There was no way it was real.

That name. Dara. That little string of numbers written next to it, quickly but with care.

It was all a fiction of some sort. I couldn’t let myself fall into believing otherwise.

She was a stripper, the woman who had written out those letters on the back of this business card and pressed it into my hand. Strippers were professional liars.

That wasn’t a judgment against them, just a fact. There were all sorts of professional liars in the world, and strippers were far from the worst of them. There were actors, and writers, and company executives, and therapists and bartenders who had to tell everyone they were worthy of sympathy whether it was true or not. I’d even spent my formative years listening to a professional tell me that he knew the will of God, before passing the collection plate.

There was nothing wrong with the pretty little fictions that strippers sold. And there was nothing wrong with buying them, as long as you didn’t fool yourself about what exactly you were paying for.

That was where the trouble started, both for you and for the poor stripper who had to decide when to break character and nudge you back to your place, as one audience member among many.

I was lying in bed, on the morning after Glen and Gemma’s wedding, turning that card over and over in my hand, never quite managing to toss it into the wastebasket.

I’d fulfilled my duties as Glen’s Best Woman reasonably well, I think. My speech was short and full of the usual jokes I knew Glen would like, about our exaggerated history of hijinks, and how he was marrying way out of his league and had better not mess it up. I made sure the DJ honored the do-not-play list, ejected a drunk uncle for hitting on the younger bridesmaids without getting any vomit on my suit at all, and let Gemma’s mom talk at me for twenty minutes about how lucky I was to not be attracted to men.

I never corrected her, either about the fact that I was bi, or about how little luck my bisexuality had brought me in my dating life so far.

I certainly didn’t tell her that I’d only ever been intimate with one woman, and that she was a stripper.

A stripper named Violet, or named Dara, depending on whether you asked the DJ at her club, or the card folded up in my pocket.

I didn’t touch that card all evening. But now I was out of distractions.

I turned it over again.

Dara had to be a fake “real” name. And the number probably went to some other line at the club itself, where I could tell someone how great a job she was doing, and maybe book some more private time with her.

I might as well just get it over with, finding out. It would free up my mind to make a real plan for the day.

I typed the number into my phone, saved it as “Dara?”, which still read as more hopeful than I wanted it to, and started a new text.

Hey, Dara? It’s Briony. I don’t know if you remember me, from the Angel Room the other day?

I rewrote every word of this at least four times, adding and subtracting details, moving punctuation around, and then finally gritted my teeth and hit “send.”

The ellipsis appeared immediately — a reply being written.

Briony!!!

My name was followed by a string of emojis, full of smiles, hearts, and flowers.

I almost thought I wasn’t going to hear from you. I thought maybe you’d decided to forget that time you were a bad girl for a few minutes ;)

My heart thumped hard enough to make my head feel light each time I re-read the message. I had to look away so that I could think.

It wasn’t real, I told myself, almost like a prayer.

I didn’t have a real relationship with a stripper.

Strippers didn’t… well, of course they must have real relationships sometimes, too. They were people, just like anyone else. Was it really so absurd to imagine that this woman might genuinely like me, just because—

Yes. Of course it was. I’d had two, maybe three conversations with her in the course of one evening, all of them paid for in one way or another. And every day, she spent her working hours surrounded by prettier women than me, and dozens of other customers who all wanted to believe the same things about themselves that I did.

It absolutely was absurd to believe that I was the one it was true for.

I never want to forget, I typed, then deleted it and replaced it with something that would get me to the inevitable dead end faster.

Crazy thought: if you’re not doing anything today, do you want to hang out?

The ellipsis appeared.

Here it came, I assured myself. The sales pitch. The real reason she’d given me this number. Sure, she’d love to hang out some more, as long as it was at the club. Usual rates applying.

The reply came through.

I’d love to.

My heart thumped madly while I watched the next ellipsis.

I was actually just getting ready for dance class, though…

So maybe I should just come by the club later, right? I thought, squeezing my phone painfully hard into my palm.

I have a free pass for a guest, said the next text. Do you want to come with?

I searched her words for every possible meaning.

It’s fun. It’s got poles, and heels, and boas. I can think of worse places for a first date :) Dara added.

The pounding in my chest spread down the rest of my torso and out to my fingertips, as I realized that I would not be wrapping up this feeling and putting it behind me today.

Where should I meet you? I texted back.

Move Me Dance Studio, on Marionberry Road, said Dara. 12:30. Wear something you can move in.

#

I almost backed out three times just getting dressed. My entire athleticwear collection consisted of one pair of knee-length gym shorts, two sports bras (only one of which worked), and a handful of baggy t-shirts with too many holes in them to use for anything else anymore.

On the rare occasions when I left my room with the express intention of sweating in public, my clothes had one function, as far as I was concerned: to conceal as much of my body as possible without getting in my way.

Appropriate attire for a dance class felt utterly incompatible with appropriate attire for a date. And a pole dance class? The image of a roomful of women with bodies like Dara’s, twirling effortlessly in their cute little lacy lingerie pieces, made me want to roll myself up in a blanket and hide under the bed.

But I was going. I might whine at myself about it every step of the way, but ultimately, I was too smart to let my bully of an imagination rob me of an invitation like this.

