by Blake, Laila
Smiling that knowing little smile, Paul shook his head. “That’s not quite what I said—that would be awfully grandiose of me. Particularly in regards to my own role in the experience.” Snorting a little, he reached up and reset his glasses in a way that always made him so gentle and thoughtful, all those little lines around his eyes still crinkled in a smile. “I just meant that these stimuli are powerful, for anyone but especially for people like us whose sexuality draws from them so much.”
I thought about this as I pushed a prawn tail around the plate with my fork. I tried to feel into myself, forging paths into these newfound countries that were blossoming out of my emotional landscape like snowdrops in spring.
“Tell me what it felt like for you,” he asked, his eyes focusing on me with that intensity I was beginning to associate with him. He just had a way of regarding me that seemed to blend out the rest of the world as though nothing else could be interesting enough to be worth interrupting his focus for. It made me shiver and blush, too. Holding his gaze was not the easiest thing to do, especially now that my mind had left the place where each word of his was a rule to live by, but I was practicing—several seconds each time.
“It was like... I was floating,” I tried, “like every care in the world had been taken from me. There was only one thing left.”
“What was that?”
I hesitated, then looked down at my food and shrugged. “You,” I all but whispered, then quickly shook my head. “I suppose not you specifically, just you—the person putting me into that state. All that mattered was... pleasing you, doing what you wanted me to do, making you happy.”
My face burning, I tried to turn back to my food but it was hard to swallow and I had to reach for my glass, doing my best to avoid his glance. Maybe I wasn’t quite as removed from him as I had thought, because once out of my mouth, I could hardly believe I had uttered all those words. Paul didn’t seem surprised, though. He just had that mild smile on his face and nodded.
“That’s why I brought you out of it,” he explained gently. Surprise must have registered on my face because he reached over and brushed a strand of hair behind my ear. “I was surprised you went down so hard. It’s not something most first-timers reach, especially since you hardly know me.”
I blushed and my mouth fell open but he quickly shook his head and corrected himself. “Oh, that’s nothing to be embarrassed about, it doesn’t say anything bad about you. I was merely surprised. Pleasantly surprised, Iris. But usually by the time a woman is so open and so vulnerable in front of me, I know more about her, her wishes, her limits, her fears. You said it, all that mattered was to make me happy. It’s a state in which you can be manipulated quite easily... and I wanted to make sure you got a break from it, got to reassess and talk about it.”
He was speaking for a long time and I admired him for the simple and casual way in which he discussed matters of such delicacy. Manipulation, sex, submission—it still made no rational sense in my head but my body was responding to him even then, even when he was just explaining the theory.
“Thank you,” I answered and reached for his hand. Smiling, he squeezed it and then turned it around until my palm faced the open air and he could trace the curved lines with his rough fingertips.
“Was it anything like what you expected?”
I thought about this and shrugged. “I really... really don’t know what I expected.” Like he, I had my eyes fixed on my palm and the casual, yet oddly deliberate motions of his fingers. It tickled only just enough to feel good. “But I couldn’t have expected this. Can I ask you something, too?”
“Of course, anything.”
“What’s it like for you?” I scratched my neck. It was still burning hot under my fingers. “I mean, if for me it’s all about surrender of the self, and pain and giving up power. What’s it like for you?”
Paul’s finger stilled. I could see that he was considering the question, that this time, he had to find the words to explain something inherently inexplicable.
“Firstly, it’s... not really a choice for me. I assume the same is true for you. I can rationally understand what submissives feel, why it gives them so much pleasure and I can see it in your eyes, in the way you move, in the tension of your muscles. So I know it works, but I could never feel it exactly the way you do. Similarly, you might not ever feel exactly what I’ll try to explain. It’s... I’m not a psychologist but I have come to believe that not unlike sexual orientation, there’s nothing I can do about what I need sexually, but of course I tried, especially when I was younger.
