The Apartment - Part 1

[jeepster]

Hello everyone!

As you've no doubt guessed, for a number of reasons I stopped writing completely almost three years ago. But for some reason I suddenly started up again in the past couple of months, and when out of the blue Mr. Smith contacted me to see if I was still writing I could actually answer yes!

Here's the first of ten(!) chapters I've written so far on the adventures of Jane. I'm also in-progress on Big Sky Country which is the continuing saga of Frankie, Brooke and Kenzie, and I intend to clean up Out West to make it more coherent and post it to Literotica.

More soon!

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Mr. Setzler rattled his keys, looking for the one that opened apartment 210.

Jane stood back from the door, impassive, watching. She was not looking forward to this particular task, but she didn’t want her boss to know.

Not that the task was bad, per se - it was just going to be a lot of drudgery. But that’s the fate of a custodian, she thought, drudgery.

Jane turned and gazed around the complex. From her vantage point on the second-floor walkway she could see the brown-painted Number One unit, the yellowish (mustard?) Number Three unit, and the parking lot between them. Mid-morning, nearly all the residents were at work so it was empty, and the complex generally quiet. That suited Jane, she liked quiet — she didn’t get nearly enough at home. On top of that it was a lovely spring day — bright, clear, not too hot, with a breeze that did not come from the direction of the garbage dumpsters.

Turning back around, Jane caught her reflection in the window glass: a short young woman with coal black hair in a short bob with bangs, her skin a very Irish-American white, wearing a light green uniform shirt with “Jane” stitched in cursive over one pocket, a belt with her phone and key ring and various tools, dark green pants and steel-toed shoes.

Finally Mr. Setzler found the right key and opened the door. He grunted in annoyance, and Jane smiled slightly in sympathy: the previous owners of the complex had been stupidly cheap on a lot of things, including the locks. Nearly every apartment building in Houston used electronic locks, either card or app-based and often both, but not this one - they still used metal keys in metal locks, and they hadn’t even specified a master key for the entire complex, meaning Setzler had to use a huge keyring with forty keys on it (one ring per unit, otherwise it would have had over a hundred keys and probably needed a wheelbarrow to carry it). The new owners were going to fix that, but it was just one item on a long list.

Jane retrieved her clipboard from the walkway railing (no online management system either, so no tablet computer to organize things - Jane actually used a filing cabinet like it was the Stone Age) and followed Mr. Setzler inside the newly vacant apartment.

It was the same 2BR/1BA as every other apartment in the Two unit, but because it was located on the end it had an extra window on one wall, and a walk-in closet for one of the bedrooms. Jane’s practiced eye ran over the place: no obvious damage, walls looked okay, doors and cabinets intact, and so forth.

“Looks like it might be a fast turnaround,” Jane said.

Mr. Setzler nodded. “Yep,” he said, “just gotta get all this stuff out of here.”

That was the problem: the stuff. The tenant had just up and left, vacating her apartment and breaking the lease. That was common enough, but what was uncommon was that she apparently hadn’t taken anything.

“It’s almost kinda spooky, isn’t it?” he said. “Like she suddenly vanished without a trace, leaving her entire life behind.”

Jane walked over to a small, cheap couch, pointing at the items resting on top of it. “Suitcase. Gym bag. Dry cleaning still in the plastic. Did she take anything at all?”

Setzler flipped though his own clipboard, then stopped and whistled. “Oh, this might explain it,” he said, and showed the page to Jane. It was a self-enslavement order from the Department of Agriculture, State of Texas.

“When somebody self-signs, the state sends a copy to wherever the person listed as her home address,” Setzler explained.

“So she ain’t coming’ back, huh?” Jane asked.

“No ma’am, she is not,” Setzler mumbled, flipping through the papers. “The order says she’s unencumbered, meaning no possessions are transferred with her title. So all this,” he looked around the room and sighed, “is our problem.”

“No worries, Mr. Setzler, I’ll take care of it,” Jane said, placing her hands on her hips. “You can leave it to me.”