Eventually, I put on a date-worthy bra and billowy, low-cut blouse, and squeezed myself into an old pair of leggings. The sight of my shape in the mirror still made me cringe, so I added a skirt, which I’d remove when I got there, if someone told me to.

I parked on the street and made my way around to the entrance of the Move Me Dance Studio, absorbing the ordinariness of it.

It looked like it had been built as office space and fitted at the last minute with a marquee and some double-doors that would have been at home on an older, grander building. It was run down but cheerful-looking, with nothing overtly suggestive about it. The feminine outline frosted into the windows of those double-doors was clothed, in a full-skirted ballgown.

When I took that last deep breath and stepped into the lobby, Dara was there, leaning on the front desk to chat with the receptionist.

It took me a moment to recognize her, out of the context of the club and its dim, surreal, tinted lighting. Just like the studio itself, Dara looked perfectly at home in the ordinary, daylight world. Her face was unmade-up, her silky hair pulled back in a messy bun. She wore a loose t-shirt, with the sleeves and most of the side seams roughly removed, over a sports bra and panties. They were regular kind that came in a multi-pack and didn’t bunch up, not the kind you’d find with a hanger all to themselves in a lingerie store.

She was stunning anyway, of course. I couldn’t even say which look I preferred on her.

When she heard the bell of the door, she turned her head, flicking an escaped lock of hair over her shoulder, and rushed over.

“You made it!” she said, squeezing me in a quick hug and then holding me at examining distance. “Just barely. Long drive? Trouble finding the place?”

Her eyes were just sharp enough to say she wasn’t counting on either of these explanations.

“No,” I admitted.

She smoothed the flowing short sleeves of my too-nice blouse and gave me one of her somberly knowing smiles.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “Come on, it’s about to start.”

#

The room Dara led me to had six poles and about thirty women in it, most of whom exchanged familiar waves with her.

The knot in my stomach loosened slightly when I realized that I was not in fact the largest person here. The students’ bodies ranged from willowy figures like Dara’s, to chubby rolls like mine, to gawky skeletal frames and bulky muscle.

One woman nearly twice my size was busy practicing a move where she raised one leg high behind her and pulled off a stretchy stocking over her head.

Another woman, old enough to be my grandmother and with bright pink hair, was slowly opening a corset and looking coyly over shoulder, as if there was no question at all that her imaginary audience wanted to see more of her crepe-textured skin, and the tufts of pink feathers she had taped over her nipples. Honestly, the way she held herself did make me want to look at her, even more than I wanted to watch the two cute women about my age, who were spinning around a single pole with one of them standing on the other’s shoulders.

Dara gave me an I-told-you-so smirk, and led me to stand with her near the back of a loose formation of women who seemed to be waiting for the real class to start.

A petite woman in her forties was pacing back and forth like stillness was a chore, her rhinestone leotard sparkling under the lights. She glanced at Dara, then at her watch, and clapped her hands.

Everyone who’d been using the space for practice hurried to put on exactly as much clothing as they wanted for class, and gathered into the formation with us.

“Welcome!” said the petite woman who must have been the teacher, scanning the group as if each and every one of us were a particular treat for her eyes. “Welcome, welcome, welcome! Ooh, I just love seeing so many people ready to feel good in their bodies. It’s going to be a great day, I can tell. If you’ve never been here before, I’m Kim, and this is Unladylike Dancing for All Levels. Let’s pair up and get limber, shall we?”

Dara took my hands and helped me settle down onto the floor. Before the teacher had to prompt us, she demonstrated spreading her legs apart and leaning forward, into the stretch.

I figured out that I was supposed to mirror her and press my feet against hers, but she could do a full hundred-and-eighty-degree splits, and I could barely get past ninety, so I ended up sort of resting my arches against her calves.

“Tell me if I go too hard,” Dara said, fully serious and impish at the same time, pulling me toward her.

She was shockingly strong, and my thigh muscles instantly felt the strain, but I was determined not to back out until I really had to. My body might not be the largest, but one glance around the room confirmed that it was easily the least conditioned for this kind of thing, and yet somehow, I was here on a date with a successful dancer who was also the most beautiful woman in the room. It was a lot to live up to.

I leaned, and pushed, and knew that I’d feel it tomorrow, but I got almost close enough to kiss her.

Dara moistened her lips, and then eased me back up to sitting.

I did the same for her next, pulling her slowly, gently toward me. It was easier for her, of course. She made it far enough to bypass my lips by inches, then my breasts, stopping with her lips hovering just short of, well, where she’d put them the other night.

She let out a warm breath, right when she was closest, and a tingling tremor ran down both my legs, twinging the stretched-out muscles.

When she passed my face again on the way back up, she winked.

The words first date were stuck in my head, so as we transitioned into side stretches, I said, “I feel like I should be asking you where you went to school. What you do for fun, for a living, what your hopes and dreams are…”

“We’re in school right now,” Dara pointed out. “We’re having fun right now. And you already know what I do for a living.”

We switched the stretch to the other side. I struggled against my love handles to bring my head as close to my ankle as I could, so that we could keep looking each other in the eye.

“Okay,” Dara sighed. “I dropped out of Portland Community College. When I’m not dancing, I enjoy going to museums, especially science and natural history, being a fucking sex goddess, and skipping to the good parts of conversations. My dream is to make enough money dancing, being a fucking sex goddess, and skipping to the good parts of conversations that I’ll never have to do anything else no matter how old I get. And right now, I’m hoping to find someone I always want to hang out with in my downtime, so that I never have to go through the boring questions with someone new ever again. What about you?”

