Chapter 2 Mehar
MEHAR
“You may walk in,” I instructed my pathetic masochistic client.
The dungeon was in the basement of a rowhouse in Dupont Circle.
Unassuming from the outside. Street level was a lingerie boutique with lace and silk in the window, that was owned by a girl named Yandy.
The top floor hosted a massage studio, owned by homegirl, Ayanna. In fact, she owned the whole building.
And I rented the basement.
There was a separate entrance on the side of the building, down a narrow staircase.
There were no windows and I had painted the walls black.
The air hit different the second you reached the bottom step—cooler, heavier, like the building itself knew what happened down here and minded its business accordingly.
I’d had the concrete floors polished to a dark shine.
Candles lined the walls in iron sconces because fluorescent lighting kills the mood and I refused to dominate a man under the same lights they use at the DMV.
A red velvet curtain hung behind my throne complete with black leather, gold studs.
I’d found it at an estate sale for two hundred dollars and had it restored for eight.
It sat on a raised platform because anyone in my room needed to look UP at me. Always. This was non-negotiable.
The wall to the left had my tools which includes paddles, floggers, crops, restraints.
They were all hung on hooks and organized by severity.
I kept that wall immaculate. To the right was a St. Andrew’s cross bolted to the wall and a cage that was smaller than Thad’s but effective for clients who needed to feel contained.
I’d had iron rings embedded in the concrete at intervals for chains, for leashes, for whatever the session called for.
The whole room smelled like leather and sandalwood and just a little bit of fear. That last part wasn’t a candle, that was just what happened when powerful men walked into a space designed to strip them of everything they thought they were.
I was on the throne in a patent leather catsuit and matching thigh-high eight-inch stilettos with a red lip and my hair pulled into a slick high ponytail. Dame CoCo didn’t do casual.
“My mistress…” he started.
“Uh uh. You know damn well not to speak to me before paying tribute. Have you lost your mind?”
He quickly pulled out his phone and CashApped me five hundred dollars. I looked down at the notification and shook my head.
“That is not enough for breaking the rules. Get out.”
He scrambled for his phone before CashApping me another five hundred. I looked up at his puppy dog eyes that were pleading for me not to turn him away. I knew I could get more out of him with my inevitable abuse.
But part of me didn’t feel like it this evening. Tonight was Yusef’s recital and my thoughts were all over the place. However, I needed the money. I had a few financial goals this year and being a findom was getting me there quicker than any other gig would.
Judge Timothy Baker. The Honorable Timothy Baker, to be specific.
Federal bench, appointed for life. The man who sentenced people in a black robe on Monday mornings was standing in my dungeon on a Wednesday evening in his boxers with his hands clasped in front of him like a child waiting to be scolded.
His wife was on the board of some women’s advocacy nonprofit and they had two kids in private school. He drove a Jaguar, went to Martha’s Vineyard every August, and had a reputation in the legal community as fair but firm.
And every other Wednesday, he paid me to be the meanest woman alive to him. Funny how that works.
“I’ll let you stay,” I said, inspecting my nails like his presence bored me. Because it did. “But you owe me for wasting my time. That’s another two hundred.”
His phone was out before I finished the sentence. $200. Good boy.
My rules were simple. Don’t touch me, don’t look me in my eyes, and don’t speak unless spoken to. When I tell you to pay me for one of your indiscretions, you pay me or you get the fuck out. No negotiations, no safe words, no refunds. You walk through that door, you agree to my terms.
I stood from the throne slowly and let the stilettos do what they do—eight inches of patent leather clicking against the concrete.
His eyes followed me and I stopped mid-step.
“Did I say you could look at me?”
Eyes hit the floor immediately. “No, Mistress. I’m sorry.”
“You’re always sorry. At some point, Timothy, sorry stops being an apology and starts being your personality.” I circled him. Slow. “Strip.”
He hesitated, and they always did at this part. The last layer of clothing was the last layer of dignity and once it was gone they were just… men. Regular, unremarkable men standing naked in a room with a woman who had all the power they pretended to have in the real world.
“Did I stutter?”
He pulled his boxers down and stepped out of them, then just stood there with his hands at his sides and his eyes on the floor.
And I looked.
Lord.
I tilted my head. Then the other way. Like maybe a different angle would help. It did not.
“Timothy.” My voice was flat. “What is that.”
“I—I know it’s not—”
“What. Is. That.” I pointed at his shrimp dick with one finger like I was identifying evidence at a crime scene. Which felt appropriate. “You walked into my dungeon. Into MY space. And you brought THAT? That’s what you’re presenting to me this evening?”
His face went full tomato. “Yes, Mistress.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself. Genuinely, deeply ashamed to show that tiny little thing to me. To ANY woman. That is an insult, Timothy. That is an act of aggression against my eyes.”
“I’m sorry, Mistress.”
“Are you? Because if you were truly sorry, you’d be on your knees apologizing. Properly. And you would be CashApping me for the emotional damage of having to look at it. It’s like God started to make a man but then said fuck it.”
