Roll of The Dice

Jack gasped as air rushed back into his lungs, but the movement sent a sharp spike of pain through his skull. He lay face down on the cold tiles, his head throbbing like a drumbeat, with a sour taste of bile sitting at the back of his throat. He opened his eyes, his vision swimming, and saw the crumpled silver foil beside him. It was his attempt at a genius hack, his desperate bid for freedom, now lying in a pathetic heap.

He sat up slowly, clutching his head with both hands, his fingers digging into his temples. He had tried everything—timing, stealth, the foil. But the system was flawless. He was breathing the same air as her, sleeping in her house, and he still couldn't take one step out the door.

He looked around the kitchen, the silence heavy with the awareness of how little time he had. She had left him clear instructions before she left: the house needed to be cleaned. It had been two hours since she left, and he had spent every minute of it fighting the collar and trying to escape. He had no idea how much longer he had before her return.

Logically, he understood what he needed to do. He should remove his clothes and re-hobble himself with the chain. It was the safest choice, the obedient action to take. It would keep him out of trouble and prevent the immediate anger when she returns.

But as he looked down at his jeans and T-shirt, the feeling of the fabric against his skin—a sensation he hadn't felt in days—clashed with his logic. ‘Fuck it,’ he thought, a sudden burst of defiant anger. “Enjoy being dressed while you can.”

He was sure that as soon as she walked through the door, the first thing she would make him do was strip. That was the game. But for now, he would keep his clothes on, enjoying the simple, human comfort of being fully dressed, even if it was just for a little while.

Vanessa lay sprawled across the sheets, the luxury of Jack’s bed doing nothing to ease the hunger in her mind. Her hand moved lower, her fingers tracing the contours of her body with a slow, deliberate rhythm, but her eyes remained closed, drifting through a mental landscape that was far more vivid than the room around her.

She saw him kneeling at the foot of the bed, his face inches from her core, but the image wasn't one of worship; it was of terror. She could see the fear in his eyes, the way his pupils dilated, the way his breath hitched as she leaned down and whispered the ultimate threat. "I might just castrate you," the words hung in the air, heavy and final. "Turn you into my personal eunuch.”

Then, the image shifted. She thought about his cock, big and heavy, in her hand. She envisioned how it would feel to stroke him, to sense him throb and leak, but she also pictured the scene where she denied him the release he longed for. She wanted to see him desperate, aching, driven mad by the need to come, while she held the power to give it to him or to take it away forever.

The fantasy was intoxicating. She let out a soft moan, her body arching against the sheets, the image of his terror fueling her arousal. She was the goddess of her house; he was just the plaything she owned.

Vanessa was lost in waves of pleasure, her body arching against the luxurious sheets, completely unaware of what was happening miles away in her own home. Her phone buzzed insistently, buried beneath her clothes, a silent warning that something had changed, the front door had been opened. But she didn't hear it while she was enjoying her second orgasm.

Jack, however, heard everything. He was in the middle of Vanessa's kitchen, his heart pounding against his ribs. The front door was supposed to be locked. Vanessa usually entered through the back. When the heavy wood swung open, he froze, his eyes locking onto the intruder. He wasn't expecting to see his boss, Erin Wilson, standing in the doorway, looking completely calm.

"Hello, Jack," Erin said.

Before Jack could even process her appearance—before he could wonder how she had gotten in —her finger hovered over her phone. Smiling, she pressed the shock button on the collar app.

There was no warning, just a sudden, violent jolt of electricity that arced from the collar and through his body. Jack choked on a scream, the muscles seizing uncontrollably. He didn't just fall; he crumpled, his body collapsing inanimate on the kitchen tiles as the pain ripped through his nervous system, shutting him down instantly.

Vanessa was floating in the warm, heavy haze of her afterglow, the soft mattress of the unfamiliar bed molding to her skin like a lover. She let out a long, satisfied sigh, her fingers tracing the fabric of the sheets, completely at peace in her solitude. It was only when the persistent, buzzing vibration started, buried beneath the pile of her discarded clothes, that the spell began to break. She groaned, a low, sleepy sound of annoyance, as the beeping grew louder, insistent and demanding attention.

