Chapter Six

She woke up around noon. She was exhausted, but she knew there were things to be done. Her friend offered to be her taxi for the day after hearing the story of her night, and she accepted.

She went into work and apologized to her manager for walking out on work. She claimed that Mr. Hayes had insisted she leave with him, and that she had felt that it was best for the restaurant if she went with him. The manager said he understood, but that she wouldn't get credit for the time she had worked prior to that. He also said that he gave away her shift that evening. It seemed like revenge to Tracy, but he claimed he had no idea if she had quit or not. She could start up again Sunday night.

No worries, she thought. With any luck I won't be here long enough to care. As she left the restaurant in her friend's car, she noticed a black sedan pull out behind them. She couldn't be sure, but she figured that there was no real point in trying to hide from a billionaire anyway. Even if this was an attempt to track her, there was almost zero chance he was in the car himself. After all, he had a business to run. He probably had hired goons who did all sorts of clandestine stuff for him, so tailing her would be a piece of cake. She had her friend drive her back to her place.

About four blocks away from her apartment, the car made a turn that would bring it back to the highway. Maybe I was wrong, she thought. The thought quickly passed when she got home and saw a similar sedan parked directly across the street from her apartment complex. She sighed, knowing that it'd be a life without privacy until she gave Mr. Hayes what he wanted.

When she got home, she carefully inspected the door. It looked like it hadn't been tampered with, but she decided that she would be careful in this place for the foreseeable future. She felt as if on one hand, it was impossible for him to try anything, considering how much he was in the public eye. On the other hand, with as much money as he had, anything was possible.

She looked at her computer. Who knew what he was capable of? Her passwords were all pretty good, but what if he had a virus on her computer? What if he had a keylogger attached somewhere where she couldn't find it.

Stop it, you're being paranoid, she chided herself. She decided she didn't really want to stick around here all that much anyway, so she went down to the local library. The black sedan didn't follow, but she had no idea what she'd be looking for if she were being followed on foot.

When Tracy got to the library, she quickly checked her email. Nothing suspicious, no "your password has been reset" emails from the various websites she was a part of, no emails that were marked "read" that should have been marked "unread". She breathed a sigh of relief. She may have had to call this whole thing off if he had proved too stalkerish.

While she was at the library, she figured she ought to read up on exactly what she was doing. As she started to read into domination and submission culture, she realized something. In almost all cases throughout history, the rich man was dominated by a woman who he was paying and could cut off at any time, truly giving him all the power, even though the illusion was that the dominatrix was in charge. Tracy was in unexplored territory, a stranger in a strange land. The more she read, the more she thought she was stumbling around in the dark, and that her success up to this point had been a fluke, even with her new power to enter Mr. Hayes' dreams.

She stayed late at the library, reading one book after another and trying to figure out what her next move would be. If someone is following me, she thought, they'd be bored out of their mind by now. Suddenly, a thought flashed through her head. They'd also know that she was doing research on how to sexually dominate their boss, and she didn't want that information to get back to him. She took a quick look around, and then quickly put the book back on the shelf.

She knew she couldn't check out any book on the subject, but maybe she'd come back again tomorrow. The walk home in the dark was a little stressful, and she felt her most vulnerable, but she made it home just fine. She checked her apartment one last time for tampering, found none, and drifted off to sleep.

***

The dreams that evening were much gentler, much more filled with a desire to please. In each of them, Tracy saw herself on a different type of date. In every one of them, he did things for her that you’d never get on a regular date. While on a picnic, a helicopter dropped off her favorite flowers from a distant country. Chocolate made in Bavaria. A ride on the Autobahn.

In another dream, Mr. Hayes rented out a theater to show her favorite movie for just the two of them. In each of the dreams, ‘Tracy’ went from being ice cold to being very warm, smiling, and open to his advances. It was clear that she was always pleased by whatever he had done, but whatever he did was always possible because of his money. Tracy knew exactly what to do to keep this game going a little longer.