Ashleigh and the Governess, Ch. 11

At first, Ash had believed that anyone would be better than Aleksandra but Chelsea turned out to be a deeply troubled young woman in her private life.
	"Did you know that women who practice bdsm have an atypical neural response to other people's pain?"
	She asked him this rhetorical question during one of their 'denunciation sessions.' He was sitting with his legs spread at a 45 degree angle on either side of the chair she was sitting on. His back was against the wall, and she was resting the ball of her foot on top of his cock, while he supported her other foot with both of his hands.
	He shook his head. It was the only reply he could make – his mouth was stuffed with two pairs of her thrice-worn ankle socks.
	"It's true!" she continued, "Here, let me show you."
	Without warning, she stomped on his genitals. The pain was unimaginable – even though he knew he might be punished for it, he moaned into his makeshift cotton gag so loudly that Clover and Emilija would hear it downstairs. He looked up at her with a rictus of pain and despair only to be met by her angelic smile.
	"See, most women would look at your cute little face and feel sympathy towards you. But people like me have a diminished response to that sort of thing. We find painful expressions to be enjoyable... even arousing."
	She didn't let up the pressure during this speech, and Ash was reeling from the pain. The symbiote made sure that he could not move from this spot, no matter how badly he wanted to. He couldn't even grip her foot more tightly – he had to hold it with gentle reverence the way a trainer might have their animal demonstrate its good discipline by having it carry an egg in its mouth without cracking the shell. The most Ash could do was to bite down on Chelsea's dirty socks, which squeezed some of his saliva from them and then he had to swallow the sour, bitter runoff. But it wasn't just saliva.
	"Aww! You're looking dehydrated, babe! Here, let me give you some water."
	Much to his relief, she let off the pressure and picked up one of her reusable water bottles with the spout top.
	"Open up!"
	She squirted a large volume of sour-tasting water into his mouth – water that was drawn from her foot bath after he had finished her pedicure. He was hardly bothered by the brackish taste. Comparatively speaking, this was heaven next to the pain he had just suffered. Some of the water dripped down the sides of his chin, onto the halter top he was wearing and it made Chelsea giggle. She talked to him like a lover, asking:
	"Do you think you can go a little longer? For me?"
	He nodded his head. One of the ways that Chelsea was disturbed was that she believed that when Ash was suffering at her hand (or foot), he was proving to her her how much he liked her. She got off on having him 'consent' to one more session, believing that this was the purest form of dedication. It was all a farce: whether or not he agreed to it, she would do whatever she wanted. She moved her foot towards his cock again, nails sporting a cute lavender polish.
	"Yay! Don't worry, I'll go easy on you because you've been so well-behaved lately. But do you understand what I'm saying? When I see you down there... There's nothing like it."
	 At least Chelsea kept her word this time – there had been many other instances when she said she would 'go easy on him' only to get swept up in the moment and start brutalizing his captive cock. Rather than stomping on it, she traced its length with the tip of her big toe. Everywhere she touched, it felt like a hot soldering iron but this was the sort of pain that a person could conceivably enjoy. She toyed with him like this for a while with movements that were flitting, sometimes delicate. In addition to being a cheerleader, she had also done dance, and there was a certain musicality to the way she could move her feet.
	"It was the Sisters who taught me that little fact about bondage," Chelsea explained, "But I wonder what happens to YOUR brain, as the recipient of this sort of treatment? How come nobody studies that?"
	Ash shrugged his shoulders and this made her laugh. His cock was rock-hard from the treatment, but he knew she would never let him cum.
	"Maybe that could be the next step in our relationship! You could be my guinea pig girlfriend... An unnamed test subject on a research paper that I commission. Then, we can have other women do this exact same thing to you, and we will measure your brain activity to see what happens. I bet you'll respond differently to my feet. We could finally prove that you love me!"
	Ash gave her a frightened expression. 'Love' was one of the most dangerous things that Chelsea could talk about.
	"You DO love me, right?"
	He enthusiastically nodded his head. Which was a lie, because of course he didn't love her! They had known each other for like, two months! She was an evil witch who was only happy when he was suffering! He cursed her name, but she wanted him to act like he was madly in love with her. It was very confusing, particularly because he used to have a crush on her back when they first met.
