Prologue

It was a warm balmy Thursday evening in mid-May, almost time to go to work, and Felicia was getting ready.

She'd already showered, toweled off, dried her long, thick, dark brown hair, perfumed herself, and put on makeup. Now to complete the look. Since this was going to be an outcall, she couldn't very well wear her ornate black butterfly mask and she'd have to dress more conservatively than she would if her guest were coming to her apartment, but she was just as glad that he wasn't. She didn't like doing incalls with complete strangers, and a hotel room, such as the one she anticipated visiting tonight, was often the safest place for an initial meeting where she could get a vibe, more or less, of what her client wanted. So: black bra, thong, and fishnet hose held up by lacy garters; snug-fitting jeans this time, instead of her leather trousers or her tight leather skirt, in deference to the fact she'd need to walk through the lobby of the customer's hotel without attracting too much notice; a black bustier that showed off her pert breasts to the greatest advantage, cautiously covered by a sheer black silk blouse she could remove later when, or if, things got going and she felt the customer deserved it; and finally, black high-heeled knee boots, which went without saying for either incall or outcall. Once she was dressed, Felicia checked her look in the mirror again to make sure she'd not accidentally applied too much eye shadow. She smiled briefly. Just enough dark makeup to give her the imposing look she needed. Long, soft nearly-black hair, lightly tanned skin, deep piercing blue eyes, and a touch of complementary eyeliner; what submissive male could resist?

Felicia-or Lady Antonia, to her customers-was almost twenty-two years old and had just finished her junior year in college as a Psychology major. And she was also a Dominatrix, had been more or less ever since the beginning of her second semester in college when she was nineteen and couldn't yet even legally purchase a drink for herself. Oh, she'd tried waiting tables and clerking in the college book shop when she'd first moved to Memphis, but there was no way she could make the kind of money from tips that she could from the men and women, young and old, who paid her to tie them up, give them a feeling of subjection and make them break down and cry and beg her for mercy. In the more than two years she'd been active, first with the Lady Callipygia (Miss Callie for short), the older Domme who'd taken Felicia under her wing and shown her the ropes, and then later in her own right after Miss Callie had left the business and sold Felicia much of her equipment, the younger woman had gotten quite the underground reputation as a firm, strict disciplinarian. The only complaint any of her customers might have voiced was her insistence on keeping herself so aloof from them as people, much more so than Miss Callie ever did-but then again, mystery worked well as part of the Dominant persona, so her careful standoffishness had its own singular appeal. She knew that many people would probably classify her as a sex worker and in fact she always carried condoms in her supply kit, but she didn't consider herself a prostitute because she never consented to sex, either oral, anal, or traditional, with any client she entertained. She'd caught a great many customers, both male and female, discreetly pleasuring themselves during her attentions, though. If she observed a male client in such an act, or even in the beginnings of arousal, she'd haughtily toss the offender a condom and order him to suit up with it immediately, because she didn't want any of his disgusting jizz on her clothing, her person, or her rugs. Cleaning up his mess wasn't her responsibility. She was there for the client's discipline, not to be his sex toy. For females in the same predicament she brought along hand sanitizer and baby wipes if they could maneuver around within her skillfully woven Kinbaku-bi, or Shibari, knots enough to need them.

She had turned herself out entirely to her own satisfaction this evening, but suddenly she looked down at her boots with mild annoyance. She'd almost forgotten that this new customer had specified that he wanted her to give him an old-fashioned, Southern country punishment-to "take a switch to him," as he'd put it-and all the effort she'd made in polishing those elegant boots would be wasted if she had to traipse through grass and dirt and possibly lose a heel in a hole simply to find a switch to cut. And then, like as not, run afoul of the law for damaging public property and that's the one thing she didn't need. Felicia was a city girl, but she hadn't always been a city girl and she didn't think she'd ever understand the strictness of some municipal zoning regulations. She looked at her watch, her annoyance increasing, pulled her phone from the hip pocket of her jeans, and dialed her favorite BDSM shop near the Mississippi riverbank on the other side of town. A bored male voice answered immediately. "Lucky Stiff."

"That you, Ed? It's Toni. Got a specialty request."

The boredom left the voice on the other end of the line. "Lady Antonia! How's the sexiest, prettiest young Domme in Memphis?"

