1. 6 Months Later – An Introduction to Submission
Q
It was going to be an interesting class. He’d thought that when he’d first signed up for it, after completing the Dominance class, but he hadn’t known at the time exactly how interesting it would be.
Q was doing his best to listen to Master Law and Mistress Julie as they welcomed everyone to the Introduction to Submission class, but his eyes were on Samantha Dupre, who preferred to be called Sam.
She’d also been in the Dominance class, both of them learning that side of kink, but now he was going to learn how to be a submissive, and she was practicing being a Domme.
Mistress Sam.
Samwise.
He squashed the voice in his head. She really hated to be called that, and he hated feeling like the kid on the playground, tugging on a girl’s pigtails to get her attention. That wasn’t the kind of attention he wanted from her, and he should really be more mature by now.
I should also be over her by now.
Who knew a high school crush could have such longevity? They were completely different people now, yet he was still attracted to her. Maybe even more so than he’d been in high school.
To be fair, she didn’t dress like that in high school.
Tonight was the first class, and Sam had signed up to be one of the Dominants.
Law had checked with Q beforehand to make sure he was okay with having Sam hands-on with him in the class, since he preferred a woman Dominant.
Pretty much everyone in the club had become aware of the friction between him and Sam.
Friction he’d helped along by doing stupid things like changing her phone’s ring tone to Lord of the Rings theme.
In retaliation, she’d covered his car in Post-it notes...
like, completely covered bumper to bumper and even the tires.
Looking at her now, one would never guess she had a mischievous streak.
She was wearing a corset that lifted her substantial breasts up like a shelf.
Q was pretty sure he could rest a drink on it.
Though what he really wanted to do was burrow in and hibernate for the winter.
He’d noticed her boobs in high school, of course, but they were even more incredible now.
The long skirt she was wearing had slits up the sides, flashing her legs every time she moved.
With her long blonde hair pulled up into a no-nonsense French twist, she looked like a hot librarian Dominatrix.
“Tonight, you’ll practice negotiations with all of our Dom volunteers,” Mistress Julie said, sweeping her hand out to gesture at Sam and the others.
Almost a foot shorter than Sam, Mistress Julie still had no problem appearing threatening.
She was a petite Asian woman and a force of nature, from her spiked boots to the tip of the chopsticks in her hair.
Q was pretty sure she’d gotten her corset, with its mandarin inspired neckline, from his friend Angel.
Angel was the reason he knew what a mandarin inspired neckline was. She was also the reason he’d gotten into kink in the first place, after he’d found out what she and her now-husband were up to. Q hadn’t thought places like Stronghold and Marquis really existed.
Now, here he was attending his second kink class, since he already knew how to be a Dom.
At least, he’d completed the course and Mistress Olivia had signed off on him being able to play in the club.
But there had been something missing. Eventually, he’d realized that he’d really enjoyed doing the submissive part of the Dom class and wanted to explore it more.
“Are we being paired with one of them?” Noelle, one of his new classmates, asked.
Q looked back and forth between her and Master Law with interest. He was ninety percent sure Noelle was Master Law’s girlfriend’s ex-roommate and best friend, and he was dying to know what she was doing here, of all places.
If he was right about who Noelle was, Q couldn’t tell from Law’s expression.
Law looked as stoic as he normally did as he met Noelle’s eager gaze.
“Not tonight,” Law said impassively. “Tonight, you’ll be practicing with everyone. That way, you can get a good feel for how negotiations might go differently with different people. Next time, we’ll pair you off.” His eyes flicked to Q for just a moment.
He doubted anyone else was going to have difficulty with whoever they were paired with for the class. He’d chosen to have Sam as his partner. Unlike everyone else in the room, he’d been consulted beforehand.
There was no way his answer would have been anything but ‘yes’ for a myriad of complicated reasons, but the top two were that he had never backed down from a challenge from Samantha Dupre in his life, and he was so damn attracted to her, he couldn’t think straight.
He was happy to take an opportunity to get her hands all over him.
Whether there would be any sex involved would depend on their negotiations, but he could always hope.
