The Pleasure's All Mine: Memoir of a Professional Submissive (27 page)

    “Thanks for seeing me today. Really. It was way better than anything I had imagined.” He smiled.

    “Me, too,” I said seriously.

    In the hours after our ninety-minute whirlwind romance, I thought about Ron again and again. Although I didn’t think being a domme was anything I would ever seek out more aggressively, I was glad I’d had the experience, and not just because Ron had turned out to be such a dreamboat.

    I knew what I had done with him didn’t fit what other people might think of as domination — especially the part where I had jerked him off with my foot and then made out with him to my heart’s content. A lot of Mistresses would consider it whorish, an amateur’s attempt to claim control where only sexual service really existed. I didn’t care. I felt like by that point I deserved the relief I had found, in realizing that I could be turned on by someone who wasn’t dominant himself. It had been so long since I’d had a hot, deeply submissive experience of my own, that without this newfound pleasure in topping, I wouldn’t know if I was kinky at all anymore. Sure, I’d had some incidents with dominant women lately that had been fun, but none of them had generated the types of feelings in me that T had, back before the whole thing went south. Even the time with Marcus, all those months before, seemed lukewarm compared to the fire I remembered with T. I wondered what T would think if he could have seen me telling Ron to strip, or getting him to take his first caning. The idea of T thinking of me at all, or looking at me like he used to, made my throat ache suddenly, and I pushed the thought away. Whatever that had been with T, it hadn’t been what I wanted. I knew that much for sure.

    Sitting in my window seat the next morning as the plane taxied down the runway, I smiled as I remembered that first electric moment when Ron’s lips had touched mine. I wondered if it would be possible to meet anyone like Ron at home, outside of session, and whether I’d actually want to date a guy like that. Could I be happy with a boyfriend who was cute, hot for me, and a good kisser, even if he wasn’t kinky in the same way I was? I didn’t know.

    Whatever the case, I felt hopeful about my personal life for the first time in a while. Yet underneath, I felt something else that I tried immediately to ignore — something hollow inside me, like a wish that had folded in on itself until it no longer took up any space at all.

    

    

    
I ALMOST PASSED
on Jake altogether, based on our first conversation. In describing what he wanted to do with me, he sounded not so much like he didn’t know as that he didn’t much care.

    “I was thinking about spanking, maybe a little bondage too,” he said in a near monotone.

    “Okay. Just so you know, my donation is three hundred dollars per hour for light-to-medium sessions,” I said.

    He wanted me to come to his hotel room in the City of Commerce, and I half hoped that my higher fee for outcall sessions would be more than he was willing to spend.

    “That’s fine. Can you come in an hour or so?”

    “Actually, I can’t come until early evening,” I answered.

    Maybe the timing would be the deal-breaker? I crossed my fingers. He didn’t sound unpleasant, and he didn’t want to do anything that was out of bounds — I just felt a little bored. But since I hadn’t done any sessions since I’d gotten back from New York, I couldn’t quite rationalize saying no from an economic perspective. When he said early evening was fine, I got his room number and hopped in the shower.

    The drive to meet him felt like a trip halfway to Death Valley, although it was really just a few minutes south of downtown L.A. The City of Commerce is a slew of blocky buildings splayed out on the side of Interstate 5 like cargo that’s fallen off the back of a semi on its way to San Diego. It looked neither like a city nor a hub of commerce. It gave me a parched feeling just driving by it.

    After parking in the mostly vacant hotel lot, I made my way through the completely empty lobby and into the elevator. The air in the place smelled like shit-scented cigars and months-old Marlboro smoke, and I tried not to inhale too deeply as I rode up to Jake’s fifth-floor room. I willed myself to look interested as I knocked and waited for him to answer.

    “Hi.”

    A cute and boyish face smiled around the edge of the door, then disappeared behind it. The door swung all the way open and I stepped inside. I will say, it perked me up a little that Jake turned out to be nice-looking. He was a lot taller than me — a good foot at least — with straight, almost shaggy, short brown hair and a strangely innocent-looking face for his age. That’s what had made me see him as boyish, initially. He was clearly my age or a little older, but his brown eyes were slightly wider and his smile was somehow both shy and eager at the same time.

