I’ve been sleeping on Breanna’s couch for a couple nights and I still have no idea what I’m going to do. Brea says I can stay on her couch for as long as I need to, but I feel bad. I know she likes having me around, and I love living with my best friend, but Breanna also has roommates and I get the feeling they aren’t as thrilled as she is.

“Why don’t we get a place together?” she suggests while she’s getting ready for work.

“With what money? I have nothing and no one seems to be hiring. I’ve gone to every store in this stupid town and emailed my resume to every local ad I found online. I’m seriously considering doing some camming, but I don’t even have any space to do that here.”

“You can use my room! Seriously, do it in here while I’m at work. I don’t mind at all.”

“Thanks, Brea. I appreciate it. I just wish things were going better for me right now. I feel like such a loser.”

“Why? Because an asshole dumped you? That’s silly. I’m serious, Aubrey, there are tons of guys who would kill to go out with you, or see you naked, or tell you what to do.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want just any guy telling me what to do. I mean, I have to be into the guy. There has to be a vibe there.”

“Have you checked out any BDSM dating sites lately? Like Smackmatch or Domlife? You might find someone you like on there.”

“No. I’m just not feeling it.”

“What you’re feeling is sorry for yourself. Your job while I’m gone today is to sign up to start doing some camming and message at least one Doms on one of those sites. I’m going to check your progress when I get home tonight and I’d better see some results, young lady.”

“Ha ha.”

“I’m serious. I’m not gonna let that jerk-off, Danny, keep you in a funk. He’s not worth it. You are so much better off without him and you deserve to be appreciated. Now get on that computer and find someone to tell you what to do in bed!”

I laugh out loud at what Brea says. She’s being silly, but she’s also right. I need to get over Danny, like, now. All I’m doing by feeling bad about what he did to me is continuing what he started. I’m treating myself like shit and I know I don’t deserve that. “Okay, I will.”

“Yay! You are gonna rock the camming world, Aubrey. Dudes are gonna be lining up to slip you their tokens,” she says with a big grin.

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”

* * *

After almost an hour of scrolling through the profile pics on Domlife, I’m pretty much ready to give up. It seems like it’s just the same bunch of guys that I saw the last time I was on here. There were the young guys who are trying to look tough, the scary guys who looked like they were about to snap someone’s neck, and the old, fat, bald men who always seemed to demand a very specific type. Young and skinny, with long, blonde hair. I mean, I find it odd that these men feel like it’s perfectly fine to have requirements that they themselves don’t even fit. I sigh as I remember why I stopped coming to these sites not long after I made my profile a couple years ago.

I don’t even have a picture of myself up. I uploaded one when I made the account, but within the first couple days I was barraged with over one-hundred emails. It’s pretty common on those sites for the men to have profile pictures up but not the women, so I pulled mine down, but I still got about twenty emails a day for at least a month. The guys on those sites really come across as desperate sometimes.

It’s getting late and I haven’t even signed up at any of the camming sites yet, and I promised myself that I would message at least one guy before Brea got home.

On the twenty-third page of profiles, I finally come to one that looks promising—a mid thirties guy with dark hair who lives not too far away, in the valley. He looks nice, like he isn’t trying to appear tough with a leather jacket or a scowl, and he’s actually pretty attractive. I don’t even think about what I’m going to say. I just message him some general stuff about myself—age, weight, interests, and that I’m a sub—but I don’t mention being a virgin. I don’t feel like that’s something I want him to know unless we’re actually going to get down and dirty. I figure we’ll have time to go over more details if and when I decide to meet him. I hit send, log out of the site, and get the hell out of there.

I spend the next hour creating an account on the one cam site I know is halfway decent—or at least isn’t owned by a scamming perv—then go back to check on my private message to the Dom.

I suck my breath in a little when I log in. I have a red envelope at the top right corner of the screen. I click on it and read the short message. The guy thanks me for contacting him and tells me he’d love to know more about me. He says we could talk on the phone or even meet up in person—in a public place—if I’m comfortable with that. He gives me his private email address and tells me to email him a picture if I’m okay with that—which I am. I just don’t want it on my profile for every weirdo to see.

I’m totally nervous about emailing this guy, but I’m also really curious. I want to see if there is a guy out there who I can connect with. A guy who will make me want to submit to him. Someone who treats me well and makes me feel safe, but then can make me feel like he’s taken it all away in a split second. Someone who dangles me off the edge of a cliff, but then has the ability to pull me back to safety after he makes me come.

