Page 18 of In Her Own Way
“Did you hear that?” Another rock song came on, making it impossible to hear anything outside.
“Hear what?” he said and slid a weight along the sleeve of the barbell until it clinked against the collar. “Just me moving plates, maybe?” he picked up his phone and tapped it a few times. Good, he was turning the music off. But it didn’t go off.
“Turn the fucking music off,” she barked and bolted to her feet. She grabbed her coat, put it on, and headed to the walkway outside his unit. He seemed to fumble doing what she asked, but finally, the air was quiet.
She listened. Nothing. She turned her head in all directions, looking down the walkways. Nothing. She turned to him. “You have five minutes to wrap up. I’ll be back.”
Without waiting for his response, she hustled down the walkway on the far side and then serpentined her way back up and around, covering all the aisles. Nothing seemed out of place. No doors were lifted, and all locks appeared to be secured. She rounded out her search at Kimo’s and walked him out. He wasn’t to blame for the noise she thought she heard. It could have simply been the traffic out front. It was a busy road.
“See you Tuesday?” Kimo said from the other side of the now-locked gate.
“Sure,” Victoria said. “Thanks for the workout. As short as it was.”
“Cool,” he said and walked to his car. Once he’d driven away, she took a breath and headed back to the security office. Should she log it? No, she was seriously doubting she had heard anything anyway. Best not to cry wolf when there wasn’t one. “Shit,” she said when she remembered. “Camera twelve.”
Step stool in hand, she headed back to Kimo’s unit. She checked his door. Locked. Good. Nothing untoward there. Up on the stool, she checked camera twelve’s cable. Yep, loose again.She snapped it back in place and gave it a slight tug. It was secure. This time she was going to log it.
Back at the office, she wrote down her concerns about the loose wire and then checked the security cameras. Erin said the system didn’t have a recording feature, so she couldn’t rewind and look over anything. That was not good. Hopefully, Erin would upgrade the system sooner rather than later. But for now, nothing seemed out of place. Just peace and calm and stillness. After reassuring herself that all was well and her cousin’s business was safe, she prepared for a mind- and butt-numbing evening.
She leaned back in the desk chair and put her feet up on the desk. Her laced fingers cradled her head as she closed her eyes. No, she wasn’t going to sleep. It was something better. She relived yesterday afternoon’s liaison with the woman in the private room at the Scarlett Dungeon. Victoria smiled. It almost sounded like the winning combination in the Clue game Madison was always trying to get her to play. Who dunnit? Who had slain Victoria yesterday? The attractive woman, in the private room, at the Scarlett Dungeon.
Well, Victoria hadn’t been slayed exactly, but it had felt natural and easy. There had been no awkwardness, probably because both women knew what they wanted and were willing to communicate those needs. She couldn’t believe she had to wait one entire week before seeing the woman again. She began writing a tentative script for their next session. Victoria wanted a little more skin-to-skin contact. Maybe a spanking and then she’d pull the woman into her lap, let her ride the strap-on, only to be laid down and pummeled until she came. Edging? No, not yet. Another time. But what if the woman didn’t show? Sometimes, people regretted not only confiding their dark secrets to a stranger but also actually acting on them. And acted, they did. This woman might not even show up on Friday, leavingVictoria high and dry. She had a few days off, maybe she could go back to the dungeon and charm another willing woman into accompanying her to a private room in the back.
No. She cut the thoughts off before they could fully form. She had to focus on apartment hunting and making herself worthy of this security job. Erin had put her trust and faith in Victoria, and she wasn’t going to let her down. She couldn’t couch surf in her cousin’s apartment forever. She’d end up like Kimo, working out in a storage unit, surrounded by all her worldly possessions.
With those thoughts in her head, she took her feet off the desk, sat bolt upright, and checked the cameras. All looked well, and camera twelve was working fine.
After another patrol and several camera checks later, Victoria opened theKinksapp on her phone. Why not? There was nothing else to do. She sent Madison a quick message asking if she and Shasti had gone to the Rocco’s brunch that morning. She asked if they still got together once a month on the first Saturday like usual. Then she left a quick question at the end of the message.