“Okay, everyone, split up. You’ll have fifteen minutes to talk through your limits and work on negotiations before you’ll move on to the next partner.” Mistress Julie’s dark gaze moved over all of them, then she motioned to the other Dominants.
Standing, Q moved his chair to the side.
He’d expected his first negotiation would be with Sam, so he was a little surprised when Connor stepped up to sit down with him.
Over the past few months, he and the big Dom had become friends—they’d gone through the Dom class together—but he hadn’t expected the other man to choose him first. He could tell Connor was nervous.
Maybe he just wanted someone familiar before he had to tackle the unknown.
“Hey, man,” Q said, sitting down. Connor sat across from him. A big burly guy, he was close to six and a half feet tall and built like the Hulk. When they’d gone to the Maryland Renaissance Fair in the fall, Connor had dressed up like a Viking and looked every bit the part.
“Hey.” Connor had a clipboard, which looked toy-sized in his giant hands. He glanced nervously to where Mistress Julie was talking to Law about something. “So, uh, I guess we’re supposed to pretend we don’t know each other. Hi, I’m Master Connor.”
“Hi Master Connor, I’m Q.” Q grinned, hoping to ease his friend’s anxiety.
He glanced over to where Sam was sitting with Steve and chuckled. Steve was gay and would have as little sexual interest in Sam as Q did in Connor. That was going to be pretty common this evening, though. Their little group was more sexually diverse than the Dominance class had been.
Q was the only straight guy. Noelle and Cassidy hadn’t said whether they were straight, but if Noelle was Iris’ ex-friend, Q knew she’d had a boyfriend.
Cassidy had also had a boyfriend before he’d gotten kicked out of the club for ignoring Cassidy’s safeword.
He wasn’t sure why Cassidy was here. He’d thought she was an experienced submissive, albeit with a shithead for a Dom.
The other submissives were Steve and Emery.
Steve was a friend of a friend’s brother, who Q met in passing at group gatherings, which was how he knew Steve was gay.
He hadn’t met Emery, and they were the only non-binary person in the class.
They hadn’t said what their sexual preferences were, but since Sam was the only woman Dominant, Emery would be paired with a man for the class.
Q knew the other Doms by sight and name—in addition to Sam and Connor were Leo, Trey, and Eric.
“Q? Did you need a minute? Oh crap, were you hoping to talk to Sam first?” Connor’s face fell, his expression turning apologetic as he realized where Q had been looking.
“No, this is good. I can practice going through everything from this side before I have to talk to the person I’ll be scening with.” He turned his attention back to Connor. Sam would be by eventually, and until then… well, it really didn’t hurt to practice.
“Okay, cool. So, um.... let’s talk about limits.” Connor’s smile widened, his eyes crinkling with amusement. “I see that you’ve put cock and ball torture as a soft limit.”
Q pointed a warning finger at his friend.
“For you, that’s a hard limit.”
Connor’s chuckle made him smile as the big man finally relaxed.
Sam
“It was nice to meet you,” Sam said, giving Steve a wave as she got up from her seat.
This was kind of like speed dating except with hard limits and a lot more talk about sex than she would normally put up with from a stranger.
Steve had been a total sweetheart, though, and going first with him had shaken loose a lot of her nerves.
The Dominants all moved, as if by unspoken agreement, in a clockwise circle, heading to the next submissive. Q would be her last stop, and she didn’t know how she felt about that.
“Hi, I’m Sa… Mistress Sam,” she said, quickly correctly herself when she almost left off the honorific.
She sat across from a pretty blonde sub.
With their similar coloring, at first glance, she bet a lot of people would say they looked like sisters, though the sub was shorter and much skinnier than Sam.
All the Dominants had a list of each sub’s limit list for the evening so they could be prepared. She’d spent three times as long looking over Q’s as she had anyone else’s.
“I’m Noelle.” The blonde smiled back at her, leaning forward slightly.
“I love that you’re a female Dominant. I am all about female empowerment.
” She held up her hand for a fist bump, which Sam returned somewhat bemusedly.
