The Collaring of Chloe Ch. 34

The Collaring of Chloe

Chapter 34 -- Past Meets Present

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As they were disembarking, Chloe couldn't help but notice the sour look she got from the flight attendant who'd 'caught' them in the bathroom. Apparently, her sense of humor wasn't quite as good as that of the attendant who'd caught Master and Mittens on their Montreal flight. Luckily, she only had suspicions of what they'd been doing, no real proof. Regardless, Chloe was still far too floaty from the experience to really care. She noticed Master catch the look too, but he also otherwise ignored it.

On the way to baggage claim, he took a moment to remove a pair of leashes from his carry-on and connect one to each of his girls' collars, afterwards leading them both merrily along through the airport. Chloe felt energized by it, returning back here properly collared and tethered to her Master, felt like some great victory on her part.

Mittens bounced along, jubilantly taking in every possible sight and sound she could, seeming thrilled to be somewhere new. Between her cat-attire and both of their leashes and collars, the three of them were getting plenty of looks. Most people just did double-takes, others took covert pictures with their phones. A few gave rather disapproving expressions, but no one seemed willing to voice their grievances with the tableau.

When they got to the baggage carriage, Chloe dutifully had Master transfer most of their luggage for her to carry, as his slave, though Mittens took up one her own bags and Master took the heaviest one himself. As they exited out of the terminal, Chloe spotted Master Heron and Ellie waiting for them in the outer concourse. A surge of affectionate emotion washed through her at the sight of them and she had to fight to stay at pace with Master.

Leaning his heavy-set frame on his walking cane, Master Heron was well-dressed as usual, sporting navy pin-stripe slacks and vest over a white silk shirt and leather tie, a matching fedora perched jauntily on his cleanly shaven head. Though it was obvious he was a man of very mature age, his well-groomed full beard almost all grey and his face deeply etched with laugh-lines, he always exuded a kind of vital aura that made him seem somehow not 'old'. While his typical sense of style wasn't especially outlandish, it usually managed to stand out in a crowd.

Ellie was dressed in a more understated fashion, a medium length yellow sun dress and denim capris, but she stood out in any crowd regardless of what she wore. Her hair was naturally stark white and beautiful, styled into old-fashioned shoulder-length tresses that framed a face so classic in appearance that she looked as though she'd stepped out of a film from the forties. Chloe knew that Ellie was significantly younger than Master Heron, but definitely much older than herself. However, it was nearly impossible to guess what her actual age was. She was like some immortal, monochrome siren of the silver screen, with a curvaceous body that would have made Marilyn Monroe green with envy.

It was obvious that Mittens was just as struck by the amazing presence of them as Chloe had been her first time meeting them. And, if she was honest, nearly every time she saw them. The expression on Mittens' face was almost comical in its look of complete fascination.

"Oh my God, let me help you with those." Ellie said at the sight of Chloe carrying all but two of the group's luggage.

Chloe laughed and shook her head. "It is this one's duty to carry her Master's bags." She said proudly.

Master Heron put a hand on his submissive's arm to convey that it was okay. Part of Ellie's protocol was to always be helpful to those around her. The conflict in her at not fulfilling her directives was evident, but she obeyed her own Master as faithfully as Chloe was dedicated to serving hers. Something tickled inside her at the recognition of that, as though she'd maybe made a connection she'd not considered before, but tucked it away to be pondered later.

"Welcome, Master Brooksend." Master Heron intoned formally. "This is my submissive, 'Ellie'." He gave a tilt of his head to indicate her, Ellie silently raising a hand in greeting.

"A pleasure to finally meet you both, Master Heron." Master said, extending a hand to shake. "My slave has told me a lot about you."

"I hope I live up to the marketing." Heron replied glibly, taking the hand graciously. "She has certainly been missed around here. And, please, call me Ford."

"And she's obviously missed the both of you." Master replied. "James." He added with a nod of his head. "I hope the suddenness of this trip didn't cause any issues for you."

Heron gave a chuckle and shook his head. "No, no. Not at all. We're actually happy to have something to do."

"Allow me to introduce my pet cat, Mittens." Master said, indicating the other girl he had leashed.

