Paperwork, always paperwork...

Nicole was considered something of a bright young thing at her firm. Three years in and tipped to make partner in two more, beating the average by two years. She did this, in part, by forsaking all commitments outside work until she made it, at which point she could slack down a good twelve to sixteen hours a week while still earning an increased income. The suddenness of the freedom, she calculated, would make it feel like a whole new day of the week – plenty of time to regrow a social life long attenuated, to look for love with her twenties still (barely) alive.

It was a tough life she had ahead of her, and she recognised that. She allotted herself two hours per day ‘free’ time; an hour cooking and eating dinner in front of the TV, an hour on fora dedicated to the show of the moment. It gave her non-work experiences to talk about. It gave her a wide selection of people to talk with who had at least something of a common interest with her. She tried not to let herself worry how clinical this all sounded – all was – as an attempt to avoid constant clinicality, and as time went on she managed it. Water-cooler conversations at work, though brief, kept her abreast of current events; like any intelligent adult, she formed her own views on them. And bit by bit, as the show forum regulars got to know each other, an inevitable broadening of the discussion began to take place. Mental images of the others formed. Things effectively identical to true friendships slowly formed, an hour a week.

That was how she met him.

Everyone has odd fascinations; his were expansive. From hints dropped on the show whose forum they met on – a science-fiction/fantasy oddity – he would derive elaborate theories about the world in which it was set, posted in long, halfway-organised, halfway-chaotic spiel touching on politics, theology, science and law. These were generally repudiated by experts in the various fields with cheerful half-mocking comments about his layman’s knowledge of the subject, and Nicole found herself the de facto expert on the workings and logic of legal structures. Verbal duels became a weekly thing. Each time he posted something – concentrating more and more on legal extrapolation as time went on – Nicole found herself staring at his work for a long time, composing answers.

Her mind began to wander more and more as she did so; his avatar, an animated, brightly-cartoonish confection, received a lot of comments on the board as people would routinely get distracted staring at it. Nicole certainly did, staring for a minute, five minutes, ten minutes at a time as the weeks went by at a jaunty cartoonish representation of, if not, him, his online persona The verbal duels felt more and more like flirting, something noticed by other members of the group and jovially made the butt of jokes.

Nicole dismissed the jokes as foolish, essentially skimming over them while looking more and more eagerly for his comments. After two months or so, she started to imagine herself frolicking with that cartoon face, wondering what it would be like to kiss the lips beneath the mask. She gradually stopped reading her other boards, watching her other shows; her two hours a day were given over to the show’s board exclusively. Other posters began to vanish from her ken, too; she spent her two hours daily waiting for posts, replying with more and more concessions, staring at his avatar in a lost, absent daydream, her hips squirming as she ground herself against the chair in barely-acknowledged sexual frustration.

And one day, she noticed, just below his forum name, a small icon; a messenger program she’d never used. She downloaded it, telling herself she only really spoke to him anyway; what would it matter if she left the board behind? She hadn’t watched the show in weeks anyway.

He responded to her invitation almost immediately, and she was somehow relieved to see that his avatar was the same as on the forum, though larger. She could stare at it all the time they were on, and began to, barely registering what he typed or what she said in response. She didn’t notice, for instance, the message she typed that began:

Miss Legality: Nicole Quinelles

307 Ceres Arcade...

and continued with the rest of her address. She began to look forward to their conversations all day, daydreaming of the avatar rather than working, hurrying back from the office so she could set aside her business suits, shower, and don delicate, lacy teddies bought for the purpose to seat herself at the computer and log on. Her two hours daily became three.

M: ...if you follow me?

Nicole: Oh, yeah, def’nitely. Too many girls’re just careless with words. I think they think it makes ‘em sound hawt, ‘stead of, y’know, dumb.

M: Well, I’d agree with that. The thing is, I think it works for a lot of them, partly because of the anti-intellectual currents at play in society.

Nicole: Oh, yeah, it’s totally hot! But, y’know, I don’t think it’s good.

She loaded his avatar onto her cell as a backdrop. At times when work threatened to break in on her daydream, she’d excuse herself, lock herself into a toilet cubicle and stare at it dreamily. After a week or so, without noticing, she began to play with herself as she did so.

Nicole: Gawd, today was just so frustrating. All that time I was busy. An’ it’s so hard, suddenly!

M: Doesn’t sound good. What’s wrong?

Nicole: It’s like it’s just got all tricky to unnerstand and stuffs. But it never used to be!

M: Hey, easy now. It’s all right...

Nicole: It totally isn’t! I’m not sure if I can do this anymore an’ anyway I don’t wanna!

M: You’re just reacting to a bad day, hun. I’m sure it’s not that bad. You always said you loved studying law.

Nicole: Well, yeah. But it’s just so hard!

cries

M: Look at it logically. You know that always helps, right?

Nicole: Uh-huh!

M: So you know you haven’t gotten dumber, right?

Nicole: Yup! I’m no ditz!

M: And vocabularies don’t mysteriously vanish, do they?

Nicole: Nope! You’re so smart, Emmy!

M: So don’t worry...

