The Trainer (6 page)

The door did not squeak, but the floorboards
did. Michael’s head shot up when he heard the sound, and he caught
Chris Parker’s eyes instantly. His mouth dropped open and confusion
mingled with anger at the intrusion.

“I’m busy—” he started to say, but Parker
cut him off.

“That will be all, Joan,” he said, snapping
his fingers. “Fix yourself and attend the Trainer upstairs.”

“Yes, Chris,” she said quickly. And with a
lightning quick glance at Michael, she rose, drawing her dress up
over her shoulders. Quickly, her fingers did up the closures, and
she dropped a neat little exit curtsy as she passed Parker in the
doorway. She was blushing furiously.

Michael bit back his initial retort and
shoved his still-hard cock back into his pants. He waited until the
door closed behind Joan to explode. “What the fuck was that about?
I was interviewing her, for crissakes! You just blew my authority
with her, thank you very fucking much!”

“You had no authority with her, Mike,” Chris
snapped back, his emphasis sharp on the name. “And what you were
doing was not an acceptable part of an initial interview—or didn’t
you notice that sexual conduct was not recommended for first
contacts?”

Michael fastened his belt. “It wasn’t her
first interview! She’s been here for almost a month!”

“It was her first interview with you.”
Parker smiled tightly, and tilted his head in amusement.

“And my methods are obviously different than
yours! You had no right to interrupt like that!” Michael slammed
his fist down on the table. “What the fuck am I supposed to do now?
She’s not going to respect me as much as she should.” He stood up
and started shoving his shirt down into his waistband. “I don’t
believe you did that.”

“Then we have something in common, Mike.
It’s hard for me to believe how spectacularly you are making a fool
out of yourself.” Parker walked past him and opened Joan’s file and
shifted through the papers. “Look. She has been rated novice level
in sexual performance—does that suggest anything to you?”

Michael looked down, fuming. Sure, the pages
of her ratings were familiar, he had looked through them before the
interview. “Yeah, so? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Doesn’t it strike you as rather odd that
someone who has been in training for so long would be a novice at
sexual pleasure?” Chris looked over the top rim of his glasses and
then back down to the page. “And here—do you see any suggestion
that her training has included sexual skills? No—domestic skills,
language skills, and social skills—and that’s it.”

“What are you saying? That she doesn’t have
to screw? That’s bullshit! All slaves have to be good in bed,
that’s the whole fucking point!”

Chris sighed and closed the file. “It was
a... pleasure to meet you, Mr. LaGuardia. Good luck in your future
employment.” He turned to leave.

Michael grabbed for his arm angrily. “And
what the fuck does that mean?”

Parker looked at the hand locked around his
bicep and then up into Michael’s face, and Michael opened his
fingers. Michael was astonished at the muscle density he had felt,
but he wasn’t afraid. They stared at each other for heartbeats, and
Michael felt about ready to snap when the Trainer’s low voice cut
through the tension.

“Profanity is so unoriginal,” Anderson said,
stepping through the doorway. “I try not to use it—it provides such
a bad example for the clients. Particularly that word—fuck. It has
to be the ugliest word in the English language.”

“Trainer,” Chris said. Michael shut his
mouth and watched the moves the smaller man made. Parker took a
slight step back, just enough to make the dipping of his shoulders
look gracefully natural. Then, he straightened back up—just the
sort of move that an Anderson-trained slave might make—smooth,
unobtrusive, yet absolutely clear. For a moment, he lost himself in
the study of it—how do you show someone that move? Step back, dip,
but not too low, keep that eye contact except for a brief second...
where had he seen this before?

“I’m ever so fascinated to hear all about
how you botched up your first assignment, Mike,” Anderson was
saying, interrupting his train of thought. “Chris, will you please
attend to Joan? We had planned to continue with organizing skills
today.”

“Of course.” Chris exited without another
glance at Michael.

“Well—doesn’t follow instructions, doesn’t
play well with others—you’re not on the way to making up for your
initial entrance, Mike.” Anderson shuffled the scattered pages of
Joan’s file back into a neat stack.