	Chelsea beamed a smile down at him in response. Then she scooted back from the chair and climbed into bed.
	"Come to bed, my love. I need you to take care of me."
	So began another half-hour of sexual torment. Chelsea had the utmost standards for oral sex; she practically required Ash to read her mind and eat her pussy with the perfect amount of pressure at all times. His tongue had become strong from the many, many hours of polishing shoes but even then she brought him to the point of exhaustion half way through.
	"OH FUCK!!!!" Chelsea cried out, squeezing his head with her thighs as he brought her to her first orgasm by devotedly lapping at her perfectly-formed cunt.
	Then he slowed down, licking up all the girlcum that the petite brunette produced every time she came. This was the nearest thing he had to a break and he savored it, despite the fact that his cock was fully erect, completely numb, and his balls ached terribly from all this sexual frustration.
	"Okay," Chelsea said after a while of him gently collecting her love nectar, "Let's go again."
	Ash pushed himself to lick her with the exact same fervor as he had done before, but his tongue was tired. In response, Chelsea picked up her smart phone and pressed a button on it.
	ZAP
	"RRRrggh!" Ash cried out from the pain of a thousand tiny needles embedding themselves in his cock and balls.
	The burning hot needles were 'imaginary' of course – they would do no lasting harm to his body, but they felt completely real. This was her way of motivating him to eat her pussy with more energy, and it worked. The Caldwell boy had thought nothing could be worse than being Aleksandra's slave, but Chelsea's sexual demands regularly brought him to his breaking point. The sophisticated woman had one of the highest sexual appetites he had ever known; sometimes she would have him slowly lick her cunt as she read through endless court documents just to make her job more interesting. But in hotter encounters like this one, she wouldn't be satisfied until he had made her cum at least two times and that was a herculean effort.
	"Harder! HARDER!!" Chelsea cried out, sounding every bit like an entitled brat who didn't care about his well-being.
	If she didn't have the symbiote to motivate him with, Ash could have never found the strength to do this exhausting task. She liked a lot of force, and a lot of repetition and it was so fatiguing for the poor boy that he wondered how she ever found a lover that could satisfy her appetites without her whipping them to keep them on task. He was doing well enough – she was approaching her second orgasm and playing with her own tits which was always a good sign, but then disaster struck. His tongue slipped and he accidentally didn't hit her clitoris one time.
	"FUCK! Not like that!"
	Ash felt his heart sink before she picked up her phone and pressed the button again to punish him for the honest mistake. The burning needles sunk into his cock and his balls yet again, causing little white spots to begin floating in his vision. This time, the needles were coated in venom that circulated through his genitals for quite some time after the initial blow. It was very effective at keeping him on duty – Ash never shirked when he was going down on Chelsea. But her sadistic attitude, combined with her impossibly high-maintenance attitude made it so that it was less like a sexual encounter and more like trying to defuse an explosive.
	"Just like that! Yes! YES! YES!!!!"
	Here was the peak of Chelsea's sadism: even when Ash did a good job, there was a high probability that she would pick up her phone right at the moment of her climax and start mashing the button that would punish his cock. It made her cum even harder, knowing that she was hurting him. It was devastating for Ash to know that even if he did his job with superhuman skill and precision, this beautiful brunette woman might still torture him just because she got off on hearing his moans of despair. He wasn't even sure to call this sex; he felt like he was a sex toy that she used however she liked, then dismissed once he had completed his job.
	Chelsea looked gorgeous afterwards – she had this natural glow that any man would have found attractive. She laughed to herself and wiped some of the perspiration off of her forehead, then stroked Ash's hair affectionately.
	"Good work," she said in a tone dripping with satisfaction, "Fuck, I need to find out how to keep you here all the time!"
	That would be a nightmare situation for Ash, but that outcome seemed more likely with each passing day.
	"Yeah, that would be nice," he said, "I love going down on you."
	"Would you make me some coffee please? Then I need you to fix yourself up because we're meeting my girlfriends for brunch."
	"Okay."
