LifeMates Ch. 05 - Meeting Amanda

Chapter 5. Meeting Amanda

On a Wednesday evening in the middle of January, Myrna announced to me, "We're invited to dinner at Mistress Amanda's this Friday. She wants to meet you and discuss the future of LifeMates with us. You must address her as Mistress, as you do me, because I am her subject in a sense. Her consort George, you will address as 'sir' (if you have occasion to speak) because although you're both submissives he is way senior to you, both in age and status."

"I have to warn you," she continued. "Mistress Amanda is more highhanded and imperious than your Sylvie ever was. She treats her subs like slaves and gets away with it because she's both skilful (like Bernice) and very rich. Though an old lady now, she is still very attractive -- beautiful, really, in a way that some people remain, even as they age. And, of course, she dresses her part -- in black leather, with stiletto heels: She is a Dominatrix always."

"Her redeeming feature is that she respects and deals honourably with all those that she cannot overwhelm and crush. These she accepts -- not as equals, exactly, but as worthy counterplayers, Whether ally or adversary, they are fellow humans at least. With these, she negotiates and enters into relationships as suits her interests. And she keeps her word. This is how I have managed to get along with her."

"Your problem with her is that, despite innumerable discussions with me, and her agreement to fund our operation, she will not treat you as my lifemate or proxy, but as my submissive and therefore her own slave. Intellectually, she understands the difference between a lifemate proxy and a BDSM slave, but she has no real sense of what it means. Which means that when I introduce you, she will know your name, but not who you are. She will expect you to grovel, and will be surprised when you do not. She will expect you to keep your head bowed and remain silent, and will be astonished when you meet her gaze, and participate (albeit respectfully) in the conversation."

"Even her consort George does not speak to her before he's spoken to. He worships her. In his eyes, she cannot be wrong. He would not dare to contradict her about anything -- not even a mistake in arithmetic. He gives her legal advice, but only as she asks for it. He does legal work for her precisely as she commands. If she ordered him to do something that would get him disbarred or even a prison sentence, I don't think he could refuse. She won't, of course. She needs him too much and is much too clever and knowledgeable to discard him in that way. I think she even loves him in her own fashion. At least, she loves the way he sees her."

"What you must do is show her that you are a good submissive, but my lifemate, and no one's slave. This will not be easy, because I'm sure she'll test you. I don't know how she'll do it, but it won't be pleasant. Whatever she does, you can trust her to stay within the rules of BDSM and not do you any permanent damage. But she may try to break you, though I know she won't succeed."

"So now I have to ask you: Can you handle this? Are you willing to try?"

"A question first, Mistress," I answered her. "Are you ordering me to do this, or asking me to volunteer? And if I refuse, what will happen to me and to our company?"

She hesitated. I could tell she had not thought this far ahead. Finally, she stared at me and said, very slowly, "I will order you to come with me to Amanda's. That is within my rights. But I will not order you to submit to her tests. They may be well be beyond the call of duty. As my lifemate, you are my submissive, but not hers. You wear my collar, not hers, so she has no right to give you any order without asking me first. Therefore, you may say 'no' to her at any time without impugning our relationship. You will still be my lifemate and submissive. You will not have broken any promise to me."

"What that will mean for our company, I cannot say. I don't know Amanda as she is now. We haven't spoken for a few years, and it's more than a decade since she played with me. She may be vindictive now. She may try to punish me for your refusal, or for refusing to order you to obey her, if it comes to that. Does that answer your question?"

"Indeed yes, Mistress. Thank you," I replied, speaking very formally. "Then I cannot say whether I will obey your Mistress Amanda, until I hear her orders. I promise to do my best for both of us, following my best judgment at the moment."

"That is a worthy answer, and the most I can require of you." She smiled at me. "Once again, I am happy and proud to be your Mistress. I will live with whatever happens. I will remain yours, and you will still be mine."