    “It’s nice to meet you,” I said, and put my bag down, in case he wanted to shake hands.

    When he nodded at me, still smiling but saying nothing, I took the bag over to one corner of the unmade bed and set it down. He followed me into the room and sat on the opposite edge of the bed. In my daydreams I often imagined that the perfect partner would be a man who had very little to say, hence lowering his chances’ of saying something irritating and spoiling my ability to tolerate his company long enough to complete a sex act. As Jake brought my daydreams to life, I realized that, in reality, I often counted on the sometimes pointless chatter of men, clients in particular, to calm my own nerves when facing a new sexual situation. I preferred to play the reserved, mysterious role myself, but even a few seconds of silently staring back at Jake failed to generate anything on his end. Fidgeting with the interlocking zippers on my toy bag, I finally blurted out the first thing that popped into my head.

    “Why would a person leave Vegas to gamble?”

    He had mentioned in his initial e-mail that he lived in Las Vegas, and was in town for a poker tournament. His eyes shifted briefly to the crumpled blankets near his thigh, but his smile remained fixed and he nodded again.

    “The tournament moves all over the world. I follow it wherever it goes,” he said. “I’m a professional poker player. I’ve been on television a few times.”

    “Wow, that’s cool,” I said politely.

    It did sound kind of neat, but it was a dead end as far as small talk went. I didn’t know anything about poker or professional gambling, and could only continue looking agreeable. Finally I offered to show him what was in my bag.

    “I brought two kinds of cuffs. I wasn’t sure which one you would like better. These are leather, pretty easy and comfortable, and then these—” I pulled out the other “—are Velcro.”

    I set both pairs on the bed, and saw his long slender fingers reach out to pull them closer to where he was sitting. I stared into my bag as I heard him pulling at the Velcro and opening and closing the hooks that locked the cuffs to each other.

    “I brought this paddle. It’s pretty flexible, but stings a lot more than it looks like. This is a pretty soft flogger — my riding crop — some clothespins — and these are some pretty heavy clamps. I don’t even know if I could take these today, as they’re really intense. Also, just for the record, I have a hard time with the clothespins or the clamps directly on the tips of my nipples, which are really sensitive, and I just can’t take much there.”

    I looked up then, and he nodded once more, staring at me, waiting.

    “I usually accept the donation at the beginning of the session,” I said.

    He wordlessly removed his wallet from his pants and counted out three hundred dollars in twenties, then held them out to me. I cleared my throat again.

    “I have to use the restroom before we start. Would you like me to undress in there, or come back out here and take off my clothes?”

    He had told me on the phone that I didn’t need to bring any lingerie or other sex clothes, that he wanted me naked from beginning to end once I was in his room.

    “You can take your clothes off in there, and then open the door for me when you’re ready. I’m going to start by using the cuffs to restrain you in the shower, if that’s okay with you.”

    “Sure,” I smiled, relieved.

    He had asked the question softly, looking at me expectantly, as if my answer actually mattered. In addition to the pepper spray in my bag and the friend I’d told where I was going, little things like his simple concern helped me feel secure in this type of situation. I could tell a lot about how safe someone was as a domme by whether or not they showed any consideration for my feelings before we started.

    As soon as I was ready, I pushed the wide bathroom door open. When I heard him get up from the bed, I took a quick glance at my reflection in the mirror and stifled a groan.
Which son of a bitch invented fluorescent lighting? I’m sure I’m better-looking than this.
At least it was a little dimmer over by the shower.

    He had taken off his shirt but kept his casual beige slacks and brown loafers on. The shirt he’d had on — a pink cotton, button-down number — had made his upper half look almost puffy, as if he’d gone soft in the shoulders and around the middle. It was a shock to see his beautiful, tanned stomach and back, all lean and lanky, muscular like a teenaged boy who’s just hitting puberty and not quite grown into wider shoulders. He moved to where I was standing and looked down at me. I looked down, too.