	As Ash made a pour-over coffee for Chelsea, he reflected on how much their relationship had changed since the beginning. As absurd as it was, he missed the times when she would show interest in his life and make like she was trying to impress him with her accomplishments. Nowadays, she acted like a completely different person. He would still get flashes of that charming, vivacious personality that he had fallen for, but for the most part she was extremely codependent nowadays and had a fixation on controlling his every word and action. He lived under the microscope and as a result, he felt a deep sympathy towards Clover and Emilija because they had been beneath Chelsea's heel for so much longer.
	As he waited for the water to boil, he entertained himself in the usual way: by picturing Aleksandra working for Judy Humphries. It was one of the few things that made him smile, picturing his stepmother on all fours scrubbing the floor for a woman she despised. This was one of the last bright spots in his life and it delighted him to think of this gold-digging woman being reduced to the exact circumstances she had considered herself 'above.' The taste of Chelsea's cunt was still in his mouth and he had a headache that often resulted from this sort of sexual denial, but Aleksandra's suffering brought him joy. He wished he could be a witness to it, since that was a more realistic goal than him getting his freedom again.
**
	The touch of the uniform made Aleksandra's skin crawl, but it was nothing compared to the revulsion she felt whenever she heard Judy Humphries's voice.
	Even if Judy hadn't been a threat to Aleksandra's reign, she would have kicked the woman out of their social circle just because she was such an obnoxious harridan. She had that pompous attitude that came with old money, enhanced by the many years she had spent in academia. She lorded both of these things over Aleksandra's head constantly, as though she were a student or teacher's assistant that Judy had the burden of uplifting and educating. Judy was in her late 40s with raven-dark hair, some of which was greying. Although she didn't put too much care into her personal appearance, she was an attractive woman if a bit overweight.
	"Alex, dear, could you please make us another pot of tea?"
	"Yes, Miss Humphries," was Aleksandra's response.
	She hated the way that Judy addressed her as 'Alex' which she did on the reasoning that it had fewer syllables than her full name. She also hated the way that Judy didn't allow her to wear makeup, instead having her put this natural oil on her face that she suspected was causing her pH balance to change. For the first time in many years, Aleksandra was noticing pimples on her once-flawless face. She felt like she constantly had to wash up, but Judy wouldn't allow it.
	Aleksandra went into Judy's enormous kitchen and started boiling a pot of water. During the downtime, she had to participate in one of the most loathsome exercises that had been put upon her: she had to practice her American accent.
	"I enjoy working for Miss Humphries," Aleksandra said into one of those home-monitor speakers.
	The machine glowed red, and a robotic voice told her that had mispronounced the 'ing' ending as 'ink'.
	"I enjoy workinG for Miss Humphries," she repeated, although she found it embarrassing to speak in this manner. In addition to the self-consciousness she felt from learning something so elementary, she had always enjoyed her accent since it made her feel cosmopolitan. Now Judy wanted her to speak like a dunce, but the speaker flashed a green light. She moved on to the next exercise:
	"I want to work for Miss Humphries for a very long time."
	 Aleksandra made another error, called 'devoicing' which the imperious woman had lectured her about but she still had absolutely no idea what it meant. Frustration began to creep in; no doubt, Judy would use this as an opportunity to give her another lecture and make her feel like a complete fool for her lack of comprehension. For all the woman's education, she wasn't much of a teacher. Judy had a short temper and would lash out at her if she didn't pick up on the lessons right away, regardless of how poorly Judy had explained them.
	  Aleksandra stifled a yawn. It was nearly noon, and she had been working non-stop since six in the morning. Judy required her to get there early because she was an early riser and she wanted her maid to be present to help her dress in the morning. The Ukrainian beauty could not believe that she had to get up at 5 AM so that she could go to this woman's house to hold her panties open in the morning for her to step into.
	The tea kettle began to hiss and Aleksandra poured two cups of tea.
	"Thank you Alex!" Judy said when she had returned. She was sitting with her best friend Gretchen, a dour lady who only ever regarded Aleksandra with hostility.
	"I think it's a marvelous thing you are doing for her, Judy," Gretchen repeated,
	"In my day, a widow wouldn't be running around getting massages so soon after her husband's passing. Women have no standards anymore! When my Albert passed, I barely left the house for a year."
