A Jewel in the Dirt - 11. Changing faces

"If you keep this up, the welts will never heal."

"And you obviously have nothing better to do than stare at my backside, hmm?"

"No." Tom's grin was clearly audible and Dante rolled his eyes, invisible to Tom, as he smoothed out the pillowcase on the clothesline. Before bending down for the matching blanket cover- the last item in the basket- he glanced over his shoulder. Tom was leaning in the doorway, arms folded in front of his chest, watching Dante work. His posture, his look, his smile- there was something possessive about it. Something demanding.

'I'll only take what you're willing to give.' Sure you will, my friend.

Dante returned the smile, took the last piece of laundry and stepped further into the laundry room before tossing the cover over the high hanging line; he felt the strain and tension in the scabbed welts. A soft sound of bare feet on smooth floor came closer and he smiled to himself- Tom was predictable. And now that they were out of sight from the door, Dante was not surprised to find Tom's hands coming to rest on his waist. Unconcerned, Dante smoothed out the bed cover before leaning against Tom, who made a warm embrace of it.

Nuzzling behind Dante's ear, he whispered: "You smell good..."

Dante hummed in agreement, after all Mistress Alice had bought him a new set of bathroom products and yes, damn, the stuff was expensive and smelled indescribably masculine-sweet-good.

Tom kissed him behind the ear, a little down the neck, until Dante turned his head and their mouths found each other. Dante would be lying if he said he didn't enjoy Tom's attention, his kisses, his hugs. It was an incredible feeling to be wanted, to see the hunger in Tom's eyes when he couldn't control himself and let one of the stolen kisses get out of hand.

Tom's hand slipped into Dante's pants and although he had Dante's dick in his hand for the moment, it was Dante who held the reins. For he was the one without a cage, the one with the mistress he could ask for things, who had assured him of her backing with just a few words after he had made peace with Tom. Tom knew that. They played with each other, but so far, without a doubt, Dante was the winner. He took, but he did not give. However, he wasn't sure what Tom was truly interested in here.

"Don't..." he mumbled as he started to get hard under Tom's gentle touch. "I need to get back upstairs."

Sighing, Tom withdrew his hand. "Maybe next time your mistress goes on a trip, we'll be far enough along that she'll leave us my key."

A little confused, Dante turned in his arms while he carefully rearranged his privates. "It sounds like this is going to come down to a relationship."

With a strange little smile, somewhat fake, he said: "If that's what you want, that would be nice..." Fake shyness, Dante decided.

"That would be permissible?"

"Who cares about a work slave and a whatever slave whose mistress is ironclad monogamous? No, wait, that sounds crappier than it is. No one cares because it basically never happens. The thing is, most slaves get their cage so early that they never develop any real sexuality, and if they do, it dies off sooner or later."

"Not with you, obviously," Dante teased, and Tom smiled.

"Not with you, either." He stroked Dante's cheek tenderly- small gestures like this almost made Dante forget that he didn't trust Tom any farther than he could throw him. But he hungered for attention, for affection, and he leaned involuntarily into the touch. "Little liberties and concessions are good for morale, Dante, women know that," Tom murmured, leaning in to kiss Dante, but heavy footsteps on the basement stairs made him pause.

They backed away from each other and Dante grabbed the laundry basket to take it back to the adjacent laundry room. In the hallway, he paused.

"Frank?"

Frank pulled off his shirt as he walked and half turned around. "Hey..."

"What happened?", Dante wanted to know and started moving again.

"Hrmph. Britney bought a new slave." Frank looked anything but thrilled.

"I thought they wouldn't buy a new one until Adam or Douglas were sent to the retirement house," Tom piped up in surprise.

"He's not a work slave." Frank returned somberly and Tom quietly went 'oh' while Dante put the basket away and pulled a fresh shirt for Frank from the 'to be ironed' pile.

"So what exactly happened?" he wanted to know, accepting the wet shirt and tossing it into the matching basket.

"Ethan spilled my juice all over my shirt." Now Frank was back to being the boy who was interested in adult concerns only as far as they related to himself.

"So Ethan will be... sold?" Dante asked cautiosly.

Frank nodded, while Tom said with a half-shrug: "Most likely."

