In the shop I ask for my size and a woman with long, square nails finds it for me and I take it to the change room. The price tag makes me feel faint: it costs a week’s pay. But when I put it on I see why. It fits me like a glove, cinching in at my waist and curving over my hips. It even makes my breasts, which are all right but nothing to throw a parade over, practically demand attention.
I look so different to how I normally do. So womanly. The part of me that wants to curl up in a blanket and watch cartoons and be petted and cossetted like a princess is still there, but another part of me, the part that wants to hold Rufus’s hand as we walk through Soho and drink white wine and who diligently takes her pill an hour before she even gets his text, wants this dress. I buy it for her, and there’s a minxy slink to her gait as she walks home.
I’m showing the dress to my mother and asking what she thinks when my father walks in.
“Do you have a date with Rufus?” he asks. I’ve told my parents we’re dating. They were pleased. My mother looked smug, thinking she predicted the whole thing.
“Yes. I’m thinking of wearing this. Is it all right?”
He just shakes his head and walks out again. “Poor bastard. Doesn’t stand a chance.”
I turn to my mother, biting my lip. “Are you sure it’s all right? It’s not a little too old, is it?”
She laughs. “Old for your usual tastes, but not too old for you, no.” She studies me a moment. “Is it getting serious with Rufus?”
I nod.
“How serious?”
“Like, super serious. He—he’s my boyfriend.” It’s not a lie, but it’s a half-truth. I can’t exactly tell her what he really is. Yes, he’s my dom. He owns me and I call him daddy. I feel myself choke just thinking about it.
“That’s wonderful, honey. Are you being careful?”
I nod, and pay close attention to folding up the dress. I know what sort of careful she means.
“All right, then. As long as you are.”
* * *
When I walk out of my dressing room at the theater, Rufus’s mouth actually falls open.
“Bloody hell. If I knew you were going to look like that I would have brought a cane or something.”
“What for?”
“So I can beat off the hordes of men who are going to trail in your wake as soon as I take you outside.”
I grin. “Silly.”
He looks at my feet. I went back to the store and bought a pair of matching red high heels, as nothing I own did the dress justice. The stilettos are five inches high.
Rufus rubs a hand over the back of his neck. “I don’t normally feel like this but I want to lie down and have you walk all over me.”
“Rufus! You?”
“It’s a fucking great dress,” he explains.
The restaurant is just around the corner, and I’m glad because in these shoes I can’t walk terribly fast or far. Inside, we sit very close, talking quietly and laughing loudly. I barely touch my food but Rufus doesn’t say anything about it. I think he knows why. While I’m forking my pasta about on my plate I sneak looks at him, wondering whether to ask what’s on my mind. In a “normal” relationship it’s usual for a couple to ask each other difficult, personal questions, but does a sub have the right? Will he tell me off and tell me I’m prying? But then, Rufus has often said he wants me to be myself. I’ve never felt more like myself than I do in this moment, and I want to ask, so I say, “Rufus, will you tell me a little more about the theater you want to buy, and—and your family?”
He raises a quizzical eyebrow at me. “How do you mean, princess?”
“Well,” I say slowly, putting down my fork and resting my hands on the napkin in my lap. “I get the feeling that you don’t think your father would be proud of what you’re doing. Or that you don’t want to tell him about it.”
He smiles down at his steak as he cuts it. “Ah. That. Perceptive little thing, aren’t you?” But his voice is light and teasing, not annoyed. “You’re right that I’m reluctant to tell him. We don’t talk about the theater much. We don’t talk much at all, really.”
I wait for him to go on.
“He ran the Palais for nearly twenty years, but I think so much of the memory of it is tied up with my mother’s death. I don’t want to cause him any more pain by talking about it.”