She unzipped several bags and tossed me a pair of shoes. I sniffed them without thinking.
“Fuck, Raven! That’s disgusting!”
“Right?” she responded with genuine pride.
“If you don’t want to borrow them, I’ll happily take Randall for you. He’s super easy and it’s dead tonight.”
I hesitated, contemplating.
Fuck it.
“Thanks, but I’ve got it. I’ll bring these back before my scene.”
I spent the next hour pacing in Raven’s smelly flats, which was surprisingly effective. For the last few minutes before Randall’s appointment, I stomped around in the dirt behind the patio, covering my feet in dust and mud. I looked down at the finished product, only able to see flashes of red through the grime. My feet were disgusting. Mission accomplished.
23. ELEVATOR
With my new Switch status, I was enjoying work at the Dungeon much more than at the hospital. Every shift seemed to have some kind of new thrill that I could enjoy because now I was the one in control. People in the real world felt boring and closed off compared to the madness that was revealed within those walls. I was doing well at my vanilla job, but I was starting to make excuses to leave early to take more clients at the Dungeon and was picking up extra shifts for special clients. Rich paid no attention to where I was as long as my work was completed, and even if it had been slipping, he had no room to talk. I got away with it until my mom showed up on-site one afternoon for meetings that I didn’t know about and found me absent.
She called to find out where I was. I answered it in the dressing room, signaling to the girls around me to be quiet.
“Hey, how’s it going?”
“Good. Where are you? I’m in the trailer and you’re not here.”
“Oh, I had to leave early,” I stalled while I tried to think what to tell her that she wouldn’t call bullshit on.
Naturally, at that very moment, Raven emerged from the cell walking her client on all fours wearing nothing but a leash.
“Bad dog! You are a bad, bad dog! Time for your shock therapy!”
“Where the hell are you?”
“I’m at … the vet. Amelia’s dog is really sick and she had to go to work, so I’m at the vet with it.”
“I didn’t know Amelia had a dog.”
Damn it, why does she have to pay attention?
“She just got one.”
Fuck. Remind me to tell Amelia that from now on as far as my mom is concerned, she has a dog. Or had one and something happened to it.
“Okay. I don’t think it was good for you to leave work early and no one here knew where you had gone.”
Before she could continue, I jumped in with what I thought she wanted to hear.
“I know. I’m really sorry. It just came up and Amelia just sounded so worried, so I dropped everything and drove up here. You know she would’ve done the same for me.”
“If it was that much of an emergency, I don’t know why Amelia couldn’t have missed work instead of you. But that’s between the two of you. Next time make sure someone here knows that you’ve left.”
“Will do.”
Viv popped her head in the dressing room door, but I frantically gestured that I was on the phone and she took the hint. She looked meaningfully toward the lobby instead of yelling that my cock-and-ball-torture client was waiting. That might’ve been a little tough to explain away.
“Hey, Mom, the vet is ready for me, so I really need to go. I can call you when I leave here if you want?”
“No, it’s okay. I’ll just see you on-site tomorrow.”
Note to self: reschedule my early client tomorrow. This guy better be worth the bullshit I just had to spew.
He was.
My client ended up being a guy who was really into having his balls beaten, but was concerned about the long-term impact on the health of his man parts. He had managed to get his doctor to agree to do an ultrasound and a semen analysis the day after a heavy CBT session to see whether there was any noticeable impact. I would’ve loved to have been a fly on the wall for that conversation.
I got to do my worst to his balls … in the name of science.
It turned out there was some bruising (that’s right, gents … let that one sink in for a second: bruising on your balls!), but the ultrasound showed a minuscule amount of scar tissue despite decades of abuse, and it wasn’t impacting function at all. His sperm count was higher than normal. Evidently, man parts are more resilient than we give them credit for.
I always gave Wes a full download of what I had done with my clients when I got home. Sometimes, he was just fascinated by the crazy shit I saw, but with clients like this one, telling him about it was foreplay. He never once got jealous about what I did with my clients.
* * *
I showed up early to the jobsite the next day ready to stay late if necessary in order to appease my mom. I needed to check out the seismic anchorage that had been completed on some of my equipment, so I took her with me over to the new hospital instead of just hanging out in the job trailer.
I was basically always the only girl on the construction site, and despite the reputation that construction workers have for being lewd, I was never once catcalled on that job. In fact, permit me to digress for a moment and say that the construction industry as a whole is full of some of the most wonderful, family-oriented people I have ever met.
I was proud of what I considered “our” building and how much I had learned in such a short amount of time. The hospital was coming to life and I was a part of making that happen. It felt good to see the surprise on my mom’s face as I was able to walk her through the building and explain our progress and what the next steps would be. It was also nice for her to see the guys on-site acknowledging me by name and with mutual respect. I was part of the team and I wanted her to see that.
We had recently switched from an exterior man lift to the service elevator and it was always packed going in both directions. Somehow we were alone on our ride back down to the first floor, but the instant the doors opened, guys came flooding in without giving us a chance to exit. We were packed in at the very back before I had time to even think about squeezing my way out. I was mortified that everyone had treated us like we weren’t even there. I had a split second to make a decision and two options from what I could tell: We could embarrassingly have to go for another ride until some space cleared and then get back off at the first floor … or I could make a scene. I didn’t seem to know how to be meek anymore. Scarlett wouldn’t allow it.