Mittens bounded forward, twitching her rear to make her tail swish. "Meow!"

Ellie giggled at the initial behavior, but goggled suddenly as she realized that Mittens had pronounced fangs. "Oh my, are your canines extended?" She asked, despite the obvious evidence.

"Nope!" Mittens responded bouncily. "These isn't canineses, they's felineses!" She opened her mouth wide and pointed at them with her big fuzzy 'dew-claw'.

Even Master Heron chuckled in spite of himself. "Well, you are certainly a very cute kitty, Mittens." He looked back to Master with an amused expression. "Well, it would seem you were not joking about being completely public with the lifestyle."

"Why I made sure to check with you beforehand." Master replied. "Still, if you need us to rein it in at all, just ask. I understand that not everyone wants to invite spectacle or scrutiny to their lives."

Heron waved a hand dismissively before gesturing to an ornamental collar that Ellie was wearing. "While we're not as...obvious, I'm in a position where I don't need to hide it and Ellie actually works as a fetish model, so there's no point in hiding it with her."

"Reeeeaaaally...?" Mittens drawled, her face filling with mischievous interest.

Ellie smiled demurely and gave an elegant curtsey. "I specialize in 'retro-vintage' photography."

Mittens' interest deepened immediately. "Like recreations of old turn-of-the-century shots? I wanna see! I wanna see!" She bobbed up and down excitedly.

Ellie giggled at the cat-girl's energy. "I'm going to like you, I can tell."

"I've not met many people who don't." Master said with a smile.

Straightening up a little, Master Heron gave a formal nod. "Well, now that we've all been introduced, you will allow me to treat everyone to an early dinner." Without waiting for any sort of response or possible refusal, he turned and began leading them away towards the exit of the airport, Ellie falling in a step behind him immediately.

Sparing a brief grin towards Chloe, Master followed along, leading his two girls in tow. Despite the need of a cane, Heron's pace was generally brisk as he led them out of the concourse, across the passenger unloading area, and into the short-term parking lot. Chloe had to smile as the familiar Lincoln Sedan came into view. Well maintained and sharply detailed, it could be taken for almost brand new. It was almost as old as Chloe was, but Heron had it continually serviced and attended to.

What made the car even more remarkable was the rather distinct color of it. As part of his upkeep on the vehicle, Heron would have it repainted every seven years. Each time, he'd chosen a new color, with each iteration growing more and more bold in choice. His last selection had been 'neon aqua', a shade of blue so vivid that it seemed radioactive. Certainly not a shade one normally saw on a 1998 Lincoln Navigator.

Chloe considered Mittens' own brightly painted car, complete with anime cat-girl silk screened across the hood, and smiled. It was kind of funny how many corollaries she kept making between her time with her old mentor and her life with her new Master. Already, she was finding herself more and more glad she'd made this trip, sensing that it would indeed be very helpful for her.

Loading all the luggage into the spacious trunk, Heron and Master took the front seats, their submissives piling into the back seat together. Chloe found herself sandwiched between Mittens and Ellie, who were already getting along fabulously. Heron and Master chatted amicably up front together, discussing real estate rates and local statistics that held little interest for Chloe. So, her focus was on Ellie and Mittens.

They were both utterly fascinated by the other, volleying questions back and forth so much that Chloe felt like she was in a tennis match, her head constantly switching back and forth. Though no one was talking directly to her, she felt a massive swell of jubilation to see her past and her present so immediately connecting well together. She hadn't even realized how much she'd been hoping that the four would get along together. As she sat there, grinning almost foolishly at them all, she wondered if this was what it would have felt like to bring a romantic interest home to meet your parents.

Outside the car windows, she kept seeing old landmarks and sights she'd grown up with, feeling a strange sense of nostalgia for them, despite it having only been a few months since she'd last been here. It felt, to her, more like she'd been away a whole lifetime, as though she were returning to somewhere she'd known only as a child.

There was the large Cineplex theater where she and friends would go on the weekends when she was a teenager. The coffee shop where she always grabbed a latte on her way into work each morning. A mini golf where she had her first date and first kiss, both of which had been laughably terrible. The strip mall parking lot where, at 2:30 in the morning and while slightly inebriated, she was dared to streak the full length of the complex, but chickened out.