Felicia's usually severe facial expression relaxed into a soft grin. "Flatterer!" she retorted. "If I was first-rate I'd be making a lot more money than I am right now. But I take what I can get-well, within reason. Got a client who's asked specifically to be switched. You know, the old-fashioned way, like parents used to, I guess. Do you have any switches, or know any place convenient where I can cut a couple without running into trouble with City Zoning?"

"Hmm," Ed answered, a slight degree of additional interest in his voice. "A cane or a crop won't do? I've sold you both. Or a singletail or dragon tongue, maybe. Got some new ones of those."

"Guy specified a switch, so I guess I'll have to invoke the spirits of all my long gone back-country Arkansas ancestors, find a limb or two somewhere, and meet the task. Can you help me at all?"

"You learn all that flowery prose in college?" Ed chuckled. "You should be a poet, like my Ruthie! But yeah. Tell you what I'll do. Down on the riverbank behind here near the levee there's a few little willow saplings that ought to have branches that are just what you're looking for. I'll get my nephew that's clerking for me to slide down there and cut you two or three. Give any of 'em to you at a steal, for thirty dollars."

Felicia's frown returned. "Thirty?" she huffed. "You trying to bankrupt me, you old skinflint? I'll give you ten for the trouble!"

Ed laughed heartily now. "Same Lady Antonia I know and adore!" he chortled. "Awright, then, twenty-five."

"Fifteen!"

Ed sighed. Dominatrices were among his most stubborn customers, but one supposed that such was to be expected from them. "Twenty-two and a half," he countered.

Finally they settled on twenty dollars for two to three fresh, thoroughly peeled, limber switches full of sap, from which Felicia would pick the best-looking to use on her new client. She told him to have them ready soon, because she'd be on the road in only a few moments. She hung up, stuffed her phone into her purse, and looked again at her watch. In spite of all the times she'd met new clients, a first encounter still made her a lot more tense and apprehensive than she liked to admit, even to herself, and this evening she needed something to ease the nerves that were already starting to make her guts flutter. She'd left a small roach in the bathroom ashtray, the last of her current supply of marijuana, so now she fished an alligator clip out of a pocket, clamped it to the end of the thin half-smoked joint, re-lit it with the flip of a lighter, and drew deeply, holding in the smoke till it caught in her lungs. She coughed as she finally exhaled. It was good weed, and she'd likely need only one more deep toke to reach the level of calmness and mellowness she sought. And the roach looked like it had just enough bud in it for her purposes.

After her second toke Felicia coughed again and flipped the near-microscopic remaining stub of the joint into the toilet, almost simultaneously reaching for her eye drops and then, her bottle of mouthwash. The stuff never gave her the giggles, but if she smoked too much she occasionally became a trifle paranoid. No worry of overdoing weed right now, though. After rinsing away the taste of singed hemp-she always thought of burnt rope when she smelled or tasted marijuana smoke, regardless of how high-quality the product was claimed to be-she picked up a bottle of cologne and sprayed it lightly over her hair and upper body. She didn't want the client to smell pot on her breath, her hair, or her clothing, and the slight, diluted patchouli fragrance of the cologne was a heady complement to the perfume she had already applied. She sighed. I wonder how my faculty advisor would feel if she knew about my weed habit, she reflected sardonically. Oh, well. It's my only vice so far, hopefully things will stay that way, and I won't need it any more when I get out of this line of work. After all, even Freud used cocaine. At least I've not yet been suckered either into that, or the cheap heroin that's taken so many girls down.

