn’t sure if it was the act itself or her bluntness about it that had caught him off guard.

“Did you enjoy that?” he asked as he moved behind her.

Leslie couldn’t stop her sarcastic response, “Oh yeah, I just love the feeling of my asshole tearing.”

Black delivered a stripe across her ass. She sucked air through clenched teeth as she rode out the pain.

“Why did you fuck your ass with a huge dildo, Leslie?” he demanded.

“Because I needed to suffer!” she spat.

“Why?” he asked from behind her.

She had backed into the same corner again. “I told you I don’t know. Ask me something else!”

The whip fell across her shoulder blades. The sting went on and on. Leslie wondered if he’d broken the skin and anticipated the trickle of blood on her back. Her calves were knotting from being on her toes.

Black walked around and faced her. “You’re a bright girl, Leslie. Do you expect me to believe that you’re suffering without some idea why? Last night you were hurting yourself. Tonight I’m hurting you. What’s your plan for tomorrow night?”

Leslie knew that the answer to that question was waiting in her second envelope downstairs. She cringed at the thought of the things that she would be enthusiastically doing for her torturer.

Black continued, “We mere mortals occasionally have to take out our emotional garbage. We cry. We get drunk. We yell. We break things. We feel sad. We tell our friends. We change. Not Leslie, though. Leslie has a magic button called ‘pain’. When she presses it, ‘poof’, her emotional garbage is gone. Except it’s not really, is it? You’re just stuffing your garbage under the couch. Your problems are still there, you’re just able to ignore them until the stench overwhelms you and your magic button stops working.”

Leslie was stunned. Black was right. She’d gone from self-inflicted gang rape and its aftermath to exhibiting herself and offering sex to Watson’s class, to self-abuse, and now she was tied naked while a sadist literally whipped her. She was frantically mashing her pain button, but it wasn’t working anymore. Her life was just getting worse. She’d lost her husband. She would lose her job when the scandal at the university broke. After that, she’d lose her home and everything she’d worked for. Her shoulders ached from holder her weight.

“This,” he said as he held up the whip “is a crutch. It can be useful, but you can’t rely on it forever. Why are you here tonight?”

Black’s words stung her as sharply as his whip. She felt like a child being lectured. Her response was immature. She looked him in the eye and hissed, “Fuck you.”

The next stroke of the whip left a fresh stripe across her breasts, just above her nipples. Leslie screamed and bellowed in pain.

Black stepped close and said in an even voice, “I hope for your sake that you figure it out soon. Why are you here tonight?”

Leslie was indignant, “It’s none of your business!”

She saw Black drop his eyes and she followed the movement of his wrist as he flicked the whip upward between her legs. She managed to shift her hips at the last second so that the blow landed on her upper thigh instead of his intended target. It still hurt, but the stroke hadn’t connected the way he’d intended. Black looked angry at having missed his mark.

“You made it my business by dragging your emotional garbage to my front door. Why are you here tonight?”

As he waited for her answer, Black stared directly at her exposed sex and seemed to be lining up for his next shot. Leslie couldn’t imagine how much that was going to hurt. She shifted weight between her aching calves and shoulders. Black tensed to strike. She was panicking, “Because my life is falling apart! I’m ruining everything!”

Leslie was beyond distraught. She was full-on ugly crying by the time Black lowered her arms and released her restraints. She was gasping to breathe between her sobs when Black sat on the floor and pulled her into his lap. Leslie buried her face in his shoulder and blubbered about Alex and her career and the mess at the university. Everything she’d lost and everything she feared she would lose and what it would mean for her life. She couldn’t stop crying and she couldn’t shut up. It was humiliating for anyone to see her like this. It was humiliating to be this naked and vulnerable. In the back of her mind, she wondered if that had been the point.

When she finally ran out of steam and pulled away from Black, the front of his shirt was stained with her tears and snot. “I’m sorry,” she said as the evidence of her weakness threatened to send her over the edge again.

“It’s nothing to worry about,” he said as he helped her to her feet. “I think that’s enough lessons for now.”

The sadist led Leslie to the amazing bathroom that she had seen on her way to his torture chamber. He reached into the walk-in shower, turned on the water, and adjusted the temperature for her.

“Get yourself cleaned up. Take your time.” He left her alone and gently closed the door.

She needed to empty her bladder before she took her shower. It struck Leslie as odd to use the toilet without needing to at least partially undress first, but especially here in a strange man’s house. She realized that being naked in Black’s house was improbably far down on her list of concerns these days.

Warm water from multiple shower heads stung her tender skin at first but soothed as she relaxed and let the water run over her. She wished that she could fully enjoy the amazing shower, but the massage settings would probably make her writhe in pain in her current state. She found the control for the rain head and switched to its more gentle flow. She washed carefully, but quickly. Leslie stood with her face tilted up, letting the water run over her as she tried to wrap her mind around what just happened.

There was a gentle tap at the bathroom door and Black opened it a crack. “I’m just leaving some things for you. Find me downstairs when you’re done.”

Leslie stood in the water for another minute before turning it to icy cold. The shock of it revived her senses, and the cold numbed the welts and abrasions that decorated her body. She was shivering when she turned off the water and stepped from the shower. She mentally prepared herself for what ‘things’ Black might have left for her. What she found was a fluffy white towel and robe, both warm as if just out of the dryer. Leslie was grateful for his thoughtfulness. She dried herself, tied on the robe, and headed downstairs.

Black was in the kitchen wearing a fresh shirt when Leslie found him. He handed her a glass of iced tea. She took a sip. It was minty and slightly sweet. Delicious. She drank down half the glass.

“Have a seat,” he said as he refilled her glass.

“I think I’d rather stand,” she replied.

Black smiled knowingly as he retrieved a squat jar from the refrigerator. “A woman I know, a submissive, makes this cream,” he said. “I don’t know exactly what’s in it, but I’m sure it’s all-natural, herbal, and probably a nutritious spread for toast. She’s a vegan who will tell you all about the evils of gluten and GMOs without provocation. She’s into homeopathy and grows her own herbs. Come to think of it, she may be a witch. I’d better watch my step. Since I prefer giving to receiving, I don’t have any first-hand experience, but people in our community swear by this stuff. It’s good for kitchen burns too. Let me see your back.”