God, I’d give up my virginity for a guy like that in a heartbeat, I know I would. It’s not like I find it special or sacred somehow. I wasn’t brought up religious, although I was taught that a girl’s virginity is something that can only be taken away when a man’s cock is inserted into her vagina. Now that I’m an adult, I don’t buy that crap at all. But I do feel like that idea fits together with why I’ve stayed a virgin for so long.

My wanting to find a man to submit to, and my waiting to let a man stick his cock inside my pussy. Those things are special in a way. Or at least they can be. But maybe it really has to do with trust. Because I know that if I felt that way about a man—if I let myself go to a place where I would do whatever he asked, no matter what it was—that I would be able to trust him with my entire body. Every inch of it. I’m not sure if it’s even possible for me to find a man like that online. And I seriously doubt it can happen over just one date, but I also know I have to start somewhere.

I email a picture to Trey—that’s what he tells me his name is—of me sitting in a dark bar with my knees pushed together and a shy smile on my face. There’s a flash going off so my skin is glowing and my eyes are almost closed. I’ve always thought the picture made me look the way I wanted guys to see me—especially Doms. Sweet and pretty and demure. I know it’s a bit of an act, because it’s not the way I am all the time. But it’s how I want to feel when I’m being a sub.

I rarely felt that way with Danny, though. I always felt kind of desperate when I was with him. I’m sure that he truly believed that I was the lucky one. That I should have been thankful that he was gracious enough to stick his cock in my mouth. Ugh. I tell Trey that I’d be happy to meet him at a coffee shop or a bar and that we can get to know each other better that way, rather than over email.

He emails me back almost immediately, which sets off a bit of a desperation red flag in my mind. But I decide to give him the benefit of the doubt. It is hard to find someone you find attractive enough to message, let alone interesting enough to meet in person. And when you do, a lot of times you want to grab onto that teeny shred of hope so it doesn’t slip away.

He says he wants to meet tonight. He has a place in mind and it’s not too far. He suggests we get something to eat and a drink and see how we feel about continuing on. Even though I’m really nervous to get back out there so soon, I agree. I know this will be good for me. I don’t know about what he says about continuing on, though. But I figure I’ll just take it one step at a time.

I get dressed—not too slutty but definitely not sweet and demure. I want to be myself the first time I meet this guy. I don’t want to be a sub right off the bat, and definitely not his sub. Not yet, anyway. I still feel a little sad and wounded over Danny, and more than anything right now I need to do start doing things just for me. Things that make me feel better about myself, regardless of how they make anyone else feel. And right now, meeting this random dude from a BDSM site online is totally for me.

I leave a note for Breanna and head out to meet Trey. He’s already there when I get to the restaurant and he stands when I get to the table. He shakes my hand and sits down and I feel a little flustered. He’s very nice and very respectful and I can feel that I immediately like him. I just can’t tell if I like like him.

It’s not that I’m expecting instalove or an insta-connection. I mean, I do believe those things can happen, but it’s not very realistic to go on a date with those expectations. So I try to relax and not get too wrapped up in this first guy.

“Aubrey,” he says, smiling and seeming pleased with what he’s seeing. “A beautiful name for a beautiful woman.”

A little cheesy, but I let it slide. He does have nice eyes—dark and intense. As well as dark hair. Two major pluses for him in my book. “Thank you,” I say. I don’t know what to do with my hands so I sit on them while Trey asks me questions about myself. He’s tall and sort of intimidating and the way he looks down at me makes me feel like a little girl. I kind of like it.

I tell him about my experience as a sub, or lack of experience since Danny was my longest relationship and he never even attempted to do anything other than exactly what he wanted. In the middle of my rambling story about my relationship, I let it slip that I’m a virgin and I can tell that I have just become a hundred times more interesting to Trey.

I guess maybe it’s because I’m not a guy, but I’ve never understood what the big deal was with virgins. I don’t understand why guys seem to get all worked up over them when it’s such a silly thing. A certain specific body part is inserted into another specific body part. Big wow. But after I say the magic word, I can definitely feel that the atmosphere at the table has shifted. He is leaning in closer to me and his eyes have developed an almost predatory quality. Each word that comes out of his mouth is deep and measured and intent, like he has know what he was going to say in this situation for a long, long time.

