Chapter 13: Rules Refined

The barn was freezing.

I’d lost track of time hours ago. The open windows let in the night air, cold and sharp, smelling of hay and frost. Emily’s face was pressed against my cunt, her breath the only warmth. Mine was pressed against hers.

We hadn’t spoken in a long time. There was nothing to say. Just the cold, and the dark, and the slow rhythm of our tongues.

Internal: This is the third night in the kennel. The worst one yet. No blanket. No chain. Just the cage and the cold and each other. And you wouldn’t trade it for anything.

The barn door opened. Light spilled in gray and thin, the color of early morning. Aaron’s footsteps on the concrete.

He knelt beside the kennel and unlocked the two padlocks. The door swung open.

“Out,” he said. “Both of you.”

We crawled out, stiff and shivering. Our bodies were pressed together, and we’d stayed latched onto each other all night, unwilling to separate even in sleep.

“How do you feel?” Aaron asked.

“Cold,” Emily said.

“Hungry,” I said.

“Good. Inside. Coffee first, then breakfast.”

The kitchen was warm. Aaron had already started a fire in the wood stove, and the heat hit my frozen skin like a blessing. He handed us mugs of coffee, black and hot, and we drank them standing up, our hands wrapped around the ceramic.

“Sit,” he said. “We have work to do.”

We sat at the table. The chairs were hard, but after the kennel, they felt like thrones.

“Today,” Aaron said, “we go through the rules. All of them. We decide what stays, what goes, and what changes.”

“I thought we already did that,” Emily said.

“We did a preliminary review. Now we do a final one. Your mother wrote these rules based on her fantasies and her fears. But we’re living them now. Things have changed.”

Internal: He’s right. The rules I wrote in the shelter feel different now. Some of them are too easy. Some are impossible. Some are exactly right.

“Where do we start?” I asked.

“At the beginning.”

He pulled out the printed document of my rules, thirty-seven of them, typed and organized. He’d made notes in the margins, small scribbles in black ink.

“Rule one: naked at all times indoors. Stay.”

“Agreed,” I said.

“Emily?”

She shrugged. “I’m used to it now.”

“Rule two: kneel when not serving. Stay, but with an additional one hour of couch time in the evening.”

“That was my addition,” Emily said.

“Yes. And I’m keeping it.”

“Rule three: address the Master as ‘Sir’ or ‘Master.’ Stay.”

“Agreed,” I said.

“Rule four: no speaking without permission. Modified free speech during meals and designated free time.”

“That was my idea too,” Emily said.

“It was a good idea. Stay.”

Internal: She’s contributing. Not just fighting. She’s helping to build this.

We went through the rules one by one. Some were easy, such as nudity, kneeling, and addressing him properly. Others required negotiation.

Rule nine: Eat what you’re given, when you’re given it. Emily wanted the right to refuse food she hated. Aaron countered that she could request alternatives in advance. They settled on a compromise: she could make a list of foods she wouldn’t eat, and he’d avoid them.