New Title: Civic Compact
Well, it's that time again. That is, time for a DomCo tie-in story! Since closing things up on the main series with Korrupting Kayla, I've been itching to get something written in that universe again. In this release, we're looking at things from another side: inside the backroom dealing that happens in the swamp.
Black Room members, this title is available to download from the member area now.
This story follows Heather, a low-level mail girl working in the office of Congresswoman Rebecca Midwell. Heather's job is simply to answer mail from constituents. She writes the kinds of words that average Americans want to hear from their representatives. Compassion, acknowledgement, understanding. She makes the voters believe that Midwell has their best interests at heart. It's easy to do, because Heather believes it, too.
Heather is meant for more than answering mail, though. She wants real power to make real change, to drain the swamp, like so many others before her. Now Rebecca Midwell is making a push for her latest initiative to become a federal program. The Civic Compact.
The Midwell Foundation, backed by its corporate sponsor, DomCo, wants to help young women get off of jobs behind desks and teach them valuable skills as Civic Fellows: aides to the wealthy and influential. Things like being camera-ready, complementary service, hospitality, readiness, and after-hours representation.
All of these under the headline that Heather has written: Show up as the room needs you.
Only, Heather's headline doesn't mean what she intended it to. Midwell's used her phrase and honeyed the language in the bill in order to cover up its true purpose: turning the Civic Fellows into little more than sexual favors and prostitutes for powerful perverts who control the swamp.
Kinks served: Psychological manipulation, blackmail, corruption, slut transformation, reluctance, girl/girl, gender betrayal
Length: 75,000 words
Chapter Headings
The Mail Room
The Slot
The Letter
The Camera
The Reception
The Drink
Home
The Women Who Already Knew
Julie Calls
The Trip
The Clip
The Foundation Room
Heather Tries to Stop It
What Heather Calls Help
The Room
The Smoother Sentence
The Day It Clears
The Track
What the Bill Bought
Heather's Hand
The Promise
Stay the Night
The Proof
The Same Sentence
Installed
Off the Cycle
Preview Chapter: The Clip
On Monday Heather put on her headphones and opened the newest Foundation video before she had taken off her coat.
District Rollout: Best Practices.
Julie stood at the head of a folding table in the satellite conference room in the green dress. The ring light caught the edge of her hair. Next to her sat the new girl, Brianna Holmes, the March intake. Brianna was slumped. Her hands were curled in her lap. Nobody had told her yet what her body was for.
The video started in the middle, with Julie's hand on the back of Brianna's neck.
"Shoulders back," Julie said, and pushed. Not hard. Enough. She put her hand on the side of Brianna's jaw with her thumb on the hinge. "Now up. Eye line to the camera."
The accent was Heather's. The rhythm was all Rebecca. Flat, precise, a little bored.
"Show up as the room needs you," Julie said.
Heather felt it in her teeth.
Julie held the pose, hand on the girl's jaw, and said it again. Then she smiled and turned to the lens. "Again?"
"Again," Brianna said. Her voice was small. She did the move.
Heather scrubbed back five seconds and watched it twice. Julie used the line exactly the way it was printed in the public document. Heather had drafted that document. The Foundation had published it without changing a comma.
In the background the coordinator with the blond twist was tapping on a tablet. Otherwise the room was empty.
Heather watched her own words do their work. Julie used them to move another girl, and the other girl moved. Hands. Posture. Repetition. Heather had built this and now it ran without her. She was horrified. Under the horror was pride, small and specific and ashamed of itself, and it did not go away when she told it to.
The press inbox pinged.
Hospitality and the Compact. From Chris Jenson, Capitol Daily. Jenson lived on after-hours scoops and staffer drama. He had once broken a senator's affair by publishing the man's Venmo history.
Two sources say your office is providing "after-hours company" to members and donors while the Compact is held in Cole's committee. Both say staff are aware, and that at least one instance in the past thirty days involved a district Fellow. I'd like your comment by five.
District Fellow. That was not a phrase you used by accident. He knew about Julie.
Somewhere on the shared drive there was a hallway photo. Comment due by five. It was 9:54.
So there it was.
She had always thought it would feel like something. The door you could walk out of. In movies it came with music. It came as a Gmail notification.
She could write back. Yes. I'll go on the record. I have files. She had the ring-light still in her own folder. She had the Readiness Confirmation email. She had the audio. She had Julie on the phone saying I thought about you watching. She could hand Chris Jenson the Midwell Civic Foundation and DomCo with a bow on top.