Leslie turned her back and lowered the robe to her waist. Black gently applied the cream to her injured skin. The cold alone was soothing, but the cream also tingled as it soaked in. It had a strong herbal smell, something like sage or maybe pine. When he finished her back, it felt somewhat better. She turned to face him, uncovered to the waist. He glanced down at her nakedness briefly and swallowed hard before offering her the jar. “Would you like to do the rest?”

Leslie shook her head ‘no’, so Black began to apply the cream to her upper arms and shoulders, working his way down to her breasts. He was gentle but efficient, almost detached. The cold made her nipples stand out, but he didn’t linger. After dealing with the stripes on her stomach, he pulled the robe back up her arms and covered her. He sat down on a kitchen chair and Leslie lifted the robe to bare her right leg to the hip. He continued to work silently and efficiently, soothing her wounds. Leslie marveled at his self-control as he moved up the thigh of her left leg. “You didn’t fuck me,” she said. It was a statement and a question.

“You didn’t want me to,” he responded. “The consent in your punishment letter was half-assed. Despite what you probably think, what we did on your hunt wasn’t the norm for me. If I fuck you, it won't be just because you allow it this time. I’m not desperate. I want you to want it.”

Something about his clinically detached demeanor as he applied the cream had Leslie feeling a little desperate. She considered breaking the tension by straddling his lap and fucking him right there in his kitchen chair, but he stood and moved away before she made up her mind.

“Besides,” he continued with a wink, “I thought I might need to save my energy for that second envelope.”

Leslie knew that the consent in that envelope was not half-assed.

“None of your marks look too serious. You’ll feel much better in a few days.” Black replaced his jar of sub cream in the refrigerator and put a second jar on the counter.

“What’s that one?” Leslie asked with some apprehension.

“That one,” he replied with a smile “is garlic butter. I’d like for you to have something to eat with me.” He placed several more items on the counter while Leslie retrieved a pillow from the couch in the living room. She was able to use it to perch on the edge of one of the tall chairs at his breakfast bar. Black prepared a mixed green salad and tossed it with a vinaigrette dressing. He then sliced a loaf of sourdough, applied the garlic butter, added slices of sharp-smelling cheese, followed by more bread. Finally, he applied the creation to a hot cast-iron skillet.

The grilled cheese sandwich was the best that Leslie ever had. The salad dressing tasted of citrus and berries. They shared more of the mint iced-tea. Black initiated a conversation as they ate, “During our session upstairs, you mentioned that you’re worried about a scandal at the university. The last thing I want to do is add to your worries, but I think that your concern is well-founded. Even if you’re able to make peace with the women’s studies people, the details are too salacious for the campus press to ignore. Once they have it, the local media will probably pick up the story.”

Leslie nodded. She’d feared as much. “Do you have any advice?” she asked.

“I don’t think you’re going to be able to deny that it was you. A grad student showed me one of the videos and a couple of pictures. Those phone cameras are really amazing. I don’t think that anyone who knows you will fail to recognize you. I think you’re going to have to own it and take the consequences on the chin.”

“I don’t know if my chin is up to it.”

“Hopefully, the interest will be short-lived. Maybe a celebrity will release a new sex tape and people will forget all about it. If you need to talk, or even hideout for a while, you know how to find me.”

After dinner, Leslie helped with the dishes and Black started the coffee. It was an oddly domestic scene considering that she had been hanging naked from the rafters while he whipped her only a short time ago.

“Have a seat in the living room.” He suggested. “The couch is pretty soft. I’ll bring the coffee when it's ready.”

Leslie was able to lean on her hip and against the arm of the couch without too much discomfort. Her body would hurt all over for a few days. Black joined her carrying a tray that included a coffee pot, cups, cream, sugar, and the second envelope. Leslie eyed it apprehensively, but Black made no move to pick it up. Instead, he poured coffee and slid a cup towards her. She sipped it black, while Black added cream and sugar to his.

Once he’d taken a sip, Black said, “I know that this probably sounds like an odd question coming from me right now, but may I ask you something personal?”

Leslie chuckled, “Go ahead, let’s hear it.”

Black’s tone was serious, “It’s just that you seem to still be dealing with a lot of sadness and anger about your divorce. Was the decision to separate not mutual?”

He was right, that was personal. Other than blubbering into Black’s t-shirt, she hadn’t discussed this with anyone. She took a deep breath before answering, “Alex decided on his own to leave me and he did. I couldn’t convince him to stay.”

“That’s surprising. Kinks and fetishes aside, Alex seemed very enamored of you on the couple of occasions that we were all together. I’d have said that you were the center of his universe. I felt that way about someone once. Seeing you two together kind of reminded me of her.”

Leslie thought of the pictures she’d seen by the stairs. “What was her name?”

Black paused a beat. “Laura.”

“And how did it end for you and Laura?” Leslie asked.

This time Black paused for so long that Leslie didn’t think he was going to answer. Finally, he said simply, “Car accident.”

Leslie was taken aback, “Oh, no. That’s awful. I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine what that must have been like for you.” But Leslie could imagine it, and it physically hurt to think of getting that call. Then it occurred to her that it was no longer she who would get that call about Alex. A mixed blessing.

“You never really get over it,” he told her. “You might go several days without really thinking of it, but the loss is always lurking there like some sort of bogeyman. One night you’ll turn off the lights to sleep and it’ll hit you like it was yesterday.” Black was no longer looking at her, but gazing off toward the stairs. “It doesn’t happen as much anymore, but the worst is when you forget they’re gone and you’re ready to tell them something until you remember that you can’t ever tell them anything again.”

Leslie thought to herself that maybe it wasn’t so very different from divorce.

Black took a sip of his coffee before he continued, “A few days ago, someone asked Reddit, ‘If you could have anything you want for a decade, would you trade the rest of your life for it?’ My answer would be ‘hell yes.’ If I could have even one more good year with Laura, I’d go to the gallows with a spring in my step and consider it a deal well made.”

They sat in silence for a moment before Black said, “We were talking about you and Alex, though. Did he give you any reason? What did he say when he left?”

