Choking Jennifer

Somewhere in the stratosphere she is falling towards me from eight miles high. More like six, but I like the poetry.   Plunging through the early night, falling like a rock to just a quarter mile above.  The board flashes “On time” and she is eighteen minutes out.  I know roughly where she is; it is odd to think both how far she is from me and how close.  Making her final big turn east over Martinsburg, control transferred to DCA Approach.  She is closer to my home in the mountains, sixty miles from the Capital than she is to me now, and the Boeing Jet is leveling out from its long turn to twist along the Potomac River towards Washington. 

I take a drink to steady my nerves. I would like to say I am terrified.  I have done a lot of reading.  I know the safety rules.  I have a lot of practical experience, but this is something above and beyond.  If I let myself dwell on it, I suppose it would scare me.  But that is not what I am most afraid of tonight.  I like to think I have balls of steel...  But…this is new. I don’t fear very much, but tonight it is possible I am going to kill my lover. 

                                                                 *   *   *

“You coming up for the big fetish night at the club?”  Annie asks me.

I nod noncommittally.  “I heard something about that.  What is it?”

“Big local club, used to do fetish parties all the time.  They lost the site, so they just have a couple of big parties every year.  Kind of a big deal now.  Lot of people you know will be there.”

“Maybe.  It’s a lot of travel.  You know I love you guys.” I smile at Annie.  My arm is around her waist and I’ve got a drink in my hand, trying to look charming.  I look better with a woman hanging on me, though I haven’t dated Annie in two years. It’s important to look confident, have your game face on. 

We’re using each other a little, but that’s okay.  I act for her, she acts for me.  We are like that when we are together.  Always playing a role, never just ourselves.  Probably why we went separate ways, but we still both like it.  I play Bogart to her slightly short version of Bacall, or William Powell to her Myrna Loy.  Right now I was playing John Malkovich to her Glenn Close, both looking for something we didn’t have… although she wasn’t driving a fork into the palm of her hand just yet.

“So…who’s that?”

The girl I’m looking at is that indeterminate mid-twenties age.  She’s hard not to notice.  Of all the women at the cast party, she’s noticeable for having the most guys obviously playing up to her.  She probably isn’t the prettiest, but she wears it well enough not to matter.

“That’s Jennifer M____.   And yeah, I know her”

Move fast.  While the drink was still fresh before you have second thoughts and all that grey matter gets in the way. “Okay if I blatantly ditch you and go make a pass at her?”

“Just be a little careful around that one.  I don’t know if she’s your type.”  Annie gave a laugh.  “Or maybe she’s exactly your type.”  Her voice darkens a little, emphasizing “type.”

“Type?  She a Top?”

“She says she’s a sub, but I’m not sure, really.  You know the story.  Last year she talked to Brett about it, when he was starting to Dom me.  Got all interested, was all about wanting to ‘find out about it.’  Decided she was a sub.  She went with us down to Paddles in New York.  I set her up with a guy we trust down there, I don’t think you know him.   So she sort of went cold on it after that. I don’t know why and she never told me.  Talked a big game about being a sub, wrote about it in her blog but never really did anything else.  Don’t get me wrong.  I get along with her okay.  But I think there’s a little bit of “poor lost me” in there, though she doesn’t come across that way to guys.  She’s pretty and they play to that.  I don’t think guys get her.  She’s one of those kind of dangerous overachiever types, but she’s got some serious fuckupedness in her chart.  A lot of attachment problems.”  Annie’s standing joke was astrology.  She would say someone had “beer in their chart.”

“She attach too easy, or not at all?  She doesn’t seem clingy, we know I’m not real good with clingy.”

“Well, be careful.  I think if she attached she’d do it hard.  She’s got a boyfriend she doesn’t like but won’t let go of .  She’s blown some guys off pretty hard.  Here’s the thing.  She comes off completely kick ass, and guys take that seriously.  She isn’t, but they don’t get that.  The ones she gets get chewed up by it’s because they want her to be the strong one.  She doesn’t handle being disappointed real well.”

“She got a boyfriend?”

“Yeah, he’s out on the balcony smoking and getting trashed because she’s not going home with him.  She got a room with some people you don’t know.  He’s a nice guy, she treats him like shit.”

“Well nice guys get treated like shit.”

“You’re not as tough as you play.  And yeah, but she’s dated other guys. She’ll either like you or punch you.”

I shrugged.  Nobody was as tough as they played.  “She doesn’t look dangerous…”

“She is and she isn’t.  I’m just saying it’s complicated with her.”

I watched her.  She was talking animatedly about something, gesturing with a drink.  I got something in her face but I couldn’t tell what it was.  A little bit of pain maybe.  I’m not the sort that sees a look of pain on a woman’s face and wants to rush and rescue her.  I want to hurt her.  I can think of a lot of reasons why.  Maybe I want to shape it, maybe I just want to fuck it.  I want her to want it, and not be able to say “no.” That probably makes me fucked up.

I spun Annie away smoothly, giving her a peck.  “Yeah, well.  I never liked anything that was simple.”

Annie shook her head. “You’re going to have to stand in line.”

“Fuck that,” I said.  I wasn’t sure she was going to fuck me, or even if I wanted her to, but I felt pretty confident about driving three college boys off the field.

                                                                                     *   *   *

At twelve minutes she will be fastening her seatbelt and the airliner will be breaking through the cloud cover, making its spectacular turn over Georgetown.  The bleak December ceiling is about three thousand feet and she will be able to see the National Cathedral rising lights blazing off the gothic facade, the dome of the Capitol farther away a great shining white mass.  The cold marble city looks good in the early winter.  It matches the sky.

