Influencers: Latex Date Night

[Author's note: this story loosely follows on from Closed System, if you'd like the background.]

---

ADAM'S DEFINITION OF DATE NIGHT

I do the rounds of the club. The crowd is pretty quiet, since it's still early. Tonight, there are no new faces who had wandered in fresh from the street with that curious bug-eyed look and the adrenaline kicking in from having finally, finally got up the nerve to go to a kink club. Kiko's here, with her husband in tow, booked into the playrooms upstairs later. We'd exchanged words as they arrived and then Kiko had led her husband over to a booth, wiggling in a tight little black leather dress in front of him, showing off her bottom. That bottom is going to be a lot more circumspect after the visit upstairs. She won't be sitting down for the rest of the night.

I slide into Adam's booth.

"Done with your perimeter sweep?" he asks.

He's watching me with a little smile; it lights up his otherwise unremarkable features. Adam is fairly nondescript from that point of view: rangy and lean, but pleasantly well-built underneath his shirt, still way taller than me even in my highest heels. There's something about Adam, something I haven't yet cracked, which is an admission from a person who reads people for a living. In my line of work, you need to get a bead on your target pretty quickly or shit is liable to go sideways, and instead of employing the interview skills you're having to reach for the combat training. It's a hard job, but I wouldn't switch it for the world. It also means I need the downtime of coming to the Lost and Found on a night and just putting some distance between the person I am here and the woman who carries the badge.

Adam is a curious case. I've sometimes seen him possessed of a strange, feral energy, or lost in concentration, even in the middle of a scene, but just now he's relaxed and smiling. I like the way that his eyes dart down to my knees as I cross my legs in my little black dress. Despite his reputation for control, he can't help himself. But that's my intention. If you've got it, flaunt it: a girl needs all her options.

"Perimeter secured, all good," I reply.

"Never off duty, Eve?"

"No such thing as off duty. Perps everywhere, gotta stay sharp."

"Not armed tonight, though."

I lean forward, cupping my chin in my hand. "Oh Adam, how do you know?"

His eyes crinkle into a smile. "That dress is way too tight to conceal."

"I've still got a deadly weapon."

Adam's gaze holds mine for a moment, then he rocks back in his seat, laughing.

"Oh, yeah, let me guess. Geez, Eve. Too corny, way too corny."

I laugh too, then hold my finger up. "Okay, scratch that line. How about this?"

I lean forward again, giving him my best lingering look, and say, "You'll find out soon enough, when you're on your knees, begging for mercy."

Adam shakes his head.

"Yeah," I acknowledge, "Bit forced, off the cuff."

"But what do you really say?"

I shrug. "Uh, I tell them their rights. Because I'm dealing with actual criminals, and I'm not in a tiny dress."

"But admit it, it still gives you a bit of a thrill when you slide the handcuffs on."

"You really think I'm like that? At work?"

"I don't know. I only know what you're like out of work."

"Recreational restraining is a whole lot different."

"You've worked yourself up, though, haven't you?"

"A bit. Maybe."

"There's some in the box under the bar."

"For you or for me?"

"Lady's choice."

I look at him for a moment, then pick up my drink, taking a sip. Adam's smiling at me now, and I can tell he's ready to play.

"Maybe just sit here and have a drink, for a bit," I reply, "Wind down some more."

"Bad day?"

"Yeah, pretty heavy. Glad to be out of it and sitting here."

"In general, or with me, specifically?"

I can't tell if Adam's baiting me. Like I said, he's excruciatingly difficult to read. I mean, I've been on the body language courses, and I've dealt with a lot of characters in my day job, but Adam's always been that enigma. Unless he does what he's doing now, opening up a crack, it's often impossible to know what he's thinking, where the playing stops and the real feelings begin. I'm the polar opposite, but I suspect he knows that and he's compensating. Right now, it's the look in his eyes that tells me something, and despite the banter, I feel a little flutter in my chest.

"With you, specifically," I reply, watching for his reaction, seeing if he's going to let anything slip.

Adam interlaces his fingers on the table. "Me too," he says, as if it's a confession.

I'm curious as to what he's going to do, so I hold back, letting him fill the silence. There's something on his mind. His fingers begin to fidget nervously with his drink; he looks directly at me.

