A few minutes later, Eliana and Brenda were outside with groceries in hand.

“I’m so sorry about that, ma’am,” said Brenda.

“My name is Eliana.”

“Yes, ma’am. Of course it is. I’m so sorry.”

Down the street, on their way back home, was a gym. Eliana stopped in front of the window. The groceries she had in one hand were quite heavy, but she felt no strain or ache. Her back muscles were strong, her posture perfect, and her arms taut like coils. She felt like she had energy for days.

Inside the gym, she saw women in nearly as good a shape as her. They needed visits to the gym like Eliana needed a makeover. All the same, there they were—running on treadmills, lifting weights, performing high-intensity calisthenics on exercise mats.

And all of them, of course, looking gorgeous.

They wore lingerie and high heels to a woman. The lingerie tight, bright, sheer. Heavy tits—several of which obviously lactated to add to the sheen on their ultra-fit bodies—bounced happily in their nominal restraints. The treadmills must have been reinforced somehow, or maintained with superb regularity, to stand-up to the spikes of the heels of all those girls. Of course, they weren’t hitting the tread with a lot of weight, either.

Their hair was done-up in sexy, long ponytails or pigtails. Some of them with big sweeping waves of it, dripping with sweat like they had been bathing in saltwater at a beach. They stared endlessly at the mirrors, blowing themselves kisses, attending to their appearance totally.

One woman in particular caught Eliana's attention—a redhead with porcelain skin and emerald eyes, positioned at a leg press machine. Her movements were deliberate, controlled, each extension of her legs performed with balletic precision. She wore a powder-blue teddy, the delicate lace doing absolutely no work to contain breasts that had to be at least double-D cups. Her five-inch stilettos remained strapped to her feet throughout the exercise, adding an element of difficulty that she navigated with practiced ease. Between each rep, she paused to admire her reflection in the mirror positioned directly in front of her, running manicured fingers along her inner thigh as if checking for imperfections that simply did not exist.

The redhead's lips moved—probably counting reps, or perhaps reciting affirmations about her own beauty and her husband's pleasure. Her expression remained serene, almost meditative, even as sweat beaded on her collarbone and ran in rivulets down into her cleavage. She looked like she was preparing for something important. A dinner party, perhaps. Or simply her husband's return home. The distinction seemed irrelevant. Eliana’s pussy pulsed with sympathetic need, imagining her own darling Husband’s return or arrival or simply his presence at all.

Nearby, a pair of brunettes worked in tandem on adjacent elliptical machines, their movements synchronized as though choreographed. Both wore matching coral-pink corsets with garter belts attached to sheer stockings, their heels—easily six inches with platform soles—never once slipping from the pedals. Their ponytails swung in perfect unison, left-right-left-right, hypnotic in their rhythm. Every few minutes, they would glance at each other and smile, a wordless communication that seemed to confirm they were both doing this correctly, both becoming more desirable, both fulfilling some unspoken standard of wifely excellence.

One of the brunettes had a more pronounced hourglass figure, her waist cinched impossibly small by the corset's boning. The other was slightly more athletic, with defined shoulders and arms that flexed beautifully as she gripped the machine's handles. Despite their physical differences, they shared the same glazed, blissful expression—eyes half-lidded, lips parted slightly, faces flushed with exertion and something deeper. Eliana suspected they were both imagining their husbands watching them, approving of them, wanting them.

“Did you want to work out?” asked Brenda. “Not that you need to. But every Wife in town has a membership, gratis. And—”

“Shush.”

Brenda gulped, clearly afraid of Eliana.

Good. That felt good. She liked Brenda well enough, but she was learning she liked Brenda’s fear even more. The way Brenda…knelt at Hannah’s feet.

That had seemed so natural, so spectacular. Eliana doing it felt more like a mistake, like she and Hannah didn’t truly understand one another yet.

Inside the gym, leading the calisthenics class, was a heavily built man with a short mohawk and a bunch of tattoos running down his arms. Two young women with flowing, neon-pink and blue hair attended him. One stroked and sucked him while he was standing, slapping his hefty cock against her face. The other had a similar job, but only when he was on the mat. So if he began doing push-ups or burpees, there she was, sliding her mouth around him with every downward thrust.

The eyes of both looked completely vapid, cock-crazy, cum-crazed. They stared up at him with complete abandon.

“He’s the owner of the gym,” said Eliana.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“He has multiple wives.”

Brenda nodded. “It’s an important business here. Important men have multiple wives. He’s Prime class.”

“Like me.”

“Yes. Though he has seniority over your Husband.”

“And so the wives do over me?”

“Yes.”

A tall, dark-haired woman—nearly as tall as Hannah—strutted through the gym alternating between sneers and smiles. The sneers inspired girls to start breaking down, nearly close to tears. The smiles made others work even harder.

“That’s Margarette,” said Brenda. “She’s kind of new, but she fits right in.”

Margarette walked into the calisthenics class and everyone stopped what they were doing to look at her. There was a lot to look at. She actually wasn’t wearing lingerie, but instead ultra-tight hot shorts that displayed the completely sculpted lines of her ass, and a sports-bra with a wide-open v-shape of cleavage. Her hair was brilliantly chestnut-dark and long, and every few moments she tossed it from one side of her head to another. Posing. Sneering. Waiting.

The gym owner and his wives—as well as the rest of the girls in the calisthenics class—knelt to her in turn and came and bowed their heads at her feet.

