“First, when we’re in The Club and we’re in the lounge section, talking to friends, you should be sitting on my lap or at my side at all times.” He did need to start training. He wanted her comfortable and confident while they were there.
If she was who she said she was, doing nothing wrong, there was no reason they couldn’t have a D/s relationship. Maybe that was the only kind of relationship that would work for him. He wasn’t going to get the marriage and kids thing. That was obvious, but he could have companionship.
It went through his brain that this wasn’t a woman he could take home to his parents and brother, but he brushed that aside. They could keep it to The Club, to a contract, and it might work.
She started to sink to her knees, but he stopped her.
“I would rather you sat on my lap tonight.”
She let him guide her down, settling on his lap. “It’s been a while since I was this close to anyone. It’s nice.”
Her head rested on his shoulder.
He liked having her close, too. There was something deeply intimate about holding her now that everyone else was gone. She filled a spot that had been empty for a long time. “It is nice. Tomorrow I’ll take you to work and pick you up. Before we come back here, we’ll do a walk-through of the dungeon so you can get familiar with the space.”
She yawned. “Yes, that sounds good. What should I plan on wearing on Friday? I’ve got a couple of miniskirts and a bustier.”
“I get to pick your fet wear. It’s in the contract.” He expected her to argue, but she simply cuddled against him.
“All right.”
“Your clothes for the night will be in the locker they assign to you,” he explained.
“That sounds good.”
“No arguing?”
“It’s a costume,” she replied. “It’s theater, right? You need a proper costume to play the role. I’m used to that. I don’t know much about it, so I’m letting you lead the way.”
“It’s not a role you’re playing.”
She looked at him through thick lashes. “Isn’t it? It’s not who I would be in the everyday world. We all play roles all day long. We just don’t label it that way. Aren’t you a slightly different Michael when you’re around your friends than you are your family?”
He didn’t think about it that way, but she was right. “I suppose.”
“We all do it. I call it a role I’m playing. You would call it your work personality or adapting to your surroundings. It’s all the same. It’s all me, but not the same me. Having the right costume will get me in a good headspace to explore the character.”
He wasn’t sure he liked her referring to herself as the character. “It’s another side to yourself. It’s real.”
“So is a character,” she replied quietly, as though she wasn’t sure how honest she wanted to be. “When I act, there’s always a piece of myself in the character, some place I explore. That’s what I get out of it. I get to figure some small part of myself out. It can make me understand other people more.”
“What part of yourself did you find in the horror movies?” From what he could tell those scream queen slasher films were what she was best known for. And being the bombshell in raunch coms. He wasn’t sure what she’d learned from those except that her boobs made teenaged boys lose their minds.
She went still, and for a moment he worried she could read his mind. “I learned how afraid I can be. I learned how I can try to tell myself something’s okay when it’s not. There’s this stupid scene in the first movie where one of the guys comes on to my character, and he’s very rude and sexist about it. He demeans my character, and she flirts back and acts like it’s no big deal. I realized I’d done that a lot in my life. I’d shrugged off something that hurt me because it was easier to pretend it didn’t than to fight for myself. I realized I was willing to internalize that pain rather than have everyone think I was a bitch. That’s what I got from that role.”
He hadn’t been expecting that. “Did it change how you behaved?”
“I became more okay with being a bitch,” she replied. “At first it was empowering. I stood up for myself, and I got some of the things I wanted. And then I was labeled difficult for the same behavior that was considered confident and forthright in my male colleagues. I started to lose jobs. That was when I worked with female directors. That was a good place for me.”
And then her friend had died and she’d been left alone. Was it wrong to pretend? To put herself into a role in order to explore that aspect of her personality? He was fairly certain any therapist would tell him no, that it was healthy and necessary.