“Hell, I know that, Jane,” Setzler said, smiling. “The only smart thing the blockheads at iSmart Properties ever did was hire you.” He unclipped the tenant’s file and handed it to her. “And seriously, please call me Will.”

Jane smiled back. She liked Mr. Setzler — Will — and liked working with him. It had only been a month since he took over as property manager, but it was going really well; as long as stuff got done, he left her alone to do it.

Setzler straightened all the papers on the clipboard and put it under his arm. “I’ll leave you to it then,” he said, then snapped his fingers. “I forgot to tell you - Jess needs me to come home for lunch, so I won’t be here for Malaysian Monday.”

“More for me,” Jane said, thinking about the Chicken Satay from the food truck that came through on Mondays. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” he replied, “some dumb thing she wants my help with, no big deal just a bit of a pain in the—,” Will pulled his vibrating phone out of his pocket and glanced at the screen. “That’s her now. You okay if I don’t make it back until tomorrow morning?”

“I’m fine,” she said, smiling even broader. Jane was amused by Will’s grumbling about Jess - he clearly adored his wife and would do anything for her, but Jane supposed he was used to working around guys so he had to make it look good.

“Go on, git,” she said.

————————————————————————

Jane went through each room of the apartment, taking stock of everything remaining. Will was right, it was essentially all the earthly belongings of a young woman: eating utensils in the kitchen drawers, dishes in the cabinets, a cheap television in the living room, clothes and shoes in the closet, half empty value-size shampoo and conditioner bottles in the bathroom.

She went over the checklist she’d developed in one of her property management classes at Houston Community College: furniture to the local mission store (which, from the looks of it, may be where she got it in the first place), clothing to the women’s shelter, household goods to the Salvation Army, anything that looked like records or personal photos or things of sentimental value goes in a box in case a family member shows up, everything else in the trash. All she had to do was sort it out.

Jane carted in a bunch of cardboard boxes and contractor bags, then put in her earbuds and went to work.

Clearing out the bathroom went quickly, so she moved on to the kitchen; Jane did those first because they generated the most trash, and dragging the bags full of spoiling food and aging toiletries down to the dumpster gave her a feeling of accomplishment.

Noon rolled around and Jane wasn’t really in the mood to go down to the food truck without Will, so she sat on the couch eating some of the microwaveable macaroni and cheese she’d found in the pantry.

Slavery, eh? Jane thought. That’s a new one. She must have gotten in trouble to leave so quickly.

At least, that’s what Jane assumed. She didn’t actually know much about slavery as a practical matter, just that it was legal and most of the people who became slaves were either criminals or in a great deal of debt, though there were probably exceptions.

Jane had cleared out apartments before, either the result of evictions or (more commonly) after the tenant skipped out on the rent. No doubt some of those tenants went on to be enslaved, but none of them while they still had an apartment.

Why the hell would you do it voluntarily? She assumed that’s what a “self-enslavement order” meant, the woman had enslaved herself. It was one thing to get in over your head in debt - that could happen to anyone - but to choose of your own free will to become a slave? Stripped naked, forced to wear a collar, paraded in front of strangers and sold on an auction block like a… well, she didn’t know what.

Jane shuddered. Her appetite gone, she tossed the remainder of the mac & cheese and got a bottle of diet cola to drink while she worked.
Returning to the kitchen, the first cabinet she opened revealed an open bag of dog food and a pair of dog bowls.

“Huh,” she said out loud, “she didn’t have any pets. Did she?”

According to the bag label, it wasn’t dog food but slave kibble — the bland, crunchy pellets that slaves were typically fed because (according to the text on the bag) it was cheap, highly nutritious, required minimal clean up and could be measured out to monitor the slave’s intake and ensure she was eating a “proper amount.”

“Mother Mary,” Jane whispered to herself, “She was trying out kibble beforehand, wasn’t she?” Judging from the amount remaining, she’d been doing it for a while.

As she worked in the kitchen, Jane thought about the bathroom she’d finished. It was completely unremarkable: no condoms, no lubricant, no birth control - not hugely surprising, most young women were on implants - but no prescription medications at all, come to think of it, just some over-the-counter pain relievers.

