The internet was so rife with pornography of every sort, Kat wanted to be astonished, but she couldn’t be. Even sitting in the familiar, comforting surroundings of her own bedroom, she felt like she was trolling the grimy streets of some surreal alternate reality of sex predators and fetishists. But what felt even stranger to Kat was opening herself up to that world for the first time, maybe not to some of the more extreme niches found online, but even then she knew that it all was just a matter of perspective. She was proud of herself for going inwards and really connecting with her own sexuality, and what she had been craving for such a long time without realizing. She longed for a sense of excitement, the feeling of truly being able to let go of control, and giving up the power to someone she could trust. In all of her past relationships, there was always an element missing; discovering what would fill the void was absolutely liberating. She may even have been born with it, but that didn’t matter. It was in her, and she wasn’t alone.

The litany of paid sites was too long to digest, directories collected by theme offering hundreds of different sites each. All were merely gateways to hundred of other sites with countless videos of seemingly questionable material.

Amateurs, she couldn’t help but silently remark with a little chuckle.

And her newly discovered kink was as well-represented as any. Video sites offered bondage videos of every conceivable sort: women kidnapping women, wrestling-oriented scenarios, super-heroine videos by the score. Some sites were dedicated purely to that fetish: young and shapely women in absurdly high—and—low-cut costumes losing fistfights to a variety of thugs and goons, and even men in gorilla costumes, only to be groped, manhandled and gut-punched, electrocuted and strangled.

But none of it meant anything to Kat. I’m not going to sit here and watch some video, getting myself off like some teenager. After what happened with Carter, there’s no going back to anything like that now, at least not for anything more than getting through the night. People get addicted to this kind of porn and it ruins their social lives. I don’t want that to happen to me, to be some shut-in, getting old while I’m getting myself off. Sure it’s easier than getting out there and having real relationships; it’s all too easy.

But this is for people who haven’t been there, people who’ve never tasted blood for themselves. And once you’ve tasted blood, you never go back.

So Kat made a lateral move to a different kind of website. Bondagedate.com was the first one she found—a black background with red and white text declaring the promises of instant, kinky sex with just a quick, free membership. Most of the pictures were of pretty women, and even those were bogus, she knew. Whether there would be any decent men on the site was another question. She went though the site and browsed the male profiles, and there did seem to be one or two promising candidates. Once again, she wasn’t deluded enough to think that any of them were what they represented themselves to be, but she didn’t see any harm in setting up an account with a fake name and testing the waters, maybe meet one of these fellas for a cup of coffee or something. I’ve tangled with Carter Fields, Kat reassured herself. I can handle any of these lonely-heart masturbators.

* * *

Kat had to squint and really concentrate to recognize the face from the picture Dale Slater had posted on his profile for OnTheProwl33. There was a faint resemblance, she tried to console herself, between the dusky, brown-haired man in the picture and the plump, balding man sitting in front of her at Callie’s, a local bar. He was much shorter than she expected, even sitting down in a booth he was considerably shorter than he was, his leather jacket just a bit oversized as he sipped at a beer.

“I’m an alpha male,” he declared before slurping the beer, a bit of foam clinging to his nose. “It’s the law of nature, what can I tell you?” Kat just nodded, trying not to laugh.

“Is this your first time?” Dale asked with a cocky air about him that made Kat cringe.

Her brows rose, and they shared a little, knowing chuckle. “No, I mean, your first time…in the underground.”

“The underground?”

“Yeah, you know what I mean, the dark side.”

“Well, I suppose I’ve spent most of my life in the rebel camp, but I’m not against, y’know, switching over to the dark side.”

Dale laughed again, snorting several times before taking another drink. He eyed her glass of chardonnay, sitting untouched. “You’re not gonna make me drink alone?”

That’s not the only thing I’m gonna let you do on your own, Mr. Alpha Male, Kat was tempted to say.

He looked her over with what she believed he thought was a very wry, sexy expression: one brow raised, half a smile digging up into his cheek. “Believe me,” he said in a different voice than he used before—lower and more delicately sexy, “I know what you want.”

“Is that so?” Kat indulged him.

Dale set his beer aside and leaned forward. Kat leaned back, bringing her wine glass with her. “You need a man to take control, to show you how truly vulnerable you can be. You need a man who’ll throw you down, tie you up, make you feel special again, make you feel the way you’ve always wanted to feel but never have.”

For all the ridiculousness of this little man and his self-deluded swagger, she had to admit that he wasn’t far wrong. She did want those things, and hearing him say it only drove the point home. She may have wanted those things, but he wasn’t nearly the man she wanted them from. Kat looked away and downed half the glass in a single gulp.

