12 - Taming Grace, Part One
MF / BDSM / Dom/sub
As I felt his hands wrap around my wrists, pinning them to the wall above me, all I could do was tip my head back and let it wash over me the way I always did.
This was when I felt most like myself; this was when I felt alive in a way I never had before.
This was when I became the woman I hid from all through the week, and this was when nothing else mattered but how good it felt to be in my body.
And there was a good reason for that, of course.
Because most of the time, I couldn’t exactly just check out and focus on what felt good for me and me alone.
I had a business to run, a business that I’d been running for the last eleven years; a marketing company that was already one of the biggest in the city, collecting clients left, right, and center to gather up the kind of clientele list that would have made even decades-old companies jealous. And it had all been because of me.
When I’d started Front Marketing, I had been fresh out of college and not quite sure what to do with my life.
With a few savings tucked away from the job I had worked while I had been studying, I decided that I was going to give something a shot – all my friends were going to internships or other hard-worn, low-paid positions at whatever companies would have them, but I wanted something more.
I wanted something that I couldn’t get from someone else.
I wanted something that belonged to me, utterly, and the only way I was going to be able to do that was if I ran a business of my own.
It started off just taking on freelance clients wherever I could find them, stringing payments together in the hopes of being able to afford my rent check on top of maybe going out with my friends more than once a month.
Those were gruelling times, when I’d stay up late to make sure a project was completed and then crunch the numbers to see how much I had left to spend on groceries that week, but they were worth it.
Every drop. Every minute. Because they had taught me everything I needed to know to get my business off the ground once and for all.
I started to earn something of a reputation around the city for my work, and I took that seriously, building on it to eventually hire a few more staff members to come work with me.
From there, things just grew and grew and grew, until I was CEO of one of the biggest marketing firms in the state, presiding over dozens of employees and always keeping a tight grip on everything I had learned while I had been working for just myself.
Whenever I went to those fancy charity dinners thrown by whoever was trying to erase some bad press that month, I always looked around the room and wondered how many of the people here would have survived if they had their parents’ money taken away from them, if they hadn’t just walked into a business that had been waiting for them since they popped out of the womb.
I was different. I hadn’t come from cash.
I had come from nothing to make everything of myself, and I was going to be damn sure that nobody ever forgot it.
And, of course, my personal life had to take a back seat while all this stuff was going down.
That just made sense, didn’t it? I couldn’t keep up with everything that the business required of me while also playing dutiful housewife to some guy back home.
And besides, I soon discovered that most of the men I knew didn’t really want anyone like me – I scared the hell out of them, it seemed, and the very notion of being with a woman who had the unapologetic success that I did was too much for their little egos to handle.
“I just want to meet someone, that’s all,” I bemoaned to Jeannie, my best friend and one-time roommate.
We had been stuck together when we had first moved into our university dorms, and ever since then we had been close friends – she just got me, having been there for everything I had worked through to get to where I was right now.
She wasn’t after me for cash or for clout, but because I was the same Grace she had always known.
“You will, Grace, you will,” she replied, but I could see the doubt written all over her face. “It’s just...I guess most of the guys in your industry aren’t looking for a woman who might outshine them. I think, anyway...”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m worried about,” I agreed. “I don’t want to have to pretend like I’m some simpering idiot just to find a guy who’s not freaked out by the fact I’m good at my job...”
“And I’m sure you will,” she promised. It was easy for her to say, she was engaged to her partner, the same guy she had met in college nearly twelve years ago now.
Sometimes, I was jealous of them, of their comfortable life down here and how happy they seemed just being with one another.
How did they manage that? I wanted the inside scoop.
Could a person just exist without ridiculous levels of ambition and actually live a functional, happy life?
It didn’t make sense to me. If I wasn’t constantly watching profit margins swelling, or interviewing for new staff positions, or reading up on the latest technologies to make sure that my business stayed way ahead of the game, I didn’t feel like I was doing anything productive with my time.
But maybe that was some of the problem. It was my inability to let go of control that had landed me in this problem, after all.
I didn’t want to sacrifice anything for my work.
Control, sometimes, felt like all I had – and I didn’t want to give that up, not for the promise of anything other than a man who could match me.
But a girl has needs. And my needs were going more and more neglected with every passing month; I didn’t go out so much anymore, too busy planning meetings and making sure we were meeting client quotas every month, and it had been a hell of a long time since I had actually been with anyone.
Been with them. Sure, my friends had set me up on a few blind dates, and I had half-heartedly gone along because I didn’t want to seem ungrateful, but the truth was I didn’t feel any connection with those men.
They all seemed too nervous, too jittery, like they thought I was judging them from the moment they walked in the door.
Which I suppose I was, but that was just my nature – I was constantly evaluating people, figuring out their strengths and weaknesses, putting my finger on how they could slot into my life to make things run a little smoother.
It was a cold winter evening when I decided that I couldn’t take it anymore, and I went out to a club not far from my apartment to find someone to hook up with.
I knew I could land myself in serious trouble if anyone recognized me – standards were different in this business for men and women, and where a man might have been a stud, I would be a slut – but that just made it all the more exciting.
I felt like I was going undercover, sneaking this new version of me into the club to find what I knew I needed.
And, in there, I could finally let go and have a little fun for a change.
It was so liberating, so freeing – I drank and danced and flirted and acted like any other woman in their early thirties with some free time and some money in her pocket.
I thought that I was attached to the control that came with my powerful job, but as I spent the evening in that place, I began to wonder if it wasn’t something else entirely – if, maybe, just maybe, giving up that control could be just as exciting for me.
I hooked up with a guy in the bathroom, and he had no idea who I was.
To him, I wasn’t this terrifying, powerful, all-encompassing woman – I was just a girl he liked the look of.
When he grabbed my hips and pulled me roughly back on to him, I felt sparks run up my spine.
This was what I wanted. This was what I needed.
The freedom from control, once and for all, totally and completely.
I went back to work the day afterwards feeling as though I had a secret tucked away inside me, and I smiled to myself as I sat at the desk.
Nobody here knew what I was capable of. If only they did.
This new side of me was bubbling just under the surface, and I was going to make sure that it wasn’t the last time she got to see the light.
After that, I started heading out to the clubs whenever I got the chance – I would always go by myself, and I would always feel like I was an agent on some kind of undercover mission.
I knew it was crazy, but it was as though I had taken on a whole new personality.
The woman I became in there wasn’t the same woman who worked demurely behind her desk all day in the office.
I could slip off in the middle of the night and treat myself to the thrill of some man just ripping the control from me, using my body, fucking me hard and deep and making me come before he sent me back to the real world out here once more.
And this particular night, I’d come looking for something a little more intense than usual.
I knew that I was playing a dangerous game, that at any moment someone from my work could figure out that it was me having sex with random strangers in this sweaty club, but I didn’t care.
It had been a stressful week at work, what with us hiring a new manager to oversee the legal department after the last one left on maternity leave, and I needed to blow off some steam. Sooner rather than later.