A thought caused Jane to pause: this is a two bedroom apartment. No one in this rental bracket can afford a 2BR without a roommate. But so far she’d only seen one person’s things.

Jane stopped boxing up the kitchen utensils and made her way down the short hall to the exterior bedroom (the one with the window, on the right). Nothing unusual: a double bed, stacked milk crates for a nightstand, a cheap travel trunk, a folding chair draped with a towel, a shallow bi-fold closet with a few shoes and things.

No food, dishes, or toiletries - no one ate or got ready in here, so this is probably the tenant’s room, she thought, then crossed the hallway to the interior bedroom.

It was not what she expected.

The carpet had been torn out, and in its place was cheap vinyl tile embossed with a stone pattern. A wooden frame dotted with metal eyelets bisected the room. Fastened to one wall was a cheap full-length mirror, fastened to the opposite wall was a metal ring, and on that ring was a dog chain. Jane pulled on the ring - it was screwed into the stud, and not coming out without a lot of effort - then stretched the lightweight metal chain out. It was long enough to reach just short of the bedroom door, and it had a padlock on the end.

The only other contents were a plastic bucket, some cheap bluetooth speakers, a rubber exercise mat, and in one corner on the floor, a desk lamp and a small pile of books.

Jane knelt and looked through the book titles: New Owner’s Guide to Livestock Regulations, Animal and Human - State of Texas, Slave Yoga: Beyond the Basics, Improving Your Slave Grade for Dummies, The Midnight Companion for Slave Owners (Texas Edition), A Self-Enslavement Workbook.

“This place looks like a dungeon,” she said to no one in particular, then spotted the door to the walk-in closet. Jane opened the door and flipped on the light.

Inside was a large metal cage.

————————————————————————

That evening saw Jane sitting in her idling car in a huge Walmart parking lot. She was on-call for her second job, a casual no-contract driver for the “ride share” company Öber. It was a slow night - only two passengers so far - so she was alone with her thoughts.

Those thoughts were entirely occupied by that enslaved tenant. What was going on in her apartment? What had forced her into slavery? If she “volunteered,” was she really forced at all?

Jane reached into her bag on the passenger seat and pulled out the tenant’s file. There was her name, Aubree Hall, and her slave registration number or SRN. Looking at the letter, she noticed a statement in tiny print at the bottom; it said that to verify the authenticity of the order, she could go to a gov.tx.us web address and enter the SRN.

Okay, Jane thought, pulling out her personal phone (not the cheap Android phone she used for Öber - when she went off duty, it got powered down and stashed in an old metal tool box in the trunk) and entering the address into the browser.

Filling the SRN into the provided form field returned an abbreviated slave ID form containing all the slave’s public information. Jane read through the fields: Aubree Ellen Hall, age 20, white with brown hair, height 5’ 9”, bust 34C, chipped, no tattoos, no scars, pierced ears, no brands at time of registration, high school education, non-virginal, graded Prime.

The attached photo of Aubree was less than flattering, reminding Jane of a driver’s license photo. It was just her face, neck, and upper chest and shoulders, but Jane could guess she wasn’t wearing a shirt when it was taken - maybe a crop of a full-body shot? Nonetheless Aubree was very pretty: lightly tanned skin, long brown hair swept behind her ears, blue-green eyes, a little snub nose with a smattering of freckles across her cheeks. Like a “Beach Blanket Barbie” kinda thing.

Aubree was not smiling.

Time to try Groogle.com, Jane thought, and entered “Aubree Hall Houston Texas” into the search engine.

Not a lot came up. A suspended Zuckbook account, a locked-down Instantgram, some random images of Aubree (or technically Aubrees, since not all of them were her), mostly with groups of friends. It was as if she’d been scrubbed from the Internet.

“Well, there’s another option,” Jane said to herself, and opened an app on her phone. The previous property manager was an alcoholic frat boy (the failson of one of the investors) and he pushed off all the work he possibly could onto Jane, including checking out tenant applications. Thus, she had access to a pretty good industry-standard background and credit checking service.

