She touched the paddle to his ass and held it there. “Do you have permission to come, Kyle?”

  “Not until or unless you give it, my Lady.”

  Marcus had warned Heather against giving Kyle a warmup for this, since the aim was tears, so she hit him with almost full force right away, and didn’t give him time to recover between strikes. Marcus was doing the same with Ruby, tearing into her with the flogger, and in less than three minutes, she saw a tear spill out of Ruby’s eye.

  Heather stopped and held her hand up for Marcus. He walked around Ruby, ran his finger down her cheek and through the tear, looked at the liquid on his finger, and then looked back to Ruby, on her knees with Kyle’s cock in her mouth.

  “You lasted three minutes and eleven seconds, so that’s how long you’ll blow him. His Mistress hasn’t given him permission to come. If you can pull an orgasm out of him, he’ll sleep in the plug tonight instead of you.”

  Heather took the donut-spacer off Kyle’s cock, and Marcus pressed a button on his watch and said, “Begin.”

  Ruby went to work on Kyle’s cock, and Heather watched her technique, slow at first, and it looked like her tongue was working him while she rode her lips up and down on his length. About a minute into it, she sped up, slamming her mouth onto him over and over, faster than Heather thought she could manage, since she knew Kyle had to be going in and out of Ruby’s throat, but the other woman never gagged the first time.

  “Ahhh, too bad,” Marcus told her when her time was up, and he relaxed his arm, no longer looking at his watch. “Looks like you’ll be sleeping in the plug. Get a breath and deep throat him. You’ll be holding for at least thirty seconds, so make sure you have plenty of air. If you come off his cock before I give permission, you’ll take ten punishment strokes of the cane without a safeword.”

  Ruby took a breath and then slowly went down on him, taking him into her throat until her lips were wrapped around the very base. Heather counted to ten in her head and said, “Now Kyle, come now.”

  Kyle let out a bellow and pushed his pelvis forward three times, and then froze as he came into the condom deep down Ruby’s throat. Heather could tell it was all Ruby could do to stay on his cock, and she finally saw Ruby’s gag response kick in, but Ruby kept her mouth forced onto his cock. Ruby and Kyle’s hands held onto each other, their only contact Ruby’s mouth on his cock, and their hands.

  When Kyle’s reaction slowed, Marcus touched Ruby’s head and said, “Good girl, you can pull off now.”

  Heather took care of the condom while Marcus went to work releasing their captives. Once Kyle was free of his restraints, Heather had him remove the plug from her ass and put it in the bowl, then she pulled the plug from his ass, and handed it to him to put into the bowl.

  “Take this bowl to the kitchenette,” Marcus told Ruby. “Wash everything we’ve used with the Dawn soap and then the chlorhexidine soap, both times in water as hot as you can stand it, and then load it all, bowls included, into the dishwasher. Put a soap packet in, and run it on the sanitizer cycle with an extra rinse setting.”

  He turned his phone on and watched her to make sure she followed his instructions, and left with a stainless steel plug already lubed with ginger oil as she was turning the dishwasher on.

  Heather hadn’t known he had a video camera aimed to see someone working at the sink. From the angle of view, the camera must be part of the lighting fixture. She made a mental note to ask him where every camera in the house was located. He’d already explained everything went to a hard drive on the premises, and nothing went out onto the net. It was broadcast through his internal Wi-Fi, but it was encrypted, so if someone stood outside the house and tried to pick up the signal, it would just be static.

  She watched on his phone as he stepped into the kitchen and ordered Ruby to spread her legs, bend over, and grasp the edge of the kitchenette’s counter. As soon as she was in place, he inserted it into her ass without ceremony, and Heather learned something new — doing it in the little kitchenette as if it were a task depersonalized the act. This wasn’t a punishment, rather a penalty given for not reaching a benchmark, but it was clearly not part of any romantic bed play.