* * * * *

Amanda lived in a modernized chateau up near Mont Tremblant, more than an hour's drive from Montreal. On Friday, at 5 PM, her limousine was waiting at our door. We climbed in, and took off. The weather was crisp and cold, but the roads had been cleared of snow. It soon grew dark. Most of rush hour was past and, with Amanda's skilful chauffeur, we made excellent time. Myrna held my hand for most of the way -- whether to reassure me or herself I could not tell, and thought it was probably both.

At last, we pulled into the circular, gravelled driveway and stopped in front of the massive front door. The chauffeur, came round opened the car's door to assist Myrna's exit, then let me manage by myself. Climbing the steps to the house, I admired the huge knocker on the front door; but before I could knock, the door opened to us. The chauffeur must have notified the house of our arrival, and its butler was there and waiting.

After welcoming us in, he helped us to shed our winter coats, offered us house slippers instead of boots, and led us down the hall to a large living room, furnished like a salon at Versailles. Then he asked if we would like refreshments and declared that our hostess had been informed of our arrival, and would be with us shortly. Myrna ordered a Bloody Caesar; I asked for a gin and tonic; and we sat down and waited. Our drinks arrived promptly, but 20 minutes passed before Amanda made her entrance. Then she seemed to wait for us to drop to the floor and kiss her feet; but Myrna only gave her a polite bow, and I did the same. She scowled at us, and at the drink in my hand. It was clear at once, that we were not following her script and that the evening would be strained.

"Why does he have a drink?" Amanda barked at Myrna. "Since when are submissives allowed alcoholic drinks?"

"Your Butler offered us refreshments, and he asked for one," my Mistress replied. "As my lifemate, he has permission to waive submissive protocols in social situations. You invited him and he is your guest. He will behave like a courteous guest, expecting you to be a kind and courteous hostess."

"I invited you, and told you to bring him. You are my guest. He is a slave."

"No, Mistress,"Myrna answered her. "We have discussed this." A lifemate proxy is not like the slaves who serve you. He is not a slave at all. As you will see, Richard is submissive to me in every way he should be. But to him, you are his hostess in a social situation. My relationship to you is not his business."

I just stood there sipping my drink while the two Mistresses argued about my status. I had to bite my tongue not to laugh.

"As your Mistress, I am his Mistress too," Amanda argued.

"No Mistress, you are not, Myrna said. "No slave can serve two masters or mistresses. Even if he were my slave (and he isn't), he would not be yours. He will call you Mistress, because I told him to, to be polite. But that was probably a mistake on my part. You are not his mistress -- and neither am I in the sense you mean. I am his Alpha, and he is my proxy. It is the relationship that we discussed in establishing lifemates, but it is not one that you are used to yet."

"Richard, speak for yourself now. Please explain this situation as you see it, to help Amanda understand you. And forget what I said about calling her 'Mistress'.

"Yes Mistress," I responded. Then, to Amanda: "Please, ma'am, we want you to understand. I am submissive by temperament, but I am not a slave. I give myself to Mistress Myrna of my own free will because it pleases me to do so. I love her and respect her and obey her. When she does not command me, she expects me to behave as I think she would wish, and I try to do so -- though sometimes I make mistakes. Then I receive some punishment to re-establish our relationship, and to help me remember what displeases my Mistress. I accept such punishment thankfully, because I am submissive by nature. But I am still a free agent throughout."

"I am here tonight with my Mistress, because she bade me come, clearly expecting me (as always) to be courteous to you and to everyone. She has explained to me that we are beholden to you for backing her LifeMates Company and I am prepared to honour you for that. She has explained her prior relationship to you as her Domme and friend. Again, I am prepared to thank you and be loyal to you as the Domme and friend of my own Domme. As such, I would even obey you up to a point because I know that my Mistress would want me to. But I believe that she would not want me to abandon my dignity and self-respect, to please you or anyone. She knows that I would not obey even her if it went against self-respect to do so. As Mistress said, I am her submissive and proxy, not her slave. Nor am I yours. If you can accept that, I am prepared to treat you with the respect, loyalty and obedience to which you are entitled. Beyond that point, I must be my own man."