She pushed the clothes aside, her hand fumbling until she found her phone. She tapped the screen to silence the alarm, the bright display momentarily blinding her. She squinted, expecting a work email or a message. Instead, a notification from the Collar App flashed on the screen: *Proximity Alert: Front Door. Open.

The blood drained from her face. She sat up abruptly, the sudden movement causing a wave of dizziness to sweep through her. The front door was locked, and the sensor was active. Jack had somehow circumvented the sensors. She typed in her password with trembling fingers, logging into the live feed. The red dot showed that the collar was live and in the kitchen. He had somehow managed to remove it. The thought that somebody else may have entered her house didn’t even enter her mind. 

Jack was still twitching on the floor, his hand gripping his collar, the metal still humming with residual energy. Before he could process the betrayal, the front door swung open again.

Another woman entered the kitchen, dressed in a sharp police uniform with a badge shining on her chest that exuded authority and demanded immediate respect. It was Former Chief Inspector Jennifer Warden.

Erin Wilson stepped forward and greeted her with a warm hug. "Hello, Jennifer. Thanks for coming."

Jennifer Warden returned the hug with a firm, professional smile, her eyes scanning the room and briefly resting on Jack's crumpled form before shifting back to Erin. "Of course," she said, her voice calm and steady. It was a simple confirmation, yet it felt like a heavy weight settling over Jack. He was lying at the feet of a cop, and his own boss, the two women were clearly in cahoots.

The engine roared as Vanessa sped down the road, the tires humming against the asphalt in a frantic rhythm. Her mind was a chaotic kaleidoscope of worst-case scenarios, spinning out of control. She gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white, her heart pounding against her ribs like a trapped bird.

‘What if Jack had escaped?’ The thought was a cold knife in her gut. Did he find his car keys or his wallet with his credit cards in it? He could be on a train, a bus, heading to a police station right now, leaving her behind in the dust. He might be telling his story, painting her as some kind of monster, and the police could actually believe him.

She could try to spin it, she supposed. She might explain it away as a kinky game. "Oh, we're into BDSM," she could say. "He likes to be tied up." But it was a lie, a half-truth that wouldn't hold up under scrutiny. They would see the bruises, the collar marks, the leash marks, the rope burns on Jack’s wrists. They would see the fear in his eyes. The "kinky game" defense.

And then there was the other fear. What if someone else had broken in? The door was unlocked. What if a random creep had come in, he was naked and following her orders? What if they had hurt him? What if they had taken him? The thought made her stomach churn. She liked to break him, to own him, to crush him under her heel, but the thought of someone else hurting him made her want to cry.

She was a hypocrite. She enjoyed the power, control, and rush of domination, but she was also possessive in a way that went against her own nature. She wanted him to be hers, completely and utterly, and the thought of him slipping away or being touched by someone else was a violation she couldn't accept. She was driving fast—faster than she should—with the silence of the car deafening, her mind racing with the terrifying possibility that she had just lost everything.

Vanessa’s house looked untouched as she pulled into the driveway; no broken glass marred the windows, and no splintered wood indicated a struggle. She turned off the engine and stepped out, walking carefully toward the front door. Usually, she might have asked a neighbor to watch, but the risk was too high. She rarely used the front door, yet that was the source of the alarm’s warning. She checked the doorframe for signs of forced entry, but found none. With a trembling hand, she turned the handle. The phone in her pocket beeped, confirming the alert.

"Hello? I’ve called the police; they are on their way," she lied, her voice echoing in the silence. Then, she heard a sound—a soft, deliberate clinking of china on a saucer. She froze, her fingers fumbling for the pepper spray she always carried. She marched down the hallway toward the kitchen, the color draining from her face as she came face-to-face with the female police officer.

"Vanessa Walker?" the detective asked.

"Er, yes," Vanessa answered, her voice barely a whisper. Then her jaw dropped as she noticed the older lady sitting on a chair, drinking tea in the center of her kitchen. She was dressed as though she had just stepped down from the winner's circle at a major equestrian event. She wore a smart black jacket over a tight blouse that emphasized her generous breasts, paired with elegant sandy-colored breeches and gleaming black riding boots. A silver-handled riding crop lay across her lap. On the kitchen floor beside her lay a pile of tattered fabric—Jack's clothes, the very items Vanessa had taken from him, now torn into strips of denim and cotton.