"I was thinking," he begins, tentatively, "Whether you might want to do date night?"

I can see it's a big deal to him, and I'm shocked. Adam's famously robust composure has cracked, just a little.

"Are you asking me on a date?" I ask.

Adam looks startled, suddenly unsure of how to take my reaction. I know it's cruel, but I leave him dangling as I wait for him to continue. The ensuing silence is excruciating. He shuffles in his seat.

"Yes."

I can't explain why, but there's a quivering sensation in my stomach. I want to play it straight with him, but bantering is our thing. Reflexively, I fall back to it. I can't help myself.

"So, after tying me up, stripping me naked, delivering me multiple orgasms, some of which were in public with an audience, letting me stew on a rack in front of strangers, asking me to cuff you and then do, uh, that thing?"

My eyes go wide.

"Now you want to actually date me?"

Adam looks mortified. I'm really trying to hold it back now, the tiniest slip would explode it all.

"I don't even know your real name," I finish.

I'm proud that I deliver the line without breaking into a grin, but to my shock, his head slumps and I realise I've crossed a line somehow. It's true, I don't know Adam's real name. He knows I'm Ava Choudhry, he knows where in India my parents emigrated from, he knows I have a deaf father for whom I've become fluent in sign language. He knows I have a badge and a really fucking serious job. He knows a lot about me because I've told him.

I know that he does something with orchids, he's an accomplished dominant, and when he leaves the club at the end of the night, it's like he ceases to exist. To my surprise, he raises his head and fixes me with a look I've never seen before.

"That's the point, Eve. Maybe I want you to."

Without thinking, I reach across the table to take his hand in mine. It's warm and sweaty; I realise the agony this is for him. I feel like I'm learning a lot of new information very quickly.

"Sure. Saturday night. Okay?"

Adam frowns but seems to come to a decision. "I have another commitment," he tells me, "I'm, uh, pet sitting."

"We can do date night at your place. I don't mind."

His mouth is working, but there are no words coming out.

"Sure," he says at last, "Uh, sure, okay. I can make it work."

"Eight?"

"Eight. I'll cook."

"Are you sure? You've never talked about your cooking skills."

A faint trace of a smile returns to his face. "It's my concealed deadly weapon," he replies.

---

I don't know what to wear. In the club, it's easy, same as at work: there's a dress code. But this is different, and I don't want to just turn up in sweatpants, but I don't want to arrive like I'm on a hot date either. We've known each other for a while, and somehow turning up in the spandex microskirt on his doorstep, the one I keep in the back of the wardrobe for special circumstances, feels like the wrong move. After an hour, I settle on the tight blue jeans that show off my bottom, black heels and a black tank top. At the very last moment, I pull on a leather jacket and grab a decent bottle of red as I head out the door.

I book a cab over to the address he gave me, and as we get closer I can feel the nerves begin to buzz in my stomach, which is stupid when I think of all the things we've already done together. Why is this any different? I have gone further with Adam than anyone else, pushed boundaries, done outrageous things. We have always played with other people as well, but there's something special about him. It's the way he thinks, as if it's all about the game rather than satisfying himself, that just makes me feel special when I'm in the middle of it with him. I know that his brain works differently to everyone else, and looking back at the moment in the club where I left him dangling as he atempted to ask me out, I feel awful. It would have been so hard for him to express his feelings. Behind the charm and the intelligence is a person who never could quite figure people out on an emotional level, so this is a tremendous leap into the dark for him.

When the cab stops at a fairly unremarkable row of huddled-together townhouses on the outskirts, I have to check the address he gave me again. It's correct, and I pay the driver, but as I stand there on the street, it looks nothing like the kind of place I would have expected him to live. I guess, what with the orchids and the mystery, I was expecting something more upscale. I go up to the front door and press the buzzer, clutching the bottle of wine with both hands.

The door opens and it's Adam. He smiles and I smile back, relieved.

"Come in."

He steps to one side and I enter, taking in the hallway and the pictures on the wall, excited to be finally allowed into the inner sanctum and see some of the private man.

"So, this is home," I remark.

"Ah, no."

I turn to him, frowning, as he closes the door behind me.

"I'm sitting, remember."

"You don't live here?"