Dante swallowed as pity filled his stomach. Ethan had been here for nearly thirteen years as Miss Britney's personal slave, he should have been Jessy's father and even though he wasn't, he raised the girl with all the love he could muster. Dante and Ethan may not exactly be friends and may never become, but this was hard.

He followed Frank back upstairs and made as unobtrusive as possible a detour to the living room. There Miss Carolyn sat at the table, a calculator and notepad before her; Blaise stood behind her with a slightly guilty expression. Miss Britney seemed to be pacing restlessly, and beside the couch, kneeling in perfect posture, was a young man with dark brown hair.

Dante immediately retreated and headed for the kitchen. Ethan, Daniel and TJ were sitting at the table, Mikey was leaning against the fridge chewing on a fingernail, Seth was standing kind of indecisively in the middle of the room and turned to Dante.

"What does it look like?" he asked with the calmness of experience, and Dante shrugged.

"Looks like Miss Carolyn is calculating things."

Ethan sobbed dry and buried his face in his hands, awkwardly TJ patted his arm.

Seth nodded thoughtfully and Dante joined the tense waiting group for good, leaning against one of the kitchen counters and keeping his eyes on the door.

It was a long time before Miss Carolyn appeared. An unusually gentle expression was on her round face and she nodded to Seth before saying: "Ethan, come with me, please. Seth, wait here, will you? The rest of you go to bed."

"Yes, miss."

"Yes, mistress."

Somehow Dante had expected something different, but this was just a tad more personal than the procedure he knew from the past. But maybe that came later; after all, Miss Britney had caught her mother off guard with her apparently very impulsive purchase, and a slave didn't sell himself with a snap of fingers. Dante glanced at Ethan, who was for real crying silently now, looked at Seth, who nodded at him encouragingly, and then half bowed to his matriarch before leaving the kitchen.

~

Usually, the other house slaves appeared for breakfast preparations just as Frank was leaving, but today even Daniel, who was usually the first, didn't show up and Dante couldn't help a certain uneasiness creeping up the back of his neck.

"Good morning."

He winced and almost dropped the tea can he was about to put back in the cupboard. "Morning." he said in surprise, seeing the new slave standing in the doorway.

Flynn. That was all Mistress Alice had been able to say either.

Flynn was wearing a charcoal gray shirt which seemed a size too small, and dark green loose pants of a strangely wrinkled fabric, with matching slippers. Beneath the dark brown stubble which merged into what had once been a fine chin beard, he appeared to be very young- perhaps he was not even of age.

As no further response came, Dante indicated a nod and put the tea can away, closing the cupboard and returning to the kettle, which by now was bubbling audibly.

"I need breakfast for my mistress," Flynn finally said in the slightly condescending tone of a pleasure slave who was waited on from dawn to dusk- almost like his mistress. Dante had learned to hate that manner.

"The kitchen is at your free disposal," he said coolly over his shoulder, grabbing a teaspoon to put honey in Mistress Alice's teacup.

"I don't know what she wants."

"Well, neither do I." Dante half-turned and punctuated his words with a shrug; Flynn still stood in the doorway as if the kitchen were a forbidden place. This young man had certainly never had his hands in the dishwater for hours or scrubbed floors. The kettle clicked quietly over the loud bubbling and Dante turned to his own duty; he was rescued by Seth in the background.

"Flynn... is there a problem?"

"I'm supposed to get breakfast for Mistress Britney." Again, that condescending tone.

"Well, before getting, there's preparing," Seth said seriously.

Dante grabbed Mistress Alice's heavy teacup, then gave Seth a smile.

"Toast is there on the shelf, the toaster is behind the cover there. There are plates, there's cutlery. Jam's in the fridge.", Seth explained with little finger pointing, and Dante just caught sight of Flynn's aghast face before he left the kitchen.

~

"You must have gained some experience with pleasure slaves in Denser's Port, right?", TJ wanted to know after a cautious glance over his shoulder and Dante nodded.

"They get their brains trained into their dicks and the muscles are just for looking at."

Mikey chuckled silly from the table and Dante grinned wryly at him before joining him with a cutting board and knife.

"Really?"

"Really. Miss Britney accused me on my first day of just standing around looking pretty, but that's truer of pleasure slaves. The ones I know can't do anything." He reached for the broccoli to cut it into florets, and Mikey chuckled again.

