by Loris James
If only she knows what an effect she is having on me.
Each day I grow more in love with her. My love for her is becoming like a bottomless abyss into which I am sinking deeper and deeper. There is nothing now that can save me or make me turn back.
My body is on fire with desire for her. Every fibre of my being yearns for her touch. I am masturbating more and more to relieve the physical tension, but it does not appease the desperate emotional longing and the overwhelming desire to possess her body and soul.
“Saskia,” I murmur as I fall asleep.
This afternoon we took a blanket into the garden and picnicked near the Venus statue. I picked wild flowers and tossed them into her lap and she weaved them into a crown and placed them on my head. “Now you truly look like a Greek god descended from the heavens to corrupt women, she said, touching my cheek. “You remind me of a youthful Adonis, god of beauty and love, and perhaps the most complex of the gods.”
Suddenly she looked at me so strangely that my senses heightened and passion swept over me like a blazing fire. For a moment I lost control of myself and I threw my arms around her and kissed her passionately on the mouth for the first time and she drew me close to her heaving breasts.
We lay there panting, I smothered her body with mine on the blanket, hardly daring to breathe for fear that she would push me away. I was sure that she could feel my erection against her thigh. Finally she moved and cradled me in her arms and drew my head down onto her breast.
“Are you angry?” I asked, not daring to look at her.
“I am never angry at anything that is natural,” she replied. “Are you really suffering?”
“Yes. I love you, Saskia. With all my heart.” My lips moved against the fabric of her dress that concealed her breasts. I longed to rip that fabric away and take her breasts in my hands and drown myself in them…
“Poor boy!” she brushed my hair tenderly back from my forehead. “Are you finding it difficult to cope with your promise of abstinence?””
“Yes,” I replied, my voice muffled against her breast. “My love for you is becoming a sort of madness. The thought that I might lose you has begun to torment me every moment of the day and night.”
“But you don’t possess me, Julian,” she chided, “at least, not yet. So there is nothing to lose. Except, perhaps, a good friend.” She looked at me with a deep, consuming expression that overwhelmed my senses. Then she pushed me away and sat up, dusting bits of grass off her dress.
I sat up and put my arm around her.
“I can’t live without you a moment longer,” I said wretchedly. “I feel as though I am drowning, as though I know in my innermost soul that my future is in your hands, that my life must be inseparably intertwined with yours. If you leave me, I shall go to pieces.”
She took hold of my chin. “Oh you foolish boy! You foolish, romantic, beautiful boy! I warn you - don’t abandon yourself too absolutely to me, I may just become conceited and begin to take advantage of it and treat you badly.”
“I don’t care!” I said, swept along on the tide of overwhelming emotion. “I don’t care if you are conceited or arrogant, or harsh with me. Only be mine – forever!” My voice quivered and I could feel my eyes well up with tears.
“Things will end badly for you, my young friend,” she warned softly, without moving away from me.
“I don’t want it to end!” I said violently. “If you won’t be mine, all mine for always, then let me be yours. Let me serve you. Let me be your slave and serve you and suffer everything from you - just to be near you!”
“Calm yourself, Julian” she said soothingly. She laid her hands on my shoulders and gently pushed me back onto the blanket. Then she bent down over me and tenderly kissed my forehead, “I am really very fond of you, sweet boy, but this is not the way to win my heart and hold onto me.”
“I will do anything and absolutely everything that you want from me! Just don’t send me away,” I said feverishly, “I cannot bear the thought of losing you.”
“Do sit up,” she said, and moved away from me. “You’re such a strange young man. First you want to marry me, now you want to serve me. What am I to make of all this?”
“I’ll be anything you want me to be,” I said dully. “Just don’t leave me.”
She regarded me with curiosity. “So you wish to possess me - at any price?”
“At any price,” I agreed, dry-mouthed.
There was a lurking, strange expression in her eyes—“What if I did not love you? What if I loved another? Would you still want to be with me at any price?”
A shudder ran through me. The thought of her being with another man repulsed and frightened me.
I looked at her. There was a cold gleam in her eyes. But in an instant a beautiful smile suddenly illuminated her face. “You see, the very thought of it frightens you.”
“Yes, it fills me with horror to think that you could give yourself to someone else,” I said slowly, painfully. “But do I have a choice? I have fallen in love with you, Saskia. I will continue to love you - even if it drives me to madness. If you cannot or will not love me in return, then I would rather subjugate myself to you - even if you treat me badly and without pity. If I can’t enjoy the happiness of your love, fully and wholly, then I would rather live with pain and torment with you, than live without you. I don’t care if you maltreat or betray me – as long as you don’t send me away.”
“Have you lost your mind?” she said, clearly taken aback.
“I have come to love you with all my soul, Saskia. With all my senses and with my whole being. I can’t go back to the way I was before I met you. Do with me what you will, make me your husband or your lover or your slave. I offer myself to you completely!”
“Very well,” she said at last, thoughtfully, “it might be rather entertaining to have a young man who interests me and loves me, completely in my power. You say you will be subservient to me? Humiliate yourself for me? Very well then, you shall be my slave. I shall make you my plaything!”
