Chapter 14 #2
No time for telepathy this time, Kenny spoke immediately. “I only paused the laundry service, didn’t cancel it. I can start it back up.” He looked at Silas, then Boone. “Ya’ll can chip in on whatever the extra cost is to add two more people, or you can do your own laundry.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Silas said.
“If it’s an option, I’ll chip in too,” Willow told him. “For mine. No laundry at all sounds good.”
He nodded, and she relaxed a little more. They were willing to make changes, to discuss.
Kenny took a sip of his water. “I had someone come in to change the sheets on my bed, dust, vacuum, clean the bathrooms — all the other things you’re doing. Any objections to continue doing those things?”
That wasn’t on her list, so she considered her answer. “They’ll need to come the week to ten days I’m away working, so I don’t walk into a filthy house, and maybe I can have two or three days off when I return, because it takes me a few days to recover from a week or more of twelve-hour shifts.”
He nodded. “More than reasonable. We’ll go with two full days without duties other than servicing us, meaning you’ll have the day you come home plus two full days.”
Servicing them.
The words hit hard because she immediately realized they’d have gone without fucking anyone for over a week, and she’d be used a lot harder in those initial days.
Her pulse sped a little, her nipples tightened, but she tried to ignore her body’s reaction and remember this was a negotiation and she needed to keep to the facts.
And she decided it was okay, being used a lot in those initial recovery days. She mostly had to just accept what they did to her, and it would be a nice way to destress after a week in some crazy ER or whatever flavor of ICU they stuck her in.
“Right, ya’ll are going to be horny as fuck when I walk in the door, and I get that, but maybe ya’ll can focus on fucking me when I’m horizontal more than vertical those first days?”
Kenny chuckled. “We’ll keep it in mind.”
Not a promise, but she figured it was as good as she was going to get.
She looked at her list again. Why hadn’t she put this in the same item? “Same topic, but can you maybe buy two robot vacs? One for upstairs, another for downstairs? I’ll still need to vacuum the stairs.”
No one said anything, and she said, “At least one for the downstairs. I like most of the wolves, and I’m getting used to random people hanging out in the kitchen, but they track stuff in and I’m constantly sweeping, and it’s a huge fucking kitchen.”
“May as well get two while I’m at it,” Kenny said, “but you’ll be responsible for programming them and doing whatever maintenance they need to keep them running.”
“That means emptying it and cleaning the brushes, or whatever,” Boone said. “If one breaks, that’s different.”
Kenny glanced at him and nodded. “While we’re on the subject of reducing your load, it’s probably a good time for me to tell you of another job you’ll have — gardener.”
She furrowed her brows. “I saw a raised bed out back, and Boone said you grow tomatoes, peppers, and a few other easy vegetables in the summer.”
He nodded. “We’ll build waist-high beds along the kitchen wall farthest from the sink, so the eastern windows will bathe it in light.
The peppers will move inside, but you’ll also cultivate a patch of stinging nettles for ritual punishment.
In the spring and summer, you’ll harvest fresh leaves that grow naturally on the property when you’re to be punished.
Fall and winter, you’ll harvest from the kitchen. ”
She stared at him, her clit throbbing, her mind horrified.
She’d experienced nettles before, knew how they’d sting, how the little needle-like hairs would claw into her skin long after the leaves were gone, heat and itch blooming under her clothes for fucking days if they didn’t let her change, and she didn’t figure they would.
The thought of tending the very plants that would torture her, watering them, nurturing them for her own punishment — it was twisted. And her body’s immediate response told her exactly how twisted she was, too.
She blinked and reminded herself to focus. He wasn’t asking her. He was telling her. And yes, this was a negotiation, and she could argue, but he’d been clear this would be a ritual punishment, and she’d fucking asked for rituals.
So she looked to her list, checked off the laundry and vacuum items, and moved to the next point.
“I’d like to choose my own clothes sometimes. Date nights, especially, but I’d like to wear pants to go walking on the property. I feel silly in a dress when I see wolves in the woods, whether they’re on two legs or four.”
Kenny shook his head without time for telepathy. “Denied.”
She stared at him. “No. I need more than just denied. Maybe that’s the way we end up, but I need you to understand how I feel, and I guess I need to understand why this is so important to you.”
“We want you always available to us sexually. If I want to bend you over the table and fuck you in the kitchen, I don’t want to have to remove anything to get to your holes.
You can’t be naked because unless it’s a shifting thing, no one sees you without clothes but the three of us.
If we didn’t have people in and out at all hours, you’d be naked at all times when home. ”
“And I get that, but I’d still be able to wear what I wanted to go shopping, or to have lunch with a friend during my personal time, right?”
Silence while they telepathed, and then, “We’ll allow you to bring a few dozen outfits to put in your closet, but it will be locked to you.
We’ll put an armoire in the hallway with two weeks’ worth of dresses we like, so you can choose the color and style you wish for the day.
Every week, we’ll put another seven in, so you’ll always have at least seven to choose from.
You’ll need permission to wear something from your closet, which we’ll likely give for your two examples. ”
“I’ll need underwear in my closet, to wear with jeans and hiking clothes.”
“Underwear we approve of, but yes,” Kenny said.
“If my closet’s locked, all my shoes will need to be in the armoire. Running shoes, hiking shoes, but also all the colors and styles of heels, unless ya’ll are competent at deciding which shoes go with which dresses?”
