Top or Bottom: What Side are You On

The trip home from work on the Metro was uneventful. It was late and I was in a pissy mood. My boss bombed all this extra shit on on me after lunch--an unfair thing to do on a Friday, I thought, not that she thought about things like that--and as a result my mind was pretty fucking fried. So I just stared out the window at the black tunnel walls flicking by and Belgians standing patiently at the station platforms holding their day bags, waiting for their train home.

An older businessman sat in the seat across from me; I avoided his looks of interest. I was interested in neither old nor man, but he didn't know that. It didn't bother me. He could take his peeks at the dashing young blonde working girl on the train and indulge his fantasies. I've always been tolerant that we've all got to have our outlets one way or another. Hell, I've got mine and so do my girls.

The Brussels downtown was coming to life for the weekend. I was heading the other direction, away from the city center, but I saw the energy building on the platforms with groups of revelers gathering for their night out. I'd be back later if Maggy had her way. She wanted to hit that new club in the Marolles District again, the one she dragged me to for a very late night on Wednesday. Fuck., I was still struggling to catch up on sleep from that marathon evening, and that's probably why my brain was dead now, although it was worth it for that kiss.

She was a pretty, fun, and flirty girl, with a good sense of humor, and she was a bisexual, at least according to her claims which grew more frequent with the drinks. It seemed tentative on the female side because it took a while to get her to shut up about her former boyfriend, aka "the fucking A-hole" as she referred to him. I kept thinking about that night at the club and some of the characters we met there, and about the gentle kiss from Maggy (finally!)

My French needed work so I had been practicing with people at the club. It was unusual that I had gotten by with only English for the three months I'd been in the city. Nobody spoke Russian here, at least not for work. Being at the office didn't help me with the transition because everyone there spoke English and as soon as I tried something in French they would respond in English. Being with Maggy also let me get by too easily because she spoke excellent English. And of course Jonathan being American was yet another anti-French force in my new life here.

The train got to my station and I walked the three blocks to my flat which was up a long flight of stairs. Along the way I practiced the French phrases that I could remember. How would I say, Maggy, can you stop flirting and just let me fuck you, girl? I smiled to myself. That wouldn't work. She was a sweet girl; I couldn't come onto her like a ton of bricks. I was going to have to work my way through more gentle kisses.

I was stopped in my thoughts by a figure slouched against my flat door. It was a girl I didn't know with long dark hair, long eyelashes with heavy mascara, and an oval face with unblemished skin. She turned towards me as I approached. She was very pretty, and reminded me of my Russian girls. Young and innocent looking.

"Hi..." I said, unsure what was going on.

"Hi!" She responded eagerly, in well-trained English, standing up. "Are you Rachel?"

"Yes. What's up?" I was tired and not in the mood for bullshit and it showed in my tone of voice.

"Good!" She seemed pleased to see me. And then because I still seemed confused, she added, "Jonathan sent me here."

"Jonathan?"

"Yes. American. Tall guy, good looking." Her face went into a crinkle of concern as I stared blankly. "Wait. You know him, right?"

"Yes, I know him... I just didn't expect him here tonight."

"Oh, he's not. It's only me."

"Only you?" I was more confused now than before. She nodded and seemed pleased that I had come to save her from waiting. That made me wonder.

"How long have you been waiting here?"

She looked at her phone. "About two hours." She smiled. It didn't seem to bother her that she'd wasted two fucking hours of her Friday night hunched over on my doorstep. "A little more, actually."

"You've been waiting over two hours for me? I don't even know you."

"I know." She stopped, embarrassed, then looked around the hallway, which was empty. She held a slender hand out to me. "Sorry... I'm Annabel. You can call me Anna. I live next to Jonathan, actually on a different floor, but in the same building. I should have explained better. But can we talk inside, maybe? I can tell you everything."

I thought about it. Should I let a beautiful girl into my apartment on a Friday night? I smiled. Why not? Worse things have happened to me and she seemed harmless. I hadn't fucked a single girl in the three months I'd been here--kissing Maggy on Wednesday night had been the closest I'd come--and Anna's youth and beauty set my mind racing. I set my bag down in the hallway and fumbled for my keys while she stood silently to the side, watching and waiting.