I rushed to distill the essence of what I’d normally ramble about, if a date asked me about myself.

“I was homeschooled,” I said. “I didn’t find out that dinosaurs were real until I was twenty-one. I got my associate’s degree in business studies without ever setting foot on a campus, and now I make burritos in a mall food court. I’ve had sex with two people, or three, or five, depending on how you count it. I’ve never had a serious relationship. I’ve never kissed a girl. And everything you just said sounds amazing to me.”

Dara grinned. “Now you’re getting it.”

The rest of the class was shifting, in response to some direction I hadn’t been paying enough attention to hear. Dara turned around and knelt, facing away from me. She reached her arms up and back, wiggling her fingers in a clear enough signal that I was supposed to take her hands again.

I did so, and she leaned back slowly, using my hands for leverage to control her descent. Her head hung back to look at me, upside-down.

“So, is there anything else you want to ask me?” she asked.

There were plenty more things I wanted to ask, but the one at the tip of my tongue was the most selfish. I should probably—

“Things you actually want to ask me,” Dara said pointedly, as she lowered herself all the way down to rest her head on the floor, right between my legs again. “Not the things you feel like you should ask me.”

I took her at her word.

“Why did you give me your number?” I asked.

“Ooh,” she looked up at me, as unblinking as if she were watching me play out the crucial moments of a life-changing competition. “Going right from boring small talk to fishing for complements.”

“Sorry,” I said immediately, looking away toward a bare patch of floor. “I knew I shouldn’t have—”

“Oh, I approve,” said Dara. “It’s pretty bad girl. And I’ll answer you, but later, I’m going to fish for some compliments of my own. I’m going to do it on purpose, and I’m not going to apologize. Deal?”

“Deal,” I said.

She pulled herself up by my hands, turned back around toward me, and waited, holding her own hands up in the air.

I turned away, took them, and began lowering my upper body backward toward her lap. I had to ease in in much slower than Dara had, and I was pretty sure she’d been taking her time.

“Let’s see. Reasons I want to know you.” Dara cleared her throat. “You understand that it’s possible to be respectful and enthusiastic. You’re good to your friends. But you’re not afraid to step up when one of them is being an asshole. You feel the desperate urge to skip to the good parts too, even though you’re still fighting it. You give great head, for a beginner. And you’re beautiful.”

I snorted at this last one. Twisted into this awkward position next to her, I couldn’t help it.

“I’m not going to argue with you about it,” said Dara. “Hearing that you’re beautiful isn’t how you’ll find out it’s true. It wasn’t for me.”

The bluntness of how she said this stopped my already constricted breath in my chest for a moment.

“…How did you find out?” I asked.

I was probably squeezing all the blood out of her fingers, while I whispered this plea for mystical knowledge.

Never had I met a woman who believed with such convincing confidence that she was beautiful, though I’d met plenty who objectively were.

She smiled. “Dancing.”

“Unladylike dancing?” I guessed.

“Yes. That part’s important,” said Dara. “I sure as fuck never suspected it when I was doing ballet.”

“You did ballet?”

“Yeah,” said Dara. “Funny how all those boring get-to-know-you details find a way of coming up on their own, once they connect to something that matters.”

I let out a breath, part of a laugh. “Yeah. Funny.”

Kim clapped her hands, and Dara helped me lift myself upright on my knees, and then on my feet.

“All right, let’s shake out those muscles!” Kim demonstrated with a flail of her limbs. “And we’ll start things off with ten bevel-bounces on the left. For the newbies, that’s one foot in front of the other, heels together, or as close as you can get, toes apart, hands on hips.”

I appreciated the “as close as you can get” caveat, as I tried to imitate her posture.

“And a bounce, one, bounce, two…”

She bent her knees, and the offset position of her feet somehow made her hips sway out to the side as she lowered them. Dara mirrored her beside me, and I gave it my best shot. It wasn’t easy to throw my center of gravity around over such a narrow foundation, and I wasn’t even wearing the high heels that half the class, including Dara, were wearing with their shorts and panties and leotards.

“Close, but give me more,” Kim said, pointing at me. “Really make a meal of this little movement. Lean in deep, pop up strong.”

I tried, but the mirrored front wall betrayed my continued stiffness, surrounded by graceful reeds bending in the breeze.

Kim put a thoughtful fingertip to her lips while we finished out the ten bounces. She was still looking at me when she continued, “Now a nice long hip shimmy.”

The others easily began an impossible-looking move, making their hips move so rapidly in place that they seemed to be vibrating.

“This is just an alternating knee bend,” Kim explained, putting her hands on her hips to demonstrate a slightly slowed version.

That really was all there was to it, bending the knees, so that the hips moved from side to side, much like the bounce, only quicker and more symmetrical.

Still, I couldn’t get anywhere near the smooth vibrations of the others.

“If you’re not getting the amount of movement you’d like, ask yourself if you’re fighting the jiggle,” said Kim. She had the subtlety to look at a few other people, as well as me. “A lot of the time, we’re trying to keep everything tight and stiff to match some societal ideal we’re carrying around inside us, without even realizing that we’re doing it. But this is about doing the opposite of that. We’re giving our bodies room to breathe and take up space, and flow into all these beautiful shapes.”

