A Rose of Any Color: MaleDom: A BDSM Anthology

by Editors: Katherine Merchant, Sonya Bond, Michelle Puffer

  The journalist goes on to say that, according to legend, a blue rose will grant its recipient eternal youth. It is due to this legend that the painting has been named by the museum curators as Efflorescence, the short-lived peak of bloom that all flowers enjoy before they wither and then die.

  Staring at the young girl displayed before her, her time of bloom immortalized by the brush, never to wane, never to fade, Hannah now sees what Pavel had tried to show her so long ago.

  “I was beautiful,” she murmurs. Why had she not seen it back then?

  Oh, but if her artist could see his Muse now, fallen prey to the ravages of time—her hair gone white and her face a patina of lines, her once-supple skin weathered and parched; the extra pounds which she had fretted over, but he had celebrated, all melted away; the limbs he bound now crippled and useless.

  A shadow passes over her, blocking the sun. She catches a whiff of paint and macassar oil.

  “You are still beautiful, my precious Hannah. The roses, they worked their magic that day.”

  She jumps, startled by the low, gruff accent, letting the magazine slip from her lap. Trembling, she looks up to see her dark-haired artist. With his left arm behind his back, he bows and extends his right.

  “Will you pose for me?” he asks, a wicked gleam in his coal-black eyes. “I can pay you in roses.”

  She opens her fist, and the crushed, dried petals are released. Blue powder swirls in the air and is carried off by the light spring breeze.

  Hannah takes Pavel’s hand. For the first time in years, she stands, straight and strong and proud. Amazed, she looks down at herself and sees she is young again, dressed in her orchid linen suit, paired with her tall boots.

  Pavel eyes her hair and clucks his tongue with disdain. Smiling, Hannah reaches up with her free hand and pulls the tortoiseshell loose. The combs clink and clatter upon the concrete patio. One by one, her golden curls tumble and spill to the dip of her spine.

  “Ah, much better,” he grins.

  From behind his back, Pavel produces a coiled strand of jute. He wraps and knots it around first her wrist, then his, alternating back and forth until the strand is spent.

  They walk together, bound hand-in-hand, leaving the husk of her body behind. The magazine on the ground by the wheelchair flutters in the rose-scented breeze, one tortoiseshell comb tucked mysteriously within the fold of the center pages.

  Touching Down

  by

  Joe Wilson

  What Became

  She dropped smoothly to her knees before him in the yellow mist of a Georgia morning, naked except for her collar and cuffs. He smiled affectionately. Naked like her, he relaxed in a wicker chair on his front porch. After so many years, neither of them preened nor hid with the other. Water from a summer shower, still dripping from leaves and branches around the cabin, made the only sound. He sat forward to focus on her.

  Her knees were spread, and her hands lay on her thighs so the palms faced upward. Her head tilted down, as if she did not want to be thought presumptuous. He looked at her tenderly.

  She did not speak, maintaining her peace while she awaited his direction. His voice caressed, deep and affectionate. “A beautiful morning.”

  “Yes, Sir,” she responded. “I suppose …”

  “How can you doubt it, little one?”

  “It is beautiful,” she admitted hesitantly, “but I hate it that I’ve lost the bracelet.”

  He listened carefully and reminded her of what he’d already explained. “It’s somewhere in the house, I’m sure.” For years, since Pita received his collar, Joe used their morning conversation to comfort and observe any discontent. If possible, he anticipated her needs. “It’s not like you to be so upset. We’ll find it,” he assured her.

  She shook her head slowly. Her damp, red hair shone in the sun as it shifted side to side on her shoulders, and light sparkled from her collar. “It will be what it will be, Sir. It’s possible we’ll never find it.”

  His brow creased. The furrows in his forehead had grown deeper over the years, but his eyes still penetrated. More than once, he overheard her remark to friends that the gray wolf pictured on the wall in their den reminded her of him. If he fixed his eyes on her, she said, he knew everything. She bowed her head further, and her breath came faster. She once asked him what made him look at her that way. “I own you,” he replied.