“You wanna be tied-up, tortured…just a little bit.” But this truth was only adding insult to injury. “You wanna be humiliated.”

“I’m sorry?”

He leaned back with his beer, head lolling cocky on his narrow shoulders. “You wanna feel how powerless you really are, how worthless. You wanna be smothered with my ass right in your face, don’t you? You want me to stand over your body, so I can piss right in your mouth—”

One more gulp emptied the glass. “Yeah, I gotta go.” Kat was on her feet, purse in her hand, before she even realized it.

He turned and whined out, “Hey, where’re you goin’?”

* * *

“Hi, baby,” Kat said very sexily into her own cell phone, once more in the safety and relative sanctity of her own bedroom. “What’s your name, hon?”

“It’s…um…Jim; I’m Jim.”

She smiled, not because she was amused but because Jackie had assured her that it would come across in her voice. And she had clowned for enough children to know how to force a smile for hours on end, just another quality that Jackie assured made her perfect for the job. “Hi, Jim.”

“Hi.”

“So, what kind of things do you want to talk about, Jim?”

He paused, and he seemed even to Kat, like a first-timer, maybe even a virgin. “I wanna talk about you and me.”

“Okay, Jim,” she said, deliberately stretching out the phone call as instructed. She didn’t like doing it, as the charge was by the minute. But she also knew it was the waiting that made the arrival. She was ready to make the suspense as terrible as she could and make it last as long as possible. “What about you and me?”

“I, uh, wanna talk about you reaching into my pants and pulling out my cock.”

That took her a little by surprise, but it passed quickly as the reality of her job, and the aspects of her new reality rose to the fore. And, she imagined, they weren’t alone. She cooed into the phone. “Oh, Jim, it’s so big; I don’t think I can take it all.”

“Suck it,” Jim said, with a new strength, and Kat began making sexy moaning sounds, slurping sounds, trying not to break out laughing. “Yeah,” Jim said on the other end of the line, “oh yeah, that’s good…” She could hear his shortness of breath—an odd, repetitive sound she could identify only by common sense.

“Oh, you’re so delicious,” she said, trying to sound enthusiastic and engaged, which she knew was key to a performance worth giving, or a life worth living.

“Did I ask?” The voice was different, instantly recognizable as Carter Fields. She started daydreaming and reminiscing about her time with the incredible Mr. Fields.

“I—”

“Shshshsh, quiet,” he said in a sexy rasp, “don’t make me hurt you.” For the first time in a while, a rush of warmth passed through her body, some areas more than others.

“Okay,” she said, nearly breathless.

“You see what this is?”

“I-I can’t see through this blindfold.”

He chuckled a little bit, low and in the very back of his throat. The loud crack of a leather belt told Kat instantly what it was. “Please…don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t…” Kat’s mind began to flash from one possibility to the next. Is he going to whip me? Strangle me?

“You’ve been a very bad girl,” he growled in her inner ear, “and you have to be punished.”

“Please…”

“Bend over,” he said with less warmth and more of an authoritarian snap. “Right here, over my knee.”

Oh, she realized, of course. She imagined herself bending naked over his lap, her ass up and ready for the first strike of that leather instrument of discipline. She sat rigid, nervously awaiting that first thwack, the suspense terrible if not lasting.

Smack!

Kat could virtually feel the stinging pain shooting through her ass and into her crotch, ricocheting up into her body.

Smack!

She only then realized that her free hand had found her pussy, and that she was massaging herself vigorously, eyes dipping shut, almost oblivious to her surroundings.

“Hello? Hello?” It was a man’s voice, but not Carter’s. “Hey, what’s going on here?”

“Oh, um, sorry, hon,” she said, trying to shake it off and get back into character. “I was just sucking on your big, juicy cock—”

“No, I was fucking you up the ass. What are you, drunk? What kind of bullshit phone sex line is this?”

“I’m sorry, I…your cock is just so big, I can’t think straight. Oh, keep fucking me, baby—”

“Oh knock it off. I wanna talk to your supervisor.”

“My—?”

“Yeah, that’s right, I know how these things work. Put me over to your supervisor.”

“I-I’m not sure how to do that, I’m new—”

“Well, don’t bother. I’ll call back and deal with it personally. I’m gonna get my money back for this, you bitch.” A click and a dead line punctuated his sentence.

* * *

Kat decided to meet Ben at The Cloisters, an outdoor branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. They spent a peaceful though slightly awkward half hour wandering around the medieval art and architecture and strolling through the peaceful gardens. Stained glass and famed unicorn tapestries gave every glance its own little reward.