“Alex said that he couldn’t deal with my masochism anymore. He said that we both deserved to meet someone who could be happy with us the way we were.”

Black asked, “Is that something that you struggled with during your relationship? He didn’t seem to be having any trouble dealing with your masochism on the day that Professor Watson and I first met you in the woods.”

Leslie thought about that question for a moment, “No, not really. Actually, he seemed to enjoy what I did. What we did. There were definitely times when he was really into it. The only thing he ever struggled with was when I slept with other men.”

Black nodded, “Right, you said that you’d had an open marriage for a while. Did you have a hard time with him sleeping with other women?”

Leslie was shocked at the idea, “Oh no,” she corrected. “Alex never slept around. Only me.”

“Oh, I see,” Black nodded his understanding. “Cuckolding. I always thought it was odd that two masochists would be together.”

Leslie was confused, “What do you mean?”

“You and Alex.”

“Alex isn’t a masochist.”

Now Black was confused, “The day that Professor Watson caught you by the lake, weren’t you acting out some sort of humiliation fantasy? Punishing Alex for losing the hunt? You told him to wait in the car while another man ‘raped’ you.”

“No, I wasn’t trying to punish him. I was just serving my punishment as promised.”

Black was agitated. He ran his hand over his head, puffed out his cheeks and blew. “You mean to tell me that was real for Alex? It wasn’t something that he’d asked you for?”

Leslie wasn’t sure where Black was going with this. “Yeah, I was just doing what we’d all agreed to. My loss, my punishment.”

“Watson told me that his failure to perform wasn’t as high minded as he made it seem. He told me later that he’d begged off to save face, but in reality, he was afraid that Alex was going bash in his skull with a tree branch. I told him at the time that it was silly because you two had just been acting out a fantasy. That’s why I said what I did about using my cock to punish you. Jesus, Leslie! You were playing with fire. Alex is younger and in great shape. Ed and I are lucky he didn’t kill us.”

Leslie dismissed that out of hand, “No, he might not have liked it, but Alex would have abided by our agreement.”

Black disagreed, “You don’t understand. You thought that you were serving a punishment, but that situation would be emotionally charged for Alex. He’d have felt betrayed and emasculated. Letting that happen would have destroyed his self-esteem and his self-image.” A question occurred to Black, ”Whose idea was it to invite Ed and I to participate in your hunts?”

Leslie shrugged “It was mine. Alex was against it, but I convinced him that there was no way you two would ever outrun either of us.”

“Jesus,” Black said again. Something else occurred to him then, “If Alex isn’t a masochist and he isn’t into being humiliated, how did you end up cuckolding him?”

The wheels started turning for Leslie. She was replaying certain events in her mind as she recounted for Black the backgammon games against Alex’s champion. The first match led to Leslie serving a year as a sex slave (in lieu of being branded, which answered a question that Black asked the day before). The rematch led to Alex’s year as a cuckold when Leslie seduced his champion.

“You seduced another man right in front of your husband?” Black asked incredulously. “Didn’t he object?”

“Of course he did, but I told him that he deserved it for making me suffer for a year as his sex slave.”

“Did you ever do anything to deserve Alex sleeping with someone else? Was that a punishment that you ever devised for yourself?”

“No, I wouldn’t have been able to stand it. I’d rather have been branded.”

“Did you assume that Alex would be any less jealous, or that he loved you any less?”

Black’s questions were becoming difficult to answer. “No, I guess not. I just didn’t think of it that way.” Leslie felt defensive, “Look, if Alex wasn’t willing, he didn’t have to play the game.”

“Alex probably didn’t think that you’d go through with it,” Black suggested.

Leslie let that sink in for a moment. “Actually, Alex didn’t believe that I was going through with it even after I’d slept with a few men. That’s why I started recording it.”

Black choked on his coffee. After finding a napkin, he said, “You recorded yourself having sex with other men and showed it to your husband?”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t all bad. The sex was amazing.”

“The sex with other men?”

Leslie shook her head, “No, I mean the sex with Alex. Most of the other men were barely average, but Alex was an animal after he watched the videos. He’d call me filthy names and I loved how rough he got with me.”

“It was anger,” Black said. “Alex wouldn’t physically abuse you, but sexual abuse had been part of your relationship. He was hate fucking you.”

Leslie blanched. That new perspective turned something that she’d thought of as ‘good’ into something very ugly.

“What happened in your relationship when Alex knew that you were really going through with it?”

“He tried to withdraw by ignoring me, but I told him that was bullshit. I’d served my penalty without complaint, so he had to do the same.”

Black nodded, seeming to understand, “And did he?”

“For the most part, yes. I heard him crying at night a few times, but I had suffered too! What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”

Black sat back in his chair and pushed his fingers under his glasses to rub his eyes. He went into professor mode. “Leslie, you know first hand that when a masochist suffers, they can experience a release, a sort of catharsis. When the right mix of endorphins and adrenaline and dopamine hits your brain, your suffering is processed as ‘good’. For everyone else, though…suffering is just suffering. You have to keep sight of that or it can lead to a lack of empathy.”

Leslie thought back to Alex crying and how she hadn’t done anything to comfort him. What the hell was wrong her? How could she have done that to anyone, much less someone she loves? She was disgusted with herself.

Black interrupted her dark thoughts, “How was your relationship after that year?”

“It was good. Really good, I think. We were happy. We got fat.”

“Why? Did you two go out more?”

“No. Alex did most of the cooking at home. Lots of pasta.”

Black cocked an eyebrow.

“What?” Leslie wanted to know.

“Well, some sexual abuse victims will overeat to make themselves less attractive to their abusers or to ‘hide’. I wonder if Alex was unconsciously adding his own spin by trying to make you less attractive to other men.”

Leslie’s ears were still ringing from that bombshell when Black asked, “Were you two still playing games with punishments?”

“No, I don’t need to do that as much when I’m happy.”

Black thought of Leslie serving punishments on consecutive evenings and wondered at how unhappy she must be now. “What made you start again?”

“I suggested that we bet on weight loss. We’d both weigh every week. If one person lost weight and the other person didn’t, the fatty would serve a punishment.”

