Playing with Fire

Erin's roommate had been given the flyer from a friend of a friend, or so she said. Lucy's claim was eyebrow-raising, but Erin sighed at the story and didn't press. "My friend's friend gave it to her who gave it to me." A game of telephone, Lucy wanted her to believe, brandishing the wrinkled piece of paper with its four torn corners, no doubt still stapled to whatever light pole she'd torn it from. It was all so immature, and Erin thought Lucy could have just admitted she wanted to go in her own right instead of claiming simple and abject curiosity. "I'm not saying we should go," she had said when floating the idea for the first time, hands held up in mock preparation for appeasement. "I'm just saying, can you believe there are parties like that?"

They had been sitting at the kitchen table, and Erin shrugged and took a convenient bite of toast. Lucy let it drop, but brought it up a few days later, the slight strain in her voice betraying eagerness. "What do you think people do at those parties?"

"I'm guessing people dress up in fetish gear and show off," Erin replied, before slipping her phone out of her back pocket and busying herself with her empty inbox. When Lucy got up to refill her coffee, and when Erin was sure her back was turned, she glanced again at the wrinkled flyer laid out on the table. She knew the venue; she had been to a concert there the year before and a rave once back in college. The memory was hazy and tinted by the ruminated judgments that her twenties were at times a blur of brazen, stupid whims. She could still feel the phantom rush and heat of the crowd, bass thumping in her chest as she exchanged wanton grinding for mystery pills that made the air shimmer and the lights trail. She remembered, late into the night, making out in some corner with a woman and her boyfriend. The woman's lips had been so soft and so warm, and Erin had wanted to stay in the moment forever, kissing her while his stubble scratched against her neck and someone tangled their fist in her hair and pulled until she gasped. She had come down after dawn, sipping on orange juice from concentrate in a stranger's living room, a dull ache of desire pulsing lazily between her thighs.

"I think I'm going to go," Lucy said, sitting down again and pulling the flyer toward her. "Do you want to come? It'll be fun."

"I don't know," Erin let the memory fade, swallowed against the lapping heat in her stomach. "I haven't done anything like that in a long time. I might be too old."

Lucy laughed, her mouth turning down in a skeptical challenge. "Since when is thirty old? Come on, girl, come with me. Please? I'll even buy your ticket! I know you wanna go," Lucy teased. Erin sighed and clicked off her phone screen, pressing it face down into the wood of the table, and let her curiosity get the better of her. Lucy rejoiced. There was a lot of jumping and hugging and thanking. Erin didn't correct her. "Do you want to pregame? Do you need to borrow something to wear?"

"I'd quite prefer to be sober," Erin laughed. "And I know you think I'm a prude, but I do know how to dress up."

Lucy let out a polite but disbelieving bark of laughter and said, "I'll believe it when I see it."

In the end, Erin settled on a peach satin bralette with black and peach floral lace and a black miniskirt that was tight against the curve of her waist and hips. As she turned to admire herself in the mirror, she tugged the bralette and took a deep breath, feeling the softness of her stomach. She could see the faint definition of her abdominal muscles, shifting with her as she twisted side to side, and the lines of her hamstrings and calves. Her dark brown hair was down, in waves that brushed her shoulders, framing her face.

Lucy had tied her hair back into a shining, golden braid, and donned a sapphire-blue corset that created enviable cleavage. A distressed, denim mini-skirt clung to her hips over fishnets and heels.

"Wow," Lucy breathed. "You look hot."

Looking in the mirror, Erin took in the woman staring back: her slightly flushed cheeks, the freckles dotting her chest, and the slight movement of her belly when she breathed. A prickling sensation started up in her fingertips, tingling all the way up her arms and into her chest as she imagined strangers taking her in. What would they think of her? Would they look long enough to notice the pink that started at the base of her throat when she felt shy or flustered? Would they look closely enough at her top's lace appliqué to make out the silhouette of her pebbled, hard nipples? Would they see through the outfit, imagining what she looked like out of it, using the fantasy of her body for whatever lewd, wicked fantasies they could hide behind their private thoughts? Suddenly her cheeks felt warm, and her throat felt very dry, and she had to look away from the mirror and clear it several times to steady herself against the racing thoughts.

"Get ready for some stares," Lucy said, elongating the last word with a wink and a hip shimmy, oblivious to Erin's affect as she turned to the mirror to apply eyeliner.

