4. Covered
FOUR
COVERED
NAILAH
Three days.
I gave myself three days to change my mind.
Three days of waking up at 5:45, going to the gym with Josh, sitting at my desk at Nine Body Co.
scheduling Instagram posts about "intention" and "alignment" and "sacred feminine energy" for women who spent $48 on bath salts.
Three days of being Nailah Cross: social media manager, gym regular, Malik's quiet little sister.
Three days since Jarvis Reed kissed me in that hallway with his hand on my throat and his voice in my ear saying things that made my whole body reorganize itself.
Three days of knowing that something had shifted.
Not in me. In my options. For the first time in my life, there was a man standing in front of me saying: you drive.
And my hands already knew the wheel. They'd just been waiting for someone to build a road worth speeding on.
Three days of lying.
Because here's what nobody tells you about the moment a man sees you clearly for the first time: you can't go back to being invisible after that.
You can put the black dress back on. You can sit in your corner at work with your headphones in and your shoulders turned inward and your whole body performing don't notice me.
But the place inside you that got seen stays lit.
Stays warm. Stays wide open, a door someone walked through and forgot to close behind them.
And I liked doors closed. I kept my doors closed. Always had.
Let me be clear about something. Just because I prefer to be covered doesn't mean I lack confidence.
I know what this body is. I've known since my hips came in at ten, since my breasts filled out in a way that made my mother say Lord, girl, we need to go shopping and my aunties whispered quietly at the gathering about how fast I had to be.
But behind my own closed doors? I'm a different woman entirely.
I walk around my apartment naked. Cook naked.
Stretch naked in the morning light that comes through my bedroom window and watch my own shadow on the wall and think: yes.
I sleep bare. I moisturize slow, every inch, not rushing past my own body like it's something to just get through.
I live in this skin when no one's watching.
Touch myself without guilt. Look at myself in mirrors without apology.
My body and I have a relationship that is intimate and honest and mine.
But in the world? Covered. Always. And no, I'm not ashamed.
My body is simply not a public offering, the world didn't earn the view.
Because I learned young that when men see this body in the open, they take it as an invitation I never extended.
So I dress for myself and I save the rest for spaces that feel safe.
My apartment feels safe. My mirror feels safe.
My bed at 1 AM with my hand between my thighs and nobody's expectations in the room feels safe.
I know I'm the shit. That has never been the question.
The question has always been: who deserves to know it with me?
Men look. That's what they do. They've been looking since I was twelve.
But it wasn't just looking. It was the commentary.
Grown men on my mama's porch saying she gon' be dangerous when she get older like I wasn't standing right there hearing it.
Men at the corner stores, my uncle's friends, saying give her a couple more mango seasons and I'd... and then trailing off with a laugh that made my skin crawl.
Saying I can't wait about a child. About me.
Like my body was a countdown clock to their access. Shit was weird.
I was thirteen. Fourteen. Wearing oversized clothes trying to disappear inside fabric, and grown men were already narrating what they'd do with me when I ripened. Like I was fruit. Like my body was on a timeline that ended with their hands.
The looking was never the issue. The issue was that looking became claiming.
They looked at the body and decided it belonged to them eventually.
Decided my curves were a preview of something they'd been promised.
And no one told them to stop. No one said she's a child.
The women around me just shook their heads and said that's just how men are.
So I covered. Not from insecurity. From refusal.
I decided early: you don't get to narrate me.
You don't get to countdown my body like it's yours on layaway.
The curves are mine. The access is mine.
The gaze lands where I allow it and nowhere else.
And if covering myself is what it takes to remind you that this body is not your inheritance, then I'll cover until I decide otherwise.
But the sexuality? The longing underneath all that careful covering?
That was always there too. Alive and well and vivid in the dark of my bedroom where nobody could mistake it for an invitation.
I've been touching myself since I was sixteen.
Elaborate fantasies. Hours spent. I know my body the way a musician knows their instrument: every note, every response, every hidden register that opens up when you press just there.
What I've never had is a man who made space for any of it.
Every boyfriend. Every situationship. Every man who got past the armor and into my bed: they assumed. Assumed they'd lead. Assumed the quiet girl was a quiet fuck. And because they assumed, they never asked. And because they never asked, I never showed them.
Not because I was scared. Because they weren't worth it.
