This is my entry for the Winter Holiday 2022 contest. I hope you enjoy it!

This story depicts BDSM and lesbian sex. It is also a work of fiction. Any resemblance of the characters to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental. All characters in this story are above the age of eighteen.

Mistress Beatrix

They say that Christmas is the loneliest time of year. I don’t handle loneliness well. That was why I was in a luxury hotel on Park and East 57th in Manhattan on a late Christmas Eve, a trembling hand curled into a fist, raised, ready to knock on his hotel room door.

I forced myself to breathe. I forced calmness into every bone.

It would be my first time ever with a paying client — a man I first met at a fetish club in Jersey City a month ago. I had put on a good show. He told me how much he admired my work. Over drinks, he told me I was a true artist. He said he’d love to meet me again on his next trip to New York. I had mostly forgotten about him. But just as I approached the apogee of my loneliness, I get a text from him. That was this morning. He offered me a lot of money for a session. He offered the promise of business. He wasn’t a bad-looking guy and was nice enough. That’s how I justified it anyway. So, I took him up on it.

I was just about to rap my trembling fist on his door when I heard his muffled voice on the other side. He was talking to someone on the phone. So, I listened. His wife was on the other line. A tense conversation. They bickered about their kids. He spoke about how close he was to closing the company deal of a lifetime. Then his wife put their kids on the line, made obvious by the softening of his tone to something playful and dad-like, and the talk of presents and Santa Claus. It was all I needed to hear to chicken out and pull chocks.

God, what was I thinking?

I’ve had bad experiences with cheaters. It made me sick to think I’d be an enabler. On Christmas Eve, no less. It made me sick to the stomach to think I was about to take money from this guy to have sex with him — technically making me an escort. It made me want to hurl thinking about his wife and kids back home, spending Christmas without him while he closed the company deal of a lifetime (which I suspect might be a euphemism for getting his ass spanked by a dominatrix).

How low I have stooped for a bit of business on Christmas. I felt pathetic.

The snow fell fast. It collected quickly on my shoulders. The chill bit my cheeks. It was a nice feeling. It was invigorating and sobered me a bit from my sad desperation-fueled delusion.

With nothing else to do and nowhere else to go except home alone, I wandered around a little bit in the snow trying to let the magic of the New York City Christmas take the edge off me. I stopped in front of a cocktail bar that happened to be open that night. It was at the Four Seasons hotel, which looked nice and cozy inside and beckoned me in out of the snow. I could go for a nice, strong cocktail right about now.

The bar was sleek and empty. A Christmas tree with glittering white lights sat in the corner near a fireplace containing a crackling Yule log fire. Next to it, a shiny black baby grand topped with Christmas wreaths. The speakers wailed a melancholy song on a mournful trumpet. A Miles Davis tune that hit all the right notes for the vibes of this lonely place. Miles Davis at all times sounded like Christmas to me. This was the place for me.

Sitting at the corner of the long bar counter was a woman in a pretty green dress with a drink in her hand. She glanced my way as the bartender greeted me. She gave me a smile. I gave her one back. She seemed nice. She was gorgeous. She had these adorable adolescent ears poking out of her short-cropped auburn hair, a dainty nose, and academic wireframe glasses covering gorgeous brown eyes. Marisa Tomei eyes. I could tell she was a little on the older side of me, forty-five or so, shown by the smile lines on the sides of her eyes and the few strands of silver in her sideburns. She wore her age well, which I found incredibly hot.

After hanging my coat on the coat rack, I sat at the bar counter appropriately far from her in case she wanted to be alone. I ordered a Brandy Alexander and smiled at her again when my eyes wandered back to meet hers.

“You too, huh?” She asked.

“Sorry?”

She pointed her eyes to the briefcase I had just set at my feet.

I blushed. She wondered she had me pegged as something approximating what she might be — something like a high powered corporate businesswoman on a company trip. It wasn’t just my briefcase. It was my grey tailored pinstripe suit and perhaps the fancy, conservative chignon I had my hair done up in. It was all a costume, though. All part of the sad sex game that I would’ve been playing now with a man I met once at the bar in a fetish club a month ago had I not chickened out.

