The room had already begun to gravitate into small groups making plans and finding corners in which to get comfortable. Nicolette brought her slave over and took the cushions that Rowenna and RG had recently evacuated. Nicolette sat gracefully in the hollow of pillows and pulled her slave to lay comfortably in her lap. The slave began immediately to purr and pulled her legs up to snuggle deeper into the hollow made of legs and cushions. Nicolette made a valiant attempt to look imperious for a moment and then gave in and smiled lovingly down at her slave and began to pet her hair.

Nicolette looked first at me and then at Rose. We were in a similar position by this point. Rose had curled herself into a small ball and I was running my hand down her back, alternating my palm and my fingernails while I watched the interesting effects each sensation had on her body. I watched Nicolette run her fingers through her slave's hair. The slave was purring and I could watch individual muscles relax and when Nicolette walked two fingers down her slaves back I watched each muscle tense and relax even further under her touch. I emulated the action and saw the same results in Rose. She tensed as the point of my finger descended to touch her skin and then relaxed as my finger settled onto her and she stayed relaxed as my fingers lifted to reach for a new foothold on her back.

"That is good, I can teach you." Both Rose and I tensed at the sudden sound of Nicolette's voice. Her voice was melodious to say the least, but both Rose and I had begun to relax as a result of my ministrations. "Xeno, you will refer to me as Mistress Nico, I am not demanding that you refer to me as your mistress, just that you afford me my proper title. When we are truly equals, I will allow you to refer to me as just Nico. But for the moment, you are my student. And you will show me proper respect."

She looked lovingly at Rose for a moment. "Your slave will refer to me simply as Mistress. This is an honorific in this case. She is a slave; I am a Domina, a Top, and a Mistress. And I like the way Mistress sounds. We will speak further of this later, but for starters we should get the basics out of the way. I will refer to your slave as either simple slave, or slave Rose. You and she are intimate so you may refer to her however you please, but in a more formal setting we prefer to use titles so that the slaves do not get confused." I must have tensed because she laughed, a beautiful tinkling laugh that set my nerves to dancing and made both of the slaves perk their heads up to listen.

"No Xeno, I am not putting the slaves in their place as that idiot Reginald was so fond of saying. Pah, in their place indeed." She spat the phrase as though it burned her tongue. "If he had not been such an imbecile he would have seen clearly that the place of the slave is truly far from equal. However, quite to the reverse of his beliefs, we serve the slaves in most ways. They are precious to us, they complete us and they obey us in all things. In that the role of the Master or Mistress is to command and to care, to exact swift punishment for any misdeed and to immediately sooth the pain of that infraction and in all things we must be aware of our slave's state of being." Nicolette grinned widely. "And I wouldn't have it any other way. She soothed her slave who had tensed at the anger in Mistress Nicolette's voice. I found my hands mimicking hers, rubbing slow circles down the length of Rose's back and speaking softly to her until she was calm and purring in my lap again.

When both our slaves were calm, Nicolette spoke softly and gently. "Devon has asked me to show you the actions implied by the existence of the dungeon. We all believe that if you are going to enter the, oh, the lifestyle or the scene or however you wish to refer to it; you should know the entirety of the scene. And in this I agree with him. However, I will not teach half a lesson. Behind every action you make there will be a motivation. Your first responsibility should be one of awareness. You should know why you are acting. Your second should be the knowledge of what you expect to gain, and your third should be the knowledge of how to act well." She reached for a water bottle and opened it.

"In this circumstance, I reached for the water because I am thirsty. I wish to gain a lack of thirst by ultimately drinking the water. And I chose water because it was both close, and much more prone to quench my thirst than beer or soda. I am also aware of the long-term effects of my choice. I wish to stay alert so choosing water over alcohol is the more logical choice, and I wish to stay sitting so the water is a better choice over the caffeinated beverage."

She took a long sip of her water and then leveled her gaze at me once more. "That is not to say that beer or soda are bad choices in the greater scheme of things, in this moment however; the water was the best choice. Now, the same goes for anything, and ultimately, everything you do. When you reach for a whip you should know why you are choosing a whip at all, why you are choosing that particular whip, and what you expect to gain by the use of the whip. And I should hope you pay attention tomorrow so that you can learn how to use the whips well."

"Now, are you willing to learn in such a fashion? I will be forcing you to think as well as learn. My lessons will be much more than a casual lesson in the methodology of torture, and I need your consent before I continue." I nodded mutely. I was fascinated. I had, in a general sense been examining my motivations throughout my entire relationship with the club, but never so clearly. I wanted to learn, I wanted to soak up the knowledge these people possessed and become better at acting on the urges I had felt in myself for so long. And while I had seen a number of discussions on why a sub was submissive and why a masochist liked pain, I had always had a difficult time finding anyone who spoke to the subject of why a master needed to be obeyed. I leaned down to kiss Rose and then listened attentively when Nicolette began to speak again.

