by Jenna Barton
“Yes. Very curious.” The idea of Walt, doing things to me with his nails, teeth, and lips followed, making me shiver.
“Sensation play. Temperature.”
“Temperature?”
“Ice cubes, hot wax.”
“Oh,” I said, considering. “Yes. Curious. But not burning.”
“No, no burning.” He grinned and moved closer. I tried to adjust my position, but he shook his head and steadied my legs as they were, against his. “Sensation play with needles, hair pulling, suction, pinching.”
“Yes, very curious.”
Walt’s eyebrows rose a little. “Even needles?”
“I think so. But not those hooks.”
“That’s a different kind of play, and I don’t know how to do it.”
“Those yogis in India—”
Wincing, he threw up a hand. “Damn…no. Red.”
“Really?” I was suddenly fascinated. “You’ve done this—”
“Sadomasochism, Erin, not this,” he said, grinning.
“Sadomasochism. BDSM. You’ve done this for so long, I’m surprised.”
“Sweetheart, everybody’s got limits. That’s one of mine. Don’t want to see it, think about it, or especially do it. And I damn sure don’t want to see my girl’s skin all pulled out—” He made a particularly revolted grimace. We laughed together for a moment until what he said came clear.
“Your girl?”
“Yeah. My girl.”
“Oh…” Unable to look from him, I twisted my fingers together.
“Don’t,” he said, separating my hands and returning them to my knees. “Sensation play, clamps on nipples?”
“Yes. Very curious,” I said—very agreeably.
“Oh, I see. Very curious. Gonna have to remember that.” He chuckled until he caught sight of my hands creeping from my knees. Then his eyebrow quirked. “Put your hands back on your knees, Erin.”
Suddenly my perception of and participation in the conversation shifted. Oh…
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, clutching my knees, my teeth nearly chattering at the tickling flush soaking the muscle and bone in my shoulders.
“No need to be sorry, you’re doing good. Now turn your hands over, palms up.”
I opened my hands, flexing them at the tension hemmed into my fingers.
“I just asked you about nipple clamps, didn’t I?” I hummed my response to him, nodding. “I thought so. Sensation play, clamps on pussy?”
My knees twitched, and I pressed them into the pine needles under me. “You mean down—”
“I mean clamps on your clit and your lips.” Again, my knees rose and Walt’s hands covered them, solid but gentle. His voice dropped, so quiet I could have missed it had I not been bound to every sound he made. “Don’t move, Erin. Are you curious about clamps on your pussy? Keeping you open and holding you still for me?”
“Yes.” The memory of my surprising realization in the shower came into focus. “I had this fantasy…”
“And I put clamps on your pussy, didn’t I?”
I nodded, my breath-sounds swelling in my ears. “Well, just one.”
Walt’s hands brushed over mine, settling beside them on my thighs. “Just one? I guess that would be enough if I wanted to keep a little pressure on your clit, remind you how swollen I made it.”
“Yes.” The weight of his hands never wavered, but my legs were slowly heating under them, curling the muscles taut, coaxing my knees to rise and grind together at the warmth building between them. Quickly, I pushed them back to the earth under me. Walt chuckled at me and I squirmed again as the vibrations of his laugh settled, stoking the ache.
“Bet it would keep you still too. What about impact?”
“Impact? Like hitting?”
“Well, I know you like your ass spanked. You looked pretty interested in that leather paddle of Tate’s last night.”
“I was,” I said. I should have been struggling with myself, given the subject matter, forcing my eyes to stay open and focused on him. But staying with Walt, waiting and watching as he questioned me was the simplest, hardest thing I’d experienced. Being this open to him was so surprisingly easy, even as he lead me further into uncharted territory. “Yes, very curious.”
“What else?”
“Floggers, those big ones of yours?”
“Really?” He looked pleasantly surprised and my pulse tumbled over itself. I’ve pleased him. “We can do that.”
“And crops. Canes. And um…a belt.” My eyes flitted to his waist. He was, sadly, missing one.