She is a little afraid of flying.  Not terrified, but it makes her nervous.  The last time I brought her to town it was by train which she likes better, but this trip was on short time, and I wanted her arrival to carry an undercurrent of fear.  I wanted her nervous, and I gave her instructions aimed at turning that nervousness into excitement, at eroticizing her fear.

She has a set of explicit instructions, which I sent to her in e-mail in the wee hours of this morning.  I would have preferred to mail them to her.  There is something about a solid cream-colored card that speaks of authority and finality.  But this was planned quickly, and part of the art is flexibility.   You don’t depend on anything.  You improvise and go.  That’s why you’re the one in control.

I have told her what to wear on the plane, down to her underwear.  I have told her what things to pack in her bag, with a few options.  I have provided her reading material, a story which she will have printed at work during lunch.  I have told her what to order to drink.  I have told her what to look at when arriving…with allowances for weather.  She is seeing the city now, as the plane rolls to the right. 

My control of her creates a low level of excitement.  I hope she is experiencing the same growing arousal, and that adds to it.  I know when I see her it will spring alive, but for now it is a distant warm tension pervading me.

                                                                                     *   *   *

The party was winding down.  Annie had disappeared an hour ago so I was on my own.  There were dead beer shooters pooling on a table and a few people I didn’t know smoking on a verandah.  It was hot outside, and sticky.   The place didn’t look like a war had been fought there, but I was just as glad it wasn’t my suite to clean up before checkout.

I had my arm around Jenn.  She was a brunette, not tall but leggy.  Nothing about getting her had been hard.  I played my charm card; it was like she was waiting for it.  She just smiled, attached herself to me.   It had been easy.  And entirely superficial.  I felt like she was seeing if she could scare me.  I didn’t scare real easy.  The way she came on was disconcerting.  Didn’t feel subbish at all. Maybe Annie wasn’t far off the mark.  I’d met more than one girl who thought she was a sub because it seemed like a lot of attention, but when push came to shove it didn’t click for her. 

“This place is clearing out…” she said.

“Yeah, time to head upstairs,” I said.

She smiled at me and took my arm conspiratorially, “c’mon.”

I let her lead me to the elevator.  She punched her floor, not mine, and when I got out with her, she began towing me down the hall.  At the corner I used her speed to pirouette her around at the corner, catch her in my arms.  She gave a nervous laugh.  This wasn’t quite in the playbook.  She smiled at me winningly.  “C’mon…you’ll have to be a little quiet.”

I shook my head, giving my patented “sad but firm smile.”

“No.  I don’t think so.  I may wanna fuck you, but not enough to keep quiet in a hotel room.  Anyway you’re playing me, and we already established I’m the player. “

She just looked shocked.  She’d had too much to drink to react to that.  Her eyes had this way of getting big when she was scared or surprised.  And I saw something else in them.  She wasn’t used to a guy who would say “no,” to her.

I dropped her arms to her sides, then put my hand behind her head and pushed her back against the hotel wall.  “I will kiss you, though.” I said, then I did, hard.  On impulse I moved my hand to her throat.  She reacted just about exactly like I’d plugged an electric wire into her cunt.  From the moment I felt my hand on her throat make her grind into my pelvis, I wanted her more than I wanted most anything else. 

I wanted to say” to hell with it” and drag her into the stairwell.  Instead I pushed her back and took three steps away.  “Annie has my e-mail and I know you’ve got hers.  I’m back up here again in two weeks for that big club thing.  You wanna see me, drop me an e-mail.”  I turned around and walked back to the elevator, waited for it to come, and got inside.

I was shaking a little when I got back.  I hadn’t realized it but I was fumbling for the key and dropped it and I was not that drunk. 

Inside, my first reaction was to punch the wall.  I did this when I was younger and nearly broke my wrist.  At my old house there was a hole in the bathroom door.  But now I just let it flood out, rode it down.

I always think that in my room I’ll fantasize about them and masturbate, because when I was in Junior High that was what you did.  I do sometimes.  But it seems like the more they matter the more the fantasy doesn’t form.  There is only what is.  I lay in bed, sweating out the booze and just thinking about her.  I wasn’t hard though I could make my mind from what I wanted to make happen in two weeks.

                                                                                              *   *   *

I know how to take complete control of someone’s life.  I do not do this very often or for very long, but since four thirty this afternoon everything that she has done has been under my control.  Some of what I have told her to do is intentionally dehumanizing.  She knows perfectly well to take a piss before getting caught in the waiting line for the airport, and it’s only an elementary precaution.  But it is a different experience to be told to do it, and told to text me to let me know she has done it. 

I do not indulge in this level of intense control very often.  But it is important that I put her into the right “head space” early on.  I want her scared, more scared than she has ever been since she first stood trembling and naked before me and bowed her head to accept the first training collar I placed around her neck.   I was up at two thirty, checking schedules, editing, re-editing, trying to balance a list of orders that would make her feel completely controlled with a list short enough not to be tedious.  In normal life it would drive her crazy, but I cut all contact with her today - she is in a vacuum.   Since she received my message in her inbox at work this morning, she has not had any contact from me other than curt acknowledgements to her text messages, informing me of where she was in her schedule.  She has gotten no warmth from me, no reassuring word.  Simply “Yes,” in LCD.

I avoided anything at all sexual or kinky in her instructions other than the reading material.  A story I wrote two years ago.   Some of her instructions are humiliating but only to her and only because she is doing them at my insistence.