    “Stand up here, one foot on each side.”

    He held onto my arm as I stepped up, and held me tighter as I stretched across so that I straddled the empty bathtub.

    “Put your hands up here.”

    As I raised my wrists toward the curtain rod above my left side, he took my left hand and put one of the Velcro cuffs on. After fastening the other onto my right, he hooked them together over the top of the rod, so that my wrists hung above me and could not be lowered. I stole glances at my naked body in the mirror as he fiddled with something, his back toward me, at the end of the fake marble counter. At least this position made the muscles in my thighs stand out, and my back arch in a way that made my stomach look flatter and my ass look as high as it had been ten years before. Maybe there’s something to be said for bathroom scenes after all.

    When he turned around, he was holding two clothespins. He brought them toward my breasts, but then seemed to think of something and put them back down. He moved in close to me, and began to run his hands over my body, moving from my breasts and arms down over my stomach and the length of my legs. He bent down to caress my calves, and then ran his palms and fingers over my ass. I expected him to start with a warm-up, spanking me lightly as I stood there, then moving on to the paddle. Instead he continued to rub my skin gently, his eyes following his hands as they covered and uncovered different parts of me.

    “You have really soft hands, sir,” I said quietly.

    “Yes. I do.”

    I looked sideways at his face to check out his expression. It had been a teasing thing to say, and seemed out of character, at least according to the impression I’d had of him up till then. But his face still had the same open, pleasant look that had been there from the beginning.

    Picking up the clothespins again, he placed one on each of my nipples, pinching a very small amount of skin in each, which actually hurts more than taking a larger bite. I did what I always do when a new client hurts me more than I’d been expecting.

    “May I ask you something, sir?”

    “Yes.”

    “Would you be opposed to taking a larger amount of my skin in each clothespin? It would hurt less and I could take them for longer that way.”

    His hands dropped to his sides and he said nothing. In the stillness of the seconds that followed, I worried that I had made him feel inept by asking him to do something differently. Finally, he reached for a clean washcloth. He folded it over twice, and brought it up to my face.

    “Open your mouth.”

    I did as he said, and he softly pushed a corner of the washcloth between my lips.

    “Open wider.”

    I let him push it in further and then bit down to hold it in place when he told me to. I felt a tingling in the pit of my stomach, the beginnings of intense arousal. I don’t know how to explain it. Being gagged as a response to something I actually said, as opposed to just a form of play we’d agreed to, would normally be pretty offensive to me. But there was just something so gentle, even polite, about Jake’s manner as he positioned the washcloth. He acted like a person who intended to control every part of our exchange, but who also cared how everything felt to me. It was the kind of combination that most excited me.

    It was also the sort of behavior that most unnerved me. I had an impossible time using the safe word (even if I’d been able to speak) with real dominant partners who were as sexy as Jake was, so I knew I was simply going to take whatever he ended up doing to me. Since I didn’t yet know what that would be, I felt helpless in a way I hadn’t for quite some time.

    His hands returned to the sides of my breasts, where he stroked absently for a couple of seconds before dragging each of the clothespins off my nipples without opening them. The quick pinching ache of it made me moan briefly into the washcloth, and something in his body language gave me the sense he was pleased. A moment later, he turned and left the room, and I listened to myself breathing deeply as I stared at the aging white tiles and detachable showerhead with massage settings.

    He carried an ice bucket with him when he returned, and when he brought the open bucket over to the tub, I thought he meant to rub cubes of ice on me, a common form of sensation play. Instead, he lifted the bucket behind me and tilted it, and I realized it was filled with ice water, not ice. As he slopped a good quart of it down my back, I tried to scream into the makeshift gag, but the impact of the freezing liquid on my torso evaporated the air from my lungs, and all I could manage was a couple of high pitched gasp — whimpers. He brought the bucket around toward my face, and I tried to say something in earnest then —
I can’t have anything touching my face, I don’t want water poured over my head —
but even I couldn’t understand me through the bunched terry cloth in my mouth.