"He's really going to have fun here," TJ remarked dryly, clinking with the spice jars while seasoning the minced meat for the meatballs.

"Probably," Dante agreed with him.

"Probably- what?" Seth asked curiously.

Dante saw by Mikey's expression that Flynn was here, too, so he said politely: "We talked about Flynn probably fitting in here as easily as me."

Mikey spluttered over the potato he was peeling, and TJ sighed.

"He ate a clown for breakfast today."

Seth, on the other hand, snorted, unconvinced by Dante's answer. "If by fitting in well you mean getting whipped twice already in a matter of weeks, I don't want to know what a difficult start looks like for you."

"A difficult start is when you're told right on your second day by your mistress's favorite pleasure slave that you don't even need to unpack your clothes," Dante replied coolly, and Mikey choked on his giggle.

Seth sighed deeply. "Flynn, go sit with them and dice up some onions for TJ. And then-"

"Onions?" Flynn sounded horrified.

"You know, those round things making you cry when you cut them," TJ said casually, and Dante regretted not being able to see Flynn's face. The boy hesitantly but smoothly sat down next to Dante at the table and Seth was gracious enough to hand him a cutting board, a knife and three onions.

"I don't like broccoli," Flynn then declared critically, and Dante gave him a quick glance.

"Don't have to eat vegetables."

"Aren't there any choices?"

"Eat or don't eat."

Mikey chuckled again and Dante had to smile too as Flynn shot an annoyed look across the table.

"Guys, get along," Seth admonished from the refrigerator.

"You have to peel the onions first...", Dante said kindly and Flynn finally looked at the onions now.

"Like an apple?"

Mikey laughed again.

"No..." Dante had thought he himself wouldn't fit in here on the farm, but Flynn...

"Don't pull faces like that, Great Mother, or Mistress Carolyn will put her foot down and sell all of you," Seth grumbled, while Mikey forgot his potatoes from laughing so hard.

~

The day had been exhausting for all the house slaves, and Flynn was rubbing up the wrong way- it certainly wasn't intentional, and he probably didn't even always realize it, but Dante could see Seth's approaching despair. Ethan, whom they had only gotten to see at mealtimes, would leave a big gap.

As a final act of the day, Dante took Flynn down to the basement to unload the washing machine. Seth had explained the machine to him earlier, but judging by the look on Flynn's face, Dante guessed not much of it had stuck.

"So, you haven't been here long..." Flynn started a little stiffly as Dante opened the washing machine and slid the laundry basket underneath. "Where are you from?"

"Denser's Port."

"That's... pretty far away."

"Yup." Dante pulled the wet laundry into the basket and gave Flynn a prompting look, which the boy ignored- instead, again with a condescending expression on his face (probably his standard, Dante thought), he looked toward the door.

"Ah, there's the fresh meat," Tom said with the same condescension. "Are they going to change out the whole staff now?"

"I don't think so. No one else would want you anyway," Dante scoffed, grinning at Tom. "Now let us do some work."

"Hey, hey... I don't think my eyes are going to stop you from working. What's your name, sweetie?"

At the salutation, Flynn's face contorted disdainfully. "Flynn." He almost spat the word at Tom's feet.

"You shouldn't mess with Tom," Dante said casually, and since the situation certainly wasn't going to resolve itself within the next few seconds, he left the heavy laundry basket for now.

"No.", Tom agreed with him and grinned. "You know, sweetie-"

"Flynn."

"- I've got a trained bodyguard, the master of the house, and the son of the house on my side."

"Well, now, don't get carried away," Dante admonished gently. Now that he could practically look at it as an outsider, Tom's behavior seemed almost territorial.

"You told me you were a bodyguard," Tom defended himself, and Dante rolled his eyes.

"That's not what I meant."

"If you are a bodyguard... were... then what are you doing here?", Flynn wanted to know skeptically.

"I've messed with bed bunnies like you one too many times," Dante said dryly, picking up the laundry basket after all.

"Dante's got balls, you know," Tom explained sternly.

"Great Mother, Tom, why don't you just shut up?"

"Why? You've got balls, I know it. Unless, of course, you've lost them since the last time I checked."