What she didn’t see was the leather crotchless lingerie beneath the suit (which chafed like a bitch), and in the briefcase, the accoutrement of the sort a high-powered corporate businesswoman probably not carry unless the company was something more… unorthodox. Coils of jute rope. A leather collar and a leash. Handcuffs. Different shapes and sizes of butt plugs. A steel-boned corset. Clamps. A gag. And my most prized possession: a custom-built, handcrafted riding crop.

“Oh,” I laughed, twirling my hair innocently. I took a long sip of my Brandy Alexander, then quipped, “no rest for the wicked.”

“Cheers to that,” she said.

She raised her glass. I raised mine. And we drank.

“I’m Holly. Nice to meet you,” she said.

“I’m Beatrix,” I replied. Then the color drained from my face. A part of my soul left my body. Beatrix wasn’t my real name. It was my ‘dominatrix name.’ Mistress Beatrix.

I guess I was so caught up in the anticipation and excitement of the night that I was still subconsciously wrapped up in my domme identity.

“But you can call me Bea,” I quickly added. Bea was my real first name. The name that was on my birth certificate. Beatrix came later. How smart of me to adopt a domme name so logically similar to my real one. I must have done that for moments just like this.

“Are you from out of town, Bea?”

“LA,” I replied, trying my best to keep up the thin façade of a woman on a company trip. It wasn’t a complete lie. Though I’ve lived in New York for over five years, I’m originally from LA. A good lie contains strands of truth, as they say.

“What about you?” I asked.

“Seattle.”

“Nice place?”

“It has its charms, but it’s not quite New York. New York is enchanting. Don’t you think?”

“I suppose so. But what makes New York so enchanting?”

She tapped her chin as she wondered about it. She turned her eyes to the window to at a passerby with a cinched-up jacket puffing out white condensation as he hurried somewhere, yelling exuberantly into his phone. Her eyes brightened, as if he had given her the answer she was searching for.

“New York has noisy people. I love noisy people,” she said.

It was a nice sentiment. One I agreed with wholeheartedly. New Yorkers are noisy, and their noise makes the city what it is — a chaotic hodgepodge that seems like one big ocean of incoherent dreams. If the city was a sound, it’d be the sound of a big ol’ wave crashing down on a sandy beach. Discordant. Chaotic. Incoherent and gorgeous because of all the dreams contained within it. That is to say, I’d say Holly was right in her succinct supposition. New Yorkers are noisy, and because they are noisy, they make the city a very enchanting place.

“Do you like the city?” Holly asked.

“Absolutely. I can’t imagine living any–“

I stopped abruptly, realizing I had just told her I lived in Los Angeles. She seemed to have caught the slip-up. She cocked her head to one side and raised a suspicious eyebrow.

“I wouldn’t mind living here,” I quickly corrected, blushing (I’d make a terrible undercover cop. How long before I spill the beans about the riding crop in my briefcase?)

Holly finished her drink. Asked the bartender for another. She saw I was nearly finished with mine and said, “Let me get you a drink. What are you having?”

I shook my head. “Thanks, but don’t worry about it. I can get my own.”

“Please, I want to buy you a drink,” she replied. “I insist.”

I agreed, and soon another Brandy Alexander found its way in front of me, courtesy of Holly, and shortly after, she found her way to the bar stool next to mine, and we lost ourselves in conversation.

Holly was exactly the stereotype I expected to discover in a bar like this on Christmas Eve. A real type-A personality. A high achiever blasting through life like a rocket ship. She shared every detail of her life with me. How she studied chemical engineering at the University of Washington, then got her JD at Yale and springboarded her way up to partner at a corporate law firm. She seemed like a woman who had a way of wrangling life into giving her what she wanted. I was intimidated by her, but I greatly admired her infectious optimism and fierce confidence. I was the complete opposite. I was certainly not a rocket ship like her. More like a bottle rocket, whizzing every which way, more uncertain about where I’d end up the more I whizzed. Though I was bashful and careful about sharing my life’s story, the precious few (truthful) things I did distribute, she made me feel good about, and I loved that about her. More intriguingly, I discovered she was single. And a lesbian. I really loved that about her.