Thursday after work, I headed to my closet.
I drove past my exit on Memorial. Kept going. Took the turn onto Moreland and pulled into the parking lot of a shop I'd walked past a hundred times and never entered. Black exterior. Tinted windows. A tasteful sign in gold script: Velvet & Vice.
I sat in my car for three minutes. Not nervous. Deliberating. The way you deliberate before a purchase that says something about who you're becoming.
I got out. Walked in.
The inside wasn't what I expected. No fluorescent lighting.
No sticky floors. No men in trench coats browsing DVD racks.
It was clean, warm, curated. Exposed brick walls with product displayed on floating shelves.
Track lighting. A woman behind the counter with locs and gold hoops who looked up from her phone and smiled without judgment.
"Welcome in. Let me know if you need anything."
I didn't need anything.
I needed everything.
I started at the rope wall. Three types: cotton, nylon, and silk. I touched each one. Remembered the cobalt rope in his cabinet, the weight of it, the way it gripped skin slightly without cutting. I chose a deep navy silk blend. Thirty feet. Long enough for complex work.
I moved to the restraints. Leather cuffs, various styles. I bypassed the cheap ones with plastic buckles and found a pair in matte black leather, suede-lined. Buckle closures. The same kind he'd shown me. I ran my thumb across the lining. Butter-soft. I put them in my basket.
A blindfold. Silk. I chose black.
I stood in front of the impact play wall for five full minutes. Floggers, crops, paddles. I picked up a suede flogger and swung it against my palm the way he'd shown me. The thud. Deep. Warm. I took it.
A riding crop. Black shaft, leather tongue at the tip. I turned it in my hands and felt the precision of it. The directness. I took that too.
Nipple clamps. I chose adjustable ones with no chain. Clean. Minimal.
A collar. Thin leather. Single O-ring at the front. My chest tightened when I picked it up. Not fear. Recognition. I held it in my hands and thought about fastening it around someone's neck. Thought about the ring catching light. Thought about clipping a leash to it and pulling.
I took it.
At the counter, the woman with the locs rang me up without commentary. Professional. But when she bagged the last item, she looked up at me with something warm in her expression.
"First time shopping for yourself?"
"How can you tell?"
"You touched everything twice. Women who know what they want just grab." She smiled. "But the ones who touch twice? They're discovering something. That's the fun part."
I took the bag. Heavy. The weight of it in my hand felt real. Tangible. Proof that this wasn't just fantasy. I was building something.
"Thank you," I said.
"Come back anytime, love."
I walked to my car in the evening heat. Set the bag in my passenger seat. Looked at it. Black bag, gold tissue paper peeking out the top. $347 worth of commitment.
I started the car. Drove home. The bag sat beside me the whole ride, heavier than its contents.
When I got settled at home, I sat on my couch cross-legged with tea in my hands and my laptop open.
I typed two words into the search bar: Female dominant.
And fell down a staircase I'd been standing at the top of my entire life.
FemDom forums. Educational blogs with tasteful headers. Reddit threads from real women who talked about this the way I felt it: quiet. Cerebral. Authority as a state of being, not a role to play.
"It wasn't about being mean. It was about being the one who decides."
My eyes burned reading it. Not sadness. Recognition. Someone describing a place I'd visited in dreams and telling me it had a real address.
I read for three hours. The difference between dominance and aggression: aggression is loud because it's insecure.
Dominance is quiet because it doesn't need to prove anything.
The kind of man who needs this: not weak.
Strong enough to stay still. Tired of holding everything up alone.
Looking for someone worth lowering himself for.
I thought about Jarvis. The relief in his voice when he said nobody has ever made me the subject. The way his body shifted when he told me I looked the way a woman who wants to be obeyed looks. That wasn't him leading me. That was him asking to be led.
I found instructional videos. Workshops. Women demonstrating ties, explaining negotiation structures, talking about the psychology of power exchange with the same calm precision Jarvis had used when he walked me through his room.
I closed the laptop at 1 AM.
Sat in the dark for a while. Thinking about the bag from Velvet & Vice sitting on my bedroom floor. Thinking about the rope inside it, navy silk, waiting to learn the shape of someone's wrists. Thinking about the woman at the counter who said that's the fun part.
She was right.
I wasn't scared anymore. I was ready.