“Was it hard to convince Alex to start up again?’

Leslie thought a moment. “No, not at all. He was totally on board. His only concern was if we’d have to sleep with other people.” It finally hit Leslie as her words hung in the air. Alex never a problem with her masochism and penalties and punishments. The only concern he'd ever had was her sleeping with other men. She had violated Alex’s trust and never earned it back.

Black summarized what he had learned in an annoyingly clinical tone, “You came up with a punishment for yourself. Alex enjoyed it too much. This made you angry. Instead of communicating your feelings to Alex, or simply refusing to continue, you enacted what amounted to the nuclear option in your relationship. The game was just a formality for you. There was no way Alex’s ringer wouldn’t have cooperated. You knew that you’d be seeing other men as soon as the idea of ‘getting even’ popped into your head. Alex played hoping to win unlimited sexual access to his wife, and you played knowing that you’d win unlimited sexual access to anyone but your husband. ”

“So for a year, you took your revenge by betraying, humiliating, and emasculating Alex. Every week you’d rip the scab off and rub salt in the wound by showing him videos of you having sex with other men. You told him that he deserved it for making you suffer, that it was his fault for losing the game, and that he needed to paste a smile on his face and deal with it. All he could do was hate fuck you and cry himself to sleep. You just kept going. And they call me a sadist.”

“God knows that I loved Laura more than anything in this life, but if she had done that…” Black just shook his head. “Not Alex, though. He stayed. He toughed it out, hoping for future happiness. And it worked out. Things were probably great for him until you invited strangers…”

Black trailed off when he realized that Leslie was crying. Tears were streaming down her face and her shoulders wracked with silent sobs. He hurried from the room and quickly returned with a box of tissues.

Leslie was destroyed. She couldn’t stop crying. She thought of herself as a good person, but that was bullshit. She had hurt the person she loved most over and over. How had she not understood? Had she understood? She was vaguely aware of Black apologizing for upsetting her. He hadn’t meant to be so harsh. Why the fuck not, she wondered? Hadn’t she been harsh? Didn’t she deserve it? She wasn’t the hero of her story. She wasn’t even the victim. She was the fucking villain. Alex hadn’t left his wife. No, Alex had run screaming from a monster who kept hurting and abusing him again and again.

Black asked softly, “Leslie, how long was it between the day Ed caught you and Alex leaving?”

Leslie couldn’t form the words to answer, but she knew. She knew that Alex left her right after that hunt. Right after. God, how could she have been so dense? How could she not have understood what was happening and stopped herself before it went too far? She realized that she was rubbing hard at a welt on her hip to make it hurt.

Eventually, Leslie ran out of tears. When she looked across the coffee table, it was littered with her soiled tissues and Black was holding the second envelope. ‘Yes!’ she thought. She looked into his eyes and nodded. She deserved to suffer. She needed to suffer. She wanted to give back the third and the fourth and the fifth envelopes and then a dozen more that were even worse. She wanted to be ground into dust so she could blow away and not have to feel this anymore.

Leslie gasped audibly when Black tore up the unopened envelope, “No! You have to punish me.”

“The problem,” Black began, “is that the punishment should fit the crime. Did the punishment in that envelope fit your crime?”

Leslie shook her head miserably.

“I’m going to give you a different, more appropriate punishment.”

Leslie wondered if Black had a gun.

When he told her what the punishment would be, she considered that a gun may have been preferable.

Alex’s apartment wasn’t far from Leslie’s house. She’d seen his address on some of the divorce paperwork and hadn’t been able to resist driving by a couple of months ago. It wasn’t the nicest complex in the area, but it wasn’t the worst, either.

Leslie wanted to complete the punishment that Black decided ‘fit her crime’ as soon as possible. She texted Alex as soon as she was dressed. It was their first direct contact since the divorce and she kept it simple, “I need to talk to you. Important. Can we meet?”

Leslie only hoped to meet him sometime in the next few days, but Alex replied right away and asked if he should come over. Leslie didn’t want to inconvenience him for this and felt that they should talk on his ‘turf’. That way, she reasoned, he could have the satisfaction of throwing her out into the cold and slamming the door in her face when it inevitably came to that. Leslie texted back that she was out and would come to his place.

The buildings were three stories tall, and each apartment had an outside entrance on a shared stairwell. Two to a side, four to a floor, twelve to a stairwell. Leslie found building C and climbed to the third floor. She could hear the sounds of TVs or muted conversations behind some of the doors as she passed. She stood outside Alex’s door, steeled her nerves, and tried to imagine how she was going to start. She knocked.

A man opened the door, and Leslie started to apologize for being at the wrong apartment before she did a double-take. She recognized his old college t-shirt before she registered that it was her ex-husband wearing it. The t-shirt had never looked like this, though. Tonight it was full of muscles. Alex had obviously been spending a lot of time at the gym. He’d been in great shape after training for the hunts, but he’d really bulked up since she’d seen him last. There were pecs and delts and biceps and triceps and lats and muscles that she couldn’t name but wanted to run her fingers over. Alex had also grown a beard. It was neatly trimmed with just the tiniest hint of ‘salt’ that made him appear distinguished. He looked unreasonably good.

While Leslie stood there trying to remember her name, Alex looked her up and down with an unreadable expression on his face. She hadn’t said anything yet, so he started. “Hi. Come on in.”

Leslie stepped into the apartment and he closed the door behind her. “Can I take your coat?” he asked.

She handed her coat over and he draped it over the back of a chair as she surveyed his apartment. It was a studio, not much bigger than a hotel room with a kitchenette. Clean and serviceable, but no frills. Along one wall there was a stack of his moving boxes. She knew that they contained mostly clothes, books, shoes, and some pictures.

Leslie still hadn’t said anything, so Alex offered “Why don’t we have a seat?”

Leslie sat on one end of a couch that she thought was probably from Ikea. It wasn’t nearly as soft as Black’s, so she was careful not to wince as she arranged herself. She didn’t want Alex to wonder what she’d been doing and ask. Her punishment was to meet Alex face to face and to apologize to him for the worst thing she’d ever done. She was to be completely honest, so she’d have to tell Alex the truth about anything he asked. This punishment didn’t exactly tic her usual boxes, but it was important to do. Alex deserved an apology, and she could never begin to forgive herself until she’d at least given him the opportunity to forgive her.