So many memories, though none compared to the ones she'd accumulated in just the last few months. Even back then, she'd always felt disconnected from herself and everyone around her. She'd felt like she was wearing some kind of mask. Only when she'd gotten into the BDSM lifestyle had she begun to feel like she was shedding that mask, becoming the real person beneath it. Becoming Master's property had been when she'd first felt like she'd finally become free of that false self to begin growing into her true form.

Settling more into the soft upholstery, she folded her hands into her lap and let herself sink into a half-meditative state, allowing the ambient sounds of her mentors, Master, and sister submissive wash around her like a warm bath. Inside, the swirl of emotions she was feeling slowly evolved into a singular sense of blissful submission. A wonderful feeling of simply being patiently at hand to be used however anyone around her might like. As if having given off some sort of silent signal, both Mittens and Ellie subtly seemed to react to this aura.

Without ever pausing their mutual interrogation, both of the women to either side of her nuzzled a little closer to her, Ellie absently alighting a hand upon Chloe's forearm and Mittens taking her other hand into her big fuzzy paw. The small notes of attention, obviously meant to let her know that she'd not been forgotten, made her smile.

"You look really pleased back there, Chlover." Master Heron said, looking back at them in the rearview mirror. "You're almost glowing."

Mittens peered first at Heron, then to Chloe, looking curious. "Did he just call you 'Clover'?"

"It's her scene name. Which an 'H', like her real name." Ellie supplied to her. "Or it was, at least." She fixed her own curious look on Chloe.

A little pink came into Chloe's cheeks, having completely forgotten about this little detail. She'd never discussed her old identity in the scene with Master or Mittens, mostly because she'd wanted Master to feel free to rebuild her however, or into whomever, he'd wanted. It wasn't anything she'd meant to stay hidden, it had just never come up before.

"That's so adorable!" Mittens gushed. "Master, can we start calling her 'Chlover'?"

Master chuckled. "Sadly, I think I've just gotten too used to her name being 'Chloe'. I do agree that it's pretty clever."

Chloe turned a little pinker, grinning broadly. "Thank you, Master. I was pretty proud of myself for it, at the time." Truth was, while she had liked her scene name, it felt so good to actually be known by her real name and openly identified as a slave. Had she been 'Chlover the slave', it might have felt more like just a character she played. The way she had been 'Golden Bombshell' in the game at the comics store.

And she had a sudden certainty that Master understood that.

"Master, may we take a walk together somewhere, while we are here?" Chloe asked off-handedly, a sudden desire to be seen as his, here in the town where she grew up. The thought made her heart speed up a little, both from the excitement of the general idea and the sweet anxiety of them seeing someone she once knew in her vanilla life. "In my posture collar, if that pleases him." She added demurely.

"I think that would please me." Master said with a small nod, but looked to Heron. "So long as that is okay with you, Ford. Like I said, I know that most people are not as forward with this lifestyle as I am."

Master Heron grinned. "I think we should make a full afternoon of it. We can dress the girls up and I can give you a proper tour of the city."

Even Ellie brightened significantly at this idea, despite that Chloe knew such displays weren't something she and Heron did. While it was true that neither of them had any sort of mundane face that needed to be protected, they, like most people in the BDSM community, preferred to keep their lifestyle much less public. While Ellie did wear a collar in public, it appeared more like a subversive choker than a real collar; present, but subtle.

"That sounds like a great plan." Master agreed. "I'm actually very interested to see more of where my slave grew up."

"I fear that there isn't much here that's very interesting." Heron chuckled. "The park is nice and there are a few unique eateries, but nothing especially tourist-worthy."

"The city itself is interesting to me, actually." Master said vaguely, turning his gaze out the windows to take in the general landscape. "There's actually a couple places I wanted to look at while I'm here, professionally."

His comment garnered curious looks from everyone else in the car. "Are you planning to buy some property here, Sir?" Ellie asked him.

For a long moment, Master didn't answer and Chloe couldn't see his face from the back seat to get an idea of what he might be thinking. Finally, he replied. "I try to expand my interests whenever I see a good opportunity." He said cryptically.