There is a part of me that’s excited by him. I like the way he’s looking at me—the intensity in his eyes and the way he speaks in a commanding tone, even when he’s speaking softly. I wonder if I could do it, let him have complete control of me. I look into his eyes and imagine saying yes to every single thing he tells me to do. But as I try to picture myself giving everything of myself to him, I just can’t.

“Would you like to go back to my place,” he asks. He’s practically hovering over me now. I feel like a cartoon mouse about to be eaten by the cat that’s been chasing me for the last fifteen minutes. He’s clearly savoring every second of my rapidly beating heart and my wide-eyed stare before he pounces on me and devours me whole.

“Okay.” The word comes out barely above a whisper.

On the way over to his house I’m talking to myself out loud in my car. Saying things like You don’t need to do this tonight, Aubrey, and It’s okay to take it slow. But the minute I get inside his house I start to panic. As soon as he looks at me I know there’s no taking it slow.

“Jesus Christ, you are so hot, Aubrey,” he says as he pins me to the wall next to the door. “I seriously didn’t think I’d find someone like you online.”

He presses himself up against my body so that I can’t move, then he grabs my wrists and pushes them into the wall above my head. I can’t deny that I am totally turned on. He’s hot and he’s sexy and I can feel his kisses all the way down to my pussy lips. My body starts to melt as his mouth trails down my neck, and when he reaches that super sensitive spot right at my shoulder, I moan.

“You like that, you little slut?” he says as he grabs a fistful of my hair and pulls my head back. “You’re mine now.” I can see in his eyes that he’s serious. They suddenly have a scary quality that makes me feel like I might have made the wrong decision.

“Hey … Trey,” I say, squirming to try and get free. “This feels like it’s going a little too fast.”

“Oh, no you don’t. You’re not getting out of this so easy,” he says as he yanks my head back. “And it’s Sir. Say it!”

“Sir.” I can’t believe he’s doing this and I can’t believe I actually call him that word. I haven’t agreed to call him Sir or Master or anything. I haven’t told him what I want. I have no idea what he’s going to do to me. But I’m too scared to say any of those things to him. I hate myself so much for letting him take control like this. I want to stop him, but I can’t.

“Get on your fucking knees, you little slut.” He pushes me down and starts to undo his pants. I’m down on the floor and a huge cock pops out and he forces it into my mouth while holding the back of my head. I’m up against the wall again and this guy is fucking my face.

He’s thrusting into me harder and deeper than any guy ever has and it scares me, but I just let it happen. I keep hoping that something is going to kick in, that I will go back to being turned on, but I don’t.

I don’t understand it. Everything this guy has done so far has felt amazing, but now nothing feels right. I wanted this. Part of me really hoped that if I found a guy who made me feel certain things that everything would just fall into place. Plus, I thought he understood what I was telling him about Danny. I thought he knew that I needed to take things slow.

I just don’t understand why everything suddenly feels so different. I liked this guy He’s hot and has a total Dom vibe that I was into at the restaurant, but somehow everything has changed and now I’m just praying for him to finish.

I feel him shoot down my throat and when he pulls his cock out of my mouth, he pushes me over and to the side. I’m not very steady after what just happened and I wind up on my hands and knees on the floor. I see my purse next to me and grab it, then pull myself up the wall. “I need to leave,” I say as I turn the doorknob, my hand visibly shaking.

“Just hold on a minute,” Trey says as he pushes the door closed with one hand. He’s standing behind me and he’s keeping me from leaving and I’m really scared now. “I thought you were into all this. Were you just feeding me a bunch of bullshit?”

“I’m not feeling very good. I just want to go, Trey.” He’s just standing there, breathing on my neck, but not touching me or saying anything. “You had some fun, didn’t you?” I’m trying desperately to keep the situation calm so I can just get out the door. “Maybe we can do this another time. When I’m feeling a little better. I just want to go home now, okay?” I close my eyes and silently pray that he lets me open the door.

He kicks the door and I jump. “Fucking fine!” he yells. I don’t even turn around. I just pull the door open as fast as I can and run out. I hear the door slam behind me when I get to my car and I’m shaking as I pull away. I’m so fucking glad that I’m not in his house anymore that I can barely focus on driving my damned car.

