Tymber Dalton - The Denim Dom

Fighting a close battle with her nervous stomach, Shayla pulled up to the address listed on the information page of the club’s website fifteen minutes before the scheduled start time of the class. The club was located in one of several nondescript two-story warehouse suites located in a large complex just east of I-75 in Sarasota, not too far south of Fruitville Road. The area didn’t look run-down or seedy, with other assorted businesses such as a custom automotive restoration shop, a cabinet shop, and a water softener distributor also located in the complex, but apparently closed for the weekend.

Six other cars were also parked in front of the address, which was identified only by an address number plate and a small sign reading VENTURE in black, block-print letters.

She double-checked the address and stared at the building again. On its surface she saw nothing that hinted at what kinky pursuits occurred inside.

Loren and Ross had assured Shayla that the Submission 101 class was the perfect place for her to begin her first-hand research and allow her to see different aspects and opinions of the lifestyle.

Not to mention they would help fill in any blanks or correct any misconceptions Shayla had in her research thus far.

Taking a deep breath, she grabbed her purse and notebook and headed inside. The blacked-out glass door opened into a large lobby. Three of the walls were filled with merchandise—collars, cuffs, canes and crops and other implements she couldn’t identify. There was a section of books, both fiction and nonfiction. At the far end of the lobby, a young woman manned the desk. She looked up and smiled at Shayla’s entrance.

“Welcome to Venture. Here for the class?”

Shayla nodded. “I’m supposed to meet Loren here.”

“Oh! You must be the one she told me about. She’s already inside.” The woman handed her a clipboard with a simple form on it. “Fill this out for me real quick, please. And I need your driver’s license or some sort of photo ID, and ten dollars for the class.”

Shayla handed over her shiny new Florida license and a ten-dollar bill. She quickly read through the form before filling it out. It was a basic information form, privacy agreement, liability waiver, and listed the club’s rules.

Three other people, two women and a man, also entered the lobby while she was filling out the form. They had to go through the same procedure with their IDs and forms.

Shayla felt comforted that all three also looked as nervous as she felt.

Inside the club she found close to ten people, all but one of them women, gathered in a cluster of round tables at the far corner of what turned out to be two of the warehouse suites. In front of them stood a middle-aged woman with her long black hair in a braid. She wore a plain, black blouse over a colorful peasant skirt that nearly swept the floor.

Shayla felt relief when she spotted Loren. Loren turned and waved her over. “Hi! I saved a chair for you.”

“Thanks.”

“Ross dropped me off. You can ride with us to dinner, if you want. That way we’ll have more time to talk.”

“Sure. That’d be fine.”

Once everyone was seated, including yet an additional two women who arrived just before the start time, the instructor began the class. She used a laptop computer attached to a projector, which shone on a whiteboard behind her.

“Thank you all for coming. I’m Maria. On FetLife my screen name is Eggmans_kinky_pet.” Her information appeared on the board behind her for everyone to see. “Feel free to friend me on there if you haven’t already. We have a reporter with us today, Shayla.” She pointed out Shayla in the group. Shayla felt compelled to force a smile and wave and wished she could slump down and hide. “She’s here today to observe and learn. Please don’t worry about your anonymity. She’s already been briefed about our privacy rules, and she will not do anything to out anyone here. She’s just here to learn like everyone else.”

Shayla gave her a thumbs-up and hoped she wouldn’t be asked to stand and speak.

Maria turned out to also be a married slave. In her day job, she was the accountant at her husband’s legal firm. “It makes life easy when we know we don’t have to worry about being fired,” she explained. “But we still keep this part of our lives separate from our vanilla lives, for obvious reasons.”

One surprise was the implements Maria laid out and invited the class to pick up and try out if they wanted. Shayla even let Loren smack her on the back with a leather flogger. She actually found the thuddy impact a pleasant sensation, not unlike a massage. Shayla suspected hard strikes from some of the canes and riding crops against bare flesh might hurt like hell, but Maria talked about how and where each implement should be properly used.

I wonder of OSHA has safety rules covering this? Shayla barely kept her silent snicker to herself.

Another topic Maria emphasized, especially to her female students, was how to spot and avoid predators in the lifestyle. Shayla found it particularly eye-opening. While Shayla had seen mentions of it in some of the sites she’d already explored, it hadn’t accurately transferred over to a real-world concept in her mind.

A lot of the advice was common sense, but, especially, tips on how to spot red flags while negotiating hard limits and scenes made more sense explained in person with examples.

By the time the class ended, Shayla once again found herself with the conundrum of knowing way more than she had when she walked in, but having still more questions about a lot of what she’d learned.

And feeling like she knew even less than before, considering the depth and breadth of the topic.

Shayla frowned as she flipped through her notebook and nudged her glasses up a little, making a few addendums here and there to her notes. Loren must have spotted her consternation.

“It’s like getting tossed down a rabbit hole, isn’t it?” Loren asked. “That’s the way people commonly describe it.”

“That about sums it up.” So far, contrary to what Shayla originally thought going into the assignment, instead of finding herself disgusted or completely disassociated from the information she learned, she found herself intrigued.

Which unsettled her in a way.

These weren’t a bunch of freaks. Well, maybe some of them were. But the people sitting around the tables this afternoon, some drinking coffee or water from Styrofoam cups, could have easily been members of a book club get-together and not a class on the basics of kink.

“I feel woefully ignorant,” Shayla admitted to Loren. “Like I know more and understand less than I did when I started.”

“Don’t worry. We can talk plenty at dinner tonight.” Loren turned and raised a hand to a man who’d just walked in from the lobby area. “In fact, there’s Tony now.”

Tony didn’t see either Ross or Loren’s vehicles at the club when he pulled up, but suspected that meant Ross had dropped Loren off earlier. He recognized the young woman working the front desk.

She waved him through. “Loren’s inside. Class just broke up. Go on in.”

“Thanks.”

He continued through the door leading from the lobby into the main area. Over half of the dungeon consisted of equipment and play areas, including a couple of smaller rooms in the back, curtained off for patrons to change or do more private play. And upstairs, an open loft area visible from the lower floor held play spaces for more specialized activities, like wax play, electrical play, and other things, to keep them out of the more heavily trafficked downstairs play areas.

The other downstairs half of the space contained tables and chairs for patrons to sit and socialize. It also did double-duty as classroom and meeting space when the dungeon wasn’t open for play. And it’d even hosted a wedding or two, such as when their friends Tilly and Landry got hitched.