“I promise, he’s really famous.” Dante sounded heartbroken. Poor baby.

“Don’t sweat it,” she said. “I’m just giving you shit because you deserve it. King? We good to go?”

Kingsley only nodded and waved her from the office. She had a feeling that Kingsley had decided that tall stack of hundreds on his desk wasn’t close to paying for the headache she’d given him.

“Ready, Mr. Burns?”

“Sure.” He sounded doubtful now. Gone was the cocky rock star. “I’m all yours.” He said the words casually, too casually. Behind them she heard something. Something hungry, something wistful, something true.

“This is HQ,” The Mistress said as they left Kingsley’s office. “Kingsley lives here, works here and reigns here. He takes the King part of Kingsley very seriously. You should, too. You might be more famous than he is and you might even have more money, but there’s no one in the house who would take your side against him, who would take an order from you that he had contradicted, who would even take a step out of this house with you without his permission.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. King doesn’t have employees. He has slaves and submissives. Well-paid slaves and submissives, of course. But they don’t work for the money. They work for the kink. None of his employees are vanilla.”

“Vanilla...that means like straitlaced and normal, right?”

The Mistress smiled at him.

“Vanilla means ‘not kinky.’ It’s what we call people outside the scene, the straight types. You, for instance, are vanilla.”

“No way. I have more tattoos than Brian Setzer. We counted one day.”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s not clean versus ink, Goth versus normal, gay versus straight, Mohawk versus buzz cut. If you don’t do kink, you’re vanilla. And didn’t you just say yourself a few minutes ago up in King’s office that you’re ‘not one of those guys’? Or did I mishear you while I was eavesdropping?”

“I said that, yeah. Just not used to be described as, you know, vanilla.” He winced at the word as if she’d called him something really offensive, like “impotent,” or “racist,” or “a politician.”

“Get used to it, Vanilla. If you aren’t kinky, that’s what you are. There’s no shame in being vanilla. Some of my best friends are vanilla.”

“Really?” he said with some hope.

“Nope. Come on. Let’s get to the club.”

Kingsley had a Rolls-Royce waiting for them outside his town house. The driver hopped out and opened the door for them.

“Nice car,” Dante said, studying the interior. “Total pussy wagon.”

“You have no idea....” The Mistress said as Dante got comfortable on the bench seat where she’d seen Kingsley fuck at least a dozen different people over the past year. “So tell me about this video. What are you envisioning?”

Dante looked at her and shrugged. Pretty boy. Rock-star pretty. Eyeliner, pierced ears, good tan, good smile.

“I don’t know. The song’s about a guy really in love with this woman, so in love with her he wants her to be her slave. You know, all guys feel that way when they fall in love with a woman. They feel...”