The Pleasure's All Mine: Memoir of a Professional Submissive (10 page)

    “Tell me, are you still wet right now?”

    
Wow! That’s
so
not where I would’ve gone with it myself.
I told him I didn’t know.

    When he told me to check with my right hand, it turned out that my body was indeed processing what was happening on its own. He asked then if I would like his permission to come. I thanked him but said I’d pass. I’d never done
that
over the phone either, and somehow it felt even more personal to me than what we’d done with the ruler.

    “In that case, I rescind the offer.” Before I could thank him for his understanding, he went on. “Now it’s a direct order. You
will
come for me on the phone today. Are you lying on your back?”

    That was sort of the last straw for me, in terms of my resistance to messing around with someone else’s husband. He wasn’t going to leave his wife for me, so she wasn’t going to get hurt, and I had a little less fear now about getting my feelings hurt as well. Last I checked, there was no surplus of men around who were both good at being bossy in a sexy way and even more interested in my orgasms than I was. I came quickly, and loudly, as he listened quietly on the other end of the line.

    The next day I sent him an e-mail.

    

    
Dear Sir,

    
I wanted to tell you that I thought of you today when I was out. I was wearing a skirt when I went to the store, and it wasn’t until it rode up during the drive home that I saw the marks. I checked in the mirror when I got home — the backs and insides of my thighs are blue, purple, and yellow where I used the ruler. It scared me at first, because I associate bruises with injuries. But they’re shaped funny, like butterflies with their wings spread, and now I’m sort of fixated on them. Am I going to stay this preoccupied with you and with this kind of stuff permanently? It’s making me feel sort of retarded in the rest of my life.

    
Sincerely,

    
Joan

    

    By the time he wrote back to me two days later, I was convinced I had said too much, and I steeled myself for rejection as I went to open his e-mailed reply.

    

    
Dear Joan,

    
I was very pleased to get your note. Yes, you might stay somewhat focused on what we do together for a little while to come, but eventually the novelty will wear off and you’ll be able to think of other things again as well. I wish I were there to enjoy those beautiful butterflies. Maybe some day soon.

    
Warmly,

    
T

    

    When he offered to send me money soon after, so I could get a hotel room near where he lived, I accepted eagerly. I didn’t feel like we needed to meet first at some public place, or that I should have a friend tag along to chaperone outside the door until we knew for certain he wasn’t a well-disguised maniac. I could tell from his voice and the things he said that he wasn’t dangerous. Plus, for reasons I didn’t really understand, I liked being a little scared. Later I would wonder whether it was that particular preference of mine or his unconditional acceptance of me in our first phone conversation that kept me going to those hotel rooms long after the butterflies had vanished and what we were doing left me more shaken than stirred.

    

    

    
“DO YOU MIND
my asking about your first relationship?”

    A man named Phil was tying me to a straight-backed chair with the soft rope we’d picked out together from the tool shed. It was my fourth shift at the dungeon, and Phil was my first session of the day. I had told him in our interview that I’d only had one “real-life” experience with a dominant sadist prior to my job at the dungeon.

    “No, sir, I don’t mind,” I said, which actually wasn’t true. “There’s not that much to say, though. We weren’t right for each other, but I learned a lot from him.”

    I hoped to dull his interest with my bland response. It wasn’t that I minded his curiosity. I just didn’t like thinking about what had happened with T, not any part of it. Even the good times were unbearable to think about now, more painful in a way than the bad. At least thinking about the crappy parts never made me ache for the way his skin smelled, on those occasions when he had let me face him and be close enough to take it in.

    Phil wound one length of the rope twice around my left ankle, slipping two large fingers inside the loop to make sure it wasn’t too tight against my skin, and then pulled it a few times around the leg of the chair. While there was nothing about being tied up in intricate ways that technically turned me on, I liked bondage sessions anyway. Even when the ropes were tightened in a manner meant to relay interesting sensations, real pain was never involved. I could sit or lie there, with nothing expected of me, as the person dominating me worked away for long stretches of time. Really, I could recommend it to anyone who had an aversion to actual work.

    “What made you feel you weren’t right for each other?”

    I stared at the top of Phil’s blond-gray head as he knelt in front of me, and watched the muscles in his broad shoulders move under his button-down blue shirt while he continued his work with the ropes, the chair, and my ankles. While I took a second to think about my answer, he glanced up at me and offered an encouraging smile. He looked to be about fifty or so, although his moderately tanned skin made it hard to tell whether it was time or the sun that had made the cute little wrinkles around his mouth and eyes.

    “Mostly, it was that he wanted a slave,” I finally answered, “someone who would take anything and everything from her master, and I’m just not built that way.”

    This wasn’t entirely true either. T hadn’t ever insisted on the kinky lifestyler’s version of “slavery” with me, nor had I even wholly rejected the idea of it myself. There had been, and were still, times when I wanted nothing more than to feel like I really belonged to someone. But I couldn’t think of how else to avoid the specifics; ascribing our breakup to differing levels of interest seemed a way to say the issues hadn’t been anyone’s fault.

    “So you see yourself as more of a masochist than a sub?”

    Phil finished the knot he was working on and picked up another piece of rope to use on my upper body.

    “Not… well… I think I don’t really know what I am yet,” I finally admitted.

    I flashed on the very first time I’d met T, when he had used his belt on me and drops of melted wax from a long white candle that tickled and stung my nipples at the same time. I had not been able to think of much else until our next meeting. I also recalled the many times I’d been afraid to see him after that, even as I’d remained fully compelled. I would go, full of dread, the memory of gritting my teeth and breathing like a pregnant woman who’s refused an epidural still fresh in my mind from the last time. I’d only had a real hypnotic rush after the first and second meetings — the rest of our dozen or so times together had left me confused and upset, by both his advancing tortures and my reluctance to just say
no.
Whenever I’d tried to talk to him about how I wasn’t enjoying the things we were doing as much anymore, he would put his fingers inside me.
Why,
he would ask,
if you don’t like it, why is your body so open to me right now? Why are you drenching my hand?
How could I tell what I was in all that?

