Ashleigh and the Governess, Ch. 3

Aleksandra's life was all first class accommodations and skipping to the front of the line, with servants everywhere she went to keep her very comfortable. From a young age she had a knack for commanding people's attention, particularly when they worked for her or when she was their customer. She was aware that people called her a 'ball buster' but that wasn't exactly how she thought of herself. Once, one of her cousins had teased Aleksandra by saying that she never did anything for herself – she must have princess feet to be waited on all the time like that. That phrase fascinated her, like it gave her permission to be really demanding of her waitstaff because she just had really high-maintenance princess feet and she would only be happy if everything was just so. She also enjoyed that it was peoples' entire jobs to make her princess feet happy; their livelihoods depended on it.
	Aleksandra knew that she was difficult to work for and made no apologies for it. She had conducted so many working interviews for prospective maids, only to have the person run away fighting back tears after she had upbraided them for the smallest error. And no matter how good they were at the job, she wasn't going to pay more than minimum wage or, better yet, a day rate that would average out to less than minimum wage. She found that when she acted cold and dissatisfied, people would usually bend over backwards to make her happy (her enormous wealth certainly helped, too). She would lash out at anyone who displeased her: a gardener who dared to use a power tool rather than trimming hedges by hand, or a masseuse who didn't have the energy to give her a two hour full-body massage without slacking on the pressure 90 minutes in. She knew just how to complain, just how to press someone's buttons into making them work much harder for her for no extra money.
	She had a force of personality, and Ashleigh had been one of the few people who had successfully resisted it. She knew that he believed she was just a gold digger who was after half his father's money, and that was good because it kept him from realizing the truth: that she wanted not just half his money but the house, the business, everything. And Ash was the only thing standing in her way. She couldn't believe how easy he had made it. He didn't have a stable job or much of a connection to family or friends, and he also didn't have much real world experience so he didn't function well under pressure. She had lulled him into a false sense of superiority by tolerating so much disrespect from him for so long, but now the pendulum would swing in the other direction thanks to the Sisters of Diana.
	It made her heart flutter to think about.
	 Aleksandra Lipka felt optimistic now, but she had once despaired. She thought back to an event many years ago, when she first got in touch with Yusra.
	 Yusra had the reputation of 'mediating' inheritance disputes in such a biased way that her client could walk away with a lot more than they were due – even when they had a very shaky claim starting out. A lot of her strategies were in the grey area, legally speaking, but they were cunning and they appeared to work. Aleksandra had sought her out because she was afraid of being written out of the Caldwell will. She was afraid that wild, handsy Graham Caldwell was just using her as a fuck toy and would secretly change things so that she got nothing when he passed.
	It had been on Yusra's advice that Aleksandra got Graham to write the clause about 'personal conduct' and 'drug rehabilitation' into Ashleigh's inheritance, which the Ukrainian beauty used all of her charms to achieve. Aleksandra didn't enjoy her married life and she didn't like thinking about it. When his private jet was loaded with the wrong fuel and crashed on accident, she only pretended to mourn. Her relationship with Yusra was much more fulfilling, anyway.
	"I am afraid that my husband will leave me with nothing," Aleksandra confessed to Yusra, on one of their earliest meetings.
	"Yes, I have seen that happen before," Yusra answered, but then she asked, "But what if it's the opposite? What if you get everything, and he writes Ashleigh out of the will?"
	 That was the first time she felt the fluttering in her heart, like she just heard something that resonated with her on a spiritual level. Like someone else had dared to speak aloud the words she was afraid to say.
	"This is possible?" Aleksandra asked.
	"Of course. There's an entire science behind it, and I am one of the best in the field. Perhaps we can re-work Ashleigh's inheritance, so that he only gets it increments of $8.50 an hour, and he needs to be working for you to collect it."
	Aleksandra laughed out loud as she pictured that!
	"I don't think he would ever agree to that," Aleksandra said but it wasn't so much a 'no' as a 'convince me.'
	"Don't worry about that, Mrs. Caldwell. We are very good at what we do."
	"Call me Miss Lipka," Aleksandra politely asked her, "But how? How do you make these things happen?"
	"By making him into a slave," Yusra replied plainly,
	"You have probably never heard of the Rosewood Scandal, This happened in Baltimore, many years ago. In a mental asylum... A lawyer made a great deal of money by identifying the inmates who could do domestic chores, then he would arrange for those women – some of whom he had represented during their trial -- to be released from the asylum into the home and custody of a high-society women, as her indentured servant."
