Chapter 1 #2
He’s from here, originally. Though, I don’t remember him from before.
Probably because he’s somewhere around fifteen years older than me, so I have no reason to.
A foster kid, who went off and got rich doing something with luxury resort development.
He’s a billionaire. Came back and bought land looking over the town to make a point, I would think.
He moved into that big house on the hill. Then my dad sold him half our ranch. He put Dad under a lot of pressure and my mom had just left for the third and final time so it was a rough run of luck for us.
I was livid. More than that I felt reckless – something I never was. Something I could never afford to be. But my life was falling apart and he felt like a good target for my anger.
He caught me, grabbed hold of me and slammed me up against the side of that barn, hands tight around my wrists. It had felt like a fight.
And it had felt like sex, for all an eighteen-year-old virgin could know what sex felt like.
All that rage directed against me, the fierce control of his strength. The way his large hands had directed my movements. I felt powerless.
He could have done anything he wanted to me in that moment, and instead of fear I’d felt…
Turned on.
You get the hell out of here, he’d said. And give thanks that nobody got hurt, and that I’m not calling the police on you. You fucking brat.
His words stuck with me. And even now, they meld into my fantasies, twisting themselves up in my head and turning into something else.
Fucking brat. He said that to me while he moved his hand from my wrist to my throat…
And I get off on that memory. Every time. Every time I see him I feel an explosion of heat that’s not solely about hatred.
It fills me with shame. Then a deep sense of fear. It’s what’s been driving me the last few months. As pressure on the ranch has been building, it’s been pushing me toward the thing I’ve been avoiding figuring out about myself.
Instead of sleeping I open up The Club app, which has become the dirtiest of my dirty secrets.
I’ve been going over and over my desires for a while now.
Why every interaction I have with men leaves me so unsatisfied.
I blame Caleb, actually. That interaction that we had when I was young.
The way he held me, the way he used his strength against me.
It’s like it broke something in me. Like it turned me into a monster that I don’t even recognize.
And it’s finally driven me to this.
There aren’t very many experienced Dominants in rural Oregon.
I’ve been considering actually experimenting with BDSM for a while. There’s no one I can talk to about it. Not here. All of my friends would be utterly and completely scandalized, and then they’d be afraid.
For me, for my sanity. Afraid I’m like my mom because obviously she’s a slut and therefore I must be drawn toward slut behavior because of her.
I’d be lying if I said that didn’t get twisted up inside me sometimes. As far as I know, my mom’s thing isn’t kink—God, I never want to know what her thing is—but it seemed like it had more to do with just wanting to get away from my dad.
But I can’t deny that it puts me in a weird shame place. I tried. I tried to want a nice, normal guy who gave the potential of a nice, normal life and nice, normal sex and I blew that up three months ago.
After he proposed.
I panicked. Like a spooked horse trying to escape a barn.
I had felt like I loved John but then it just felt like more responsibility piled on top of everything I was already dealing with and I couldn’t bear it.
I wanted to feel like someone could take care of me, which is a simultaneously terrifying thought since I’d have to trust them in order to do that, and I don’t trust anyone like that.
How can I?
Which is why this is a fantasy, though one I’ve been edging closer to making real. If I can pull the trigger.
My research has led me down a whole lot of rabbit holes and I’ve nearly leapt into a few really sketchy choices.
I looked into physical sex clubs, but I don’t like the idea of doing anything in front of anyone.
Plus, I would have to travel to a bigger city and that already feels scary given that I’ve so rarely been outside my hometown.
I want a little secret trouble. I don’t want big bad trouble where your body ends up floating in the Columbia River because you went for an orgasm and got serial killed instead. No thanks.
I’ve always been good. Because I have to be. Because if I’m not good, then the ranch is going to fall apart. My parents were dissolute and irresponsible – though to give my dad his due, he’s still here.
The one time I ever misbehaved was when I sneaked onto Caleb’s land and nearly burned his barn to the ground. As misbehavior went, it was relatively spectacular.
It wasn’t BDSM club spectacular.
That’s how I ended up finding The Club app, during a desperate Google search that went something like How Do I Find a Dom Who Won’t Kill Me If I Also Don’t Want to Get Railed In Front of a Room Full of Strangers.
They really do have apps for everything.
It’s dedicated to helping kinky people find a partner in their area who matches their personal needs.
Everyone is vetted, their identities verified, and there’s a lot of built-in protection in that. People have STD tests on file and their actual government names, even though you don’t see them when you’re chatting in the app.
The people running it know and if something was going to happen to you, they would know where you were and who you met with. There’s just a whole lot of security built-in, and I like that.
I think.
Of course, I am also still terrified. I’ve only been with the one man and I assumed I’d marry him because part of me wanted to slip into an easy partnership that had some security.
The truth is, in action, I’ve always been the one in charge during sex too. I can’t get out of my own head and I like directing things because it feels easier, safer.
The really weird thing about my BDSM fixation, my fantasies about being powerless, about being forced…is that it’s nothing I’ve even come close to doing in real life. It’s nothing I would say fits my personality at all.
BDSM is not a quick fuck. And I’m aware of that. There’s something about it that terrifies me. The idea of giving my control away.
It’s a particular kind of fear. One that attracts me more than it repulses me.
But the truth is, none of the sex that I’ve had has sparked the kind of need in me that the one angry encounter I had with Caleb has. The way he held me, his hands around my wrists like manacles. I’m intrigued by it.
I swallow hard, and open up the two Dom profiles that I’ve been eyeing on the app.
There’s one guy who lives local who’s into pain. Pain and rough sex, which intrigues me, I’m not going to lie. But it’s not quite what I’m after.
That very thought makes me laugh at myself. What am I after? Who can say. It’s not like I know.
I swipe away from that profile and look at the next.
He goes by The Duke and I’m not sure if that’s a John Wayne reference – which I wouldn’t know if my grandma hadn’t been obsessed with him – or if he’s trying to get the girls who are into Bridgerton.
I can’t work that one out. I’m not sure I need to.
He’s into bondage. Elaborate knots and a total surrender of control. Dubious consent role-play.
Every time I read those words I start getting hot.
And I am intrigued in spite of myself. Mainly because nothing scares me more than the idea of losing control, and there’s something that’s so attractive to me about the idea that I could flirt with a loss of control while also having all these firm agreements in place.
It feels like something I could keep control over in a way. Something that I could maintain a grip on.
Just looking at the words in his profile starts to ramp up my libido. I’ve messaged him twice. He knows that I live in the area and that I’m an inexperienced submissive.
He told me that he likes to train subs who are trying to get into the lifestyle.
Just that word, training , that should make me mad. But it doesn’t.
I think about messaging him, but instead I just read over our previous interactions.
I like to train submissives. Teach them to take everything I can give. Show them their limits.
I put my hand between my legs and start to touch myself. Everything is terrible, honestly. But this fantasy, this fantasy that I will probably never act on, fuels me now. It makes me feel like everything isn’t terrible.
I put my fist in my mouth as I bring myself to the peak with record speed.
God. Just thinking about him, this man that I’ve never seen…
It pushes me right over the edge. But I would be lying if I didn’t say that I was imagining those cool blue eyes looking at me as I shudder out my orgasm.
I grit my teeth and throw my arm over my face. As long as I don’t think about that tomorrow when I have to face him, I’ll be fine.
Lucky, I’m practiced at that. Lucky that when I’m actually around him, the hatred usually takes over.
But for tonight, I’m just going to let myself relax into my sexual satisfaction.
I don’t have anything else for me. Nothing else but this.
So I’m going to hold it close while I can.