Becoming Mistress: Ch. 7

After the Awakening

This was after The Joy of Sex.

I already knew what my body could do.

Now I was learning what it could command.

It started with vampires.

Not the slick ones from TV or the melodramatic teenage heartthrobs that came later. These were Anne Rice's creations--drenched in velvet, speaking in riddles, moving through rooms like they'd been carved from silence.

I found Interview with the Vampire on a shelf I wasn't supposed to reach. A friend's older sister, maybe. Or an aunt's collection pretending to be literary when it was really devotional.

The cover was unremarkable.

But the words inside?

They crawled under my skin.

Devotion in the Dark

I remember the night I began it.

The room was cold. The hallway light cast shapes on the ceiling. I was cocooned in my blanket, the book balanced on my thighs, fingertips already tingling.

It didn't start with sex.

It started with need.

And that's what hooked me.

These vampires didn't ravish.

They chose.

With care. With gravity. Their gaze was a decision. Their touch, a sacrament. And the humans? They didn't resist because they were weak. They yielded because it was inevitable.

It wasn't about blood. Not really.

It was about surrender as design.

Louis, looking at the boy interviewing him--restrained, intense, almost tender.

Lestat, laughing--not out of joy, but out of dominance.

Claudia, tilting her head before she fed--like ritual, not instinct.

Every interaction felt like a chess move wrapped in silk.

And I read with my breath held, like I might miss something sacred if I blinked.

Not Fantasy--Recognition

I wasn't aroused in the way I would later come to understand arousal.

I was possessed.

The devotion.

The hunger.

The unbearable intimacy of being seen--and consumed.

They weren't monsters.

They were priests of longing.

And I wasn't reading them as fantasy.

I was reading them as prophecy.

I didn't want to be bitten.

I wanted to decide when to bite.

Even before I had words like "Domme" or "discipline," I knew: this world made sense. Not because it felt naughty. Because it felt true.

It wasn't the blood.

It was the obedience.

The choreography.

The language of restraint cloaked in desire.

That night, I read until my legs went numb. Until the blanket slipped from my shoulders. Until the candle I wasn't supposed to be burning drowned itself in wax.

And I still wasn't done.

Somewhere between Louis's confession and Lestat's cruelty, I had been marked.

Not as a victim.

As a curator.

Ritual, Not Chaos

Anne Rice didn't write kink.

She wrote devotion.

Her vampires didn't seduce. They watched. They chose. They moved with gravity. Every decision was weighted. Every glance, deliberate. Every silence, architectural.

They didn't fuck.

They fed.

But feeding wasn't survival.

It was communion.

There were no safewords. But there was structure. There was reverent intensity.

It was beautiful. But more than that, it was precise.

And in that precision, I felt something open.

They weren't chaotic. They were disciplined.

They didn't love without structure.

They didn't surrender without being shaped.

And what I craved wasn't chaos.

It was design.

Not submission for spectacle--

Submission for structure.

A gaze that could hold someone in place.

A voice that could direct someone's breath.

A silence that made someone ache before being touched.

Anne Rice gave me that.

She didn't call it Dominance.

But I saw it.

The Book Behind the Curtain

I heard about them in a whisper.

The same way girls whispered about blowjobs, or tampons, or what it meant when a boy "wanted to go further."

"They're not like regular books," someone said. "They're written by Anne Rice, but not under her name."

I stopped breathing.

That night, I scrawled the pseudonym onto a scrap of paper--A. N. Roquelaure--and tucked it into my notebook like contraband.

It took weeks before I found one.

A used bookstore. Dim. Dusty. The kind of place that smelled like typewriter ribbon and mildew. I didn't ask for help. I wandered until I found it:

The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty.

My hand trembled as I pulled it from the shelf.

No summary. No image. Just a title. And a price tag.

I paid in cash.

Read it in one night.

Not fast. Not fevered.

Ritually.

From the first page, I knew:

This wasn't fantasy.

This was instruction.

Ceremony and Obedience

Beauty, naked.

Led by a chain between her teeth.

Presented for training.

Punished. Displayed. Obeying.

And the writing--God.

It didn't blink.

It didn't pull back.

It insisted.

No innuendo.

No coyness.

Obedience wasn't a prelude.

It was the form.

One scene stopped me cold:

Beauty, spanked until she wept, then made to thank him.

Not sarcastically.

Sincerely.

Not punishment.

Purification.

Correction as care.

Pain as preparation.

And I didn't flinch.

Because I recognized it.

