When I walk into the room, it is as an artfully crafted collection of lies; my chestnut hair is bound back in a tight, severe bun without a single strand out of position, my chest is bound in a black leather corset that looks as if it could deflect bullets, and my long alabaster legs peek out in row upon row of serried diamonds from a pair of fishnet stockings that accentuate their sensual curves. I tower over everyone in the room in my platform boots, swishing a riding crop in my hand that so many of the people here know I can wield with artful skill, tapping it lightly against the palm of my gloved hand in a promise to inflict pain and punishment that I fully expect to be taken up on several times before the night is over.

I look every inch the classical image of a Domme. But it's all an illusion. And he sees right through it.

I catch sight of him from across the room, gazing at me with piercing blue eyes, and for a moment I feel myself about to stumble off of my own shoes--he's not dressed for the scene, instead opting for a simple charcoal gray suit with a crisply pressed white shirt and a slim crimson tie, but somehow he conveys dominance with his stance and his demeanor without the need for a single prop. He could be naked and I would feel the same urge to... to kneel? To cower? To flinch away from his calm confidence and hide myself among one of the many submissives here who've never even thought to question my authority? I realize I don't even know, and that terrifies me more than anything.

Because I realize in a heartbeat that he could ruin me. I don't even know his name yet, I only know his chiseled jaw and his icy stare and that tiny little quirk of a smile at the corner of his mouth, and yet I'm instantly aware that he could strip away all of my authority right here in front of everyone if he wanted to and I wouldn't be able to make myself do a thing to stop him. I've cultivated a reputation over almost five years in the local kink community as one of the most punishing of all the dominants of any gender, an absolute artist with the whip and the crop and the flogger, but he could turn me into a quivering submissive with a single imperious gesture.

I'd never be able to show my face here again if he did. Never mind that this is a supportive community, forget all the people who'd still be happy to take a beating from me even if they knew I was a switch. I'd know they knew. I'd know they could see the meek, submissive little girl behind all the leather and the latex and the smacking caress of the crop, and I'd... I'd want to lose myself again and again to the naked humiliation of public subjugation. I'd want them to know I was nothing but a lie, a simpering bootlicker who craved surrender and hid herself under layers of skill and pretension to conceal a desperate desire to submit. It would change everything. I'm not sure I could handle being known like that.

He can tell that, too. I can see it in his gaze as he moves toward me through the crowd like a shark seeking its prey; he's fully aware of everything going on behind my darting, frightened hazel eyes and he knows that he could take me and own me and possess me right there in front of everyone and it would break me completely. He could take me to all the events I once presided over, force me to come along as his pet on a leash and make me crawl on all fours for the people I once whipped into submission. All my desire to hide myself away would be nothing compared to his control, because he sees me for who I truly am and I'm defenseless against it. I can feel my cunt leaking at the thought of it all. I'm terrified, but I crave everything I'm so desperately frightened of right now.

I swallow hard as he approaches, still a couple of inches shorter than me thanks to my high-soled boots but meeting my gaze as if we're at eye level with one another. "My name's Ryan," he says, a trace of smoke and whiskey in his baritone voice that makes my knees threaten to quiver with the sheer smoldering sensuality of it. "You must be Lady Absinthe. I've heard a lot about you." My breath catches in my throat at the tone of subtle menace in his voice disguised as politesse--the casual listeners around us would only hear a friendly acknowledgment of my reputation, but I can hear the shadow of his true meaning. He knows what they say about me, but he also knows what he sees when he looks at me. And he knows which is real and which is only an illusion for the rubes.

Because that's the honest story, once you get past the corset and the stockings and the riding crop I made myself. It's easy to pretend to be dominant, because what most submissives really want is the illusion when you get right down to it. They don't want to know what I'm feeling, they don't care about my desires, all they really care about is that I fit into the fantasy they've woven for themselves and it's childishly easy for even a fake like me to be taken for a top. I deliver the dream, and if deep down I know I only do it because I'm scared to admit I want to be the one who kneels? They're not interested.

But Ryan is. He sees me. And I'm both terrified of being known and pathetically grateful that someone actually gives a damn about what I want.

"I don't supposed you'd be interested in talking shop for a bit?" he asks, breaking into my train of thought with a clean and simple ease. "Somewhere a little more quiet, maybe. I don't mind a crowd, but I'd like to talk for more than a few minutes without someone here demanding your attention." His ice blue eyes glitter with a magnanimous condescension his voice carefully avoids conveying, offering me the opportunity to submit to him in private and salvage my foolish pride rather than forcing me to kneel for him in front of everyone. I'm torn--I know that if I go with him, I'll have no chance at all of resisting, while if I stay I might just be able to retain my composure long enough to withdraw with dignity. But if I call his bluff....

If I call his bluff there's just a tiny chance he won't bother pursuing me. And beneath the fear, beneath the mortifying ordeal of being known by a complete stranger, I absolutely want to break on the shoals of his will and be made to submit. "I don't mind giving you a bit of my time," I say, hiding the quiver of lust in my voice perhaps slightly less well than he conceals the command in his. "Why don't we go up to my room? I don't expect we'll be disturbed there." He smiles, and I know he's weighing the question of whether to impress his will on me now by choosing our destination or allow me the illusion of self-possession a tiny while longer.

"Your room it is," he says, and I know that's the last decision I'm going to be allowed to make tonight.

