Chapter 15 #2
“She wants to know how I’m doing,” Victoria mumbled to herself.
She had so many thoughts swirling around in her brain that she had a hard time answering the question.
Before answering, though, she had to get her thoughts in order about Tillman.
What an uphill journey he was embarking on.
Victoria wondered about her own physical presentation.
She was masculine forward, but with feminine undertones.
Was she transgender? What did that even mean?
Rowena said Victoria was genderfluid, but she wasn’t sure if that was right either.
Did that mean she could float between current societal definitions of masculine and feminine at a whim?
Victoria had submissives in the past who called her “Ma’am,” while others called her “Sir.” Even Bernadette had called her Sir. Did that mean she was male?
“No,” Victoria said out loud. I’m not a man. I’ve never thought I was a guy. But she had never fit into society’s constructed gender roles or expectations. She was just Victoria or Vic.
“Ahh, right there,” Victoria said out loud. Which is it? Can’t I be both? She groaned. Maybe she was genderfluid inside and the external expression of that fluctuated depending on her mood. Did that make her non-binary?
She looked up the term non-binary and scoffed. “I do fall outside the traditional notions of gender.” In her best caveman voice, she said, “Must be man or woman. Not both. Not neither.” She scoffed. “Fuck that noise. I’m just me.”
Maybe the group would have some thoughts on all this. And maybe a certain Juicy_Babe would contribute as well.
She clicked on the button to create a new topic.
Topic: Gender
Question: (2 parts) How do you define gender? And how do you go about supporting a transgender person?
She posted the topic and took a sip of coffee as she thought about how to answer her own questions. She saw movement on the screen. Oh, wow. Someone already responded. Was it Juicy_Babe? No, it was that new person.
Yes_Ma’am: Gender’s on a spectrum. Cis women can be femme, masc, or anything in between. Transgender stuff…I’m still trying to wrap my head around it.
lesbo_submisso: Sex and Gender can’t be different. I hate this new thing “cis.” If you’re a girl, then you’re a girl. I mean, if you have lady parts, then you’re female. Why is everyone trying to make it weird?
Yes_Ma’am: Transgender people have been around since time began, I think. I don’t personally feel like I’m a man, but then my straight friends don’t get why I love women. It’s unnatural, they say. So, who am I to say that someone who feels like they are in the wrong physical body is unnatural?
lesbo_submisso: It IS unnatural.
“Wow,” Victoria said out loud. “Even queer women can be close-minded and oppressive.”
lesbo_submisso: And I wish they would just stop waving their flags and stop talking about it already. We see you. You won’t let us NOT see you. OMG! And then we’re not supposed to talk about it and make THEM feel weird.
Yes_Ma’am: I like masculine-presenting women. A lot.
Daddy_Vic: A new friend just came out as trans (a trans guy). How do I help him?
Yes_Ma’am: Hi, Daddy Vic. Great topic.
“Whoa,” Victoria said, feeling pounced on. “That was quick. Too fucking quick.”
Yes_Ma’am: Daddy Vic, I’d tell you to feel how you feel and don’t let anyone tell you differently.
Yes_Ma’am: Your truth is your truth, Daddy Vic, and we’re here to support you. I’m here to support you.
Yes_Ma’am: I sent you a private message, Sir.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Victoria said and put her phone down.
This woman thought Victoria was a transgender guy.
Not true, but that wasn’t the problem. She’d seen this kind of behavior before.
The woman had addressed her twice and then called her ‘Sir.’ This was a thirsty, fawning, and frenzied sub who’d made presumptuous assumptions.
Victoria snuck a peek at the direct message.
It was short, so she could read the whole thing without opening it, which would alert the woman that she’d read it.
Yes_Ma’am: I can change my name to Yes_Sir, if that pleases you.
“Holy shit,” Victoria said. She’d had over-the-top women go for her before, and it sucked. Should she reply? No. Bad idea. To engage with crazy had no satisfactory outcome. Victoria ignored the message and, instead, began a new message to Juicy_Babe. Now that was a polite and intelligent woman.