We had another cocktail. Then another. Each one bringing a little bit more warmth. Each one bringing out a bit more intimacy in the conversation. Holly had a way of leaning in and touching my knee whenever she was excited about something she was saying, and each touch crackled through me like pleasant electricity. I loved her touch. I loved her vibrance. She made me smile and laugh so much that my jaw began to ache. And she was so attractive, making it easy for my eyes to linger on her neckline, and on her cleavage, and her lips. Her soft, small lips. Each drink made me more curious about how her lips might feel against mine. My heart pattered with the fantasy that she might think the same about me. Certainly felt more than wishful thinking, considering how she constantly put her hand on my knee.

After ordering our next drink, the bartender went for a smoke break. The cool jazz stopped playing, so the only sound in the silent spaces that punctuated our meandering conversations was the gentle crackling of the fire. Outside, the snowfall had thickened into a lush blanket of white, making me feel like cozying up to her. I was caught up so much in the gorgeous moment that it took me a while to realize her hand had lingered on my knee.

When I finally noticed it, my first instinct was to edge away from her. Not that I didn’t want her hand to be there (or to wander farther up my tight pencil skirt), but because the memory of why I was at a cocktail lounge at one of fanciest hotels in the fanciest part of New York City spidered its way into my mind, filling me with dread to think that in an alternate timeline, I would be in a penthouse suite at a hotel over on Park Avenue, whipping a gagged and tied up married man, because he paid me to do it. The wondered threatened to ruin the special intimacy I shared with Holly.

But I didn’t edge away. Instead, apprehensively, I placed my hand atop her hand, then looked into her eyes and smiled. Her eyes went wide, and she stopped breathing. She didn’t realize her hand had lingered on my knee until she felt my hand atop hers. She tried retracting her hand, but I latched onto it, clasping it to my thigh.

I recognized the trembling fawn-like apprehension on her face for what it was. I was good at recognizing things like that. She wanted me, but she was afraid to want me.

It had an effect on me. Mistress Beatrix was re-awakened and now, very aroused.

Slowly, I pulled her hand up inside the hem of my tight skirt along the top of my thigh. Inch by slow inch, I forced her hand to travel up my skirt. With every inch, I felt the confidence in her crumble away like a sandstone cliff in a heavy downpour, and mine grow like wildfire.

I placed my hand on the back of her head, pulled her in, and whispered in her ear, “do you want me to kiss you?”

She didn’t answer, but she didn’t take her hand back or lean away either. So, I leaned in closer to test her. She gave me the answer I was looking for. She leaned in towards me. She leaned in for the kiss and shut her eyes. Unequivocally, her answer then was a ‘yes.’

Her lips were as soft and precious as I imagined. They were delightful. Her tongue timid, warm, and willing.

As we kissed, her hand began to move farther up my skirt (without my help). It moved up to the band of my garter belt. A forefinger curled around the band and tugged.

My nipples grew tight with arousal. My pussy thrummed with coursing excitement. From the heat coming off Holly, I knew she felt the same way.

The dark cocktail bar faded away, leaving only us — Holly and me, in the world and the wonderful kiss we shared. And I wanted to keep the world that way, but then a loud and curt cough and a clearing of a throat snapped the real world back into place.

We both jumped, startled, and turned to face the bartender, who had come back from his smoke break during our little exploration of love.

He shot us a crooked smile and said, “Last call, ladies. Closing time, I’m afraid.”

Holly gasped, covered her mouth, and turned as red as the stockings hanging above the fireplace. We didn’t order another drink. I grabbed my coat, and we went to the lobby.

“So…,” Holly said, clasping her hands in front of her. She gave an embarrassed laugh and said, “that was…”

“Yeah,” I replied with a wink. “A nice little Christmas surprise.”

She nodded. Then we stood to enjoy a silent, awkward pause. Her eyes traveled all over me, burning with desire. I knew exactly what she wanted and saw the struggle inside her to understand how exactly to get it, and I saw in her eyes the desperate hope that I would throw her a line and reel her in. But I didn’t because I had my own trepidations — All those things about me that I failed to distribute with her in our short time together. For a long moment, we just stood there like a pair of shy teenage girls until, finally, Holly broke the impasse.

“If you’d like, we can, um, go to my room and have another drink or two…,” she mumbled, scratching the back of her neck.

Seeing her struggle was adorable. But it didn’t help that terrible sinking feeling that washed over me, that this was where I had to finally confess. I was sure she would freak out when I told her everything. But I owed it to her to tell her the truth. So, bracing for the curt goodbye that would inevitably follow my confession, I finally spilled the beans.