It didn’t feel very respectful, but at the same time, Noelle was being super friendly, and she didn’t want to discourage that.
Making friends had never been one of her strengths, and it had gotten even harder over the years. She couldn’t remember having a best friend, even though she’d always wanted one. And it wasn’t like she was actually going to be dominating Noelle, since they weren’t attracted to each other.
She decided not to take offense at the lack of formality.
“Thanks,” she said, trying to smile as naturally as she could. “Actually, I’m a Switch. I kinda go both ways, Dom and sub.”
“Oh, cool!” Noelle appeared surprised but interested. “I wonder if I’m a Switch. I bet I could be. I’m not sure about this whole sub thing, but I wanted to get into it.” Waving her hand to indicate the room around them, she definitely didn’t seem very submissive. Maybe she was a Switch, too.
“Well, the class will definitely help you figure it out.” Samantha’s smile felt more genuine now. “I know it helped me. I’ve done both classes, but I wanted to get more practice being a Dominant.” She’d had plenty of practice being a submissive before she’d realized she might be interested in both.
“That would be great. I lost my best friend because I didn’t understand this whole lifestyle thing, so I wanted to try to understand it. I just wish she’d been more willing to explain things to me, but I know stuff like this can be a sensitive subject.”
Noelle looked so sad, Sam wanted to reach out and hug her. That probably wasn’t appropriate though, right?
Ugh. This was why she was so bad at the friend thing.
“It can be,” she agreed sympathetically. “I’m happy to answer any questions you have, everyone will. I don’t know all the Dominants in here, but Stronghold and Marquis are really careful about their membership.”
Though, even as she said the words, her eyes shifted over to where Cassidy was tucked in on herself, barely looking at the Dom who was trying to engage her. Unfortunately, assholes snuck in unexpectedly, but she trusted Master Patrick and the other owners to take out the trash.
“Thank you so much,” Noelle replied effusively, reaching out to put her hand on Sam’s knee. Sam blinked in surprise, but she didn’t really know what to do. “You’re so nice. I’m sure we’re going to be friends.”
“Um, right.” She smiled, relaxing again as Noelle sat back.
So, she was a little more touchy-feely than Sam was.
That happened. She was nice, and she wanted to be Sam’s friend.
Sam held up her clipboard with the limits on it.
“I think so, too. Um, would you mind if I practiced some of this stuff? I need it.”
Not just because she was going to be facing Q in a few minutes.
Part of the reason she’d volunteered to be a Dominant for the subbie class was because she needed more practical practice with it.
Striking up a conversation with someone she didn’t know, for the purposes of negotiating a scene, was absolutely something she needed more experience with.
It was also one of the reasons she’d started to worry maybe she wasn’t really a Dominant after the previous class she’d taken—if she was a Dominant, shouldn’t that mean this should all be easier?
Part of what had appealed to her about being a submissive was not having to make any of the decisions, but eventually, she realized that wasn’t always what she wanted.
Sometimes, she wanted to be in charge. She wanted to have a man on his knees and play with him the way she wanted instead of the other way around.
Or a woman, she supposed. Kink wasn’t always about sex, which was why she needed to regain control of this conversation with Noelle.
“Absolutely. I’d love to help you practice.” Noelle sat up straight, her hands in her lap, eyes sparkling at Sam. She looked like an eager submissive, and Sam inwardly breathed a sigh of relief.
“Great. So, it’s nice to meet you, Noelle.
I was looking over your limits list and saw you have a lot of ‘would like to try’ items marked off, especially with impact play, but that you say you’re experienced with spanking.
I’m assuming bare handed?” Sam tilted her head, giving Noelle the professional smile she would give a new patient at her job.
“Yes, and between you and me, it was more like a swat or two here and there, not like a ‘putting me over his knee’ situation.” Noelle giggled, then winked. She’d leaned forward a little again, as if letting Sam in on a secret.
“Well, we can definitely do more than that.” Sam smiled. “Are there any implements you had at the top of your list to try?”
Settling into the questions, she stayed focused on the woman, despite being able to practically feel Q’s presence from all the way across the room.