When I get back to Breanna’s I knock on her door. I can’t bear the thought of crying out on the couch in the living room with her roommates still up.

“Oh my God, Aubrey, what happened?”

“Nothing,” I say. I jump face first onto her bed, then put one of her pillows over my head.

“You went out with one of those guys from Domlife tonight, right? I saw the site up on your computer. Did something happen?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I say from under the pillow, then feel my head become exposed as it gets pulled off.

“I can’t hear you with this thing covering your head. What happened, Aubrey?”

I roll over on my back and look up at the ceiling. “I don’t know. I thought I’d be into it, but I wasn’t.” I feel so stupid and ashamed, but I know it’s better to talk about it with Brea than to wallow.

“Into what?”

I can feel the tears running down the sides of my face again. I’m so fucking embarrassed I just want to die. I want to hide from everyone and hope that the whole world just blows up in the next few days so that I don’t have to deal with whatever the hell is going on in my crazy head. “I don’t know, the guy, I guess. Maybe the whole thing.” The idea that I don’t know exactly what it is that bothers me or what I actually want is the worst part. It makes me feel like I don’t know myself at all. That maybe I never will. “The guy was hot, and he seemed nice—“

“Show me his profile.”

I sit up and grab my laptop off the bedside table. “I mean, I know it all happened kind of fast, but I thought maybe it would be fun. No big deal, you know?” I’m talking and typing at the same time. “He started kissing my neck and that was nice, and he had me pinned against the wall, which I was into, but then something changed.”

“With him or with you?”

“Both, I guess. I just didn’t feel like continuing.”

“But he did?”

“Yeah.”

“Did he?”

“Yeah.”

“Did he force you?”

“Yeah, well, kinda. But that’s what I wanted, Brea. That’s why I feel so confused. That is what I wanted—”

“But then you didn’t,” Brea said. “That’s not cool of him to keep going if you changed your mind.”

“I know, but that’s not why I’m upset, really.”

“What then?”

“I’m upset because … now I feel like I don’t know what I can trust … inside me.”

I get to the site where I’d found Trey and see that there’s another red envelope in the upper right corner of the screen. I click on it and see a new message in my inbox. I wonder if it’s Trey again, writing to tell me what a loser I am, but it’s from someone else.

“I think you can trust yourself, Aubrey. You gotta give yourself a break. You just met him. He wasn’t the right guy for you—“

“What the hell?” I say, cutting Breanna off. “Check this out.”

“What is it?” she asks as she scoots next to me on the bed. “An invitation to an audition?” she reads out loud. “Who is this from?”

I scroll to the bottom, then back up to the top to read the whole thing over again. “It says it’s from Daddy K and Daddy G. Who the hell are they?”

“Click on their profiles. There should be something on here about them.”

I go to their profiles. “They look like every other Dom profile on the site, except they don’t have the same kind of profile pics that the other guys do.”

“Yeah they both look like stock photos or something. Go back to the email. I want to read it again. Did it really say something about five-hundred-thousand dollars?”

“Yeah, it says here ’An audition for the chance to experience a night—or more—with one of two of the most eligible Daddies in the United States, as well as a cash prize of five-hundred-thousand. There will be two winners and each candidate will compete in a variety of tasks, each determining her skill level as a sub as well as her compatibility with Daddy K or Daddy G.’”

“Wow, do you think this for real? Why did they send it to you?” Brea asks.

“I have no idea. I haven’t logged on here in months. I don’t know what to think of it at all. How would I even go about checking something like this out?”

“Hey, go to the general forum and see if it’s posted there.”

I click around until I find the place where general announcements are posted and one of the top posts is about the same event. “Here it is. Holy shit, it’s got over one-thousand comments!” I scroll down and Breanna and I read through them all, mostly out loud to each other.

“It looks like pretty much everyone is asking the same question as us.”

“You can all rest assured ladies,” I read out loud from user Daddy K. “This offer is legitimate. Auditions begin next Friday.” I scroll down a little further but that’s the end of the thread. “That’s all there is.”

“Maybe they’ll post more tonight or tomorrow.”

“Yeah, I hope so.”

“Are you thinking about doing it?” Breanna asks.

I look at her, feeling like a completely insane person because I had a feeling the second I read the email that I knew exactly what my answer was going to be. But now I’m positive. “Yeah, I’m gonna do it.”