  This time he said, “Perhaps you should spend a few minutes in your room, Pita.” His voice gently assured her. “You are unsettled,” he explained. “I’ll call you in a bit.” He knew she liked the way he saw so easily into her, but if she felt unsettled, his look could be bewildering.

  She stood gracefully and padded into the house with short, silent steps. She opened a door off the living area into a room, which once had been a large closet. The room became her private place.

  He provided a room like this for her everywhere they’d lived. Like the others, pink filled the room. It had a pink rug, a chair that he offered when she joined him, and a white and pink stuffed rabbit. The room focused on a picture of a child ballerina who still looked wistfully through a window. Joe gave her the picture with her first room with an explanation that it could tell her everything she needed to know about submission. Each time they moved, she packed the girl herself.

  On the porch, Joe finished the mug of chai she’d brought. He stood and stretched in the yellow light, his lean and weathered body freeing itself from the gray night he carried from bed each morning now. His brow furrowed as he thought about the turmoil he sensed in her.

  Often, when she was unsettled, Pita could fix it herself, and he preferred that; but if she didn’t understand her turmoil, like this morning, she’d hint for help to find her focus and natural docility.

  He moved with ease, arranging furniture for space around the large, white column at the corner of the porch. From there, they could see three counties. He quickly arranged loops, cuffs, and hooks that tinkled and rattled from heavy eyehooks at the top, middle, and base of the column. He returned from a trip inside with a black snake whip curled in one hand and a pitcher of ice water and a towel in the other, ice rattling against the glass of the pitcher. He placed them on a table next to a holder of straws. Finally, he cleared a path to the hammock suspended at the shady end of the porch.

  Glancing over his preparations, he nodded and returned inside. At Pita’s door, he quietly asked her to come out. Once in the living room, her hands fluttered like birds; she seemed even more anxious. She turned toward him, her head down. “May I request your help, Master?”

  “Of course,” he said with concern. “You know I am yours.”

  Pita returned to her knees. “It’s not serious, Master,” she said, speaking clearly. “I am full of hormones and crazy energy. I feel scattered and self-absorbed.”

  Joe reached down to take her hands. As he straightened, she raised her head to look into his eyes for the first time since she knelt before him on the porch.

  “What do you want me to do?” he asked her.

  “If you would touch me with your whip, Sir…” She bowed her head again, and Joe nodded and kissed her forehead; he helped her to her feet, and they walked, he a step behind her with his palm placed lightly on the cool skin just at her waist, back onto the porch. There, she faced the corner post and took a deep breath.

  She snugged his cuffs at her wrists and ankles. He snapped a quick release link from the ceiling through the cuffs on her outstretched wrists, gently spread her ankles, and latched the left end of the lower chain through the “D” ring of her ankle cuff, and the other end of the chain through the right ring.

  He moved up her body. He designed the restraints so she would have maximum feel and a little control over the sensation she received. Small rings pierced through her nipples and each of her major labia; he hooked the small chain around the column at the height of her hips to the labial rings, and then the chain at chest height attached to the nipple rings. She became quiet, her eyes c
losed, head tilted back and her lips slightly parted. She waited patiently for what would be. She betrayed neither need nor desire to struggle.

  As he finished, he stood by her and bent to kiss her open mouth. His sex stirred. He gave her a sip of the water, and after he set it back on the table, picked up the whip.

  The leather lash whispered through the quiet air. Against her shoulders it made little sound. At first, each time it touched her, she softly cried out and her body writhed. His motion flowed as if choreographed, athletic and under control. He moved the lash gradually lower. Carefully watching each throw hit its target. Her bottom became lined with pink and then a series of crisscrossing welts lifted on her skin. He listened to her, and with each stroke, he scanned her body and face for signs of what she wanted and needed.

  Again and again, the whip hummed and cut through the air. After awhile, Pita no longer cried out but softly moaned and then became silent. She stopped writhing and seemed instead to push into the whip and against the nipple and labial clamps.