"You will have many reasons for why you are what you are. I am sure as a thinking person you have thought about this, and I do not claim to know every detail of your mind, but I do know that I have been about this longer than you have. So listen carefully and if you disagree, tell me why. Do no just disagree with me in your mind and scoff at what I say, speak out and tell me what you think so that together we can gain a greater understanding of our world. Tonight however, my time is my own and I do not plan to spend it teaching you when your mind will be more open and receptive in the morning. I am told you know where the dungeon is. Meet me there at ten and we will begin. Bring your slave and come well fed. I want you alert and as free of distractions as possible." And with those final words, she left.

***

Rose and I spent the rest of the night snuggling and resting. We went to bed early and a misguided urge on my part led us to try having vanilla sex, she lay prone on the bed while I mounted her in the ever so popular missionary position. For the first few moments I enjoyed the feel of her body and the closeness of her skin, but before long I realized that neither one of us was actively involved with the process. We paused and I asked her if she understood what was going on. She sat up, radiant in the diffuse moonlight that kissed her bare skin, and we talked about the fact that there had been no emotional attachment to the act. I had been going through motions scripted by a very unimaginative choreographer, and neither one of us had cared for the dance.

I pulled Rose to me and held her while we spoke in whispers about the day and her reactions. I kneaded the tension of our failed attempt at love making from her shoulders and as the massage became more intense I felt myself begin to stir. When I pressed her deeper into the mattress I felt her moan and when I ordered her to relax her muscles, I watched her labia swell. Clearly we were both involved with the moment and each other. I continued the back rub and we enjoyed the sensations of shared space. We also enjoyed the frission as I knelt, naked, above her.

I realized that tonight I was not so much craving sex in and of itself. Rose was very sexy, amazingly so in fact, but it was her submission I craved, I wanted, needed to be in control. And I was taking that control gently tonight. I moved my hands over the relaxing muscles along her spine and began to knead the tiny balls of stress that nestled on either side of her coccyx. I remembered hearing once that sexual tension was stored in that muscle group and when it was massaged it could release a sensation of well being completely different from any sensation derived from pure sexual release.

As I rubbed and massaged, Rose began to respond. Her breath came more readily but there were little hitches and moans in her soft voice. Her body began to tighten and relax and I could see muscles jumping and settling in her back and along her thighs. When I looked between her legs I saw that she was now glistening with her obvious readiness, but the movements she was making were far from the hip grinding motions of someone trying to seek release.

I continued my massage, moving my hands still lower to the soft tissue that lay just below and to the right and left of her tailbone. Her legs twitched at first as I dug my thumbs into the tightly wound muscles that controlled her thighs and the movement of her inner labia. She moaned quietly and her hands fluttered on the bed where I had placed them, but Rose made no other movement aside from the occasional involuntary twitch. When I began to dig deeper into her muscles, feeling for the tiny knots of tension still remaining, her voice changed and she began to mumble into her pillow. I leaned forward to hear her words and was stunned to find her repeating over and over again, "Thank you Master, I am yours Master, thank you Master."

She was in a near trance state by this point, and the massage was releasing a flood of emotion with her muscular tension. I looked down and saw that I had her bound hand and foot by the unconscious placement of my legs. Her wrists lay beneath the pillow on which my knees rested. I had my ankles pressed tight over her own. She was bound and blindfolded by pillows and my body.

I continued my massage while she murmured into the pillow and when she turned her face; I could see tears glistening on her face. I froze momentarily until I realized she was also smiling and relaxed. I thought back over what I knew of her past and I remembered my dream. If that was the way she had been treated, Rose was receiving more human contact this evening than she had received in a week under Ariana's not so delicate ministrations. I watched the tears dry to shining jewels of joy on Rose's cheeks and began to run my fingers in parallel lines down her back. Digging the tips into her muscles as they rose and fell over her ribs. The motion pulled the skin of her back tight, and in her relaxed state Rose lifted her head with the motion. For a moment she looked as though she was arching her back in orgasm, and in a way, I think she was. When I reach her hips for the fifth or sixth time, she suddenly shuddered and collapsed.

I fought momentarily with the temptation to climb on top of her and relieve my own tension, but she looked so peaceful, and the smile on her face was one I wanted to flavor her dreams the whole night through. I curled onto my side and gently slid a leg over hers. A few moments later, I joined her in a deep sleep.

* * *

Again I woke in a dark room, there was no discernable light anywhere and I paused to regain my senses. Slowly sensations began to filter through and I realized that I was really awake and I was still in the tree house. I felt Rose's hair slide across my eyes and her arm thrown across my chest. We were completely naked and her left breast was pressed to my chest so that I could feel the slow slide of her semi-erect nipple when I breathed. Her lips were pressed against my neck and I could feel her breath against my skin with the steady rhythm of her sleep. I carefully brushed her hair out of my eyes and saw the dim light of dawn filtering through the leaves outside our window.