If I were able to see the runway, her jet would be slamming onto the asphalt, thrust reversers screaming, flaps locked up, tires squealing driven down by powerful compressor shocks onto the short runway of Washington Reagan crossing the entire length of the airport in a few moments, slowing to crawl back up the other side at a stately taxi pace.  The Airline board flashes “Arrived” like the tote board at a racetrack flashing “Final Results.”

The jet has landed but she is still falling towards me, out of her control.  The only control is me.  Before the night is over, we are going to collide.

*   *   *

I never heard from Jenn directly but Annie said she was coming to the club night and asked about me. 

At the club she was remote, and for a while I thought she’d lost interest.  It wasn’t a couples date, and at first I couldn’t even place who was with whom.  Annie and Brett were a couple.  Brett was a tall dark haired fellow, good looking, and smart, though not very talkative.  There were a lot of other people there, and I had no idea who was with who.  She didn’t talk to me much and I’d more or less started to write it off.  I talked to some people I knew, figured it wasn’t a wasted trip, but I wasn’t going to play but so hard.  She knew where I stood. 

I don’t dance much and she danced a lot.  Towards the end of the night she came off the dance floor and started hanging on to me like I was her date.  I’d made the offer, so maybe I was.  Her face was flushed and she’d had more to drink than she should have, but she was all confidence, holding onto my arm just like she belonged there. 

She waited for me to offer her a ride home, but I made her ask me.  We didn’t talk much on the trip over, but she held my hand, almost like a schoolgirl.  I could tell she was coming down a little, hoped she wasn’t sick, but she seemed alright. 

At her apartment I eased the rental car into the parking place.

She didn’t make any move to get out, but leaned back in the leather seat.  “I’m fucking drunk.”

“I’m not perfect, but I’m okay.  I can’t stay, but you want me to walk you upstairs?”

She spoke staring out the windshield, not looking at me.  “Jimmy…you don’t want to come upstairs?”  She was sounding drunk, maybe drunker than she really was. 

I looked at the side of her face lit by the parking lot lamp outside.  The upper half of the light came through the blue sun band across the top of the windshield and fell on her face like a veil in an old film noir flick.

“Maybe I don’t want to.”  That was the point where she might get out of the car and storm away. 

She mulled that one for a little while, then looked at me, more sober than she was playing a minute ago.  “No.  You do. “

I shrugged.  “Maybe I do.  But maybe I’m also the sort of guy who would like to give you a good slap on the chops for calling me Jimmy when you know I don’t like it.”

“Did I make you mad?”  She asked it tonelessly and I didn’t know what to make of it.

“No I just like to hurt women, but you already know that. You asked Annie a lot of questions.”

“Annie says you play pretty hard core.  Edgeplay.”  She doesn’t sound very drunk anymore.  She still had not looked at me.   She stared out the windshield.

“Does that scare you?” I asked.

“No,” she said.  I thought maybe she was lying.

“Then maybe I have better uses for you than fucking you.”  I gather my courage.  Nothing but the truth is going to work here. “Every guy who fucks you easy, you walk away from, or walk all over.  I don’t like that kind of shit.”

She leans back in the seat and drew a couple of breaths.

She didn’t have an answer to that one and it was up to me to say something.  “You ever really done anything but fuck college boys Jenn?”

She nodded, biting her lip a little.  “When we went down to New York, I did a scene with a guy who was a friend of Annie’s.  A Dom.   I liked that okay.  I’ve got a submissive nature.”

“A submissive nature?  How many times have you written that?  Do you even fucking know what that means, or is it just something you say to guys so you don’t have to be responsible for whatever train wreck happens when they date you.  What did he do to you?”

“Who?” I caught an edge of panic in her voice.  That intake of breath.

I shrugged.  “Not the person you’re thinking of.  The Dom, Annie’s friend.  What did he do to you?”

“Spanked me, used some toys.”  Whoever or whatever she’d thought of had scared her some, because she came across a little more like a girl now, almost a child.  She was suddenly a little pliant.  I twisted the knife.

“Maybe you are a submissive.  Somebody stands up to you and you like the control.  I got it from you before, in the hotel, when I put my hand around your throat and you got wet.”

“I…”  Her mouth moved but she didn’t say anything.  I knew where I was then, and I pushed her.

“You did.  You started to say you didn’t but then you remembered how you humped my leg.   You liked it.  So it makes me wonder how much you like being hurt.  I know you like it, I just don’t know how much.  I could probably learn pretty easily though…” 

I put my hand on her shoulder.  Not cradling it like a lover, but hard and firm, holding her.   Her frame was slighter than I’d realized at first, my fingers closed around her easily.  I pressed my first two fingers against her neck hard, pressing into the skin without gouging.

 She sucked in breath.  I think she thought I was going to take her throat again right there.  She turned and looked at me for the first time and I could feel her breathing hard. “I have the perfect fucking boyfriend James.  He’s kind considerate, good looking.  He does whatever the fuck I ask. He puts up with me fucking other people, not that I give him a lot of choice.  I come with them, or I come when I use the Hitachi and think about being hurt.  How fucked up is that?  I don’t think I would have ever come with him at all, but he’s kind of strong and can get just a little rough when he gets going.  Oh Jesus that’s overshare.”  She looked down.

She was embarrassed by the rush of words that had just come out because she was drunk and I could see her wanting to take them back.  But for the first time during the evening I was genuinely excited.  I felt it worming its way up out of my guts…a hot surge.  I was on and I wanted more from her.   I kept my fingers on her throat and raised her head by her shoulder to look into her eyes again.  They were wide.

“I don’t mind… Jenn.  I kind of guessed you were fucked up sexually.  How fucked up are you?  You like pain.  You liked my hand around your throat.  What else do you like? What do you fantasize about?”