Kenny gave her a smirk. “I’ll build a shoe cabinet in your room.”
She considered what else she needed for around the house, since it appeared she should be grateful for the dress, and said, “Warm, insulated leggings I can wear to walk around outside when it’s cold. They’ll come off once I’m inside.”
Kenny looked at Silas, his brows raised, and then made a motion toward him.
“We’ll have them altered so they’re crotchless,” Silas said. “Serged or whatever. That way you can wear them in the house if you get chilly and need something on your legs, and if we’re walking with you outside, we can still stick our dick in you without having to fuck with pulling them down.”
Once again, her insides fluttered. The matter-of-fact way they spoke about allowing only clothes with full access was a blunt reminder of how much it meant for her to give herself over to them.
She knew what she was offering, but Silas consistently had a way of stating the obvious in a way that made her clit wake up and pulse at her.
She nodded and looked down, not trusting her voice, and unsure what to say to that anyway.
She took a slow, deep breath before trying to speak again. “I get that the morning routine is about using me and dismissing me, and the ritual of it works, but I want aftercare the rest of the time, especially after the intense scenes.”
Kenny frowned. “When did we fail to take care of you after an intense scene?”
“The scene where you put the TENS on my clit and then Silas beat the hell out of it.”
He shook his head. “That wasn’t a scene, it was a punishment you more than deserved. You’ll never get aftercare when you force us to punish you.”
The flatness of his tone stung sharper than the memory of the TENS and cane. No softness, no comfort. Just the line drawn, hard and sure.
She sat back, considered whether she could argue with him, and realized she couldn’t. They’d taken care of her after the normal scenes. “Yeah, okay. Maybe a little more after training scenes? I’m not sure you understand how rough they are.”
He nodded. “Yes, that we can do.”
She looked back at her list, saw the line she’d drawn above the next point.
“That’s all the sex stuff, the rest is more about power exchange and logistics.
I need to be able to shift and fly more.
Even when I lived with a human and it was hard to work it in, I shifted and flew at least once a week, probably, like, one and a half times per week on average. ”
“Understood,” Kenny said. “This first week, it was important to keep you sore, but we’ll build time in for you to change.
We’ll start by having it scheduled for, we’ll say Monday during your personal time.
If you’re feeling itchy to change outside of that, you’ll tell me when you bring my lunch and provide your holes for use.
If we don’t have a specific need for you to be sore that night, I’ll approve.
If we do, you’ll have to wait until your personal time the following day. ”
That seemed fair. She didn’t like having to use her personal time for it, though. “Once a month, I’m going to need to spend the better part of a day as my hawk. Released from all obligations for the daylight hours.”
“We’ll build it in,” Boone said. Kenny glanced at him, clearly irritated he’d agreed without checking in with them telepathically, but then he relaxed his shoulders and nodded. “Boone’s right. We’ll build it in.”
She hit with the next one fast. “Privacy for phone calls and personal business.”
“Denied,” Kenny said without hesitation. “Either you belong to us, or you don’t.”
It rankled, but she wasn’t likely to successfully argue his logic, so she moved to her next point, which she would not back off on.
“Ya’ll aren’t expecting I’ll eventually quit my job, right?
” Her job defined her, made her autonomous.
If something blew up in the relationship, she’d need an escape.
It was the reason she’d refused to quit for James, and the same logic worked for the wolves, too.
As long as she could leave, they had to be reasonable with their expectations.
Also, she needed to be a nurse. Not full-time, but helping people when they were at their worst gave her purpose. A reason for being.
It made her time off, away from the high-stress work she was so good at, that much more valuable too. She thought she might just fade away without that week of hard work to ground her in the real world.
All three heads shook without needing to telepath, and her gut relaxed.
“You need that week to keep you balanced,” Kenny said.
“A time when you aren’t submissive. Being a twenty-four/seven full-time submissive wouldn’t be healthy for you mentally or emotionally.
If you want to quit your job, we’ll have to figure out how to give you off days, and that would interfere with the energy of the house.
It’s easier, having you gone while you aren’t submissive, so it doesn’t fuck up the energy of what we have when you’re completely, one-thousand percent ours. ”
“And if I’m working in town? Doesn’t happen often, but sometimes one of the local hospitals comes in with the highest offer. I usually turn one of them down, but the other two are decent to work for.”
“While you still have your apartment, you can stay there,” Kenny said. “Once it’s gone, you can stay in a local hotel, same as you would out of town.” He tilted his head, “Or if that bothers you, we can put you in a downstairs bedroom, so the rules about your bedroom stick.”
She nodded. “Yeah, maybe. So long as those options are there, we can figure it out.”
“Just to clarify,” Kenny said, “there’ll never be power exchange when you’re working.
No butt plugs, no rules other than to text us before you go to sleep at night with a little about your mental state, maybe something about your day — and we’ll want you to keep the tracking live on your phone, so we can see where you are. ”
She nodded. “That’s reasonable. Ya’ll worry about me, and I’ll feel better being able to see where the three of you are, too.”
She closed her notebook. “That’s all I had.”
Her pulse was still high, the push and pull of giving and getting leaving her strung tight. Some wins, some losses, and the slow, dangerous thrill of realizing this was actually going to happen.