I tried again, focusing on that idea of fluidity, sending it down to my knees. Suddenly, for half a second, I could feel the vibrations rippling across my ass, and then my legs locked in place.

It was as if I’d hit an emergency shutdown switch. A jiggle-detecting emergency shutdown.

Kim was right. I was more than fighting the jiggles. I was at war with the jiggles. I lived in terror of the jiggles, and now that they’d made their presence known, all I wanted to do was disappear before anyone could remember to associate me with them.

A hand rested on my shoulder, and I jerked away instinctively, without thinking about who it belonged to. What if those repulsive jiggles could be felt in my shoulder too?

After the gut reflex ran its course, I turned to Dara, frantic to apologize.

She didn’t look angry, only sad, and not for herself. She smiled at me anyway, nodded downward at her own body, and turned around.

When she shimmied again, I watched the jiggling ripples of movement splash dramatically across even her tightly rounded ass and athletic thighs.

The sight wasn’t repulsive in the slightest, of course. On the contrary, I wanted nothing more in that moment than to reach out and put my hands all over her. If there hadn’t been so many people around, I might have asked her if I could.

I’d seen her show off a shorter jiggle once, back in the Angel Room. At the time, my head had been ringing with senseless awe, and with the guilty thrill of hiding in the dark and staring at the body of someone who wasn’t me. Someone who could take it.

Here, with her showing me this in a bright, mirrored room, it suddenly made sense to me how a person who looked like Dara could possibly have been insecure about her body. It was hard to be really attracted to yourself, after all. So instead, you judged yourself on abstract criteria like, “jiggling is bad,” and, in cases like Dara’s, diagnosed yourself with an ugliness that was complete nonsense to anyone who could actually see you.

Taking the next leap of logic was harder for me. I knew Dara wanted me to conclude that what was true for her was true for me as well. That I was actually gorgeous, and had just been tragically misinformed.

I wasn’t ready to go that far.

But if she wanted to see me jiggle, maybe I could do it, just for her, never mind what any of these other friendly-faced strangers might secretly think of me.

I fluttered my knees in that alternating pattern that had given me that brief moment of uncontrolled jiggling, and when I found it again, I forced myself to keep going, letting the ripples churn my skirt into rapids around me.

Kim clapped, Dara clapped harder, and most of the rest of the class tossed in a few claps as well.

My face felt warm, but so did the pit of my stomach, where their approval collected.

“There we go, that’s it,” said Kim. “Now, ten more bevel-bounces, on the right. Remember, anything we can do on one side, we need to practice on both.”

I pulled my heels as close together as my thighs would allow and dipped my knees in time with the count. This time, I could feel the tripwire that would set off the shutdown if I crossed it, and I crossed it anyway.

I let my ass stick out to the side, and observed the way my stomach clenched, as I prepared for someone to slap it.

I was pretty sure it had been years since my guy friends would have done that to me. They all knew better now, even Tom, but it had been even more years since I’d given them, or anyone, an easy opportunity. A few of those “joking” reminders was all it had taken to teach me only ever to bend at the knees, never at the waist or hips.

Never to tempt anyone.

But here I was doing it, and no one was hitting me. I was safe in a crowd of women all doing the same thing. Every time we bounced and no one hit me, I took it as proof that I could do it again, and the next bounce was easier.

From there, Kim led us into a piece of beginner choreography, set to a sultry sapphic love song I’d never heard anywhere but in my own headphones before.

We bumped our hips forcefully out to the sides, and even to the back and front. We learned how to grind them around in the air. That was even what the move was called, “grinding.”

We flung ourselves dramatically to the floor, humped it, and splayed our legs apart in the air on our way upright. We bent all the way over, arching our backs to display our asses even more shamelessly, before slowly standing up again. We stroked our skin and even licked our fingers in ways that felt almost too intimate for a roomful of strangers.

I was sweating like a fountain and wheezing half of my breaths, but I didn’t want the lesson to end, because when I looked in the mirror, I could see myself moving like a beautiful person. Like a hot person. Those seductive sways and provocative jerks that I’d always assumed were not for me, the ones I thought must come naturally to bodies of a certain type and to no one else, it turned out they were a language that could be taught and learned.

Sure, that language looked foreign on me, maybe because I’d so rarely seen someone my size speak it, or maybe just because the vocabulary was composed of exactly everything I’d been taught never to do.

My accent was crude. But I was speaking it.

When we got to shoulder shimmies, which sent jiggling ripples across our breasts, I had some of the most dramatic movement in the group, and Dara openly stared at the cleavage I’d left uncovered just for her.

In that moment, I dared to wonder if I’d been so forcefully encouraged to hide my body because it was ugly, or because it had the potential to be too sexy.

I’d heard both implications so many times, often confusingly mingled together in the same comment from the same person.

Between the two, ugly was easier to wrap my head around, and safer, much safer, or at least so it had seemed for much of my life. Maybe I’d simplified all the mixed signals to that one meaning in my head, to protect myself.

But now, dancing next to Dara, in a room with no parents, no preachers, no men, the thought of being too sexy held an appeal I’d never really appreciated before.

