Sometimes Anita’s job made her absolutely crazy.
It was mostly the boss’s fault. The boss was the kind of person who had to micromanage everything and everyone, who couldn’t trust anyone to get a single detail correct and so was constantly looking over the shoulders of every employee, sometimes literally breathing down their necks.
But there was little that Anita could do about it. This was because she was, in fact, the boss: the sole owner, president, CEO, and undisputed head honcho of SofterWare, a company that created computer programs and games designed specifically for female users. And as the company had prospered and expanded, taking on more and more employees, Anita had become more and more stressed out, due to her inability to delegate even the slightest authority to her subordinates.
This made for a less than pleasant work environment, and she knew it. She could see it in the way her employees unconsciously hunched over their desks when they saw her heading their way. Had caught, out of the corner of her eye, more than one them shaking their heads, rolling their eyes, or simply sighing with relief when she’d moved on after spending minutes explaining exactly what he or she should be doing, despite the fact that they were already doing it.
In her late-twenties, Anita was still a very attractive woman, although it would be hard to notice that about her when she was at work. There, she was a bundle of nerves in squinty glasses, her black, slightly curly hair yanked behind her head with a clip. Her slim figure was the result of nervous energy rather than exercise, unless you counted her constant prowling through the office as exercise. She didn’t drink coffee because she didn’t need it.
Anita had understood what was happening to her, and realized that it was bad not only for her but for the company as well. Several of her best employees, people who had been with the company since its founding, had left, unable to cope with Anita’s becoming more and more of, as one departing employee had snarled, “… an anal-retentive control freak.”
She herself had become an insomniac and a nail-biter. She’d known that she couldn’t go on like that without suffering some kind of physical or mental breakdown, but had no idea how to make herself let go. Who had time for yoga or meditation or any of those other relaxation techniques? She had a company to run and everything...had… to… be… perfect!
But in recent months Anita’s situation had become much better. Although her personality remained unchanged she’d made an important discovery that had made a huge difference in her life. So now, every couple of weeks or sometimes more often, whenever the pressure began to build inside her and she felt herself coiling up like a watch-spring, snapping at her employees and practically grinding her teeth at the slightest problem or delay, Anita would sit down at her desk, take out her phone and send a text to her husband, Don. This text always consisted of just two letters, followed by a question mark:
SN?
Sometimes she thought that was the best part of everything that was to follow; just pushing the ‘send’ button would always bring a smile to her face, and she would sit there, no matter what the other myriad demands on her attention there might be, until his reply came in. Which would nearly always be one simple letter, followed by a period:
Y.
From that very moment, she would begin to relax slightly, and her nervous tension would gradually, throughout the remainder of the workday, evolve into a delicious sense of anticipation. Her focus would become less intense, her demeanor softer and even the way she walked felt different to her – less stilted and more catlike and sensual.
If her employees noticed the difference they said nothing, of course. But surely they had become aware of the fact that on certain days she was now the first one to leave instead of the very last as was usual, and that during the days which followed she was altogether much more gracious and pleasant to work with. Anita wondered sometimes if they speculated together about the cause of these sudden shifts in her demeanor.
If they only knew, she would think, and sometimes actually giggled to herself, which would have astonished any of the people who worked for her. Most of them, she was sure, would testify in court that she never even smiled, much less giggled.
And if they thought that giggling was unlikely, Anita couldn’t begin to imagine what they would think if they could see her racing through the evening traffic on those special nights, often with one hand on the wheel and the other inside the pants of her conservative business clothes, cupping and squeezing herself through her panties, her mouth hanging open with excitement. Sometimes she thought that was the best part: the sheer, tingling anticipation of what was about to happen:
Slave Night.
It had evolved during the previous year as Anita had discovered that sometimes she enjoyed being told what to do during her lovemaking with Don. Don was certainly not dominant by nature – their day-to-day relationship was generally very well balanced in that regard. But he quickly learned to enjoy his role, becoming more and more brusque as he took command of her pleasure.
Over time their role-playing had expanded, becoming a kind of occasional foreplay, with Don ordering her into the bedroom and making her strip for him before they began. Then little by little their roles became a kind of theme for an entire evening, sometimes spontaneously but more and more often at Anita’s request.
