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My face goes up in flames, and I rush to apologize. “Oh my God, Crystal. I’m so sorry. I did not mean to say that. I swear, I was just thinking about how you’re so nice, but there’s something about you that tells me you could probably be a tough trainer and hurt me if you wanted to. And then I thought about how my husband—” I cut my rambling off abruptly, because no one is supposed to know that Seth Owens is Seven, owner of an exclusive BDSM club. “Uhhh… he has like… this alter ego when he’s uhh… goofing off that he’s named. And I was like, I wonder if Crystal has a name for this badass I think she’s hiding inside, and somehow that came out of my mouth as ‘stripper name.’”
She exchanges a look with Astrid, and then the two of them fall into a fit of laughter, making me feel a little nauseous I’m so humiliated.
“Honey, I believe you mean my Domme name, which you actually met me briefly by at the New Year’s party at the club. My husband—my sub—introduced me to you as Countess. I have this… blood thing.” She shrugs with a gleam in her dark eyes, and then her voice lowers and slightly deepens, taking on a sensual tone that makes me hold my breath. “You must be a very good submissive to so easily pick up on my role, which I’ve spent years perfecting the ability to hide… unless I don’t want to.”
I swallow thickly, but shockingly, I don’t blush or freeze. In fact, something about her tone is soothing, makes me feel safer in this space than I had just moments ago. And for her to compliment my instincts, going so far as to say I must be a very good submissive, heals a little piece of my broken self-confidence in that role.
Maybe I have picked up and learned more than I realize?
When I’ve discovered a lot of my anxiety has disappeared, I meet her knowing eyes and smile gratefully. “Thank you for saying that. And it’s nice to know someone from the club on the outside. That’s definitely a relief,” I tell her. “I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you. I always thought the little masks and stuff we wear there would be ineffectual if we met another member at like… the grocery store or something. No way it could be like Clark Kent and his fake glasses. Surely all those people weren’t fooled. The hero they always saw blasted all over the news and stuff, and they couldn’t tell it was him just because of a pair of glasses? Come on. But I guess….”
Crystal holds up a finger and sashays over to the table holding the Bluetooth speaker her phone is connected to. She taps and scrolls along the screen, then comes back over to show me a photo. I can tell by the decorations it was taken at the New Year’s Party right across the street.
Now knowing it’s her, I recognize Crystal’s voluptuous figure and the shape of her full lips that are painted a matte black in the photo. She’s not smiling in it, instead wearing a closed-lipped smirk that tells me my new friend might lean toward the sadistic end of the spectrum along with her “blood thing,” so her telltale little gap isn’t showing. The rest of her, from head to toe, is clad in a skin-tight, shiny latex bodysuit the likes of Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman, minus the ears. Definitely not like Halle Berry’s—her costume was almost as identity-revealing as Superman’s glasses. The only skin Crystal’s bodysuit shows is from the slits for her mouth and eyes, much tinier than either of the villain’s costumes had.
I tilt my head, look up at her and her thick braids, then back down at the photo. My face must show I’m trying to solve a puzzle, because she chuckles and asks, “What?”
I look back up from her phone, my voice full of wonder. “Halle Berry has a pixie cut. How do you fit all that hair under there?”
After she bursts out laughing, slapping her thigh and closing out her screen, she answers without truly revealing anything, “Black girl magic.”
Astrid shakes her head at me. “Plus, Halle had grown out her hair by the time she played Catwoman, sis. Remember? It was pretty long and curly during the parts she wasn’t in the suit, when she was her counterpart, Selina Kyle. And Michelle Pfeiffer too. She had all those voluminous curls I envied.” She lets out a dreamy sigh.
I nod, recalling that now but still not understanding the physics of Crystal getting all those heavy-looking braids to lie perfectly flat and secure under that tight mask.
“But bravo on not one but two DC references. I’ll have to tell Seth he needs to give his woman some kind of reward.” My sister winks, and I roll my eyes.
“He was on a mission to prove to me why Marvel is superior to DC Comics, even though I never argued or had an opinion either way.” I don’t even have time to blink before something occurs to me. “Hey, wait. Did you know Crystal from the club?” I ask Astrid.
