His Good Girl

I count myself lucky to have met Will. I hear horror stories about people starting out in the BDSM scene and, as a submissive, fall victim to someone who only thinks they know what they’re doing — or worse, is just an abusive asshole looking for some easy targets to beat on.

My friend Cecily and her partner were having a dinner party at their house for “kink-minded folk” and invited me to come along. It would be a “safe, controlled environment,” she’d said, perfect for me to “get my feet wet.” Yes. Perfect. Right?

Wrong. I was petrified.

Who knew what really went on at these things? I mean, Cecily and Trisha were very normal-seeming people to the outside world; Trisha was a lawyer and Cecily worked at social services. They needed to preserve their appearances. This should have soothed me — but instead, my neurotic ass was all sorts of worried that they used these gatherings to ‘let loose’ in ways that the Real World disallowed them.

I imagined a ton of likelihoods: shiny, vinyl black pants, torn mesh tops, 10” thigh-high Fuck Me boots, heavy make-up, naked girls on leashes — and a ridiculous amount of staring at the new Would Be, who clearly didn’t belong. Really, what had she been thinking? What was I thinking?

“Here, let me get that for you.”

I don’t even remember which of the above I actually had been thinking about in that moment. An arm covered in a brown houndstooth jacket reached around mine and rang Cecily and Trisha’s doorbell. I blinked.

“Oh — sorry,” I said, turning. I could already feel my cheeks flushing red — and I wasn’t even in the door yet! But the sight that met my eyes was interesting: just a regular guy in blue jeans, a white T-shirt, and a brown houndstooth jacket. Did he know what he was getting into? Suddenly I began to worry that this was a friend or colleague of Trisha’s from work and that this definitely couldn’t end well. Before I could say anything else, the door behind me opened and I saw Trisha’s petite frame and voluptuous-when-brushed-out dark hair. I caught her gaze with alarm, telepathically trying to tell her that some normal guy friend of hers or Cecily’s was about to get an eyeful of something he wasn’t prepared for.

“Hey Will,” she said, smiling. Trisha let him in, accepting a one-armed hug, and he offered me a small smile as he walked past. Then she looked at me, grinning. “So are you actually coming inside?”

“Um. Yes.” I offered her the plate in my hand. “I brought cookies. I know Cecily said not to bring anything, but you know I can’t do that.”

“I know,” Trisha said, and I could tell she was laughing at me. “She’s just pulling the pasta off the stove, I think.”

“Great, I’ll go —”

“Sit,” Trisha said. “You’ll go sit.”

“What — ?”

Her arm came halfway around my shoulders and helped to steer me into their living room, done in soft café-au-lait and various other coffee shades and filled with a small group of people I had never met. Unless, of course, you counted Will; I didn’t count my standing around looking like an idiot as us ‘meeting’, and I hoped that he didn’t, either.

“Guys, this is Savannah,” Trisha said, squeezing my shoulder a bit. One woman with Molly Ringwald hair (á la Breakfast Club) wiggled her fingers at me with a friendly smile. “Be nice now, okay? No scaring her off.” And then she walked away from me.

So as to appear casual I took the nearest seat, which happened to be on the end of the chaise lounge of their suede sectional. I tried to smile, I think; I at the very least attempted to look unafraid. There wasn’t a single person sitting there on a leash — or naked for that matter. One of the women appeared to be wearing a pretty distinct collar, and Molly Ringwald had some concoction of a chain maille necklace on, but other than that any regular person off the street wouldn’t know that there was a lick of anything different about the people sitting in the living room. For some reason, this made me more nervous.

“Nice to meet you all,” I finally managed.

“Nice to meet you, sweetie,” said Molly Ringwald. “I’m Carla.” She indicated the dark-haired man sitting next to her, “And this is Keith, my Dom.”

I nodded to them both and the others sitting around the living room followed suit with their names. The woman wearing the collar was named was Diane and her Dominant preferred to be called Trix; a petite, middle-aged blonde woman with long red fingernails introduced herself as Raine. Raine introduced the scrawny guy next to her as Gavyn, which only left —

“Hi, I’m Will.”

Will was close enough to me that he could lean forward to shake my hand; I took this as my opportunity to erase all prior idiocy and offered up what I hoped was one of my best handshakes. Up-close-and-personal, Will had short brown hair and cloudy turquoise-blue eyes; they reminded me of the surface of a frozen lake on a cloudless day. He had a firm grip and seemed to have a ridiculously intriguing balance of I-can-change-my-own-oil and I’ve-read-Tolstoy going for him. “Savannah,” I said, “it’s a pleasure to meet you.” I looked up, remembering my manners, “Nice to meet you all.” I rubbed my palms up and down the thighs of my pants, as though that would diffuse the nervousness.

“So, Savannah, honey,” Carla began, “how do you know Cecily? She’s such a doll, isn’t she?”

I smiled, trying not to laugh. If there was one person in the world more neurotic than myself, it was Cecily; we got along well because of it, certainly. “We went to undergrad together.”

“Oh, well that’s very nice. And what is it that you do?”

I paused and felt my eyes widen a bit. I had spent so long worrying about naked girls on leashes that I’d forgotten the basics — what was my name again?

