- "Was that tone necessary?" I asked, without taking my eyes off the game.

- "What do you mean? I wasn't even rude." Came the reply. I didn't even need to look at Claudia to tell they she was still glued to her phone. We were planning a vacation in Thailand and she was booking the flight and hotels.

Looking back at it, vacation might be the wrong term. Neither of us had a 9 to 5 job and so we could travel whenever we wanted. I was a mechanical engineer, and with a little bit of help from my parents I was able to start my own business (a garage and body shop) by the time I was 25, which was 2 years ago, after working for no more than 3 years. 

But I had absolutely nothing on Claudia. We met in high school and we've been close friends since. Her father was a shareholder in a pharmaceutical and biomedical giant, Biocentrex, and had several properties in Miami. She was loaded, and as much as it hurts me to say, a bit spoiled. This is saying something coming from a guy like me, I mean it's not like I had to start from scratch, but I was running a business and I knew what having an honest job feels like. Claudia's parents weren't so rich 25 years ago when she was born, but they were still making enough money to live very comfortably. Her mother passed away when she was only 11, and it seemed her father wanted to make it up to her in any way that he could, including spoiling her.

She had her first car by the time she was 13, but with a driver of course. She preferred driving as soon as she was old enough for it though, and good ol dad immediately bought her a brand new Porsche Cayenne. I'm not gonna lie, I was more than a bit envious. I drove a Dodge RAM 1500 and I was proud of it, but don't we all wish we could be filthy rich?

To her credit, after Claudia's father passed away last year she'd started trying to live in the real world. She'd taken over her dad's real estate business, and was actually doing a decent job running it. She didn't care much however, about Biocentrex, and was contemplating selling her shares in the business. I can see why, she really didn't need to bother with something this complicated when she had much more reliable and easier sources of income. If only she was more involved, maybe we would've kept our freedom.. but I'm getting ahead of myself.

- "Yes you were. I don't get why you need to be so dry with the poor woman, she's only doing her job."

The "poor woman" was Carissa, her housekeeper. Well she wasn't exactly Claudia's housekeeper, in the sense that it was Claudia's father who hired her 2 years before his death. Claudia didn't like her from the get go, she insisted that Claudia was after her father's money, which she had little proof of but honestly wouldn't be much of a surprise to me. Claudia's dad didn't marry again after her mother passed away, because he didn't want Claudia to hate him for trying to replace her mom. Still he had multiple mistresses over the years, and I'd assume most women hanging out with a man 15 years their senior would be in it for the money. Claudia hated Carissa the most because she felt that Carissa wasn't just temporary romance, she insisted the woman wanted to get married to her dad.

- "Her job is being an only fans model! The only reason she's kept her job is because of you!"

This was partly true, Carissa was an only fans model (but to my knowledge not since she started working for Jonathan, Claudia's dad). She had the looks for it but not in a traditional way. She was muscular but not overly so, and had a sizeable belly and a pretty curvy body. And yeah, I'll admit that I had talked Claudia into it. She was pretty nice to both of us and she was a single mother supporting her daughter. I'll admit however that it was also strongly influenced by my attraction to her. I was secretly a bit submissive, and at 6ft 2 and 215 pounds (almost exactly my height and weight) she had the perfect body for a dominatrix. She also exudes an aura of confidence that wasn't shaken even by Claudia's sometimes less than respectful tone shall we say. I didn't share that with Claudia, mainly cause I didn't want her to think I would think about her in the same way.

You see Claudia was pretty hot in her own right, she's a healthy 5 ft 8 and having infinite time to dedicate to working out means her body was sculpted like that of a Hollywood supermodel.

- "No it's not, and you know it. I dunno why you insist on this nonsense, she doesn't post to onlyfans no more to our knowledge."

- "Look around you bro, think this place needs a housekeeper?? She's not gonna be around for long."

Kinda true, I thought to myself. The house Claudia live in had 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms, with a large garden, but it wasn't a huge mansion by any means. Claudia and her dad didn't even use all of it anyway, and I guess she didn't exactly need a housekeeper if she was willing to take care of things herself.

- "Your dad hired her, and she has a family to support. Plus the way I see it, you still need her services. Who's gonna look after the place while we're on vacation?? Which, you know, is every month or two." I replied, trying to busy myself with call of duty to hide my anxiousness. I didn't want Carissa fired, but I guess I can always hire her and pretend that I only did it out of the goodness of my heart.. maybe Claudia will believe it. Hell it partly is.. isn't it??

- "I'm pretty sure I'll be just fine without her." There isn't much point arguing with Claudia, even if she didn't get wise to my anxiousness, she's more stubborn than a Chihuahua.

A few minutes later, Carissa walked into the room again, letting us know that she was leaving. She lived close so she didn't need to sleep here.

- "I'll be back tomorrow at 8 am as usual Claudia." She liked calling Claudia by her first name, Claudia told me she didn't like that a lot because she felt it was part of Claudia's attempt at replacing her mom. She never insisted on correcting her though, and honestly I felt like Claudia could use a caring motherly figure. Her mother had passed away when she was still pretty young, and her father, despite his attempts at making up to her by smothering her with attention was a very busy man most of the time.

- "Fine." Was everything Claudia said in return. I couldn't help rolling my eyes, hoping neither of them noticed it.. or the fact that my eyes were basically glued to Carissa's butt as she walked away.

-a few days later-

- "Phuket Island is great, I dunno what you're talking about." I said, rolling my eyes.