But as Victoria sat there trying to figure out how to tell Juicy_Babe the truth about the shit she’d caused back home, she couldn’t figure out how to start.
Telling Tillman had brought it all back up, and it had drained her.
And, besides, any way she put it, she’d end up looking like a jerk.
Okay, she would own it. She was a jerk. The biggest. But Victoria didn’t want Juicy_Babe to write her off.
So far, she’d been the only bright spot since her move back to Indy.
Her cousin Erin and Tillman, too, but Victoria was in Erin’s way now.
Her phone rang. She recognized the number and answered it. “Inmate call from Stateville Correctional Facility.” She took the call, then went out to her truck to talk to her father in private.
They talked for a while and when she hung up, she felt good.
It had been nice to connect with him. She’d been finding fewer and fewer people in her corner lately, and his was a grounding voice.
Maybe she should go up to see him. No, he’d hate that.
Frustrated that he insisted she keep family first, Victoria tucked her phone in her shirt pocket and took herself to Rose’s Diner for some comfort food.
She allowed herself to wonder whether Juicy_Babe liked diners and whether she would like this one.
Once at work, she worked out with Kimo as usual and then settled in for a long night.
She checked the Kinks group and saw that no one had added to her Gender post. And, sadly, Juicy_Babe hadn’t sent any messages, so she just closed the app.
She still wasn’t ready for the soul-revealing text she wanted to share with the woman she had feels for.
Yes, she admitted it. She was growing feelings for the intelligent woman who lived somewhere in the eastern time zone.
“Why am I having all these feelings?” She wasn’t used to it.
She clicked back to the messages app and typed a long message to Juicy_Babe, telling her everything that had happened in Denton Heights and her nefarious role in it.
Her finger hovered over the send button.
She closed her eyes and felt the shame all over again.
Maybe it was better to let all that shit flow down the river, never to be seen again.
Why bring it up? And to a stranger? Why the hell was she airing her dirty laundry all over the internet? She didn’t know this woman.
She deleted the message and didn’t send it. Maybe she’d give Kinks a rest for a while. Just a few days to let her brain adjust itself and let Yes_Ma’am find someone else to lust after.
What to do now? What she did best. “Time to patrol.”
Back in the office and chilled from the uneventful patrol, she turned on the hot water boiler. Erin stocked teas, coffee, and hot chocolate. One of the tea bags was conveniently sitting on the tray, so she grabbed it.
“Chamomile Infused Herbal Tea,” she said.
“Nice.” Once made, she sipped her tea and then put her feet up on the desk.
She slid down and rested her head on the back of the chair.
She felt herself dozing. That was okay. She’d done this practically every shift working for Erin.
She’d wink out for a few minutes and then wake up before anyone noticed.
She smiled, too sleepy to actually laugh.
There was no one there to see her sleeping on the job.
She burrowed her nose in the supple cleavage.
So soft, she thought. She turned her head and kissed the offered breast and then sucked hard.
She liked her women to have a souvenir to remember her by long after she’d had them.
Gentle hands encouraged her explorations, but, as all women did, they pushed her head lower to the spot of most need.
Legs spread. Victoria inhaled the scent between the fleshy thighs.
“Yes,” she murmured. She always did favor a plus-sized woman.
She bit her way up from the woman’s knee to her center and dove in like she was starving.
The woman tousled her hair, letting out the occasional soft moan.
Was it Sunday morning? Victoria loved lazy Sunday morning sex.
A flash of arousal hit all the right nerves, and she heard herself moan.
It was then reality crept in, but just on the very edges. “Mmm,” she groaned, lamenting the fact that she knew she was dreaming, but not wanting it to end. So, she didn’t let it.
She pulled the woman’s legs apart even further.
She needed room to work. She was gentle with her ministrations.