“Out. Everyone get back out right now!”
There was a pause as an elevator full of burly dudes contemplated whether this tiny woman was serious. My mom glanced at me with surprise. A few of them laughed, but the door stayed open.
“You heard me. I’m completely serious. Get. The. Fuck. Out.”
It didn’t occur to me that they wouldn’t obey, which would have been mortifying. Sure enough, one by one they started to pile back out and then stood in front of the elevator staring at me like I might be about to light one of them on fire.
“Gentlemen,” I emphasized as I too stepped off, “let’s try that again, shall we? I know your mamas taught you better manners than that. We let people get off the elevator before getting on. Now … everyone is off, so you may carry on.”
They cracked up and I heard a mama joke being hurled as the doors closed. I only got away with it because I was an attractive young female. I fully acknowledge that had any one of those descriptors been its opposite, I would’ve been branded a bitch or worse. Instead, I had earned myself a reputation as “the redhead.”
24. TA-DA TED
Unfortunately, my reputation as a semi-unstable ginger didn’t do much for me off the building site and in the conference room, where the real torture occurred. Meetings piled on top of each other and sometimes it felt like the meeting was simply about setting up another meeting with no real purpose except to make people feel important.
Prior to usurping responsibility from Rich, it was easy to just announce I needed to leave and get out the door on time to make it to the Dungeon. Now that I had to deal with my own meetings, it was becoming more and more challenging to find ways to leave early. On that particular day, I knew I had a client booked at 5:00, so with traffic factored in, I needed to be on the road by 3:30 to make it on time. Which was in ten minutes. And these fuckers were off topic again.
Taking a deep breath, I glanced up and surveyed the room. Eight men and two women, including me, circled the conference room table, which was strewn with enough paperwork and drawings to be considered an act of environmental terrorism. We were scheduled to have been finished twenty minutes ago, but no one else seemed to have anywhere better to be, so on it dragged.
“The table in that special procedure room needs to have stirrups so that it can be shared with the women’s clinic on Thursdays,” I interjected in an attempt to get us back on topic.
“You hear that, Victor? Make sure it has stirrups so that they can do the ‘special procedures’ in that room,” chimed Patricia with a shriek of laughter and a melodramatic wink.
The room erupted in laughter and I knew I had lost them once more. I felt like slamming my forehead on the table. Instead I took another deep breath and looked at my watch again.
“Oh, what are you saying, Patricia? Does somebody do horsey things in private? Do you have a special costume?”
More laughter.
I had to keep my eyes cast down to prevent them from rolling out of my head.
How naughty. How terribly scandalous you all are!
I tried a different approach with, “Well, on that note, I think I’ll excuse myself and we can go through the rest of this at next week’s meeting.”
I knew they were going to think that I was offended by their suggestive remarks, but that was fine. This Dominatrix had a client to get to and couldn’t care less if her coworkers thought she was a prude.
I was only about ten minutes late by the time I got to work, but was incredibly wound up from sitting in traffic and stressing about the time. It didn’t help that my client Ted was already in the waiting room when I walked in, so I had to introduce myself in business attire before running back to change. He seemed shy, but nice enough. He had mentioned that his scene was sort of based on fantasy wrestling, so I knew I needed to put something on that I could move in.
Dom popped his head into the dressing room, so I stopped getting ready long enough to give him a hug.
“I haven’t seen you since Halloween! I heard you’re now officially a Switch—congrats!” he said with genuine excitement.
“Thanks, love!”
“Hey, I’m about to do an interrogation scene with some dude and I need a girl to double with me. Wanna play the bad cop to my very bad cop?”
“I’ve been dying to do a double with you, but I’m already late for my guy up front and we’re playing for two hours. I’m guessing that won’t work?”
He shook his head. “Next time. Or you know you could just come home with me one of these days and we can play there. My wife has the hots for you. You and I can top her together if you don’t want to sub.”
I was caught off guard by the offer, but had to admit it sounded appealing.
“Let’s do it. I gotta run, but we can talk more about it later!”
* * *
In our interview, Ted described that he liked to do a session that had elements of fantasy wrestling, but was more about the aftermath of being conquered by a woman instead of the actual experience of someone defeating him. He liked to simulate the headspace that came after having his ass beat, that helpless feeling of despair. I was excited to play with him. What little I had gotten to try of fantasy wrestling had been fun and empowering, and this was a new and novel way of looking at that genre.
He allowed me to pick where we would play, so I selected the Dita Von Teese room. I wasn’t entirely sure how he wanted the session to go, but I was beginning to trust my instincts. I went to start some music, but when I hit play, he softly spoke up.
“Goddess, would it bother you if we didn’t have music?”
I had a strong preference for music over silence to get in my own headspace, but he was so polite about it that I didn’t bat an eyelid and hit Stop.