    “Lift up for a second,” Phil grunted, pulling a piece of the rope through my legs from the back, positioning the strand so that it ran between my cheeks and in a straight line between my legs.

    As soon as I sat down, he pulled the rope taut, making me gasp from both the surprise of it and the sensation. He then held it firmly while threading it through the harness he’d made around my breasts. A minute later, he began tugging rhythmically on the harness in a way that felt like a strong finger pressing between my legs. Grateful to have my attention focused on something besides T, I leaned my head into the back of the chair and closed my eyes, smiling. With his free hand, Phil brushed a strand of hair away from my eyes.

    “Do you like this, Marnie?”

    His voice was deep, almost gruff, but it came out soft, even a little hesitant. He had been much the same way in the interview — attractive enough to get my attention, but almost shy in his manner toward me, claiming he hoped to learn a lot from me since I was the more experienced player.

    “Yes, thank you, sir. My real name’s Joan, by the way. Is it okay for you to call me that instead?”

    It had been grating on me, the fake sound of that name coming out of his mouth in the middle of something that felt like this. He let the ropes fall slack, and I opened my eyes. He looked almost giddy with delight.

    “Nice to meet you, Joan. My name’s really Phil.”

    He tightened the ropes again in his hands, and went back to tugging. A surprisingly short time later, he dropped the ropes for good and began to untie my feet from the chair legs. For all the time it had taken to get me into that position, I was surprised that he would undo his own work so nonchalantly minutes later. I tried not to show any disappointment I felt. The truth was, I could have stayed like that all day, on or off the clock.

    “Stand up.”

    He took my hands in his and raised me up off the chair, then squatted to massage my legs before standing again to work on my arms. I closed my eyes as his muscular fingers applied just the right amount of pressure to skin that still tingled where the ropes had pressed into me.

    “When you feel steady enough on your feet, I’d like you to go stand in front of the mirror, a few feet away but facing it, and bend over.”

    Staring at the slightly fragrant shag carpet in front of my face a few moments later, I asked for permission to put my hands on my knees for balance.

    “You may do that if you need to. I’d like you to remain as still as possible otherwise.”

    “Yes, sir,” I murmured, remembering the last time I’d heard the words
remain as still as possible.

    I had been bent over a table in an Orange County hotel room, feet and hands tied to the wooden legs beneath me. It was the third time I’d met with T in person, and when he’d ordered me not to move, I’d taken him to mean
not even your lungs,
as that was nearly the only part of me that had range of motion at that point anyway. I’d begun drawing in slow, shallow breaths to minimize the rise and fall of my chest in the hopes of doing this right; he had already been punishing me for a list of minor mistakes I’d made that day. Using a whip I’d made out of sixteen strands of clothesline that I’d cut, soaked and tied together at his instruction, he’d brought his short but muscular arms up again and again over his head, sometimes brushing the high ceiling with the tips of the homemade whip before bringing it down on my upper back or ass. When I’d cried out too loudly at one point, he’d told me I was to hold still
and
not make a sound. I hadn’t known what choice I had then but to breathe deeply and visibly, to take my mind off the urge to scream.

    After what had seemed like half an hour to me but could have been a great deal more or less, T had stopped abruptly when he’d noticed an old red stain of something on the table lamp’s creamy shade, and had mistakenly taken it to be a drop of my blood, spattered from the whipping. Instead of relief, I’d remained anxious when he let me up, feeling like I’d somehow done something wrong even in how I’d endured his punishment. It had taken a good night’s sleep and another twenty-four hours for me to realize that he’d been trying to make me cry, to make noise, all along.

    Phil moved in close behind me now and gripped my waist with slightly calloused fingers, holding me gently in front of him as he talked.

    “We’re going to start slow, and I want you to say ‘mercy’ if at any point we get into territory that you can’t handle. Okay?”

    I nodded my head, thinking how much I liked the tone of his voice. It sounded like Phil genuinely had no interest in hurting me in a way that didn’t turn me on — as if he would experience it as a mistake on his end, rather than a failure to be masochistic enough on mine. It was different from what I had felt with T. Thinking back, it seemed to me that T’s idea of a safe word had been more along the lines of something I could say if I really wanted to interrupt his good time. With Phil, I got the immediate feeling that I, myself, was his good time.

    When he began dropping the strands of a leather flogger softly onto my hips, I worried momentarily that he was going to be almost
too
careful with me, that things would never heat up to a noticeable level. At least with T, I’d get an adrenaline rush, if nothing else. Within a few minutes, however, Phil had progressed to a level of intensity that rivaled what I’d experienced with T so many months before.

    It was hard for me to believe we were really playing that heavily at first, for how little it took out of me. If anything, I felt like Phil was transferring something
to
me, between the methodical swing of his arm and the pieces of leather that now seemed like a physical extension of his body. Stopping in between sets of twenty strokes, delivered evenly across my upper thighs and ass, he would ask me if I was doing okay, if I was ready to go harder. When he approached me to hear my response, I could feel the warmth of his body emanating from the denim of his jeans as he held himself barely an inch away from me, massaging me in all the places where the flogger had landed. Pushing back into the hands that cupped me, I always answered
yes
and that I was fine, and waited for it to feel like something that was hurting.

    

    

    “How did you learn to do these things, if you don’t have that much experience?” I found myself asking.