“I have recently learned of the app,” Vivian replied dryly.
“Recently, huh?”
Bryn got rid of her drink in one fiery shot and leaned across to put the cup on the console. She bumped Vivian’s bare knee, skin soft and warm against her forearm. Vivian didn’t move away and Bryn forced herself not to read into it.
“How recently?” Bryn scooted forward, foot sliding next to Vivian’s.
Vivian finished her drink with enviable grace and set her cup next to Bryn’s. When she looked at Bryn this time, there was a crackling spark in her expression. A luminance Bryn had never noticed before. A joy.
She looked away and offered the faintest single-shoulder shrug. “An hour ago.”
Too buzzed to hold back her grin, Bryn asked, “Oh? And what did you listen to?”
When Vivian met her gaze again, her eyes were so dark. So heavy with concern she was struggling to hide. “I only listened to the audio you marked safe for work. I would never?—”
Bryn laughed. “Well, then you can’t judge whether it’s porn, can you?”
Surprise won over Botox when Vivian’s eyes widened.
“I’m not embarrassed, Vivian. I’m actually pretty proud of my work. The only reason I haven’t talked about it is I know what other people might think?—”
“Other people are stupid.”
“They are,” Bryn agreed. “And I don’t want to be typecast as only a steamy voice, you know? I still want to perform spec fic and horror and mystery and”—she forced herself to take a breath—“well… just everything.”
Vivian nodded, her posture relaxing.
“And you can listen.” She grinned, absolutely and unquestionably drunk. “I think you might enjoy Fdom, although Fsub can be pretty surprising.”
“My on-set tutors didn’t teach me Morse Code,” she replied, but she chuckled this time, the sound like a gunshot starting a race. A signal for Bryn’s pulse to work double time.
“Fdom just means ‘female dominant,’” Bryn explained, enjoying being on the other side of the knowledge gap. “I don’t mean, like, leather and chains or whatever. Not necessarily.” She guessed where Vivian’s mind would go. “It’s more…” The vodka and adrenaline drop made her brain fuzzy in a warm, pleasant way. “The dominant is in charge of how everything feels. The pacing, the reassurance.” She laughed and wiggled her eyebrows. “The filthy stuff. Fsub is the opposite. Same pairing, different dynamic.”
Vivian shifted, but she didn’t look away. “And that’s popular?”
“So popular.” Bryn leaned forward, propping her elbows on her knees. “Most of my messages are like, ‘I thought I wanted to be the one in charge, but apparently my thing is being bossed around by a hot woman with a nice voice.’”
“Who the hell wants to be bossed around?” Vivian rested her forearms over her thigh.
A thigh Bryn was too drunk to resist noticing. If her favorite soapbox wasn’t calling to her, Bryn might have considered dropping to her knees. Considered ghosting her lips over Vivian’s soft skin.
“A lot of people are desperate to be told what to do,” Bryn said, voice husky like it didn’t want to leave the fantasy of Vivian’s body either. She cleared her throat and wrangled her slightly unfocused vision. “I mean, part of me wishes Fsub were more popular. I love doing those. There’s something really powerful about being the one asking, begging, being reassured. But Fdom just… hits something for a lot of women.”
“And that something is what exactly?” This time Vivian didn’t just shift, she uncrossed her legs and Bryn had to call upon every emotionally evolved cell in her body not to look down again. “A collective yearning for subjugation?”
Bryn laughed, which helped drag her back to the conversation. “It gives women a safe space to explore stuff. To figure out what they like without someone else’s expectations all over them. They can pause or rewind or stop whenever. They’re in total control while pretending they’re not.”
Vivian tilted her head, growing steadier while Bryn was only feeling further adrift. “You hear how contradictory that sounds.”
“I do.” Bryn tucked one leg under herself and tried so hard to be sober. “Humans are weird little animals,” she agreed. “But think about it. We’re not exactly raised to be comfortable taking what we want. Almost all of us got some version of a purity lecture. Who ever talked to you about pleasure? Where was that in sex ed?” She quirked one brow and hoped it was as smooth as she imagined. “So if a woman in power is telling you to touch yourself, or to go harder, or to push a little further… you’re not being greedy. You’re being obedient and making me so proud by following instructions.”
Vivian made a face like she’d never had to work to understand something in her life before. “And that isn’t infantilizing?”
Bryn gave a half-nod. “Like anything else, it depends who’s in control. There’s definitely gross stuff out there. But what I’m doing? It’s… counterintuitively freeing.” She searched Vivian’s gaze, trying to see if she was losing her. “If you grow up being told what you’re supposed to want, it’s a lot of pressure to be the one who says, ‘Actually I want something filthy.’ Or even admitting you don’t know what the hell you want, but you know there’s something out there that scratches the itch.”
Vivian looked less skeptical but still ambivalent. “You’re saying it’s a way to outsource responsibility for desire.”
“Kinda, yeah,” she conceded. “But I’ve found erotic books or audio or whatever are more like training wheels. The idea might come from me, but it doesn’t take long before they’re off exploring in the real world.” She still couldn’t believe her own job sometimes. “I get these wild emails where people are like, ‘I finally told my wife what I like,’ or ‘I realized I’m into women because of your audio.’”