We leave the party together, a few interested stares telling me I'm not entirely getting away with this no matter how he might present our 'conversation', and I can already feel myself flushing with embarrassed arousal by the time we reach the elevators. I've seen this flustered look on submissives before, the shocked and helpless expression of someone who never expected to find their exact fantasies met and doesn't know how to handle it now that it's happening, and I try and fail to find my composure just in case I bump into someone I know on the way up. Thankfully, it doesn't happen, and it's just the two of us in the small and silent space as we go up to the seventh floor together. He has to smell my cunt by now, but if he does he says nothing.

That throws me off, and for a fraction of a moment as we walk down the hallway I wonder if perhaps I haven't been projecting this entire time. Perhaps those chilly blue eyes and slicked-back blond hair only conveyed dominance in my imagination, perhaps I've just been desperate to end this lie for so long that I looked at the first stranger to join one of our events in months and decided to make him the fulfillment of all my fantasies of submission. He didn't say a word in the elevator, even though we were alone together for seven whole floors; what if he's just a nice, polite gentleman who wants a few tips on flogging technique?

The question lingers just long enough for the door to my hotel room to close, and then I feel his hand on my shoulder steering me around to face him. "Why don't you just go ahead and kneel for me, darling," he growls, his voice taking on a husky burr that tickles something deep-rooted and sexual right at the very base of my brain. "We both know you've been craving surrender since the moment you saw me, so why don't you stop fighting the urge to bend those lovely knees and drop right down the way you've wanted to for so long."

It's not even a question by the end, it's a promise and a command and a simple statement of inalterable fact, and before I even know it I'm clumsily sinking to my knees with an awkward thud as I topple forward off my platform boots. He doesn't break eye contact with me the entire time, and a wave of delicious heaviness makes my eyelids flutter as I try to hold his gaze despite the sudden steep angle of his head relative to mine. I've met a few people into hypnokink, but I've been far too terrified to experiment with it. I always knew that if I lost control I'd be utterly devoted to whoever took me, and nothing sounded like a loss of control so much as slipping away into a deep, helpless trance.

But that's what's happening now. He cups my chin in his hand, reaches out and unbinds my chestnut hair to let it flow down my back in silky waves, and purrs out, "That's it, my darling girl. Feel those eyes struggle to stay open, knowing that the only reason you're fighting is because it's so much better to fight and fail than it is to simply collapse into my will. You know you want to be weak, you know you want to be taken, and that makes it all so much sweeter when you try to lift those heavy eyelids and discover that the more you resist me, the more exhausted the effort makes you. You're already slipping away into my power, aren't you, dear?"

He nods my head for me, and it's only then that I've realized I'm sagging into his touch like a drowsy kitten as my muscles go limp and my shoulders slump and my eyes roll back until only the whites are showing. I'm putting every last drop of willpower into keeping my eyelids from slamming shut, conceding the rest of the struggle without even an attempt at resistance, and my clit throbs between my legs with the force of a ringing gong. It's so easy for him to take me. I'm so easy to break. God, I've wanted this for so long.

A part of me is already envisioning his triumph, picturing myself stripped naked and crawling through the crowd with my exposed cunt dripping and leaking for everyone to see. It would be child's play for him to make me do it, it will be child's play for him to make me do anything he wants, and although I don't doubt we'll negotiate some sort of boundaries and limits for his control over me we both know it's going to be a sham. I don't want limits. I want to be owned. I want to be turned into his needy little bitch in heat for the rest of time and I'm as eager as I am terrified to discover all the ways he's going to degrade me.

The vision gets sharper and clearer, and I have just enough presence of mind to realize that it's because my eyes are tightly shut before my brain plummets into a deep, helpless trance. He lets my head slump forward onto my chest, stepping around behind me to undo the corset and allow my chest to reinflate, and even though I hear him murmuring gently to me about the comfort relaxing me further I can't properly parse any of it because I'm so lost in the fog of obedience. When he lifts my arms to pull my chemise up off my head, exposing my lush breasts, I hold the pose until he moves me again. That only intensifies the feeling of submission hammering away at my will.

He takes off my boots, tugs down my stockings, denudes me of every last vestige of my pretense at dominance until I quiver naked on my knees in front of him. I already know he's going to beat me with my own crop, leave my ass red and black and blue so that every time I sit down for the next week I'm going to be reminded of just how false and fraudulent my old self truly was, and I know it because he's asking me to tell him the most effective way to make me feel like a submissive slut and I can't stop myself from pouring out each and every last fantasy I've ever had. And unlike the people downstairs, I know he truly wants this with every fiber of his being.

It's only when he plugs my mouth with his cock that I stop babbling out all my degrading fantasies, and even that's something I begged him to do only moments earlier. Being skullfucked while I'm down on my knees feels like the purest expression of obedience, an offering of my body for his pleasure while I'm allowed nothing but the gratification of service in return, and it sends me so deep into trance that I can't imagine ever waking up again. I'm going to belong to him forever, each scene intensifying the intimacy of my subjugation until it's the only thing I can possibly desire, and I feel Lady Absinthe shredding to ribbons under the force of his thrusts until only plain simpering Cindi is left behind. That's a better name for a slut like me. It's honest about who I am.

I'm embarrassed by how greedily I drink his cum as he shoots his load down my throat. I'm mortified by the way I tongue his balls and beg him for more in a muffled, whimpering mumble of pathetic arousal. But at least I'm not living a lie anymore.

THE END