"Thank you, Richard," Myrna said. "That sums it up perfectly." Then to Amanda she added: "Mistress, I hope you can see the treasure that I have here. I took Richard on as my proxy, because to make LifeMates a success, I needed someone with me to model the relationship that we are trying to sell. As you can see, he understands that role perfectly and is perfect for it. I beg you, for the success of our venture, please treat him with the kindness and respect that he deserves."

"Well," Amanda said. "That was a very pretty speech, I'll give you that. I still want to see what it means in practice."

"Is George here?" Myrna asked, trying to change the subject. "I was hoping to see him again."

"George and I are scarcely a couple anymore, though legally we are still married. He lives here, in his own suite, and he is well served. He has friends and playmates among my slaves who are allowed to spend time with him. But we have little in common any more. When I was setting up Keyholders, he helped me greatly -- and slavish as he is, was almost like one of your 'lifemates' in the process. But in the last resort, he wanted a goddess more than a wife -- preferred to be one of my slaves and worshippers more than a husband. You may think I put him away, but it was more his doing than mine. I became what he wanted, but it ruined our marriage in the process. I treat him well now, and he is content. You may visit him, if you wish. He will be glad to see you. I would advise you not to take Richard with you, if you go to see him. He would not understand that relationship at all. It would just confuse him.

At that point, Amanda's butler announce "Dinner is served!" He threw open the doors to the dining room, and bowed us in. Amanda took Myrna's arm and walked with her, leaving me to follow. "Fine for me," I thought, "but if she treated her husband that way, no wonder their marriage ended. She says it's what he wanted, and that may be true. I've met too many subs like that, who confuse loving obedience with blind worship. And this confuses their partners also, because there's no way to live up to blind worship in a real-life marriage. Maybe I did something like that to Sylvie. Maybe she was just trying to be what she thought I wanted."

It was a smallish dining room with a table that could accommodate 12 people, for just the four of us. There was probably a larger room, on the other side of the kitchen, that could seat 40. There were three servants -- two handsome young men, naked and caged, for Amanda and Myrna respectively, and one rather plain woman, fully dressed as a servant, for myself. "Well," I thought, "I won't be on the floor licking mush from a bowl, but she wants me to know my place!"

The room was luxurious; the table was lavishly set; the cuisine was excellent. As the meal started, everyone was silent for a while, taking the edge off their hunger. The servants laid the courses and refilled our glasses with professional smoothness and dexterity, while I concentrated on my table manners, as if this were Buckingham Palace. At last, halfway through the main course, Amanda broke the uncomfortable silence.

"Well, I read your last financial statement," she opened. "And I followed that affair with the MP. You were lucky that time. And you seem to be doing well. What happens next?"

"Next we'll have to expand," Myrna replied. "Up till now, we've been operating on a shoe string." Bernice de la Rocque (the pro Domme whom I'm sure you remember), Richard and I have been doing all the recruiting and training, as well as the admin work and marketing. Now, the clients are coming -- some with their own subs, and some without. And submissives are signing up, hoping for placement with desirable Alphas, (on much the same terms that Richard has with me). As they come in, we have to train them to our standards, match them with clients, then introduce them and give them a chance to accept or reject each other, before we collect the client's fee. We do make some money on the training itself, but that is time consuming and costly. As the business grows, the three of us are going to need help, and we will have to hire it (or else obtain it, when we can, from candidate subs, as part of their training). The trick will be to grow at the right pace -- not running up expenses before we must, but not lagging too far behind the demand either. I want to pay off our debt to you and Keyholders as soon as possible, and then start paying you dividends as our major shareholder."

"Yes, I want that too," Amanda said dryly. "What's involved for the marketing and training? Those will be the expensive parts."

Myrna answered: "The marketing will mostly take care of itself, if we handle things right. After that MP affair, we've been getting plenty of publicity. With a reputation for integrity and excellence, the clients will come and the subs will submit applications. It will need a few more good articles, that Richard will have to write and get published, and a minimum of tasteful advertising that we will have to pay for. The major expense will be in selection, matching and training. Those areas are mostly Richard's responsibility."

