The Pleasure's All Mine: Memoir of a Professional Submissive (17 page)

    “Nice, Marnie,” she said in a low voice, and ran a fingernail along the base of my throat to my belly button.

    Her other hand held the same purple flogger and some kind of metal chain with things that looked like internal clock parts attached to each end. She placed the items next to me on the bed.

    “Kiss my hand.”

    She held out the back of her hand and I leaned forward to kiss it. Her skin was silky and smelled of some sort of perfumed lotion. I wondered fleetingly if I would be able to smell her on me at all after we were done. K stepped in close and lifted her knee up onto the bed, to push my legs open wider. I could smell her hair conditioner (an expensive salon brand), her perfume (a delicate scent that made me think of orchids), and even her deodorant (Secret, Shower Fresh scent, same as what I used). I inhaled deeply as she put her hands on me and began a slow massage.

    Starting at my shoulders, she ran the tips of her fingernails down the length of my arms several times, first down the middle and over the backs of my hands, then dragging them lightly through the inside crook of each arm. Her touch and the intoxicating smells pulsing off her with each movement began to lull me into a state of relaxation that was new to me. When she moved her hands inward to stroke and circle my breasts, I shivered.

    “How are you feeling right now?”

    K took each of my nipples between her slender fingers and began to pinch and pull rhythmically.

    “Excellent, thank you, Mistress.”

    “Good,” she let her hands drop and stepped away. “I want you to lean your head back now, and push your chest out for me.”

    She picked up the leather flogger and ran a hand through the strands to straighten them. I did as she asked, and shut my eyes. A second later, the flogger landed with a gentle thud across my right breast. It felt soothing in much the same way her hands had, with an extra tingling from the light slap of the leather. I pushed my chest out farther, and heard K murmur her approval. She began alternating strokes between my right and left sides, working up from a completely painless level to a barely noticeable sting. I don’t know how long she worked on my breasts, but eventually I felt her hand behind my head instead of the flogger on my chest.

    “You can bring your head back now, but open your legs a little more for me.”

    My neck was a little stiff when I opened my eyes to straighten myself, and K squeezed and rubbed the back of my neck when she saw me trying to loosen it.

    “Mm, thank you Mistress,” I said, and waited.

    She swung the flogger between my legs, and I jumped when it landed. Not because it hurt, but just from the surprise of it. It was the softest of taps, and made me acutely aware of how aroused I had become when she’d been flogging my breasts. Everything had become swollen down there, so that even the least of sensations provoked an excruciatingly pleasurable response. K noticed when I pushed my hips slightly forward, and increased the tempo and intensity. I began to moan quietly, finding the space between the strokes almost unbearable as they landed increasing pressure on a part of me that was by that time aching for it. After a few minutes, she set the flogger aside and directed me to lie down on my back. I heard the jingling of that metal toy I’d seen earlier, and then K was playing again with my nipples.

    “Have you ever had these kinds of clamps used on you before?”

    She held up the silver chain by one of its ends, and squeezed open what I now understood to be a kind of nipple clamp. It looked like two interlocking circles, and when you pressed on one of them, the other parted to reveal small rubber pads to fit around whatever skin was clenched between.

    “No, Mistress, I haven’t. They look kind of neat, though. What are they?”

    “They’re called clover clamps, and they
are
neat,” she smiled. “They’re also pretty intense, Marnie. Would you be willing to try them for me?”

    I expected to feel afraid from the sound of it, like I had been with Marcus when he’d been about to cane me for real and I hadn’t known how bad it would hurt. But with K, I just had this feeling from the way she touched me that there was nothing she couldn’t help guide my body pleasurably through. I felt also that she would be kind to me if I couldn’t take it and had to ask her to stop. What did I have to lose?

    “Yes, thank you for asking me,” I finally answered.

