Legacy

By the next morning, Dakota expected to be trained as a slave. Naturally, she had no idea what that meant; she assumed that it would involve being naked at all times, led around on a leash, told where to stand, when to sit, what and how to eat, who to fuck, and what to feel about it. The last thing she expected was to be treated like someone's favorite niece, doted upon and spoiled and made to feel like one of the family. A different family than the one she'd grown up in, to be sure. But a family nonetheless. Evangeline spoke as though she and Sara had grown up together, although that wasn't the case. They had in fact spent nine months together.

At the Retreat.

So, that was the next step. Not enforced nudity and collars; not eye contact restrictions and sitting with her legs apart; not being whipped and then ignored by a lover who first transformed her and then forgot her, like O. The next step was the program. The Retreat. A week later, Evangeline gave her a brightly colored folder with a few pieces of paper inside: a short contract, a pamphlet, a plane ticket. The folder seemed to weigh a thousand pounds, and Dakota collapsed beneath the weight of it. She sat on the couch with it open on her lap, staring blankly at the ticket more than anything.

She swallowed. She didn't want to say it. She made herself say it anyway.

"I need to know first."

"Know what, Dakota?"

"You know."

Evangeline kept silent.

"It wasn't a helicopter crash, was it."

Silence.

"It wasn't an accident."

Silence.

"I need to know."

Silence.

"Tell me!" she cried out. "Was she murdered? Did some freak decide to ignore her safeword and—"

"Sara St John had no safeword."

Evangeline's voice was rough, brittle, thickened with unspent tears. Dakota flinched. Had she said something wrong?

"She was a wand-bearer," said Evangeline. "She gave herself to us fully. To all of us. No limits. No reservations. On the night she died, she gave her life to us—from her own hand!"

That felt like a knife in Dakota's heart. "She killed herself?"

"She accepted a higher fate."

Dakota could only shake her head.

"She gave someone a gift. She has a true legacy—one that will echo forever. I could never do that. I don't have the courage."

"I don't understand," Dakota whispered.

"Neither did I," Evangeline whispered back.

It was then that Dakota knew she wouldn't be going to the Retreat, no matter how nice the brochure looked. She didn't need the money. She had a good head on her shoulders and a little money put back. She'd find a job and work her way through an associate's degree, and maybe she could scrape together enough scholarship funds after that—enough to put her through two years at a regular college. And then she'd have her bachelor's degree. She could...

All night long she worked to finish that sentence.

Then she could what?

She didn't know what she wanted to study. Her mother had been a doctor, apparently. Dakota didn't have that kind of money and never would. She'd need a degree in social work, or—or maybe she could join the Army and become a police officer. One of those tiny women with bad attitudes and no common sense that liked to pick fights with men twice their size and then get bailed out by a partner or slung through a window. She could become a paralegal and try to be sexy enough join a firm with a partner horny enough to knock her up and wife her up to quiet the scandal. She could study medicine at community college and become a nurse. All the worst women became nurses.

She tossed and turned. She stared at the right numbers of the clock that sat, for no apparent reason, on the table beside the bed. No one used those things anymore, did they? Her phone woke her each morning; it had been doing that for years. This one read 4:18 AM—which was wrong, obviously; she assumed that no one had set it in years. But it was so bright that she could read the title of the book that sat beside it on the nightstand.

Story of O.

Her bookmark held a place a little more than three quarters of the way through. She hadn't read in a while. Evangeline's stories had made her hunger for something, but something more real and more intense than she found in those pages. Something hot and hard and bruising. That tasted like sweat and tears. That left marks and drew blood. A fantasy, no matter how prettily written, couldn't do that for her. Then she understood why she couldn't decide on a major anymore.

She'd already chosen one.

As it turned out—according to the clock on the stove in the kitchen—it really was 4:21 AM as she padded down the stairs to knock on Evangeline's door. It couldn't wait. She had to know now.

"What if I'm not?" she said to the blinking, blear-eyed woman whose naked body was wrapped in silk sheets.

"Not?" said Evangeline.

"Submissive."

Evangeline stared at her.

Dakota's cheeks flushed. She looked at the ground, at her toes. She was a fool. Coming down here in the middle of the night, to wake up a woman she barely knew as though she were a child with a nightmare. She was a grown woman with a choice to make, and she needed to make it on her own! That she was apparently wholly ignorant of her whole nature, unable to judge for herself whether she could or couldn't serve for another's pleasure—

"Go to sleep, Dakota," said Evangeline.

"I'm sorry," she mumbled as she went out. Before she could close the door, however, Evangeline spoke again.

"Right there. Not another step. Sleep right there."

Dakota stared back. If it hadn't been after four in the morning, she might have asked a question. Might have argued. Might have rankled under so unreasonable a demand. Tonight, though, maybe she was tired. Or maybe she just wanted to know. Had to know. She lowered herself to the floor without taking another step, half in and half out of Evangeline's master bedroom. From the waist up, she lay on the hard, cold marble outside, shivering. From the waist down, she lay on the thick, luxurious carpet in the bedroom—still shivering, because the door was open and the air conditioning was on, and because she wore nothing other than a long t-shirt.

She didn't sleep at all, but she was still there in the morning, when Evangeline asked if she was ready to go to the airport.