“You heard what Trisha said,” Will spoke up with a leisurely smile, “let’s be nice and try not to scare her too much.” And he winked at me. Winked. Did people even do that in real life? I was thankful he looked away after that, because I knew I’d blushed again.

“Sorry for the wait, everyone!” came Cecily’s songbird voice from the dining room. “Dinner’s ready!”

What I did or did not do was forgotten for the moment and I thoroughly enjoyed dinner; I think I even forgot to be so shy after the second glass of wine. Cecily had been right, it’d been a perfect way for me to get my feet wet.

Trisha couldn’t keep me out of the kitchen after the meal was over, and I helped Cecily clean up a bit while Trisha handed out cups of coffee.

“So what do you think?” she’d asked.

“About what?” I replied. I shrugged. “Everyone? They’re all very nice.”

“Anyone in particular?” Cecily asked, and I sensed rather than saw her cocked eyebrow.

“Please, God, Cecily, tell me this isn’t a dating service,” I replied. But my cheeks were red. “I don’t need to be fixed up, and you know that —”

“You need someone to ‘show you around’,” she replied. “And a good spanking, clearly.”

“Cecily!” I caught her gaze and held it a moment before we burst into laughter. “Oh my God, I’m so telling Trisha. Not cool, Ces!”

Cecily giggled. “Go ahead and tell ’er. I could use a good spanking, too.”

“Did I just hear the magic word?”

Cecily and I jumped and looked up, guilty, like two little kids caught with their hands in the cookie jar. Will headed to the Keurig, nonchalant as can be.

“Nope, no magic word,” Cecily replied, grinning as she handed me a wet pasta bowl to dry. I had a sudden desire to stomp on her foot.

“Pity,” he said, watching his mug fill and grabbing the sugar bowl. Then he looked up, right at me, and asked, “Did you enjoy yourself tonight, Savannah?”

Surprising even myself, I replied, “The night’s not over yet.”

Will’s eyebrows raised slightly as he considered this, as though impressed. “Good point of view,” he said, smiling, and left the kitchen. As soon as he was (hopefully) out of earshot Cecily sputtered into her glass of red wine.

“’The night’s not over yet’,” she mimicked, leaning against the counter to hold herself up while she laughed. “Oooh, little miss Savannah … I know what you want for dessert!”

“You are so cut off,” I replied, whacking her thigh with my towel. “And shut up, okay?”

Cecily laughed.

* * *

As it turned out, Cecily had given Will my number and he called me a couple of days later. I was leaving my office and was just about to the level of the parking garage where my car was when my cell phone vibrated in my hand.

I hesitated to answer a phone call from an unknown number, but swiped the ‘Answer’ button on the touch screen anyway. “Hello?”

“Hello, is this Savannah?” came the strange, male voice.

“May I ask who’s calling please?”

“Good girl,” he replied, and I could hear the smile in his voice. “This is Will. It’s nice to see a woman with some common sense.”

“Um,” I began, “thank you?” A horn honked behind me and I realized that I had stopped walking in the middle of the parking garage. Grinning sheepishly, I hurried across to the opposite line of cars, pulling my keys out of my purse and holding my cell phone up to my ear with my shoulder.

Will laughed. “You’re welcome, it was definitely a compliment.”

I was never good at these sorts of things, my mind fished fruitlessly for something interesting to say — I had as much luck coming up with something as I did putting my key into my door. “Shit,” I muttered after missing the keyhole for the fourth time.

“Is this a bad time?” I heard. There was actually a note of hesitation in Will’s voice.

“What?” Success! I opened my car door and slid inside, placing my purse on the passenger seat. “Oh — no! I’m sorry … I’m just trying to get into my car and …” Finally, I burst out with, “how did you get my number anyway?”

“Cecily,” he replied, as though it were obvious. “I take it she didn’t actually ask your permission like she said she had.” There was a tone of wry amusement coating his voice.

“That she did not,” I muttered, beginning to think of a myriad of ways to make Cecily’s upcoming death look like an accident.

“Well, I’m sorry to have invaded your privacy … but since I have you on the phone, I was hoping that you would let me take you to dinner sometime this week.”

“Me?” I asked, then cursed myself.

“You,” he replied, clearly attempting to hold the laughter from his voice.

Get it together, Savannah … I thought. Taking a deep breath, I glanced at myself in the rear-view mirror, then sat up straighter. Swallowing, I said, “That sounds very nice, thank you.”

“Great, how’s Wednesday?”

“Um, hold on, let me check …” I pulled my phone from my ear, sifting through my calendar that I already knew was empty of evening appointments this week. “Wednesday works fine for me, any time in particular?”

“Six o’clock works for me if it works for you.”

“Yeah, sure. Fine,” I replied, trying not to look and see how red my cheeks were turning. “Where should I meet you?”

Will paused. “I can pick you up if you’d like.”

“I’d rather meet you,” I replied.

I sensed rather than saw Will smile; I was reminded of his prior “good girl” compliment. “I’ll text you then on Wednesday — it’ll be somewhat of a surprise.”

“Okay.”

“Great. See you then.”

“See you then,” I repeated.

“Good-bye,” Will said.

“’Bye.”

Click.

I quickly dialed Cecily’s number, put her on speaker phone in my passenger seat, and backed out of my parking space. I exited the parking garage to the sound of a phone ringing.

“Hello?” Cecily answered.

“I’m going to kill you.”