    She took my left nipple with her free hand and pulled it away from my body, drawing the skin out so that she could get as much of my nipple as possible into the clamp. She positioned the metal contraption around the base of my areola and slowly let it close with increasing pressure on my skin. By the time she let it go completely, and then subjected my other nipple to the same procedure, I was feeling a steady throb in each breast. The throbbing quickly turned into what felt like an unbearable ache.

    “Mistress K,” I gasped, “I’m not sure how much longer I can—”

    “I understand,” she interrupted. “I want you to feel yourself, feel your whole body now floating on top of the pain.” She placed a cool hand on my bare stomach. “The sting of it, the burning, it’s all just waves of the ocean rolling under you as you stay afloat. Let it roll by. Feel yourself resting calmly above it.”

    She continued murmuring to me for several more minutes, coaxing and encouraging me to relax, to experience the clamps on my nipples as something besides a source of pain. Her voice and her soft hands elsewhere on my body made it easy for me to close my eyes and picture exactly what she was describing. The sensation in my breasts started to feel like something I had a hold of, instead of something that had a hold of me, and I imagined water supporting my naked body, with warm, gentle waves beneath me. I breathed in as deeply as I could, and it began to seem like there were moments when I felt almost nothing in my breasts at all. After several more minutes, K announced that the clamps were coming off.

    “The blood rushes back in when they’re first removed, and it actually hurts a lot more in that second than it does to keep them on indefinitely. I want you to breathe in deeply when I tell you to, and concentrate on continuing to breathe. It will help with the pain just like my voice was helping you before.”

    She counted to three and took the clamp off my right nipple. I yelled in pain and surprise, but kept breathing. She was right. It immediately helped the sharp pain soften into something bearable before it disappeared altogether within seconds. Knowing what to expect after the first one, I was scared to have the second one removed, but again it was over almost before I knew it. It reminded me a little of the caning with Marcus, the way something so intense could come and go so quickly.

    “I’d like to finish with some more flogging. Do you think you can handle that?”

    I didn’t think I could handle
not
being flogged some more right then, so I nodded silently and let K help me up off my back. She had me get on my knees again on the bed, with my legs spread, and my hands clasped behind my neck.

    “You can use
mercy
as your safe word if you need it.” She leaned over to whisper in my ear.

    I smiled and closed my eyes; I couldn’t imagine ever wanting, much less needing, her to stop anything she chose to do with my body by that point. When she started to swing the flogger between my legs again repeatedly, I leaned my head back and let out a deep breath.

    As K slowly increased the force behind each successive stroke, I started to get confused about what I was feeling. The harder the whip landed, the harder I
needed
it to land. I wanted more and constant pressure, once the initial rhythmic weight of the flogger got me so aroused. But the more K flogged me and the more I craved, the more it started to really hurt as well. Because it stung and felt so great all in the same instant, each time the flogger landed, I got nervous about what we were doing. What if I got into such a frenzy that I needed it to go on until I reached orgasm? Would that be too overtly sexual a response to have with this woman I barely knew? Was it even
possible
to have an orgasm this way? I’d only been able to come with my hand up to that point, and, on very rare occasions, someone else’s mouth. What if it took so much flogging for me to come this way that by the time I reached a climax, I had accidentally let myself get damaged? I looked up to see K concentrating on the swing of her arm, breathing hard from the work of flogging me so thoroughly. I was panting by that point as well, and had the overwhelming urge to beg her — I didn’t know for what.

    
“Please,
Mistress,” I finally moaned, my head spinning with irrational visions of explosive pleasure and broken clitorises.

    K immediately eased up, and I immediately regretted it. It wasn’t enough, this suddenly lighter flogging, but I didn’t want to be pushy by asking her to do anything differently.

    “You okay?” She looked into my eyes, swinging the leather strands slowly at my open legs as she asked the question.

    I sucked in a huge breath. “Definitely,” I sighed. “I didn’t want you to have to stop on my account, I just got scared. But I would have said the safe word if I’d needed—”

    “I know,” she smiled. “It’s okay. I didn’t want to push you too hard. After all, we just met.”