Daddy Vic:Hey, Madison, what kind of bird works at a construction site?
It was late, almost midnight, so Madison wouldn’t get the message until the morning or whenever she went onKinksnext. In fact, it might not be for a while since the kid was busy with a heavy college workload. Well, okay fine. Madison wasn’t a kid. She had just turned twenty-six, but whatever. She was alittle,so Victoria was allowed to call her ‘kid.’
Victoria meandered aroundKinksfor a while, checking out the sexy pictures, reading some stories, and then an interesting item showed up in her feed. It was a question posted in a group calledSapphic D/s Relationships.
Topic:We Love Our Mascs and Studs
Question:Is there a difference between “male” energy and “masculine” energy?
“Fuck yes, there is,” Victoria said and clicked on the link.
Sapphic D/s Relationships:To become a member, please fill out an application on the group’s page. Click this link:Sapphic D/s Relationships.
“Oh, come on,” Victoria said. If she’d had anything else to do, she would have skipped it and moved on to peruse other, more enticing pages. But here she was, hours into a nothing shift. “Fine.” She clicked the link, read the rules, which were the same as always – be nice, don’t be mean, blah blah. She could do that. She filled in the information and went back to her own feed.
“That group’s probably abandoned like so many on this website,” she said out loud. “I’ll never hear from them, and they’ll never get to hear my wisdom about male versus masculine energy.”
Another topic from the same group showed up in her feed. Maybe the group was active, and the algorithm was putting this in her path. Shanice would say Victoria needed to pay attention.
Victoria sat back in her chair with her phone face down in her lap. “Did Shanice get her prosthetics yet? She had been approved for them, I think.” A pang of regret hit her chest. She was going to miss the monumental moment when the young woman walked again. Victoria and all her friends in Denton Heights had only known Shanice as someone in a wheelchair. A multi-vehicle car crash caused the need for her feet to be amputated. “She still has such a love of life,” Victoria mused. “I’m missing it. And I miss Marta.” Marta was Shanice’s Mommy Domme, although she would never admit to being a Mommy Domme. Victoria chuckled. “The girl calls you ‘Mama,’and you say you’re not a Mommy Domme.” She laughed again, remembering Rowena’s words, “If it quacks like a duck.” She and Marta used to talk about their Army experiences. It helped to have someone who understood, and Victoria thought that in her own small way, she’d been helping Marta with her PTSD.
Thoughts about her friends overwhelmed her. Would she miss Madison graduate from college, watch Rowena happy and settled, see her former bestie Rikki finally in love for real and married to Bernadette? Fine, Rikki hadn’t asked Victoria to be her ‘best man’ or whatever, but Victoria had lost that privilege, hadn’t she? It hurt, but it had been the right thing for Rikki to do. Before Rikki was even seeing Bernadette, Victoria and Bernadette had been casual play partners. Nothing more. And Victoria had abused Bernadette, hadn’t she? Instead of analyzing how she had been so oblivious to the damage she had been doing to the poor woman, she said, “I’m an asshole,” and went back to perv around onKinks. What else was there to do? She read the second post from theSapphic D/sgroup.
Topic:How Do You Say, ‘No?’
Question:How do you say no to something you just don’t want to do or know how to do? How do you let the person (Domme/Boss/Family member) know that you just aren’t interested?
“If I could fucking get this link to work, then I would answer your question,” Victoria said, annoyed. God, she was irritable. “I wish Bernadette had been able to say no. I wouldn’t be here if she had.” Victoria tossed her phone face down on the desk.Blaming the victim, are we?“Shit, I reallyaman asshole. It’s not your fault, Bernadette. It’s mine. I took advantage. I got something in my head, and I thought you could be the one to give it to me. But did I ask for your thoughts on it? No, of coursenot. Did I even tell you what I wanted? No, I didn’t. And that is where I went wrong.”
