The Maid For Service Bundle (2 page)

For a few minutes, he talked at length about the duties of the house—cleaning the different wings, dusting and polishing and vacuuming and scrubbing. There were a few art pieces I was to leave alone, as he had specialists come in and inspect them every quarter to address their specific needs. He listed several such pieces—more than I could remember, in fact—and said that if I had any doubts about whether something was too valuable for me to touch or not that I should simply leave it be. I could easily do that, and the rest of what he asked, and I told him so.

He leaned forward then, his massive frame pushing down on the desk. “There is something else.”

“Sir?”

“I have lost a great many maids over the course of my time. Not many last much beyond two or three months. I am a demanding employer, I suppose.”

“I understand, Sir.”

“Possibly it also has to due with my wife, as well. My wife and I...we are both very passionate people.”

I had almost forgotten about his wife.

“Will I meet her soon, Sir? Your wife.”

“She’s out of town at the moment. On one of her little vacations. We had a bit of a conflict recently. As I said, we are passionate. We find it better to sort out our emotions away from each other, otherwise...” he shrugged. “Well. There are a lot of valuables in this house to throw, you understand.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“I expect your discretion in such cases if they occur.”

“Of course, Sir.”

“If you find any of these altercations...unsavory, you may leave immediately. Your guaranteed pay is five thousand dollars. But should you decide to stay on for the duration of your contract—that is, at the end of the year, then you shall be awarded an extra fifty thousand dollars.”

I struggled to stay in my seat. An extra fifty thousand dollars, simply for completing a contract that I had agreed to already?

“That’s very generous of you, Sir.”

If he were to offer that much, though...certainly there was something wrong. I wasn’t completely stupid. Something he was doing was illegal, maybe. Perhaps he was some rich super stud serial killer, banding about the countryside and bringing back virgins here to sacrifice, expecting me to clean up the mess.

Probably I would have run off if I found out that was going on. I don’t know, to be honest. Buried in debt as I was, I was desperate for money and I think I would have done anything at that time to dig myself out of the hole my parents had put me in.

But, I calmed myself by remembering that this was a brilliantly rich man who came from a brilliantly rich family. He probably thought drying himself after a shower was too low-class of a duty for him. Who could even say what he thought was a nasty altercation? All this job would be was working as a maid—and I certainly was no stranger to messes. As I said, my job before this one had been working for a cleaning crew at a dingy inner-city hospital. I knew I could handle whatever was thrown my way here at this estate.

The meeting was over. I stood up to leave.

“Before you begin today,” he said, “I need you to go with Terrance. There are some tests that you must run through before your employment is complete.”

“Driving tests, Sir?”

That was the only thing that made sense to me, as Terrance was handling the car when I came in.

“Driving...? No.” He shook his head, smiling. “Ah. You think he is just the chauffeur. No, Terrance has many responsibilities in my employ. He will explain the rest.”

* * * * *

I
come from a small home in Texas. Despite the smallness of our home, however, we were a large family in number. There were ten of us in a small house that my mother and father had bought right out, after my father won the lottery shortly after his marriage to my mother. They had planned, at the time, for no more than two children. Luckily for me, that turned out to be an underestimation, as I am the fourth of the seven children in the household (though often I was made to feel as the oldest and youngest, depending on the moods of the other children and my parents).

My father liked to say that the lottery win was the last of his luck. Some men, and some women I suppose, are able to grow emotionally when they obtain larger families. Their compassion for the people around them only multiplies as the number of people close to them grow. My father was not such a man.

Shortly after the birth of my older brother—the youngest of the three boys in my family—father lost his hand at the factory, and then grew ill. He developed a strange lung sickness that compelled him to cough all throughout the day and night, and no medicine that we procured could do anything for it.

