Alena's Game Ch. 18

[Author's note: if you don't like to read about female domination or male chastity, please skip to the next story, or check out my other stories for something that's more to your taste.

Through a series of counselling session with Cassie, his therapist, Quinn is trying to come to terms with how his wife Alena managed to transform him from her assured, overbearing husband into her willing slave.

In the end, they have found a new dynamic, refashioning their marriage as they fulfil each other's deepest needs. Cassie has one last session with Quinn.

Note: the brown envelope and its contents have been discussed previously in What We Say In The Dark]

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PHYSICAL THERAPY

Cassie smoothed her hands over her hips and descended the stairs, taking each step carefully in her stiletto heels. At the bottom, she paused and settled herself. It was always the same, opening the door and walking out into the club. Like you own it, Syn had advised her. Cassie drew her body straighter and opened the door.

She saw Quinn in the booth where she had left him to get dressed. There was a gratifying moment as he noticed her and his posture changed. No longer slouching over his tonic water, he was giving her his full attention. Cassie placed one foot carefully in front of the other and swayed on her heels across the floor, feeling eyes on her.

Cassie was wearing a full-length figure-hugging dress in turquoise latex. The collar of the dress was snug against her neck, directing the eye down to the rounded orbs of her breasts and then to the flowing sweep of her hips, sculpted tantalisingly by the tight, glossy rubber. The shiny surface complimented and constricted her toned legs, tapering down to the hem just above her ankles.

"Stunning," Quinn said when she reached the table, "I'm honoured by your presence."

"Ah, no," Cassie chided as she slipped into the seat opposite him, across the table, "We're not...."

Quinn held up a hand in defence, laughing. "I wasn't about to call you Mistress Grace and fawn and get on my knees. I meant it objectively, Cassie. You look absolutely superb in that dress, and I'm honoured to be now the most envied man in the club."

"Charmer."

"Seductress."

Cassie wrinkled her nose. "I wish."

Quinn leaned closer, speaking in low, conspiratorial tones. "You realise that you could have them lining up, right? Men and women. There are people here right now who would part with a week's salary just to be allowed to kiss your feet."

"Present company included?" said a woman's voice.

Cassie turned. Syn had appeared at her side, dressed smartly in a blouse and a black leather hobble skirt. She was amused, facing Quinn with a wry smile.

"Madame Syn. I am honoured," Quinn said.

Syn scrutinised him carefully. "The usual," she replied.

Quinn stood up immediately and hurried off to the bar. Syn slid into his vacant seat.

"Do you think?" Cassie asked.

"Present company? Quinn? I'm sure you could mould him to your ends if you so desired, Cassidy. I'm sure he would give you a lifetime of service," Syn mused, "But you won't, will you? The husband situation."

Cassie grimaced. "Yes," she agreed, "The husband situation."

"Still a situation?"

"More and more so."

"I keep telling you, Cassidy, you're wasted."

Syn's eyes travelled down Cassie's sleekly-enveloped body. "No, I meant the company currently present. Seeing you in that dress is quite arresting."

Syn crossed her legs, continuing to smile at Cassie. Cassie blushed under the other woman's stare and wiggled her bottom on the seat.

Syn laughed. "You're so shy. We really need to work on that."

"I'm just not used to being propositioned by a woman."

"Oh Cassidy, if I were propositioning you, we would already be upstairs, naked. I'm teasing."

"Okay."

"But it's so nice to see that dress put to such good use. I'm afraid it's been languishing in my wardrobe for the last few years."

"Thanks for letting me borrow it. It's lovely. You should wear it more yourself."

Syn laughed again. "Oh no, you have the figure to pull it off, myself not so much these days."

Cassie's eye twinkled playfully. "The great Syn. Such modesty," she said.

"Such vanity, you mean. You should keep it."

"I couldn't," Cassie protested.

"I can't wear it, not now people have seen it on you," Syn said, feigning horror, "I will not be an also-ran."

The expression on her face made Cassie laugh. "When would I have chance to wear it?"

"Oh, you'd find opportunities," Syn drawled, "At school pick-up? Perhaps to hold attention in the parent teacher interviews? It's ideal for just popping down to the shops. You could park pretty much anywhere you wanted looking like that."

"Stop, please," Cassie laughed, "You're going to make me pee."

"It's okay. Latex is waterproof."

"Really. Stop."

