Tom hated the way that sounded, but understood the question and answered as best as he could to try and bring her thinking around to a different angle.
"Okay, let me explain that Samantha mostly likes to be in control of everything in her life. And for the duration she was with her boyfriend, he wanted her to be aggressive with him. He wanted her to be a dominant, but in reality he was controlling that, which caused a strange dynamic for her, I think. Like he wanted her to be in charge, but he was in charge of her being in charge … really weird, the way she explained it to me.
"Anyway, when she ended her relationship with him and asked me about being her club partner, she wanted to trade places - to see things from the other side, so to speak. With him she'd had to hit him and do to him the things he wanted her to do to him - all the while telling her she was in control - so weird, I find that. But she asked me if I would consider being a dominant, with her as my submissive. We had long talks about that one, I can tell you!
"But in the end we found our groove. So generally when we are at the club she goes into the role of being the person who just wants to be controlled - and with her that means she wants to be hurt.
"So yes, to answer your question, I do hit her … spank, slap, whip - whatever terminology you wish to use - with a few different things that she likes the feel of."
Alexis had been listening closely and was trying to get her head around what she was being told. Until now she had never heard of anyone doing the things that Lincoln had made her do to him. She had thought it wasn't a normal request, or a normal thing to deliver to others.
"But how do you feel when you hurt her like that, Tom? I used to feel sick sometimes…"
"Well I suppose everyone is different. Samantha asks me to use different things at different times - in that we agreed that she would have to tell me what she wanted me to use. I don't want to just try different things on her. It is her body after all that is on the receiving end of it. I think that might go against the traditional role of a dominant - to let her choose how things will go - but we don't care. So with us she sometimes gives me a new thing and asks me to use it on her, and if she likes the feeling of it I will keep using it. If she doesn't like the feeling - and there have been some things she has wanted to try but then did not want to try a second time - then we discard that and don't go back to it. But she seems to get a real sense of pleasure from the use of those things on her. I don't know think it is pain to her…"
"Have you been on the receiving end of the pain?"
"I have … only a little though. When she first took me to the club, part of the introduction was feeling a few different tools used on me. I didn't mind the small amount that I got that night, but I didn't feel any kind of pleasure from it either. I didn't feel any kind of need for it. But Samantha experiences it completely differently. She says it is just pleasure to her, and I believe her. I worried for a while that she was doing it because for whatever reason she might think that I wanted her to feel pleasure in it, but over time she has convinced me that it really is what she wants."
Alexis sat quiet again, processing all of the information that was being shared with her.
"Do you get…" she started to ask, and Tom saw her face blush slightly before she continued. "Do you get … aroused … from it? From hitting her?"
Tom laughed softly at her, feeling only a slight embarrassment at the question.
"If I answer that question, you have to promise not to tell Samantha, if you ever meet her!" he said and paused before speaking again. "When I was at the club for the introduction and I was experiencing being struck, I didn't, no. To me it really did just feel like I was being hit, and I couldn't enjoy that. Even now, being the one who delivers the pain to Samantha, and knowing how it affects her, I don't really understand the why or the how it somehow gets perceived as pleasure. But!
"When I am with Samantha and she is in full BDSM mode, I do get aroused from it, yes," he finished and looked at Alexis, wondering what she would make of him for admitting that.
"But you aren't … involved with each other?"
"No," he said, laughing slightly to cover his own confusion over that question. "I know, it probably sounds like a strange situation to be in. We are close friends, and we do this thing together, and I do get turned on by it … but we have never crossed that line."
"But she must know that you get aroused…"
Now Tom felt his face go deep red, but didn't mind the conversation. In fact he was finding it quite refreshing to be able to talk to someone about it.
"Oh yes, she has caught me out a few times when I couldn't hide it. But we find a way to laugh it off and keep our distance from each other sexually. It isn't that way for everyone in the club - there are nights when I wonder if I am not in the middle of one big orgy!" he said and laughed out loud, making Alexis smile. "But that isn't the focus for most people, I don't think. I expect some people go there and then do go home and … go at it … but then other people never go near sex in it at all. I think for some people it is all about control, and they don't associate it with sex in any way at all. Everyone is different, but at the club although there are very strict rules in place, to ensure everyone's safety, the people are nice and everyone is fairly relaxed about things too. We all respect each other, and the differences in what we like, and what we do."
Tom looked at her face and tried to read how she was feeling about everything he had told her. He found, though, that he had many questions emerging in him.
"But Alexis, did the person you were with make you do things to him?"
"Oh, I should have said no, Tom. But he didn't threaten me or do anything like that. At the time it felt like I had no choice but since I left I have finally been able to see that I always had a choice. I just couldn't see that when I was in the situation."
"What things did you do?"
Alexis looked at him and wondered how much she would want to mention. But at least the few things she had seen in his car, he would think were okay, so perhaps restricting the list to those would be okay.
