Page 31 of Minha Dona

“Zoe is around my age. Twenty-nine. Blonde, beautiful, I couldn’t believe my luck when we matched. She has this energy… bratty confidence is the best way I can describe it. Like the world was built to accommodate her and she’s annoyed that it’s not doing a better job of it.”

Helena could picture her. She’d known women like that. São Paulo had its share, the daughters of money who moved through life never having been told no. There’d been a few at her school, so she understood the type.

“Single, no career to speak of, never really needed one. More than enough family money. She filled her time with social events, her friends, shopping, the gym. And…” Caitlin paused. “The scene. She was very involved in the d/s scene. In Houston there’s more of a structured world than you might expect, it turns out. Private events, people who take it seriously as a lifestyle. Zoe was deep into it. She knew everyone, she had experience, she had a reputation.”

“As a dominant?”

“As a dominant, yes. Women exclusively. She’d had several long-term submissives before me.” Caitlin’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. “I found all of that out later. At the time, all I knew was what she showed me on the app and on our first few dates.”

“What did she show you?”

“Confidence. Certainty. She knew exactly what she wanted and she wasn’t afraid to say it. Our first date, she chose the restaurant, chose the wine, told me what to order. Not aggressively mind you, smoothly, like it was the most natural thing in the world for her to make those decisions and for me to follow.” Caitlin smiled faintly at Helena. “Sound familiar?”

It did. Helena recognised the technique because she used it herself: the early, low-stakes assertions of control that tested whether the other person responded to direction. She’d done the same thing with Caitlin at Kirby’s. The shoes. The drinks order. The game.

“The difference,” Caitlin continued, as if reading Helena’s mind, “was that you did it to see what I was like. To understand me. To open a door and see if I wanted to walk through it.” She paused. “Zoe did it because that’s how she operates. Full stop. With everyone. The waiter, the valet, her friends. It wasn’t about me specifically. It was about her needing to be in control of everything around her.”

“But you didn’t see that at first?"

“No. At first it was thrilling. Here was this gorgeous, experienced woman who wanted me, who seemed to understand exactly what I needed, who took charge in a way that made me feel…” Caitlin hesitated. “Safe. Wanted. Claimed. I’d been craving something that looked a lot like what she was doing, and it felt joyous to have found it. Genuinely, joyous is the word.”

Helena felt the word claimed resonate. She’d used it herself, in Houston, about Caitlin. Hearing Caitlin describe being claimed by someone else made something twist deep inside Helena, something she hid.

“The first time we slept together was intense,” Caitlin said, her voice quieter now. “She knew what she was doing. Technically she was very skilled. She did… I suppose I could describe it as all the things I’d discovered I enjoyed with you, and she did them very proficiently.”

“Proficiently,” Helena repeated. An interesting word choice. Not passionately, not lovingly. Proficiently.

“That’s the right word. I didn’t realise it at the time, but looking back, that’s exactly what it was. A proficient performance. She had moves, a sequence, things I reckon she did with every woman. I was the latest recipient.” Caitlin took a drink. “But at the time it felt amazing. After Sarah and Alex, where the dynamic had been absent or awkward, Zoe was like a drug. Someone who finally got it, who could give me what I needed. I loved it, genuinely. Being treated like that, being dominated by this beautiful, bratty woman who just did something to me.”

Caitlin paused there, looking into Helena’s eyes, and Helena had to force herself not to reach across the table and take her hand in hers… she looked so open, so honest, and exactly the woman that Helena had been pining for all these months.

“The thing you have to understand,” Caitlin continued, and Helena could see her choosing her words carefully, “is that the good parts weren’t just good. They were extraordinary. Beyond anything I’d experienced, beyond anything I could have imagined.”

“Tell me,” Helena said, because she was interested but also, more than anything, because she could see that Caitlin really did want to tell her.

“Zoe had this way of treating me in front of other people. Bratty, dismissive, like I was an inconvenience. She’d interrupt me, talk over me, drag me away as soon as she was bored. In any other context I’d have eviscerated someone for treating me like that.” Caitlin paused, her expression complicated… part embarrassment, part something darker. “But with her, knowing what it was, knowing it was part of our dynamic… it did something to me. Something deep. The contrast between who I was at work, where people practically stood to attention when I walked into a room, and who I was with Zoe, where I was dismissed and belittled, it turned me on… I’d never have believed I could respond to that. But I did.”

Helena said nothing but she understood. The appeal of being diminished by someone you’d chosen to give power to was a specific kink, not one Helena shared or practised, but she recognised the psychology of it. The release of being treated as unimportant by someone you’d consented to treat you that way, after a lifetime of being hyper-important in every other context. She could see why Caitlin, who carried that weight of dominance every hour of her professional life, would find a perverse freedom in being brushed aside.

“And the experiences themselves…” Caitlin shook her head slightly, as if she still couldn’t quite believe her own memories. “A few weeks in, Zoe told me she’d arranged something special. She drove me out of Houston to this ranch property about an hour outside the city. From the outside it looked like any other ranch. Inside…” Caitlin took a drink. “There was a barn. Purpose-built, discreet, private, every piece of equipment you could imagine. Crosses, benches, suspension rigs, things I didn’t even have names for. She’d rented it for the whole weekend. Just the two of us.”

Helena kept her expression neutral but her mind was racing. She’d experienced a couple of places like that in São Paulo but they were expensive and exclusive. You had to know and be known by the right people, and the fact that Zoe had access to that ranch spoke volumes about how deeply involved she must be in the scene.

“What happened there?” Helena asked carefully.

“Everything.” Caitlin’s voice was quiet. “Two days. She used things on me that I’d never seen before, never even conceived of. She restrained me in ways that made what you and I did in Houston look like a beginner’s class.” Caitlin caught Helena’s expression and added quickly, “I don’t mean that as a criticism. We were mostly making do with what we could find in my house and your hotel room. This place has everything. And Zoe seemed to know how to use it all.” She paused. “It was unbelievable. I can’t pretend otherwise. For two days I was completely out of my mind with what she was doing to me.”

Helena took a sip of her own wine, trying to calm the jealousy that was growing. I would have loved to be the one giving Caitlin that experience, she thought. And I’d have done it so well.

“And there were others,” Caitlin continued. “A masked party in New York where… well, I’m not sure I believe what happened even to this day. There were… I don’t need to list them. When it was good, it was very good.”

She looked away and Helena could sense something coming. When it was good obviously implied that there had been times when it wasn’t.

Eventually, Helena prompted her. “There’s a but, isn’t there?”

“Yes.” Caitlin smiled wistfully. “There’s a but.”

“When did things change?” Helena asked.