	Aleksandra nodded. She had learned about the Rosewood Scandal during her own research into modern slavery. The story titillated her; she imagined herself as one of those socialites who needed to break in a slave who was very slow at learning new things. The aesthetic of the roaring twenties really helped her fantasy, too. Not just the clothing, but also the inequality between the social classes and how that might create for a very desperate servant with no pesky labor protections. She had done a lot of research into this subject, reading stories like the one about the maid in Riyadh whose employer tied her to a tree as a punishment. She had a sexual fascination with the abuse like that and she spent a lot of pleasant time daydreaming about what she would do, in that situation.
	"I should say that I don't agree with everything that happened there," Yusra continued,
	"But it is an example of how the legal system can be used to allow for modern slavery. Many people are interested in this for a variety of reasons and they've spent a lot of money to make it possible. We, as a firm, have a particular sort of high net worth individual who enjoys our services. People you would recognize – actresses and socialites. Powerful women with very particular tastes."
	Aleksandra just stared at Yusra, hypnotized. She had heard rumors that slavery rings still existed, and now she was getting a glimpse of one first-hand. But she couldn't believe that there was actually a service that would turn her stepson into her slave!
	"Okay, so because of some scandal one hundred years ago, you can make Ashleigh do what I say?" Aleksandra asked.
	"That lawyer made a fortune selling those girls' labor contracts," Yusra continued, "And when he got caught, the judge was more interested in how HE could be making money off that arrangement instead. But here's what else happened: the group of wealthy housewives got a taste for having an indentured servant. They didn't want to give that luxury up, and some of them became quite addicted to the power. So they took some of their money and financed a company that could continue providing this service for them. The company did the exact same thing that the lawyer was doing, but it partnered with the local government so it could operate legally."
	"That explains how a poor person would end up a servant, but how about Ashleigh? Would you have him committed to an asylum, then released to my custody?" Aleksandra had asked, referring to another one of her fantasies of control and domination.
	"That is a very good guess," Yusra complimented her,
	"And that is one way we can do it. But let me continue the story."
	Aleksandra got more comfortable in her chair and smiled and nodded – even if this didn't pan out, she enjoyed spending time with Yusra. She viewed the Arabic woman as a rare equal in a world where she kept most everyone bowing and scraping at her feet.
	"This group of investors, it was mostly women. Rich women. And yes, they discovered that by getting someone committed to an asylum it made it easy to get them out of the picture. But the founders had a deeper mission than just re-distributing wealth. They also wanted to create a female dominance paradigm; a family and social dynamic where men are viewed as servants for the women in their lives with no hope of being anything better."
	"I like that very much," Aleksandra said with a smile.
	"It is an entire philosophy we will train him to think in terms of. We have a lot of experience bringing men to heel. But in order for this to work, you need to trust in the judgment of the Sisters of Diana. Even when you find our methods strange, or burdensome."
	"Burdensome? How would it burden me? Wouldn't Ashleigh be doing all the work? I will push my burden off on to him!" Aleksandra said, and it made Yusra laugh.
	"You need to constantly be thinking of ways to make him feel trapped in a particular role," Yusra replied,
	"You need to manage his entire social universe so that the only people around him are treating him the same way as we do. We will need to isolate him, and there can be no pillar of his life that he could lean on to turn away from us. Our conditioning will change his personality, his appearance -- everything. He will surrender to you, and you will have it all."
	Yusra then laid out a few photographs of runway models all with the same sort of look: very androgynous, but leaning towards queer femme. She explained that as part of Ashleigh's training, he would work to look like one of these elfin models. He would need to change his body to fit the look: skipping meals to get so waifishly thin until he was looking like a runaway model always neurotic about food, always bending the knee. It lit a fire in Aleksandra's heart to think about having a beautiful fashion model like this as her devoted slave. The ones in the photos were attractive and pleasant to look at, but their beauty was a different (and inferior) sort than her own, in her opinion. It would be a very flattering look for Ashleigh though, and Aleksandra could never have enough pretty, doormat friends.
