The evening was still young, which was good, seeing as I had a lot planned for her. But since I wasn't at my club, which was where I should've been right now, I had a couple of stuff to take care of first. Luckily, these were things I could do remotely. I didn't need to be at work to get them done.

"I'll be back in an hour or so." I didn't say anything else as I grabbed my dinner plate and rose from my chair.

Emma rose with me and held out her hand. "Go do what you got to do. I'll clean up." She didn't even wait as she grabbed hold of my plate and moved to the sink.

The way she was making herself at home was...oddly satisfying. The house had been so empty for so long, and while I needed my space, I didn't mind sharing it with her.

My office was in my father's style. And just like every room in the house, I hadn't bothered renovating it. No, bothered was the wrong word, more like didn't want to renovate it. This place held a lot of shitty memories, but I wasn't one to run away from them. There was no way I could run either, even if I'd tried.

Some things were impossible to escape. Memories and experiences molded you–the shadows of the past slithered into your soul and shaped it into its own image. There was no changing a soul once it had been shaped. At least, that was what I'd always believed. I thought mine would stay black from years of...crap. I thought it would remain bruised and damaged, and it still were all of those things. But, the lightness I'd felt in Emma's presence, could it be that it too could help remold my soul if given enough time?

Shaking my head at my absurdity, I sat down in my office chair and booted up the computer. I had a couple of documents to go through before I let my body–and mind–get what it wanted.

The suspense was almost the best thing about BDSM, both for the dominant and the submissive. The waiting, knowing something exciting was about to happen. I'd decided we should continue her training, and this time, I would focus on her body's reaction. There was a list of things I wanted her to do, all by one simple command. Of course, it wouldn't happen overnight, but we all had to start somewhere.

After finishing up my work, I grabbed my notebook and went through today's plan. Being a dominant–and especially being a master–planning was an essential part of any training. For now, I had a few things I wanted to train out of her, one of them being her hesitation. Sure, she'd come a long way already, but I wanted it completely gone. When we were through, she would follow our orders without a second thought.

Another thing I wanted to fix was her embarrassment. Purposely humiliating her was one thing but being embarrassed by what should be natural wasn't something I would allow. Emma needed to learn to embrace herself. Only then would she achieve a feeling of inner peace.

Before I went to find her, I made sure the playroom was ready for us. The paddle I'd used on her last time I laid on a table, within reach of where we would be–just in case I had need for it. The room had been aired out recently and I'd also changed the sheets. No-one but me were allowed into this room. Satisfied that everything was as it should be, I closed the door behind me. I swung by my bedroom quickly, and brushed my teeth before moving on to search for our girl.

My house was massive, and it took some time before I found Emma. I should've probably given her a house tour, so she knew where everything was. But, it seemed she didn't have a problem moving around in what I considered a labyrinth.

I located her in what I considered the homiest living room. There was a huge sprawling couch which Emma currently took place in. A ray of sunlight streamed in through the window and made her creamy skin glow seductively.

A flatscreen took up most of the wall opposite the couch, and a part of me was irritated when I saw her watching Netflix, thinking she'd put on the series we'd watched together at Callan's. For some reason, I'd hoped we'd watch it as a group. When I looked closely at the screen, though, it wasn't The Witcher playing, but another show I hadn't seen before. I didn't want to admit how pleased I was that she hadn't started our show without us.

I stood silently and took her in, making sure not to move and drag her attention towards me. The girl was in her own world as her focus was on the TV. No matter how much I'd tried ever since we met her, it was impossible to take my eyes off of her.

Emma was the complete opposite of me in every way. She was the light to my dark. Her mind was pure, and her body was soft. She had humor and smiles that came easily. Like I said, the complete opposite of me. But I found that it pulled me in even further. I didn't want someone like me; I needed someone who could drag me out of my own head and into the present. She didn't know she was doing it, though; she was naïve to her own effect on me.

The girl was laying in the couch, looking relaxed and carefree. I liked seeing that look on her, almost as much as I enjoyed seeing her submit. Since meeting her, my protectiveness had reached a new height. I never wanted anything bad to happen to her, and I considered it my job to give her whatever she needed to stay comfortable.