And now…
It always began the same way, and Anita loved the whole ritual of it. Maybe that was the best part:
When she hurried through the door her husband Don would be sitting in the living room, reading a book or magazine. And even though the front door was well within his line of sight, on Slave Night he never looked up or acknowledged her presence in any way.
Because she wasn’t really there - not yet.
So, Anita would simply drop her purse and laptop by the door and hustle up the stairs as quickly as she could. In the bedroom, she would shed all her clothing and jewelry, then take a shower, during which she would wash herself thoroughly, scrub off her make-up, shampoo her hair and then shave everywhere, even if she had done it that very morning. This part of the ritual always heightened her arousal, but she would never touch herself, no matter how tempted.
It was not allowed.
Afterward, she would dry her hair and brush it until it shone, falling down to her shoulders in a curly mane. She would spray a mist of perfume into the air and walk through it. And then she would kneel in front of her dresser, open the bottom drawer and reach under the sweat-clothes and winter socks to retrieve her treasure.
Don had found it on eBay and given it to her on her birthday: a heavy, wide, gold-plated collar, delicately engraved with the name Precious One. Anita often wondered whether it had belonged to a large, slobbery and beloved dog… or another slave. But no matter, it was beautiful and it gave her goosebumps every time she removed it from the drawer, because of what came next.
Cradling it in her open hands as though it was a crown, Anita would carefully rise until she was standing upright then turn and walk, with slow, formal steps, out of the bedroom, down the stairs and into the living room, trying to breathe normally while checking out of the corners of her eyes to be sure that Don had remembered to close the drapes. Because it wouldn’t do for the neighbors to see what was about to happen:
Anita, completely naked, kneeling and prostrating herself before her husband, her face to the floor, her arms stretched out in front of her, her hands offering the collar.
Don would always ignore her at first, and Anita loved that, being made to wait in that submissive pose, completely still and silent. Often it was her first tranquil moment in days or even weeks, and she was grateful for it, happy to just be aware of her breathing as it began to slow and soften, and also aware of her mind, usually a whirlwind of anxious and angry thoughts, as it gradually settled until the only thing that needed to be done was wait.
Maybe that was the best part.
Or was it when Don, having learned to judge exactly the right moment, would put his reading aside, lean down to take the collar from her hands, then gently brush her hair away from her neck before enclosing it within the collar, fastening it with a firm click?
For Anita that one sound, the smooth, metallic latching of the collar around her neck, was the sound of a door being closed on her entire, frantic daily existence. There was no company to run, no clients to placate, no employees to supervise; there was nothing at all beyond her awareness of the collar, the cool metal encircling her neck.
There was no Anita. There was only Precious One.
The slave.
And no matter how many times Anita played this role, that final moment of transition from CEO to slave-girl never failed to make her nipples harden.
The rest of the evening would be variations on a theme. Usually, at this point, Don would clap his hands, the signal for her to sit up in her kneeling position: back straight, hands resting palms up on her thighs and her attention entirely focused on her husband.
Anita loved this part because it almost always resulted in her first spanking of the evening.
Don would pretend to continue his reading, although they both knew that he was watching her for the slightest sign of inattention, which she was only too happy to provide. A moment’s wavering glance, the slightest turning of the head or hint of restlessness in her posture and he would say, in the calmest of voices, “Down.”
Anita would immediately turn in place and resume her earlier prostrate position, her face to the floor and her behind held high in the air, within easy reach. Don would always wait until she was literally quivering with anticipation – usually not a very long wait – before delivering two open-handed swats, one to each cheek.
The first two were just warm-ups, they both knew that. Afterward, Anita would resume her kneeling position and Don would return to his reading – until her attention ‘wandered’ again.
The next two slaps would be noticeably harder, the wait before he struck – and the time between the slaps - longer. And the next two after that, and the next two, and the next…
They had never gotten beyond ten slaps during this stage of the evening because usually well before that Anita would be literally biting her lip, her breath rushing in and out of her nose, as she teetered on the edge of orgasm. Sometimes she thought that was the best part, fighting to control the overwhelming desire for release while her husband watched, knowing that it was against the rules to come without permission and that if she gave in the evening would be over.