As you may expect and in fact may in some ways excuse, he more and more often found his escape from the toils of life in drinking and in procreation. As I am the first of my parent’s many experiments in finding out whether a new child would reinvigorate their love for one another, I have always had what my schoolteachers would call a sort of “peculiar melancholy” about me. I knew that while I had been wanted, I was not actively desired. My younger sisters, all three of them, seemed to feel this as well, and all of them went out of their way to rebel to gather father’s attention and mother’s love.

For myself, I tried to be as obedient as possible, to do every last thing these two authoritative figures in my life asked for. Even so, I could never seem to earn their love. To my brothers and sisters, I was a goody two-shoes. To my parents, I was a snob for wanting to right by them and hoping for some affection in return. The lack of my father's income did not stop my mother or even him from spending as they had when they had first obtained their enormous fortune. Before I was fourteen, they had sent us wildly into debt, and to make money, he had all seven of us apply for student loans that went to supporting him. He, and my mother, were rather manipulative in this fashion. I wanted them to live, but I did not want to be responsible for it.

Finally, when I was eighteen, I left their home for the city. I didn’t care where I went, particularly, so long as it was away from them. I managed to find a small closet apartment in a duplex where I roomed with an older woman who smelled like anchovies and farts, probably because she ate lots of anchovy pizzas and farted quite a lot. I spoke to her as little as possible and got a job as a sanitation worker in short order.

Then, through the magic of the internet (which I was able to access only through the library, as my tiny home certainly didn’t have a connection), I found the job at the Castle estate. It was his lawyer who hired me—an attractive young Asian woman who had dressed in smart, tight-fitting suits. She said, after a very long interview that asked me all sorts of hypothetical moral questions, that she thought I would “conform well” to Mister Castle’s interests.

The night after my first day at Castle's estate was over, I lay on the bed and allowed my thoughts to collect.

The tests that Terrance ran on me were unnaturally intrusive. I stuck with them, however, thinking all the while of the money involved. One hundred and fifty thousand dollars, just for sticking with this for a year. I could certainly do that.

He took blood tests, several of them. The entire time, he would not speak to me. I got the feeling very quickly that he hated me for some reason. I didn’t know why, but I didn’t want to press it, lest I give him even more reason to think more of the same.

My stomach grumbled. After the tests, I had been required to do a full tour of the grounds with Elliot, so that I would know where to begin cleaning the next morning. But after the long bout of blood testing, my energy was completely drained, and I hadn’t been able to search the kitchen for a snack. Spoons guarded its interior with a crusty curmudgeonly attitude that was matched only by the amount of ladles he threatened to beat my behind with if I broke or touched anything.

My stomach grumbled again. I had heard of this before, read it in books and such, but I was too tired to even go to sleep. My brain lacked the power to shut itself off.

Struggling, I sat up in the bed. My busty, young form was covered by a slender pair of pajamas—sweats and a two-sizes too-small t-shirt that was one of the few things I had leftover from home. The shirt had on it the faded out color logo from a charity run I had participated in the sixth grade. In my tenure working at the hospital, I had not gathered enough spare income for a decent wardrobe, and certainly not one for sleeping.

Through stumbles and trips, I made my way through the immense mansion, searching out my prey—any food at all.

In the pantry of the large, luminously white kitchen downstairs, I found what I needed. Chocolate. Lots and lots of chocolate. I didn’t want to eat a ton—it was so late, after all—but I certainly was going to down a few bars. Enough to tide me over till morning.

“How do you like it so far?”

I jumped. In the darkness of the kitchen, it was impossible to see who had said that. I heard a light switch flip on, and slowly the lights powered up.

It was Terrance. He was dressed similarly to me, in a small amount of clothing that was perhaps too revealing. Tiny boxer briefs—I could see the outline of his enormous manhood beneath them—and a short white undershirt. Little fingers of heat pressed against my body, seeing him like that. My nipples began to firm up. My crotch tingled. His body was hard and muscular, like a swimmer or a gymnast, with that kind of tight core that every other perfect piece of muscle so clearly wrapped around. Tattoos wrapped around his arms—pictures of interlocking skulls on one side, and the other held flames and flowers.