She entered Aubree’s information into the app and gave it time to work. A minute or so later it popped up an alert Jane had never seen before:

“NO RESULTS”

————————————————————————

Almost midnight, and Jane was finally off work and at home. She stripped off her custodian uniform in the bathroom she shared with the rest of her family, and showered off the accumulated grime from the day. Drying off, she saw herself in the bathroom mirror and stopped to look for a moment.
Sure, I’m shorter than Aubree, she thought, And I’ve got a lot more curves than her, but I look pretty good, right? I wonder what grade I’d get?

Jane examined herself, looking over her four-foot-eleven body, her large 36DD breasts (she had a slightly larger-than-normal ribcage, but you wouldn’t know it to look at her) with their dark, rose-colored aureolas and prominent nipples, her narrow waist and wide hips - “baby making hips,” her grandmother had called them - making her look a bit chunkier than she actually was, but when she stood up straight her thighs didn’t touch and she had that slight gap at her crotch that boys seemed to like. She turned slightly to look at her shapely white bottom (which brought her lots of attention, a close second to her tits) and the dimples on top of her hips before turning back around and trimming her pubic area of a few stray hairs - she kept her hair close-cropped in a neat triangle, because she thought it just looked better that way.

Jane snorted. What grade? Good grief, she thought. I guess all young women think about it, but Ma always said that getting graded was the first step down a slippery slope straight to Hell, so I’ll be putting that right out of my mind.

Quickly blow-drying her hair, she pulled on her sleeping clothes (panties and an oversize t-shirt), gathered her things and crept into the small bedroom she shared with her younger sister Irene. Sliding into bed by the light of her phone, Jane relished her first chance all day to truly relax. She could hear Irene snoring softly across the room - the rest of the household was likewise asleep - so this was the first real privacy Jane had all day, too.

For a twenty-three-year-old woman, Jane knew remarkably little about slavery. Raised by a devoutly Catholic widow along with her two younger sisters, Jane graduated from Catholic school where the state-mandated “Slavery 101” classes - the ones that covered such topics as types of enslavement and conditions, legal rights, free-person etiquette, grading, and positions including slave yoga - were not taught. Neither was she slave graded; knowing she could not pay for college, plus her mother’s attitude toward grading - and also abhorring debt like her mother - Jane worked her way through an associates in business management at the local community college so she had no need to go through the “demeaning, dehumanizing, demonic” (her mother’s words, roughly echoing the Church) process required to qualify for student loans.

Growing up in a small, crowded apartment ruled by her religious mother, Jane rarely had the chance to watch SlaveTV or read through Collarpedia, and she was far too embarrassed to do so in public. Her lack of knowledge ultimately didn’t matter anyway because she didn’t deal with slaves in the course of her normal day - although that might be changing: since it looked like self-driving cars were still many years away, Öber had recently opened their “Grey” service, which was staffed entirely by slaves in company cars.

She did, however, read novels (her one indulgence other than lunch at the food trucks) on her phone, ranging from so-called “hard” romance novels (many of which revolved around sexual slavery, like the popular works of Hillary Rodham) to “potboiler” detective novels that featured agents of the USDIS, the federal agency that investigates crimes involving slaves, to fantasy novels about feminine Elves enslaved by masculine Orcs. So truthfully, nearly everything she did know (or thought she knew) about slavery came from popular culture.

Opening the library app on her phone, Jane selected the next chapter in the book she’d been reading: Wednesday is for Whipping, the latest novel featuring Domino Carminia, undercover special agent.

Domino was - as usual - going undercover as a slave, this time to investigate a circus that used only slaves as performers. Following the autopsy of a slave discovered at an abandoned quarry, Domino’s boss Patricio “Pat” Olivares suspected that the circus was abusing their slaves during private “invitation only” performances, including exposing them to attacks by dangerous animals. In this chapter, Domino was training with a wildlife expert to prepare for her mission; Jane just knew she would end up sleeping with the tanned, well-muscled expert with the shy grin, and Jane could not wait for it.