Alex took the other end of the couch and said “You’ve been crying. Is everything OK?”

Leslie wasn’t sure if her nod constituted a lie, but she didn’t correct herself.

“Can I get you anything? Tissues? Water?”

Leslie shook her head. “No, thank you.” Those were the first words she’d spoken to Alex in months.

“I like your hair.”

Leslie touched her hair and found it still in Black’s braid, slightly damp from his shower. “Thanks. I was just trying something new.” Not a lie.

“So what’s up? You said it was important?” he prompted.

“This isn’t what you’re probably thinking,” she said.

“What am I thinking?”

“You’re probably thinking that I’m here to either beg you to come back or to make the most pathetic booty call ever. I know that you’ve got too much self-respect to come back, and I’ve got too much self-respect for a pathetic booty call. Just barely.”

“Actually, when I got your text I thought that you were going to show up with your belly poking out, telling me that you were pregnant.”

“Oh.” Leslie hadn’t thought of that possibility. Thinking about it now wasn’t a detour that she could afford to take. “I’m not.”

Alex nodded. “So what is it?”

“I don’t know how I’m going to get through this, so I need you to just listen. Please let me finish before you say anything. OK?”

“Yeah, sure. Just tell me what’s going on. You’re worrying me.”

“Alex, I need to apologize to you. There should be a bigger word to match the magnitude of what I did.” She took a steadying breath.

“When we did the sex slave punishment, I felt that you enjoyed yourself too much. It was a punishment that I devised myself, so it was unfair for me to be upset with you, but I was. I was hurt, and I felt angry and resentful. What I should have done is communicate to help you understand how I felt. Instead, I decided to get back at you by sleeping with other men.”

Leslie saw the stricken look on Alex’s face. “God. I’m so sorry. I can’t tell you how sorry.”

She pressed on, “The backgammon game was just a formality. I know that. There was no way that I was going to lose. Once I’d decided to hurt you, there was no stopping me. You didn’t imagine that I would be so cruel as to actually go through with it, but I was. At first, it was vindictive, but then it just became compulsive. I was only doing it because I’d said that I would. I don’t know if I understood how badly I was hurting you, but I did know that you were hurting. I was hurting the person who I loved most and I didn’t stop. I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me. A normal person should have a conscience, or empathy, or common sense that stops them. You should have left me a hundred times over, but you stuck by me. I didn’t deserve you. You sure as hell didn’t deserve me.”

Leslie saw sadness and resignation in Alex’s face. She needed a reprieve before she went on. “It got better though, didn’t it? I mean after when it was finally over and I stopped? We were really happy for a while, weren’t we?”

“Yeah.” Alex almost whispered with a catch in his throat

.

“Then I fucked it up again. I asked strangers to join our hunts. I gave other men a chance to have sex with me. Again. I was only trying to make it more exciting for me. I didn’t even think about how you would feel, or what it would do to you. That’s what you’re supposed to do in a relationship. You’re supposed to think about the other person and how they feel, and what they need, and you take care of them. You’re also supposed to be faithful. I didn’t do any of those things, so you left. You deserved better and you went to find it, and I deserved to lose you and to be alone. You did the right thing.”

Leslie took a deep breath. “I know that I don’t deserve to be forgiven, but you definitely deserve this apology. I’m sorrier than I can possibly express for what I did to you…what I did to us.”

Alex and Leslie’s eyes were both burning with unshed tears when she finished. They sat in silence for a minute or two.

Finally, Alex said “You’re taking too much on yourself. There were things that I should have done better too. I should have been better at communicating…”

“No,” Leslie interrupted, “my infidelity was the core issue. I may try to justify it with my games and my punishments, but the bottom line is that I betrayed you by having sex with other people while you were faithful to me. The most messed up part of it is that I really didn’t even want to have sex with other people. I just wanted to hurt you. Well, mission accomplished. Well done, me. What happened to us is my fault.”

Alex wouldn’t argue the point. “Thank you, Leslie. I accept your apology. I forgive you.”

Leslie was incredulous, “You can’t possibly mean that after what I did. I don’t deserve it.”

“I do mean it. There’s no benefit for me in hanging on to anger and resentment over past hurts. I just have to let it go or it’ll eat away at me forever until I’m just a grumpy, bitter old man. You have to do the same. You can’t hold onto this guilt forever. You have my permission to let it go. You have no obligation to feel guilty on my account.”

“I can’t let it go. Not yet. I need to figure out what’s broken inside of me that would let me do that. I think I need to be talking to a professional. The guilt will keep me motivated to improve until I can let it go someday.”

Alex leaned in to hug Leslie. The position was awkward and every bruise, welt, and abrasion hurt. Leslie wouldn’t have broken that hug for anything, though.

When Alex pulled back, he said “I’m going to have a beer. Will you have a beer with me?”

Leslie wasn’t ready to leave yet, so she agreed.

Alex only had to go a couple of steps to reach the refrigerator in the tiny apartment. Even in her state of distress, Leslie noticed how well his jeans fit. He returned to his seat and handed her a bottle. He clinked bottlenecks with Leslie and said, “To ‘letting it go’.” before he drank.

Leslie took a sip too. “I just keep going over it, wishing that I could undo it somehow. I wish that I could make it so that it never happened. If I had a time machine, I’d go find that stupid slut who was about to cheat on you and beat her ass. She’s a couple of years younger, but I’m in better shape. I could take her.”

Alex laughed at that “Be careful, I hear she likes having her ass beat.”

“Yeah, she’s a real sicko alright.” Leslie agreed.

A second later, Leslie said, ”I wish I had your name branded on my ass.”

Alex nearly choked on his beer. “What are you talking about?”

“If I had made you brand me instead of doing that sex slave punishment, I wouldn’t have cheated to get back at you.”

“Or,” Alex said, “maybe you’d have been pissed off about having to go around with my name on your ass and needed to get back at me for that. Maybe I’m the one who should have your name on my ass.”

Now it was Leslie’s turn to ask, “What are you talking about?”

