They asked for similar changes almost weekly. The adjustments were never difficult, but tended to be time consuming and sometimes tedious. Today’s involved hiding seven coconuts somewhere in the front-page design for their time-share resorts based in Atlanta. They had time-shares all over the world, but it was almost always the ones in the U.S. that needed these odd changes.
She pushed her hair over her shoulder. They paid on time, the work was easy and steady, and it was their money to waste on such mindless updates if they chose. Although she often wondered what their marketing department was smoking when they came up with such odd last-minute requests.
Maybe it was for a promotion of some kind? But that meant they had weird promotions nearly every single week.
She shrugged.
Whatever.
She frowned. In the past, she would never have gotten to the “whatever” stage with a project. Her understanding of a company’s motivations was part of what made her a good graphic designer. She vowed to figure this latest challenge out.
She knew exactly where this new laissez-faire attitude had come from.
Over the last few months she had started to realize the city of L.A., and even The Dungeon, was no longer working for her, and she had begun to research other options. Part of her dissatisfaction with her hometown was because her father lived here. She loved him, but he didn’t respect her as an adult. His smothering and dictatorial manner had become insufferable, and she was fast reaching her “done” mode with the situation.
Since she was self-employed, she could work from anywhere that was IT-friendly and easy to find clients. Someplace with a fetish scene like the one she’d always imagined would be a huge plus.
Thanks to her maternal grandmother’s very generous trust fund that her father had no control over, she could afford to move anywhere she chose. In fact, her grandmother had also left her some real estate scattered around the country that Kate was still deciding what to do with. If she moved to any of those cities, she would already have a home base while she got settled.
True to her organized and detailed manner, she had already narrowed her choices. The current front-runner was Phoenix. There was an elite dungeon in the city called Club Desire that had a reputation for being the best sex club in the entire southwestern U.S. One of her grandmother’s houses sat in Paradise Valley, a very nice suburb of Phoenix.
Throughout her research, Club Desire kept popping up, as if the universe was giving her a nudge toward Phoenix. However, there were also good possibilities in Las Vegas and San Francisco. But even though Gram also had a house in San Francisco and some land in Nevada, so far, Phoenix was her favorite. The city itself seemed more suited to her tastes.
The Vegas dungeon looked good, but seemed like it would attract more of the same types of Doms L.A. did, and she’d had more than enough of them.
San Francisco was a terrific place to go on vacation, since she loved seafood and the unique character of the city, but she couldn’t see herself living there for some reason, although she couldn’t quite articulate why.
As an added bonus, there were no earthquakes in Arizona, only heat and occasional dust storms. She could even drive a few hours north during the winter and go skiing.
And from her research, it sounded like a much better crop of Doms lived in Phoenix. The submissives grapevine said they were highly trained, very creative, and as hot as the face of the sun. She planned to make time for a trip out there soon to see for herself.
Her jaded heart beat a little harder, braced for disappointment again if a new location left her just as dissatisfied as she had begun to feel here in L.A.
But she was willing to take the chance.
Her move to a new city and dungeon couldn’t come soon enough. Her current projects had either been delivered already or were still in testing, except for hiding a few more coconuts for the Atlanta time-share. She could take her laptop with her on the road and handle any bug reports, as well as the requests that regularly came in from Merestone Resorts, en route. That would allow her to check out her top choice in person so she could make an informed decision.
Next week, she promised herself.
She had a flash of memory from tonight’s amazing scene with Master Dex, and a flicker of second thoughts set in.
She shook her head. One scene with a new Dom, no matter how amazing, shouldn’t alter the course of her life. Dex had already said he was only in L.A. for an “undetermined” amount of time, and she refused to make her life’s choices around a man, something she’d seen so many of her friends do. Kate was an independent and self-sufficient woman, and she would damn well act like one.
That decided, she returned to her previous train of thought about her dissatisfaction with L.A. and what she needed to do about it.
Next week I’ll rearrange some priorities and start my road trip to a new life.
For the first time in a long time she felt lighter, like she had something to look forward to.