Restraint/s

***Thanks for checking out my new story. This is a spinoff from Ben Loves A Challenge featuring Aisha and her adventures as a dominatrix, and two men in particular who challenge her in all the right ways.

This chapter takes place after Ben Loves A Challenge Ch. 17, and before Ch. 18 (which is in the works, I promise!)

This chapter includes BDSM (spanking, timeout/corner play) between Aisha and two men who are friends (but not yet *that* kind of friends).

As always, looking forward to your thoughts, and I hope you enjoy!

-Penny***

"No, huh-uh. Not happening. Not again. Nahi, bilkul nahi, Beth. Not after last time." Aisha Battacharyya pursed her lips, wanting to stand her ground, but knowing she'd probably lose.

"Aisha, you're one of the only 'beginner friendly' doms we have right now, and this specifically requires an intro-level of play." Beth mirrored her body language, she knew she was being played and it ate at her, but she couldn't do anything about it. "Just think about it, you could finally get yourself a maybe normal regular if this works out. At least interview him."

"Interview him? The guy buying the gift session for his best friend? Or the guy who it's a 'surprise' for?"

Beth purses her lips, deepening the frown lines around her mouth. "Listen, I know it's unusual, but-"

"Would you take it, if you were me?"

"I'd at least do the interview if my mentor highly recommended it," Beth replied, short and sweet. Aisha hated it when she did that, pulled the 'mentor' card. "And, you know I wouldn't pass on a referral if I didn't think it had potential, and was a good fit."

Aisha sighed heavily, crossing her arms over her chest. "Just an interview," she finally relented. "And he has to pay double."

"Aisha," Beth chided. "Not for a first session. Don't you want to get yourself some regulars after some of the last few clients you've had?"

"It's not that bad. I mean, the pee-dude at least tipped me well."

"You know that's not what I'm talking about." Beth straightened up in her chair, catching and holding her gaze. "And what have I said about kink shaming?"

"As long as someone's kink doesn't hurt anyone else, all kinks are valid and shouldn't be belittled." She bit her bottom lip. "Sorry."

"As a Dom, you need to make that your number one mantra. You're in public service, sweetie, and if you can't deal with the 'weirder'," Beth made air quotes with her fingers, "stuff, well, then I'm not sure you're cut out for this as a career, Aisha."

It hurt to hear. "Beth, I'm getting better-"

"Oh, sweetie, I know you are. But, your heart isn't in it, not really."

"I love kink, Beth. I like doing this."

Beth sighed, shaking her head slightly. "I know you do, sweetie, but enjoying kink and doing kink professionally are different animals entirely."

"Fine, fine, I get your point. I'll take the interview," Aisha relented, feeling surly.

Beth shook her head again, looking frustrated. "I didn't mean-"

"No, it's fine, I just, like. I want this to work, I like doing this." She sighed, then stood up. "I'll email him tonight and set up a phone screening for sometime this week."

"Aisha," Beth began, but she was tired of hearing it. "You don't-"

"I've got a session to get ready for," she replied, heading for the door to the office. "I'll be in room D tonight?"

Beth sighed again. "Yeah. I already got the double layer cake, marble, white icing with black roses. Oh, and a bunch of balloons, but they aren't blown up yet, he likes to watch you do it all."

"I know." Aisha nodded, trying to repress her reservations about who she was now calling 'creepy goth birthday party guy'. It was a working title, obviously.

Tonight would be his third scene with her in as many months, and he'd slowly been adding more and more to his creepy black and white children's birthday party-themed fantasy. The cake sitting was new, she had to watch a few videos to make sure she wasn't misunderstanding his request.

"Yeah, thanks. I'll go get changed now." Beth went to say something, but she closed the door to the office, already not super excited about her session in an hour. At least it paid well, and he'd tipped her two hundred dollars last time. The cake sitting thing was a bit much, and she hoped his tip matched the 'extra' service.

***

"You sound like you've got something you need to get off your chest," Ben said, poking his head into her cube shortly after returning from some meeting or another.

"Huh?"

"I think I must have heard you sighing about a hundred times before I left for my meeting, and at least five times since I got back. I can't even imagine how much sighing went on while I was gone. I can only speculate, but I figure it must be about fifty seven, at least, for the hour I was gone."

She harrumphed. "Ben, there's no way I sighed more than once per minute, not even I'm that good."

Ben chuckled, drawing a smile from her. "So, wanna talk about it?"

"Yeah, but, like. Not now, you know?" She looked around, then shrugged.