“I have never met a conscientious dominant who hasn’t gone through that phase of self-loathing and doubt, where you can hardly distinguish yourself from some common wife beater or rapist just because those images and fantasies resonate with you in a way you know they shouldn’t.”
I blinked and looked down at the table. My heart was racing and my fingers shook a little around the glass. “I kind of... I thought something was wrong with me, too.”
Paul squeezed my hand. “There’s nothing wrong with you Iris, nothing at all.”
“How... how did you stop feeling this way?” I asked.
Paul looked at his salad—he hadn’t eaten much of it, concentrating instead on the prawns, his Camembert and bread.
“You know this stuff was much more difficult before the Internet. Now that I’m older, I can usually feel my way through a conversation, get a feeling for a woman but back then I was pretty lost. I suppressed it for a long time. It didn’t turn me into a nice guy, believe me.” He looked down and an expression of pain crossed his face. He quickly recovered though. “I got a divorce and spent some time throwing myself into work. And then there was the Internet and a little later than most people I realized that with a few clicks there were hundreds of women interested in receiving exactly what I had always wanted to give. It was... like a fresh start.
“But you asked what it is like for me. It’s not easy to answer without a long story. In the beginning, there’s that undeniable rush of power. The very idea that a beautiful woman would lay down her individuality, her decisions, her basic human instincts to do what you say... it was addictive. Makes you feel so much larger than life, you know?”
I nodded although I didn’t. In a way, even listening to it froze a certain part of me that had been hot and throbbing only minutes before. And there it was again, that unsettlingly knowing smile.
“It didn’t last long,” he went on. “I was lucky. Some people get stuck in that phase, in the power rush. It makes a chill run down my spine now when I listen to them.” He shook his head but smiled at me, momentarily seeming to search for words. Finally, he threw up his shoulders and shook his head.
“I went back into another period of doubt. This craving for power had started to feel hollow, almost... boring if that makes any sense at all. I went to meetings, talked to other people, but that didn’t help. I’ve never been one to build my identity on my sexuality and I couldn’t really find anything in common with those who did. So I stopped, I moved here and thought I’d start a new—a different kind of life. I’d made some money with the scripts I’d written and I was tired of the lifestyle in LA.
“That was easy to quit, dominance wasn’t. It catches up with you when you least expect it. This time I went at it more carefully, slowly building on ideas I’d developed over the years.”
He stopped, rubbed the back of his neck and tried to smile at me. There was something impenetrable in his eyes and I looked away when it made me shiver.
“Anyway. I’m rambling, aren’t I? What it’s like for me is… intense. I’ve learned that while it may look like I have the power, that’s not really the truth. Or more accurately, it’s half true. Both open each other more deeply, right to that place that contains who you truly are. Showing that to someone makes you vulnerable—sub or dom, doesn’t matter. You know, when you kneel in front of me, there’s that tinge of humiliation, the knowledge that in any other situation it would
be degrading or laughable. And you trust me not to laugh or to degrade you. But it’s the same for the dominant. It’s all over if you laugh at his attempts to lead you.”
He reached over and tapped his finger against my nose. My eyes fell closed and I angled my face up to kiss his palm.
“Both have power, we just exercise it in different ways. You are powerful in the way you let me see you vulnerable, in living out a sense of weakness that couldn’t be further from most definitions of that word. Without your permission, I couldn’t do a thing of what I love to do. My power is in guiding you, both of us, in planning and watching and steering. But it’s too deeply entwined, you know? Once I started to see it that way, I didn’t know how to have regular sex anymore... it just felt like mutual masturbation without that sense of giving everything inside of you to the other’s needs.”
My tongue sneaked out to moisten my bottom lip. I hung at his words, letting them roll around my head, slowly testing and probing their worth. I wanted to think about them, wanted time and a piece of paper to write but I also wanted him to go on explaining.
