Cycle II · “The Hidden Life” · 04

She’s in multiple sub-only Discords and more than one private group chat she didn’t expect to access so fast.

All of them have rules channels.

All of them say the same thing in slightly different fonts.

“Real Doms have references.”

“Never talk to someone without a full vetting.”

“Daddies should be background-checked.”

“Anyone calling themselves a Master is a walking red flag.”

She’s read it so many times she could almost quote it back like scripture.

Half of her finds it comforting.

If everything dangerous could really be sorted into neat bullet points, all she’d have to do is follow the list:

Ask the right questions.
Demand the right screenshots.
Walk away if anything didn’t match the template.

Safe.

Simple.

Almost like studying for a test.

The other half of her is… confused.

Because the Dom she said yes to doesn’t fit the rule-book perfectly.

He doesn’t have a spreadsheet of references waiting in a shared folder.

He doesn’t offer up exes as character witnesses.

He just… shows up.

Checks on her.

Remembers details.

Pauses when she wobbles.

He’s not perfect. There are gaps and delays and missed messages. Some days she’s not sure if he’s careful or just busy. But she knows this:

He’s the one she thought about when her stomach dropped reading, “Never speak to a Dom who can’t give you three prior subs willing to vouch for him.”

Because by that rule, she should have walked away already.

She didn’t.

In the group chats, people talk like they’ve seen everything.

Some of them probably have.

She sits there half-lurking, half-participating, watching messages fly:

“I’d never let a Dom touch me without X, Y, Z.”.
“Any good Daddy does A, B, C from day one.”.
“If he doesn’t do ___, he’s not worth your time.”.

There’s usually a story attached. A bad one.

A crash, a betrayal, a scene that went sideways and left someone shaking on the bathroom floor.

She believes them.

She doesn’t doubt the pain.

But somewhere under the agreement, there’s a quieter question she doesn’t type:

“What if I’m still a beginner and I don’t know what I actually need yet?”

She is “virgin sexy” in all the ways the post names:

Her body lights up fast.
Her history is mostly zeros.
Her ego wants to pretend she’s not as new as she is.

In chat, she rounds up her experience a little.

Not lies, exactly. Just… edited.

“I’ve played before,” when “play” means one half-fumbled power exchange and a lot of late-night texts. “I kind of know my limits,” when she mostly knows what scares her, not what safely holds her.

If she says “I’m basically new,” she’s afraid everyone will either:

Talk down to her like she’s made of glass. or quietly move past her to someone “easier,” less work to teach. or try to take full advantage of her.

So she stays somewhere in the middle:

never pretending to be a veteran,

never admitting how much of this is happening in her head for the first time.

When she reads this post for the first time, she feels something twist — not in the usual “oh god I’m turned on” way, but in that embarrassed but relieved place.

The lines about:

“Virgin to living the life you piece like you’re already an expert in.”

and

“Horny with a word bank.”

feel a little too close.

She thinks about:

The way she’s memorized other people’s language. the way she’s tried on “good girl,” “brat,” “little,” “submissive” like outfits. the way she’s nodded along in conversations about scene structure she’s only really seen in fic.

She’s not faking on purpose.

She just doesn’t want to be the only one in the room admitting she’s learning in real time.

The part that hits her hardest isn’t even about subs.

It’s the bit about pods that start as safety and turn into purity tests.

She knows exactly which lines in her own servers have that edge.

Little rules that sound like care on the surface but carry a warning underneath:

“No real sub would…”

“Any ethical Dom always…”

It’s comforting, until the day she looks at her own dynamic and realizes it doesn’t line up cleanly with any of it.

He’s not perfect, but he’s present.

He’s not saying all the “right” safety slogans, but he’s the one who tells her to drink water, to sleep, to log off when her brain is starting to spiral.

She doesn’t know how to square that with the idea that anyone who doesn’t tick every box is automatically unsafe.

The post doesn’t tell her which one is correct.

It just names the tension she’s been quietly holding:

Wanting protection.
Wanting freedom.
Wanting to be taken seriously while she’s still a beginner.

By the time she gets to the end —

“You can be sexually charged without pretending to be sexually seasoned.”

— she’s half-angry and half-grateful.

Angry because it would have been easier to keep playing along.

Grateful because now she has language for what she is:

not fake,

not broken,

just new.

New to the life she feels like she’s been dreaming about forever.

New to saying:

“I don’t know everything yet.

I still want this.

I’m going to try to be honest while I figure it out.”

She doesn’t leave her pods.

She doesn’t dump her Dom.

She doesn’t burn anything down.

She just… adjusts.

Answers one question in a group chat a little more honestly than usual.

Types, then deletes, then finally sends:

“I haven’t done much of this yet. I’m still figuring it out.”

And in her own DMs, with the person she said yes to, she lets herself say:

“I’m more of a beginner than I’ve been acting, and that scares me a little.”

That’s her version of “staying mentally lean.”

Not memorizing more rules.

Not pretending she’s seen everything.

Just admitting she hasn’t — and choosing, anyway, to walk into all this with her eyes open, instead of hiding behind someone else’s script.

Cycle II · “The Hidden Life” · 04

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