	Aleksandra had to hold her tongue. She found it insulting, the accusation that she wasn't properly mourning Graham. She didn't feel anything for the old goat and even if she had, why would it honor him if she lived like some shut-in renunciate in his honor? In general, she despised it when someone tried to control her behavior but the patriarchal implications that Gretchen was making were truly abhorrent.
	"She thought she had a mind for business," Judy explained as Aleksandra poured tea into her cup, bending over at the waist as she had been trained to do.
	"But without any education, I'm afraid she just burned through millions of dollars with nothing to show for it. You should see the financials for her 'Lipka Organization'! She spent half a million dollars on shoes alone!"
	Gretchen tutted, then expectantly held out her cup for Aleksandra to refill. The defeated woman could barely hide her contempt – and it was even more insulting that they were talking about her as though she wasn't there. Judy continued speaking:
	"Yes, it was generous of me to buy out her business. I mainly did it for the name, and out of pity. But considering what a lovely assistant she makes, I think it was all worthwhile! Now she earns a wage that's more commensurate with her experience... Alex, dear, how much am I paying you?"
	Aleksandra stood there holding the tea pot, the words dying in her throat.
	"I asked you a question, girl," Judy rebuked her, sharply.
	"Miss Humphries is paying me $4.25 an hour," Aleksandra answered.
	"That was the minimum wage when I was starting out," Judy said, "And look how successful I have become! I know it's not legal, but considering the fact that I purchased her company for well above its valuation, I think this is a fair trade."
	Their conversation shifted to other things, and Aleksandra was left standing there mutely, thinking about all that she had lost. Her downfall had been much quicker than Ashleigh's was – the Sisters had a lot more on her than they did on him. Or perhaps they were working on her all along. That was what stung the most: that she had brought this upon herself by her own carelessness and greed. Her feet pained her enormously from the pointy-toed high heels that Judy made her wear. They were cheap, tacky things that she wouldn't be caught dead in last week but now she was rarely without them. Yusra had drilled the resistance right out of Aleksandra; she could no more easily refuse an order from Judy than she could step off a steep cliff.
	Some day soon, Judy would unveil her to all of her former friends. Until then, they were coaching her on her story. She mentally rehearsed it, because if she messed up she would have hell to pay.
	'My organization made some very bad investments,' she would say, 'and I covered up these losses with bad financial statements. At the last moment, Miss Humphries came in and saved me with her own money. I owe her my life and my freedom. It is only right that I work for her, and she is teaching me how to be a good person.'
	 It paralleled the story that she had forced Ashleigh to memorize, about him having gender identity issues that he needed his stepmother's absolute dominance to help him work through. The irony did not escape her. And what did all of this have in common? Yusra! The she-wolf who could change the world with a snap of her fingers. Her natural dominance combined with an iron-clad legal case made sure that Aleksandra would never step out of line. This was her life now: perched on cheap, pinching stilettos and working 12 hour days. And when she went home...
	"Alex!" Judy said in a voice so shrill that nobody could have tolerated it by choice.
	"Yes, Miss Humphries?"
	"I have a delivery arriving. Please go get the door, sign for it, and bring the package to me."
	She set down the tea pot and went to answer the front door – another of her duties. She retrieved the package and came back to set it on the table in front of Judy.
	"Great! It's your new contact lenses! Why don't you try them on for me, so we know if they fit?"
	Aleksandra looked at the package with distrust. They were colored contact lenses, but the color was 'Russet Brown.' She had heard of women with brown eyes putting on blue contact lenses, but never the other way around! She hesitated – she had always been proud of her blue eyes, and now Judy was about to erase them entirely.
	"Well? What's the hold up? Do I need to contact Yusra?" Judy threatened.
	Darts of fear started to race up and down the Ukrainian woman's spine.
	"No, Miss Humphries! I will put them on now."
	She did so without the aid of a mirror, and felt a creeping dread when she made eye contact with her empoyer. Judy's smile said it all: 'Not so proud now, are you?'
	"Let me see!" Gretchen said, and Aleksandra met her gaze as well.
	"It's a stunning difference! It completely changes the look of her face! I am jealous of you, Judy. It's like you have a doll you can dress up."
	Judy laughed at this comment, and Aleksandra felt completely cowed. She wished she could see herself in the mirror, but she expected that it would make her feel even worse.