"I used the same things that I saw in your car, plus a few different things. It seemed to be progressive, in terms of pain levels. Like he would find something and it would be exciting and arousing to him, and then one day it just wouldn't be enough, and he would have to go out and find something else … something more. It started to feel like there might be no end to it, and I became worried about the level of pain he was starting to seem to need. That is when I left."
"But you were partners - in a relationship?"
Alexis took a deep breath and wondered where she should stop talking. But it was so therapeutic, this openness. She had been open with Anthony, of course, but this was different because Tom lived the whole pain-giving thing in reality, so was opening her eyes to a different side of it, which she did need, to be able to put that whole chapter of her life behind her.
"Tom, the man I was with was married, and he would come and visit me a few times a week."
"Just for pain?"
"No, we were sexual as well. At the beginning it was all sexual - I think the reason he wanted to keep coming to see me was for sex. But then things started to change slowly, and toward the end he was … reaching his point of arousal … just from my delivery of pain to him, and I stopped being a sexual partner then, I think." Alexis paused and then spoke again, seeing Tom's intent attention on what she was saying. "I think at the end I wasn't a lover anymore. I was just a deliverer of pain. That was my role."
"So you ended it. Did he accept that?"
"No. Well, he hadn't a short time ago, anyway … he might have now. I hope he has. He isn't a bad person - for a while when I first got away I thought he was evil - like he had something dark inside of him - but I know now that this was never the case. We were just too … different."
Alexis stopped herself before she said too much. It felt so good talking about everything, but she did not want to keep talking about Lincoln - she didn't want
to risk mentioning his name.
Tom looked intently at her face, intrigued by the things they had talked about today. She was such a timid little thing in their workplace, he would never have guessed that she had such things in her past.
"Did you move on, Alexis? With someone new, I mean?"
"Yes! I am involved with someone, Tom. Anthony - he is wonderful. No pain in sight so far," she said, letting out a small laugh before she looked closely at him again. "It feels good to be able to talk like this, Tom. I felt so … oh, I don't even know really … just so different from everyone else, for so long. And Anthony has helped with that, but he hasn't lived some of the things that I've done. It feels good to be able to talk about this with you. Thank you."
Tom took note of his feelings. He hadn't known she had a boyfriend, although he had wondered about Lincoln Kokiri that day that he had walked into the supermarket. But obviously he wasn't her boyfriend.
In that moment Tom realised that he might have unconsciously been starting to have some design on her - perhaps unknowingly starting to assess her as a possible girlfriend. He shook his head to get that thinking out of his mind. Even if she hadn't been involved, he had never been involved with someone he worked with, and he didn't want to be. Generally he had always gotten on well with everyone he worked with - and he wanted it to stay that way.
"What was that thought that you just discarded?" she asked with a smile on her face, knowing that she did the same thing sometimes.
She saw him blush slightly and smile sheepishly at her.
"I was just thinking…" he started, trying to think of anything to say other than what he had been really thinking. "That you and Samantha would probably get on really well. Would you like to meet her? She could probably provide a different insight again, being a woman. And she has been on both sides of the pain thing."
Alexis was surprised … pleasantly so.
"Oh but Tom, should you have talked to me about her so much? Would it be better that she did not know…"
"No, Alexis. Samantha is the most open person I know. Honestly, she would tell the whole world private things if she thought everyone would listen. But I appreciate you considering that. I will talk to her about you, if you are okay with that?"
"Yes, of course. I don't have … I've never had … women as friends. It would be nice if I could get to know more people."
The two of them sat and looked at each other for a long time before turning to each look out over the water.
"But what of this 'Anthony', Alexis? Where is he and what does he do?"
It was an innocent question but immediately Alexis felt her nervousness kick in. She did not want anything about Anthony to get back to Lincoln. Perhaps Lincoln had left town and was back in Melbourne, quietly getting on with his life even as they sat here on the bench, but the risk was too great.
"He works in a supermarket too, but he doesn't live here so we only see each other every few weeks. It is slow, getting to know each other, but that is good for me I think. That previous person I was seeing … that whole scenario … really played with my head a lot. It has taken a while for me to start to relax and feel like it is okay to enjoy my life."
Alexis felt Tom look at her intently. She could almost see the curiosity oozing from him, but believed that she had gotten to know him at least enough to be certain that whatever he wanted to ask her, he would ask her.
"Of course it is okay to enjoy your life, Alexis. It is more than okay - it is your right to fully enjoy your life. And nobody should be trying to force you to not enjoy it - or even just imply to you that you shouldn't enjoy it. Life is short - it can be so very short for some people - you have to make the most of every day. Don't do the things you don't want to do," he said, making her thoughtful with his words.
He watched her face and to him it seemed like she was completely absorbing what he had said. Not only like she had never before thought about the simple things he was saying, but almost because she could not quite get her head around the concept of having full control of her life.
