Baby Cage (2 page)

The door opens, and Kayla comes in. “Hi there, baby bear!” she sings to me. At once, her eyes light on me, and it’s clear what I’m doing. But her face doesn’t fall. She doesn’t look hurt or disappointed.

Instead, she places her hands on her hips, leans forward, and asks, “Oh, is the baby girl feeling energetic? Do you want some extra play time today?” I remain there, braced, refusing to fall down onto my butt and also unable to make it all the way over the top of my crib. I can only watch in horror as she pulls out the baby leash.

(Before)

Kayla

My fingers danced along the keyboard as I watched the cursor move across the screen. The words came to life while I reconsidered my tone and the exact note I wanted to strike with this student. His name was Joseph, a small red haired kid who really wanted to do well. In cases like this, I took my position as his professor extremely serious. Once I finished with the explanation of the flaws and potential in his research project, I nodded my head.

I was about to hit send when a pair of arms looped around my chest. I yelped in surprise as a warm mouth touched the back of my neck. With my hair pulled up into a bun, Seth had easy access. He kissed me and pulled me back. My chair rolled along the hardwood floor.

“It’s time for our talk,” he told me. With his arms locked around me from behind, I couldn’t see my fiancé’s face, only in this case I didn’t need to. A jubilant tone lit every word. He sounded predatory and joyful. In a word,
sexy
.

“Are you sure now is the right time?”

Seth let me go and hopped onto the leather couch we kept in the home office we shared. His expression brimmed with confidence. I loved the way he grinned like this. Although we came from different departments, Seth’s ambition and thirst for power matched my own.

For a half-second, I wanted to giggle. Phrases like “the thirst for power” made us sound like super villains from a comic book. But why lie? Seth had a talent for brutal honesty. Sometimes he had to stifle it at work, otherwise too many of his students might break down and run off to the dean. But alone with me, he could be brutally and precisely honest. It was a trait I had started to pick up more and more.

“I am,” he said, his nod both solemn and eager. “We’ve finished the house. We’ve saved up enough money. Neither of need to work now, thanks to my investments. If we wanted to stay home all the time to take care of her, we could do it.”

“What makes you so sure it’ll be a girl?” I asked. Oh my god, I thought, this sounded like a conversation about pregnancy. It wasn’t. Maybe some day we would have a real baby girl, but now we had something else in mind.

Sure, it still included the prospect of diapers and cribs, but we wanted someone a bit more challenging.

Seth’s expression solidified into serious, “I know you. Kayla, you are a wonderful woman, but I think you’d be happiest if you had an adorable baby girl to control and dominate. It couldn’t be a boy. That wouldn’t be enough of a challenge.”

“You think guys are easy to dominate?” I asked, teasing him. “Is that because I have such an easy time controlling you?”

“Careful, young lady, or you’ll end up strapped down on your back. Remember, I know all of your naughty buttons.” He spoke with the calm assurance of another professor who knew all of the answers. In spite of myself, I swallowed since he did know the best ways to arouse me. Worse, Seth had no problem using such information against me. There had been plenty of games in our bedroom where I had been restrained in one way or another and he teased me for minutes or hours. I had been with a couple of guys before Seth, but only he could make me genuinely desperate for his touch and the climaxes he brought.

“Yes, Sir,” I said with a half-serious smirk. He liked it when my mouth crumpled up, revealing my dimples. Sometimes he liked to think of me as a little girl, but submission has never been my strong suit. It wasn’t Seth’s either, hence the need for this conversation. “Just don’t get too cocky.”

“Because I might wake up in the straps?”

“It’s a very strong possibility,” I assured him. Seth may not have been a natural submissive either, but I did enjoy watching him wiggle and struggle beneath me. Naked, he could struggle all he wanted, but he wouldn’t get to orgasm until I allowed it.

We were both dominant. We both wanted to be in control of another person. That was probably why we both gravitated toward college instruction. As professors, we had total control of our domains. Granted, we had department chairs we had to report to, but both of ours happened to be old women more interested in calculating retirement income than actually watching us. We picked the content we taught. We managed the conversations. We taught students what we decided was most important. Both of us took our jobs seriously, and we maintained strict discipline in our classrooms.

After failing a girl for texting once in class, I had a reputation as an instructor not to be defied. Seth got his reputation as a hard ass by making his students write twenty page essays. Our school was small but popular among engineers and liberal arts students, which meant we could be hard. Hell, that’s precisely why so many of our students chose our university and us in particular. They craved a challenge, and we gave them one.

“It’s more than a possibility.”

“Do you think the contract is sufficient?” I asked. We had covered all of the major issues and reviewed it with several attorneys, but this new project would be so much more interesting than a simple renovation or conference. We had to make sure it was perfect.

I leaned back in my chair. We had spent a lot of time and effort on that particular room. And why not? It would be the home of some naughty child who would learn how to behave and obey. I grinned at the thought.

Seth moved over to the coffee table and sat down so he could look over my shoulder. I opened a new window on my laptop and typed in the web address. My computer always had me logged in. At the same time, Seth pulled out a list of students’ names with their email addresses.

I typed in the first name and clicked the search icon. My computer loaded and a girl’s picture popped up with her public profile information. Nineteen and pretty, she had black hair, blue eyes, and adorable freckles. Sara Smith had a generic name and generically pretty features.

I typed in the next name and another pretty girl came up. She had nearly white-blonde hair and bright blue eyes. In her profile picture, Mandy had on a big smile. “Oh no,” I said with a giggle and shake of my head.

“Yeah, this one is too made up and fake.”