My mind took me to my conversation with Callan. I'd been beyond pissed, and I was still angry, not at what he'd kept secret, but that he'd kept a secret. Her working at my place, or even studying at Mateo's college, wasn't a big deal, in my opinion. It would be worse if I was an active boss or if Mateo was her professor, but we weren't. Instead, Mark was technically her boss, and I was his, and Mateo had no interaction with her at school. So, what had really been the problem?

Stupid question, I knew, because I knew my friend. Callan had gotten better at his issues as an adult, but they still clung tightly to his mind. The last couple of years, we hadn't been as tight as we used to. I could think logically about that, knowing we were still best friends even if we didn't see each other as often as before. Callan, though, wasn't able to look at the slight gap between us without seeing it with the fear of abandonment coloring his eyes. Deep-seated issues like that could make nothing into something, and in this case, it made him think he was losing us.

So why had he kept it from us? In his mind, I believed he thought it was the only way to bring us back together. We'd never been interested in the same woman before, and he grabbed that opportunity by the horns. Maybe he thought Mateo would be too honorable to become her dominant if he knew she was a student where he worked. To be completely honest, there was probably some truth to that. Mateo was the most honorable among us.

I think at first, Callan was perhaps too focused on keeping his friends together to even think about how this would affect Emma. He'd been interested in her, sure, but either he'd been blinded by that or blinded by his need to bring us back together to say something.

And now...hell, now we were too bound to her to take any chances in revealing the truth. I had a strong suspicion she would've walked away from us if she figured out everything. She was too strong-willed, too independent to accept it all. And we were too egotistical to let that happen. It was wrong, completely fucking wrong, to keep this from her, but what choices did we have now? We had too many secrets, and we would lose her if she knew about them. We couldn't tell her about the PI, or how the membership wasn't sponsored but instead paid by all of us, or how Callan knew about her working for me, and us both knowing she studied at Mateo's workplace.

We'd made a fucking mess, and now we had to live with it.

The sound on the TV was muted, bringing my attention back to her and away from my swirling thoughts.

Her eyes went wide as she took in my brooding mood. Could she sense where my mind had gone? Could she see the secrets I kept?

Mentally pushing it all away, I said gruffly, "Follow me." She hesitated a little, and I growled. It annoyed me how she didn't follow my commands at once, but that was what this training session would be all about.

I led her to my playroom and ordered her to strip. I didn't give her privacy while she unbuttoned her blouse or worked off her pants. After she was done and stood in front of me gloriously naked, I got her to fold her clothes and stack them atop a chair in the corner.

"Present for me," I said, and when she started to kneel, I stopped her. "Not there, in front of me." I was standing on the hard, granite floor while she'd been on the soft carpet.

She moved towards me and once again sank to the floor. She cringed as the cold stones touched her knees, and I inwardly smiled. While I wanted her comfortable in life, I never said I wanted her comfortable with me.

"Today, we'll start conditioning you. Do you know what that means?" I asked.

"I-I've read a little about it, but I don't have a clear picture of what it means, no," she answered softly, a bit hesitantly as well.

"No, what?" I pressed her, my eyes narrowed; even if she couldn't see them, she could feel it.

"No, Daddy."

"Conditioning means, in general terms, to alter your behavior. It can sound scary, but we promise you we won't condition you for anything that can be considered harmful. We will teach your mind to react in the way we desire. There are many ways to do that, but for now, we'll stick to rewards and punishment," I explained. "This will all be to better yourself as a submissive." My voice grew rougher the more I spoke. I wasn't used to speaking long sentences, but I needed her to understand what was happening, and I couldn't do that with a few gruffly spoken words.

"Do you understand?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Yes, what?" I growled.

"Yes, I think so, Daddy," she answered shakingly, affected by my angry voice.

"Good. That will be one of the things we'll start with. For every time you forget to address me properly, I will give you three spanks with my favorite paddle," I informed her and took a sick pleasure seeing her shiver with fear. She was already thoroughly acquainted with the paddle. "And I will not make it feel good for you," I tossed out, wanting to elicit more of that delicious fear.

This would be fun.