I pushed her a little too hard, which was fine.  The point was mostly to get those words out, get her thinking about them.  She nodded negatively.  “I have fantasies that…you wouldn’t like.  I’m a fucking piece of work.  I want to hurt people and instead I hurt myself.  I’m not a very nice person.  I…I understand that I’m too much for most people.  I try so hard to tone it down.  I thought maybe…”

She turned away and looked out the side window away from me, her voice bitter. “You might be okay with that…”

I turned her back toward me, and ran my fingers along her throat, from her ear to her neck, deliberately.  “Jenn.  You aren’t too fucked up for me.  That’s not why I’m talking to you instead of riding up the elevator with my hand on your thigh right now.  Look…I’ve gotta move faster than I usually do because I don’t get up here very often.  I could wait another six months of you pussy-footing around dropping bdsm references, and giggling with Annie.  If you want to fuck me first to try it on for size, you’re welcome to it, I don’t think you’ll find me any too gentle.  But I don’t feel like being fucked out the door in the morning by you.  I think you know what I want from you.”

She sat silent a long time.  She shook her head.  “Maybe.  Tell me.”

“Christ, you know there’s absolutely no graceful term for ‘I want to dom you.’  Everything you can say either sounds as pretentious as fuck, like ‘take my collar’ or like something from a bad porn film.  I don’t want you as somebody to fuck, I want to strip you, restrain you, and hurt you.  If that’s not something you want, then I’m not going to force it.  I can walk away. “

“Just like that?” she asks.  She’s playing me now, but that’s a fair question and I’ll give her what she wants.

“It won’t be easy, but if it’s not what you want, it’s not what you want.  I’m not interested in a night of casual sex as a consolation prize.”

“So…what would you…want?”

“What I want is you on your knees in front of me begging me to fuck you.  But you mean how do we start?”

“Yeah…I mean in the club in New York.  I don’t know Annie was there just sort of set it up…”

“Well normally there are some formalities.  I’d have met you at a club, maybe as a casual play partner, we’d talk in e-mail…if we clicked, I’d make the offer…it’s up to the dominant to offer, usually, sure there are exceptions.  So maybe you’d ask for a questionnaire, or maybe you ask me if I had one I’d like you to fill out.  Then we meet somewhere…coffee house…bar…I interview you.  Ask you a lot of questions and you tell me the answers.  Then we set up a first session, or maybe even progress right into it after the interview.  Depends on how many reservations you have, how much trust you have.  That’s the way it usually works.”

She shook her head, her mouth slightly open.  “I just don’t know if I wanna get started with that.  I don’t know if I’m ready.  It sounds complicated.  I’ve got Danny.”

“Fuck Danny.  Fuck complications. You wanna find out?”

“How?”

I kissed her again, hard, and put my hand around her throat.  This time I tightened it.  I held the kiss for a long time, after she started to break it, holding her in place by her neck, then pushed her backwards.

She just nodded “yes” when I was done.

“Let’s go in.  I’m going to fuck you harder than you usually get fucked and hurt you a little bit too.”

Her mouth was open in a little ‘o’ her breath fast.  I could see her face coloring. 

“Okay…what…do I have to do.  Jesus fuck I am so easy.  Fuuuck!” She  pounded the dashboard but without much strength or conviction.

“Right now nothing.  You’re a special case.  We’ll talk later.  Right now you’re going to beg me to fuck you and I’m going to, you already started to a minute ago, so doing it on your knees won’t take much more from you.  I’ll hurt you a little too, though not very much.  Enough that you’ll remember it.”

I knew guys never talked to her like that.  And if they did she’d cut them down with a glare.  But she wasn’t cutting me down.  She nodded again, seeming dazed, and I got out and walked around the car.  She was still just sitting on the seat, and this time I took her by the wrist.  She was almost not there, was limp when I pulled her up.  I put my arm around her waist and walked inside and within a few steps she shook her head “yes” again and picked up the pace.

*   *   *

I am the counterpoint to the chaotic train wreck that is her life.   She is out of control.  And what I am going to do to her is the most out of control she will ever have been, the most under control she will ever have been.   She needs both.

Right now the control is a barrier.  It isolates her from the needy boyfriend, her demanding mother, the supervisor who takes out her frustrations at work at the job she hates.  My instructions are a thin barrier against all of that.  I want her to feel safe about everything in her environment.  Other than what I am going to do to her.  Even there at some level the fantasy is about knowing that there is safety at some level.

On my negative days, I sometimes think BDSM is for people who can’t hack actually relating to each other.  It imposes some rules, gives a framework for people to form attachments on that are safe because they have limits.  On my positive days, I think that the constraint of BDSM is like a five point harness on a racing car.  You can do with a seatbelt if you are going to drive a car to the supermarket, but if you are going to push to the limit, you need something that will actually hold you in place.

I think about the things we’ve done in the past.  The last few trips have not been so serious.  There were sessions and play, ropes and pushing her limits.  But that wasn’t all there was to it.  In some ways we are a very normal couple.  I remembered …

A drink on the patio at the Occidental Grill, with this stunning view up Pennsylvania Avenue.  Not yet fall one of those rare beautiful sunny days Washington has at the end of the year where the temperature is perfect and it takes your breath away.  Afterwards I watched her feed our dinner rolls to the ducks in a little park while some boys danced professionally to a boom box and we walked holding hands.

Making funny faces at each other eating ice cream at Giffords before seeing a foreign film at the Landmark cinema on E street.   Coming out and watching her trying to say what she thought without sounding stupid and finally telling her I thought it sucked so that she bent over holding onto one of the brass poles that forms the concession line laughing.