The Compact would die in Cole's committee. Rebecca would go down. So would Heather. The folder would come out of the drawer. Julie's elevator photo would run in a newsletter. Diane would read it in line at the Giant.
And the Male Rights bill would still pass. The pipeline would still exist. Somebody other than Heather would write the sentences.
She saw all of it in about four seconds. It was the fastest she had ever thought.
Rebecca's reflection appeared in the glass wall behind her.
"What do you have?"
Heather turned the screen. Rebecca read the subject line and the first sentence and did not blink.
"Handle it," she said.
"How?"
"However you handle things." Rebecca was already looking at her phone. "Don't make me read about it."
She left. Heather understood, watching her go, that this was a test too. Maybe Rebecca had known it was coming. Maybe Rebecca had sent it. A girl who sees the door and doesn't take it is worth more than a girl who never saw a door.
Heather did the count twice. Once more for her hands.
***
She forwarded Jenson's email to the communications director with the subject line unchanged. Then she went to the bathroom at the end of the hall and used it as a phone booth.
Jenson picked up on the third ring. "Ready to go on the record?"
"I have a statement, if you want one."
"Love that. I'll need more than we deny the charge."
"We're not denying anything. I want you to get the story right."
"Okay," he said. "Sell me."
Heather looked at herself in the mirror. Top button undone. She buttoned it.
"If you want to write about girls giving blowjobs for bills, you'll get your clicks," she said. "But this program is young women learning to survive a room. The story is that girls in public service are smarter and tougher than any man who ever tried to eat them alive."
He laughed. Not unkindly. "So it never happened?"
"I'm not discussing rumors. I'm offering you a real interview. Come to the district. Meet the first cohort. Ask about the stipend. Ask about the job-center-to-Fellows pipeline. Ask how the Foundation pays for a girl's face and expects her brain."
"You sound like you're selling it."
"It's a good program," Heather said. "And you'll fuck it up if you write the hospitality rumor and nothing else."
She heard her own voice. It was Rebecca's from the town car. It was Rebecca's over the bourbon glass. Heather had been in Washington less than a season and her mouth had already been fitted for someone else's sentences.
"Do you want to name the girls?" Jenson asked.
"No. I'll give you one on camera this week."
"And the hospitality question?"
"You can ask it. She'll answer."
She'll answer. Heather was offering him Julie. She was offering Julie to a reporter the way Rebecca had offered Heather to Cole. With a promise that the girl would perform.
"You know I have the photo," Jenson said. "The hotel hallway."
"I know what week it was taken. I know who took it. The Foundation already audited it."
"They say the girl in it's you."
Heather let the quiet go on. She could feel her pulse in the hand holding the phone.
"If you want to say that," she said, "put your name on it."
"I will. But you have to give me the district Fellow. By Thursday."
"Done."
She hung up first.
She took the long way back and sat down with her palms flat on the table. They were shaking. It was not fear. She knew fear by now. It was the other thing. The thing from the town car when Rebecca said decide who provides them. She had just played a reporter, and won, and her panties were damp.
The communications director's reply came in seconds. I'll call his editor.
Do it now, Heather wrote.
She could hear the call through two glass walls. If you run this without a named source, you're off every briefing list. You'll never see a draft. You won't get the blast. You'll be the last to know when the real story breaks.
"Twenty-four hours," the editor said, on speaker.
"You have twelve," the director said.
The legislative correspondent rolled over to the partition, eating almonds.
"Was that Jenson?"
"Maybe."
"Did you just spin Chris Jenson?"
"I offered him a better story."
"Is it better?"
"It has more pictures."
He ate an almond. "Same move she made in '19," he said. "Different reporter."
"Did it work in '19?"
"That reporter covers sports now."
***
She opened the Foundation folder on the shared drive and scrolled to the week of the backdated letter. The picture was there. hallway, Feb 16, proof. She was at the edge of the frame, half hidden by the door hinge, her face turned away. Her body was hers, though. She knew her own ass. Several people did now.
She made a new folder and named it Lead Only. She moved the picture into it. The system warned her: Restricted to Owner. She clicked confirm.
She told herself that was protection. If I hold it, nobody else can use it. It was the logic of a drawer. She had learned it from a woman who kept one.
She texted the coordinator. Is the video briefing internal only?
Five minutes later: Internal.
To whom?
Lead and principal only. No press.
Principal was Rebecca. Lead was her. Somewhere in a database, without anybody asking her, Heather Stamper had been promoted to the person who decided who saw the girls.
She looked at herself in the dark monitor. Dark rings under her eyes. Jaw set. Six weeks ago, at the folding table, she would have written this woman a warm letter. Thank you for trusting us with your story.