Ben's forehead wrinkled. "Not about me, right?"

"No, not about you, why do you think everything's about you?"

"Oh, I mean, like, I didn't, I just wanted to make sure there wasn't something else, like more rumors or something..."

She smiled a crooked smile, pursing her lips to the right. "Nothing fresh, but you know that I would probably find out at the same time as you, since we're friends and all. No, nothing with you, it's me, my stuff. Just, not, like," she dropped her voice and leaned closer to him, "not work appro-pro, yeah?"

Ben nodded, still looking uncertain, but he didn't press her. "Lunch? My treat?"

"Ben, Dean would literally grind me under his boot if we went to lunch," she said with a frown.

He feigned innocence. "I don't know what you mean..."

"Dean's your lunch date everyday, and, um..."

Ben smiled. "Dean's off today."

"Arrey, Ben. No way." She shook her head. "Then why are you working?"

Ben nodded. "Yes, I came to work without him. In fact, he forced me to come to work. Downright refused my help packing up his apartment, can you believe it?" Ben rolled his eyes dramatically. "Says he doesn't need me 'up his butt' while he goes through his stuff."

Aisha covered her snorted laugh with her hand. "Up his butt..."

"Of course that's what you picked up on," Ben said, rolling his eyes again. "Not what he meant."

"I know, I know," she said, her spirits finally lifting a bit. "Still, it's funny."

"Yeah, sure, laugh it up." Ben shrugged, but he was smiling. "But, anyway, point is, he's not here, and he's not meeting me for lunch. And, for the record, I can still go to lunch with you even if he is here. He's my boyfriend, not my mother."

Aisha snorted. "Ben, he's the type to get jealous easy. I wouldn't push it, or you're gonna be spending a lot of time conversating feelings."

Ben shrugged. "I'm fine with that. And, hopefully living together will help with all of that uncertainty he wears like a suit of armor. So, are we doing the lunch thing or not?"

"That would be nice, actually," she agreed, then looked at the clock and sighed heavily. "Baap re baap, Ben. It's still way too early to go to lunch..."

Ben shrugged. "You can wait an hour, Aisha. It'll give you time to figure out where you wanna go."

"Ben!" she whined. He withdrew from her cubicle with a smile. She crossed her arms over her chest and pouted for a minute, then turned back to her computer, forcing herself to focus on the ad copy draft that was due by the end of the day. Somehow she finished it enough to submit for comments just before Ben knocked soundlessly on her cube wall.

"Ready for lunch?"

She sighed, spinning around in her chair. "An hour ago," she grumbled. "How do you feel about Tacos Tacos Tacos?"

"You mean about the absurdity of the name, or the restaurant itself?"

She shrugged. "Either, I guess, but I actually meant if you wanted to eat there or not."

"I'm always down for tacos," he said, zipping up his coat. "I'll drive. You ready?"

She grabbed her winter coat off the small hook on her cube wall and nodded. "After you," she said, motioning in the general direction of the front doors. She followed him out to his car, then practically jumped in to escape the icy wind cutting through her coat.

"Why's it so cold?" she whined as she buckled.

"Cause it's winter," Ben replied. "For at least another... maybe two months? Stupid groundhog went right back inside two weeks ago, the wimp."

Aisha snorted a laugh. "Dude, it's so weird, using a large rodent to predict if it's gonna stop being cold soon based on if it's feeling frisky, or if it's tired, or whatever makes it decide. Who does that?"

Ben looked over at her, then back to the road. "Seriously? You don't trust Punxsutawney Phil?"

She rolled her eyes. "Is that its name? Do they name it the same thing, like when one dies? Are they all related, like some weird breeding program for rodents who can predict spring?"

"Sometimes you need to just suspend your disbelief and let us Americans have our groundhog prophet, yea?"

She snorted. "Now you sound like Dean. Must be rubbing off on you."

Ben shrugged. "Prolly. So, if you don't like Punxsutawney Phil, what do you do to know that spring is here?"

"I celebrate Holi, at least when my family is here I do. It's a festival, like, you know the color runs, where you run and people pelt you with different colored powders? It's from Holi. I love it. I can remember when we would visit my mother's home when I was a kid, running around like a little barely fluent crackhead, spraying people with squirt guns and fist-fulls of colors, then stuffing myself on gujiya. Mmmm..."

"What's gujiya?"

"Little fried pastries, filled with fruit and a kind of cheese, sort of like ricotta or something. Creamy. They're rolled in sugar, or coated with syrup. So good, Ben."