  She turned his screen off and put the phone back into the headboard compartment before they returned, and a few minutes later, the four were all piled into bed, with Kyle on his back with Heather on one side of him, her head on his shoulder and one leg thrown over his hip. Ruby was on his other side curled up to his other arm, with Marcus spooned behind her, reaching around and possessively holding onto one of her breasts.

  Inserting the plug had been handled as a task, but Marcus was holding her while she wore it.

  Chapter 35

  Over the next three weeks, Ruby spent a great deal of time with the foursome — a few evenings a week, and most of their weekends.

  She asked Heather if they could work out together, and this gave the two women time alone, without the men, to talk while they lifted weights and stretched. Ruby wasn’t a big fan of running though, so Heather ran solo most days. Occasionally, it worked out so either Kyle or Marcus could run with her, which was a nice change, but she enjoyed the feel of her feet on the pavement, the rhythm and cadence, almost meditative, one can only get when running alone, so she was a little glad Ruby didn’t want to run with her.

  Heather thought things were going terribly fast between Marcus and Ruby, but Kyle told her that’s how it works out with lifestyle relationships, sometimes. When both parties have had lots of experience and they find their person, everything just clicks into place.

  And so, three weeks after they first met Ruby, the four of them sat around Kyle’s kitchen table while Marcus and Ruby negotiated a contract. It took hours, with Marcus typing the contract as they agreed to it, and now it was all printed out, and Marcus was reading it out loud.

  Ruby had agreed that, if a contract could be successfully negotiated, she’d accede to three months of twenty-four-seven slavery, and she’d move in with Marcus to serve her term. Her relocation package had included two months in a nice suite at a hotel close to the factory while she found a place to rent or buy, so if it didn’t work out, then at the end of the three months she’d just be back to finding her own place. No harm no foul.

  “I really like the three of you,” Ruby told them, “and the sex is incredible. I can’t deny the dynamic of Heather and Marcus kind of being the King and Queen, with Kyle and I as your subjects — it does something for me.” She met Marcus’s gaze. “But I feel it’s important you know I’m struggling with giving up the ideal I’ve had in my head for so long — of belonging completely to one man who would own me body and soul, and love me above all else.” She looked at Heather, then Kyle, and back to Marcus. “I’ll be giving that up if I do this, and I need to be sure. I’ll also be gaining a whole lot — three people I care about, and who care about me, but it’s still not what I’ve thought I wanted for so long.”

  She looked at her hands and then back up to Marcus. “Sometimes, it turns me on for you and Heather to have sex while I’m tied up and forced to watch, but sometimes it bugs me. I’ll never be your entire world, and that’s been fine so far in the short term, but only time will tell if I’ll be okay with it long term.”

  “If you become my slave, I’ll have the right to loan you out to people I trust. Not just Heather and Kyle, but others, too. You agreed to that from the beginning.”

  “Yes, and I still agree to that. It’s part of total ownership. Loaning me out wouldn’t negate me being yours and you being mine.” She shrugged. “Slaves aren’t supposed to be able to dictate who their Master fucks, or who their master orders them to fuck. That’s one of the reasons this arrangement works for me. I love that so much is out of my hands.”

  Marcus nodded and made a notation. “Heather and I can order you to do anything inside the boundaries of your hard limits, and you must immediately follow orders or be punished.”

  “Agreed.”

  “You won’t have a safeword when being punished. You won’t be damaged, but it will hurt.”

  “Agreed.”

  “You and Kyle cannot touch each other without permission. This will be a work in progress, as we may eventually allow hello and goodbye hugs, and there will be exceptions, should one of you need assistance that requires touch. To start, though, no contact at all without express permission.”

  Ruby nodded, and Marcus looked at her until she said, “Agreed.”

  They were outside of power exchange for this conversation, but Heather understood why he wanted her to state it verbally. She’d be signing the contract once he read through it, but still, Heather felt better with them going over the whole thing in its entirety, first.