Driving out to Leesburg with the fall leaves changing, arm around her and her head against my chest driving through an explosion of yellow and red, giant trees over a perfectly maintained yard where horses were trained.

I have strategically selected a seat at the bar.  It is a chain operation with a fake red and white awning, and tables behind a railing that borders the concourse.  It is the closest to her arrival gate, and from my table I can see the gate she will pass through. 

Her instructions run out when she comes through the gate.  Another element to make her thoughts race, make her nervous.  She is used to detailed contingencies…I do not like to leave things to chance if there is a problem.  Today I have left her no further instructions, they run out after she walks through the gate.   Working downtown, I have no practical doubt I can make the airport, and little short of my death with prevent me.  It is a chance I take and arrive an hour and a half early to make sure.  I have a deep burning conviction that I must not fail her.  She has my collar on her neck, and that does not give me the option of failure.  That is a constant low level pressure that a dominant feels.  It is like producing a show. The show must go on.  It may suck, it may be a flop, but there is no option to simply back out, to break the commitment. 

She is here for the weekend, but what is going to happen will happen tonight.  I do not want the familiarity of her sleeping next to me and waking up together fresh in her mind when I do it to her. I am not casual about this.    I can’t quite calculate the odds, but real danger I am able to parse out.  It’s cold to think of endangering someone else, but I can work it in my head.  In the long run it is no different than making a fast lane change with a passenger.  I might cause an accident and kill us both.

I give a mental sigh.  The difference is that in this case I’d be alive and fine.  I’d be alive to face the aftermath.  Even that I can face.  It would mean disaster, the end of normal life, but that’s the risk you take.  It’s both abstract and real world.  It’s about questions and lawyers and things that don’t scare me.

But I may hurt this girl.  And I’m excited about it, just thinking about it makes my cock hard.  And it scares me so badly that my insides clench up tight.  It makes my face flush.  Exhausted at four thirty this morning it was enough that as I tried to fall asleep the thought of it gave me a pang of panic that brought me awake with a physical start, slapping my hand against the bed.

There’s a reason I drink.  Drinking breaks inhibitions.  I have a half empty glass sitting on my table.  I toss the rest of it down.  The sign shows “Arrived” now.  I am drinking Irish Whisky straight, and it burns going down.  It spreads through my throat and into my gut and the warmth melts a little of the fear and turns it into excitement.  It is the same thing that’s happening to her.

*   *   *

> [11:38] Jennfyr – WB.  I didn’t see you online this morning, so I was a little worried.

>[11:38]  James1114 – good to be back.  I slept in.  Sorry you couldn’t.

> [11:39] Jennfyr –TY for everything this weekend.  For the training collar.  I didn’t sleep much.  Fight with Danny.

 >[11:39]  James1114 – I’m sorry.  Over this weekend?

> [11:39] Jennfyr – It’s Danny.  How can I fucking tell?  I want to fucking kill him.  Or for him to shut up.  I hate him so much.

>[11:40]  James1114 – Remind me why you moved in with a guy who can’t even get you off?

>[11:41]  James1114 – I’m sorry that was cold.  I apologize.  I have no right to comment on that part of your life.

> [11:41] Jennfyr –No.  I gave you the right when I started talking to you about him.  I was just trying to work out the answer

>[11:41]  James1114 – I’m still not sure that’s wise.  I’m not a disinterested party.

> [11:42] Jennfyr – I can depend on him.  Even though I don’t get excited by him, and I’m pretty sure now I don’t love him, I do depend on him.  I think he’s something solid to hang on to.  But he’s not solid.  He flails around all the time.  I’m angry at him all the time.  I’m angry at everybody all the time James.  Nobody sees it, but I am. Nobody has any fucking idea.

>[11:42]  James1114 – honestly it doesn’t sound like he’s what you need. 

> [11:43] Jennfyr – Is it totally fucked up that I am talking to a man who raised welts on my thigh that I’m running my hands over for sympathy because I hate my loving, sympathetic, kindly boyfriend who would do anything for me, including let me fuck that guy.

>[11:43]  James1114 – Probably.  I will say that you pay for it in guilt.  Guilt all the way down to the core.

> [11:43] Jennfyr – Yeah.  Fuck.  It makes me hot that you hurt me, and I can still feel it.    Makes me feel guilty because of where it comes from and who it’s referring to.  Shit going to be a long day at work.  And I so don’t want to go home.   Fuckfuckfuck.  You’re more stable than Danny.  I trust you.

>[11:43]  James1114 – Jenn.  I do not want anything good for you.  I want to use you sexually and not even make you like it, I want to control you even though you know it is bad for you.

> [11:43] Jennfyr – Shit.  I don’t care.  I still trust you.

>[11:44]  James1114 – Jenn. Trust me?  I’m a friend of a friend.  You’ve been with me two times and you don’t know dick about me other than that I’m married, and hopefully you think I’m a competent improv Director.  You vaguely know one person I dated, who is not the most stable person on the East Coast.  The two times we have been together, I’ve hurt you, emotionally and physically.   You don’t know if you can trust me or not, you just react to me.  Hell, I don’t know if you can trust me.  Take it one step at a time.

> [11:44] Jennfyr – Fuck you.  I love the pain. *sigh*  I’m running my fingers over my thigh.  Jesus this sucks at work.  Please tell me.  I need to not think of Danny for a little while.  I need to think of you hurting me.  Even with the guilt.  It isn’t like I don’t remember does that fuck it up for you.  That I remember the guy?

>[11:44]  James1114 >No.  I don’t care.  I’m me not him.  Does it excite her.

> [11:44] Jennfyr – Fuck yes, and she hates it..  She is totally wet over what happened.  Okay….relax….This girl has her training collar in her purse, wrapped up in cloth, Sir.