When we’d finally nailed the full, thirty-second routine twice over as a group, Kim called for us to split up.

“Advanced students who would like to practice the advanced floor routine we blocked out on Friday, take the back half of the room. Beginners and anyone who’d like to mentor someone on pole basics, take the front.”

Dara immediately grabbed my hand and led me over to the poles.

“You’re glowing,” she observed.

“Uh yeah,” I laughed. “Because men sweat, and ladies ‘glow,’ right?”

“I think you know that’s not what I meant,” said Dara. “But why don’t you hydrate for a minute while I show you a couple things?”

I wasn’t too proud to take her up on that. I grabbed one of the disposable water bottles from a case by the door and finished most of it before I’d even made it back to our pole.

“Okay,” said Dara. “So, the default starting position is next to the pole, with your closer arm raised up to hold it as high as you comfortably can. Then, you can start by just taking a little walk around it, like this.”

She demonstrated, taking regally fluid steps.

“When it’s time to take a step with your inside leg, kick it up high, put your weight on your pole hand, lean forward, and see how far around the pole you can step.”

With the toes of her high heels looking nearly weightless against the ground, she twirled around the pole, stepping almost all the way back around to where she’d started.

“Or, instead of stepping around the pole, you can use your inner leg to hook it, like this.”

She repeated the twirl, capturing the pole in the crook of her knee and bringing her other leg up to meet it, so that she was completely off the ground until she’d finished the rotation.

“Here, you try.”

I tossed the plastic bottle into the bin in the corner and stepped up to the pole. “Which thing?”

“Either,” said Dara. “Both. Whichever you feel comfortable with.”

I reached up and tried the twirling step. I was able to swing about halfway around the pole with my shorter, thicker legs. I went straight from there into the off-the ground hook move to get the rest of the way around.

My shoulder protested the weight, but I made it around without falling or looking ridiculous, as far as I could tell in the mirror.

When I rotated back toward Dara, she had her fingers over her lips, holding back a private laugh.

“What?” I asked, setting my feet back on the ground.

“Nothing.” Dara shook her head ruefully. “I just really want to make an excuse to touch you right now. I want to come up behind you and press my whole body against you while I pretend to correct your form. But you’re trusting me in a strange place, and I’m not going to be that person.”

The thought of her thinking about me that way sent tingles down my spine. The thought of her considering my comfort while she was thinking about me that way made me want to hug her and never let go.

“Well… what if I ask you to?” I suggested.

“Ask me to what?” Dara asked, some of the guilt leaving her smile.

“Correct my form, please,” I said, grinning back at her, riding the wild flood of confidence this primer on hot people body language had given me. “Correct me as unnecessarily and inappropriately as you can get away with here.”

I glanced around at the other women, who were all pretty absorbed with either the group choreography on the other side of the room, or with the other poles they’d claimed in pairs and threes.

Dara looked over her shoulder to make the same assessment, and then back at me, with eyes alight.

“Keep that core energized,” she said, stepping close behind me and reaching her hands around to rest on my abs.

I flexed, showing off that I did indeed have abs, even if you couldn’t easily see them.

“Shoulders back and down.”

She trailed her hands up my torso and gave me two quick squeezes of a shoulder massage, letting her fingers play in my hair.

“And at your strength level,” she continued her tactile examination down to my biceps, which I flexed as well. “You’ll be able to practice a lot more safely if you can get a grip on the pole with your legs as well as your hands.”

She brought her hands down to rest on my hips, and leaned forward over my shoulder, meeting my eyes in the mirror to ask permission.

I took a breath and nodded.

She tucked her hands under the waistband of my skirt and pulled it down to the floor, keeping her palms in contact with my thighs all the way down, and then all the way back up, over my leggings.

“This is still a pretty slippery material,” she said.

I could see my own cheeks redden in the mirror as I nodded again.

There were plenty of other women here in their panties, or with equivalent coverage. This was only as sexual as I made it in my head… which was very, in this particular moment.

Dara pulled the same move again, tucking her hands into my leggings and pulling them down, brushing my bare legs with her fingers along the way.

This time, on her way up, she took an extra look over her shoulder and ran her fingers ever so briefly over my pussy, through the thin remaining layer of my panties.

That momentary contact set off chain reactions of vibrations through my whole body, and for the first time since the class had started, I wondered how soon it would end, and open the possibility for aloneness.

“Try again,” Dara instructed, stepping away.

I reached for the pole and took another walk around it, stepping wide, hooking with my knee, and hopping up to bring my other leg to join it.

It actually was easier to stay up with my legs bare, and gentler on my shoulder, though I didn’t get quite as much rotational distance.

“You want a little extra momentum?” Dara asked.

“Yeah, how?”

“You’ll see,” she examined her fingernails, playacting nonchalance, while bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet with anticipation.

I switched sides, like Kim had said we should, and tried another hook spin.

As soon as I was off the ground, and before I’d quite decoded her intentions, Dara’s hand found my ass.

The shutdown inside me started again, infiltrating and hardening all my muscles, but I didn’t totally lose my senses this time. I knew it was Dara, and that she wasn’t trying to hurt me or embarrass me or warn me that I was doing something wrong. She just wanted to steal some sneaky touches, and only as long as I wanted her to, which I’d just told her I did.

