Whenever she sat down in a staff meeting, the slave liked to imagine that everyone in the room could hear her rings click. A big part of her wanted them to—wanted the professional mask she wore five days a week to be humiliatingly shattered, revealing her true nature to the world. But that was not allowed. Her orders were to keep her job and support herself in service to her master. And besides, the rings were far too small to actually jingle and clank. It was only in her mind that they loomed large, each one huge and heavy with its own significance.
The highest one on the right side had been the first, anchored into her flesh after she had first truly surrendered her body to master. She remembered the moment with fond amusement now. How startled she had been that he hadn’t asked; he just ordered her up onto the table, spread her legs, and informed her that he was putting a ring in her. Until that moment the full meaning of having given him her body to do with as he liked had not fully sunk in. And afterward… Afterward she’d thought that she was at the end of the road to slavery. Master owned her body and had modified it to his liking. What else was there to surrender?
Several years and five more rings later she chuckled at her old naiveté. Her assistant shot her a quizzical glance, wondering what the joke was about, but she waved his attention back to the deadly dull quarterly sales report. Before the fourth ring, her own attention would have been riveted to the numbers and charts flashing past on the projector, seeking to divine some subtle trend or overlooked opportunity that she could use to advance both the company or her own career.
It had been one hour—to the minute—before her big interview for VP when master had summoned her with no reason given. Surrendering her career had been so much harder than surrendering her body, but she went. She made no excuses or postponements, only slipped out the back and straight into her car, because “Come at once” meant no delays. And at her master’s home she found the table prepped, and the ring sterilized and waiting to complete her second pair. Now she devoted exactly enough attention to her job to remain a self-supporting slave, and daydreamed of obedience and servitude through staff meetings.
The competitive fire that had fueled her career hadn’t gone away though. It had merely been shifted to a more deeply fulfilling target. Master’s slaves earned their rings for different things, so direct comparisons weren’t really fair, but you didn’t get ahead in business by being hung up on fairness. She knew of only one who wore seven rings (Though there might be others she did not know of. Surrendering her need to know and judge: ring #3), and she was powerfully envious of and determined to surpass them. She couldn’t imagine what more of value she had to surrender to master. But she had felt that way more than once before, and he had always found more to take. So she was confident that she needed only to wait for her next opportunity to shine. If she had to carve out a kidney and lay it at her master’s feet, she would. Anything to grab that ring.