>[11:44]  James1114 – I would like the girl to go into the toilet stall in the bathroom, and masturbate. 

> [11:45] Jennfyr – Does this girl have your permission to come, Sir?

>[11:45]  James1114 – Yes, the girl may come at will.

> [11:45] Jennfyr – TY…Sir…going now! 

> [11:45] Jennfyr – …this girl is going I mean, Sir

*   *   *

She comes through the gate, and I get to see her unprepared.  There’s a little flush on her cheek, she’s fiddling with her carry on bag, and holding her gloves in her mouth.   She’s wearing a white skirt that comes to just above the knee, a gold belt and a black short sleeve turtleneck.  Conservative and fashionable to fly, with a leather choker and gloves it was good for dinner.  She is wearing it terribly. 

I ring her phone.  She drops the gloves, kneels to get them, answers, still standing up and out of breath.

 “Yes Sir…”

“Turn around”

She does it, sees me, and struggled to bring herself together.  I want to laugh.  If we were lovers I’d walk over and give her a hug and a smile.  It hurts a little bit not to do that, on one side it is actually hard to see her twist that way and not react a little.  Sometimes fighting instincts is the hardest thing.  But I wasn’t her lover.  I was Sir to her.   Her master now.  And on the other side, watching her twist delights me.

I let a frown cross my face and look up and down at her.  She looks so completely crushed for a moment I have a slight fear she is going to kneel in front of the railing in the middle of the airport.  My lead in must have been pretty good.  I stand with my glass in hand.  God she is stunning when she looks scared and conflicted.  I let her hang for a minute without doing anything.  Looking at the color on her cheeks, the liquid fear in her eyes.  I feel warm inside, and not from the drink.  Having this beautiful woman stammering and apprehensive in front of me is an aphrodisiac. 

Then I give her a patented sidelong look, sweeping her from head to toe, eyebrow raised, jaw set, and step over to the rail.  I’d already paid for my drink at the bar.  “I want you to go get yourself composed, then meet me under the sculpture.  You have ten minutes.  I suggest you visit the main floor lavatory.  While you’re there, take off your underwear and put it in your travel bag.”

She makes it in eight minutes and thirty seconds.  Which was long enough for me to have another drink.  I needed it.   Coming off the plane she’d looked like a slightly overdressed college student home on vacation.  She had a bad way of walking that a lot of athletic girls have, a sort of lope didn’t do much for her looks.  She got enough attention from boys she’d never worked to fix it.  I’d trained her to walk differently.  Not an exaggerated strut, just a nice graceful feminine gait that got her back straight and her hips moving.  Walking back down the Concourse she could almost have been a fashion model.  She had good natural looks, but didn’t quite know how to bring them together.   Now with her bag swinging gracefully from her arm she was managing.

*   *   *

She was kneeling up, sweating.  Her hand had a clear dildo in it.  Borosilicate glass.  It shone slick with her cum.  Her legs showed strain.  Her neck muscles stood out.  Her face was beginning to clench, as she worked it in and out of her body, circling her clit with the middle finger of her other hand.  She was none too gentle when she got to this point; I was always surprised how hard she would grind herself. ...

“Stop”

“Wh…what?”

There was a snap as the crop stung her abdomen, the flat place right above the thatch of hair.

“Was there something fucking unclear about that, slut?”

“Jesu…Sir…”

She is clearly about twenty seconds from coming.   She stops moving her clit, but does not think to take the dildo out.  I pull it out and I see the strain on her face as she tries not to let go.

“How badly does the girl want to come?”

“Really really badly Sir…”  She’s talking better now, her brow creased hair stuck to her shoulders with sweat.  I want to drive the dildo back in and watch her face as she comes.  There is nothing more beautiful than her face when she loses all control.  It twists down into me and makes me want her more than anything else.

“I will give the girl a choice.  She knows that for some time I’ve been considering letting her take a name. She can finish masturbating, or she can take a name tonight.”

I saw a look of anguish play on her face and loved it.  She squinted her eyes shut hard and placed her hands on her thighs palm up.  I could see her gritting her teeth and turning her head to the side.  She swallowed hard.

“This girl would like to take a name Sir.”

“Even if it means not finishing”

“This girl’s orgasm is nothing.  If her trainer wishes to honor her with a name, she has no interest in her own pleasure.”  She was panting trying to think of something to say that sounded right. “Her come exists for her trainer to use.”

“That is her decision?”

“Yes Sir…”  She sounded decisive.  She was coming down a little from the edge.

“The girl is settled on the name we discussed?”

“Yes Sir…”

“Good.  J.  Please turn away from me and present your ass so that I can fuck you.”

The relief gushed from her like an explosion, as she twisted to turn her ass to me.  “Yes Sir…thank you Sir…please fuck this slut Sir…”

There were times I held out on her.  Holding out was important, it was a matter of building her respect and restraint, of bringing out the hidden parts inside her.  I wanted her to show me what and who she was, really.   But tonight she was perfect, beyond reproach, as open as she would ever be.  She wanted me to take pleasure from her, to use her, and I knew that the fact that I wanted her would make her come, clenched around me, her hips bucking and head thrown back. 

*   *   *

We’re sitting in a restaurant off Dupont Circle.  There is Flamenco music in the background, and candlelight and ceiling fans rotating, above the balcony and the stained glass floral lights.  We’re sitting on a couch, not in chairs.  She is facing me, her foot tucked up a little.  Our plates sit on a coffee table, which makes eating slightly dangerous.  I try to look graceful picking up pieces of quesadilla without dropping them on my suit.  This isn’t an ideal restaurant but the food is top rated and it suits my purposes – a nightclub atmosphere, and living room dining.  Most of the tables are booths, but there is this small balcony at the back with a tiny little bar and couches around coffee tables.  It looks out over the restaurant, facing an empty balcony bandstand at the other end. 