At that point, I started speaking, though Amanda scowled again when I did so. But I decided that this would be my best chance to show her the difference between a lifemate and a slave. I did not need special permission to speak. I could speak when it was appropriate. And Myrna gave me a nod of encouragement as I started in.

"Selection, matching and training will be expensive, one way or another," I pointed out, "because they require skilled labour. Applications from ambitious submissives must be screened to choose only those who are authentic, trainable and potentially matchable. This must be done by someone who understands the needs of our clients for intelligent, skilled assistance and companionship, but understands too the mentality, reservations and limitations of a sub. Young men and women will apply for that role, either because they are confirmed submissives (like myself) seeking full-time, real-life guidance and orientation, or because they are ambitious careerists who believe it will be in their long-term interests to attach themselves to the coat tails of persons already established in the careers they hope for. The second are the ones we really want, because they will be the most useful to potential clients; but they must be adequately submissive as well, to accept their subservient position and to behave as submissively as their Alpha desires from them -- as social and sexual companions, as well as working assistants. If they don't take pleasure and satisfaction from their service itself, there will be trouble in the long run no matter how we train them."

"This training presents its own problems. It will need to be organized like a school curriculum with a list of prepared courses, each a module unto itself. Some of these will be compulsory -- conveying knowledge and skills that we decide are necessary for every submissive that we qualify: proper grooming, courteous speech and deportment, intelligent (not robotic) obedience, and so forth. Most of all, to be acceptable proxies, they must show discretion and obedience without abject self-effacement. They must have knowledge, skills or points of view which they offer and render valuable to the Alphas they serve."

"Other modules will be elective -- to be chosen either by the applicant in preparing a resume for placement, or by the specific client for an otherwise qualified sub. Unfortunately, a number of these modules will be highly specialized, and will need to be designed on a custom basis. Some will be entirely beyond our scope. We have one client now, a gay neurosurgeon who wants a protege and lover. We've told him that he will probably need to dig up the candidate himself -- a young surgeon who wants what he can offer. We will only find a suitable match for him by a fluke. Once he has such an protege, we can provide all necessary training for a qualified submissive; but there is no way we can take a random submissive and give him a decade of medical training. We'll have to tell such clients that they must find their own candidate lifemates. And we'll have to tell some ambitious subs, that they lack necessary prerequisites -- that we cannot undertake to train and match them."

"The matching has its problems also. Given a number of clients who do not bring their own subs for training, we'll need to maintain a pool of subs hoping to be matched with clients. Those that we've accepted will need enough training to be presentable to a client, though they may require further training (now at the client's expense) before they are fully satisfactory. But we will have made some investment in them before they are presented to anyone, never mind accepted by a paying client. From the perspective of LifeMates Company, they will be inventory: goods-on-hand. So our matching staff will face a dilemma. On one hand, they will be judged by their ability to peddle our subs -- flog them to customers, if you'll forgive the pun. But they will also be judged negatively if the customers come back and complain afterwards that subs whom we presented and recommended were unsuitable. And our reputation, obviously, will suffer when this occurs."

"In sum, our bottom line, and the dividends we can pay to shareholders will depend on getting these three functions exactly right."

"Very good," Amanda said to Myrna. "This boy obviously knows his stuff. I can see why you are pleased with him."

And Myrna replied, speaking formally: "Mistress, I believe you will be pleased also, as you get to know him. We were lucky to find him. He has proved exactly what I need. Charles Thorncliffe, my contracting officer, was sharp in bringing his KI application to my attention. He deserves commendation for that."

"Very well," Amanda agreed. "I'll make a note to tell him so."

"Speaking of Keyholders," she went on, as we continued eating. "Where does chastity fit in to your operation? To what extent will your customers also be mine?"

"Truthfully, we can't know that yet," Myrna answered her. "I can and will recommend sexual control, and/or the sexual gift, as an option. I can and will explain its advantages, and the advantages of having it go both ways -- so that Alpha and proxy are each other's keepers. But that is the most I can do; and how many of my clients will choose that option depends more on your marketing than on mine."