As I let her in, I thought about Jonathan. It was Maggy I had been waiting for at the club a few weeks ago when I first met him--and it started as one of those awkward moments where he tried to hit on me. It happened often and I wasted no time giving him my well-practiced message that his come-on game wasn't going to get him anywhere. It was a fatal problem with one of his chromosomes. But he just laughed it off and stuck around anyway, which surprised me.

He was cool. An athletic guy, good looking. Huge biceps. Any typical straight girl would go for him in a second. I think that's why he was okay letting me off as a potential target for his dick, because he probably fucked as much as he wanted. The fact I was lesbian didn't stop him from checking out my tits while we talked, as often as he could, which was a lot. But what the hell, I didn't mind. It was like that guy ogling me on the train. It was harmless to let them look, and people's sexual drives kinda were interesting to me. One of my hobbies.

Throwing my coat and bag down on the table I shuffled quickly through the mail and kept a peek out of the corner of my eye. Anna was still standing at the door. She had closed it behind her quietly and was waiting for me. I liked that. It was a good quality for a girl that might become a submissive, to be able to wait patiently.

Maybe this girl could become my sub, I wondered. But I wondered that about most cute girls I saw around town or at work, so it wasn't an unusual thought. I was often wistful about my subs back in Saint Petersburg. They were such good girls. I hope they missed me.

"So, Anna..." I opened, turning to her in a friendly way and with honest curiosity. "Tell me what's going on."

She pursed her lips and looked down. She was shy and endearing. "It's kind of embarrassing. But I'll just tell you. I moved in, there, in the building, like I said, where Jonathan lives. Last month, I mean." She was nervous. I waited for her to unpack her thoughts with more care.

"And I've been working as a waitress. You know, it's a good job, I guess. Decent. It pays okay. It was enough to pay the rent for the first month."

"Okay," I said. "But then something happened?"

"Yes!" she said, excited that I had guessed it, showing her naivete. It wasn't hard to guess.

Her energy faded as she remembered. "Well, I didn't have my job anymore. And then I couldn't pay the rent. And the landlord, he just threw--"

"Wait. Why did you lose your job?"

"I don't know. It was unfair."

"There must have been a reason." She looked down, pouting. Damn, she would make a fine sub if I could get my hands on her. She needed discipline, that's for sure. I would start off by spanking what looked like a beautiful ass.

"Anna," I said sternly, prodding her to answer.

"Okay..." She rolled her eyes. "I was late. Because they are really strict about it. Like even if you are one minute late. My manager, she got mad and told me if I was late one more time that would be the end. But it wasn't my fault, the next morning when--"

"Anna." I said it sternly again. This girl didn't accept responsibility, that much was clear.

"Yes," she said, subdued, and looked at me with her eyes a little watery. It was hard for her to tell this story. She was trying to deny it, but she knew she had done wrong; and was now paying the price for it.

I looked at her in a different light, and changed my tact.

"You are very young. Are you even eighteen? How is it that you are on your own? Having to work a waitress job?"

"Yeah, I just turned eighteen. If I hadn't, maybe my parents wouldn't have kicked me out." She said it quietly.

"Was your father a drunk? Or abused you?"

"No no, not like that. They didn't like my friend."

"Your friend?"

"My girlfriend."

"Ah..." I nodded as the lights went on for me. I knew this story well. Not for myself, fortunately, but from many girls I'd known. Parents in Russia generally were not tolerant of alternate sexualities. I continued my questioning.

"Wait. Let's go back to Jonathan. I met him only a couple weeks ago myself."

"That's what he said. But he said you were nice and that I should come over here and meet you."

"He did? What else did he say about me? Did he mention that I like girls too?"

"Yes. He didn't really say it like that, but he hinted about it. I understood what he meant."

"Interesting... Well, you understood correctly. Did he say anything else about me?"

"Like what?"

"Nevermind. So how did you get here?"

"Like I was saying, I didn't have money to pay the rent. And the landlord, he's... " she shook her head. "He's an asshole. He started throwing my clothes into the hallway. Right on the floor. And it was so dirty. Some of my best things he just threw there, all my clean underwear and everything. It had only been two days, for the money being late, I mean. And I was going to find a way to pay him. I swear."