Eliana, noticing this, felt her pussy pulse again. Warm. Happy. Singing with approval at this display of deference.

“She’s better than them,” said Eliana. “Superior.”

“Yes. Magnus class. She’s the fifth wife of the second-richest man in town. So. She gets to do basically whatever she wants unless she crosses Hannah. Which I can’t imagine, since they’re like, best friends. I wish…I wish I had a friend like that sometimes. I—”

“And I am…Prime class. That’s what you said?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You’re a Neophyte.”

Brenda’s voice became very small. “I’ve actually been here for longer than even Margarette. But my husband, he’s just not…he’s having a tough time. It’s really getting to him. He’s so stressed he won’t even fuck me, and I was really hoping that your good review of my performance w-would—”

“Shush.”

Eliana considered. Inside, Margarette directed the class back into action. Smiling at them. Her smile meant the world to them. Even outside, dozens of feet away, Eliana felt it work on her. Something chemical. Some kind of response she had.

She turned to Brenda, smiling. Smiling as brilliantly as she possibly could. The way she’d smile if her Husband told her to come suck his Cock.

Brenda’s entire body stiffened. Leaning forward. Pupils dilating like she was on a drug. Her own smile in return was sexy, open, and empty.

“O-oh,” she murmured. “Oh. M-miss…misses...I-I…oh…”

Slowly, to watch it all go down, Eliana erased her smile. Raised an eyebrow. Curled up a lip into a sneer. Let herself feel contempt for this lowly neophyte trying to waste her fucking time.

Brenda started falling to the ground. Pure, young, tight muscular control kept her knees of the ground even as she slowly kneeled closer and closer. Tears welled up in her eyes. A great red flush overtook her face and neck. She made choking noises, like Eliana had a hand around her throat.

“P-please,” said Brenda. “I-I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what I did, but I know I did it. I’m s-so sorry…”

The sight of Brenda's submission—so complete, so involuntary—sent electricity crackling through Eliana's nervous system. Her cunt clenched, releasing a fresh flood of arousal that threatened to drip down her thighs right there on the sidewalk. She understood now. Really understood. There were layers to this world, strata of power and beauty and worth, and she existed somewhere in the middle of it all. Above some. Below others.

Below Hannah, certainly. That blonde goddess with her ice-cold eyes and iron grip. The memory of Hannah's hand around her throat, of being forced to kneel, of having her face dragged across that divine pussy—it made Eliana's knees weak even now. Hannah was Elysian. Whatever that meant, it meant she could make Eliana drop without a second thought. Could humiliate her in public. Could use her face like a toy. And Eliana would thank her for it.

But Brenda? Brenda was beneath her. So far beneath her that even Eliana's casual displeasure could reduce her to this quivering, apologetic mess. A Neophyte. The lowest rung. And here she was, on her knees, begging for forgiveness for crimes she hadn't even committed, simply because Eliana had decided to withdraw her approval.

The power of it was intoxicating.

Eliana let her gaze drift back to the gym window, to Margarette strutting among the exercising women like a panther among housecats. Magnus class. Fifth wife of the second-richest man in town. The way those women had knelt for her—the gym owner included, with his two devoted cock-worshippers flanking him—spoke of a hierarchy so deeply embedded that it functioned like gravity. Margarette didn't have to demand their submission. Her mere presence extracted it.

And those girls in the calisthenics class, the ones now working twice as hard under Margarette's approving smile, they were probably Prime class like Eliana. Maybe some were Neophytes who'd been around longer, clawing their way up through their husbands' success. But in that moment, with Margarette's attention on them, they became nothing more than performing dolls desperate for her validation.

Eliana recognized the hunger in their eyes because she'd felt it herself moments ago when Margarette had smiled. That chemical rush, that need to please, to be seen as worthy by someone so clearly superior. It was hardwired into them somehow. Into her. The same way kneeling for Hannah had been automatic, the same way her body responded to the word "Husband" with Pavlovian wetness.

She wondered if Margarette felt the same rush when Hannah smiled at her. Probably. Best friends, Brenda had said, but Eliana suspected even that friendship had its hierarchies. Hannah was Elysian. The top. The absolute peak of this strange pyramid they all existed within.

And Eliana was Prime. Middle management in the hierarchy of trophy wives. High enough to make Brenda grovel. Low enough to be forced to her knees by anyone with a higher rank. The knowledge settled into her consciousness with disturbing ease, slotting into place like it had always been there, just waiting for her to notice it.

Eliana turned away and gestured for Brenda to follow.

"Get up," Eliana said, her voice steady and commanding in a way that surprised her. "You're embarrassing yourself."

Brenda scrambled to her feet, wiping at her eyes with gloved hands. The tears had left dark streaks down her cheeks where her makeup ran. She looked even more pathetic now, and something about that patheticness made Eliana's pussy throb harder. She wanted to push Brenda down again. Wanted to see her beg more. Wanted to understand the full extent of what she could make this lesser creature do.

But there were groceries to carry home. Dinner to prepare. Her Husband would be home at 5:30 and she had responsibilities. The thought of those responsibilities—of serving him, of being ready for him, of presenting herself as the perfect wife—overrode everything else.

How very interesting.

She took one last, long, very good look at Margarette. All the eyes in the gym on her. Everyone wanting to be her. Wanting to be owned by her.

And Eliana knew what she wanted.