Competition Breeds Excellence in Captivity

My base instinct to look for ways to let Zarina’s body and mind heal was driven by my superficial attraction to her appearance that I had destroyed. Happily, 6000 years of human progress have produced commercial products that at least somewhat glamorize their customers. Man and womankind would much rather throw money at the promise of a quick fix, as opposed to solving the underlying problem. My expectations were admittedly tempered from working with advertising agencies, who privately owned up to selling snake oil. But the invisible hand of the market had me luxuriating in its grasp, so I thought nothing of spending a couple thousand US dollars on false hopes.

My stumbling block was not knowing which beauty products to purchase. I’ve been that man looking lost in one of the women’s product aisles, when a girlfriend failed to specify an exact item or packaging. Now in the second month of Zarina’s captivity, she had solely cleaned up her appearance with whatever products I gave her from my own use. Not that my body care routine was cut-rate: I am as vain as any hotshot corporate executive. The tough reality in the job market is that looks matter. I don’t mean to brag when I say that my preferred brands were Aēsop soaps paired with Salux exfoliating cloths, whatever new formulations of Shu Uemura or Kérastase shampoos my hair ‘stylist’ recommended after charging me $150 US dollars before tip, and RMK or Shiseido sunscreen only sold on the Japanese market. But there are differences between men’s and women’s products, especially at the high end, and there were a lot of items I was missing. 

I was reminded that I needed Zarina’s help coming up with a shopping list when that time of the month came around. I had expected that the reality of keeping a sex slave meant reckoning with the natural changes in a woman’s body. Between my combat experience and sadism, I am the least of all people to be squicked out by blood. I never had any dysfunction when it came to period sex, nor is it a fetish of mine. Irregardless, I understood when some exes found it too messy or were uncomfortable with the idea. But that was in my past life. Presently with my sex slave, I was not amenable to any kind of scheduled monthly delay when it came to raping her vagina. 

Thus, the sex and torture continued apace and I could ignore Zarina’s internal hormonal changes. If Zarina had mood swings, well, she was still a sex slave and had every reason to be angry since she woke up in a dungeon. At first, I even appreciated the slight swelling of Zarina breasts, the added sensitivity in her sexy parts, and her discomfort, whether the pain was from cramping or something I had done. However, I acknowledge that every girl is different and figured I should at least let Zarina request her favorite personal care products.

So I broached the subject by making it clear to Zarina that I was not willing to compromise my pleasure in any way, but was willing to listen if she had suggestions on how to better manage the delicate parts of being a woman. She must have thought I was only asking about her menstrual flow:

“Well, you clearly enjoy making my vagina bleed.” 

I had to flash a little smile at her snark. I assured her that I did not have a feeling about a woman shedding her uterine lining either way. Once I turned the discussion to the specific medical aspects and more general care products, Zarina eyed me suspiciously, but opened up a little. I confessed my relative ignorance compared to any grown woman on the subject, and took notes on a whiteboard as I asked her what worked well in the past, as well as what did not. 

Zarina admitted she savored the smell of my soaps and shampoos as one of the only creature comforts she could look forward to and identified the brands. But for her hair’s genetic tendency to curl, and her olive skin, she favored other brands that I could probably only find in speciality boutiques or at approved salons. Together we slowly came up with a list of items I said I would look into ordering. Since I did not mention I would have to leave the island to pick up the shipment, she must have wondered how the logistics would work. I don’t think I was giving too much away, as she had noticed that I had a limited supply of fresh food. 

Zarina started speaking without malice or despair for the first time, so it seemed like a natural progression of the conversation to bring up other forms of birth control, since some might reduce or even eliminate her periods. I informed her then of my vasectomy, not that I could think of any advantage to allaying her fears of getting pregnant. That was apparently a revelation for Zarina, and a welcome one. She moved on to comment on a few brands of birth control pills that she had tried and how each made her feel, and brought up the option of an IUD. I demurred, having heard horror stories about guys being poked, and said I lacked the medical skills to insert one correctly. 

The discussion meandered to methods of removing body hair. While I enjoyed causing Zarina a relatively low level of pain by tweezing hairs from her sensitive parts, or forcing her to do it to herself during one of my refractory periods, it was very time consuming and tedious. She awkwardly pointed out that one of the ‘pros’ of waxing, as an alternative, was that I could still watch her react with distress. It had always been apparent what turned me on, and I was glad that she thought to appeal to my kink in a relatively normal conversation. Alas, the suggestion proved somewhat counterproductive for Zarina, because she admitted waxing did not hurt nearly as much in her experience as other things I regularly did to her, and she could get it over with quickly. Zarina’s skin was swarthy, so, coupled with her dark hair, we suspected it was still light enough for her to be a good candidate for laser treatments. 

I put the dry erase marker down and told Zarina it was good to see her speaking with authority and making decisions on aspects of her life. That took Zarina out of the moment and she visibly sunk back into gloom and spite. I had never expected Zarina’s disposition of normalcy to last, and our minds were hopeless drawn towards her next task as a sex slave. But the discussion had shown that Zarina could speak in an unaffected manner if the topic was technical and something that she knew about. Just one avenue to gradually getting Zarina to come to terms with her new life and role.