Page 23 of Dozer

Asking questions could get me in trouble, but I was learning how to speak when I didn’t have permission so I didn’t piss him off. He’d still punish me for it on principle, but he’d also eventually give me an answer. Not right away, but within a few hours, usually.

“Master isn’t pleased, and his slave doesn’t understand what she’s doing wrong.”

“We’re going to have our talk, little bitch. Trying to act up so I’ll gag you isn’t going to get you out of it.”

I hadn’t been trying to get out of our talk! I was trying to figure out how to word a sentence to tell him that when he took a deep breath and gave me a surprised look.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I had that wrong, didn’t I? You’re really upset that I wasn’t pleased with your change in positions?”

I nodded, remembered he wanted a verbal answer after a direct question, and said, “Yes, Master.”

His face went soft, and he sat me up, leaned in, and kissed my nose.

“You aren’t moving between positions the way I expect you to, but it’s because I haven’t figured out how to train you to do it with grace, yet. My failing, not yours. You’ve learned the positions and never falter when I tell you how I want you, we just need to work on moving between them like a dancer. It isn’t about logistics, but about poise and grace. We’ll get there, little flower.”

It was the first time he’d called me that, and my insides went all gooey. You’d think someone would’ve called me that before, but no one ever had. Of course, I’d only ever had three boyfriends, and I’d only had sex with Dray.

And it turns out, he hadn’t been all that good in the sack.

It’s probably like driving a piece-of-shit car when you learn, and never knowing it drove terribly. I’d started out with a Porsche, and hadn’t known how much better it drives than normal cars.

And then I’d run away with my scam-artist boyfriend, who’d only known how to jack older cars, and I’d learned really fast how boring and difficult it can be to drive a shitty car.

I’d had no idea Dray was a nineteen-eighties, four-cylinder, two-wheel-drive compact truck while Master was…fuck, not a Porsche, because they’re sleek. Master was a BMW fucking X model — and not just any X. Oh no, Master was the X7. Big and powerful while also being…shit, I wanted to giggle when Ithought of him as the ultimate driving machine, though in his case, it was more like a piledriver, and I was pretty sure that hadn’t been what the Beamer people had meant. And to be clear, he doesn’t drive a BMW, he drives a Dodge Ramcharger, but my imagination has never cared much about reality.

“What’s going through your head, little Daisy May?”

The rule is, I have to be completely honest when he asks a question, and somehow, he knows when I’m not. I have no idea how he knows, but he does.

But no way was I telling him all of that, so I tried to just tell him the last part — and I took him at his word that he wanted me to talk about myself, so I didn’t fuck with figuring out how to word things without personal pronouns.

“I like cars, Master.” I’d learned to get the honorific out of the way at the start, so I didn’t forget. “My dad’s a car guy, and my first car was a brand-new Porsche. A year later, he got me a Jag for my birthday, but only after he made me test drive dozens of cars and make lists about what I liked and disliked about each. He made sure I could drive all of his cars, too. He said if the two of us were out and he decided to drink, he wanted to feel confident I could drive his vehicle. Also, he said if there was a medical emergency when I was out with anyone, friend or relative, it was important I be able to drive all kinds of cars, so I could safely get whoever it was to the hospital, should it be faster to do so than to wait for an ambulance.”

“I assume this is the set-up to telling me what you were thinking? Because if you don’t get to it soon, I’m thinking I’d like to see binder clips on your nipples this time, or maybe even the alligator clamps with the teeth.”

“You’re a BMW X7, Master. Big. Massive, and yet, still a performance vehicle.”

My face flamed red, and Master lifted me and carried me into the kitchen.

I’m four foot eleven, and I weigh around seventy-five pounds, most days. I try not to go below seventy or over eighty, and it bothered me that I couldn’t weigh myself.

“Since I think I’m supposed to use this time to tell you of things I’m bugged about, I’ll start by telling you it’s killing me not to be able to weigh myself every day.”

Chapter 19

Daisy

He sat me on the counter, released my wrist cuffs from my collar, and set the chain to the side. “Your identity is wrapped up in being tiny, isn’t it? You haven’t balked at any of the food I’ve given you, so I don’t think you do the low-carb thing, but you don’t eat much. I’ve let you determine how much you want to eat until I get a handle on it, though. You weigh, what, around seventy pounds? Toy poodles don’t eat as much as standard poodles, so it makes sense you don’t eat much — both because there can’t be much room in your stomach, and because your caloric needs aren’t as great.”

“My grandmother, my mother’s mom, is four-foot-six; but my grandfather played pro-football and has a couple of Superbowl rings. My mom is tall and majestic, but I guess my grandmother’s genes came through to me, so I’m short and skinny. Yet another reason not to be a lawyer or politician, right? Both of my parents work in a human lion’s den, where it’s eat or be eaten, and size matters when it’s survival of the fittest.”

“It does, and it doesn’t,” he told me. “Smarts are important, and sometimes the small people aren’t taken seriously when they should be. One of the worst beatings I ever took was from a scrawny little guy who couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and thirty pounds. The asshole barely came up to my nipples, and he beat the fuck out of me. He wouldn’t be able to now because I learned enough about…” He stopped abruptly, and I had the feeling he was about to overshare.

He was still keeping me out of his life enough, I wouldn’t be able to sound knowledgeable about him if I had to sit in court and testify about the man who’d kidnapped me and held me captive while he trained me to be his sex slave.

The thought sobered me a little, and neither of us spoke while he removed ingredients from the refrigerator and cabinets — eggs, onions, mushrooms, shredded cheese, several pounds of bacon, and frozen waffles.

“I don’t do so well with omelets,” he told me, “but I make a mean scrambled egg with all the shit most people put into their omelets.”

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