Yes, the story lines were ridiculous (sometimes to the point of cringe) and the plots didn’t always make sense, but Jane loved Domino: she wished she were as brave and self-confident as her fictional heroine. She also wished she led a life as thrilling and, well, sexy, as Domino did.

But alas, there were bills to pay. Jane sighed, turned onto her side, and dove back into the tropical jungle with Domino.

————————————————————————

Six AM comes far too quickly for any normal person, but even more so when you’ve only had five hours of sleep because the chapter you were reading had more pages than you were expecting and you were really determined to finish it.

Jane looked into her mother’s room: she was still fast asleep - she must’ve stayed up to watch midnight mass on local access - and lying so still Jane wondered if she was dead. Then one of her feet twitched under the covers. Jane sighed quietly and turned to the kitchen.

Irene had already left for her job at the bakery, so the only other person awake in the house was Teresa, her youngest sister, getting ready for school. Unlike the rest of the family Teresa was a morning person: she was already dressed and seated at the kitchen table, eating cereal from a box with a cartoon character on it while staring at her laptop screen.

“Good morning,” Jane said, kissing Teresa on the top of the head.

“G’mornin’,” Teresa replied absently.

Jane poured some coffee from the pot Irene made earlier. “What’s on for today?”

“Usual,” Teresa said around a mouthful of colorful pebble-things. “Stats first, then Business Systems 101, then after lunch some actual programming in the lab for my intro class.”

“Are you still liking it?” Jane asked; Teresa was studying Software Engineering at the community college until she learned enough to get a job as a programmer. At least, that was her plan — by contrast, both Jane and Irene wanted Teresa to stick it through until she could graduate from a real four-year college.

“Yeah,” Teresa said. “The hands-on stuff is pretty okay, but the other stuff is boring. You driving tonight?”

“Yes, but then I’m off on Thursday. You gonna be home?”

Teresa shook her head. “Got the clopening shift at The Gape. Sorry.”

“No worries,” Jane said. She saw much less of Teresa now that she was in college than when she was in high school last year, and… it made her a little sad.

Jane took her coffee and started for her bedroom. “Gotta go get ready. Love you!”

————————————————————————

Jane clocked in at the front office right on time (as usual). Will was there, working in his office, and he looked up when she leaned against the doorway.

“Good morning, Jane,” he said. “How’s it going with the clean out?”

“Slow but steady, there’s a lot of stuff,” she replied.

“Do you need help?”

“No, not really. When did you want to have someone come in and estimate the paint and carpeting?”

“The Sandoval brothers will be here this afternoon,” he said.

Jane straightened up. “Seriously?” She said.

Will grimaced, holding up a hand. “I know, I know, but their contract from when iSmart owned the place is still good, so until it runs out we gotta use ‘em.” He shook his head. “Just keep an eye on them, okay?”

“Will do,” she said, then made her way to her maintenance storage room. The Sandovals were as crooked as a barrel of snakes, and they only had the contract because they gave kickbacks to the previous manager, Rob - sometimes in cash, sometimes in the form of top-shelf booze. They always charged too much (which Jane didn’t really care about — screw iSmart) and cut corners - which she did care about, because it made more work for her, and sometimes she’d take the blame for it.

Jane pulled a box off a shelf, and opened it to reveal another thing she’d managed to wheedle out of Robbie The Drunk: a concealable IP camera. She was going to “keep an eye” on those dirtbags alright.

————————————————————————

Jane planned to finish boxing and bagging up all the non-perishable stuff in the kitchen later; she decided to focus on the living room this morning. She might need help with the couch, but she could handle the rest.

First things first: she stuck the tiny camera to the ceiling, near the smoke alarm at the kitchen entrance. She opened the app on her phone and saw herself, then put in her ear pods and spoke a few words; she heard herself, with a slight delay, so the camera was working as she expected.
Jane got a “Donate” box, sat on the couch, and started going through the piles of stuff. She unzipped the gym bag, bracing herself for the odor of unwashed clothes and sweaty sneakers - but there wasn’t any. Instead, the bag was heavy, it clanked when she moved it, and the odor was of… leather?