***
Jenson never ran the hospitality item.
On Wednesday the Capitol Daily ran three paragraphs on the Midwell Fellows under the headline Service Pipeline in Practice. The photo was Julie from the video still. Green dress. Hand on Brianna's jaw. Perfect smile. It quoted the district numbers, the stipend increase, and Show up as the room needs you. Nothing about a hotel. Nothing about a suite. At the bottom there was an editor's note: Civic Compact markup postponed.
Julie texted the link the minute it went live, with a row of exclamation points so long it wrapped.
You look good, Heather typed.
She had put Julie's face on a puff piece to bury the story of what was being done to Julie. She'll answer, she had told Jenson. Julie had answered. Julie had smiled.
Julie called ten minutes later.
"I'm in the Capitol Daily."
"I saw."
"My mom printed it. She doesn't have a printer. She went to the library."
"That's commitment."
"Brianna's furious. She says she looks like a hostage."
"She's slouching."
"That's what I told her!" Julie was laughing. "I said, if you didn't slouch you'd look like a Fellow. She said she is a Fellow. I said, then act like it."
"You said that?"
"I said it in your voice," Julie said. "It works better in your voice."
Heather didn't say anything.
"Who set it up?" Julie asked. "The article?"
"I did."
"Why?"
"Because somebody was going to write something," Heather said. "I wanted it to be this."
"Was the other thing bad?"
"The other thing was about hotels."
There was a short silence.
"Oh," Julie said. "Then thank you."
"Don't thank me."
"I'm thanking you," Julie said. "Live with it."
***
At 6:10 Rebecca called her into the inner office.
Every light in the suite was off except Rebecca's lamp and the red light on the webcam on her monitor. Rebecca was in the black suit with nothing under the jacket. Her lipstick was dark.
She shut the door. "You handled it."
Heather nodded. For once she did not smile.
Rebecca leaned on the desk with her palms flat. "Do you know how many girls would have fucked that up?"
"Enough that you picked me."
"Exactly." Rebecca sat and crossed her legs. "And do you know how many would have called him back and said yes, I'll talk?"
Heather did not answer.
"I watched you think about it. Through the glass. Four seconds. Your hand went to the mouse and stopped." Rebecca's eyes were warm. Terribly warm. "Everybody gets that moment once. Most girls spend it. You invested it."
Heather's chest loosened.
"Do you know what happens now?"
"You get the bill."
"You get the reward." Rebecca pointed at the navy. "Take it off."
Heather unzipped it and let it drop. Nothing under it. She had stopped wearing anything under it on after-hours days, and after-hours, it turned out, was most hours. The air hit her thighs and her tits. She stood there and waited.
Rebecca held out both hands, palms up. "Come here."
Heather went. Rebecca pulled her down into her lap, straddling her, so Heather's pussy pressed on the seam of Rebecca's skirt. Rebecca's hands found her waist and then the small of her back and held her there. Then the left hand went down between them and parted her.
Two fingers went in in one motion and curled. Heather tried for four in, six out. The count broke when Rebecca pressed the heel of her hand onto her clit and began grinding in tight circles.
Rebecca's right hand went into her hair and pulled her forward and kissed her.
Not a brush. Tongue. Teeth on her lower lip. Lipstick and heat.
It was the first time Rebecca had kissed her. Heather had been fingered, inspected, bent over, filmed, and made to come on command, and nobody had kissed her. She opened her mouth and let Rebecca set the pace. Her pussy clutched the fingers. Her wet ran down onto Rebecca's skirt.
Rebecca pulled back half an inch. "You're a slut for coverage."
"Yes," Heather said into her mouth.
She meant it. That was the discovery, right there in Rebecca's lap with two fingers inside her. She was not a slut for cock. She'd had three cocks now and they were fine. They were work. She was a slut for this. For being handled correctly. For being told she did it right. For the folder. For her name in a database next to the word lead.
She was a slut for power, and she had found out by getting some.
Rebecca fucked her harder at an angle that made her hips jump. Rebecca pinned her with the other arm and did not slow down. It built at the base of Heather's spine and climbed. Her head dropped onto Rebecca's shoulder. The count was gone.
She came loud. She bit Rebecca's neck hard enough to leave a mark and ground down on the hand until everything in her locked and then let go.
Rebecca let her breathe. Then she slid her fingers out and wiped them on Heather's thigh.
"That's the reward," she said. "That's not the coverage."
She stood and turned Heather around and bent her over the desk. She swept the Compact drafts aside with one arm. A hand between Heather's shoulder blades pressed her cheek down onto the wood. Heather's eyes found the webcam's red light.