“If I hadn’t brought in a ringer as my champion, I’d have lost badly that day and you would have been branding me.”

Leslie laughed at the thought of Alex with ‘PROPERTY OF LESLIE CHAPMAN’ branded on his ass. “Shoulda, coulda, woulda.” She teased.

“Besides, I kind of liked the sex slave thing,” he added.

“Don’t start that shit again,” she said with a grin.

They sat in companionable silence for a moment before Leslie asked, “So, have you been seeing anyone?” and immediately regretted it. She wasn’t even sure that she wanted to know. “I’m sorry. Forget I said that. It’s none of my business.”

Alex smiled ruefully. “I have dated exactly two women since our divorce. The first was absolutely gorgeous. She had done some modeling.”

Leslie was pretty sure that she didn’t want to hear this, but maybe she needed to. She put on her best ‘open and interested’ face and took another sip of beer.

“She was also terrible in bed. I had to check several times to make sure that she was awake. I’m not even kidding.”

Leslie couldn’t imagine just lying there with Alex on top of her. The woman must have been dead below the waist.

“The second woman was more ‘cute and curvy’. We took things slowly, and she eventually turned out to be a lot of fun naked. But, to be honest, I lay next to her a few times thinking ‘she’s never going to hand me a stack of numbered envelopes’.”

Leslie smiled at that. “Lucky man. That one sounds like a keeper.”

“I’m not so sure,” Alex said. “In any case, it turned out that we really didn’t have that much in common. We broke it off after a couple of months. I’ve been on my own for a few weeks now. It’s not really a good time for me to start a relationship anyway.”

“Why not?” Leslie wondered.

Alex joked, “A recent divorcee living in a studio apartment with his moving boxes? I don’t exactly scream ‘relationship material’ to the ladies.”

“Are you looking for a place?”

“Actually, yeah. Not here, though. I’ve accepted a new position in Portland. It’s a nice promotion and pay raise for me.”

“Congratulations,” Leslie said as she tried to come to grips with Alex not just gone from her, but gone from here.

“What about you? Have you been seeing anyone?”

Leslie was chagrined, but still bound by the rules of her punishment, so she had to be honest. “I haven’t had any romantic encounters, but I’ve had sex with four men since our divorce. The first three were all at once when I lost a hunt.”

Alex looked outraged “Three!? The losers were supposed to get lost after you were caught!”

“I changed the rules after you left,” she said. “I’ve learned my lesson, though. Hunting season is over unless I figure something else out.”

Alex had a strange look on his face that Leslie assumed meant ‘Thank God I got out when I did.’ but actually meant ‘I want to tear some people apart and stomp around in their guts.’

“The fourth man was kind of a sociobiology experiment.”

“I don’t know what that means,” admitted Alex.

“Professor Watson asked me to offer myself as the prize for the top-scoring student in his sociobiology seminar. He wanted to see if grades would improve. I went to the classes to sort of ‘show off’ and keep their interest up. Grades did improve, and I did take the top student to a hotel. It was fine, and he must have really enjoyed himself because he made an awkward marriage proposal the next morning.” It occurred to Leslie that it was kind of pathetic that the only action she was getting was from punishments.

“Well, that sounds like good clean fun.” quipped Alex.

“No, not really. It’s turning out to be the second biggest mistake of my life. Some of the guys in that seminar secretly took pictures and videos of me, and now those are being shared around campus with the story of the experiment. The women’s studies feminists got wind of it and went on the warpath. They assume I was coerced or exploited somehow. Even if we can prevent them from crucifying Watson and me along with him, the media is bound to pick up the story. Once the recordings hit the news and the Internet, someone will put my name with my face. They might even recognize me in the masturbation video from a few years ago. If any of that happens, I’ll lose my job. They can’t have an amateur porn star advising their clients. No one will have me in a position of trust.”

Alex was staring at her in open-mouthed horror.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t come here to dump all of this on you. It’s my mess to deal with.”

“Jesus, Leslie. What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “If this really goes bad, I may have to lay low until it blows over. Maybe I’ll go stay with my sister for a while. I could take my maiden name again. I’ll change my look so that I’m harder to recognize. Eventually, I’ll send out some resumes and hope that no one connects the dots.”

“Leslie, if you need any help, I mean with the mortgage or bills, just let me know.”

Who had she ever been to deserve this man? “I won’t take your money, Alex. Thank you, though.”

Something had been on Leslie’s mind for the last few minutes. “Alex, earlier you said that you’d thought I might be pregnant.” She paused. “How did you feel when you were thinking that?”

Alex thought about his answer. He knew what she was getting at. It may not be easy for her, but it would be honest. “Well, at first I was really happy that we were having a kid. Then, I was sad because we’d have to do some sort of shared custody every other weekend bullshit. Then, I was angry because I’d have to get a paternity test…you know.”

She did. She’d ruined so much. Leslie was starting to feel pathetic. “I’d better get going,” she decided.

Alex took her beer bottle from her, helped her with her coat, and accompanied her on the short walk to the door. They shared another hug and wished each other good luck. As Leslie started down the steps, Alex had an idea and called out to her, “Hey, what are you doing next Friday night?”

Leslie could think of a few things that she should be doing, but her calendar would be clear for Alex. “Nothing. Why?”

“Would you like to go out for fish & chips? For old times sake?”

Leslie said that she would like that very much and couldn’t help beaming at him.

Leslie did a lot of thinking on Saturday and came to some decisions.

On Sunday, she deleted all of her social media accounts and the email address that included her name. She also attempted to remove or asked friends to remove any pictures of herself that she could find online.

On Monday morning, Leslie requested a meeting with her boss and started packing up her office while she waited. When they met, she gave him a letter of resignation dated two weeks prior, which cited ‘personal reasons’. She told him that she had done some things in her private life that reflected poorly on her, and by extension, the company if she continued there. They needed to get some distance from her. They should remove her from the company web site as soon as possible. She apologized for the short notice and offered to complete her current assignments for free and to make herself available to answer any questions about her past work. She also told him not to take any shit from a former contractor named Bob Rudolph. If he caused any trouble, she would provide absolute proof that he was a rapist. Her boss was at a loss for words.