	"Are you going to do anything with her hair?"
	"Yes," Judy replied, "In fact, I have an appointment later today to do exactly that..."
	The hairstylist at the salon couldn't believe that Aleksandra would want the dye job that Judy picked out for her. But after being assured that it was alright, she complied and put the dark toner on the roots of her hair. The end result was that she had dark roots, but the rest of her hair was its natural blonde color. This, combined with the brown contact lenses, made it look like she wasn't a natural blonde but a woman with a cheap dye job who was too lazy or poor to do the upkeep on it. She looked at herself in the mirror: oily complexion, brown eyes, grown-out roots. It made her want to cry, but Judy ran her fingers through her hair admiring the work. Once, Aleksandra had clearly been the more beautiful woman between them, but now as she looked at their reflections things were much less clear-cut.
	"If this was the only thing I got to do to you, it would be worth the money I spent," Judy said, stroking her hair repeatedly,
	"But this is only the beginning. Imagine what your friends will think when they see you – you'll be the center of gossip for our entire neighborhood. And they're going to be seeing quite a bit of you, once my book club starts up again. I can hardly wait for them to witness you at my beck and call."
	Judy rested her hands on either of Aleksandra's shoulders and they looked at each other in the mirror.
	"You turned them all against me. Do you know how painful it was for me to be shunned by the women I thought were my friends?"
	Aleksandra made no response. She could only focus on her roots – she realized how much of her confidence derived from her beauty and her wealth. Now that those things were gone, what remained?
	Judy laughed to herself when she saw Aleksandra's pitiable expression.
	"Now YOU will find out how painful it is to be an outsider. Except it will be much worse for you, because you'll be a mere servant. It will amaze you how quickly these women turn on you. It amazed me."
	Aleksandra blinked back tears. Judy went back to stroking her hair – it reminded her the way a mother might comfort her daughter, but in this context it just made her skin crawl.
	"And do you know what the best thing is?" Judy asked rhetorically, continuing:
	"It's that your external appearance is finally starting to reflect how ugly you are on the inside! Ashleigh was a good-for-nothing boy, but even he didn't deserve what you put him through. Not that I care."
	This was too much. A single tear ran down Aleksandra's still-beautiful face, and Judy wiped it away. She softened her tone, but her words were just as cruel:
	"You'll see that people treat you differently, now that you don't look like a runway model... Actually, you know what? Forget what I just said. The best part of this is that you brought this all on yourself! All of your schemes and all of your hard work was just so that you could end up as my maid. You'll do all the reading for me to prepare me for my book clubs, and I'll feed you stupid lines to say so that will make all the women in our neighborhood shake their heads and take pity on you. They will think you're so dull that it only makes sense for you to clear plates and massage my temples to help me think. They'll wonder why they ever looked up to you."
	One thing peaked through the despair that Aleksandra was feeling right now. It was the suspicion that Yusra was laying the same trap for Judy that she herself had fallen victim to. All the facts lined up: Yusra came into Judy's life, offering the woman her heart's desire on a silver platter. But she wouldn't get it so simply. How much had Judy done to get to this point? How deeply was she in their debt already, and did she even realize it yet?
	"Miss Humphries--" Aleksandra began.
	"Shhhh. Unless the next words out of your mouth are 'thank you', I don't want to hear them."
	Aleksandra looked at her reflection and felt more of her resolve melt away. She looked like a poor person, and after looking down on them for so long it completely undercut her confidence to appear like one. She had nothing in her future except being treated like a menial servant by Judy, and as a bedwarmer by Yusra. She took notice of the hangnails forming around her cuticles – another blow to her self-esteem and a result of the cleaning products that her hands were exposed to as part of her new job. Taken all together, it created a certain nervousness within her so that she couldn't find the courage to warn Judy about Yusra's machinations.
	"Thank you, Miss Humphries," was all she said. And no matter how much she despised the woman, she felt a certain elation that came whenever she pleased her 'superior'. She wondered if she would ever get used to this sort of treatment, but then recalled a conversation with Yusra many months ago about how Ash would never adjust to his own circumstances.
	"You're welcome, Alex! Now come along, the Sisters have prototyped a new device that I would like for you to try..."