  A drop of spittle trickled from the corner of her mouth. His sex hardened with the energy he felt at owning her this way. His rhythm never varied, and he began to see small spots and streaks where blood had begun to seep on her shoulders and hips.

  He still observed her carefully and watched for the signs of what some call subspace, a trancelike euphoria where she would be incapable of good judgment while she floated on waves of sensation, like a hawk on high winds soaring and riding far above sparkling trees and grasses. Her head rolled in circles from shoulder to shoulder. From the first, subspace had been easily won, but still they cherished it.

  He allowed her to remain in the subspace she loved, a space free of the need to be locked into herself or her stresses, for as long as he felt he safely could.

  Then Joe changed his rhythms, interrupted throws, paused, and gave rapid, staccato flourishes until he saw he disrupted her stupor. “Pita,” he said, and stopped the whipping. “Pita,” he said again, louder.

  Now he moved quickly and loosened her fastenings. He began with her feet and ended with her hands, after turning her toward him and against his shoulder so that she would lean on him as he freed her.

  He carried her to the hammock, gave her water to drink, and unwrapped a large piece of the dark chocolate she loved. While she nibbled on it, he spread cool lotion on her welts and on abrasions from the whip. While he tended her, he noticed the morning birds seemed to sing louder. Late,r he would apply an antibacterial cream.

  For now, he reclined into the hammock and held her, her face against his throat, and she cried with the release of the emotions that had unsettled her. At first, Pita cried sporadically, then with a burst, she sobbed and settled to a low, soft keening. He held her and called her his good girl.

  After a time, she dozed. He found himself dozing, too, grateful his tired arm no longer needed to be under constant control. He visited the place inside where his own darkness often hid and decided it once again had retreated, perhaps into the forest across the field. He felt the muscles twitch in his triceps, and muscles rippled in her back as she, too, relaxed.

  He listened to the birds and thought “This is what a day should be” while the hammock barely moved. The sun climbed overhead, and he knew Pita awoke when he felt the touch of her fingers on his penis. He stirred at her attempts to arouse him and teased her: “What’s a fatalist like you doing in a nice hammock like this?”

  She became playful. “I’ve told you, my submission is what I am, Sir.” Her hand and fingertips brought him, quickly, to full erection. Her insistence worked magic, and his cock twitched on its own. She caressed him for a long time. Finally, she raised her head and asked: “Sir, will you come for me this beautiful morning?”

  “No, Pita,” Joe said, smiling at her. “Your submission is beautiful, and you, and your lust…but I’ll give you that some other day perhaps.”

  “It’s a long day, Sir,” she said, “and it will be what we make of it.” But her fingers slowed, and minutes later, he became aware of a soft breeze at his loins. He wondered whether her breath or a lost breeze found him.

  “I wonder,” she reflected quietly, “about Alexi’s new doctor boyfriend.”

  Her comments often sounded irrelevant. “Are you worried he won’t know what to do with her?” he guessed.

  “Oh, I still think she’ll be the dominant.” She paused, and then thought out loud. “I hope my sister finds someone who will fly a thousand miles to give her a pink rose.”

  She stopped abruptly. “Oh my,” Pita laughed, “I just remembered where I put my bracelet.” She started to get out of the hammock.

  He pulled her against him. “Sshhh,” he said. “You can get it later.” She curled into his side. He listened to her breathe as she slowly drifted to sleep. Her shoulders rose and fell in rhythm with the slight motion of the hammock.

  Joe watched where cottonwoods across the field at the edge of the woods shimmered in the sun. Beyond them, from a tall, shadowy oak, a hawk leapt forward and climbed to search for prey.

  He smiled as he recalled, as he did nearly every day, the woman who taught him to love, and he thought, too, about the woman sleeping on his shoulder who had brought him back to it.

  From the line of trees, a mockingbird began its list of songs. Joe knew the darkness deep in the woods and imagined gray shapes moving silently from shadow to shadow, the souls of wolves who once hunted these fields. He wondered what a wolf would do on such a beautiful morning.