Her grip was warm and firm, and she pushed me steadily forward through a full spin around the pole, without hitting or pinching me tight enough to hurt.

“Are you okay?” Dara asked, examining my face when I was stable on my feet again. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said.

Dara ran a finger dubiously over the frown line on my forehead.

I pulled her hand away and kissed her heavily along the wrist. I would have preferred to jump on her, kiss her lips, and neck, and breasts, and keep working my way down. The buzzing in my body was making me desperate to do something, rather than just wait for it to be done to me.

“Nothing,” I repeated.

Dara raised an eyebrow. “Okay, then.”

She placed her hand on the pole and demonstrated a new move, one she called a “crucifix,” which I was sure must be particularly popular at the Angel Room.

No matter how well (or badly) I imitated her, she didn’t touch me again before Kim called the class back together for cool-down exercises.

I doubted any exercise ever devised could cool me down.

#

When Kim mentioned needing to leave on time to make it to some event of her daughter’s, Dara volunteered us to tidy up the room.

There was no competition for this task, so within a few minutes of the end of class, Dara and I had the room completely to ourselves.

Dara tossed a few questioning glances over her shoulder at me while we wiped down the poles and gathered up the abandoned water bottles. She seemed to have decided that the next move was mine to make, so I made it. I put my hands around her waist and pulled her close, turning her so that her back rested against one of the poles.

“I know you probably have to be pretty careful who you do this with,” I said, “but I’d really like to kiss you.”

“Sure,” said Dara. “If you’re sure—”

I leaned right in, trying to show her, better than I could tell her, that everything really was okay. I kissed her as deeply as she’d let me, starting with just the touch of lips, and then sinking in to create a shared space out of both our mouths when she kissed me back. I flicked my tongue quickly over the tip of hers, the same way she liked to be eaten out, and thought about how strange it was, sharing our first real kiss after our first round of oral.

“You’re trying to distract me,” Dara accused me when we broke apart. “From good stuff, with good stuff.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Oh, so, you’re not trying to avoid talking about where that deer-in-headlights expression came from when I was spinning you around?”

“How is that good stuff?” I asked. “Especially compared with this.” I kissed her again. “This has to at least qualify as better stuff.”

I trailed more tongue-flicks down her neck as I argued my case.

“It’s good stuff,” Dara insisted, reluctantly but firmly pushing me to eye contact distance, “because if I did something that made you uncomfortable, knowing what it was will help me not do it again.”

“Oof, this whole ‘good stuff’ thing is a lot more complicated and responsible than I thought,” I said.

“Yeah, it is,” Dara chirped, undeterred, and waited for an answer.

I sighed. “It’s just that I’ve never enjoyed having my ass touched before. It kind of took me off guard. But you didn’t know that, you didn’t do anything wrong, and after a second, I did enjoy it. A lot, actually. Because it was you. So, it’s fine. Really.”

“Ah,” Dara said, nodding like this was a much bigger revelation than I thought it was.

“Ah what?” I asked.

“That’s why being a ‘bad girl’ is such a high for you.”

“What’s why?”

Dara pursed her lips and put one arm gently around my shoulders.

“Look, I’m not trying to put you in a box here. But when it comes to sex… I’ve seen a lot of things. And I can tell you, at least half the time, a person’s biggest kink isn’t something that’s exotic to them. It’s a twisted, spit-polished version of the familiar, mundane thing that scares them.”

I crossed my arms, not even realizing that I was doing it.

“I mean, people who’ve been spanked for real,” Dara went on, and I could feel her watching my responses with an intensity that didn’t match her conversational tone. “You’d think they’d be the last people in the world who’d want to do it for fun, right? But they’re not. They’re usually first in line.”

I wondered if she could feel me slowly sweating through my blouse.

“Sometimes, I think that’s part of what kinks are for,” said Dara. “To give us a chance to overwrite the things that happen to us, with things we get to choose. But that’s the most important part. Choosing. So, I’m sorry, but I have to put the onus on you, babe.”

I felt myself smile, my shoulders loosen, at the casual term of endearment.

“I have to wait for you to ask again,” she said. “Specifically, with open eyes.”

I nodded and pulled myself out from under her arm.

“Touch me like that again,” I said. “Please.”

With a cautious smile, Dara brought her hand very slowly to my ass, giving me time to step away.

“Like this?” she asked, stroking what skin my plain brief panties left bare.

I nodded again, taking in the full-body sensation of nerves and excitement, the clashing impulses to close off and open up.

Dara put her other hand on my breast and ran her thumb over the rock-hard nipple. “That does seem to do something for you, doesn’t it?” she said softly.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“More?”

“Yes, please.”

She moved her hand farther back along my ass, squeezing gently and running a finger along the edge of the crack, hitting a fresh row of nerves. I shivered, and she gave my tingling nipple a squeeze as well.

“This poor ass hasn’t gotten any nice attention before, has it?” Dara whispered, at a volume just right for a lap dance booth. It bounced incongruously around the empty studio space.

I shook my head.

“No wonder it thinks there’s something wrong with it,” she cooed, patting and massaging it, letting go of my nipple to crouch down and kiss me, right where my cheek met my thigh. “Our bodies are like puppies that way. They think whatever they get must be what they deserve.”

She looked up at me, eyes wide and searching, hand lightly trailing up and down my ass.