Over his lap and in the bathroom, I had learned that indulging these fantasies did not have to feel degrading at all, didn’t have to feel like I was betraying my gender and the rights we fought for. Here at this table, I was learning about him and how he was dealing with those questions. His eyes, his mouth, his neck—my glance brushed over them all, their reactions, tension, release. He wasn’t nervous, but neither did it seem altogether easy to bare his mind like this. And I wanted to kiss him for it, for being who he was, for sharing it with me the way he did.
“When I spanked you, I did it because that’s what you wanted, craved. And because you did, your reactions coursed through me like wild fire. When you hurt, I hurt —and we both loved it. That’s why I went on and did it harder. Everything is shared this way, every sensation, every orgasm...”
“Yeah...” I whispered quickly, interrupting him when he inhaled.
He smiled at me and raised his brows. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Whatever had been closed behind his smile seemed to dissolve. Our hands found each other, and like the moon never turns her face away from the earth, our eyes were locked together, spiraling through space. It was the moment that decided so many future decisions but in that point in time, I was transfixed and dazed. We smiled at each other and for that fleeting moment, nothing else existed—not my job, not the interview, not his past or the pain he masked with layers of kindness and thoughtful words.
It couldn’t last. Moments like this, moments of softness and beauty are so much more volatile than any others. A robin on the windowsill, fluttering away before you can reach for a camera as a way to hold onto it, give it substance by recording it.
X
Paul looked away first. His chair screeched when he pushed it away and got to his feet. I closed my eyes, breathed shallow breath after breath. His naked feet smacked softly against the wooden floorboards; something jangled, like glass on glass: a bottle of Pinot Noir and two high-stemmed glasses. I crossed my naked legs when he returned to the table, piled his plate onto mine, the cutlery on top, ignored his gently reproachful glare while I cleared the space between us and distracted myself from watching the strength in his hands as he plucked the cork from the bottle with a soft plop and a sigh.
“Could you mix it with water for me?” I asked quietly. Paul looked up and nodded without judgment. He took the empty plates to the sink and poured tap water into the bulbous bottom of the glass. It still swished in a circular motion when he sat it in front of me and filled the remaining space with red liquid. It looked nothing like his drink: mine crystalline red, catching the light like a gemstone, his like viscous dark blood.
“Thank you,” I said, but he waved it away and raised his glass. Nothing had changed. Everything had changed.
The desire to gulp it all down like the first sip of water after hours of heat rose in my throat. My fingers played with the glass stem, I watched the wine color his lips and then I brought my glass to mine. The taste, diluted and softened, did not make my face twist into the displeasure alcohol could easily effect. I was distracted, nervous again after all these minutes of calm, of a center unlike any I’d found in my life before.
My sips grew larger, more frenzied and I only truly realized it when I let the empty glass sink back to the table. My head swam just a little and I didn’t check whether Paul thought me strange for it.
“Are you okay?” he asked. Predictably.
Not quite knowing what to say, I turned my eyes back to the glass. Down at the bottom rested a final drop of clear, pink liquid. I picked it up again, gently tilted the glass until the drop painted a thin, transparent line along its round walls. I wondered if I would always drink wine like this—not like a woman but like Italian children at dinner. I wondered what other sensations I routinely diluted—for safety or comfort or fear. Now, I could hardly see any red in that drop anymore. Unlike Paul’s pure color, this watered-down version did not have the power to stain anything. That felt important somehow.
“Iris?”
Finally, I looked up and nodded.
I was fine. His chair screeched across the floor again, but this time he dragged it closer to me until his knee touched mine. He didn’t have to pull me towards him when he put his arm around my shoulder—I leaned against him all by myself. Like gravity.
“A sudden sadness is not unusual,” he said so quietly, his breath stirring the little hairs in my ear. “It’s like coming down from a high, like after you take drugs.”
“I’ve never... done drugs,” I whispered with a little smile and he broke into a warm chuckle. It was a beautiful, rich sound—not loud but it seemed to fill the room into the last crevasse between the wood planks on the floor.