Let’s get this out of the way right here and now—there was something about him that reminded me of my brothers. Certainly he looked a bit like them—they were all handsome and tall like him, and in very good shape. But it was more than that. It was more in the way he seemed to dismiss me out of hand, the way he didn’t seem to care about anything I said. So, because I am completely unable to deal with my emotional past, I think a lot of my baggage got transferred onto Terrance almost right away—I wanted to impress him. I wanted him to care for me. I wanted him to want to do right by me.

I couldn’t help myself wanting to do this...and yet, at the same time, I could feel myself wanting it, and disliked it, and also disliked it the strange comparisons to my brother when I felt such a rush of sexual heat from Terrance’s presence...and so I decided I hated him.

Hate is so much like love. Either emotion just gathers up all the little minutia about a person; they just go into different baskets, that’s all.

“Did you hear me?” he asked. “I asked you something.”

“Oh,” I gulped. “Yes. I’m sorry. You just startled me.”

“You still startled?”

“No. I suppose not.”

“Okay then. How about an answer?”

“Um.”

I hadn’t had too much time to think about it, really. All day I had been busy. Not run ragged—they certainly weren’t asking me to do anything outside of my area of expertise or willingness—but busy nonetheless. It was a large estate. I figured that I would only have time each day to work through one of its four wings. By the time I made it around to the last, the one I finished originally would need another round of cleaning. The estate was, I noticed, was rather dusty already—the last maid didn’t seem to have done a good job of leaving everything in order.

But, that was all right. There was job security in dirtiness, if nothing else.

“It’s all right. Everyone seems...nice.”

“Nice, huh? That how I seem?”

Right away I knew I had said something wrong...I just didn’t know what it was. Who wouldn’t like to be called nice?

“I...yes? I mean, I don’t really know. We’ve only just started talking...and...”

As I said, I was instantly attracted to him, even though I felt dislike mounting a quick offensive to counter my growing desire. I think his attitude made me even more attracted to him. His muscles clearly visible underneath his tight shirt. The cut shelves of his pecs pressed against his shirt, the tight avenue of his abs trim and succulent.

So, when he came at me—rushed at me, really, I didn’t know what to do. He was bigger than me. He could pin me down if he wanted. I tried not to let myself get carried away with the eroticism of such a thought.

Instead of pinning me, though, or kissing me, he took some of the chocolate out of my hand and took a bite. He smiled at me.

“That tastes nice.”

I nodded. I was still so hungry. I wanted it back.

“Stop being a jerk,” I insisted. “That's mine.”

“Yeah? You want some?”

I nodded again. He slipped the chocolate forward, letting it run into my mouth. Feeling weak and helpless, I let my lips run over it slow, chewing it down. He smiled, watching me. The bastard was enjoying this.

“Here,” he said, rubbing the corner of my mouth with his thumb. He sucked the chocolate off slow. “You’re sort of sloppy at eating.”

“I’m better when I can be the one to hold it.”

“I’ll bet you are.” He put a hand on my hip and pulled me against his body. I didn’t know how to stop him. I didn’t know if I wanted to. “I bet you know just how to...hold it, don't you?”

“I don't know
what
you're talking about. Stop being so crude.”

I tried to back away, but he wouldn't let me, instead tugging me closer. My nipples brushed against his hard chest.

“You’re going to be seeing a whole lot of me in this place. Is that all right by you?”

“I don’t...” I kept gulping for more breath. “I mean, I...yes? Yes...yes.”

That seemed to please him. “Good girl.”

I whimpered a bit. That was something of a trigger word for me. It always had been. It was what I had always longed to be called.

He walked away then, leaving the chocolate on the counter. I was breathless, turned on.

It was only after I started walking back to my room that I realized he had been testing me. He wanted to see how far he could push me, how easy I was or wasn’t to take advantage of. It turned out, I was very easy.

“I’ve got to watch myself in this place,” I said.

I had no idea.

* * * * *