“Look, I’m sorry—Jeez, how many times am I
going to have to say I’m sorry about making a simple mistake at the
door?”

“Until you get it right, kiddo. Sit down.”
Anderson turned quickly and pointed. Her eyes were hard and cold,
and Michael felt the first genuine moment of dread. He collapsed
back down into his chair, compressing his lips in an effort to keep
himself from saying more. He felt like he needed to explode!
Anderson waited as he blew out a stream of exasperated breath, and
then pulled out a chair for herself.

“Mike, has it occurred to you to ask why we
haven’t fully forgiven you for last night?”

“Not as much as it’s occurred to me that
you’re blowing the entire fucking thing out of proportion!” The
words were out before he even had a chance to consider them. He
grimaced as a look of displeasure crossed the Trainer’s face.

“How about we try this,” she said gently.
“You lose that word, and I’ll try to forget that you just had that
little slip.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For saying...the word you don’t like!” What
was this, some kind of absurd, childish drama here? He fought the
impulse to say “the f-word.”

“And?”

“What is there to add?” He could barely keep
his voice from scaling up, but at least he was controlling the
volume. Michael looked away to avoid those dark, analytic eyes.

Anderson brushed a few strands of hair away
from her throat and sat back. “You’re sorry that you offended me by
using language you knew I find distasteful. You would make up for
this lapse if you could, but you can at least assure me that you
won’t ever use such language in my presence again.”

“Fine. I mean, yeah. Is that what you wanted
me to say?”

“Michael—let me clue you in on something
which I usually don’t reveal this early in someone’s training. My
clients don’t always learn because I sit and teach them by
explaining how something is done. They sometimes learn because I
set an example for them. Therefore, you must set an example for
them.”

He stared back at her in amazement. “You
mean I have to act like a slave?”

“I mean that you have to know how to do
everything that I teach, so that you can teach it yourself. You
must at the very least make an effort, understanding that in most
things you will probably never achieve the skill level of one of my
clients. And I mean that you have to lose this hypocrisy.”

“I am not a hypocrite!”

“Perhaps not. I’ve been known to make
judgment errors. But what you are is a student—an apprentice
trainer without professional ranking. As far as I’m concerned,
senior slaves are far superior to you. Maybe you should keep this
in mind, and try to be a little less impatient and a little more
open to learning new things. That is what you’re here for, isn’t
it? To learn?”

Just a little bit chagrined, Michael nodded.
“Yeah. I’m sorry. It’s just that nothing in your writing prepared
me for this. Everyone else—I mean—where I was trained before—we all
used the slaves. And there wasn’t this... formality between us. It
would have been helpful if you explained this all to me last night,
instead of waiting until it got this far.”

“Mike, it’s not my job to make this easy for
you,” Anderson said as she rose from her seat. She gazed down at
him for a second, and then turned to the table as she continued to
speak. “And it is certainly not my job to teach you basic
etiquette. Since you have belatedly discovered that you need to
learn it, I suggest you come up with a plan to do so. Now, let’s
review what you did in your first assignment. You were sloppy, you
did not follow my instructions—let’s hear the tape and see how else
you made a fool out of me.”

“Out of you?”

She turned to level her eyes at him as she
hit the rewind button on the tape recorder. “Of course me, Mike. I
chose you.”

As the machine whirred, Michael’s gut joined
it. This was turning out even worse than he had ever imagined.
Nothing was happening as he had planned! He sighed and eased back
in his chair, and then bit his lip as he realized that maybe he
should have made some acknowledgment when she rose. Maybe he should
have gone to the tape recorder first.

Shit, he fumed, knotting his fingers around
the chair arms. This is nothing like California!

It hadn’t taken him too long to realize that
he would never be able to afford a slave—let alone two—with
whatever his degree could fetch him on the job market. Niall was
sympathetic, but didn’t offer to buy him one or even float him a
loan.