"No. Just over the weekend."

"Oh. I thought I was coming to your place."

I remember the bottle of wine in my hands and I hold it out for him to take. For some reason, I feel a little bit cheated that he's managed to dodge my investigative skills once again.

"Sorry. Like I said at the club, I was already booked, I hope you don't mind."

He leads me down the hallway. There is a door off to the right that opens up into a lounge and a closed door to the left, but we head down the back into a modest open-plan living area with a kitchenette on one side and bi-fold doors that open out onto a little patio and a patch of grass. The back garden isn't huge and it's well shielded with foliage from the neighbours. Adam opens cupboards until he finds the wine glasses.

"Pet sitting, you told me," I say as he opens the wine and pours us a drink.

Adam looks at me, a little uncomfortable smile on his face. I brace myself.

"What kind of pet?"

"Uh, well."

He plays with his phone, tapping the screen. After a few moments, I hear movement in the hall behind me, but before I can turn around, his hand is on my arm.

"I know you can look up this address at work, Eve. You can find out who lives here on your computer. Please don't."

He's serious, I can see. There is a noise behind me, and I turn.

A shape is worming towards me across the floor. It has no arms or legs, just a sleek, shiny black skin. I watch as its body undulates, pushing its head forward. The head weaves slowly left and right, finding contact with the island bench and adjusting its direction, feeling its way blindly into the kitchenette. I take a step backwards, transfixed by the progress of this rippling worm.

It approaches Adam, and only now I notice he's standing on the vinyl flooring barefoot. The worm's head makes contact with his shin and stops. It pauses and the head weaves about, brushing against his foot. From a small aperture in the front of the head, a slick black appendage slips out to probe and lick between his toes. He looks up at me apologetically.

"She likes to do this," he confesses.

I just stare at him blankly. It takes me a moment to gather my wits.

"Adam, if you were busy, you should have said," I tell him, keeping my voice level.

"I... uh... well, you said Saturday at eight. I didn't know when else you'd be free. I know you get called away."

He looks back down at the featureless black shape contentedly lapping against his toes.

"Fuck," I breathe, "I could have rescheduled."

Adam looks mortified now. He knows he's screwed up, but it's a particular characteristic of him that he wouldn't have seen anything wrong with having date night with me at the same time as turning a woman into a latex-wrapped worm and watching over her as she wriggles around the floor of her home. I look back down at the female figure, cocooned tightly in her sealed latex tube. There is a collar around her neck with a plastic pouch embedded into the back of it, but aside from the shiny black tongue, it's the only distinguishing feature of her. Everything else, her face, her hair, her identity, has been subsumed by the glossy black covering that completely encloses her body.

"Uh, so what should I call her?"

Adam shakes his head. "She can't hear anything. Or see, or smell or taste. It's complete enclosure."

"Then how did she know to come into the kitchen?"

As the initial shock wears off, I start to rationalise. In my job, getting blindsided is a fact of life; it's a skill to not remain blindsided, to take in the details and adjust. Adam is holding up his phone, showing me an app.

"Simple tones. Left, right, forward, a few others. Specific tones to go to a room. It's actually remarkable how quickly her brain acclimatised to that as her only input."

Adam takes a sip of wine, his tone becoming conversational now. I'm still having difficulty.

"She was bumping into things a lot at the start, but she's pretty good now. She's learned the limitations of her new body."

"At the start? How long, uh...."

"Friday evening."

"So, have you two been having fun?"

Adam looks up at me frowning. He steps around the wriggling shape on the floor.

"Oh, not at all. This is her show. I wouldn't... shit... I haven't invited you over to...."

He's getting flustered, the realisation dawning on him how all this looks to an outsider. Somewhere in his head, on the spectrum, he's worked out what I'm thinking. Hastily, he nudges the worm in her midsection with his toe and she rolls over. I can see the twin points of her hard, swollen nipples, the shiny black orbs of her breasts, but aside from that she's featureless. There are no apertures.

"Look," he stammers, and it's actually endearing that he's so far removed from his usual controlled demeanour, "If this is... if you want to reschedule, I get it."

I take a deep breath. This is what getting to know him takes. If I wanted a straightforward fuck, I could have just lined up Reece at work. This is certainly the path less travelled.