Jane swept the clutter off of the cheap fiberboard coffee table, and began placing the items from the bag on top of it, one by one.

A pair of stainless steel handcuffs, like the police use. Make that two pairs.
A third pair of handcuffs, but with larger openings and a longer chain.
Four wide leather bracelets with buckles and metal D-rings attached.
A half-dozen or so narrow leather belts with buckles and holes running nearly their entire length.
A rubber ball with straps and a buckle. The ball had… teeth marks? Jane wasn’t completely naïve: this was obviously a “ball” gag.
Several lengths of rope, rolled and tied into figure-eights. Some of the rope was thick and scratchy, some was thinner and very smooth.
A length of chain with complex-looking pincers on each end.
A leather square with buckles, and fastened on the inside was a short plastic penis.
Another gag, this one with a metal ring instead of a ball.
A whip. An honest-to-God whip, like from the Oklahoma Smith movies. Black, slightly oily, made of tightly-woven leather, Jane could tell it was long even though it was coiled like a viper. The tip had a thin length of silky cord woven into it; most of the white cord was stained a dark pink, and she shuddered to think about how that happened.

Voices outside the door. Masculine voices, laughing.

Damnit, Jane thought, the dickheads are early.

She quickly gathered all the items from the table and stashed them back in the partly-emptied bag. She rose and started for the front door, but something, some urge, pulled her back to the unfurnished bedroom. Taking the gym bag, she went into the closet containing the cage and shut the closet door, then jammed the screwdriver option from her multitool into the lock, and turned out the light.

Putting her earpods back in, Jane opened the app on her phone in time to see Joaquin Sandoval finish wrestling with the doorknob as he opened the door. Joaquin was the worst of the two: cocky, arrogant, God’s gift to women, grinning and cracking dumb jokes about everything and everyone around him. What made it doubly worse was that he was actually very good looking: tall, lean muscles from playing basketball, light skin, thick black hair with a razor part, bright green eyes, a thin layer of stubble.

“Jane?” he shouted. “Hey Jane! You here?”

“I’ll take that as a no,” his brother Salvador - Sal - said, tapping on his data pad as he walked in behind Joaquin.

“You were right, she’s probably gone to lunch,” Joaquin said, looking around. “Good call.”

“Yes, this will be easier without her around giving us the evil eye,” Sal said, still tapping his pad.

“Giving me the evil eye, you mean,” Joaquin laughed. “I think she can stand you.”

“You do have that effect on women,” his brother replied, lowering the pad. “If you were nicer to her, you might have a chance.”

Joaquin laughed again. “Naw naw naw, she’s not up for what I’m bringin’, she wants a nice, safe daddy she can walk all over.”

Sal snorted. “Hell, I’d let her.”

Jane arched an eyebrow: Huh? Salvador was neither a ladykiller nor a dickhead like his brother (though he was still a crook), being shorter, darker, more reserved, always serious, but Jane still found him handsome: dark hair swept back from his forehead to reveal his dark, moody eyes, he was always well-dressed, and had a strong jaw, broad shoulders, arms filling out his long-sleeved shirt in all the best ways, trim waist…

Joaquin let out a sharp guffaw. “I believe you would, big bro. As for me, I just wanna tap that phat ass of hers. She’s got lots of cushion for pushin’, and those big tetas you just know have great big ol’ nipples on ‘em, and—“

“I get it,” Salvador interrupted. “She is very attractive. But that attitude on her-“

“Yeah, every time she starts bitchin’ at me I just want to stick my cock in those juicy lips of hers and give her somethin’ else to do-“

“C’mon, let’s get this done before she gets back,” Sal said.

“Yeah,” Joaquin muttered. “Lotta junk in here.”

“Not our problem,” Sal said. “Check the walls, and the carpet behind the furniture, while I go in back.”