Thinking ahead further, she left the bathroom with the cologne, zipped open the top of her suitcase, a medium-sized conservative-looking four-wheeled American Tourister, and squirted a few spritzes of the scent inside. Besides the short-shorts, fresh underwear, thin knit top, narrow belt, and sandals that Felicia always brought along just in case she needed to change but so far had never had reason to use, and her sanitary equipment, it contained a pair of leather gloves and half a box of latex ones-all black, of course-and was full of hand and ankle cuffs with shiny chains, candles and candle holders, soft ropes, cords, spreader bars, a riding crop, a few ball gags, single-tail and cat whips, wooden and leather paddles, one cane of rattan and another of bamboo, a couple of martinets and a brand-new doeskin flogger, a roll of cloth tape, one leather hood with eye and mouth zippers, and a few other incidentals. She absolutely refused to mess with the more extreme stuff, the sort of tools and practices that drew blood, cut off circulation, stretched and tore orifices that were never meant to be stretched and torn, or blocked airways, though not a few of Miss Callie's former clients had been bitterly disappointed in her refusal to continue the older Domme's riskier practices and had stopped seeing her for that reason. Better to be safe than sorry, she figured, and she'd seen enough "sorry" out of her old partner. Felicia always gave her implements a thorough cleansing with Clorox wipes, especially the ball gags and the hood, after she'd used them on a client, and the cologne would ease the sharp residual smell of the bleach. Time was running short, especially since she'd need to pick up her switch, or switches, at Ed's Lucky Stiff Souvenir and Hobby Shop, and she still had to lug her supplies down the three flights of stairs from her apartment to the parking lot.

The phone rang again. Felicia's brow wrinkled. It was the new client, calling back. "What is it?" she demanded abruptly by way of greeting. Guys often liked her to be in character from the very first.

"L-L-Lady Antonia? You still coming? Ma'am?" asked an uneasy male voice with just the hint of a quaver.

"Of course I'm still coming! Place is only a hop, skip, and a jump from here over in the Medical District, isn't it? Do you think I make my money being a liar? I'll be there exactly at the time you specified! Now are you gonna be there, or wuss out? You did give me the right room number, didn't you?" growled the young Dominatrix.

"Okay, okay, I believe you, Ma'am, but I just wanted to request a couple things more. I-is that okay? And about the room, please-don't call me through the hotel operator, okay? I've gotta have some... discretion about certain things."

"Gotta turn in your papers for the ol' expense account at work, huh? I really doubt they'll monitor calls you get, only the ones you make. But okay, I'll go along with it. Sounds like you already get whipped regularly," opined Felicia with a chuckle, rolling her eyes. "All right, you're paying for this, so let's hear what you want. Now's the time to negotiate, not later. Just remember: no sex. You get horny, deal with it afterwards on your own time. That said, go ahead and shoot, boy."

"Oh... okay, then. Well, since I gave you my room number already-when I meet you at the door the first thing I want you to say to me is 'On your knees, Worm!' Can you do that?"

"Sure, sure, whatever you wanna be called," replied Felicia with another sardonic grin on her lips. She was glad she'd availed herself of that joint now. It had definitely improved her humor. "Just so long as I don't have to scream it. No extra donation so far, Ducks. Or Wormy, I guess I should call you now. So, what else you got on your mind?"

"Uh-uh-well-"

"Spit it out, now, Wormy! You're taking up the Lady's time!" Sharp and good-natured simultaneously. Perfect technique. Callie would be so proud.

"I-err-if-if I were to appear to be resistant at first-like maybe I was pretending I didn't even know who you were or why you were here-I want you to have the switch ready to put me into submission. Just-just start on my shoulders and work down and-I'll kneel and submit and let you in. Can-can you do that for me? Please? It'd be really important to me."

"Gonna play that one by ear, little darlin'," answered Felicia more thoughtfully. "I don't want to draw any attention to you or me, either one, from the hotel staff or anybody in the other rooms near you, especially considering the extra effort Lady Antonia's making for you. We'll have to see. The more crowd there is, the more risk we run, and so the more it might cost you. Or I might not be able to do it at all."

"Well, that's-that's-good enough, Lady Antonia, Ma'am. Thank you. I'll expect you at-eight, then? Goodbye?"