  “We won’t order you to do anything illegal,” Marcus continued. “We won’t do anything to jeopardize your job. You’ll be responsible for your own bills, but you won’t be asked to contribute to household expenses. I have a housekeeper who cleans the house and buys groceries, but you’ll be given tasks and jobs to do outside of what she handles, some of which you probably won’t want to do.”

  “All of that is fine.”

  “My housekeeper is the submissive of a friend and is available for my use,” he told her, no longer reading from the contract. “You won’t have a say in what I do to her. Also, when Heather isn’t around and Kyle is, he won’t be here as a submissive. He isn’t submissive to me. He might see himself as dominant to you, or he might not — that remains to be seen. However, he won’t be submissive to you at any time. You’ll always be at the bottom of the pecking order.”

  “I’m looking for an arrangement that makes me a full-time slave except for the time I spend at work, so I’m good with that.”

  He glanced at the contract and back up to Ruby. “You can and will be severely punished for infractions, but I reserve the right to hurt you even if you haven’t done anything wrong. You’ll be the household’s twenty-four-seven slave — a sex slave, a pain slave, and you give up any and all rights to say what happens to your body as long as no permanent damage is done and we stay within the hard limits you’ve outlined.”

  Ruby nodded and said, “Understood.”

  “If you need to take a time out to communicate to us without being my slave, you must ask for a time out, and it will be given. Slaves aren’t always happy, that’s part of being a slave, but if the situation absolutely isn’t working for you, it’s your responsibility to request a time out so you can talk to us about it.”

  “Thank you.”

  Marcus looked to Heather. “I’ll let you explain the calendar. The bullet points are in the contract, but since this is kind of your thing…”

  Heather had given both men access to her online calendar and then pushed them both to put their own schedules into it as well, and it was working so much better than before.

  “The guys have sporadic work schedules, depending on when they’re on call and how busy Kyle’s surgery schedule is,” Heather told Ruby. “My schedule is always crazy. We have an online calendar we keep updated. I’m Purple, Kyle is Red, Marcus is Blue. Figure out what color you want to be and then put your schedule in. I realize you have a predictable eight to five job, but put it in anyway, along with anything else in your calendar — hair appointments, any classes you may have, dinner with coworkers, whatever. One of the most difficult parts of having more than two people in a relationship is the scheduling. If something changes for you last minute then text all three of us together. I don’t know how much alone time you prefer, we’ll figure out how you want to work things when Marcus is working and Kyle and I are off. If you want to hang out with us that’s cool, but if you’d prefer that time alone when I don’t have a need for you, that’s certainly okay as well.”

  “She’ll have tasks to complete on the evenings I’m on call,” Marcus said. “There won’t be much for her to decide, when she isn’t working. I will decide every minute of her days.”

  One of Ruby’s stipulations was at least six hours of sleep when she had to work the following day, with no more than one time being awakened for sex or anything else. Heather figured Ruby had been a slave before, based on what she knew to put into the contract, and this helped Heather not to feel as if she needed to act as some kind of mediator during negotiations.

  “I’d like to make a request,” Kyle said. “I’d like to suggest that at the end of Ruby’s three months, if she’s happy with us, we begin making plans to move us all into one house, or at least have the discussion of when we may all feel comfortable doing so. If that means selling my house and Heather and I moving in here, or if it means Marcus and I selling our houses and the four of us finding another house that can be all of ours, that we all buy a part of, with four names on the title...” He shrugged. “I don’t really care how we make it happen, I’d just like to put it out for consideration that that the ultimate goal is for the four of us to live together.”

  Heather squeezed Kyle’s hand. “I’m not sure I’ll be ready for that after three months. I’ll be ready to talk about it some more, certainly, but I’m not so sure about taking the plunge.”

  Ruby nodded. “I’m with Heather on that one. I think I’ll need longer than three months to make such a big financial decision, but we can certainly talk about how close we may be at that point.”