“Would you like a little smack?” she whispered.

My stomach clenched, but it didn’t shut me down, just pulsed more crackling energy out through my nervous system, heightening every other sensation and impulse.

“Yes,” I said, shoving the word through a dry throat.

Dara smacked, or more like tapped, me with the tips of her fingers.

There was another intensifying clench at the contact, and then another as I felt the jiggling it set off.

“Now that’s some nice movement,” Dara got ahead of me before I could make judgements on how I must look. “Makes me want to just… ahoomph,” she bit me gently on the side of the same cheek she’d smacked. “Again?”

“Yeah,” I said. “You could even go harder.”

She snapped one of the leg elastics against my skin.

“Take these off,” she said. “Lean down, grab the pole, and arch your back like Kim showed you.”

I slid my panties down and followed her instructions, displaying myself more suggestively, more lewdly, more invitingly than I ever would have imagined myself capable of. My own image in the mirrored wall was terrifying and nearly impossible to ignore. I gripped the pole for dear life as Dara walked up behind me and began stroking both cheeks at once with her fingertips, smiling at me in the glass.

After an eternity of anticipation, she gave me another tap, first on one side, then the other. Slowly, she worked her way up to what could reasonably be called a smack. The hardest ones still barely hurt, but they made a crisp smack sound.

“How are you doing there, babe?” Dara asked.

“Good,” I said quickly.

“Just good? You’re kind of quiet for good.”

“I… don’t know how I’m supposed to react to this,” I said.

“However you want to.”

“It all sounds weird in my head.” I said, resting my forehead against the pole. “Do I say thank you? Do I say no, stop, but please don’t actually? Do I give directions, or just moan like you’re, you know, doing something else to me? That doesn’t sound right, I mean, it’s not something I’m supposed to enjoy.”

“Who says?” said Dara. “Lots of people like a good spanking. Good girls and bad girls. And good boys and bad boys. You’re in so much company right now.”

“Okay, okay,” I said, nodding against the pole. “Spank me. Harder.”

She did, just hard enough to sting, and I let myself gasp out loud, a naughtily sexual sound that almost matched the image in the mirror.

“This is the only way you’re getting spanked for the rest of your life,” said Dara. “The way you want it, when you ask for it. All other ways are obsolete. The defenses you built up for them? You’ve needed them for the last time. You got that?”

The tingles throughout most of my body spread to the corners of my eyes as I nodded.

This was probably the most absurd statement I had ever cried about in my life. I wiped my eyes on the back of my hands, braced against the pole, laughing at myself.

After a while, Dara stopped and went back to stroking my skin.

“There’s something else I can do from this position,” she said, fluttering her fingers along my crack, and finally teasing the hole with one fingertip. “Depending how you feel about it.”

It was something I’d never really thought about before, one way or the other. After all the time I’d spent distancing my ass from people, including the handful of guys I’d fooled around with, it had never occurred to me that I’d enjoy having someone reach inside it. But Dara’s fingers felt so good that I couldn’t imagine not wanting to feel them closer in any possible way.

“If it doesn’t gross you out…” I answered.

Dara gave me one last smack in reply.

“You gotta stop calling my crush gross,” she said, smiling at me in the mirror. “It’s mean.”

I smiled back, my stomach bouncy with flutters. “Sorry.”

Going slow again, giving me time to watch and change my mind, Dara spat onto her fingers, brought them back down to my ass, and rubbed the moisture around the hole.

One fingertip tapped it gently, and then pushed in.

I let the rush of feeling reach my vocal cords again, moaning as Dara sank her finger in up to the last knuckle.

“Good?” she asked, clearly confident of the answer this time.

“Good,” I confirmed.

“Good.”

Slowly, she added a second finger, and with her other hand, she reached forward between my legs and stroked the outer lips of my pussy, right over my clit.

I’d been so swept up with trying to soothe my overactive defenses, to take in whatever experiences this day might bring, that I’d barely had room to want anything specific from it. I could have stood here for hours while Dara explored my ass, just to marvel at the way it stretched and the uncharted pressure points it contained, and at the simple fact that this was happening at all. I could have observed how wet it was making me, how hard my clit was, and barely even thought to do anything about it.

But once Dara increased the pressure over my clit, swirling her fingers around to spread my lips, I instantly wanted more, more, all that I could get, as fast as I could get it.

I humped Dara’s hand madly, which didn’t do much except knock it away.

Thankfully, she wasn’t deterred. Hooking her fingers upward in my ass to hold me a little stiller, she brought her hand back to touch me, starting a slow, circling rhythm.

“Would you like me to change anything?” Dara asked, and her gaze in the mirror in front of me felt almost like an extra point of penetration.

I shook my head, moaning incoherently at each thrust of her back hand, each circle of the front one.

“Look at you,” she said softly, working her hands in concert with each other, sending a pulse of half-formed pleasure forward with one, then catching and completing it with the other. “Look at you, getting fucked. Getting fucked in the ass. Getting fucked by a woman. Getting touched so that it feels good. Look at you, getting everything you were ever told to be afraid of, getting it the way you like it.”

The orgasm took me fast, suddenly, and hard this time. There was no chance to signal Dara. One moment I was in the middle of a jumbled, unfamiliar version of the buildup, one that had no map, no schedule that I knew. The next, I was filling that room with echoing, unambiguous wails of ecstasy, clutching the pole in the crook of my neck and shoulder, hoping not to fall on my face.