Joaquin nodded and started running a hand lightly over the living room walls, inspecting them for damage. Sal disappeared from the camera, but Jane could hear him moving around in the furnished bedroom.

“Dios mio,” Sal said, his voice coming from the door to the unfurnished room, the one that included Jane’s hiding spot.

She heard the chain rattling, and some other things shuffling as Sal moved them, probably looking around. The sound of pages riffling as he looked through the stack of books.

“Nothin’ out of the ordinary—“ Joaquin said, followed by: “Whoa. What the hell’s goin’ on in here?”

“Ever seen anything like this?” Sal said. Joaquin must have shook his head, because Sal continued. “DIY slave training, I guess. Gonna take a bit more work.”

“Shit,” Joaquin said, “I’d give my left nut to walk in here and find Jane chained to that wall. All naked and on her knees and, like,” he switched to a falsetto voice, “‘Yes, master, how may I serve you, master?’”

Salvador exhaled, then chuckled. “That would be pretty hot. No lie, she’d look great in a collar. Man, I’d love to own her. Coming home each night to that hot little güera, meeting me at the door with her mouth open and her tongue out–”

“Or turned around,” Joaquin interrupted, “on all fours with her head down and her ass up, all Please breed me Master Sal!”

Jane felt a hot flush run up her chest, and a little thrill down to her belly. Her face was hot, and her breath was getting deep.

Sure, I have little slave fantasies, she thought, but only with men I like. Well, she admitted, only with men from the Domino stories. She’d never thought about being a helpless captive to someone she knew (and in this case, despised) like the Sandoval brothers.
The area between her thighs was growing warm, so warm it surprised her; Jane wondered for a moment if she was sick.

“Yeah, I’m sick,” she whispered to herself, “Sick in the head.”

Still…

Jane eased a hand into the top of her work pants, felt past the elastic waist of her panties, and touched a finger to her slit. It was damp.

“Oh, man,” Joaquin said, “I wonder if she’s been graded?”

“I dunno,” Sal replied, “But if she was, I’ll bet she was Prime.”

“Really?” His brother said, incredulous. “She’s pretty hot, but she ain’t as hot as Chantelle-“

“That stripper who stole your laptop was a Prime?” Sal let out another snort.

“Yeah, she turned out to be a skank but you gotta admit she was stupid hot.”

“Only thing I’ll admit,” Sal said, “Is that no matter what grade they gave her, if Jane was up on display at a slave market, I would be doing everything I could to buy her.”

“And I would be trying before you were buying, you know what I’m sayin’?” Joaquin laughed, and Sal chuckled along with him.

“Alright, seriously,” Sal said, “Let’s get this done so we can get the fuck out of here.”

“Okay,” Joaquin said. “I’ll look in the closet.”

Jane caught her breath as the doorknob rattled.

“Fuckin’ thing is jammed,” Joaquin muttered, then pulled on the knob a few times.

Shit shit shit, Jane thought. I did not think this through. What if they find me in here?

Jane instinctively put one hand over her mouth and dropped the other down, seeking something to steady herself on. It rested on the top of the cage.

Oh my God, she thought, as she looked at the cage by the glow of light coming from under the door. What if they found me in there?

Jane pictured herself, kneeling inside the cage, grasping the bars and begging the two brothers to let her out. And what’s in it for us? Joaquin would ask. What would she give to get out? Her clothes? Her hand? Her mouth? More?

“It’s just a privacy lock, pop it open,” she heard Sal say.

Jane unfastened a button on the front of her shirt, and slid her other hand inside. Even through her work bra she could feel her nipples hardening; slipping her fingers into the cup, she felt the skin of her aureolas wrinkling with arousal. Her own touch felt good, so she started gently stroking her nipple.

Screw it, she thought, if they find me, they find me.

Jane felt a wave of goosebumps run up her body.

“It’s not locked, it’s jammed,” Joaquin said. “Left my tools in the truck.”

“Well, forget it - we know how big a walk-in closet is, we’ll just pad out the estimate a bit because we couldn’t inspect,” Sal said. “Help me figure out how we’re going to deal with this frame thing.”