She is sipping a mojito.  I am not.  It’s time for me to be cut off.  It’s one thing to take the edge off my nerves another to be fucked up when I am going to be playing with another person’s life. 

The soundtrack in my mind floats around with sobriety.  She means almost more to me than I can say.  I love her, though I do not tell her that very often, nor does she tell me, because to say it constantly cheapens it, makes us no more than some married couple in a fifties movie.  How can I possibly put her in danger?   If someone were shooting at her, I would take the bullet.  I have faced a man with a gun before, and I have no real doubt about that, it is a bland statement of fact more than a bit of braggadocio.  So how can I possibly contemplate placing her in grave danger?  Have I not already done enough?  I am talking about risking her life, and not trivially.  That is insane.  I must be insane.  I am in fact an evil person.  Is not that the definition of evil?  To hurt something you love?  How fucked up am I?

It is difficult to hear more than a few feet away.  Noise drifts up from the dining room below.  The waiters don’t come up here very often, enough of an omission that the place is notable for bad upstairs service.  This also suits me fine.  Our couch does not face any other patrons, and from my end I can watch the door.  There are only about six other people up here, a couple and another table of four.  They aren’t very far away, but they cannot see her directly.    

She has only picked at her dinner.  That’s fine with me.  She will not eat much until we have done what she has come here to do. 

I am sobering up fast.  I tend to burn alcohol quickly, maybe because I drink a lot.  Words continue to drift through my mind.  “There is no way whatsoever that either suffocation or strangulation can be done in a way that does not intrinsically put the recipient at risk of cardiac arrest.”

I can fight down that soundtrack.  I have been doing it for years.  But there is something else and that is not so easy to disregard.

*   *   *

> [23:44] Jennfyr – So are u likely to end up coming up at the end of September

>[23:44]  James1114 – that depends on whether or not Ben gets his casting plans in order before I have to make plans here. 

> [23:45] Jennfyr – I’d like it if you could make it. 

> [23:45] James1114 – I can’t say for sure.  I will try

> [23:51] Jennfyr – Are you really that fucking indifferent? 

> [23:51] James1114 – No.  I am sorry.  I do not mean to be callous to you out of scene.  I honestly do not know, Jennifer.  I’m sorry.  You know if I commit, I will be there.  So I am not going to say for sure until I know.  Don’t pressure me, please. 

> [23:51] Jennfyr – Eep.  I’m sorry.  Had a fight with Danny tonight.   

> [23:52] James1114 – I am sorry about that.  Do you want to talk?

> [23:52] Jennfyr – Not now.  Too exhausted.  It was a real knock down drag out.  He got upset because I don’t want to go to his parents for Thanksgiving.  Fuck knows I don’t wanna to go to my mother’s, but he is my boyfriend.  He got upset, yelled at me, then cried and I ended up having to console him.  This happens all the fucking time now.  So at the end I’m the bad one.

> [23:52] James1114 – You’re talking about it.

> [23:53] Jennfyr – Smartass. 

> [23:53] James1114 – Was it really over that?

> [23:53] Jennfyr – No it’s because I slept with Paul Zegler.

 > [23:54] James1114 – Hmm…I didn’t know that.  Not that it matters.  Is it just insecurity?  On his part, I mean, I know why you slept with Paul. 

> [23:54] Jennfyr – I don’t even like Paul all that much.  I sleep with guys who aren’t Danny and I don’t sleep with Danny.  I keep trying to break up, but he’s kind of a disease.  And then on some stupid fucking hand I need him, because I am not sure I can take care of my own shit.

> [23:54] James1114 – What do you want me to tell you?

> [23:55] Jennfyr – I…nothing.  I’m hoping to see you in September, that’s all.

> [23:55] James1114 – I will do it if I can.  That’s all I can promise.

> [23:55] Jennfyr – that’s hard.

> [23:55] James1114 – I know.  But it has to be that way.  I can’t lie to you.  I am not your boyfriend. 

*   *   *

A cold wave snaps inside me.  At some level I have catalyzed my fear into anger, and anger into cruelty.  It is time to begin.

I lean towards her.

“Did you like your dinner?”

“It was very…the food here is quite good Sir.”

“I worked with a man who owned a couple of local restaurants.  He recommended this as one of the most underrated in the city.  It’s going to fill up fast when it gets popular.”

“You made a fine selection Sir.  I hope I did not offend by not eating more…”

“No, no, I am not concerned about that.  But I’d like you to oblige me by rolling the front of your skirt up to your waist and exposing your cunt, please.”

“Sir?”

“In the next few moments I am going to give you several orders.  You are going to obey them quickly and without question as you’ve been taught.  Every time you fail, I am going to punish you, do you understand?”  I am feeling it on me right now.  My cruelty is hard and cool and good and I am twisting it into her like a knife.  There is a glorying satisfaction for me in her fear and embarrassment and more because I know she wants it and needs it.  This is why she has flown four hundred miles.  For me to abuse her.

“Yes Sir.”

Nobody can conceivably look up through the railing and make out anything about the people on the couch, I checked from the floor.  You can barely tell the balcony exists.  She will not remember this, will know only that there are other people in her line of sight.  None of the other diners up here is likely to get up, and walk towards the railing, though the place is already fuller than I remember it on a Thursday, and there are beginning to be patrons drifting to the small bar, making noise behind her.   If the waiter should put in one of his rare upstairs appearances I will see him coming up the stairs. 