Felicia grinned again. Time for the big tease now, just like Callie had taught her. One had to keep one's submissives, both regular and prospective, on their toes-sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally, sometimes both. So she answered, "Now, honey, don't you worry for a minute. Mama's gonna make a really good boy out of you tonight," and with a soft, sexy, only slightly-forced giggle she clicked the icon ending the call. She so hoped that nothing more extreme was on this guy's menu, something he hadn't worked up the courage to tell her yet. She simply didn't feel up to a bargaining session with a horny submissive man right now. Felicia would argue the point with the customer as long as she could, but if he insisted on something beyond her strict self-imposed limits, she'd simply have to leave and take the monetary loss in stride, maybe keeping a few dollars for "her trouble." CBT-cock-and-ball torture, one of the extremities that Felicia avoided like the plague-had been the end of her friend Lady Callipygia's career in BDSM. About eight months beforehand, the older Domme had accepted a fabulously well-paid outcall from a rich horse farmer on the other side of the Mississippi who, for reasons known best, and probably only, to himself, had long entertained the fantasy of being gelded just like one of his prize Thoroughbred yearlings. No doctor nor even veterinarian or farrier for him, though; only a good, strict Mistress with a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a boxcutter knife or straight razor was capable of performing the procedure to the turfman's own satisfaction. Callie had asked, even begged, Felicia to accompany her that night, offering her a sizable cut of the extraordinarily large fee, but Felicia had balked, using the college term paper she'd been working on as one excuse to dog off. Term paper or no, though, the whole idea was both so nauseating and horrifying to her she didn't think she'd be able to hold down her cookies even simply guarding the door for her friend, and besides that, the horse breeder lived in Felicia's home state and she had no desire whatsoever to return to it even for one night. So Callie had gone on her own, but about one o'clock the next morning had returned in a panic, pounding on Felicia's apartment door begging her to split just one joint with her, please, and offering to sell Felicia nearly her entire stock of BDSM gear for a bargain-between bouts of throwing up in the younger woman's bathroom. She wouldn't tell Felicia, or for that matter anyone else, the entire story of her venture, but she was convinced she'd made it back across the de Soto Bridge just one step ahead of the law. Ultimately she might as well not have panicked. She'd been gloved the entire time she was at the turfman's and thus hadn't left any fingerprints, and the horse breeder, nearly bled dry but still alive, absolutely refused to press charges or give any evidence whatsoever against the "unknown female" who'd dialed 911 from his home. The newspapers had had a field day with the "mystery woman" aspect of the mutilation case, especially once the Associated Press got hold of the story, but in spite of Callie's colossal blunder Felicia still refused to believe most of what the papers speculated and never asked her friend for further details. She had her own reasons for despising the Associated Press. And so Callie was now in a more conventional lifestyle-holy matrimony and a job as a makeup saleslady, that is-and Felicia was the heir to her BDSM practice. The less extreme portion of it, anyway.

Felicia looked at her watch again and with her right hand lifted the handle on her suitcase as she shrugged her purse over her left shoulder. The wheels of the suitcase were never any help on stairs, but she was a well-muscled, wiry girl and in spite of her less-than-imposing height, only five-five in her high heels, she never had any trouble with the weight of all the hardware she had to tote to an outcall. The bigger and taller the customer, the smaller and shorter he wanted his Dominatrix to be, it seemed. That's what Callie, who was a tall, buxom five-ten in flats and whose male customers, with one notable exception, were short, small men, had always said, and it was one of several reasons she'd asked Felicia to work with her and to cultivate her abilities. But the few men who had made the mistake of trying to take advantage of Felicia's diminutive size to collect unsolicited favors had almost all experienced ball torture, if not cock torture, of a type they'd never ever wanted, as well as metatarsal fractures, eye, face and neck scratching and as much other damage as she could inflict in the minimum time. Though Lady Callipygia and others had taught her a lot of effective defensive moves, Felicia had been no weakling to start with and her usually on-edge nerves gave her just enough of an extra dose of adrenaline to make her a physical opponent to be feared. All the cheerleading acrobatics, she reflected for a half second-but oh, crap, that was everything it took for the topsy-turvy past that she'd tried so hard for three years now to drive completely out of her mind, to come back full-force in a fleeting moment and as unwelcome as ever. The cheerleading had led to the kiss, and in turn the kiss had led to the rejection, which had led to... Felicia just hoped she could at least bundle the memories back into their own dark corner once more before they ruined another entire evening for her, as they so often did. Dammit to hell.

When all's said and done, I'm a professional Dominatrix, she brooded as she locked her apartment door, because of the kiss. One stupid kiss between one stupid, prima-donna quarterback from a stupid excuse for a high school in a stupid little backwater town in the Ozarks-and one stupid, spoiled-rotten little prima-donna cheerleader who'd never yet known a hard time in her life. Everything followed from that. Oh, what the hell. Time for some more exposure therapy. Maybe one of these days I'll get enough of it under my belt for it to work permanently.

