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Maybe she shouldn’t have let the name of the club slip out, but the words escaped before she could think. His demeanor appeared to soften upon hearing it. After checking her ID against a list, he retrieved a key card from his pocket and approached another elevator across the foyer. He tapped the card against the sensor and the doors opened. Rather than joining her inside, he returned to his position in the center of the foyer. Ari stepped in and cast a glance at the wall, only one choice: up. She pressed the button and the doors closed.
As Ari stood in the elevator, she had expected the upward thrust of movement. Instead, a set of doors behind her slid open, revealing a corridor with only one door. It was as if this illusion of an elevator concealed a private entrance to this secretive location. The room number matched that listed on her paperwork: 1202. The door was ajar, inviting her inside.
Ari peered into the room before entering. The spacious area contained a few sofas and chairs, and a handful of women with clipboards occupied the seating, appearing quite at ease, almost as if waiting in a lobby to be called to see the doctor.
Out from a side door, a woman entered the living room, wearing a bra, a tight mesh top, and booty shorts, a playful grin on her face. “Welcome. Grab a drink at the bar and a clipboard from the counter. We will be with you in a moment.”
Ari half-expected the room to be a circus of nakedness, a Cirque du Soleil of shibari swaying from the ceiling. With a shrug, she entered with a less cautionary stride since there were no dramatic Mistresses taking their stresses out on a fearful submissive. She had little exposure to the BDSM landscape, so the tension in her shoulders eased with each step toward the bar. The bottle of rye whiskey called to her like a welcoming friend, but as she reached for it, a moment of self-restraint intervened. She opted for a bottle of water instead. Balancing it alongside the clipboard, she found a seat next to the woman who had entered the lobby at the same time she had. The one she should have followed. Ari offered a subtle smile in her direction.
“Hi, I’m Laurie. Do you know how many people they are hiring today?”
Ari shook her head. The paperwork before her bore the heading “Limits Assessment and Consent,” a reminder that she barely understood what the job was. With a flick of her eyes, she surveyed the others who were doing the same—sizing up the competition—which cast a spotlight on her, preventing her from photographing evidence. Terry’s prior warning about the club’s dubious reputation for consent contradicted the fact that her signature was, in fact, consent. Across the way, a woman flipped through the papers, signing away without even reading. Something Ari wasn’t about to do.
She read over the questionnaire, scrutinizing each line item of legal mumbo jumbo and answering each question to the best of her abilities. Lack of experience had her struggling because she wasn’t aware of ninety percent of the BDSM lingo. How could she consent to biastophilia when she could barely pronounce the word? There were only three options for each item: hard limit, no preference, or certainly. She went against her instincts and circled certainly for half and no preference for the rest, hoping to make a good impression on the application.
Moving on, the next two pages of the document were a nondisclosure agreement, which seemed odd at the moment. She wasn’t against signing one, having done that with a variety of writing jobs; it was the fact Ari would disclose information that made her hesitate. That was the entire point of being there: to search and destroy Adytum for all their wrongdoings. Legal repercussions might ensue after she broke the story, but that was in the hands of CityBeats for hiring her for a job she couldn’t discuss. The last page of the packet was another consent form, this one giving permission for a private assessment, along with a requirement to choose a safe word. These were two things she hadn’t thought about.
First, it stated that she allowed an employee or representative of Adytum to administer a physical assessment of her body and her abilities to perform at the level of excellence required for the job with no monetary compensation. Ari chewed at her bottom lip, pondering the significance of signing this document. She could agree to this gratuitous gropefest or not get the job. Either way, she was about to be fucked. Regarding a safe word, with a scribble, she wrote the words “cotton candy” under it; a phrase she’d never use during sex.
The grandfather clock’s count of minutes ticked in her mind as a countdown rather than a passing of time. Her eyes remained fixed on the steady stream of sand pouring from one side of an hourglass to the other. Still, with these two ways to tell time, Ari glanced at her watch as if they were illusions to distract her from her impending doom. When the four long gongs of the clock stuck, a tall woman in three-inch heels threw open the door with a bang and stormed from a room behind her. Ari’s head darted in that direction, and her pulse quickened with the motion.
“Fuck you, you condescending bitch!” said the woman as she stomped out of the penthouse.
The bright-eyed woman who had invited Ari in when she arrived jogged out of the room, flipped over the hourglass, and started the process over again when they called another woman’s name.
As soon as the door closed, the woman across from Ari said, “I’ve been paying attention. The two women that left in a huff ... they both had wine from the bar. Did you notice that?”