Ben pulled into a spot and parked his car. "Sounds fun. Actually, sounds a lot better than boring old groundhogs and old dudes with top hats and what I have to believe are award winning mustaches."

She chuckled, then braced herself for the cold. "Lots more. And, it celebrates an epic battle where good triumphs over evil. But, whatever."

Ben opened the door for her and she smiled a private smile, sure he didn't even realize he was acting all chivalrous. They were seated, with menus in hand, before Ben could wait no longer. "Soooo, what's the cause of the sigh fest?"

She sighed again, caught herself, then frowned. "My other job."

"Your, ah, night job?"

"Yeah, that one."

Ben pursed his lips. "You don't like it anymore?"

Aisha picked up her silverware and twirled the fork between her fingers. "No, I do, it's just, like, it feels like I'm not being given good clients."

"You don't pick your own?"

She shook her head. "I'm new, like, only been doing this for about six months or so..."

Ben shook his head. "I thought you'd been doing it a lot longer than that, you made it seem like-"

"I know!" she interjected. "I didn't mean, like, it wasn't intentional, to mislead you, but then the moment to correct it passed and, well, you know. It didn't seem like it mattered, and you were dealing with your flighty beau."

He nodded. "Sure, I get it. How's it work? Being a dominatrix?"

"I'm sure it's different everywhere, there's no master classes or handbook for this kind of thing. Hold up, strike that, I'm sure there are about five million poorly written handbooks, and maybe one or two good ones, but that's beside the point. For me, I found a posting on the internet, which led me to meet my mentor, Beth."

"You're a dominatrix apprentice? A dominatrix apprentrix?"

"Oh, I like that, I'm gonna use it," she said. Her smile quickly disappeared. "Yeah, I guess I'm an apprentice. I just started getting to solo my own clients about three months ago, but I only seem to get the weirdos. I know Beth's not doing it to be mean or anything, like, you work with what you've got, but it's not what I thought I'd be doing at all."

"What's that mean?"

The waitress came over with a basket of chips and salsa, and two glasses of water. They ordered, it wasn't hard to choose when all you could order from Tacos Tacos Tacos was, well, tacos. Aisha waited until she felt the waitress was out of earshot, then picked up a chip and dipped it in salsa. She chewed slowly, stalling, though she wasn't sure why, she usually didn't mind telling people about her second job.

Well, anyone but her mother. Her mother would never-ever-ever find out.

"So, I thought I'd be doing the kinky stuff, you know, spanking, shaming, restraints, more spanking, teasing men until they worship at my feet, torture, subjugation, you know, that kind of stuff."

"You're not?"

She shook her head, then ate another tortilla chip. They were too salty, she brushed the pocket of salt off her tortilla before she took another bite. "I mean, sorta. But, not really. Like I said, I'm getting all the weird ones. Like, last night, I've seen this guy a few times now. I mean, I don't want to sound judgy, but it's so not sexy at all, and I have to remind myself I'm getting paid a lot to do this, but..."

"Do what?" Ben prompted when she didn't continue. "Or can you not say, like are there some kind of weird HIPAA rules for sex workers that you can't talk about it?"

She snorted. "No HIPAA laws for Doms. "I can, it's just...."

"We don't have to talk about it, but maybe you'll feel better if we did?"

For some reason, remembering last night, and talking about it to Ben was making her uncomfortable. She nodded, then steeled herself. "Dude last night is into, like, I don't even know how to explain it. Like, he's into, um... I dunno. It's like a goth birthday party for a kid, but made sexy, but also not sexy at all?"

"Goth birthday party? Like dark, moody music, fishnets, and black lipstick?"

"No. Yes. Sorta. Like, the music..." She chuckles wryly. "Not that kind of music. Yes to fishnets, but, like, Ben, it's so weird. He gave me this sexy clown costume, like, literally from a halloween store, it still had the tags on it when he gave it to me. It's a black and white clown costume, like, big checkered pattern, and the stupid jester's hat, and a cheap plastic wand thing he wanted me to stick up his butt, but I wouldn't, because it's so cheap it would've broken the second he-"

"TMI, Aisha," Ben cut in. "Skip the wand."

"You sure you wanna hear about the rest of it then?"

Ben chuckled. "I must know what a goth birthday party fetish looks like, Aisha, you've reeled me in. I just don't need deets on the butt-wand"

"You really don't," she said, forcing herself not to sigh again. "I feel like it might scar you for life."