- "There are far better places in Thailand, I've already been to it anyway."

- "I don't give a damn, I haven't. The videos are just breathtaking." I objected.

- "Fine!” she huffed. "I guess we have the time." She paused for a second. "I guess a tour on elephant back and then snorkeling would be cool."

We were in my truck, I was driving back home. We'd spent the day jogging and then having lunch outside after a quick shower. We were on our way back home. Quite honestly we had no idea what to do with the rest of the day.

- "Isn't that unethical or something? Elephant riding? I once read that they don't treat the elephants humanely, also something about human weight or the ride stressing out or hurting the elephant, especially if it's more than one person."

- "The first part is kinda true, you have to be careful which business you support, not all of them treat elephants horribly. The second part is bullshit, female elephants support the weight of a male on their backs during mating. A human is literally nothing for them."

- "That's a good point." I replied looking in the rearview mirror. "Hey by the way, think I can trust Carissa with my car?"

I'd mentioned this to Claudia before. I was going to rent my car on Turo, and I wanted Carissa to handle that part. My dad was going on vacation with my stepmom too, so they weren't an option.

- "Yeah it should be fine. I dunno why you wanna bother with this in the first place though, it doesn't sound like it be worth it."

- "Well, I won't be using the car anyway. But I'm also planning on upgrading my truck next year, and I been thinking instead of selling it I could rent it on Turo and that should cover financing for the new model. Other than the down payment, I would be paying nothing out of pocket for the new truck if this works."

- "But what if they wreck it?"

- "Turo has its own insurance so there'll be no risk of increasing my premium due to multiple claims. Plus they'll appraise the damage based on dealership repair quotes, but obviously I have my own garage and body shop and I have people working there anyway so I'll actually pocket most of the repair check." I grinned.

- "I dunno man, it sounds like a lot of trouble to go through for 2 grands a month at most." She shrugged. "Anyways, you can talk to her about it, I probably won't need her services after we come back."

- "So we clearly need her right now, but you're gonna fire her when you're back?"

- "Probably, I mean I'm not sure yet. We've talked about this before."

I'll have a lot of time to talk her out of it, I thought. She's stubborn, better distribute the workload on multiple days.. or weeks.

- "Do you have a crush on my housekeeper or something? I swear the way you defend her is so weird." Her tone was mostly sarcastic, but I could sense curiosity in her voice too.

- "Well she's hot alright." I tried playing along. "She's a hot BBW gym girl isn't she?"

- "Great! I'll do you a favor and let her go back to being an onlyfans model. Make sure to subscribe."

- "Shut up Claudia. She's a hard-working single mom trying to make ends meet and you know it."

- "Yeah, I'll pretend that I believe this is why you're defending her so valiantly."

- "I don't give 2 rat butts what you believe." I shot back. "I have the right to crush on people so I don't see why I would hide that if it were true." Honestly yeah, why hide it? Maybe I didn't want my submissive nature and foot fetish to become public knowledge.

- "Yeah I wasn't under the illusion that it was a rat's butt that had your attention.. more like a cow's butt." She smirked.

- "Get reckt Claudia."

Her attention was back to her phone all of a sudden as we arrived back at her place, and I parked the car outside.

Claudia greeted us with a smile, she seemed pretty excited that day. If only I knew why. As I said before, she's usually calm and confident and very methodical. They say however, I still remember her nervous smile, she was sweating more than usual too.

It was zero hour for her, but we were pretty clueless and completely oblivious to what she was doing. In our defense, she didn't do anything out of the ordinary. I mean yeah it wasn't her habit to always serve us coffee without being asked to but she'd done it many times before that fateful day. And how were we supposed to guess what was about to happen? At most I thought she was trying to suck up to Claudia or something. If only I knew that we were going to be the ones doing the sucking up soon.

I still remember her smile and the look of curiosity in her eyes after we finished our coffee. I guess maybe the only suspicious thing she did was offering to stay the night in case we needed her, but even that wasn't very unusual. Like it wouldn't have been the first time she did it, but usually it was Claudia or her father who asked her to do it.

Mostly her father...

Claudia raised her eyebrows and simply told her that it isn't necessary. Carissa left, I guess she was thinking herself that she could just come back for us later. She had the keys and security codes, shouldn't be a problem for her.

I don't remember when the effects of the stuff she spiked our coffee with kicked in, this was a few months ago.. damn, I can't believe it's already been so long. Maybe I adjusted to life in captivity much better than poor Claudia. Anyway, my best guess is about an hour after we finished our coffee we started feeling it. At first it was a feeling it warmth all over, we were sweating despite the air-conditioning. Then came the ringing sensation, mostly in the arms and legs. Next, a few symptoms that I can only describe as anti-cholinergic followed: dry mouth, tachycardia, palpitations, cramps, and an upset stomach. None of it had a completely sudden onset, this was over the course of several hours. Looking back, I'm not sure why we didn't try to seek medical help immediately. Ironically, we didn't even expect it to have anything to do with Carissa or the coffee, we thought it was working out and building a sweat and then going into a cold room, and taking a cold shower. We even thought maybe it's whatever we had for lunch.

Eventually, we started thinking about calling an ambulance as the symptoms were getting unbearable, it was about 12 am or so, but we didn't have the time or energy to do it. I remember Claudia blacked out first, and as I rushed to check on her her body literally felt hot to the touch. Before I could reach my cellphone, the world went black for me too, and I fainted.

Little did I know, this was the beginning of a brave new world for both of us.