Chapter 1

I remember the first time I saw her at work. I was walking through towards my department and saw her chatting with some of the younger girls in front about going out dancing. She was dressed in a western outfit, complete with straw hat, but her tight jeans made me take a second look. Yes, she was much younger than me, but I've always been entranced by shapely legs and butts on a pretty girl. Anna was simply gorgeous. I just shook my head at my lecherous thoughts and with a private smile went on about my day.

Over time, my opinion of her changed. It's true that my first impression of her was a semi-ditzy girl, charming and easy on the eyes but probably high maintenance. Oh, and definitely out of my league. After all, I don't see a particularly handsome man when I look in the mirror. I would say I'm average at best, with a bit of a gut. I get along well enough with most people, but I'm introverted and charismatic, two traits that don't exactly complement eachother. Plus, I tend to look down on people that can't keep up in conversations. Overall, I guess most people would consider me gruff and unapproachable.

Knowing that, you can imagine how surprised I was when she chose to work with me whenever she could, after transferring to my department. This must have been close to a year after that first time I saw her in that silly straw Stetson. Anna was still amazingly good looking, though the smocks we had to wear in my department tended to hide her curves. My particular job as cheese monger required a lot of work and there were never enough hours to accomplish everything that needed to be done. Any help was welcome, but I had to train any helpers I got; if something was wrong with any of the cheese it fell straight on me. We had the largest selection of cheese in the county at over three hundred varieties, and seemingly every one of them had to be treated differently or had some special detail that had to be attended to.

Anna soaked up every detail I gave her as I worked with her, showing me that she could be just as detail-oriented as I was. After a couple of months she knew enough about my job that we could just talk about life in general as we worked side by side. She was a devout Christian who had led a fairly sheltered life so far and still had a somewhat Pollyanna outlook. I was an atheist that was getting more world-weary and cynical each passing day. We'd have friendly debates about anything and everything.

I was more surprised than anyone when I realized one day that I considered her a friend. I had very few friends to speak of with my shy and introspective nature.

I also remember the day our relationship changed.

It was an spring afternoon, and a slow day in the store. One of the rare days when most of my work was caught up and I could concentrate on talking customers into buying cheeses they probably had never heard of. A cute girl was looking through my selection of brie, but the thing that caught my eye was the collar on her neck. It was made out of woven metal rings like chain mail, and had a cute little heart-shaped padlock holding it together.

"That's a nice collar, did someone give it to you?" I asked.

She smiled sweetly. "Yep, my husband gave it to me."

"Does it mean what I think it means?" I asked with a knowing smile.

This led to a fifteen minute conversation on BDSM including her love of bondage, which is my favorite aspect of the scene. She also mentioned that she was a member of a local scene group, of which I was also a member, even though I rarely made it to events or munches any more because of my lack of a willing partner. We talked about an upcoming demo on bondage techniques that I hadn't heard about and I ended up promising her I'd show up. It was still two weeks away, so I figured I'd have plenty of time to get that day off.

What I didn't realize was that Anna had overheard the entire conversation and was listening wide-eyed to every detail.