"Is she good with me being here?"

Adam blinks, then nods. "I promised anonymity, and she was okay with it. I was going to call it off actually, but she told me she wanted me to keep my plans."

"She likes the idea?"

"There's a humiliation aspect."

"Ah."

"So, do you want to go?" he asks.

He's studying my reaction carefully.

"I made Beef Bourguignon," he says, "Good match for the red wine."

The worm has rolled back onto her front and is busy licking his toes again.

"Sure, that sounds lovely," I reply, "But what about her? She likes your toes."

"Oh, she just wants me to put her toy down for her."

"What?"

Adam walks over to the kitchen table and picks up what appears to be a wand vibrator secured with masking tape onto a large wooden square. There is a power cord trailing from it.

"Why don't I give her something to do, and then we can sit down to dinner without interruptions?"

"Uh, sure."

Adam brightens, and I follow him down the hallway into the lounge. He sets the wooden square down on the carpet and plugs it in. There is a low hum.

"It's turned down below her tipping point, which she finds particularly maddening. She's been in denial for a fortnight to prepare, which is another reason I didn't want to postpone."

"You could have just suggested Sunday night."

Adam stops, and I can see it hadn't even crossed his mind.

"But, I'm here and I'm hungry," I continue.

"Of course. Let's eat."

I follow him into the back of the house, and we set about getting dinner ready. I find the plates and the cutlery, stepping carefully over the latex-enclosed body on the floor each time. Finally, Adam taps his phone screen and she's in motion. As we sit down to eat at the table, I can just see the end of her slithering back down the hallway.

We sit down to the meal he's prepared and it's delicious. Adam's pulled out all the stops, exhibiting the same meticulous care and preparation in the cooking as I'd seen in his scene work. We discuss the gossip, but I angle the conversation around to the woman in the front of the house. I'm not jealous of him spending time with her, since we both play with other people all the time, I'm just curious.

"It's an experiment, to be honest," Adam tells me, "She has a thing about complete enclosure and I was interested in longer-term sensory deprivation and its effects."

He waves a fork, chewing carefully.

"I mean, a hood is fine if you just want to isolate someone, but what about removing all sensation, the entire body, to the point that they lose track of time? It's surprising what the brain does."

"So, you two have done this before?"

"Not the same. I did a weekend a while back which went well. The fascinating thing was that when I released her, she was convinced it was Tuesday. She'd taken whatever cues she could to try and track it, but time had just dilated for her. That's when I realised the endlessness of it."

"How long are you going to go this time?"

"Just Sunday afternoon, though I haven't told her that. I told her to give me access to her work email. She thinks I applied to change her roster, to keep her as a worm for longer. She didn't protest, though, she's quite the willing subject."

"You're quite the mad scientist."

"Ah, which leads to the absolutely fascination question, doesn't it?"

He puts his fork down and leans closer.

"Why on earth put yourself into the hands of a mad scientist?" he asks, "When you know he could do just about anything to you?"

"I wouldn't," I counter, "There's no telling what he would be able to do to you."

"Yes," Adam nods, "Which is also fascinating, and something I ask myself all the time. Why surrender yourself completely to be shaped into someone else's toy? What is it about giving up control that is so intoxicating?"

I take a sip of wine, smiling back at him.

"Are you asking me? Or just talking in general?"

"Both. Neither. But," he replies, "You're in control all the time. At work, in the club, all the time. Then I see you give it up and... it's amazing. What lets you do that?"

"You can't?"

"Never."

"Why?"

Adam ponders my question in silence. When at last he speaks, it's in a subdued monotone.

"I take control for others. I allow them to let go and drop down into that space, and then I bring them back up and I see to it that they are taken care of after. If I let go, who would catch me?"

My pulse quickens. "Me?"

To my bewilderment, he laughs.

"Why's that funny?" I ask.

"It's not. But it's the way you'd just blindly take all that on."

"Maybe I want to."

"If I ever let go, I think I would simply drag you down with me," he replies, shrugging and turning back to his meal, "And that's not some dramatic, tortured-soul emo posturing. No."

He takes another mouthful.

"No. That's the problem with genies. They're very difficult to get back in the bottle. It took me a long time. Happy to take control for others, but I'd never impose that burden myself."