	"There are about twenty five thousand decisions we make each day," Yusra concluded, "And our goal is to be touching every one of those twenty five thousand decisions Ashleigh makes each day. Set them out ahead of time, so that each one brings him further and further under your control. We have judges and probate officers and law firms. All we need is a crime."
	Yusra had taught Aleksandra so many things about herself; she was the only person Aleksandra felt comfortable discussing her more sadistic impulses. Together, they explored her fantasy of the cinder girl and built it up even more. Aleksandra constantly outdid herself discussing new, humiliating ways she would use Ashleigh. She particularly enjoyed Yusra's suggestion of using his male psychology against him. This was a happy time during Aleksandra's life. It gave her purpose and even when Graham was alive, she started her whispering campaign against Ash making subtle efforts to chip away at his masculinity and pride. 'He should feel like a doll you are trying to dress up and carry around in your purse,' was one remark Yusra had made – that's why she put so much emphasis on salon visits and beauty products. She couldn't wait to choose his outfits when she was the undisputed owner of his estate.
	**
	Life had become hell for Ash.
	Even at the best of times, the symbiote was uncomfortable. Like some bicycle shorts that rode up too much and were clinging tightly to his anatomy, but could never be pulled loose. The sleek latex film would stab him with burning spines every time he failed in his domestic drudgery. And there were so many ways to fail. Yusra would do things like order him to detail the entire grand staircase with a chamois cloth no larger than his hand, then have him continue and do the upstairs hallway tile by tile in such a painstakingly minute way that his knees and back were killing him by the end of it. And Marisol would stand over him or just be on her phone texting while he did this boring, repetitive labor.
	He was on his hands and knees right now, cleaning the floor. If he tried to stand up, his chastity device automatically punished him – it was that programmable. Then the pain would bring him back down to his knees, and he could continue. If he tried to tamper with it, or take two steps outside the house that was now his prison, it would spring to life like a bear trap on his balls. A burning hot bear trap that made his breath come in gasps. The pain from the device would obliterate thought itself, and certainly any thoughts or attempts of resistance. He was a prisoner here, and a part of his body was locked up in its own little prison. He had to ask permission to urinate, and could only do so sitting down.
	'Have they taken the fight out of me? Have I given up this easily?' Ash thought to himself. He couldn't imagine doing three years more of this.
	As he ran the tiny cloth across the floors, he could see a silhouette of his reflection. Enough detail to notice the black lace collar around his neck that acted as his house arrest monitor. Judge Tanaka had smiled when she learned that particular detail of his plea bargain. She sentenced him to three years house arrest on a ten year suspended sentence, as long as he followed the recovery program set forth by the Sisters of Diana. They had so many preposterous little rules: he couldn't sit on the furniture anymore, he needed to move and speak in a certain way, along with countless other hoops they made him jump through.
	"You are doing a good job on the floors," Marisol told him.
	She traced a bare foot against the tile, right in front of where Ash was kneeling. She had deep purple lacquer and a recent pedicure – his doing – and he felt humbled by the fact that he had pampered Marisol's foot which she was now using to examine his work.
	"Thank you, Miss," he replied, not raising his eyes above her ankle.
	His stomach grumbled, but he was not allowed to ask for food. They controlled his diet and fed him at irregular times, often turning food into a reward for exemplary work. He hoped he would earn some food from this then loathed himself for tacitly accepting the abusive system. Then they both heard the garage door opening and went to greet Aleksandra downstairs. She was getting back from one of her spin classes and she liked to have Ash help her with her shoes, which were very tight so they could clip onto the bicycle.
	"Ashleigh. Shoes," Aleksandra said as soon as she walked in the door. She broke her gait and pointed down at her feet urgently, like he had already annoyed her by making her wait.
	Ash hurried over and knelt before his wicked stepmother, who didn't even look at him as he helped her remove her footwear. He was expected to remove her socks as well: pink cotton pilates socks with the toes missing for some reason he could not comprehend, except for her to show off her pedicure. He took the shoes immediately to her room, to their correct place in her shoe closet and he placed the still-warm socks in a special hamper.