"Tom..." With an annoyed look, Dante walked past him and got a pat on the butt. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tom half bow to Flynn as he tried to follow him.

"I'll look forward to testing your services."

Flynn hissed an unintelligible reply.

"My, my... don't be so aggressive," Tom purred, and Dante sighed.

"Tom, that's enough."

Tom laughed, pressed a kiss to Dante's cheek and disappeared with an affected wave.

"Is he always like this?", Flynn wanted to know quietly after they reached the next room.

"No. Right now, he was in a good mood."

Even in the lousy lighting, Dante saw Flynn turn pale. "Great Mother, such behavior is disgusting."

"Which part of his behavior do you mean?"

"This..."- he made a sweeping gesture- "everything! You belong to Miss Alice! How dare he touch you! He's just a worker!"

Dante half-lowered the blouse he had just slid onto a hanger, and asked seriously: "What kind of training house are you from?"

"An open one." was the pinched reply, and Dante pressed his lips together for a moment. Open training houses for pleasure slaves meant nothing more than renting out their charges by the hour for training purposes and for little money.

After a breath, Dante turned back to the laundry and said coolly: "That makes you nothing more than an underage whore and you should be careful about throwing prejudice around. I may be a personal slave, but I still work with Tom and Frank. Outside."

Flynn was speechless for a moment. "You let him touch you..." Obviously, this went against everything he had been taught.

"Yeah. And? That's my choice, you know." Dante hung up another blouse.

"Your mistress... I mean, how dare you?"

"I don't understand your problem."

"Men serve their mistresses, Dante, and don't mess around with other slaves! How dare you betray her like that?"

Despite the vehemence of the words, Dante merely raised a brow. "My mistress is happiest when she doesn't see me during the day and can sleep in peace at night. She doesn't care what I do as long as I follow orders, behave myself, and don't get on her nerves." Perhaps a bit crassly put, but true to the core.

Now Flynn actually seemed as if his world had been turned upside down. "Men," he whispered, "are only allowed to experience pleasure through their mistress."

"What fanatical fringe group do you belong to?", Dante wanted to know skeptically, and promptly Flynn grimaced.

"I serve my mistress as the Great Mother intended me to as a man."

Dante nodded thoughtfully. "Well, then... have fun."

Something flashed in Flynn's eyes, and Dante silently wondered if he had just blown it with a bed bunny for the umpteenth time.

~

The zipper of Mistress Alice's travel bag buzzed; Mistress Alice sighed.

Dante stood by attentively, giving her a confident smile as she looked at him thoughtfully.

"I'm still not sure it's a good idea to leave you here without a cage."

"If it makes you feel better, just put it on me." Dante indicated a shrug, and she sighed again.

"I'm afraid it would take certain decisions from you."

"What do you mean?"

"Come on, how long is Tom going to be satisfied with making out?"

Dante blushed, but replied firmly: "He'll take a no for an answer."

"Are you sure about that?" Mistress Alice raised a brow skeptically. "And if so, how often?"

"Blaise no longer has access to his key."

"Oh, come on, Dante, don't be so naive! Ma doesn't care one bit whether the slaves can wash themselves properly downstairs or not. It didn't take Pa three days to get the key power back." She shook her head. "But well, I told you I wouldn't interfere with this. Your business. But be warned, Tom has his pride and your little game can't go on forever."

"I know." Dante returned, trying not to make a face.

"I'm not so sure about that..." Mistress Alice grabbed her bag and stepped in front of Dante, so close that he could smell the cherry scent of her deodorant. "You're a free man at heart, Dante," she said quietly, putting a hand on his chest, "and we really ought to thank the Great Mother every day for adding a smart and sensible brain to you. But Tom is not only free in heart, but also in mind. Before he came here, he was a free man. Keep that in mind when you try to twist each other around your fingers, will you?"

"Yes, Mistress." Dante murmured, dumbfounded, and winced when she kissed him on the cheek.

"Be good while I'm gone."

"Yes, Mistress." He nodded, she patted his chest and then just walked away without even giving him a chance to carry her bag.

Tom had been free? That probably explained a lot. The intriguing question was what had happened to make him a slave- but Dante wouldn't ask him directly about that for all the money in the world.