“So why suggest her?” I asked with a glance over my shoulder.

“I thought you’d enjoy teaching her how a good girl should look. You know, not like a total whore.” He grinned at me with a nearly feral gleam in his eyes. I loved that expression of his. It was a combination of perfect control and raw desire.

“How about a different choice?”

“Go for it,” he said with a nod.

I typed in another name, another email address, and waited for the screen to load. This next girl came up, and I shook my head, “No. Not her.” Yes, she was cute like the others, and I smirked at the idea of seeing her crawling around, her little diapered butt wagging behind her, but I knew this girl. I also liked her and didn’t think she would do well with the sort of domination we had in mind.

“Why not?”

“Jenny is sweet, but she is also pretty submissive already. I want a challenge.”

“Good,” he said, reached over, and gave my hand a little squeeze. “I feel the exact same way. I want someone who’ll start off resistant and defiant. We’re going to teach her how to behave.”

Lena

My advisor said I was crazy to take seven classes this semester. But then, he didn’t really know me. The other freshmen show up to college and go insane with privilege. They lived at home before college and had parents who told them to go to bed and behave. They fantasized about staying up all night and eating ice cream for breakfast. They imagined their lives as adults like preschoolers.

So it’s really no wonder than I had little but derision for my fellow classmates. The guys wandered between their classes thinking about video games or the next time they could get hammered again. My female classmates weren’t much better. They worried about their boyfriends cheating or how to pick out the cutest sundress. Yes, I took my appearance seriously, and I thought I was cute enough, but I understood what it meant to be an adult.

Unlike pretty much everyone at my school, I came from a foster family. Sure, the different people who took care of me after my parents’ accident were nice enough. I never suffered any abuse like the horror stories most people associate with foster care, but I didn’t get any close bonds either. Early on, I realized it would be up to me to ensure my future. With that revelation, I started to work, and I started to work hard.

My efforts paid off pretty nicely. As I focused on homework and exams through high school, I started to get offers from fairly prestigious universities. In fact, I now ended up at college on a full ride. Academics were respected here, not that you could tell from my peers.

They all loved to party or flirt or worry about the best way to break up with someone. As a scholarship student, I had to live on campus in the tiny dorm rooms, but that wouldn’t last forever. Then I wouldn’t have to pretend to respect my resident advisor, a girl named Angela. Sure, Angela tried to be nice, but she really wanted me to engage with my classmates. She said it was important to socialize, not that I really cared about anyone here.

Those thoughts always swam through my head as I got ready for class. Ambition. That was my defining characteristic. Success was my drug, and I intended to get a lot of it before moving on to my next goals.

It all seemed so easy until one very strange day. It would take me a while to put everything together. By then, it was too late.

Hitching my backpack over one shoulder, I checked the time and headed for the lobby. The dorms were situated a couple hundred yards from the main portion of campus. To get to my next class, I had to make my way through the throngs of students to get to my first class of the day, Communications 102. It was a pretty straightforward course, an introduction to giving speeches and public communication. The course would have been extremely lame except for one thing.

Seth Rowland posed some interesting questions. When I showed up on the first day, I expected a class of touchy-feely conversations about our inner light or how we were all equal and special. Nope. Seth made it very clear that he wanted excellence. He didn’t simply remind us to stand up straight, speak clearly, and enunciate. He gave us arguments and propositions. He made us stand up and defend and analyze whatever points he gave us. It was intriguing, exciting, and more than a little intimidating, even for someone like me.

He also hated it whenever anyone was late. At our last meeting, he promised a special punishment for anyone who happened to be tardy. That’s why I rushed down the hall and back out for the cold.

Before I made it out, I heard a girly voice call my name, “Lena? Hey! Lena! Do you have a second! I swear it’s super important!”

Part of me wanted to continue. I could pretend I didn’t hear Angela. It wasn’t like she could prove I had intentionally ignored her. Reminding myself of how another big part of college life was networking, I stopped before my palms could push the glass doors open. I turned around and plastered a fake smile onto my face.

“What is it?”

Angela reached out and touched her hand to my shoulder. I resisted the urge to shrug her off as she said, “I just wanted to check in, see how you’re doing.”

On some level, I understood that I should have been grateful. How many of the freshmen here missed home and simply longed for someone to talk to? But that wasn’t me, so I said in a very polite manner, “I’m fine. Thank you for asking.”

I would have turned back and left, but Angela’s grip stayed oddly firm. She wasn’t going to let me go so easily.

“Come here. Let’s talk for a minute. Okay?”

Saying no would have been like kicking a kitty, so I suppressed a sigh and let her lead me over to one of the cheap seats they kept in the dorm lobby.

“What’s up?” I asked, hoping to speed this up. I didn’t have a watch on, but I could feel the seconds ticking by. I still had time, but the idea of being late made my skin crawl anyway. “Can I do something for you?”

“No, I just wanted to check in. Like I said, it’s important that you engage.”

“I know.”

“But I haven’t seen you at any of the mixers. Are you alright?” Angela cocked her head to one side. “Are you sure there’s nothing you’d like to talk about? Because I’m here for you. There are people here who care about you.” She spoke with such sincerity and dedication. I wanted to throw up a little.

“I’m fine,” I insisted once more. “Seriously. But I need to get to class.”

“Hang on a moment. There’s a movie tonight in the common room. Do you think you could come?”

“What’s the movie?” I asked, scrambling for a reason not to watch. Maybe if it was rated R or something, I could say no on religious grounds. Again, I fought back the urge to just be honest and tell her I didn’t care about any of the college life stuff. It all seemed like such a waste of energy.