She had not. That important detail left her feeling off her game and out of her element. Ari needed to search for the unobvious signs and stop focusing on the blatant non-consensual activities.
The woman had a martini glass in her hand, which she walked over and placed on the bar. With that, she turned on a heel and marched to the door. “I know when someone has played me. Since you only drank water, good luck.”
It dawned on Ari that she was the only person left in the living room. And at that moment, her senses heightened to where she felt the layer of sweat drawing on the small of her back, her parched mouth, and the blood racing through her veins like a river’s downstream current. The only thing standing between her and the so-called representative hired to judge her performance as a sex worker was a door to a bedroom, one that held the cries of those before her. To center herself, she tuned out the incessant tick of an old clock that had already worn her nerves raw and listened to her inner voice tell herself to be strong and confident, stiffened her back, and lifted her chin.
Then the door opened. A woman with burning red tearstained cheeks ran out, clenching her clothes close to her chest. Ari’s eyes jolted open, paralyzed with a gripping fear that her fate would rival that of the woman who fled in pain, misery, or sheer fear.
A voice from behind her said, “You don’t look like Angela Deppe, so I’m gonna take her absence to mean she left. That leaves you. Ariel, correct?” Cooper asked.
Her legs wouldn’t move while her internal monologue bickered against itself, teetering back and forth like a Libra’s scales weighing right and wrong, money and morals. And as if a Mistress’s whip had smacked against her derriere, she rose from the chair. “Yes, Ma’am,” said a subservient Ari as she glided across the room, seizing the role of a new persona.
Chapter 8
Sitting behind the desk, Dylan tossed the last two women’s applications into the circular file underneath. The Mistress who had just left had been so intoxicated that she’d get nowhere near Cooper’s backside, even though Coop willingly submitted to whatever drunken rage she’d toss at her. That was the difference between safe and sane. Cooper might have been sane when she begged for the stumbling Domme to unleash a torrent of inebriated slashes from a jagged-edge flogger, but it definitely wasn’t safe.
The submissives, though, had been clean and sober, pushing through Dylan’s heavy-handed lashing until their ass cheeks were so red they looked like blisters ready to pop. The last woman refrained from using a safe word, but when she didn’t offer a word of thanks and burst out the door in tears after her torment, Dylan wasn’t about to offer her one of the coveted positions. There were two Mistresses in the hire pile, though only one would make the cut. As for the submissives, Dylan had two auditions left: Angela and Ariel.
“I think we scared Angela away, so that leaves us the last one. Ariel Delgado,” Cooper said as she stuck her head between the door and the frame.
She didn’t even have enough of a moment to relish the thought before Cooper swung the door open to Ariel’s entrance. Perhaps the world had slowed to a sloth’s pace because as soon as the woman entered her space, it was as if everything morphed into slow motion. Her hair caught in the breeze, bouncing with each precise step, shifting her hips from side to side. If they had been on the beach, this would have been one of those picture-perfect moments. But that wasn’t life. Dylan shook away the mental image when Ariel extended her gracious hand across the mahogany desk.
Dylan pushed up from the chair, standing to greet her. “Hello, Miss Delgado. I’m Dylan and this is Cooper. It’s very nice to meet you. Thank you for coming to the audition today.”
She took Dylan’s offered hand. “Please, call me Ari.”
“Very well, Ari. If you’ll follow me.” She came out from behind the desk, crossed in front of Ari with a confident stride, lifting her chest as she walked. The only reason she felt confident enough in Ari’s sexuality was because of The Pendulum. Even though Adytum was a ladies-only club, that didn’t mean the employees preferred the same sex. Over the years, many of the women worked in the evenings pleasing female clients, then went home to their heteronormative lives. With Ari’s visit to another all-female club, the odds were in Dylan’s favor.
She took her through the door that adjoined the office to the master bedroom, which the company had set up as an erotic playground, complete with kinky swings and a mattress that transformed into a Slip ‘N Slide with the right amount of baby oil. In the room’s corner was a gathering nook with a white loveseat and two matching chairs. She motioned for Ari to take a chair while Dylan positioned herself in the center of the couch, her arms draped over the back of it and her legs crossed. It was a commanding move she had seen Maxi play those times she’d sat in on auditions. The spread arms and wide-open chest spoke dominance while quietly intimidating the meek woman. “Please, have a seat, Ari,” Dylan said, still maintaining a lingering seduction in her voice. She cleared it, pressing her own voice forward. “We’ll start with a few questions.”
“Sure,” Ari said as her eyes cast toward the showcase of furniture, typical BDSM equipment for an experienced Master/slave dynamic.
