She didn’t think the dinner would lead to anything. To the contrary, actually, though she couldn’t resist going and berated herself for the nerves. She wasn’t attracted to the man really, although he had dark eyes she could potentially sink into, and a beautiful sprinkling of salt and pepper hair. He was a little shorter than she thought, she peered out at him through the windshield as she pulled into the steakhouse’s parking lot. He definitely looked like his picture, even better in person actually, and she sighed deeply in relief. She found a space for her little car, making sure she had a spot where she would be safe if he walked her back to the vehicle after dinner. After all, she hadn’t met this person before, and it was going to be dark when they were done eating and feeling one another out. 

He terrified her. Or rather, what he represented terrified her. It was too close to her actual dreams and hopes, to find him. After the past two years of going through a divorce and seeing her ex-husband marry her ex-best friend she was completely gunshy. Being on the other end of the heartbreak had her touch and go with her feelings about any human. She didn’t trust herself anymore. Then out of the blue she gets a message from the dating app she hadn’t touched in months, and there was a touch to his words, a darkness that pulled her in. It was so delicately probing, that tentacle of hope. And he said all the right things. 

“I think that you and I have a lot of things in common”, it began. She checked his profile, and didn’t see much at all to verify that assumption. He was amicably divorced from the mother of his kiddos, and lived in the same neighborhood. About ten years older, a tech savvy indoors person who never explored the wilds, just was happy to stay at home with his dogs, and she was a cat person who needed her sanity soothed by wild places. 

She replied tentatively to his message, and in the back and forth realized what had piqued his interest in the first place. The blasted personality tests that she answered when she was happier for the attention were so  misleading and yet accurate at the same time. She hated that it seemed a little survey in an app on her phone knew more about her than her ex-husband ever had cared to learn. And now she was being messaged by a random stranger who she was meeting for dinner, and she beat herself up yet again as she stood up out of her car, straightened her top, grabbed her bag, and turned to walk his direction

He waved as if she hadn’t already known exactly where and who he was, and she giggled. He seemed just as anxious as she was as she grew closer to him, and he mentioned how tall she was, seeming happily surprised. 

They shook hands, smiled, and she introduced herself. “Hi, I’m Willa, it’s so nice to finally meet you.” He grinned when he took her hand, and opened the door for her to pass through. 

“I’m Matt, but you already know that, don’t you?” His voice was higher than she’d anticipated, a pleasant cadence she found reassuring. Deep men’s voices always put her on edge.

He’d mentioned to her in their chats that she’d be his Angelina Jolie to his Brad Pitt in the “scene”, and she blushed at the comparison as she never saw herself in that light. 

It was his mention of “the scene” that drew her most deeply. 

When she was a child growing up in a very small town in central Texas she’d read voraciously. Books were her only haven, as her peers were cruel to children who didn’t know how to defend themselves. Being brought up in an apocalyptic cult from birth she only knew how to respect her elders and to be silent. That doesn’t bode well for a sensitive child. Not being equipped with the skills or words to defend herself against adults or other kids, she retreated into worlds that she could find safety. This meant that in barely any time at all she’d devoured all of the books available in the youths section of the local library. She closed the last of those when she was eleven, and looked for more to read. The adults/grown ups section of the library called to her, but she couldn’t just grab and read any of those. Some of course wouldn’t be permitted by her parents, and they’d inevitably find anything she tried to hid anyway. So she picked up the classics. The Brontes, Austen, Dumas, she plowed through them all, and as she finished one she’d have a stack of more to crack open. 

She wasn’t picky about titles so much, just took what she could find that her parents wouldn’t sneer at or outright forbid. This led to a spark of kismet when she cracked open Justine by the Marquis de Sade. It was just one of the books on her stack that day, not remarkable to anyone, until she’d gotten past the first few pages. Then she was irrevocably hooked and couldn’t let go. She’d flushed red and felt her pulse in her fingertips as she devoured each word. The guilt overwhelmed her and she wouldn’t read it around her family, as she couldn’t contain her reactions. So with the book tucked under her arm she’d disappear into a nearby abandoned lot infested with trees and wildflowers. No one could see her and finally she got lost in the depravity of the book’s characters. It spoke to her in ways nothing ever had before. The Marquis was writing her perversions, several hundred years before she ever existed. 

There was a brotherhood in these pages she hadn’t felt before. Even with the members of the congregation she’d grown up with she never fit in. There was an edge to her that her mother would mock, saying that Willa just liked to shock people. She wasn’t wrong there either, as Willa always liked to get a reaction out of the people around her. Pushing the edges of what people were comfortable with gave her a rush that nothing else could. She couldn’t explain it, and honestly wouldn’t try if asked. The quick gasp of her momentary target was enough to thrill her for hours, and she’d say slightly shocking things, escalating until she got a reaction. If people were going to push her away and treat her as something abhorrent, then by golly she was going to earn it. 

Her reading helped contribute to the thoughts of what she could get away with safely without going too far. Although her “too far” and that of others differed greatly. Being raised in the cult kept her sheltered so completely that each time she found herself on the pages of the Marquis’ writings her heart stopped for a moment. She’d re-read lines to make sure that she understood them fully, looking up words she didn’t understand in her mother’s paperback dictionary. This was far before the internet was readily available to people, but Willa self-educated with an absolute passion. 

For too long she’d been isolated from her peers by the thought processes imposed from her upbringing. She didn’t fit in with the congregation either, no one else was a reader of anything other than the literature provided to them from the organization. Her parents didn’t understand, her sister didn’t, she felt alone all the time even when surrounded by people. But here she held in her hands someone who felt familiar, who took delight in the delectable variety of experiences available to humankind. To be able to stretch her wings to their very tips, freed from the cage of expectation, she grabbed the depravity of the Marquis and dreamed up situations in her own mind. 