She heard the two of them conversing over how to handle certain aspects of the room, but she wasn’t paying attention: her other hand had started - entirely on its own, she thought - to rub up and down her slit, long strokes, slow strokes, getting a tiny bit deeper with each pass.

No, please, Jane was begging in her daydream, not both of you at once–

Her breathing grew hard, and she tried to keep it quiet.

Suddenly, she realized it was quiet.

Jane looked at the app, and she saw the front of the apartment empty, the door closed, the security chain swinging gently. The brothers must have left.
Jane burst out of the closet, ran to the front door and threw the bolt and latched the chain. Then she returned to the other room, quickly stripped off her shirt, her shoes, her pants, her bra, and finally her panties before sitting on the floor, her back up against the wall with the chain, facing the mirror across the room.

She started rubbing her pussy with her fingers, making sure to hit the little button at the top, faster and faster, while she rolled first one nipple, then the other between the fingers of her other hand.

“Wait,” she said out loud, and skittered on all fours into the closet. A moment of digging around in the gym bag, and she crawled back out to the chain-ring wall.

In her hands was the ball gag. She figured out which way was up, and tried inserting it into her mouth. It wouldn’t quite fit, so she stretched her jaw open a bit more and pushed the ball with her fingers. The red ball popped in, behind her teeth, and she felt a thrill run up her spine.

Taking a deep breath, she reached behind her head and buckled the strap, securing the gag.

She tried to say something - “Help! I’m not a slave! This is all a mistake!” - but she couldn’t really speak and it all came out as garbled sounds.

Reaching back down, Jane rubbed herself again, faster and faster, feeling an intense sensation welling up in her.

“Oh Jesus, Oh Jesus,” Jane panted. She hadn’t had an orgasm in a while, and this one was promising to be a doozy. She was envisioning herself chained to a pole at the slave market, her arms and legs spread wide, gagged with a ball like the one in her mouth, the Sandoval brothers touching every part of her naked, helpless body, making comments and comparisons of her parts while she begged with her eyes for someone, anyone else to buy her.

Without warning her jaw closed down slightly, so it wasn’t as strained - Jane realized that her teeth had fit into the bite marks left by the previous user (Aubree, she assumed); she imagined herself as just the newest slave in a long line of slave women who had suffered while wearing this gag, biting down as their nipples were pulled by laughing men—

She came.

And came, and came, and came.

Oh my God, she thought; the pleasure running through her body was more than electric, it was nuclear. She felt like every part of her body was radiating light, it felt so good.

When it ebbed, she was panting, and so relaxed it was unbelievable.

It has been a while, she thought to herself, but it was never like this.

When she raised her head, returning to her senses, resting in the afterglow, she looked across the room at the mirror.

Slumped against the wall was a naked woman (well, naked except for grey work socks) covered in a light sheen of sweat, her hair disheveled, her chest heaving, her mouth propped open with a bright red ball gag, sitting in a puddle of her own arousal between her almost pornographically wide-spread legs.

Unbuckling the strap, she popped the gag out of her mouth, and looked up at the ceiling.

She asked, “Mother Mary, what have I done?”

There was no reply.

[StoryLover]

Good to see you're back.
Can't wait to read what comes next.

[ZeeChromosome]

Wowsers! Boy, was that hot!

I'm so glad you're writing again, Mariner.

I'm very much looking forward to reading more of this. Also, looking forward to the "Went West" sequel.

Zee!

[imreadonly2]

First, my apologies. I've disappeared, as I've been traveling for work, and working weekends. However I dropped in and read this, and thought it was amazing. I love the detective story aspect to it, the voyage of discovery for both our heroine and reader. This is a very clever approach, and kept me leaning forward, eager to find out what happens next. Well done!

[gentlemanmariner]

Thank you so much, your opinion means a great deal to me!

And please say hello to Joe for me: his latest chapter of "Any Chance?" Auction on Lit is a big inspiration for part 11, coming up