Page 120 of The Dommes

She has to know what she wants, so she does. She always looks so polished and sophisticated, even when she’s at the club spanking a girl or in my apartment wearing a T-shirt and jeans and stuffing her face with popcorn. I don’t have a crush on her. Not like that. But I admire her ability to blend in seamlessly anywhere, even if she sticks out like a sore thumb bruised seventy times over.

I wish I could be so confident.

You may think it’s silly that me, a woman born with a silver spoon in her mouth and all the trappings with it, would be so insecure. I even realize how lucky I am to feel okay about my body and appearance. I’m not in love with how I look, but I don’t blanche from the mirror…

Yet it’s not easy, no matter how much money you have. People judge you. They want you to fit into a mold, and across the class board, that mold means knowing my place. I’m fortunate to have enough money to fuck off. I’ve met many women in my various campaigns who never had that kind of luxury. They can only make the best of a less fortunate situation.

Ira is the first person in this society who made me blissfully not care about who I am. When I’m with her, I not only feel good looking, but valuable and intelligent…

Even when she’s doing those things to me…

“Kat?”

I look up in time for the server to bring me my lunch. Eve removes her snapping fingers from my face with a twist to her mouth. As soon as the server leaves and we have our food, she says, “Stop daydreaming about her for two seconds, huh? If I knew I would be having lunch with you and Ira in spirit…”

“Hardly!”

“Don’t play that with me. You’re thinking of Mathison like I’m thinking about this bacon.”

We eat and attempt to change the subject to our usual fare. My mother’s most recent letter from Germany, Poland, Austria… I’m not sure where she is. Eve’s mother and her terrible jewelry that she keeps sending her daughter. Eve’s sister and what a mess the wedding planning is. Grad school, both her classes and my memories from a few years ago.

I’m thinking we can get back to normal when the owner of the restaurant walks through the door, escorting a young woman carrying a basket full of…

…Kittens.

Eve snorts into the back of her hand, and I know right away that it’s Jamie Joy, the eager girlfriend of billionaire Etta Coleman. While I’ve never met the woman on a one-on-one basis, she has an infamous reputation in our circles for being…

Well, let’s say she means well, but lacks a lot of the manners so many of us are bred with. It’s the main issue with people who marry up into these families instead of laterally… aw, fuck, this is what Eve meant, isn’t it?

The Mathisons are interested in pushing me to be Ira’s girlfriend and maybe wife down the road because they don’t want her marrying a Jamie Joy. Who, presently, is talking way too loudly with the owner and cooing over the juvenile cats in her big woven basket.

Lots of people bring their pets to a place like this. While most of them are those little lap dogs that are more or less well-behaved, there is a couple who bring their cats on leashes.

A basket full of kittens is another story, and it’s taking every bit of decency Eve and I have to not completely lose our shit.

Jamie looks in our direction and drops the smile. I turn away, blushing.

“I mean… I see what that woman sees in her…” Eve mumbles over her salad. “I go over to Coleman’s office enough to see her there. Even met her when she was Coleman’s, ahem, assistant.” Billionaire fucking the hot assistant. Tale as old as time… and how Carolyn Graham became a Graham-Mathison. “She’s pretty, acts cute, and grew up poor like Coleman.”

“What’s that last one have to do with anything?” I’m whispering, even though Jamie is far on the other side of the restaurant.

“Honey, haven’t you been listening to what I’m saying all day? Someone like Etta Coleman, who grew up in the fucking ghetto on the other side of town, isn’t going to want to spend her life with women like us. We’re too high maintenance. Our standards are on Venus, not the moon. Can’t be helped.”

She’s got a point, which makes me think of Stephanie May, a girl who grew up middle-class but still “poor” compared to us. Would Ira want to marry a girl like that? Or just fuck her?

Would she rather marry someone with my background?

I’ve long known that if I’m going to get married, it would have to be with someone as or even richer than me. Men, even the submissive ones, don’t like it when their girlfriends have more money, more social power in my experience. It invalidates their masculinity, which is already the most fragile thing on this planet, I swear to God.

As for submissive women? I seem to only be attracted to the lifestyle type, which I am not, and I don’t want that kind of responsibility on my shoulders.

The mewling kittens reach our ears toward the end of our lunch. Looking over my shoulder, I see Jamie still talking to the owner while her gaggle of cats fall over each other, nap, and sniff at her food. They’re short hairs with black and white markings. Cute.

She catches me looking again.

“You need to knock that off,” Eve hisses at me. “Last thing you want is her thinking we’re some sort of mean girls.”

“People think that about us already.”

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