    She set down the flogger and put a reassuring hand on my shoulder.

    “Thank you,” I nodded, feeling simultaneously happy and frustrated.

    I already missed what she’d been doing minutes before, but I liked that she seemed to be almost more protective of me than I was. She sat across from me in the throne chair again, and I lay down on my stomach to rest.

    “That was so nice,” I said dreamily, and somehow my stating the obvious like that made us both laugh.

    “You’re such a
beautiful
masochist,” K grinned. “God, your skin is like silk!”

    I felt the familiar heat in my face and neck and thanked her without meeting her eyes.

    “So was the Dominion your first experience with submission?”

    “For some reason, it almost feels like it. It’s all been so different from what I did before. But no, it wasn’t my first time. I was in a relationship a few months ago with an older, experienced domme. After I broke up with him, I had a hard time meeting anyone else to play with, or at least anyone I liked. I finally went to the Dominion out of physical desperation.”

    “Yeah,” K said dryly, “I’m glad I’m not a sub, having to deal with all the egos of male doms [when referring to male dominants, it’s dom(s) and female is domme(s)] out there.”

    “Why is that, anyway?” I asked. “I mean, you and Catherine are two of the most dominant people I’ve met, and neither of you acts all cartoonish about it. Why are the men so different?”

    “Partly, it’s cultural, I think. We’re dommes, but we’re still women. We’re socialized to care about our partners’ well being even while we’re torturing them,” she laughed. “But to be fair, Marnie, I’ve definitely met a lot of amazing dominant men in the scene. It’s not that different from dating in the vanilla world. It just takes time to meet the right person.”

    I knew she was right. I hadn’t really looked beyond Internet chat rooms and that one Threshold meeting, neither of which was necessarily a true representation of the kink scene at large. Still, I was relieved not to be as concerned with finding a personal relationship as I used to be.

    K leaned forward in her chair abruptly. “Hey, speaking of the time it takes to meet the right person, I have a proposition for you.”

    “Whatever it is, if it’s a proposition from you, the answer’s yes,” I said, knowing that while this sounded like a flirty line, I meant every word of it. “Okay, seriously, I’m listening.”

    “Well, I have this wonderful playmate in New York who wants to session with a female sub. I keep telling him I’ll bring someone, but I haven’t been that impressed with the pro subs I’ve met so far. You don’t have to answer now, but I was wondering if you might consider it?”

    I was quiet for a second, excited by this sudden turn of events, but unsure of how it might actually take place.

    “It sounds like fun, but I don’t know that I could afford the trip.”

    “You don’t need to
afford
it, Marnie!” She rolled her eyes. “Everything will be taken care of. Plus, you might even get more sessions on your own while you’re in town. There are some pretty amazing players back east who I’m sure would bombard you with session requests. The scene’s different there. You’ll absolutely stand out.”

    
Stand out.
With how slow things had been at home lately, I couldn’t have imagined anything better at that point than a paid vacation where I got to feel like a star even for a couple of days.

    “So, what would the session be like, and how many hours would I need to play to settle up with whoever’s covering my expenses?”

    K surprised me by laughing again. “It doesn’t work like that. You’ll be getting paid your normal fee for the session with my friend, and you’re not responsible for paying anyone back for the expense of getting you there.”

    I couldn’t believe it. Travel, more playing with K and some guy she liked, and the chance to establish even a fledgling client base in New York City? Rich perverts tended to get around. I guessed it could even increase my business at home if I got to know clients from other parts of the country who traveled. There was only one thing I was worried about.

    “So, I don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I sort of need a lot of privacy and stuff or I get stressed out…”

    I didn’t know what to expect about sleeping and bathroom arrangements for the trip.

    “Oh you’ll have your own accommodations, of course! He usually puts me up at the Mercer and stays there with me for most of the trip, and you would be set up nearby in your own place.”