“Of course you haven’t,” he replied. His smile was still crinkling his face. “You’re a good girl, a very good girl.”
And apparently, an easy one. I exhaled a shallow breath at that simple pronouncement, angled my face up to look at him and my eyes couldn’t have left much to the imagination. I moistened my lips and left my mouth open just a fraction of an inch. We were so close, I could feel his warm breath on my face, but every minute that passed without him kissing me seemed to deflate me, my chest, and my stomach. I gulped and reached for his glass, but he stopped me with a warm hand on my wrist. His head moved from side to side once and that was all it took.
His eyes didn’t leave mine as he dipped his finger into the wine. Then he brought it to my face, gently brushed the liquid over my lips. I whimpered with the sensation that fell like a drop on a dry patch of earth, greedily soaking up every hint of what he gave me.
It was only after the first impression that a little of the taste leaked onto my tongue. This was not the diluted, softened version. It stung, harsh in taste and smell. With every second that it remained on my lips, I could feel the alcohol burning into my skin and finally, I sucked my lips into my mouth and licked it off. I felt heady and light as I watched him take a sip of his own. His hand cupped my cheek, held me there, suspended by his grasp—and finally his face came closer and closer, blocking out the light from the softly whirring bulb over our heads.
Even before his lips touched mine, our noses met and something inside of me melted, broke from its egg a fresh and tender hatchling.
He tasted like wine but on his lips the burning sensation seemed at home, a perfect complement, a natural pair: snow on a Douglas fir, edge on a razor. I almost choked when his lips opened to mine and he let wine trickle into my mouth. My eyes flew open but he held me steady.
Drink. Drink.
Our wine-soaked tongues moved against each other as I gulped the liquid down, down where it burned my body and set it on fire again. When we broke apart, he took another sip and this time, I knew what to expect—how his kisses came flavored in burning liquid and dizzying heights, pushed further with each sip we shared.
I hardly noticed when he reache
d into his pocket and pulled out an object—metallic and familiar in the corner of my eyes. Click. Silence. And suddenly I heard someone gasp and moan, a high-pitched fragile sound, birdlike, yet earthbound. They were my moans, crackling ever so slightly on the old tape recorder. While I listened, Paul filled up his glass again and I didn’t know if my head was pulsing and red-hot from the wine or from listening to the sounds of my own pleasure. Eventually, I grew louder; the sharp cracks of his large palm meeting my flesh made me jump even now, in their ghostly recorded image as wine ran down my chin and stained his white shirt red.
A certain hazy slant captured my mind. Images and sensations flooded past in rapid succession. One moment, I was in that chair, the next his fingers had slipped under my arse and he was lifting me bodily onto the table in front of him, opening my legs like the covers of a book ready to be devoured. We didn’t speak this time but he laid me back across the table. Breadcrumbs tickled my shoulder blades until, for the life of me, I couldn’t feel them anymore, washed away by his tongue lapping at my shores.
I was moaning in unison with my recorded self: she was getting louder and more desperate with each slap but I was soon rivaling her in abandon. His fingers slipped inside of me again, smoothed by my slick juices but still they were so clearly a man’s hands. A man of olden times before men exfoliated. They were hands from an age where men worked with their hands, strong, calloused and driven. They moved in and out of me, two strokes for each recorded slap, as though they were full-note bass beats and Paul was creating a half-note rhythm fluttering over them in and out of my moaning melody.
Something toppled off onto the floor but I hardly noticed. I was grappling at the wooden surface, at my breasts, at the open air—anything that I might hold on to as my body started to billow like a sheet in the wind.
“Please!” I spluttered, whimpered, pleaded for nothing in particular except for him not to stop. His tongue moved around my clit, around and around until all the wine and all the pleasure made it almost impossible to accurately distinguish the source of the sensations and my entire body felt wrapped up in the moment.