Rebecca opened the bottom drawer. The same drawer. She took out a glass plug, clear and smooth, a bulb at one end.
Heather stared at it. It had been in that drawer the whole time. Next to her folder. Under it. Office supplies.
"Is that—"
"It's been there since before you were hired," Rebecca said. "Every girl wonders what's in the drawer. Now you know."
She slicked it from the same brand of travel bottle she had given Heather on Saturday. She bought in bulk. She spread Heather's ass with one hand.
"Breathe out. Six counts. You know how."
Heather breathed out. The plug went in slowly and then all at once, the bulb seating with a small pop. Heather moaned and did not try to stop it. Rebecca turned it and drew it out and pushed it back. A whimper came out of Heather each time.
The glass warmed inside her. She was absurdly full. She was bent over the desk where she had initialed a lie, and she was full.
"Say the line."
"Show up as the room needs you."
"Good slut."
Rebecca worked the plug and then Heather's clit and then the plug, until Heather was shaking again with her hands gripping the edge of the desk.
"Say it for the camera."
Heather lifted her head. In the monitor she saw a woman bent over a congressional desk with her mouth open and a glass plug in her ass. "Show up as the room needs you."
Rebecca fingered her until she came again, and this time something new happened. A hot rush, and a clear spray onto the wood. The blotter soaked it up and left a dark stain the shape of no state Heather recognized.
She had never done that before. She stared at it.
The scheduler is going to put the mail on that tomorrow, she thought.
Rebecca patted her ass and left the plug in. She went back to her chair and crossed her legs.
"You'll write the remarks for markup."
"Yes."
"The plug stays in. You'll wear it to the office. Every day, until I say otherwise." It was her dress-code voice. "I want you to feel it every time you sit down at that folding table. I want you to remember who writes these sentences."
Heather's face burned. Her pussy clenched on nothing. "Yes."
"Your dress is on the floor."
Heather picked it up and put it on with nothing under it. The plug shifted on every step. Cold and heavy and true.
At her table she sat down very carefully. The plug pushed up into her and she made a small noise that a month ago she would have been ashamed of. She had lost count of the weeks. She had files instead.
She opened the Compact document. She left after-hours representation where it was. She typed until her hands went numb.
On the way out she passed Rebecca's open door. Rebecca did not look up.
"Plug still in?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Good."
Heather walked to the elevator with her thighs pressed together and her face blank. In the elevator, alone, she let herself lean against the wall, and the plug moved, and she let it.
The Black Box: Volume 13
This edition of The Black Box contains the novel Civic Compact, six included novellas from The Black Room, and an illustrated bonus story. Every title is also available individually in the shop.
Civic Compact - 75K words - Kinks served: Psychological manipulation, blackmail, corruption, slut transformation, reluctance, girl/girl, gender betrayal: In the heart of the D.C. swamp, Heather works at the mail desk of Congresswoman Rebecca Midwell. It's not a position of power, but it's the foot in the door that could get her recognized and lead to a place where she can enact real change. Heather is like many other idealists who have come before her, eager to drain the swamp and set things right in a town rife with corruption and backroom dealing. Answering constituent letters brings the attention she's been waiting for from the Congresswoman herself, and now Heather's been tasked with writing the public-facing copy for Midwell's new bill, The Civic Compact. The language is what the public wants to hear: Opportunity, hospitality, complementary service. But the intent behind those words is wholly different. Sponsored and funded by the DomCo corporation, the Compact's true purpose is to train these women to accept degradation at the hands of powerful men. Heather realizes the truth, but only after Congresswoman Midwell has already gathered evidence of Heather in compromising positions. Now Heather faces a choice: to blow the whistle and ruin her chances of ever having the power to change things in the halls of power, or to continue working on getting legislation passed that funds the degradation of her gender. Moving a bill through markup may require the kinds of favors only wet holes can provide.
Milked Into the Herd - 13K words - Kinks served: Hucow transformation, lactation, breast expansion, forced personality modification, nonconsent, breeding kink, public display: Rebecca Kerr earned this trip. She's a top-performing accountant with a corporate incentive packet and a laptop full of projections, and she expects a quiet wellness retreat in the pines. The Beeman Wellness Ranch has other plans. The paperwork mentions "proprietary hormonal protocols." Marv Beeman, broad-shouldered and patient, calls the first injection a wellness boost. By morning her blouse won't button. By the end of the week the barns are calling her: the stalls, the machines, the gentle sisters in belled collars who promise it only feels strange at first. Every milking takes a little more of the woman who signed those forms. And the ranch's annual auction is coming.