"Then Jonathan found you, a helpless young woman, crying in the hallway, and talked the landlord into waiting a few more days?"

"Right!" she said, surprised I grasped it quickly. "Not just that. He paid the whole month for me."

"Wow. I'm impressed." And I truly was. That was a fair bit of money to dish out for what must have been at most a long shot at some getting some ass. This girl was obviously not a piece of ordinary ass, though, so maybe it was a gamble worth taking for him. "Wait. I want to hear more of your story, but let me get changed. You can sit there, on the sofa."

I left Anna and thought more about Jonathan and his unexpected role he was playing in my Friday night without even being here.

He was a decent enough guy, I knew from talking with him a number of times the past few weeks, but he was no white knight. Thinking of Anna's face and figure, I had about one guess what Jonathan expected in exchange for his act of generosity. It wasn't going to be just "Hey, to pay me back you can clean my apartment" or "Please run a few errands for me" or "Cook me dinner." It was going to involve some favors of the hot fucking kind. And he wasn't going to be shy about asking.

Definitely not shy. I smiled. He was a player. The night I met Jonathan at the club, when I was waiting for Maggy--bless her soul but she, like Anna, was far too late far too often--we had the time to sit and talk at length. It turned out he lived alone here in Brussels, not that far from me. He had come from New York City and worked a fancy military-style job at NATO.

I asked him that first night if he was a spy. He laughed with his confident and loud voice, and said no, that his work was a lot more boring than that. I asked him if the NATO girls were good to fuck and he said sometimes. I asked him if he had ever fucked a guy to try it, and he said fuck you, get out, no way would that ever happen.

Guys are so limited in their sexuality.

Jonathan and I were not compatible in any way, in our sexual orientations, and were never destined to have a relationship of that kind. But I enjoyed his frank approach to sex and life, and in just the few weeks I'd known him he had become a friend and confidant. I didn't have many of those in Brussels so I enjoyed my time with him. I didn't have to pussyfoot around, and I sensed that he liked me. Exactly why I didn't know. I divulged details about my own sexual life that I hadn't told anybody outside of Russia. And it didn't even take that many drinks to get me to do it.

I'm a dom. A top. Some girls are like: I can be a top or a sub, it depends on the mood and the situation. Not me. I'm always the one in control. It wouldn't work any other way. And only for girls. I had a series of them back in Saint Petersburg, pretty young things that needed training, and enjoyed it. I took good care of them. It was the best thing about living there, along with my mother's borscht. That was a joke I had made for years with my brother.

I once tried working as a cam girl for some extra cash and the first guy that came to my room said, show me your tits honey and put two fingers in your ass. I said fuck that shit. I don't need your money that bad. Stick your dick up your own ass I told him, and he ran from my room. And that was the end of that. Like I said, I'm always the top.

I've also tried fucking guys--twice I've tried it--and it worked only because they were slender and reminded me of girls. One of them was submissive and I made him put on a short plaid school skirt and stockings for me--we even roleplayed him as a guilty schoolgirl--before I bent him over a chair and lifted up that girlie skirt and rammed the strapon deep into his asshole.

The other one wasn't into dom-sub games but I somehow charmed him and he let me fuck him in the ass anyway. It was kind of fun, at least for me. I felt a little bad about that one. He was a tight anal virgin and I bet he was sore for days.

But those were both one-time things. I'm only into girls from now on.

So what about Anna's story? I could guess pretty well how things played out with that trio of characters in their hallway: Anna, the landlord, and Jonathan--yet another American with too much money and too much expectation that the world would give him anything he wanted as long as he paid cash for it.

I could just see his expression in that hallway, drooling over Anna's tight figure and wanting to give her a good fucking. I couldn't blame him for that, actually. I mean, shit, I had the exact same feelings looking at her. But his enthusiasm would have rushed him into an impulse payment. Then afterwards Anna would have confessed that she was a lesbian, maybe even told him the story about her parents, and he would have been embarrassed at his assumptions.

So then the question was, what exactly had he told this girl about me? And what was she doing here, exactly. What did she expect of this evening? I nursed an eager hope that he had primed her to be my sub. But on the other hand, she seemed a little blank when I tried to inquire.

