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“What it makes me is lucky.” Heat swam up my body. I felt the bartender's stare burning into the back of my neck. Conner nodded at my purse on my shoulder. “I thought you'd want to sit, have a drink, talk a bit in person, but you look ready to go.”

“I do want a drink,” I blurted.

Chuckling, he moved closer. His shadow swallowed me up. “Then let's have one.”

“I can't.” I looked at the bartender. “He won't let me.”

“No?”

The bartender wilted under Conner's intense glare. “She doesn't have any ID. I'm not serving alcohol to a kid and losing my job, or worse.”

“I'm not a kid,” I assured Conner as quickly as I could. “I lost my ID on the way here.” I didn't want Conner to think I was actually underage. I was a grown-ass woman... who just happened to want to be treated like I was a helpless toy.

That was why I'd been talking to Conner online. It had started as some cautious, if flirtatious, chatter. A casual mention of being too nervous to ask someone I was dating to indulge in my fantasies. A bold suggestion—on Conner's part—that he'd be able to give me everything I wanted without judging me for it.

If you were a woman on the RingMe app, you could see everything the men wanted to put on display. That usually meant awful photos and over-sharing in the many categories of interests you could fill out.

In contrast, men—Conner, in this case—couldn't see anything but your main profile photo and whatever you wrote in your bio. Mine had been rather simple, though I'd agonized over it for hours before submitting it to the app.

It said:

I know what I want and I don't make concessions. If you expect me to pick you over my career, you're wasting your time. I'll also eat all your snacks.

I'd done my best to self-sabotage my profile because, deep down, I was terrified of getting attention. I didn't like strangers; trust came hard for me.

Then Conner had reached out with a simple query.

Conner: What do you want?

I'd spent a few days fretting over responding or not. I'd typed messages, then deleted them, more times than I could count. I was too curious not to respond.

Me: Someone who won't reject my fantasies.

That was it. I'd replied, so from then on, the channel was open. He could see my full profile, my extra photos, even take the same surveys I'd completed on the app. He insisted he liked my sense of humor. He also said I could come to his place and eat all the snacks I wanted.

Amazingly, he felt... approachable. Like he already knew me. It helped that he was hot as fuck, not gonna lie. One night, while we chatted as I was stretched out on my couch watching a particularly hot movie—yes, Fifty Shades, why bother denying it—I felt naughty enough to let him in on what I was into. Things escalated quickly.

Now, we were in the same room.

He fingered the loops around his brown belt. “We can drink at my hotel room. It's upstairs, come on.”

I didn't have to listen to him. I could sit back down. I could shake my head and politely explain I'd changed my mind, but thanks for coming all the way downtown to meet me face to face. I could end this before I did something I couldn't take back.

Why come this far just to bow out?

I pointed my high-heels towards the exit. “Lead the way.”