"Why do you think it was so easy for him - that man - to control you so easily, Alexis?"
Alexis took her time to consider the question, and found herself taken aback.
"I … hmm … Tom, I really don't know. I have never thought about that before," she said and paused before continuing. "It all happened so slowly at first, I suppose, so I didn't really consider the level of control he was having over me." Silence again. "But when I first met him I had it in my head that the only way that I could be happy with someone was if I was certain that what I was doing for them, truly was making them happy. So in a way I started everything that happened between us - the way that it happened - because I encouraged him to be forthcoming and simply tell me what he wanted from me, rather than leave it to me to try and guess or … perceive … what he wanted."
Tom listened to what she was saying and could sense in her a type of reluctance to believe that the things she had done - the things she said she had been encouraged to do to that man, whoever he was - might be solely things that the man had wanted, and she had not been responsible for the happenings at all.
"It sounds to me like you want to take all the blame…" he started to say and was quickly cut off by her speaking with an insistence in her voice.
"No, not at all. But I did start it, Tom. I didn't mean for it to go where it did - I didn't mean for him to go where he did - but it was me who initiated him having control over everything that happened between us. And I can see now that this was my mistake. Giving full control to another person was a mistake. I think that is why I cannot quite understand this BDSM thing you have talked about, and the idea that so many people like it. It isn't a small thing to hand control over to another person."
"But that is where some people perceive it to be the exact opposite of what it is. Some people think that the person delivering the pain - the dominant person standing up, leaning over their submissive - is the one in control, but in actual fact it is the other way around, and it is the submissive who controls, as they are the one who can simply say no."
"But what of all the things they have to put up with, before they say no, Tom? What if you didn't know what was too much, before it was done to you? It is all very well that you can then say no, but what if some damage was already done in that moment? That can't be undone, can it…"
Tom heard what she was saying and considered how differently she saw things that he had never even considered before. Now his mind was drifting back to Samantha. There had been things that they had done together that afterward she had said honestly and forcefully that she would not do again, and he of course respected that and never crossed a boundary of doing something she did not want. But Alexis was right in her thinking that in some ways it was too late if someone consented to something and then found out they didn't like it. That it was too painful to try again. That it was too painful to bear. There was no undoing the pain that was already delivered if it was then realized that it was too painful to keep going - but what of the pain that was already experienced by that person?
"Hmm," she heard him express with thoughtfulness in his voice, as he looked closely at her and then smiled softly. "Okay, now I really want you to meet Samantha. You can be my liaison, doing a check of whether she really does enjoy these things, or if she is doing it for the wrong reasons…"
Alexis laughed at him.
"Oh Tom! I am sure you know and accurately understand Samantha! You have known each other all of your lives so how could you not? No, don't let my situation flow into your thoughts about your own situation. They are not the same thing. The man that I talk about - he and I did not know each other before so we did not already know what each other was like or what we really wanted from each other," she said to him with more force than she intended, before continuing. "No, Tom, the thing you have with Samantha - however you want to describe it - that is based on a long term friendship so she knows that she does not have to do any of that
to keep you in her life. And she was the one who instigated it…"
"But so did you, you said…"
"Yes, but that is different. I instigated him guiding me in what he wanted, and when I did that I didn't even know he liked pain, let alone would want me to deliver it to him. I instigated giving him control, yes, but in your situation, Samantha is the one who instigated the pain aspect of your friendship."
Tom nodded at her and could see the difference as she explained it.
"Alright, I concede that you might be right there. But it would still be good to have someone neutral between me and Samantha, to tell me if she is not acting as she really wants to."
Alexis smiled at him, finding it increasingly interesting that her own story was having such an effect on him, since he was fully into this whole 'BDSM' thing that he kept speaking of, and she had never even known about it, let alone been interested in it.
"If you want me to meet Samantha, I will, gladly. But!" she said to him, smiling but making sure he knew she was serious in the sentence to follow. "If she tells me anything and specifically informs me that she does not want me to tell you about it, I will respect her wish and keep it to myself, no matter how much you try and get me to tell you about it."
Tom heard the words and felt them to be a condition - one that he was reluctant about but agreed to.
"Very well."
~~~~~
Two days later Tom approached her on her checkout counter when she was an hour from finishing for the day.
"Alexis, I am having dinner with Samantha at my house this evening. Would you like to come along with me and meet her?"
Alexis looked at him, silent for a long while, before answering.
"Does she know…"
He nodded at her.
"She knows that I have spoken to you about the things that we do, yes. I didn't want to tell her about your situation - I thought you should be the one to do that - but she knows that you are curious about the whole BDSM thing, in particular her experiences and thoughts about it."
Tom saw Alexis nod at him in understanding.
Darkness of Heart (Painful Deliverance Book 2) Page 8