Chloe knew better than to press her wily Master further, so she decided to change the subject for him. "Master, would you like to see where I used to work? It's just up ahead, actually."

"If Ford doesn't mind the quick detour." He replied, looking to Master Heron. Heron's response was simply to jovially change lanes in preparation for the turn he'd need to take to get there.

"I don't think I've ever asked you what you used to do." Mittens said, straining to look out the windshield as though looking for a building with a sign out front that read 'Chloe worked here'.

"Data processing and analysis, more or less." Chloe said with a chuckle. "I composed daily reports on financial trends, blah, blah, blah. It was actually pretty boring."

Mittens peered at her incredulously. "Ewwww..."

Ellie laughed. "She really looked the part when we first met her too."

"My first munch." Chloe chuckled along with her.

"She was dressed like a church-lady." Ellie said. "If she hadn't been with ThornMe--"

"That was the woman who introduced me to the lifestyle." Chloe interjected for Mittens' benefit.

"If she hadn't been with her, I would have assumed she'd wondered into the wrong private room at Han Palace." Ellie continued. "She even had her hair all pinned up in a bun."

"Sure didn't stay that way long though." Chloe giggled. "I think it surprised everyone how quickly I came out of my shell."

"Especially when NoGnome made the joke of you probably wearing granny-panties." Ellie said, breaking into a fit of laughter, Chloe instantly joining her, leaving a deeply interested Mittens goggling at them in curiosity.

"She just stood right up, reached under her skirt, pulled off the panties she was wearing, which was a lace thong, and handed them to him." Heron explained for Master and Mittens, sparing a highly amused look at Chloe in the rearview, who was now clutching Ellie and giggling hysterically.

"That sounds like Chloe, alright." Master sighed bemusedly. "She's not one to back down from a challenge." Mittens, now giggling right along with Chloe and Ellie, nodded enthusiastically in agreement.

Master Heron pulled into the parking lot of the building where Chloe used to work, Warston-Clark's administrative offices. It felt strange to see it now, as if arriving at a place she'd only known in a dream. However, the nearly four years she'd spent there had been more like a nightmare of monotony and boredom. While it had paid well, with very good benefits, she'd spent her days stuffed into a small, box-like cubicle, shuffling papers and endlessly typing on a computer.

"I used to work on the third floor." Chloe said, crawling forward to poke her head between Master and Master Heron, pointing upwards at the building. "Seems like another life now."

"Can we go in?" Master asked.

Chloe smiled. "We probably can't go into the actual area I worked in, but we can definitely go in and say hello to some people."

Master looked to Heron. "Do you mind if we go in?"

Heron didn't immediately answer, just looked for a moment at Chloe's expression of eager anticipation. Leaning over, he planted a soft kiss on the top of her head, a paternal look on his face. "As long as you don't mind Ellie and I staying here."

"May I stay with them, Master?" Mittens quickly asked. "I has more questions abouts pictures!" She gave a toothy grin.

Master looked to Heron, getting his approval. The elder Dominant's brittle smile turned a little mischievous. "I would be glad to babysit your kitty for a few minutes."

Chloe, however, looked back at her sister submissive. "You don't want to see the inside with us?"

Mittens gave her a deeply affectionate look to her, leaning in close to speak softly. "I think this is something that should be just you and Master. I don't need to know wheres ya been, I has ya now." She caressed a paw down Chloe's face and neck, a show of tender love that made Chloe's heart melt a little.

Getting out of the car, Master opened the rear door, Mittens jumping out long enough for Chloe to exit before diving back in and into Ellie's lap, which made the older submissive giggle with glee. Chloe was already standing in official posture, legs spread, arms behind her back, and chin upwards to give full access to the O-ring on her collar, before Master even had a hand in his pocket to fish out the leash.

As he attached it, he took a moment to study Chloe's face, considering. She tried to make her face as submissive as she could and communicate that she would always do anything he wanted her to. He stuck his head into the car a moment to ask Heron to pop the trunk and went around back to retrieve something from their luggage. When he returned, he put leather restraint cuffs on Chloe's wrists and ankles, locking them onto her. He then ran a length of chain through the rings of her wrist cuffs, attaching one end to each ankle cuff with fasteners.