  Touching Down

  What is desire?—

  The impulse to make someone else complete?

  That woman would set sodden straw on fire.

  —Theodore Roethke, “The Partner”

  “Touch yourself. Sit where you are, Pita, and lift your skirt.”

  “I’m in the front hall. Someone…”

  “Sit on the steps.”

  “The guy next door is paint...”

  “Pita, no one can see. Touch yourself.”

  “Yes, Sir.” He heard her sigh but ignored it.

  “You don’t have panties on, do you? Are you aroused?”

  “No, Sir. And no, I’m not.”

  “I want to tell you about your spanking bench… I finished it.”

  “Thank you… Sir, what is that?”

  “Yours is like a saw horse with leather cushions for the sides and top. The wood is cherry. There are shackles for your ankles and wrists and a collar.”

  For a second, he heard silence on the phone. “It sounds lovely, Sir. Will you punish me on it?”

  “Probably not. It’s for my pleasure, Pita, but I think you’ll like it.”

  “Why, Sir?”

  “If I bend you over it, you can be spanked. If you straddle it, I can have your bottom or pussy, or I can use your face.”

  “Sir…” She said nothing, but from her throat he heard her heat rising. “How does it...” She became quiet.

  “A dildo is harnessed to the top. I can put a butterfly against your clit, and you can mount the bench and lower yourself onto them. They both have remote controls.”

  “Yes, Sir…” Her voice fell nearly to a whisper. He smiled, thinking what her mind imagined.

  “Are you wet now?”

  “A little. Sir.”

  “Is your clit enjoying the spanking bench?”

  “Sir, could I come today?” Her breath became deeper, eager.

  “I thought you weren’t aroused,” he teased, and then spoke succinctly. “Am I your dominant, Pita?”

  “Yes, Sir, of course.”

  “Then I’ll decide if you need to come. Isn’t that the way it works?

  “For now, keep touching yourself.” His voice growled, but he smiled. Through his kitchen screen, he could hear crickets chirping and the motion of wind in maple and cottonwood leaves.

  “Thank you, Sir.”

  “Imagine you are in my house; the shirt I told you to wear is off. You have cuffs on your ankles and wrists, and the trai
ning collar is snug. You are being my good girl. You wear a butterfly and straddle the spanking bench, waiting, my pussy an inch above the dildo. Your hands rest on your thighs.”

  She hummed, “Yes, I await your pleasure.” He listened to her breathe.

  “I will use you, Pita. Someday soon. I promise.”

  “You know I want that, Sir.”

  “I’ll blindfold you and lock your ankles to the bench and your wrists together. I’ll have you lower yourself gently until pussy’s lips touch the dildo. You will move your ass forward and back, so the dildo just slips past your lips and begins to open you.

  “Are you still wet, Pita?”

  “Yesss. Sir.”

  “You will lower yourself slowly, dear one, onto the dildo, just an inch. Then rise up, and again down. Each time go deeper, until the dildo is buried and pussy is pressed against leather.” Her breathing followed the motion he imagined; she inhaled as he described the dildo sinking into her, and she exhaled as he told her it withdrew.

  “Umm,” she sighed.

  “Are you comfortable, Pita? Your hands are on the bench?”

  “Yes, Sir, for balance.”

  “I’ll put a line through the rings in your cuffs to a ceiling shackle. If you put your weight against the rope and hang from it, you can press yourself against the butterfly and the dildo.”

  He heard her moan, a little louder. He kept his eyes closed to imagine both the scene he described and the submissive on the other end of the phone as she touched herself.

  “Think of the touch of the floggers, Pita. Imagine the soft deerskin stroking your flesh, over your hips to your shoulders, and back down, caressing like warm night wind. I will heat your skin. The suede will pink your pale flesh quickly. And when I lash you hard, first your shoulders, then across your ass, you will begin to lean into the whips on each stroke.