“I’m going to pull out now,” Dara warned me when the fit had passed, with a self-satisfied smile in her voice.

I grunted an affirmative, and she removed her hands from me and went over to clean them with the paper towels and spray intended for the poles.

After several seconds, I realized that I didn’t need to hold my ass in the air any longer and allowed my knees to bend. The first motion unbalanced me, and I slid to the floor in a heap at the base of the pole.

“I hope no one’s lining up outside,” I mumbled. “For the next class?”

“Don’t worry,” Dara snorted. “This room’s empty for at least another hour.”

She sauntered back over to me and crouched down to brush the hair out of my eyes.

“How you feeling there, babe?”

I took a long, happily exhausted breath that was probably more descriptive than any words I could come up with.

But then the words came anyway.

“I feel like you’re about to disappear,” I said.

“Why?” asked Dara, sounding genuinely curious.

“You’re such a giver,” I said.

“And givers are notoriously lacking in commitment?” she teased me.

“No,” I acknowledged. “But they should be. You should be. You should be asking yourself what reason I could possibly give you to stay. And I should be racing to come up with one before you get around to asking.”

I ran my hand up to the waistband of her panties.

“Just for that, I want to say no,” Dara laughed, catching my wrist. “I want to make you sit there in total, unearned satisfaction, with no way of reciprocating. I want to hold you there until you’re used to it. Until it feels as normal to you as it does to a man. Or to a seriously, scandalously accomplished bad girl.”

She held me there for a moment, then sighed and guided my fingertips under her elastic.

“But you’re just too damn tempting.”

I stroked her pussy in a few eager, full-length sweeps, while trying to arrange us into a comfortable position for more. I pulled her panties down to her knees and, with a few stumbling shifts, laid her on her back, with her head resting on my free arm.

“Please,” I said, “tell me how to make it amazing for you.”

“Okay,” said Dara. “I’m cashing in that batch of compliments now.”

“Oh,” I said, blearily, fighting to make my hazy mind thoughtful and eloquent.

I’d been expecting to use my mouth for something else sometime within the next few minutes.

“Too difficult?” Dara asked, with a smirk that told me her self-esteem wasn’t on the line, but a fair bit of playful ribbing was.

“Never,” I said, flicking one finger lightly back and forth over her clit like a windshield wiper, in as close as I could get to the quick pace she liked with my tongue.

“Maybe you haven’t known me long enough to come up with anything nice to say,” she teasingly laid out my excuses for me. Her breath was already shortening slightly under my attention, though she was excellent at controlling her tone.

“You’re beautiful,” I started.

“Aw,” said Dara. “I mean, I knew you thought so, but it is nice to hear.”

“You have a killer figure and really pretty hair. You’re a brilliant dancer,” I went on, reaching a little farther down, tending to her clit with my thumb while my fingers toyed with her entrance.

“Deeper,” Dara directed, and I wasn’t sure if she was referring to my hand or my choice of compliments, so I tried for both. I slipped a finger all the way in, surrounding a piece of me completely with her soft warmth, and almost forgetting to tick off yet another “first” in my head as I did so.

“You’re relentless at understanding things,” I said, squeezing her pelvis from both sides. “And you actually make me want to be understood, instead of left alone.”

At this, Dara let slip a moan, and nestled closer against me, turning so that I could reach one of her breasts while still acting as her pillow.

“You might be a bad girl, but you’re a good person,” I said, rolling her nipple between my fingers. “You’re kind, and so fucking brave.”

Her mouth opened, maybe to speak, or just to gasp.

“I know you’re going to tell me it’s a front,” I said. “That you’re scared inside just like me, but I don’t care. I don’t care how you do it, it’s working. Every time I see you, you lead the way to someplace where it takes all my guts just to follow you. But I want to.”

“Say it again,” Dara panted.

“I want to?” I repeated. “I want to follow you!”

“Say… that I’m good.”

“You’re good,” I whispered immediately back at her, stroking her nipple lightly, circling her clit with my thumb. “You’re a good, good person, and anyone who says otherwise has no idea what they’re talking about.”

She moaned and stirred in my arms.

“Say it back,” I suggested, recalling what she’d done for me, that first time.

“I’m good?” Dara said, less than convinced.

“You’re so good that you’ll get your hands dirty to give someone else a great time. You’re so good that you’re willing to take a fresh-from-the-closet hot mess like me under your wing. You’re so good that you know what people need before they know it themselves.”

“I’m so good…” Dara struggled to remember the lines.

“You’re a sweetheart,” I simplified for her.

“I’m a sweetheart.”

“You’re a sweet, sweet heart, and you deserve this,” I said, swirling my thumb just a little faster to draw her attention to it.

“I’m a sweet, sweet heart, and I deserve… I deserve… hnnng.”

She bucked against my hand, bit into my arm, and stayed there, tensed up in the climax, for seconds and seconds and seconds, before letting out a long sigh and turning to rest her head on my breast.

“S… so,” she stuttered afterward. “Sweetheart. Huh. That… that was a thing I didn’t know I needed.”

My heart danced in my ribcage. “Happy to return the favor, babe.”

***

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