At times he would turn the toy and press the side of the glass tube against the woman. She seemed to relax a bit when he did this, even as he dragged it over her covered breast. Just as Erin was getting lost in watching — the obvious, building arousal of the woman as she struggled to keep still on the table; the way the man’s wrist moved as he trailed the wand over her skin; her parted lips and her quick little breaths — he ran the tip of the tube just over the woman’s covered nipples, and she arched off the table and gasped.
“He turn it up, or what?” Erin jumped, unsure of when Lucy had appeared, or how long she had been standing there. Lucy seemed bored, curiously watching the scene with a cocked head. “Have you ever done electro?”
“No, but I haven’t done much.” Erin said, trying to shake off her daze without letting Lucy see. People milled around them, and the room seemed, suddenly, filled with the buzz of quiet conversations. Somewhere she could hear the snap of leather hitting skin. The other stations on the floor had been taken up by others playing. When had all of these people come in?
The man squatted down to unplug the toy before opening the case again and plucking the thin glass tube from its base. He paused, considering, before taking out a fan-shaped attachment made from fine metal wires. Erin watched, curious. He was cute, at least in profile, with a sharp nose and neatly-clipped brown hair. She was studying him, head tilted, when he turned his head and looked directly at her. Erin stiffened. He seemed unfazed, holding the eye contact with a steady gaze. Her cheeks grew warm as his eyes flicked down her body, observing. He smiled slyly and raised an eyebrow, then turned his attention back to the woman on the table.
“Electricity scares the shit out of me. Want to get a drink? I want to check out upstairs,” Lucy said, breaking the spell. Erin stared a few moments longer at the man, willing him to look at her again. When he didn’t, she blinked a few times and took a breath to ground herself. In all the fantasizing she’d done of people taking her in, she hadn’t ever stopped to consider what it would feel like when someone plainly, unabashedly did.
“Yeah, let’s — let’s look around,” Erin said, the words hard to form and heavy on her tongue. Why was her heart pounding? Why were her palms sweating? Why hadn’t Lucy noticed anything at all?
Erin turned to follow Lucy through the crowd to the bar, her movements deliberate and measured. Once there, she lightly ran her fingers over the varnished wood and willed her spinning mind to quiet. Lucy ordered a gin and tonic; Erin ordered a seltzer with lime. Drink in hand, Lucy spun from the bar and set off toward the stairs, turning back to beckon to the brunette. The daze finally wearing off, Erin took a sip of her drink and followed.
Upstairs, they briefly stopped to watch an impact scene before moving on to observe a kneeling man kiss and suck on the toes of a woman clad in a shiny, black corset. Her long, red curls spilled over her shoulders as she tilted her head back, relishing the attention of the man at her feet. With a small frown of concentration, Lucy watched the couple, while Erin took the opportunity to step up on the side of the balcony to glance at the displays below. Lingering on the empty table, Erin tried to keep herself from musing.
Lucy seemed engrossed in the scene; Erin took the chance to explore. She wandered, observing the various scenes and people around her. At the far end of the balcony, she noticed merchandise booths and slowly walked among them, admiring the cuffs and collars on display. Erin stopped at one booth, running her fingers over the rough aglets at the end of a corded flogger.
By ten, when the curtains pulled back and people gathered around the stage, Erin had deliberately lost Lucy in the crowd. Erin could see a large, steel ring hanging from the ceiling above the stage, slowly rotating and glinting in the light. Erin found herself once again leaning against a beam toward the back of the main room, scanning the crowd for her friend. She finally spotted Lucy, cozied up with a leather-clad man near the stage, twisting a lock of her bangs around a finger as she giggled. Smiling, Erin swirled the remaining ice in her plastic cup and tilted it against her lips, trying to capture any melt.
“Can I buy you a drink?” said a soft, low voice from behind her. Erin turned and found herself face-to-face with the man from earlier. She blinked a few times, looking for her voice, but no sooner had she mustered up the courage to reply than the lights in the room dimmed, and a steady bass beat pumped in over the speakers.
Close up, even in the dim light, Erin could see the man’s eyes were hazel. A small, whining sound escaped her throat as she gestured to the stage in a kind of apologetic shrug. She hoped the bass covered it.
