Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 66074 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 330(@200wpm)___ 264(@250wpm)___ 220(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66074 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 330(@200wpm)___ 264(@250wpm)___ 220(@300wpm)
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.