“Oh, Holly, I would love that, but I have something to tell you. I haven’t been exactly honest with you. I’m not on a business trip. I live here in New York. I have been for the past five years. This outfit — this isn’t how I normally dress. This is a costume. I am a dominatrix, and I… I’m only here because I was going to meet a client at another hotel but canceled at the last minute, which is how I ended up at this bar. I’m really sorry for misleading you. But thank you so, so much for the drinks and for the lovely time.”

Her face first scrunched up with amused surprise, then, as soon as the word ‘dominatrix’ was uttered from my mouth, that amused surprise twisted into shock as if she had just witnessed a car crash. Her jaw dropped and stayed there long after I finished my confession. Her wireframe glasses slid down the small bridge of her nose, and she instinctively pushed it back to its rightful place, blushed, and averted her eyes to the floor when she noticed me notice her gawking. When she had recollected her wits, she blankly uttered,

“Wow. You are an escort.”

Yeah. I guess that’s, strictly speaking, what I was. Although, also, strictly speaking, tonight was only gonna be my first paid customer, and I didn’t take a single dime from him, so no, I wasn’t! But I didn’t really have the heart to explain myself away from that allegation. Not to a lawyer, anyways.

Objectively, it was a funny moment. But all I could feel was tremendous sadness. I hadn’t had romance in my life — real romance — for a very long time. So, the kiss and the hours of intimate conversation at the bar leading up to the kiss had been very special for me. A moment of resolution in my incoherent life. It made me feel wonderful. But that was all it would ever be, which made me sad. Even if I knew my moment with Holly was only ever gonna be a snapshot in time. That we were only two ships passing in the night, so to speak. The romantic in me couldn’t help but feel as if the chance at true love was melting away like a precious snowflake on the palm of my hand.

She said nothing more. She seemed so overcome by shock she couldn’t think of a way to respond. Well, at least shock is more dignifying a reaction than disgust.

I gave her a weak smile and said, “I should be getting home. It was nice to meet you, Holly.”

Then I turned to leave.

The walk to the main entrance was a long one. It felt like a walk on a plank on one of those old-timey pirate ships. I was dying to glance back to see Holly one last time before she was forever gone, but I stopped myself. It would hurt too much to do so.

But just as I put my hand on the handle, just as I was about to commit myself to the freezing night to make my lonely way home, I heard her voice echo through the empty lobby.

“My offer still stands,” she said.

I glanced back.

“Sorry?”

She brushed the front of her dress nervously as if to brush off dust after falling to the ground. She swallowed nervously and said,

“My offer still stands. Would you come up with me for a drink?”

I turned to face her. Held my briefcase full of sex toys politely to my front with both hands and smiled. My heart began to glow. I wanted to cry out, ‘Yes! A thousand times, yes!’ Instead, I replied,

“Only if you mean it.”

“Of course, I mean it. I mean,” she glanced left then right, “just so we’re clear, I’m not going to pay for your company.”

I replied, “I’m off work tonight. Let’s have that drink.”

***

As soon as the elevator doors slid shut, I threw myself on Holly. I couldn’t stop myself. Now that I knew I could have her, I wanted every bit of her. I pinned her against the elevator wall, and we kissed passionately. We kissed until we ran out of breath and had to stop to catch our breath. In that pause, she asked,

“Soo…You really are one? A dominatrix?”

“Yes,” I replied. She giggled like a giddy schoolgirl. Toyed with the buttons on my jacket.

“I can’t believe it. I don’t think I ever met one.”

I snorted.

“Relax, I’m not a leprechaun. Besides, you’ve met plenty. You just never knew it.”

“You really think so?”

“I bet you a million bucks.”

She blushed. Her eyes wandered down to my briefcase. “I think it’s hot,” she muttered.

“That I’m a domme?”

“Yes.”

She was making me hot. Her shy confession. Her flushed red cheeks. The timid lip-bite as her eyes projected the naughty curiosities that swirled in her mind.

She shut her eyes and cringed as she said, “I have a confession to make of my own.”

“Go on.”

“I’ve fantasized about it a lot. About being dominated, I mean. About being a sub.”

She put her face in her hands and groaned.

“I don’t know why I’m saying this to you.”

I curled my hands around her wrists, pulled her hands away from her face, then put a finger on her chin and tipped it up to force her to look me in the eyes.