Syn was grinning at her now. She reached out and patted Cassie's hand.

"You are a breath of fresh air, Cassidy Hayes," she said, "I love it when you laugh."

They fell into a companionable silence, each watching the crowd, then Syn reached under the table and picked up a bulky brown envelope from her lap.

"Here you go, Cassidy."

Syn pushed the envelope across the table.

"Thanks."

"How do you think he's going?"

"Ah, that's doctor-patient privilege."

Syn snorted. "I can just get the details from Quinn himself. Half an hour from now he's going to be begging to be allowed the privilege of telling me everything."

"Then you'll get to know anyway, so there's no point me breaking a professional confidence."

"It's just less effort asking you."

Cassie shook her head, shooting her friend an admonishing look.

"Can I have a few minutes with him first," Cassie asked, "Before you reduce him to a hopeless submissive?"

"I can, but I have another enslavement at ten, and I'll need recovery time."

Syn rolled her eyes theatrically. Cassie played along.

"Then don't whip so hard. Just a suggestion. You're going to give yourself tennis elbow."

Syn reached out and squeezed Cassie's arm. "Thank you for the concern, but I beat people for a living. I'm sure I can look after myself."

Cassie could see Quinn approaching them with Syn's drink in his hand and Syn slid out of the booth. Cassie wrapped her fingers around the older woman's wrist, stopping her.

"He's good, Syn, he's really improved. It might be time for him to meet someone."

The corners of Syn's mouth turned up, but it wasn't a smile. She had a tired, careworn expression on her face.

"Then I shall make this session especially savage, so that he has something to remember me by," she said.

Syn met Quinn halfway, taking the drink he offered to her and heading through the door next to the bar, going upstairs to prepare for Quinn's arrival. Quinn resumed his seat in the booth but then he froze, his expression hardening as he saw the envelope beneath Cassie's hand.

"Am I in for a grilling?" he said.

"No, it's just a check-in."

"Then why do you have the envelope? You know what that means to me."

Cassie stalled for a second and then pushed it across the table to Quinn.

"You could open it," Cassie said.

Quinn recoiled. "Why would I do that?"

"You might choose to. You don't have to be imprisoned by your past anymore."

Quinn looked like he was about to say something, but instead he picked up the envelope and turned it over in his hands. He stopped when he saw the handwriting of his dead wife in thick black ink on the paper.

"I'm not imprisoned by it, Cassie. I know I could open the envelope and see what she wrote. I would hope that my key is in there too."

"That's another thing, Quinn. We can find a way to release you from your cage. We don't even need to open the envelope to do that, we could just get tools. You don't have to...."

"Ah, that's missing the point though," Quinn interjected, "I do have to."

He hefted the envelope in his hands.

"This," he said, tapping the brown paper with his finger, "This is my wife's final blindside. After this, she'll never be able to surprise me ever again. Everything will be known."

Quinn put the envelope down carefully and pushed it back across the table to Cassie.

"So, thanks but no thanks. I know what you're trying to do, Cassie, but I don't need that lifeline. I'm not drowning anymore. I can wait for a few more weeks to finally discover what Alena had planned for me."

Quinn took a swig of his tonic water, lost in contemplation. Cassie kept quiet while he collected his thoughts.

"I owe her that, not to ruin her final plan."

He looked up from his glass at Cassie, forcing a smile. "It would have been her birthday today, did you know?"

"Yes, Syn told me. She has something special set up for you upstairs, just the two of you."

"A very private show. Alena would have disproved of that. She...."

Quinn broke off, struggling suddenly. He took a moment to regain control of his emotions.

"She got such a thrill putting me on display. It made her wild."

Quinn glanced down at his watch. "Madame Syn will be expecting me. I should go."

Cassie reached out, putting a gentle hand on his arm. "I asked her for a few minutes with you first."

"I'm fine, Cassie. It's okay, isn't it, to just feel sad sometimes?"

"Yes, it is."

Quinn laid a warm hand over hers, his eyes on her face.

"I have a question for you," Cassie said, "About Alena, about what you said last time."

"About what, exactly?"

"About her saying she wanted to be free, to not be bound by the marriage."

"Ah, that."

Quinn leaned forward. "Fire away," he said.

"You granted her that freedom, as part of the contract between you."

"Yes."

"Did she ever take it up?"

"Of course not."

"Why?"

Quinn looked surprised, and Cassie found herself fumbling.