"Oh, but I do," he countered, leaning forward. "Tell me more, just leave out the, ah, magical components."

"Well, he likes it when I wear that costume. The first time he had me just blow up black and white balloons while that song, Enter the Gladiators, you know it, the ice cream truck circus song?" She hummed a few lines, then frowned. "I have to play it on repeat, for the entire forty or so minutes we 'play'. It is so unsexy, it kills my lady boner just thinking about it."

"You do not have a lady boner," Ben cut in.

"I can have any kind of boner I want," she retorted. "Anyway, I blow up balloons and it's up to me when and how, but I either pop them, or let the air whine out of them. He likes it if I let the air blow into his open mouth, which is super weird."

"This dude has some issues, clearly," Ben noted. "Like, maybe his parents abandoned him at the circus when he was a kid? Or maybe the circus abandoned him with some terrible parents? Maybe a guy in a clown costume killed his parents in front of him in a dark alley, and because they weren't bajillionaires, he couldn't afford a batcave, so he just wanked to clowns?"

"It gets worse, Ben," she whined, unable to stop the wave of emotion from crashing out of her mouth. "This last time, he had us order a cake. A black and white, two tiered cake with black roses all over it."

"Did he make you eat it with your bare hands, or push your face into it like a comedy skit?"

"Worse." She shivered, remembering how the icing and soft cake had felt as it conformed to the shape of her butt. "He made me sit on it, like lowering myself really slowly, then made me sit on it for, like, ten minutes. His hands are always bound behind his back, and when I finally got off the cake he ate the warm, melty, ass-indented part with his fucking face, like an animal. He ate ass cake, Ben. He wanted to eat ass cake."

The waitress brought their food at the perfect time to hear her say the last sentence. She and Ben shared a look through the thick silence as the woman put their food down, then fled the table.

"I think she heard you," Ben noted.

Another eye roll. "Ya think?"

Ben chuckled. "Well, I think she'll have a good story to tell her friends later."

"Well, glad I could make someone's day. You know the worst part?"

"There's more?"

She rolled her eyes. "I had to talk dirty to him while he did it. 'Oh, eat the nasty, dirty cake I made for you, you naughty piggy!' So not sexy at all." She shivered. "He asked Beth afterwards if I could jerk him off on the cake before he eats it next time. Fuck, Ben. Just, like, eww..."

"You don't do the, um, extra stuff, right?"

"Extra stuff, like jerking him?" Ben nods. "No, there's no touching like that, that's an industry standard. And, for the record, I wouldn't do that shit with him anyway. Ever."

Ben shrugged, then took a bite and chewed thoughtfully. "Your clients can't all be like that," he eventually said. "Right?"

She shrugged. "I thought it would be me planning sessions, like you tell me your kinks, and I'll make some wicked fun plans for you. But, so far, Beth tells me the menu the weirdos I get want to happen in their session, and I fill the menu to the letter. She said that everyone starts like this, but I don't buy it. She doesn't have any weirdo ass cake eating, clown wanking clients."

"It does seem rough," he said, pushing the meat that was falling out of the back of his taco back inside before taking another bite. "Maybe it isn't the right thing for you."

She shrugged. "I've been having that thought, and it kills me, because, like, I wanna be a Dom, I know I'm into dominance. I've known for a long time, like, before I even knew what sex was. But, like..." She sighed, then took a bite of her taco. Beans fell out onto her plate and she frowned at their audacity. "I dunno. I don't wanna give up, but it feels like it's getting worse each time. And this new client Beth has me interviewing... After clown guy, everything feels sus."

"What's the new client's schtick? Why's he making you nervous? Or should I not assume they are all men, your clients?"

Aisha dismissed his concern with a short shake of her head, causing her braid to slip down her shoulder until the weight of it settled between her shoulder blades. "No, all men, at least so far." Her bottom lip was sore, she'd been biting it and hadn't realized. "This new one, it's weird."

"Clown cake sitting weird?"

Ben smiled and she couldn't help but chuckle. "No, not like that. It's just, like, this dude wants to book a session for his best friend after a bad breakup. As a surprise. I thought Beth would have turned it down instantly, there's a big thing with consent and full disclosure, but she's not turning this one down and I can't figure out why. Like, that's weird, right, buying your friend an hour session of femdom?"

Ben tilted his head in thought and she took the opportunity to take a few more bites of her chicken taco. "I dunno. I mean, I wanna say yes right off the bat, but dudes buy each other lap dances all the time. Even the private ones. Honestly, this doesn't feel that different."