I shuddered - enraptured and comforted, yet strangely frightened. I had planted an idea in her head and it had taken hold in her.
“I suppose love is part hate and part fear,” she said thoughtfully. “No relationship is ever completely equal. In every relationship one is the hammer and the other the anvil.
“I will be your anvil and I will adore you.”
“Even if I am cruel towards you?”
I nodded. “Even if you treat me unkindly.”
“But, Julian,” she replied almost angrily, “do you honestly think I am capable of abusing a man who says he loves me as much as you do?”
“Why not? Love me and I will adore and worship you. Abuse me and I will still love and worship you. Nothing you can do to me will drive me away from you.”
“It’s almost as if you want me to treat you badly,” she said. “It looks as though you are excited by the idea of being maltreated by me. Does the thought excite you?”
My mouth was suddenly dry. “Yes,” I said softly. “It may sound strange to you, but the thought of suffering at your hands arouses and excites me immeasurably.”
“Perhaps not so strange. Don’t sexual love and cruelty go hand in hand?”
“Yes,” I replied softly. “I feel that most keenly.”
“Are you submissive by nature?”
“I appreciate martyrdom,” I said slowly. My voice sounded strange to my ears. “Throughout history, weren’t martyrs gentle and sensual by nature?”
She frowned. “Martyrs?”
“Martyrs are sensual men by nature, they find enjoyment in suffering. Throughout history martyrs have sought out the most horrific tortures, even death itself, just as others would seek out joy and pleasure. There is a deep and profound sexual pleasure in pain.”
“It sounds as if you have experienced it.”
I nodded. “Yes, I have.”
“So you want to become a martyr to love? To submit yourself to a
cruel and heartless woman?”
“Yes,” I said softy. “That is my fantasy.”
Chapter Nine
“I want to put myself absolutely at your mercy for good or evil without any condition, without any limit to your power.”- Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
We walked back to the hotel in silence. As we walked, she took my hand but did not speak. She seemed deep in thought.
When we got back we went up to her room and then out onto her balcony. The evening was fragrant and surprisingly warm and we sat in silence, listening to the crickets and an owl hooting in the forest in the distance. The sky was clear as the last daylight faded away and the vaulted heavens above became sown with innumerable stars.
“Tell me about yourself,” she said suddenly, her voice as soft and as mellow as the cool evening. Who was the first woman you ever loved?”
I laughed. “The first woman I ever loved was a stone statue. As a boy I was very shy around women. I think I was afraid of them. My father had a full-sized marble statue of Venus in his study and I used to sneak in there late at night and kneel before her as though she were a goddess.”
“Ah,” she said, nodding. “That explains your preoccupation with Venus.”
“Yes. She was my goddess and my friend. Sometimes I would leave my bed and visit her in the dark. Moonlight through the open window would bathe the goddess in a pale-blue cold light and I would kneel before her and kiss her cold feet and say my prayers. As I grew older an irresistible yearning began to take hold of me. After kneeling at her feet I would get up and embrace the beautiful cold body and kiss the stony unyielding lips. And I would go back to my bed, overwhelmed with longing.” And masturbate, I thought, but did not say it aloud.
“Poor lonely boy,” she murmured and took my hand. “How did it end?”
“My stepmother didn’t like the statue. When she married my father it was one of the first things she got rid of.”
“So you lost your first love.”
“Yes, I lost her.
“Tell me about your stepmother. Tell me about your childhood.”
I hesitated, then said carefully, “My mother died when I was young. My father was always away on business, so I was alone most of the time. My father remarried when I was nine, to a woman younger than himself.”
“Was she nice, your stepmother?”
“She was a bitch from hell,” I said softly. “After his marriage, I was left in the care of my stepmother most of the time. I grew to despise and fear her.
“What was your first sexual experience with a woman?”
I sat for a long time saying nothing and just stared introspectively into the dark night. There were secrets that I kept locked away inside me, secrets that I rarely allowed myself to think about, let alone discuss with anyone else. What had happened was in the past, but the memories still had a profound power to haunt me; to wake me from a deep sleep in a cold sweat, to make my body tremble uncontrollably for no apparent reason.
Saskia squeezed my hand. “Did you have such an unhappy childhood?”
I shrugged. “It’s not something I ever talk about. I will tell you about one sexual experience I had as a boy. I was about thirteen when I was sitting at my desk in my bedroom one day, studying. My cousin, who was about 19 at the time and was visiting, suddenly came into my room uninvited and bent down over me and kissed me. She had unbuttoned the top buttons of her blouse and I could see her breasts. The kiss ran through me like a wildfire but I ran from the room, startled. I often thought of her after that in my bed alone at night, and I used to masturbate to the memory of her naked breasts pressed against me.”
Saskia laughed. “Was that the sum of your sexual adventures as a youth?”
The sum of my sexual ‘adventures’ as a child? I thought bitterly. That wasn’t even the tip of the iceberg. How could I ever tell this woman – or anyone else for that matter – about what I was subjected to as a child?
I shuddered violently suddenly.
“Are you cold? Do you want to go inside? Saskia said.
“No. I’m fine.”