A week later she moved her chair away from her computer. She’d recently bought fuck-me heel scarlet leather boots while at lunch, not really paying attention to her surroundings or actions. Lacking a reason to wear them elsewhere, she took to donning them before her conversations, and to justify this she would stand, legs spread wide, a few feet back from the computer, bent forward to type during their conversations, one hand between her legs, frantically fingering herself to orgasm time after time during their conversations.

M: Hey, can I ask you something?

Nicole: Mmhmm?

M: It’s just kind of... it’s like you’ve changed since we started talking.

Nicole: Ummm... I know I’m, like, more easily distractabable, ‘specially now we’ve got the webcams (totally hawt, btw) but I don’t think anyfink major’s changed. ‘Sall good, right?

M: Hey, I never said they were bad!

Nicole: Yay! Um... Could you say somefin’ smart? It’s such a turn-on...

M: ...

M: Shakespeare probably wasn’t Francis Bacon? I dunno, it’s difficult coming up with something non-specific.

Nicole: Mmm...

Less than a week later he sent the first message that really broke through into her consciousness since before she disclosed her address to him:

M: Just your fingers isn’t enough anymore, is it?

She stared at the message for a long time, her mind – she believed – working through the ramifications as she did so while, almost unnoticed, her fingers took her to the brink of orgasm – and failed to reach that peak. Again. Nicole couldn’t remember telling him that she’d started playing with herself, but glossed over it without worrying. She told him everything, she reasoned glibly, dismissing the oddity. With her free hand Nicole continued the total honesty that began when she ceased to worry about preserving her anonymity:

Nicole: No.

His response was immediate and candid.

M: You need a vibe, Nikki.

Nikki... The name resonated, somehow. Much more appropriate than Nicole. She pictured, for a moment, a new signature on her court petitions: Nikki Q. A girlish giggle escaped her lips at the thought, and that felt right, too.

And he was right. She told him so, and the following day skipped two billable hours carefully selecting just the right vibe, a near-silent model that seemed to fit so right.

Two days later she was wearing it, held in place by her panties, during work. At nights, bent in supplication to her computer, it quietly did its job unattended, lodged inside her. Nikki loved it.

For a while, anyway. Two days after that the vibe, too, now reliably failed to bring her to climax. She sought his advice immediately, her toy still firmly in place during their chats by compulsion.

M: I’ll send you something special, he said.

The very next day a courier dropped a package off at her workplace. Unable to wait, Nikki locked herself in a stall and unwrapped it.

Another vibe, but one – she somehow instinctively knew – moulded on his own erect cock.

That got her where she needed to go, and spent the next day where it needed to be, tucked in her panties and later held there by her spread-legged bent-over stance. It felt like he was fucking her. It was perfection. A dream come true.

But she wanted more.

NikkiQ: Yeah, ‘sok, but I dunno... I kinda wish it was actually you. Could you, like, make it be? I’ve got a killer ‘partment an’ I bought a water bed just las’ week!

M: You know the price, he said.

NikkiQ: Yes, Nikki said, knowing as she sent it that by saying so she agreed to pay. And, without really acknowledging the price consciously, she did agree, happily. She needed his cock. She needed her fuck-me heels. She needed the matching collar she’d made her birthday treat and suddenly remembered had waited ever since on the bedside table for her acceptance. Needed the breast implants she now realised she’d booked, paid for, and scheduled time off around three months ago without noticing. Needed the blonde hair she’d laid in dye for, the dye her eyes had looked through every morning in the bathroom.

Needed to mail in the resignation she abruptly knew she had waiting in her inbox, to sign the power of attorney forms she’d pocketed from the vibe box without seeing and kept safe ever since. To work out Nicole’s resignation period, and then to let Nikki’s intelligence plummet the way she now knew it wanted to, weighted down as it seemed to be by cartoon anvils just primed to pull it out of sight. Heck, maybe she’d start early and get some giggles out of it! She might even screw an intern or two on the photocopier if he allowed it.

She also knew she needed to acknowledge the word that had ended every message she’d typed to him without her seeing it since her third day on the messenger, the only name she needed for him, and to acknowledge the nicknames he used for her when he didn’t use her true name Nikki, the names she’d been forbidden to see.

Master.

Slut. Bimbo. Pet.

Above all, Nikki needed Master to use the duplicate key she now remembered she’d FedExed.

M: You know, he wrote, I’m in town. I have been since you got the new toy, just waiting. I can be there in fifteen minutes. So here’s what you do...

Nikki listened, and Nikki was a good pet. She walked from her computer to her bedroom, careful not to allow her vibe to slip from within. She fastened the collar around her neck, put bunches into hair she hadn’t yet had the chance to dye. She left the teddy on; it wasn’t like it restricted access. She opened her bedside table drawer and pulled out the power of attorney papers, signing them with a giggle and placing them at the foot of the bed. Then she pulled out her old, discarded vibe and a pot of lube, working it carefully into her ass, squirming with joy as it went further in.

On all fours, she mounted the bed, both vibrators going, and faced the doorway. Next to her, the document that gave him more power over her. In her hair, the symbols that she had started to accept a bimbo life. Around her neck the mark of a pet. And two of her three holes filled, she waited for him to fill the third – total proof of sluthood.

Nikki knew as surely as she knew her pussy ached for him – she had been made for him. Step by step.