“Don’t worry, you’re allowed to talk during the main show, as long as you’re considerate of others,” he said with a measured look and a smile that made his eyes crinkle. There was some kind of energy about him, Erin thought. A cool confidence; a calm aura that nevertheless made Erin’s stomach flip. He raised his eyebrows again, just a bit. “Unless I’m distracting you from the demonstration, in which case I apologize.”
Erin made another sound, a strangled, “uh.” she tried to cover with a laugh. What was wrong with her? She took a deep breath and shook her head to clear it, then shook her head again in answer to his assertion. “No, not — uh — distracting.”
His lips quirked in a calm, wry smile as his gaze remained fixed on her, even as she looked away toward the stage and to study the wood grain of the support beam, her eyes occasionally flicking back to him. It might have been comforting, if it hadn’t made her heart race. He seemed to know, she thought, what his intent, steady look was doing to her. And when he finally broke their eye contact and smiled, she almost thought he reveled in it.
“I’m Oliver,” he said, grinning. Hoping the lack of lighting hid the heat in her face, Erin took his hand and shook it, introducing herself in turn.
“How about that drink?” Oliver whispered, conspiratorially. “I promise I’ll have you back before the good stuff.”
Erin nodded, and then cleared her throat and blinked. “Yes. I’d like that.”
She steadied herself and followed him away from the crowd. Fresh seltzers in hand for both of them, Oliver leaned against the bar and tilted his glass toward her in a silent toast. Her stomach fluttered. Hiding a shaky breath in a sip of her seltzer, she chided herself. What was she doing, demurely blushing for this man? Even so, the next time their eyes met she was filled with more of the same restless nervousness and found herself suppressing a kind of titter. There was something almost academic in his quiet, patient demeanor. But as the two talked lightly, and as he dropped a few clunky and groan-inducing jokes to break the tension, Erin felt her shoulders relax and the nervous knot in her belly start to loosen, even as a tingling warmth started up in her fingers and her toes and her chest.
“So,” Oliver said, pausing to take a sip of his seltzer. “What did you think of my performance earlier?”
This time, Erin held her gaze and her voice steady. “I enjoyed it. I’d never seen anything like it. Where is the woman you were doing it with? I figured she was your girlfriend.”
“Heather’s a play partner. She and her husband are around here somewhere. I’ll introduce you if you’d like,” he said, head tilted, lips flirting with a smirk.
Erin’s breath felt a little shaky. “Her husband?”
“He likes to watch our scenes. Though she and I play solo, too.”
“Do you have a lot of play partners?”
“I have some,” he said, tone warm. “She’s the only one I’ve been seeing with some regularity, though. The others are here-or-there, when they’re in town, mostly. It changes based on my relational agreements. But I’m single right now.”
Erin nodded, looking down again into her cup and watching the liquid swirl around ice. The music changed, from ambient bass into something more melodic, and Erin pressed back from the bar so she could glimpse the stage. Two tall women were standing on the stage, both with short, dark hair. One was circling the other, considering, as a swell of opening cheers and applause broke out from the audience.
“Should I let you go to watch the show? Catch up with you later?” Oliver said, very low, and so close to her ear that she could feel the heat of his breath. “Or should I keep you here with me?” Her skin prickled and the world seemed, briefly, to contract. Erin paid attention to her breathing, defiant, determined not to lose her confidence, even as warmth continued blooming in her lower belly.
“We can keep talking, if you want, “Erin whispered, mad at the betrayal of her barely-audible, shaking voice.
“If you want,” Oliver said, a sharp catch to his playful, languid tone as he shifted closer and lowered his head until his lips were hovering just away from hers. Erin closed her eyes, waiting.
“Tell me what you liked about my scene,” He said. She pressed her lips together, a wave of frustration crash over her. There was a brief, quick urge to grab him and kiss him, or else clench her fists and step back. Instead she kept her eyes closed a little while longer, letting the question and the tension hang between them.
He was still just inches from her, so close she could smell the cedar and vetiver from his cologne. It would have been so easy to close the gap, to feel him for the first time, to taste him, to pull him into her. He was making her wait: winding her up, tensioning the air between them, hoping she would pop. She wanted him to need it as much as she did. She wanted to make him wait, too.
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