“Tell me more.”
“Well, there was another incident around that time,” I recounted slowly. “I was about fourteen. My stepmother’s older sister, Aunt Sophia, sometimes visited when my father was away. She was a handsome, aloof woman with a haughty bearing - very austere and serious and unsmiling – I was afraid of her. She did not like me and my behavior toward her was sometimes rude and even a little malicious.
“One day she visited while my father was away on one of his business trips and my step aunt decided to teach me a lesson for being rude and insolent. One evening, after I had gone to be, she entered my bedroom unexpectedly. She was wearing a long fur coat and my stepmother, and my young cousin whom I had scorned, were with her. Without a word, they pulled me from my bed and tied my hands and feet with some sort of nylon cord, despite my resisting.
“I had been sleeping in my underpants and a vest and my stepmother tore them from my body so that I stood before the three women absolutely naked. I felt humiliated and afraid. Then they pushed me face down on my bed and Aunt Sophia, with an evil smile, rolled up her sleeves and prepared to punish me. My cousin handed her a riding crop and she began to whip my naked buttocks with the switch. I was terrified. I cried out and wept and begged her to stop but she carried on until she was spent, leaving me bruised and in terrible pain. Finally they untied me and then Aunt Sophia made me get down on my knees in front of her and thank her for my punishment. When I stood up I was ashamed to see that I had a huge, uncontrollable erection. She looked down at my swollen penis and gave me a knowing smile. Without another word she left the room and the other two women followed her. I was alone with my pain and my shame and the confusion at my sexual desire. The pain seemed to arouse me even further and I masturbated immediately and came with a tumultuous roar of sexual gratification. This left me feeling even more confused and bewildered.”
“Poor boy,” Saskia said, stroking my hand. “Now I am beginning to understand your obsession with Venus and domineering women in fur coats. What a coincidence that I enjoy wearing my sable coat – even though it’s politically incorrect. I just love the luxury of fur.” She laughed softly.
I nodded. “Being naked and vulnerable and mercilessly beaten by a powerful woman first made me aware of the sexual pleasure of being stimulated and aroused by pain at the hands of a dominant woman. In her full-length fur coat my aunt was a cruel and wrathful dominatrix, and from then on she became the most desirable woman on God’s earth to me. In my imagination the sensual sexual stimulus of pleasure and pain became entwined and a sort of a sacred cult. I found myself fantasizing about it more and more.” I was no longer aroused by a stone cold statue – the memory of my aunt’s angry, wrathful face as she meted out her punishment, drove me to indescribable orgasms alone in my bed at night.
“Did you try to pursue a relationship with your step aunt?” Saskia said perceptively.
“At the age of 17 I went to university in the city where Aunt Sophia lived. I studied English literature and kept very much to myself. I had no friends and read countless books and I could not stop thinking of what had happened that night when my aunt had lashed me and then made me kneel before her submissively, thanking her for my pain and punishment. I found the memory thrilling and exciting and sexually arousing. I imagined Aunt Sophia lying naked on a bed of roses, surrounded by dancing cupids.”
“What a vivid imagination you have!”
“One Saturday morning, I went to see my aunt at her house. She received me in a cordial manner and gave me a light kiss on my cheek in greeting which immediately put all my senses in turmoil. She was in her forties and, like most well-preserved women, she was still very attractive. I had not seen her in two or three years and I kept staring at her hands. They were strong and broad - almost coarse. They were hands that were capable of meting out excruciating, exquisite pain. I adored those hands.”
“And you became
lovers?” she surmised.
“In our own way, I suppose you could say we became lovers,” I said softly. “My sexual appetite was insatiable. In our ‘relationship’ I was submissive and she was dominant. I longed to be sexually aroused by her cruelty. We became… intimately involved. We fell into sexual role playing.”
“What kind of role playing?” Saskia asked. Her lips were slightly parted and she ran her tongue over them and was breathing heavily. I could see she was excited.
Oh my love, we could scale to dizzy heights of pain and passion. If only you would allow it!
I shrugged. “Sex games. She was the dominatrix and I was the submissive. She allowed me to visit her once a week at a specified time to receive my punishment. I was not allowed to be one minute early or one minute late. If I was not exactly on time I would be beaten later on. I was allowed to ring the doorbell only once and to wait until she appeared. If I rang the bell more than once I would be severely punished. She demanded total submission. Sometimes she would make me wait at the door for an hour or more.”
“Like a dutiful slave?” Saskia said.
“Yes, I was a dutiful and willing submissive.”
I made the mistake of ringing Aunt Sophia’s doorbell twice when she had specifically instructed me to ring it once only, and wait. She was angry when she opened the door. She stood there, glaring at me. When I began to apologize she placed a finger on my lips, indicating that I should be quiet. I was not allowed to speak. I was not allowed to speak unless spoken to – that was the first rule of submission I ever learnt.
There were many other rules. And if I did not agree to them she told me that she would not see me again.
And so on that first afternoon when she closed the door behind me and led me into her small sitting room, she said, “You should not have rung the doorbell more than once, Julian. I did not command you to do that – I said ring it once only.”