The Dita Von Teese room is one of the smallest rooms at the Dungeon to play in. It is brightly lit, with a bookshelf on one side, opposing mirrors on the other two, and a couch against the fourth. Framed pictures of Dita, the burlesque dancer, adorn the yellow walls. Clients rarely want to play in this room. Size is one factor, but I believe they avoid it because it is a distinctly feminine space.
Ted lay down in the middle of the room fully clothed in his gray sweatpants and white T-shirt. I had to strain to hear his next soft request.
“Goddess, would you mind taking your shoes off? I have a bit of a foot and stocking fetish as well, so feel free to rub your stockinged feet across my cheeks and mouth if you’d like,” he finished sheepishly.
“Not a problem,” I replied and unbuckled my platform heels, tossing them to one side.
No complaints here.
Without warning, he sprawled out across the floor as though he had just been thrown there by a conquering Wonder Woman. I watched in amazement as a change overcame him. His breathing quickened and his eyes glazed over with a mix of fear and awe. They were pleading with me, but I hadn’t yet determined what for. He lifted a hand, as though with great pain and exertion, and beckoned me closer. I walked toward him slowly, feeding on the energy he was throwing off in waves. As his posture morphed, so did mine. I felt my spine straighten and my chin raise. Of their own accord, my shoulders shot back and a small smile crept onto my face. This was why I was a Domme.
“Will you stand with your foot on my chest like you just conquered me?”
I obliged, standing on his right side, planting my left foot firmly over his heart, keeping the other on the carpet.
“Now will you flex your muscles? I need to see how strong you are, Goddess,” he added with a sob of desperation as his voice trailed off.
I lifted both arms, flexing my biceps menacingly, and contracted my quads to show off the muscle that was arguably unfeminine. He whimpered and sighed deeply, the fear settling further into his eyes. He was going to a very real place in his head, and I was excited to take him even deeper. If the bulge in his old-man sweatpants was any indication, he was rather enjoying his helplessness beneath my feet.
“I don’t like very much talking or orders, but will you just say: ‘I’m the winner! I beat you! Ta-da!’ Just repeat that … and maybe change poses to flex differently? Oh, and when you need a break, you can rub your feet on me.” A glimmer of excitement flitted across his eyes, and then he slipped once more into his state of utter defeat, letting his head flop back to the ground and roll to one side.
I now had the full terms of the scene. My mind simultaneously registered how simple this was going to be, and how slowly these two hours were going to pass. Dita and I were going to be well acquainted by the end of this.
After only a few minutes in that stance, my arms started to shake, so I changed position to flex my arms down in front of my body, and changed legs, brushing my stockinged foot across Ted’s lips.
Once I had a foot planted on his chest, I broke the silence suddenly by shouting, “I’m the winner!”
Ted shook like a frightened puppy.
“I beat you!” I said in my most menacing Domme voice, glaring down triumphantly at my pathetic conquest.
“Ta-da!” … Now I felt ridiculous. It was all I could do not to laugh.
Ta-da? Really? Who the fuck says ta-da past the age of four?
I decided I would need to skip that one next time to keep a straight face. The last thing I needed was to start giggling and not be able to stop ten minutes in to a two-hour session.
I allowed the silence to hang in the air, but tried a variety of threatening faces, punctuating eyebrow r
aises by pushing more weight down with my foot. It was becoming increasingly difficult to stay engaged as the minutes ticked by, but Ted was staring up at me with the eye contact classic to subs. Single-minded intensity focused on you is an amazing feeling, but not when you’re doing nothing but glaring and flexing for long periods of time. I was struggling to maintain eye contact, flex, and keep my balance, while simultaneously waging an inner battle not to look at the time. I know how that fractures the intensity of the moment, and nothing says, “Are we done yet?” like glancing at your watch. I liked Ted and didn’t want to ruin this for him.
By roughly the twenty-second time of repeating, “I’m the winner! I beat you!” I was feeling pretty silly and was ready for a break. I couldn’t keep my quads flexed any longer. I walked around to stand with a foot on either side of Ted’s head, my toes touching his shoulders. I took this repositioning as my opportunity to steal a glance at the time. Seventeen minutes down, an hour and forty-three minutes to go.
Fuck.
I took my time, sensually rubbing my feet across Ted’s facial features, watching him relax and close his eyes. This was a break for him too. He reached up and took my foot with both hands, and I allowed it. Ted looked like he wanted to snuggle into my stockings and make a nest. I alternated between feet since I was once again standing on one leg, and knew I would be back to flexing shortly. I got caught up in the sensations too, feeling the difference in the way the stocking glided over his forehead, but caught slightly on the stubble on his chin. I could feel his eyelashes tickle my big toe, and his pulse beating into the arch of my foot when I reached his throat.
I was surprised when he broke the silent, sensual reverie with a barely audible, “Goddess?”
“Yes, slave?”
“Don’t forget to say ‘Ta-da’…”
Fuck.
I took this as my cue that he was ready for me to go back to some Wonder Woman post-throw-down flexing. I had only managed to kill eight more minutes, but I was refreshed and focused enough to keep a straight face. I resumed my position at his right side and forcefully stomped my right foot on his chest, leaning closer to his face to shout, “I’m the winner!”
The Scarlett Letters Page 17