On Monday afternoon, Leslie called a realtor to list her house. She then called her sister in Phoenix to ask if she could come to stay for a while. She said that Leslie would be welcome for as long as she needed to stay.

On Tuesday morning, Leslie rented a storage unit and arranged for movers to put her furniture and some boxes into it on Saturday.

On Tuesday afternoon, Leslie put on her sharpest suit and sensible shoes. She met with professor Watson and the feminists in the university’s administration building. She only gave her name as ‘Jane Doe’, but she was able to convince them that yes, she was the woman they had seen in the pictures and that her participation in Watson’s experiment had been voluntary. She wasn’t a sex worker, but a professional woman with a solid knowledge of business principles and an academic interest in sociobiology. Moreover, she herself was a feminist who felt that what she did with her body and sexuality was her choice. Any attack on her would be an attack on one of their own. She was successful in defusing that situation and professor Watson thanked her profusely.

Leslie would spend the rest of the week packing to get ready for the movers.

On Wednesday, Black texted her a picture of the school newspaper. There was a story about a sex scandal in the biology department with a clever title. It included a picture of her with certain parts of her anatomy blurred that made the picture look even more salacious than if it hadn’t been edited at all. 

Her face was not blurred.

Leslie was annoyed. “I’ve lost my husband, my career, and now my home because of the mistakes that I’ve made. Do you imagine that you’re going to make me feel worse by rubbing my nose in it with your stories? Get off my lawn.”

The man from the paper reasoned, “This isn’t a personal attack ma’am. It’s just a story that our subscribers want to read about.”

Leslie stared daggers at the man. “We’ve built concentration camps on our border. The person in the oval office is almost certainly a criminal, and likely a pedophile. Climate change is literally destroying the earth. There are US citizens who lack access to basic health care.  American police have killed over 1700 African-Americans in the past five years. The cost of education is economically crippling young people. Women are losing their reproductive rights. There’s actual news that you could be reporting, but your subscribers want to read about me giving an anatomy lesson to some college students? Fuck your subscribers.” With that, she slammed her door in their faces and returned to packing.

That night, the local TV news included a mercifully short story about ‘sex for grades’ being turned on its head at the local university. Another picture of Leslie was shown with part of her anatomy blurred. The talking head promised that they would be “following this story”.

The newspaperman had put some effort into the story that hit the paper’s web site on Friday. Leslie’s name was finally in print, along with a surprisingly accurate account of her arrangement with Professor Watson and what had gone on in his sociobiology seminar. He must have interviewed some of the students. The story was illustrated with several pictures, some of which had been edited for the sake of decency. The reporter had also interviewed an elderly neighbor of Leslie’s who claimed to have seen her streaking in the neighborhood. There was a statement from her company that made her glad that she had gotten ahead of this, and grateful that her boss was a decent person. “Ms. Chapman resigned [several] weeks ago for personal reasons. During her time with us, she was professional, hard-working, and highly competent. Her contributions will be missed. We wish her the best.”  Someone had recorded Leslie claiming to have ‘destroyed the career’ of one of their contractors and the reporter had asked about that as well. “Ms. Chapman was not involved in contracting decisions. If anyone has a specific concern, they may contact our legal department and we will investigate. If evidence of any wrongdoing is found, we will share our findings with the appropriate authorities.” That should keep Bob Rudolph’s mouth shut, thought Leslie.

Around lunchtime, a work friend sent her a text that began “I’m so sorry, sweetie…” An intern had found a web page where some basement troll was collecting pictures and videos of Leslie. In addition to those that Professor Watson’s class had taken, they had found her masturbation video and a number of pictures that Leslie hadn’t seen before. There were a few bathing suit shots from a beach getaway, and some others taken at a work party. It was particularly jarring to see herself in a professional environment juxtaposed with being verbally humiliated while she frigged herself in the back of a van.

By late Friday afternoon, Leslie was done packing what she wanted the movers to store on Saturday. She began looking for something to wear for fish & chips with Alex. It was a tough call. She didn’t want to be overdressed, but she wanted to look nice. Not like she’d tried too hard, though. She couldn’t wear anything too low cut or short-sleeved, because she still had a few marks that hadn’t faded. That was OK, though. It was Winter, so she should dress warmly. It occurred to her how different this was from preparing to go to Black’s house, and how she’d never intentionally chosen an outfit for eating fish & chips before. Tonight had been something for her to look forward to during one of the hardest weeks of her life.

Most of the house was packed up, so there was little for Leslie to do after hair and makeup and getting dressed. She wore a snug-fitting sweater that she hoped brought out her eyes. Her embroidered skirt had a nice swing to it and a hemline that hit her just above the knee. She wore dark tights and Mary Janes that almost matched her small clutch.

It was twenty minutes before Alex was supposed to pick her up. She sat on her couch for the last time before the movers came to get it. She fidgeted. She chided herself for putting too much effort into her appearance. It was just Alex, her ex-husband whom she had known for years. He’d probably show up late in baggy jeans and an old t-shirt. They’d go to eat, and they’d say goodbye, and then they’d be in different cities. It might be years before they saw each other again if they ever did. She hugged herself as if she could squeeze out the feeling.

Ten minutes later, a car pulled to the curb in front of her house. She jumped up and grabbed her coat, but it wasn’t Alex’s car, so she plopped back down on the couch. A moment later, she heard footsteps on the front walk, and then a knock at her door. When she opened it, Alex was standing there in a sport coat over a crisp white button-down, belted jeans, and polished oxfords. He was overdressed for fish & chips, and ten minutes early.

“You look nice,” he said when he saw her.

“You too.” she understated.

As he led her to the gleaming dark gray coupe on the curb, she asked, “Is that a BMW?”

Alex knew what she must be thinking. “They’re not as expensive as you would guess if you pick them up used. A guy I know from the gym is a mechanic at the dealership. He kept his eyes open and let me know when this one came in off a lease.”

When he started it, the motor sounded like a big cat growling, and it was super nice inside. Leslie made a mental note to look into it if she ever got back on her feet. As they pulled away, Alex said “I noticed the ‘for sale’ sign in the yard. I guess that means it’s the nuclear option?”

Leslie sighed miserably. “Yeah.”