Hefting her suitcase and purse, Felicia stepped out and down the stairs into the fading sunset and to her work.

PART ONE: HIGH LONESOME

Chapter One

At a few months before her twenty-second birthday the professional Dominatrix Lady Antonia-known by her real name, Felicia Rose Culbertson, to only an extreme few, and those extreme few weren't talking-had actually experienced real sex a grand total of one time in her young life, and the one thing that could send her into a cold fury in an instant was to have someone refer to her as The Homecoming Queen. She'd suffered worse nicknames a few years before, but most of them had held sway only for a brief time and then been forgotten. The royal title, though, was the one that had stuck, and it housed a host of evil memories all its own. Her nickname and sexual history and practices were inextricably connected, and the combination was why she was holding out for the one, remaining aloof and trying to act regal just like she imagined Queen Elizabeth I might have done, and doing her best to forget the other.

She was the youngest daughter of the owner of the single filling station and convenience store in Hannahsburg, Arkansas, a little town in a tiny farm county nestled snugly in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains ("WELCOME TO OLD-FASHIONED SMALL-TOWN AMERICA!" the sign at the city limits proclaimed), and she'd grown up in comfort as the pet of her parents, her big brother, and her three older sisters. From her time in kindergarten-her folks had actually held her back at home a year extra-through eleventh grade, all that time spent safe and secure within the womb-like halls of a small consolidated elementary, middle, junior high, and senior high school that served the entire population of Hannah County, she'd both studied and played with the same kids year after year, and they all knew each other virtually inside and out. Newcomers to the school, at least those who couldn't claim relatives as classmates but sometimes even those who did, were generally treated to a short period of hauteur, pranks, and hazing but then accepted as one of the gang, taking their own places in the student pecking order. Felicia herself had always managed to stay in the highest tier of this universal school pecking order, a big fish in an extremely small pond. As she grew to maturity her thick dark hair became ever more lustrous, offset by fair but easily-tanned skin and a pair of eyes so deeply azure they made one take a double- and even a triple-take before accepting that they could be real. The cheerleading squad, of which she had been a member ever since fifth grade for the elementary and middle school teams and later for junior and senior high, was active all through both football and basketball seasons, and when she reached her full growth, the vigorous exercise had kept her figure supple and light but well muscled: perky apple-sized breasts, swimmer's shoulders, well-shaped legs, and a bouncy little firm heart-shaped behind to complement the classic beauty of her face and hair. The only thing about her appearance she might consider worthy of change was her ears: they were just a bit too prominent for her liking, "jug" ears in her own discriminating estimation, and so she was at some pains to keep them covered as much as possible by her thick, luxurious brunette mane. She'd never been shy, simply because she'd never had to be. In short, she was the archetypal Good Girl character-or perhaps caricature-so favored in young-adult books and teen movies, and yet she really did exist. For the time being.

Students were one thing, teachers another. Sometimes, anyway. Understandably there was resentment within the lower ranks of the class pecking order towards the higher-ups, and although such ill feelings could be strong at times and even flare up occasionally, they were mostly latent. Surprisingly, almost none of the few flare-ups were related in any way to racial issues. But some of the less-intelligent and less-capable teachers (and yes, surprise, surprise, there are such teachers) not only recognized the school pecking order but even encouraged it. They themselves too frequently made fun of one or more of the clumsier or less attractive students for the laughs they garnered from the rest of their pupils, especially those of Felicia's higher caste. Felicia never realized the wrongs in this system because no one had ever pointed them out to her and even if someone had tried, she'd never been on the receiving end of this kind of mistreatment. In the wake of the numerous school shootings that rocked the United States in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, her Junior English teacher had had her class read and talk about the Flannery O'Connor short story "The Partridge Festival" as a possible means to understand the violence that was becoming increasingly common in American school settings. The whole discussion had gone completely over Felicia's head. She simply couldn't conceive of an individual's harboring that much resentment over a little rowdy horseplay from his neighbors. One should simply try harder to fit in. It was easy, after all, and then one could join right along in the good clean fun.