There was nothing to do but just go find out and my style was direct so it wasn't going to take long. I finished changing and rushed back, more excited about the possibilities than I cared to admit to myself. I had gone from pissy to horny pretty fast.

Anna was sitting on the edge of the sofa, looking rather nervous. And still beautiful. Maybe even more beautiful than I had appreciated earlier.

I walked over near her and touched her shoulder. "Would you like a drink?"

"Yes," she said, hopping up right away. "Let me get it."

Before I could say anything, she popped over to the kitchenette and browsed through the refrigerator, asking me about options. So I just sat back and made myself comfortable, and waited. She brought over the drinks on a little serving platter I'd left on the counter. Waitressing was a good calling for her.

"Nicely done; you're a good girl," I said, taking a drink, and she smiled and beamed. Even with a little blush. "You enjoy serving people? Pleasing them?"

"Serving drinks and food? Yes, I'm a good waitress. I want to get another job like that... And I know. What you said. I'll try not to be late for it."

"But I mean in general, do you get pleasure from submitting to authority? From letting go of control. Does that turn you on?"

She was confused. "I'm not sure what you mean."

"Anna," I said frankly. It was time to just get things out in the open. "I'm a lesbian, as we talked, like you are. But I'm not just a lesbian, I'm a dom, a dominant woman. We also call it a top. Mistress."

Her eyes went wide open but she didn't respond.

"Jonathan sent you here because he wanted to fuck you, for the rent, but you told him you are a lesbian. So he said go visit my friend Rachel. Is this right?"

She turned red, and also with wonder. "You're really smart. You figured that out just from what I said?"

"And because I know Jonathan. He's got a big swinging dick."

Her blush turned even more red.

"Sorry, Anna. I wasn't referring to the size of his penis. Although maybe he does have a big one. He probably does. I don't really care; it's just an expression. What I meant was that he thinks about sex all the time, and almost everything Jonathan does is due to his sex drive. Especially anything to do with a pretty girl."

"Oh."

"So... tell me what you are doing here at my apartment, exactly?"

"Jonathan said I could keep the rent he paid, and wouldn't ask it back, if I just came over here tonight and did what you wanted."

"What I wanted?"

"Yes."

"He didn't say what I would want?"

"No."

"Anna. I have to be honest with you. I told you that I'm a dom. What I want is a sub. I don't know if you want to do that."

"I don't know that much about it. Is it like a whipping or being tied up or something? I'm not into pain. I don't want to do that."

"Being a sub isn't about pain. It's about being turned on by giving up control. Almost nobody likes pain for its own sake. It's the idea of being owned that gives a sub the high, a high of submission to your lady."

She was quiet, with her eyebrows furrowed.

"That's why I asked about serving. You jumped up to serve me drinks right away."

"I was just trying to be polite."

"But it means you were seeking approval. From me. And you liked it when I told you that you were a good girl."

"Well, of course," she blushed. "You are a beautiful woman, and you know Jonathan, and you are successful; you have a job and your own place here. Of course I want to impress you. I want you to like me."

We were both quiet for a few moments, thinking. Then she spoke quietly.

"Okay. I'll confess. I liked it when you called me a good girl. It felt nice... sexy, even. Like I did something right. Not messing up, like I did at my job."

Fuck... I thought to myself. This might really happen tonight. Thank you, Jonathan, I mouthed to the air.

"Anna, I want to try something. And if it works, you can stay tonight. You will know if it doesn't feel right, and you can go. In that case, you'll have to find some other way to pay Jonathan back. Or figure something else out with him. Maybe you can clean his apartment."

"I don't know where I would get the money. And I don't know how to clean. It would be a lot easier if I didn't have to pay him back."

"I know. But.... Wait here a moment."

I knew just what I wanted. It was in a box in the back corner of my bedroom closet, one that I hadn't unpacked since I arrived from Saint Petersburg months ago. I dug through the crap I'd brought in my move--wondering why I kept half of this stuff and didn't just throw it away--then I found what I wanted. It was a lightweight training collar, just thin black leather with only a few studs. A silver buckle that allowed it to go tight. Very tight if necessary. And a ring for a leash, when needed. I'd have to dig around to find that, later, maybe.