Something had obviously woken me; I was not usually prone to waking with the sunrise. I listened carefully for any strange noises, but I couldn't hear a thing out of the ordinary. Rose's breathing was even, the creak and rustle of the branches, indeed the entire structure had lulled us to sleep and it still sounded the same. I remembered Nicolette's last words before she left the main room, "Meet me there at ten and we will begin. Bring your slave and come well fed. I want you alert and as free of distractions as possible." But it was not early enough to worry about that. We still had a few hours to go, plenty of time to go back to sleep.

I was about to close my eyes and let Rose's gentle breathing soothe me back to sleep when it came again. A light tap on the door. No louder than a falling pin. Was I sleeping so lightly these days that a bare tap on the door was enough to wake me? Apparently it had been. I eased my way out from underneath Rose and padded slowly to the door. It didn't occur to me to grab clothes until my hand fell on the knob and I hesitated for a split second when the tapping came again. I shook my head at the humor of worrying about clothes in this place and pulled the door open. Outside stood a delicate slave boy dressed all in fine silver chains. He had black eyes and hair and the most intense stare I had ever seen. He also carried with him the smell of coffee and fresh bread with did quite a bit to lighten my mood.

The slave boy held in his hands a large tray covered with silver platters and platter covers. From an urn in the center of the tray rose the scent of hot coffee. The tray also held a large piece of folded paper. I took the tray from the boy and he turned and immediately melted into the shadows. I carried the tray inside our room carefully, still mindful of the darkness and the fact that we had in fact tossed our clothes rather willy nilly when we had undressed. When my knee bumped the bed and my eyes had adjusted enough to make out faint outlines, I set the tray on the bedside table.

I opened the folded note and squinting through the darkness I saw that it was addressed to me as "Master-in-training Xeno" I couldn't quite make out the actual content of the note so I reached for my lighter and lit it as quietly as I could. Rose stirred a bit but she snuggled her face into my hip and went quiet and peaceful again. By the flame light, I read the note.

"Master-in-training Xeno,
    Come to the dungeon as soon as you can, bring your slave and come dressed for sensuous action. Ten in the morning is too late to begin your training in this newly changing environment, and we do not know how long we will have before we are interrupted.
    I have provided an appropriate breakfast so that you need not waste time searching for the pantry. I will expect you in forty-five minutes."
   
It was signed "Domina Nicolette" and embellished with a large flourish, halfway between a stylized N and a line-drawn whip.

I took Nicolette at her word and turned to wake Rose before further checking the contents of the tray. I was surprised when I turned to find myself looking into Rose's sleepy but smiling eyes. "Good morning darling." I murmured and rolled further to pull her to me for a real good morning greeting. I wrapped my arms around her and felt her naked body slide across mine. I was mindful of the time, but I was also not willing to skip my snuggles. After a few moments I kissed her gently under the ear and told Rose about the note. We sat up and I pulled the tray into our laps so that we could eat. Rose found a table lamp and we were soon bathed in its soft glow while we lifted plate covers like kids on Christmas morning.

We found wheat toast and crumpets and scones and the richest most aromatic coffee I had ever smelled. Under the last tray lay a couple of hot sausages that I recognized as being vegetarian "meat-substitute" I had never really cared either way, and evidently neither did Rose as we dug in with intent. After we had had polished off the coffee and most of the bread products and vegi-sausage, I read the note to Rose and we went about finding clothing for the occasion.

The wardrobe again provided the perfect outfits, this time soft black silk slacks and a matching vest for myself, and a nearly translucent skin-tight linen shift for Rose. The hem of her shift fell to mid thigh and she filled the top half perfectly. My slacks were of a cut that left nothing to the imagination, but they could still slide and flow over my skin, and the vest was more of a formality than an actual item of clothing. I left it unbuttoned to flap around my chest while we walked, both of us clad in soft-soled boots, to the dungeon.

In the shifting shadows of the hallway I decided not to replace Rose's leash, but I had left the collar in place after checking to make certain that it was not abrading her anywhere. We walked hand in hand through the tree house and the underground tunnels until we reached the doorway to the dungeon. There I paused and turned Rose to face me. I carefully brushed an eyelash from her cheek and asked her "Are you ready for this my slave?" Rose nodded and smiled happily.

Once again I was struck by the change that had come over her when we swore to each other during the confrontation with Arial. It was such an amazing transformation from the sad inwardly turned submissive that I had met. I preferred her smiles and joy. And her submission, even though I was new to the entirety of the lifestyle, was far more satisfying than the desperate way in which she had clung to my budding dominance. I returned her smile with my own and turned the knob on the door, which swung inward, silently.