“I saw the news. A reporter stopped by my place yesterday.”

Leslie’s stomach fluttered. “I’m so sorry. What did you tell them?”

Alex gave her a grin. “Actually, I invited him in and we sat and talked for quite a while. I told him what a great person you are. I basically nominated you for sainthood. When he asked why we split, I told him that it had been due to our religious differences.”

“What?” Leslie was surprised.

“Yep, it seems that while you are a devout atheist, I have come to embrace the message of Jesus Christ through the teachings of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I gave him a copy of The Watchtower that they’d left on my door and asked him if Jesus was in his life. He kept eyeballing the door, but I wouldn’t let him go until we’d prayed together.”

Leslie was laughing hysterically.

“I just wanted to waste his time. Nothing he’d do with it was going to be good for you.”

“Thanks. He still managed to do plenty, though. He must have worked late.”

Alex’s tone became serious. “Leslie, you have to get control of…things.”

“I know,” she said. “I plan to start seeing a therapist as soon as I get settled somewhere. I need help with my missing empathy and my ‘gambling problem’. I’m risking too much and losing too often.”

The restaurant was counter service. They placed their regular order and found a table while they waited for Alex’s name to be called.

The owner stopped by and told them that he’d missed them lately. ‘So have I.’ thought Leslie as Alex joked with the man.

When Alex got up to get the food, Leslie noticed that with the exception of the lesbian couple in the corner, every pair of female eyes followed him. She was a little outraged until she realized that she had no right. He could pick up any of these women and put Leslie in a cab. She’d have to smile and wish them a good evening. “Shoulda kept a ring on it,” she muttered to herself.

She considered what had changed in Alex. Was it just that he’d been working out? That he was dressed nicely? That was certainly part of it, but he also carried himself differently. He was more friendly and outgoing. He had confidence. He had found the confidence that she’d taken from him. The last few times they’d been here had been the nights following her ‘dates’ with other men. Alex would have just watched a video of her with someone else. God, she was toxic.

“Here you go,” Alex said as he placed a basket of fried food and a local microbrew in front of her.

“It seems that you have a lot of fans these days,” Leslie said, nodding toward a group of women nearby.

Alex picked up a piece of fish. “Huh? What do you mean?”

He was completely clueless. Typical. Probably for the best. “Nothing,” she said. “How’s your fish?”

“So good. I never eat this stuff anymore. It’s all about macros and micros. Low carb, high protein.”

“Yeah, you look like you’ve been hitting the gym pretty hard,” she remarked.

Alex put down his fish and looked at her. “Just so you know, I really struggled with my decision to leave. At first, I spent a lot of time at the bar. I realized at some point that I couldn’t remember which night I’d last been sober. I wasn’t going to last like that, so I had to find a new way to cope. I decided that every time I felt like crawling back to you, I’d hit the gym instead.”

“Oh.” was all that Leslie said as she sized up his shoulders.

“The gym has become kind of a second home. One side is the standard stuff like weights and cardio machines, but the other side has mats and punching bags. They teach Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Kickboxing. Some MMA guys work out there. I wasn’t into it at first, but a guy needed someone to practice with one night and he asked me. Actually, it was Paul, the BMW mechanic. I figured ‘why not?’ and now those guys have sort of adopted me as their unofficial practice dummy. I took a couple of BJJ classes, too. I mostly just get thrown around, but it’s a good way to burn some calories, and I’ve learned a few things.”

For the rest of the meal, they caught up on the friends they’d divided in the divorce. Some were getting married. Some were having a baby. Another couple was remodeling their kitchen. They complained about work. They talked about Alex’s big promotion and real estate prices in Portland. They talked about a hundred little things that would have been everyday conversations if they were together.

After dinner, they walked around the park as they had often done when they were together. It felt odd not to hold Alex’s hand, or have his arm around her. They talked about movies and their favorite shows and told jokes and made fun of each other like old friends. Not wanting the evening to end, they stopped at a cafe for gelato. They switch bowls halfway through, and the conversation continued.

The ride home became subdued, though. Leslie couldn’t imagine enduring a long, drawn-out goodbye. She knew that she’d fall apart. She decided to tell Alex goodnight like she would be seeing him around, and then hop out so that he wouldn’t walk her to the door.

Alex’s brain was churning like he was trying to plot a trajectory to Mars. There were flow charts and equations dancing in front of his eyes. There may have been steam coming out of his ears. They rode in silence.

When they stopped in front of her house, Leslie said, “Tonight was really nice, Alex. Thank you for the fish & chips.” She reached over to squeeze his hand and added “Good luck.” She unlatched her door and started to get out, but Alex didn’t let go of her hand.

“You know,” he began, “I hear that Portland has some really great places for fish & chips.”

Leslie’s heart skipped a beat and then began to speed up, like a car downshifting to accelerate out of a turn. She knew that she should say something, but all she could manage was “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, he continued. The economy is pretty good there, too. I bet a good business analyst would have her pick of jobs. Oregon schools aren’t that great, though. We might have to consider private.”

At that, Leslie's head whipped around and she locked eyes with him. Her voice was cracking, “Alex, I swear to God you’d better not be fucking with me right now. This isn’t funny.”

“There are some things that we’d have to work out between us,” he said.

“Like what?’ she wanted to know.

“First of all,” he pointed to the realtor sign on the lawn, “that can’t happen again. At least for now, I want to pre-approve any punishments before you roll the dice.”

Leslie bristled at the idea that she needed a babysitter or anyone’s approval. On the other hand, a sanity check might be good. Look at what her own judgment had led her to. She didn’t trust her voice, so Leslie nodded her assent.

“Second, no other men.”

Leslie didn’t even need to think about that one. She quickly nodded again.

“Third, I want us to work on communication. I mean really work on it. That might mean going to a couples therapist. I want us to actually set aside time to talk to each other without distractions and to be honest about what’s going on in our relationship and how we’re feeling. We’re gonna talk until it hurts.”

Leslie was not opposed to hurting. She nodded a third time. “Alex, I think you should come inside for a cup of coffee. It seems that we suddenly have a lot to discuss.”

When they got inside, there was no coffee. No one was disappointed.