“I’m really glad you called,” Ben said, more cheerful than she’d ever seen him. “This is…this is nice, y’know? Feels right.”

“It’s nice to see you again, Ben. Seems to me we only ever spend time together when we’re working.”

“You just noticed that now? Because, um, feels like I’ve been pointing out that we could spend more time together if you’d only wanted to.”

“Ben!”

“Okay, okay, I don’t mean to complain. Hey, the best things in life take time, right?” She couldn’t disagree with that, turning her attention to the light spring breeze instead, a pigeon fluttering by overhead. “Worth waiting for though.”

“Ben, I know you’re excited, and I am too. But I guess there’s something I should tell you,” she admitted, wanting to be completely transparent with him.

“You’re pregnant?”

“No, Ben, no but, well, recently I had a…a little tryst, I guess you could call it.”

“A tryst? Not with Marvin?”

“Mitchell? No, Ben, not with Mitchell. I, um, I didn’t actually know him, I guess I should say.”

“Like a one-night stand.”

She chewed on that for a second. “Kind of, yeah. And, well, it made me reconsider things…things with you, for example.”

They strolled on, the gardens stretched out around them. “Well, okay, whatever.”

“But I hope you’ll understand if I wanna take things kind of slow.”

A few more feet passed, her nerves and muscles tightening just a bit. He finally said, “Okay, I get that, that’s fair. But, I mean, we’ve known each other for years, Kathleen, almost all the time you’ve been here. That’s a decade; how much more slowly can we possibly go?”

“We were just friends, then we were business partners. But this is different, this is a whole different kind of relationship, and I just want to make sure we don’t move too fast and ruin what we’ve got.”

Ben forced a smile, clearly biting back on his growing frustration. “Oooooo-kaaaaaay, sssoooooo, does that mean no hand job in the rose garden?” There was a stiff silence before an even stiffer chuckle. “Honestly though, don’t you think we’re past all that first-date crap?”

“No, Ben, I don’t. What did you think, I was just going to fall down and spread my legs for you?”

Ben looked around. “Well, not here.” This time they looked at each other and neither one laughed. “Kat, you know I’ve been waiting a long time.”

“I thought you said you’d decided I was right.”

“So sue me. I’m in love with you, awright? I always have been and I always will be. What more do you want me to say?”

“No more, actually. Less, if possible—a lot less.”

Ben rolled his eyes, arms flopping to his chubby sides. “Oh, y’know what? That’s it, I’ve had it!”

“Ben, take it easy, we’re just talking—”

“Yeah, and that’s all we’ll ever do. You’re staying, you’re leaving, you’re a virgin, you’re a whore—”

“Ben!”

“I don’t care anymore, Kat, I’m sick of this. I’m not gonna wait around for you, fawn after you, pull up your slack while the business I helped you create falls apart!”

“You’re the one who needed to go on all those auditions,” she pointed out.

“That’s right, and one of the things I was gonna tell you today”—his voice got louder, words coming faster—“one of the things I was so goddamned fucking happy about today, was that I was gonna tell you I got a gig, on an off-Broadway revival of The Producers.”

“As Max?”

“Yes,” Ben barked back, “as fucking Max—one of the two leads!”

“Really? Oh Ben, that’s great, congratulations—”

She wanted to hug him, and even tried, but Ben just stepped back, hands up and palms flat to stop her in her tracks. “Don’t bother to kiss my ass now; it won’t work.”

“Kiss your—? Ben, I’m happy for you; that’s great news!”

“Yeah, it is,” Ben said, his voice returning to a reasonable volume but still seething with a panted and long-suppressed anger. “It’s great, actually; it’s a big step up for me. But don’t think you’re gonna benefit from it, not one bit. You weren’t there for my struggle; don’t expect to be there for my success.”

“Ben, it’s not that at all—”

“And now you’ve had a change of heart, huh? Now maybe I’m not such a dumb, fat loser.”

“I never thought that, Ben. It’s very cruel to even say that,” she said, genuinely surprised at how quickly things escalated.

“The truth hurts, sweetheart.” Ben started walking backward, away from her for what seemed like the last time. “I’ll see you in court over the company; don’t think you’re just going to walk away with that too—make me look like a total fool.”

“Ben—” Kat tried to regain control of the situation, but knew it was a losing battle.

“No, you’re the fool, Kathleen Le Fleur; you’re the loser. Adios.” He turned and walked farther into the garden and out of her life. She stood there, embarrassed and alone after the second disastrous date in a single week. Just once, she thought to herself, I’d like to have a date where we both leave at the same time.