“If you want to come out and live here for a
few months and try your hand at writing, you’re always welcome,” he
had offered. And Michael, even in his deepest funks, couldn’t deny
that it was a generous offer. But whatever writers had, Michael
lacked. He tried going the rounds of acting and modeling agencies,
but his pretty face and body were just more meat on the
market—nothing ever came of it. He was still unemployed and sort of
living with Niall when the visitors came and offered him an
interesting opportunity.

“And this is my nephew Michael,” Niall had
said, introducing him to a tall, bronzed man with stylishly graying
hair and dancing eyes. “Mike, this is Geoff Negel, the man who
trained Ethan.”

“Great job!” Michael laughed, shaking the
older man’s hand. They all smiled, and across the room, Ethan
blushed, even as he scurried with a tray in his chained hands.

“Thank you, Michael. Yeah, Ethan’s a good
boy. I’m glad you’re getting some use out of him.”

“Mike here wants to be an owner one of these
days,” Niall added, patting Michael on the shoulder. “A regular
chip off the old block, huh? And he’s just waiting for the day when
some prime girl comes his way, aren’t you, kid? This one swings
both ways, Geoff. I don’t know about this younger generation!”

“Oh, I’d say that it’s an improvement on the
old, Niall. After all, there’s always a handy plaything if you
don’t limit yourself to one gender!” Geoff flashed a very white
smile at Mike. “Good for you, Mike, you follow those ambitions. The
Marketplace always needs new, young owners, blazing new territory
and expanding our understanding of what slaves are, and what we’re
all doing.”

“Yeah, well, unless I win the lottery, it
doesn’t look like I’ll be in the market anytime soon,” Mike said
mournfully.

“Oh, don’t you worry, Mike. You can always
come by and use my boys,” Niall said cheerfully. “I’ll be getting
on with the rest of my guests then!”

When he left, Mike shifted nervously for a
moment, but Geoff showed no similar impatience to get on with the
socializing. Behind him, Mike heard a sharp slapping sound, but
didn’t turn to see what was happening. There would always be
something else to see later.

“It’s always a pity when someone who wants
to be a part of the Marketplace can’t afford it,” Geoff said, also
ignoring the fun or discipline going on. “I’ve been trying to find
a way to lower the prices of novice slaves, but when you factor in
the time and costs which go into their pre-sale training, it’s
still more than I’d like. And if a spotter brought them in, the
price starts edging up even more.”

“What’s a spotter?” Michael asked, suddenly
interested.

“That’s someone who spends their time
scouting for potential Marketplace material. It’s a time-consuming
job—they go to all these SM clubs and they answer ads, read and
write books—all their time is spent looking for someone who could
make the grade. And for this, they get a cut of the first purchase
price, and sometimes even a percentage of future prices as
well.”

“No kidding! I could do that!”

“Well, no, Michael, you probably couldn’t.
It takes a certain amount of training and a lot of natural
intuition—you just can’t run out, grab a hot trick, and start
teaching them about us.” Geoff smiled as Michael’s face fell. “But
there’s no reason why you couldn’t be trained to do it, and maybe
see if you have the gift.”

“That would be cool!”

And that was all it took. Before long, he
was living in Geoff’s spacious designer house in Santa Cruz, with a
never-ending bevy of willing men and women to play with, and all
under the auspices of teaching him a business! Life would never get
better than this, Michael was sure.

Every morning, after some sort of sexual
frolic with a slave of either gender, he would head off to where
Geoff and at least two junior trainers conducted rounds of
interviews and intense classes of instruction, using the house
slaves as examples. It was a huge operation—Geoff proudly mentioned
that his “house,” as the training centers were usually called, had
produced more slaves than any other on the entire West Coast. He
himself had garnered a good share of notoriety for his avant garde
methods and his recommendations for ownership guidelines.

For months, it was nothing less than
paradise. Michael fell easily into the routine, and found that he
did in fact have a gift. It wasn’t for spotting, though. It was for
handling.

“That’s what we call the people who manage
slaves,” Geoff had told him one evening, over dinner. “There was
once a rigid hierarchy of titles and job descriptions in the
Marketplace, you know. Most of it is fairly obscure these days, but
years ago, a handler was the type of person you’d engage to manage
an entire household full of slaves.”