Half an hour later, they sat in relative silence in the back of a cab. Erin rubbed the cuff of her coat between her fingers. The same thoughts kept coming back to her in waves: how strangers would perceive her and what they might do with those thoughts. It made her heart pound. She toyed with the thoughts, struggling to either push them away or pull them in closer, afraid of what she might find out about herself if she allowed them to take over.

The building was a large and unimposing venue on the east side, near the river. A large billboard advertised the night's event in chipboard letters, and Erin found herself surprised at the unceremonious presentation. At the door, a bouncer checked their IDs and ran them through a list of rules as he pressed a piece of masking tape over the cameras on their phones. For a brief moment, she thought she saw his gaze flicker over her chest before he quickly looked away, but she couldn't be sure.

Inside, the pair went up two sets of stairs and emerged into a slowly filling, high-ceilinged hall. Lucy went to freshen up and Erin shrugged off her coat, glancing around the room to see if anyone was watching her. She felt exposed, acutely aware of the way the air settled on her skin, and had an itch in the back of her mind to shrug her jacket back on, or cover herself with her hands. Instead she willed herself to keep her arms still, with her jacket draped over one, and forced herself to give it to the coat rack attendant in exchange for a ticket that she pushed into the shallow pocket at the front of her skirt.

The hall was a large, almost rectangular room divided into two parts: a large, center square area with gleaming wood floors and a curtained stage against the back wall, and a smaller, rectangular hallway that surrounded it, carpeted and lined with partial walls and pillars that held up the balcony on the third floor. Four stations were set up in the center of the main room: two sturdy-looking, thin tables made from gleaming wood; a large, wooden X with steel rings at each corner and a center hourglass shape cut from leather; and a wooden chair positioned over a board. The four stations were arranged in a circle in the center of the room, each spaced out enough from one another that a small audience could gather around and watch each scene unfold.

As Erin watched people mill in, she quickly realized that no one was really looking at her. Everyone was dressed in a similar fashion to herself: tight leather, or revealing mesh, or various styles of glorified underwear. Two women walked by, each clad in sparkling gold hot shorts and black pasties. A man on the far side of the room wore tight leather pants, and Erin could see the barbell in one of his nipples gleam in the room's light.

Leaning against a beam, Erin's eye was caught by a man with a black bag over one shoulder, holding hands with an underwear-clad woman as he led her toward one of the stationed tables. The man was dressed in dark slacks and a dress shirt, with halfway rolled up sleeves. The woman was shorter than Erin, with thicker hips and softer, fuller curves. Getting her seated up on the table, the man lifted her fingers to his mouth and kissed them before laying her back. He let the bag drop from his shoulder to the floor and he knelt to rummage through it. A moment later, he pulled out a black and silver rectangular case. Opening it, he held up what looked like a thin glass tube at the end of a thick, purple and black handle.

Erin had seen a toy like that once before, she thought, but never in person. The memory itched at the back of her mind -- tugging at her to remember how her fingers had stopped scrolling to hover while her throat ran dry. It felt wrong to stand there, transfixed, unable to take her eyes away from the man's hands as he plugged the cord into the socket. When he stood, he held the toy in one hand, held his other palm flat out, and touched the glass tip to its center. The woman watched him with a lazy, warm expression, one corner of her mouth turned up. Erin watched her gaze trail from the man up toward the people looking down from the balcony above them.

Then the man pulled a piece of black fabric from the bag and tied it around the woman's head. The woman's chest rose in anticipation, the muscles of her shoulders and neck tensing before they relaxed down into the table. Erin felt the skin on her arms prickle. For a moment -- the briefest flash, gone before she'd even let out the breath she realized she was holding -- Erin imagined herself on the table, blindfolded, about to be shocked.

He started slowly, touching just the very tip of the glass tube to the back of one of the woman's arms. Sometimes he would break his contact with the woman's skin and hover it above her, and she would inhale sharply, or her stomach would brace, or her lips would part in a gasp or a pant. At times -- when he dragged the tip over the inside of her leg; when he held it slightly away from her and ran just the very point over her skin -- the woman would tense, as if trying to keep very still. She seemed almost restless, her muscles taut, coiled and ready to jump each time he seemed to re-engage the toy.

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.