I didn't want to be Beauty.

I wanted to be the one who decided how many strokes she'd take--

and when she'd earned forgiveness.

Another scene left me breathless:

Beauty in the Hall of Punishments.

Naked. Watched.

Her body, made spectacle--

not to shame, but to display her discipline.

And every eye followed protocol.

It wasn't smut.

It was design.

A third moment opened something deep:

Beauty praised.

Not for beauty.

Not for sweetness.

But for obedience.

Her stillness.

Her posture.

Her wordless discipline.

And I felt it--not desire, but inversion.

I didn't want the praise.

I wanted to give it.

Sparingly.

Precisely.

Just enough to make her shiver.

That's when I knew:

This wasn't about sex.

This was about structure.

Building the Blueprint

I wasn't aroused in the typical sense.

I was drafting blueprints.

Not for sex.

For how to hold power.

I didn't act on it. Not yet.

I wasn't ready for practice.

But I was ready for design.

After the Beauty books, I began to construct rituals in my mind.

Not fantasies of being taken.

That wasn't what I craved.

I craved control.

Ceremony.

Structure.

In my mind, there was always a girl.

I didn't picture her face.

Just her posture.

Kneeling.

Waiting.

Not because she feared me.

Because she wanted to be seen.

To be evaluated.

To be earned.

I imagined walking into the room. Heels echoing on invisible marble.

Stopping a few feet from her. Saying nothing.

And she would feel that silence like gravity.

My hand wouldn't need to raise.

She would adjust herself anyway--

Spine taller.

Chin lifted.

Thighs parted, just enough.

I imagined circling her. Once. Maybe twice.

If she flinched?

A correction.

Soft.

Sharp.

Final.

Not punishment.

Refinement.

I imagined teaching her stillness.

Teaching her that obedience wasn't a reaction--it was a state.

A posture held in the breath.

In the mind.

No screaming.

No begging.

Just this:

"Hold."

And she would.

Practicing the Voice

I began testing the choreography of command in small, invisible ways.

At school, I'd pause before answering--not because I didn't know, but because I liked the feel of attention shifting toward me.

At dinner, I'd ask someone to pass the salt without looking at them--

And smile, quietly triumphant, when they obeyed without hesitation.

I wasn't performing.

I was preparing.

Practicing the tone of voice that didn't need to rise.

Practicing stillness as power.

Practicing praise as reward, not reflex.

In my journal, I stopped writing about crushes.

I started sketching rituals:

- How she would be undressed.

- Where she would stand to wait.

- How many strokes she'd earn before I allowed a kiss.

It wasn't about cruelty.

It was about shaping someone--through structure, through reverence.

And somewhere in those imagined scenes, I realized something deeper:

I didn't just want power.

I wanted to be deserved.

I wanted someone to stand in front of me, breath slow, hands steady, asking--

without speaking--

"Am I enough today?"

And I'd nod.

Once.

Or shake my head.

Once.

And that single gesture would change the shape of the room.

Revelation, Not Fantasy

That was the fantasy.

Not chaos.

Design.

Somewhere in Beauty's Punishment, I realized:

I was no longer just reading.

I was remembering.

Not from experience.

From instinct.

From the place inside me that had always known this kind of order made sense.

That obedience, when given freely, wasn't just hot--

It was holy.

The books weren't dirty.

They were devotional.

They didn't whisper.

They declared.

And I sat with those declarations like scripture--

Reading slowly.

Re-reading.

Underlining with my breath.

Words like:

Correction.

Discipline.

Training.

Protocol.

Obedience.

Ceremony.

They weren't abstract anymore.

They were anchoring.

They didn't just arouse me.

They oriented me.

I wasn't wondering who I might become.

I was recognizing who I already was.

And the most startling part?

They didn't make me want to be taken.

They made me want to be obeyed.

To speak a sentence that made someone shift their weight.

To raise an eyebrow that made someone drop their eyes.

To build a scene from silence, not lust.

I didn't know the word Dominant.

But I knew the feeling.

I didn't know the rules of protocol.

But I understood how to make ritual from stillness.

And I didn't want to be the one kneeling.

I wanted to be the one who decided how she knelt.

When she spoke.

If she'd be touched.

The Beauty series didn't give me fantasies.

It gave me framework.

It told me that what I wanted wasn't strange.

It was sacred.

It didn't make me crave chaos.

It made me crave order, obedience, and submission shaped like art.

Because if I ever found someone who trusted me enough to give me that kind of power--

I would know exactly what to do with it.