"Chief Inspector Jennifer Warden," the detective said, deliberately leaving out the 'former' part of her title. She gestured toward the woman in the riding breeches. "And this is Miss Erin Walker."

Vanessa stood frozen, her eyes darting around the room as she desperately searched for Jack, her mind frantic to compose her face to look less flustered.

"Why are you in my house?" Vanessa asked, her voice tight.

"Do you know a Jack Gardener?" Jennifer asked, her voice cutting through the air.

“Er... I know a Jack from the club I belong to, but I'm not sure I know his last name," Vanessa replied, forcing a smile she barely felt, trying to sound confident.

Erin Walker just sat there, sipping her tea, amused by the cat-and-mouse game unfolding before her.

Well, the inspector said, her tone growing firmer, "Miss Erin received a rather disturbing message this morning from Jack Gardener, who happens to be one of her employees. It stated that he was being held prisoner in the house by Vanessa Walker. We checked the IP address, and it led us directly here."

The color drained from Vanessa's face. "Er, how did you guys get in my house anyway? I know all the doors were locked.”

Erin set her cup of tea down on the saucer with a deliberate, echoing clink. She looked Vanessa in the eye, her expression unreadable but stern. "Do you really think we would let a piece of technology like that out in the world without monitoring its use?"

Vanessa blinked, looking from the older woman to the detective, genuinely puzzled. "The collar? Vanessa, dear, it is fully monitored by us for the first twelve months of use. If you had bothered to read the small print, rather than just signing the waiver to save a few quid, you would know that." She let the implication hang in the air like a guillotine blade.

"I... I'm not sure I understand fully," Vanessa stammered, as the pieces of the puzzle refused to fit together in her mind.

Erin sat forward, leaning in, her voice dropping to a dangerously low volume filled with authority. "To put it simply, my dear, you messed up. You allowed your charge, Jack, to contact the outside world. By doing so, you could have exposed the collar and us to the outside world.”

Erin appraised Vanessa from head to toe, her eyes assessing Vanessa’s confident stance, and found it lacking. Vanessa shifted uncomfortably under the gaze, the atmosphere in the room suddenly growing much heavier, as if Erin’s stare were a tangible force pressing down on her shoulders.

The trouble is that you have become power drunk,” Erin said, her voice cold and sharp, cutting through the tension like a knife. "Which allows for complacency.”

She took a slow sip of her tea, her eyes never leaving Vanessa's face. "We see it a lot in beginners. The raw potential is there, but not the patience."

Vanessa opened her mouth to retort, to defend her control, to argue that she had done everything right, but the words died in her throat. She looked at the shredded clothes on the floor, then at the woman in front of her. She realized that she was a minnow in a very big pond.

"You see, young lady," Erin continued, the sneer in her voice obvious, "domination is a balance, and it is sweetest when it is taken, which I'm sure you've found out, but to be fully successful—and not just some magazine fantasy—your charge has to believe that they have nothing without you, even though they hate being in the position you have put them in."

She took a breath to let that sink in before continuing. "I'm going to give you a choice. Jennifer here can arrest you on charges completely unrelated to this, and believe me, she will make the charges stick. Or, you will submit to a short training session with me where you will do everything I say without question, followed by a three-month probationary period."

Vanessa gulped, glancing from the inspector to Erin. "What about Jack?" she asked.

Erin smiled. That was a good sign; the girl felt some responsibility. "He is not your concern at the moment. I need an answer from you."

Vanessa looked down at the floor; she felt like she had no choice. "Training," she said.

Erin asked, "Was that an order or a request?"

"A request," Vanessa replied.

Then ask properly, and you will call me Miss Erin.

Vanessa took a deep breath and looked Erin in the eye. "Please, may I accept your offer of training, Miss Erin?"

Erin and Jennifer exchanged glances and smiled. "Excellent," said Erin. "Now, please remove all of your clothes.”