Walt leaned forward. “Not today, sweetheart.” His palms lifted away, leaving his fingertips brushing along my thighs. I watched as he scaled higher but too late took notice of my shorts, bunched toward my hips. “Stay still.”
Yes, Sir.
He shifted again, stretching my legs past his hips. “What about orgasm?”
I blinked stupidly at him. “I’m all for them?”
“Yeah, I do know that about you.” He tugged my panties away, and suddenly his fingers were inside, twin points stroking over the tight, wet skin under them. “What if I told you no, you weren’t allowed to come?”
He feathered his fingertips over me, drew me open with his palms. Gasping out his name, I clenched my knees. He stopped, though his hands didn’t draw away.
“Erin, I told you not to move.” Before I could open my mouth to apologize, he said, “Don’t say you’re sorry. Just don’t do it again. All right?”
“Mmm…okay.”
His fingers went to work again, teasing, dragging and circling, so maddeningly slow. “Answer the question.”
“I’d hate it.”
“You’d hate it if I teased you like this,” he said as he stroked the slick channels around my clitoris, something he’d discovered sent me whining the first time we were together. “And made you walk back to the truck. Wet. Needing to come so bad.”
“Oh God, Walt…”
“Don’t.” One blunt-tipped finger pushed, dipping inside me. “Look at me, Erin.”
My breath rattled out in short gasps. I whined again, driving my palms hard into the ground. “I’m not looking anywhere else.”
Another finger dodged inside me and still that fingertip stroking, edging around the throbbing nerves, lulling me, deeper and dazed over him.
“You want me to decide?”
I nodded, so much my wobbly glasses slid down the bridge of my nose. I gritted my teeth against the urge to right them, a motion more reflex than intention, I did it so often. I fought and kept my gaze on Walt.
“You look so beautiful right now.” A momentary need to comment, maybe demur, or convince him otherwise fizzled with the thrust of his fingers. Harder. Deeper. I listed forward, nearly toppling into his chest, and Walt leaned closer, circling my hips between his strong thighs, his calves supporting my back. “Got you,” he whispered.
“Okay.” My nails bit into the pine needles and bits of gritty leaves under them. I held on. I stayed with him, still watching him, watching what he was doing to me.
“You want to come?”
“Yes,” I said, so desperate and so elated, breathy and pleading, I shook at the sound of my own voice. “Walt, yes, please.”
“Ask me.”
“Walt, may I come?”
His hands stilled, and somehow I understood I should as well. Dangling, so close. “Who’s in control, Erin?”
“You.” I rushed to say it, smiling and certain I’d produced the right answer.
“No, baby. You are. You’re the one giving me everything, letting me see you like this, with your hair all fallin’ down crazy, and your glasses barely hanging on your nose.” He smiled at me with something so close to adoration, I froze. The connection between us wasn’t merely an open path, it blazed, a shimmering current snaring me and holding me so close, I almost felt truly blinded by it. “You’re putting everything right here in the palm of my hand. You’re submitting to me, but you’re the on
e giving me control.”
Submitting. This was submission. Not taking, but giving.
“Do you want it?” For a beat, he stayed quiet, his face full of placid fascination, watching as I struggled to stay still under his hands. And finally, I nearly keened out his name, so close to coming around his fingers merely from the warm fullness of them inside me. I would have given him any tangible thing to prove to him I was his to do with as he pleased. Like this, I was all I had to offer to him. My voice was a trembling, ragged whisper. “S—W-Walt, do you want me?”
“Yeah, Erin. I do. All of you. Now, you come for me.”
And as he told me to, I was. His fingers twisted inside me, touching new nerves, and he pressed further, tugging my clitoris gently between his finger and thumb. Wailing, my eyes clenched shut as another, nearly unbearable wave turned me rigid and called my hips to bear down at it. My nose filled with the sharp scent of my body, mingling with the earthy tang of pine needles, and then the safe, familiar smell of Walt’s skin.