	The hamper had quiet a lot of socks in there and not just Aleksandra's. Looking at it made him think sexual thoughts, which he was instantly and profoundly ashamed of. But more and more, he couldn't help it. The symbiote punished Ash for getting erections, but not always. If he thought back to his old lays, and the soft moans each one of them would give when he first went inside, the chastity device would deliver a searing pain that put an end to that line of thinking. But if he was in direct contact with Aleksandra's socks, or Yusra's panties or (worst of all) Marisol's battered pink flats, the device would stop punishing him so hard. It still wouldn't let him get fully hard and he certainly couldn't finish, but it was the only place he was allowed to have some semblance of sexual enjoyment. He knew that there was probably a sinister type of transference going on here. He would spend very long periods of time sitting near this hamper with Yusra's panties in his face, waiting for an erection to go down – it might be the closest thing he got to a rest period during his work day. Ash savored the feel of the socks in his hands for a brief moment before throwing them into the hamper. Then he went downstairs.
	There was a particular way Yusra liked Ash to stand around when he was awaiting instructions. He took it now: chin up, shoulders down with a long neck and his hands folded neatly in front of his pelvis. He found it to be an uncomfortable and awkward position to hold for long periods of time. Aleksandra was seated on the sofa, her bare feet resting on the coffee table next to a large bowl of green grapes.
	"You will start at the Tea Lounge tomorrow," she told Ash,
	"And I have a reward for you, for doing your training so well."
	Ash was skeptical, and rightfully so. She picked up one of the grapes using just her feet so that it rested between her big and second toe. Then she coquettishly raised her foot so that her sole was facing Ashleigh, displaying the fruit.
	"You can have a grape. More if you hurry."
	The look she gave him set his blood on fire – a sadistic, haughty smile as he approached to accept her gift. He couldn't just reach down and pluck it out from between her toes, either. He had to use his mouth to retrieve it because Aleksandra found this endlessly amusing. Here he was again, up close and personal with her bare feet, debasing himself for her amusement. This wasn't the first time he had eaten food from between a woman's toes; Marisol had used little marshmallows for toe separators when Ashleigh did her pedicure which she fed to him in a similar way. That's why he knew to cradle Aleksandra's foot in both hands, supporting its weight to make it easier on her as he lowered his lips to her toes to retrieve the fruit. The grape made his mouth water, it was so good but he was distracted by the noticeable odor coming from Aleksandra's feet.
	"Thank you," Ash said robotically.
	"You want more?"
	"Yes, please."
	Aleksandra laughed. She obliged him a few more grapes then appeared to get bored of this little game when she realized he would probably just eat the entire bowl of grapes this way, if given the chance. A mean spark flashed in her eyes. She dropped several grapes on the floor so they were bunched together, then stood up and began to stomp them. She created quite a mess on the floor Ash had spent the past several hours cleaning, and had a blast doing it.
	"We will test you one more time to see if you are ready," Aleksandra told him, "I want you to clean all of this up."
	She pointed down at the fruit mush that she was standing in. Her slender toes were coated in pulp, slick with it and more was squelched beneath her high arches.
	"Then you will clean up anything that I track away with me, after I leave."
	"Fine. Let me get the paper towels and water," he replied.
	She giggled.
	"Oh, Ashleigh. You don't need paper towels! This floor is clean enough you could eat from it, yes?"
	Ash slowly nodded his head.
	"Just use your hands. And your mouth. You will worship the ground I walk on? Is that the expression?"
	She was wriggling her toes as she said this, raising them and lowering them and fanning them out absentmindedly. He was revolted – but also thrilled to be eating that much grapes, which made things more complicated. It was this or prison.
	"If you miss one of my footprints, I will punish you."
	Then Aleksandra turned on her heel and strutted away, each footstep accompanied by a quiet squelching sound. He looked down at the crushed pile of fruit and immediately noticed that she had dropped some stems in there which would make it a little less pleasant than he had hoped for. Nonetheless, he lowered his face down to the floor and began scooping the food into his mouth that his stepmother had just stomped on repeatedly. His enjoyment of the sugar and fruit overruled his shame but he still tasted a certain saltiness to them – like they were worse than grapes should taste.
	It took him a while to properly clean up all of that mess until it was up to the standards that they expected from him. The footprints were more annoying, by far. He had to crawl across the entire house scrutinizing the floor, trying to track Aleksandra's movements carefully so he could lick each place she had stepped. The tile floor was very cold against his tongue and it disgusted him the entire time although he had to admit the floor was extremely clean. It was spirit-breaking work, but at least his symbiote counted this as a rest period and didn't torment him too badly. Mostly it just made him itch in a subtle but annoying way.