Long, slow thrusts with her fingers inside her very wet woman, making sure to rake over the G-spot.
Slow licks over the clit. She gave tiny and gentle flicks of her tongue until the woman underneath her started writhing.
“Yes,” Victoria murmured out loud again. Her ears heard the sound of her own voice in the real world, but she refused to listen until the woman climaxed.
“Fuck me, baby,” the woman pleaded. “Harder.”
In her twilight awakening dream, Victoria had suddenly switched to thrusting inside the woman with her strap-on.
She grabbed the woman’s hips and went to town.
It didn’t take long before the woman cried out as she came.
The woman pulled Victoria down for a kiss.
But then Victoria was no longer on top. The woman was now sitting up in the bed, cradling Victoria in her lap.
The woman offered her a breast, and Victoria began suckling.
Her eyes shot open. “Holy fuck.” She scrubbed her face with both hands in an attempt to wake up.
“What the hell?” She blinked the sleep from her eyes and stood up.
Dizzy, she put a hand on the desk to steady herself.
She felt like she was drugged or something.
“A good dream’ll do that to you.” She laughed and headed to the bathroom to splash her face.
When she came out, she still felt groggy, but she didn’t even have to ask herself who the woman in the lovely dream was.
She knew. It was Juicy_Babe, a woman she had never met in person or even seen a picture of.
And that was dangerous because Victoria had been dreaming about slow Sunday morning sex, and that implied an intimate relationship.
She’d tried that with Alyssa, and that only brought heartache.
Why bother putting your heart out there if it was only going to get stomped on?
She denied having her heart broken when Rowena brought it up.
Stoic Victoria didn’t do relationships. She did play sessions and short-term stuff like Lauren. Not relationships. Right?
And, besides, she knew nothing about Juicy_Babe, anyway.
She checked her watch. Shit, she’d slept for over an hour.
Not wanting to face the cold on another patrol just yet, she did the next best thing and checked the cameras.
All were working. The system looked kind of similar to the one at Venus Rising.
Old. She laughed and pulled the surveillance system away from the wall.
“Oh, shit,” she said when she saw the disconnected audio wire.
She plugged it in and went back to the main screen showing all fifteen cameras.
She fiddled around but couldn’t get any sound.
In her fiddling, though, she came across a reboot command in the setup icon.
“Why not?” She tapped the command. All the screens went blank, and her heart leaped to her throat.
“Erin’s going to fucking kill me if this thing doesn’t come back up. ”
She paced the office, watching the system reboot. It seemed to be taking forever. Once the flicking images settled, she said, “About time.”
She heard her own voice echo through the tinny speakers.
Adrenaline hit her. “What the fuck?” She heard herself again.
She went to the screens and scrolled through the various cameras.
When she reached the last page, she said, “Holy shit.” There were twenty fucking cameras.
Not fifteen. She saw herself in one of them.
There was a hidden camera right there in the office.
Not cool, Erin. Not cool, she thought, realizing that someone could be watching her right now.
She turned and walked over to the beverage station. Pretending to make more tea, she looked around. Yes, there it was. The digital clock mounted on the wall seemed to have just the right angle.
A stream of curses filled her brain. She wanted to rip the clock off the wall and throw it. But no. She had to remain calm and cool. Hopefully, she hadn’t already blown her cover as she decided on a different strategy. For now, she had to pretend she hadn’t discovered anything.
Loyalty to family, Dad? she thought. She shook her head, knowing there was no way she’d be staying in this job much longer.
Eddie and Donny were assholes, and she’d managed to keep her distance from them, but now the only cousin she trusted was hiding shit?
Was Erin spying on her? Kimo had something to do with all of this, too. She just didn’t know what.
She couldn’t tip her hand too soon, though. She couldn’t let Erin know that she was on to her. She had some investigating to do, especially because she wasn’t sure what her cousin was up to. And the first thing she was going to do right now was see what all those hidden cameras were pointed at.