The moments of power she enjoyed as she stood over a broken weeping man chilled her skin in goosebumps. Her feet were sternly keeping beat with his pleads as she split the skin on his back with the unforgiving whip in her right hand. He was so weakened all he could do is inch forward slowly, his feet scrabbling on the brick below him.

A woman cried out as she was lifted by her ankles over a pool, her hands tied behind her to her waist. Willa nodded at the gimp to lower the rope slowly until the woman’s nose and mouth were just below the surface of the water, so that if the woman struggled and lifted her head she could breathe. Willa sat back in the corner, a cigar drooping from her fingertips, feet up on a soft stool, whiskey beading sweat in a glass beside her. She knew that the woman would fatigue in time and her neck wouldn’t be able to hold her mouth and nose out of the water for too much longer. Willa was patient, she could wait. 

Her imagination galloped forward without reign, and she kept wondering about what Matt meant about the “scene”. She finally responded to his request for dinner. It all led to this moment, and her senses were alert as they walked in to be seated. She saw Matt’s eyes following the hostess as she swayed her hips back to her station by the front door. Willa giggled at him and picked up the menu quickly to hide her trembling hands.  

Matt didn’t pick up his menu, just sat watching her, taking her in. They ordered drinks from the waitress when she came, Willa with a whiskey neat and a glass of ice water, Matt chose diet soda. As soon as the waitress came back Willa knocked back the whiskey and ordered a second. Matt’s eyes grew large as he watched her, and she giggled something about nerves and looked back to the menu without reading a word. 

“I’m not a drinker”, he informed her. 

She gulped and blurted, “Do you want me to cancel the order? I’m sorry!” 

“No, that’s okay, I don’t mind at all. You do you.”

She sat back a bit more securely in the booth seating, and glanced at him. His eyes were on the hostess again. He caught her watching and asked if she had any questions for him. Matt’s gaze was impossible to hold in her own, her heart in her throat. 

“So people really do this? It’s real?”

He chuckled under his breath. “Yes, people really do this. There is an entire community out there of those who live it twenty-four seven, actually.” 

The waitress returned and took their orders. Willa just got the same as Matt, she hadn’t read one line of the menu. Though she wanted her steak as rare as they’d cook it, and not medium well like Matt had ordered. She repeated herself to the waitress. 

“Please tell them to cook it as rare as they would for a man who requests it, I want it black and blue. Let the steak look at the grill for about thirty seconds then bring it out.” 

The waitress giggled at Willa and winked, saying she’d double check to make sure they cooked it right. 

Willa sighed and sat back after handing the menu back to the waitress. Matt turned his glass beaded with drops of water, swirled his straw until the ice cubes chinked against the side. Willa crossed and uncrossed her legs under the table. It felt like everyone in the room was looking at them, although she knew it was her imagination playing games with her. 

She glanced up at his dark eyes and was caught in the depth of them. He held her gaze without intimidation, welcoming her words. 

“So what does it look like for those who live it all the time? What are the rules?”

Matt smiled as if he could read her mind. “It’s different for each person, each couple or triad or whatever combination there is. Some are strict with many rules and expectations that cross over into their everyday vanilla life, and some are really relaxed with protocols for when they are alone together in their own homes.” 

She realized she had scooted to the edge of her seat to get a bit closer as he responded, and sat there with the table edge biting into her ribcage. She didn’t mind the sharpness, it kept her anxiety at bay. She started pinching her thighs under the table with her fingernails, riding the little bites of adrenaline as they rushed her direction. She’d be bruised tomorrow but she didn’t mind, it was fun to watch the colors change and bloom. 

He continued, “For myself, I play at home and enjoy having rules and expectations for my submissives. But my life is one where I have to keep it hidden for the most part, as my children aren’t adults yet. When they reach that point I’ll have more freedom.” 

Willa nodded, thinking of her sister and her little family. They’d never allow anything to jeopardize their peace and security, so she could absolutely understand. If she had a child she’d do much the same. Thankfully in her marriage that never happened, though she had starved for some sort of validation to her existence, some reason to feel that she deserved to exist and that her misery in the marriage meant something, anything. She’d begged her exhusband for a child, but he’d refused repeatedly. In the organization children were highly discouraged, as of course the end of this system of things was going to come and having to worry about a child through those trials and tribulations wasn’t something everyone was comfortable with. 

“Protocol? What do you mean?”, she replied. 

He had a wry grin like she’d asked about his favorite subject. 

“Protocols are the rules negotiated between people in a power dynamic. So typically, that would mean that there was someone who was given the power in a relationship. Or several relationships. Of course, it’s difficult for any submissive to obey several different Dominants, so usually a sub only has one Dominant, whereas a Dominant can have as many submissives as they can handle.”

She blinked. “Rules like what?” Her curiosity was ravenous for satisfaction.

“It can be whatever the people agree upon, really. Such as they must always wear their collar, and have one for at home and one for wearing out in public. They could have a rule where the sub doesn’t eat a bite until the Dom does, when they are sharing a meal. Where the Dom sits first, and the sub scoots their seat in. Or it could be reversed, where the Dom seats the sub down where they choose. They could have a secret language and hand gestures for different commands, wherever they happen to be. There are so many different variations that could be done. It depends mostly on what is most important to them in their relationship, or what is most important to the Dom. They could have farther reaching rules as well, more invasive ones, such as control of a paycheck.