  Marcus flipped to the last page, signed it, and handed the contract and the pen to Ruby, who started at page one and read through all seven pages. A few paragraphs required she initial them, and she did as she reached them. When she made it to the end, she signed and dated it.

  Heather signed as witness, and Marcus straightened the pages and told Ruby, “I’ll scan the entire contract. The original will go into my safe, you’ll get a copy, and a copy will be available in the playroom’s armoire, on the highest shelf. The armoire is locked when we have other guests who are welcome in the playroom, but otherwise, it will be close at hand, so any of the four of us can reference it.”

  Heather understood this contract wasn’t legally binding because no judge on the planet would force someone into slavery for a term just because they signed a contract. This was about documenting the agreement and making it real. Putting it into writing made it more official within their foursome.

  Marcus set the contract to the side and told Heather. “Once we complete this three-month term, I’d like to talk to you about creating a contract between you and Kyle that can go alongside the one Ruby and I have, and then you and I can create an agreement with each other, as well.”

  Heather looked at Kyle, intending to ask him how he felt about that, but the look on his face told her all she needed to know. Kyle wanted a contract, too.

  “Spend a week writing out what you’d like to be put into the contract,” she told Kyle. “I’ll do the same, and we’ll compare notes next Sunday evening.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re supposed to tell me about stuff like this. It’s one of those things I didn’t know that I didn’t know.”

  “I knew we’d get around to doing it eventually. If it had bothered me, not having one, I’d have told you. It wasn’t time yet, but now that you’ve seen how negotiations work, I think maybe it is.”

  Chapter 36

  Heather woke in Marcus’s bed, curled against Marcus. Ruby was in her cage in the corner, her wrists attached to the front of her collar. Kyle had slept at home, since he had to wake at four this morning to be at the hospital by five for a day of surgery.

  Heather had felt strange about making Ruby sleep in the cage, but Marcus had explained, away from Ruby, that sleeping in his bed was a privilege for Ruby, not a right. He said that so far she’d spent about half her nights in his bed, and the other half in the cage.

  It was only 5:40, and the alarm wouldn’t go off until 6:00. Ruby was still asleep, and so was Marcus, but Heather didn’t think she could roll over and go back to sleep. She reached for Marcus’s cock and wrapped her hands around it. He wasn’t hard, but wasn’t exactly soft, and with a few strokes, it started filling, expanding, and he gave a low groan.

  “Keep that up and I’ll bury myself in your ass.”

  She caught movement out of the corner of her eye and told him, “I think Ruby’s awake.”

  “Good, she can watch me fuck your ass before I get her out and administer her morning discipline.”

  Morning discipline? They’d had three days under their new contract, and Heather had worked sixteen hour days, so she hadn’t been around to see how things were going. “She gets spanked every morning?”

  “Spanked, flogged, caned — whatever the fuck I feel like doing.”

  His mention of the cane was all it took, and she suddenly craved the feel of it slicing across bare skin. Heather had grown to love the cane. “I wouldn’t mind a few cane strokes before you fuck my ass, please.”

  “As the lady wishes — I’ll get the cane while you lube that adorable ass.”

  Heather opened the top drawer in the nightstand, squirted some lube into her hand, and reached around to lube her own ass. By the time Marcus returned, her asshole was slick and she’d cleaned her hand with a baby wipe.

  They’d learned a few of the large diameter canes were capable of giving her actual pain, and that she enjoyed it, in a perverse sort of way.

  He put the wedge on the bed near the edge, and Heather climbed onto it without being told.

  “Stretch up and grab the handles.”

  The headboard was stained to look like the door to a castle, or perhaps a fancy dungeon, and had wrought iron hardware that helped with the effect.

  Heather reached up and grabbed the handles — doing so meant she wasn’t as likely to reach back as he was striking, and if she did, he’d see the movement in time to keep from hitting her hand.

  “Twelve strokes. Three at a time. Four groups, thirty seconds apart. I intend for them to hurt. Ready?”