Overhead, out there in the tree canopy a bird screamed, a counterpoint to my hard pants.
“Shhh…just an old crow. Give me one more, sweetheart.”
I did, nearly sobbing over it, and clenched his forearms as it became too much.
His arms were around me. My legs were around him. And he was hard, pressing against me, making me tremble for him again. I reached for the waistband of his shorts.
He caught my hand. “It’s okay—”
“No, please? I need to, Walt…please?” Scrambling to wobbly thighs, I knelt in front of him, fingers hovering and waiting to take him in my hands. “Please?”
Please, Sir?
His eyes bounced to his lap, then back to me. “All right,” he muttered. Finally, his smile came, turning the tension and fear of asking for him to heated flirtation. Walt leaned back on his elbows. “I should make you ask me outright instead of talkin’ around the subject of my cock in your mouth.”
“I can’t be perfect the first time.” I giggled, punch-drunk, as I hovered over him, ready to slide him across my lips.
“Damn near close.”
Later, I sat back on my heels, lips still buzzing with the feel of him skimming across them again and again, and the musky taste of him on my tongue. “So?”
“Okay,” he said finally, pushing himself up to me.
“Okay?”
“What Claire can’t teach you, I will.” His fingers trailed over my lip as they passed, moving down the length of my neck until they came, gently, to rest at the base of my throat. “We’ll get started next weekend.”
Chapter Twelve
Play
The first time you encounter an item purposefully constructed for consensual BDSM play you might marvel at the idea anyone could call “that” a toy. Our toy boxes hold everything from the softest feathers to heavy braided leather floggers, silk scarves and electrical stimulation devices, not to mention the expected whips and chains. And some of the items you find would look suspiciously like something you’d find in the kitchen or home improvement aisles at your favorite big-box store.
Since they included me in their circle of intimate friends, I’d heard Walt, Claire, and Lucy mention visiting “Home D-Perv,” and of course I’d visited Kinky Outfitters that first night with Walt. Lucy’s kitchen was commonly referred to as the kinky kitchen, though she claimed to rarely use the space for cooking. Tate had apparently fitted the long butcher’s block island he built for her with hidden eyebolts, whatever those were.
If you’ve never seen some of the toys we play with, I suggest you make yourself familiar with them. Someday a nice Dom/me might want to use one of them on you. For your safety and education, I’d recommend browsing a few online stores so you can look as long as you need to at large range of what you might find in a Dom/me’s toybag.
Reaching past Claire’s notebook, I found my glass of iced tea. How did Walt just know the right factors of tea bags, sugar, and ice? How was he good at so many unexpected, under-appreciated things?
What looks interesting to you? What have you seen before? What is completely new and intriguing and what is new and terrifying? It’s okay to think some of these out-of-the-ordinary gadgets are frightening. Some of them, in fact, are meant to scare you. If you need and want that as part of your submission, great. Just know you don’t have to like everything on offer out there.
There is no single definition of what a submissive is or of what she or he must enjoy. This investigation will eventually lead you, as an educated submissive, to understanding your limits. You’ll know where you absolutely won’t go, what you might consider, what you have to try immediately once you find a compatible and sane Dom/me to help you give them a whirl, and you’ll even find a few things you think look like a bore. However, you need to know, before you enter into even discussing a BDSM relationship of any kind, just what you will not do and what is negotiable. These are called your hard and soft limits, and I feel it’s imperative they are ingrained in you before you look for that first partner.
It is important that you’re not so infatuated with the idea of finally being able to play with one of these interesting species we call Dominants that you’ll be willing to do anything just so you can get to the fun parts! Don’t. I’ve done it, have seen other subs do it.
Once again, as I say in every part of this workbook—it is your responsibility to take care of yourself. Any variety of submission to a Dominant does not give you a free pass from self-awareness, self-esteem, and self-nurture. And never, ever forget, aftercare is a Dom/me’s responsibility. If a Dominant leaves you after a scene without any attention to your body, if they don’t check in with you the next day regarding your physical and mental state, never give them that control over you again. They aren’t worth it, and they are unsafe.