He dropped so fast his knees cracked against the concrete. Phone already out. “How much, Mistress?”
“Three hundred. For the trauma.”
$300. And something in me woke up.
That thing that was tired, that thing that didn’t feel like it tonight, that thing that was distracted and heavy and scattered, it went quiet. In its place was something sharper, something that felt like the closest thing to alive I ever got anymore.
A powerful man on his knees, naked and ashamed, paying me for the privilege of being destroyed.
This was the only place in the world where everything made sense, where I wasn’t confused about who I was or why I couldn’t sleep at night.
In this room, in this catsuit, on this throne, I was exactly one thing.
In control.
“Crawl to me. Hands and knees. If your belly touches my floor that’s another hundred.”
He crawled. A federal judge. A man who held people’s freedom in his hands. Crawling across concrete while candlelight threw shadows on the walls.
I hated men. I hated everything about them, their audacity, their entitlement, their hands, their voices, the way they moved through the world like it was built for them and the rest of us were just furniture.
But in this room, the furniture had a throne and the men had a floor.
And I charged them for every second they spent on it.
He reached my feet. Stopped. Waited.
“You’re breathing my oxygen, Timothy. That’s a hundred dollars.”
Phone out. $100. Didn’t even hesitate.
“Now. You’re going to receive your punishment for last session’s infractions. And you’re going to pay me for each strike because it is not free to have me exert my energy on someone as unworthy as you. Fifty dollars per. Understood?”
“Yes, Mistress.”
“Turn around. Hands on the floor.”
He turned around and got into position. A whole federal judge with his palms flat on cold concrete and his bare ass in the air, waiting for a woman half his age to spank him like a misbehaving child.
I picked up the leather paddle and swung. The crack echoed through the dungeon and he gasped—they never screamed on the first one.
“That’s fifty.”
Again. Harder. “A hundred.”
Again. “A hundred fifty.”
By the fifth strike his breathing was ragged and his skin was red and I was more awake than I’d been all day.
Every swing pulled something out of me—not anger exactly, but something older, something that lived in the basement of who I was and only came upstairs when I had a paddle in my hand and a man beneath me.
That was ten total—five hundred in strikes, plus the thousand at the door, plus the two hundred for wasting my time, the three hundred for the emotional damage of looking at his barely-there dick, and the hundred for breathing.
Twenty-one hundred. And we weren’t done.
“Stand up.”
He stood up slowly, wincing the whole way.
“You did adequate.” Highest compliment I ever gave. “But adequate is not excellence and I only accept excellence in my space. CashApp me another four hundred as a reminder to do better next time.”
$400.
Twenty-five hundred dollars. Forty-five minutes.
“Get dressed and get out.” I watched him scramble for his clothes with his eyes still glued to the floor where they belonged. “And Timothy? If you ever speak to me again without me telling you to, I will double the fee. Are we clear?”
“Yes, Mistress. Crystal clear.”
“Apologize for making me look at that little dick one more time on your way out.”
“I’m sorry, Mistress. Deeply sorry.”
“Mm-hmm. Go.”
He dressed and left the way they always did, no eye contact on the way out, no small talk. They came, they paid, they crawled, they left. And I sat on my throne and looked at the money in my bank account felt nothing.
Almost nothing.
Because the power only lasted as long as the session did.
The second that door closed and I was alone with the candles flickering and the silence pressing in, the aliveness faded.
And what replaced it was the same thing that was there before he walked in.
That heavy, hollow, restless nothing that followed me everywhere.
I checked my phone. It was 6:15. The recital was at seven.
I stood from the throne. Unzipped the catsuit. Dame CoCo didn’t go to piano recitals. Mehar did. And Mehar wore a cashmere sweater and gold jewelry and a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes but was convincing enough for family.
I changed in the back room, wiped the red lipstick off and applied something softer, took the hair down from the high ponytail and let it fall. I swapped the stilettos for heels that were cute but wouldn’t make Zainab give me the look.
In the mirror, Dame CoCo disappeared and Mehar stared back at me. Pretty, put together, and empty behind the eyes in a way only I could see.
I grabbed my bag, locked the dungeon, and got in my car.
Twenty-five hundred richer. Not one dollar happier.
Yusef was my nephew, the one good, pure, untouched thing in my life. The kid who still looked at me like I was magic, like Auntie Mehar hung the moon.
If he knew what Auntie Mehar was doing forty-five minutes ago, the moon would crash.
But he didn’t know. Nobody did. That was the whole point.
I merged into DC traffic that was already a nightmare at six-twenty because this city has personally never heard of infrastructure planning and at this point I think the potholes on 295 are permanent residents with voting rights.
And I would walk in and smile and clap and be the cool auntie, and nobody would know that underneath the cashmere and the gold and the smile that didn’t reach my eyes, there was a woman with twenty-five hundred dollars in CashApp notifications, a federal judge’s dignity in her pocket, and not a single clue how to feel like a normal human being.
The concealer was holding and the armor was on.
Showtime.