Stepsister's Summer Takeover - 20K words - Kinks served: Stepsibling taboo, blackmail, domination, obedience training, brat taming, public humiliation, pet play, reluctance: Larissa comes home for the summer the way she does everything: loud, early, and sure she's in charge. For three years the entitled college princess has made Connor Blake's life miserable, and this time she has something new: photos from his phone, and plans for how he'll pay to keep them quiet. She thinks she's the predator. She hasn't checked the security cameras. Connor has. With his parents away and the house to themselves, he doesn't play her game. He rewrites the rules. Silk scarves. Outfits he chooses. A carefully perfected morning smoothie. Each lesson chips away at the brat until "Sir" comes easier than insults. And Aunt Carol and Uncle Mark are coming for the family barbecue.
Pit Slave - 22K words - Kinks served: Post-apocalyptic, nonconsent, sex slavery, auction, group use, domination, power exchange, survival: Tarena keeps the settlement's trucks running. Then the eastern gate explodes. When the smoke clears, the outpost is ash and Tarena is inventory. She is sampled, cataloged and auctioned to Caplin, the scarred raider boss with ash-gray eyes and a soft spot for mechanics. In the compound's pits, women are passed between enforcers and wagered in grudge matches. Sara, the scarred veteran on the next slab, gives her the rules: you learn, or you break. Tarena plans to do neither. She smiles at Diego, spreads her legs for Caplin, fixes the generators no one else can, and hides a file in her mattress. But the wasteland changes a woman, and the hardest thing to escape may be what she has learned to want.
Sorority Bimbo Initiation - 24K words - Kinks served: Bimbofication, forced personality modification, mind control, drugged elixir, breast expansion, public exposure, group sex, pet play: Melissa Cartwright is a senior, a women's studies major, and president of the Feminist Student Coalition. She has no business at Omega Tau Sigma, a sorority that doesn't appear anywhere in the university registry. But the invitation said she had been selected, and Melissa is so tired of fighting. Jade Sterling opens the door in a silk robe and offers her a single sip. The elixir spreads through her like honey and fire. Every week brings another whisper, another sip, another seminar slept through. Her tops get tighter. Her wardrobe gets smaller. Girls who join Omega Tau Sigma come out different, and the campus has noticed. Family weekend is coming, and Jade has already picked out a new name.
Cruise Ship Swinger's Deck - 21K words - Kinks served: Group sex, gangbang, public sex, exhibitionism, slut transformation, divorcée awakening: Three years of marriage. One bitter divorce. One singles cruise booked on a whim. Kayla Tenant steps onto the Lido Deck in a white sundress chosen to make a statement, and Mark Reynolds is the first man to read it. He knows her travel blog. He has a table full of friends from the cruise's Facebook group, and he has plans for the pool deck. One wild night turns into a seven-day itinerary of escalating firsts: a midnight note slipped under her door, a cabin crawl, a shore excursion that isn't in the brochure, and a personal invitation to Captain Detrick Capwell's private table. The woman who boarded in Miami wanted to be seen. The ship has plenty of eyes.
Free Use Mommy - 22K words - Kinks served: Incest, mom/son, free use, MILF, exhibitionism, public acts, sharing: Twenty-one years of marriage end in four words and a pair of taillights. At forty-three, Brianna still has the generous curves of motherhood and a body that has gone untouched far too long. Then she overhears her college-age son, Cory, after a date gone wrong: frustrated, aching, alone. A mother would do anything to help. So Brianna makes an offer she can't take back: whenever he needs it, however he needs it. The robe goes on with nothing underneath. A morning ritual begins. Phone calls get interrupted. The bay window stays open. And once a household rule is made, it only grows. Cory's friends are about to ring the doorbell.
Illustrated Bonus: Reluctant Suckslut: Gloryhole Girl - 1.5K words, illustrated - Kinks served: Reluctance, coercion, gloryhole, oral, degradation, humiliation: Sophie never learns the value of a good phone signal and a AAA membership. Her car dies on an empty two-lane road, and the only building for miles is a dive bar that hasn't changed since the seventies. She's a feminist. She's independent. She has spent years insisting she's more than the curves men drool over. Then her card is declined on a twenty-five-dollar tab, and the bartender gives her a choice: he calls the sheriff, or she works it off at five dollars a customer through the hole in the bathroom wall. Sophie says it's disgusting. Her body disagrees, the way it always does. The tow truck is an hour out, and the repair bill will cost a lot more than five dollars.
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