Sensory exploration
How would a scene involving the most intriguing thing you saw during your online shopping trip appear? Would your Dom/me be gentle, hard, connected to you, demanding, quiet, spinning a web of taunts, encouraging you to go further toward your limits? Try to imagine the kind of aftercare your body might need after using this toy.
Aftercare, so far, meant nothing more than orgasm-induced sleep, curled into Walt’s shoulder, with his breath rustling my hair. Care meant I might need more than a nap or a few extra kisses. It meant the possibility of hurt and not of the variety that left memory-raising marks on my skin.
Condensation rolled from the lip of my glass, landing on my wrist. Shivering at it, I set my tea and Claire’s notebook aside.
Down the narrow hallway that ran the length of my house, Walt was drilling…something. With a drill. He explained it all, and I had agreed to this drilling and installing of whatever it was over my bedroom door. Walt said things about headers and hard points and load bearing walls, and I just beamed up at him as we walked through Home Outfitters because after we were finished buying this thing called an eyebolt, there would be dinner. And then I would come home by myself, take off my clothes, and sit on my knees, waiting. For him.
After another week, and forced to fit it around another wave of patches to the data center operating system for me and two off-hours calls back to Poplar Branch for Walt, we finally sat down and talked about what the people at the Enclave called “playing”—doing an actual, formal scene—and about Walt and me, as Dominant and submissive.
I wanted him to tip me over into this deep end, finally, and let me go under a few times. We compromised. Agreed to sensory play, possibly another spanking, a deerskin flogger. More, if he felt I was ready. Lightly. But Walt’s past was worth respect, as was my inexperience and my upcoming week-long trip back to Main House for project meetings and a wrap-up with my management prep group. So, all things considered, compromise was the word for us.
And Sir. This time, Sir and his girl.
They were simple, commonplace, one-syllable words but meant so much more to me. It felt different. Already, just the notion of truly, intentionally le
tting go, giving up, being his to control, made me feel different about this world I’d wondered about for so long. It wasn’t merely what he might do to me, and I wanted him to be much harder with me than he seemed to feel comfortable about. It was because what would happen was between us, and how I was coming to see him. He was more than the promise of kinky sex and the exploration of my masochistic tendencies.
“All right,” he said, ducking through the passage into the living room. “We’re squared away. What are you up to, there?”
“Oh, ruminating. My favorite hobby.”
He grinned, leaning down to me for a kiss. “How ’bout a new hobby?” He touched my lips with his. Once, then again. I giggled silently against his mouth. “Something involving less worrying and more of that.”
I inhaled and smiled up toward him. “Okay.”
We met at Trattoria Stella. Somehow the restaurant had become ours in four visits. Our place. The genial and perfectly stereotypical Italian owner—Isolde, who insisted on dubbing herself our Fairy God-Nonni—adopted us as her project, introducing us to her secret off-menu specialties. I said she paid attention to us because of Walt’s smile. He disagreed, said it was because of how we looked at each other.
“Later,” he whispered into my ear as his finger brushed against my neck.
The restaurant was dim, warmed with candles and the tiny lights strung above us. Nonni Isolde sat us in an alcove away from the main dining area, almost as if she knew something closer, more intimate was happening between us. And anyway, it was okay to shiver and let my cheeks heat over Walt. No one here would miss the obviousness of his affection, but no one would question it, either.
I glanced at my hands in my lap, let my eyes close at the heat from his finger and the chill cresting over me, bathing my skin and bone with my response to him. My lips parted, breath falling deep into my abdomen, and I heard him inhale similarly. We were quiet for a matter of seconds, connected by the rise and fall of our bodies taking in the air between us, then exhaled together, ragged…ready.
“Damn,” he muttered.
After a meal of my favorite chicken piccata, we took my chocolate espresso cake and his budino to go. Separate cars, so I could drive home alone and have a few minutes to myself. To prepare for him.