“Of course. Neil met them in Vegas years ago. Like… before the guys opened Club Alias,” she says with a shrug, as if that explains everything.
But my mind just isn’t connecting the dots. “So… huh?”
Crystal takes pity on me. “How about I tell you the Cliff’s Notes version of my life story while we stretch, before we start our lesson?”
I nod, and she leads us over to the mat-covered floor that has six of the rotating poles seeming to sprout out of them. She tells us to each pick the pole that speaks to us, and naturally, I choose the one that’s closest to the back wall and behind my sister.
“Not that one,” comes Crystal’s authoritative voice, and I gulp. “Over here, sweet girl, where I can see and help you. This one is the one speaking to you today.” She points to the pole closest to her, at the front of the “class,” and as the sub in me senses the Domme in her once again, somehow, I follow her directive without pause, actually finding relief, feeling safer, by being closer to her instead of hiding.
But being the clearly experienced and respectful Dominant she is—Club Alias wouldn’t have allowed her to become a member otherwise—she doesn’t offer me praise the way one would in an established D/s relationship.
Firstly, that would require consent; a conversation would need to take place where I’d give her, a Domme, permission to speak to me, a sub, with authority—to give me orders, to reward or punish me, et cetera. It would be my choice, if I wanted to submit to her in any way, whether she identifies as a Dominant or not. Consent is required for everything between Dominants and submissives, right down to her calling me pet names. That one, though, I’ve always chosen to pay less attention to, since a lot of the time it’s a cultural thing to call people by terms of endearment, especially here in the South. A cultural thing I happen to adore.
Secondly, we are both in our own D/s relationships, so she’d actually have to ask my Dom’s permission to address me in her Domme persona. A Dominant could either answer yes or no right off the bat—which Seven would and has before, if it was a male—or they could choose to have a private discussion with their submissive first, to see what the sub’s opinion might be. But ultimately, it would be my Master’s decision.
But even though no conversation has taken place between any of us about consent, there’s just something about Crystal—not Countess—that makes me want to let her lead me. And it’s in no way sexual. Not even slightly. There is a certain confidence—not cockiness—and trustworthiness I sense in her that tells me I’m safe in her hands, in whatever she wants to teach me. An instinctive thing, as she pointed out when we first arrived. She might have spent years trying to perfect her ability to hide her Dominance unless she willed it to come out and play, but there are just some things, things that are soul-deep, that a person has no control over. And apparently, my instincts as a submissive have been honed enough, trained enough, or are just soul-deep enough, that I can pick up on what Crystal naturally exudes.
And it’s in this moment I realize something about this “assignment” Doc gave me.
“This isn’t about me learning how to pole dance, is it?” I ask, my voice strong, my face remaining its un-flushed temperature and color, as I look at my instructor, then my sister, and then back to Crystal. All of us are seated on the cushioned floor, each straddling our own pole, legs out straight in front of us, using the silver metal between our calves to pull ourselves into a deeper fold to stretch.
Astrid and I had followed Crystal’s instruction without her even saying a word.
The two women eye each other for a second, smile knowingly, and then turn to me.
When neither responds, I elaborate, “This is about me discovering I have learned things. I have picked up lessons along the way, without me being totally conscious of it. Isn’t it?”
Astrid is the first to speak. “Neil and I thought it was interesting that you weren’t cognizant of the little habits you’ve picked up from Seth, simple things, like referencing movie characters during conversations, when you never would’ve done that before you met him.” She shrugs. “So, he wondered if it could possibly be the same situation going on with your lack of confidence as a submissive. Like, maybe you just don’t realize how much you’ve actually learned, how much you know, about your role as a sub. I mean, it’s not like you’ve been handed a test and been graded. A teacher hasn’t returned your answers, showing the ones you got right and the ones you got wrong, confirming your knowledge or lack thereof. So how could you know if there are things you need to work on, or if you’re an ace?” She grins, leans toward me, and boops my nose with her pointer finger. “My nerdy little sis.”