"Uh, Cassie, how do I put this?" Quinn began, "It was a theoretical position, being given the freedom to take that final step. But neither of us had any interest in ever going that far."

Quinn laughed to himself.

"We'd finally found Alena's hard limit."

"I don't understand. You said it was her third dark fantasy."

"Exactly."

Cassie shook her head. "Sorry, I'm lost."

"It was a fantasy. It had nothing to do with having sex with someone else. It had everything to do with how it would make us feel, how just the idea of it would torment me and stretch her. She needed to know she could make me submit to it. She needed to know she could carry it out, to experience the feeling of having that power over me. I needed to completely trust in her to never take that step, knowing that I didn't have the right to stop her. After going through all of that, the bit at the end, the actually fucking someone else, was unnecessary."

"I see."

Quinn laughed again. "No, Cassie, I can tell that you don't. Maybe you will. It's a lot to get your head around. It took us a long time ourselves."

Cassie regarded the man opposite her, digesting the revelation. She felt suddenly like an imposter, sitting primped in the booth in her tight latex dress, with the name that Syn had bestowed on her, in the presence of someone who had really lived it, had loved it, and finally had been forced to watch it slip away.

She thought about her husband, Damian, about her own crumbling marriage, how different it all was to what Quinn and Alena had made for themselves. There were similarities though, and Cassie suspected that was why she'd been drawn to Quinn's story, wanting to help him even as she failed to help herself.

Cassie knew all about power imbalances, knew the way it could twist people up inside. Even now, poised elegantly in the booth in her latex dress, with all eyes on her as Mistress Grace in the Lost and Found, there was still a part of her who was Cassie, the subjugated mother-of-two and housewife, on her knees in front of her husband's cruel lover, made to do shameful things. The difference was stark: Quinn wanted Alena to take full control, whereas Cassie wanted desperately to free herself from Lily's grip. But, Cassie had found herself powerless to stop the beautiful, willowy younger woman from taking control of her life. Even now, in the safety of the club, she could picture Lily's long blonde hair, those emerald-hard eyes looking down at her with distain as Cassie was made to obey.

"I never told you how it ended, did I?" Quinn said, "The neat little epilogue to your clinical notes."

Cassie roused herself from her own thoughts, suppressing a shudder. "No. But I'd like to hear," she replied.

Quinn seemed to be wrestling with himself, conflicted.

"Ah, Cassie. It was hard, at the end. She was riddled with it, and it was giving her such agony."

Quinn grimaced and she felt his hand squeezing hers powerfully as the memories unleashed deeply buried emotions within him.

"I've never told anyone this," he gasped, "How much pain she was in. If I could have swapped places with her and taken that on, I would. I'm the one into pain, never her. She just wasn't built for it."

"What did you do?"

"Ah Cassie, that's the million-dollar question, isn't it? What do you think I did?"

Gently, he withdrew his hands from hers and folded them in his lap.

"Do you imagine that I let her suffer? Do you imagine I watched her lovely, pretty face twisted with such hurt?"

Quinn shrugged, but he was looking straight through her now, like she was a ghost.

"Or do you think that I took the pillow from beneath her head? Do you imagine I looked into her beautiful eyes until she was ready?"

He paused; Cassie felt a chill pass through her as she saw the look in his eyes.

"Then, do you think that I held the pillow down over her face until she was finally at peace?"

Quinn rose smoothly from his seat and slipped out of the booth. Cassie watched him go and she retreated into the silent darkness at the back of the booth. A bitter, furious emotion overwhelmed her, all at once. Life was fucked, she thought to herself. It made people bear terrible things.

But here was a man who scraped and fawned, pathetic and subservient, who allowed himself to be reduced to a plaything at someone else's whim, who had followed all the demeaning rules his own wife had burdened him with, who had trusted so deeply and completely in one other person.

At the end of it all, here was a man who had borne the terrible cost of delivering her one final mercy, and in doing so had destroyed what he cherished most in all the world.

She watched Quinn striding across the floor of the club, towards the cruellest devices that a merciless dominatrix could devise for him. But his head was held high. At the door, he paused and turned back to her, giving her a nod across the floor. Quinn was unafraid, all at once the most pathetic fool she had ever seen and also the strongest person Cassie had ever met.

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[Quinn and Cassie continue in When One Day We Are Gone, but Alena's path has ended. However, she did have the last word in To Whom It May Concern.

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