She has her back to a room full of people she probably doesn’t remember much about.   I take a spoon from the table and heat it over the candle flame.  Earlier today I timed this trick, and I hold the spoon low in the cooler part of the flame. 

I twist her skirt up with my hand.  Her inner thigh is turned upwards where her foot is tucked beneath her.  I slap the spoon down.  She gives a gasp of pain and stifles a small scream.  There is a red mark.  She’s not really burned at all, but she doesn’t know that.  She’s been hit, hard with a heated metal spoon.  Her eyes bulge wide. 

“Now is there a further problem with you exposing your cunt?”

She nods, says “no Sir” softly and rolls her skirt up to slightly below her waist.

“Now please roll your shirt up above your breasts.”

This is a little trickier.  Someone standing suddenly at the table right behind us could conceivably see her.  But I can easily lean forward to whisper to her and cover her up, though she is not thinking of that.

A moment later her breasts are exposed in a restaurant.  I can see her trying to hunker down into the couch, keep below the line of sight.   Her breasts are firm, but not very big, about a handful, which is plenty. 

“Finger fuck yourself, please.”

Her eyes widen.  This is really the least of her problems, but she’s not thinking logically at this point.  I let her go for a moment or two. 

I pull her fingers out, my hand around hers.

“Lick them off.”

People do that in restaurants all the time.  A little gauche but not a big concern.  She nods her head and follows my orders.

“You are enough of a whore to lick the cunt juice off your fingers in a public place.  That’s impressive.”

The flatware here features large butter knives with heavy rounded ends.  I take one of them and sink the end into her water glass.

“You need to make yourself come before the waiter comes back to check on us.  My guess is that you’ve got enough time to make it a little entertaining, but I suggest you go mostly for speed.  First, though, I need to fuck you with this.”

I take the chilled knife handle and slide it into her.  It is about as big around as my thumb at the end and as big around as my forefinger where the hilt meets the blade.  I hold it by the blade and begin fucking her with it.  She gasps from the cold, her mouth snaps open and shut.  I am leaning over her a little now, so that she can hear me well.  I am also sheltering her from view.  No sign of the waiter yet.

“Yes Sir…”  she sounds genuinely worried.  On one level the idea of being exposed in public makes her aroused.  But I am also playing with some serious inhibitions.  I am driving the smooth knife handle in and out of her slowly twisting the angle up a little.  She begins circling her clit with her fingers. 

I whisper to her.  “You’re a complete slut.  You’re getting yourself off in a room full of people and an audience down below while I fuck you with the tableware…if you were even slightly sane you would walk out of here and take a cab home...  But you won’t because the come that is in the process of clawing its way out of your guts is more powerful than you...    Fuck, if I told you to, you would stand up and rub your clit in front of the whole room while I stood here and fucked you, because you’re more of a shameless slut than you have any sense of decency...   How would you like to climb on the back of this couch, turn around, and have me fuck you while staring at the entire room...  Not allowed to close your eyes...   The cops could only get here so quickly.  They’d probably arrest you but you wouldn’t care...    You’d have your come while these people look on in horror, wondering what kind of degenerate wanton will let herself be fucked in front of a room full of people in a public restaurant.   Why stop there.  Why not turn around and have you grab the railing, your tits spilling over it, so that the entire room full of people down there could watch your face as you lost it from being ass-fucked.   They’d point at you on the way out and be talking about you...  Pointing ‘that’s the crazy whore who was getting fucked upstairs…’ “

I could feel a tug and see her clenching hard on the knife handle.  Her eyes were closed and her mouth was slightly open. 

“Close?” I asked.

“There…” she grunted.  “May I have permission to come please Sir?”

“No. “  I feel a savage satisfaction inside me as she reacts.

“Jesus…no”  her eyes flew open wide…

“You’ll pay for that later, but now…you know how much of a whore you are?  You’re going to come full voice, full face.  You understand?  You tell me yes before you have permission to come.”

“Ohshit…” she was making a face that was almost the same as if she were going to vomit but her lip was quivering more.

I twisted the knife handle inside her.

She made a gurgling noise and nodded sharply yes. 

She was always required to tell me when she was coming.  It was the one time she was allowed to speak without addressing me as ‘Sir.’ 

“cumm…” and then the scream ripped out of her mouth and she began to make her “fucky-face.”

I leaned over and put my arm around her as she screamed once, twice, three times.  I slapped her on the back and laughed loudly.

A few people nearby noticed, but didn’t seem to pay much attention.  With the noise distortion from downstairs, they just assumed she had a donkey bray laugh or had given a falsetto scream at some joking enormity.  I pulled her top down and pressed her face into my throat to muffle the aftershocks smiling and still laughing a bit I could feel her body convulsing in my arms….while she’d stopped making noise but was still coming I whispered…”and just think, that’s the second most powerful orgasm you’re going to have tonight.”

She started coming again…

I waved the waiter over while she was still panting, and rolled her skirt down for her.  I ran the knife handle over my lips and laid it on the table, wiping the end with a wet napkin.  I doubted the young Latino male who was our waiter would really care if that was on his cutlery, but what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

I held the waiter for a moment, and folded cash into the holder with only a cursory glance and passed it back to him. 

“I’ll get your change.”

“That’s fine…”

“Thank you, Sir.”

“Funny she was just calling me that.”

I heard her intake of breath and he smiled having no idea what I was talking about and walked off.

“Except,” I said, low and deadly without a trace of humor in my voice.  “The time she didn’t.”

She was still coming down from the orgasm and she looked at me in fear and confusion.

“You lose your name for the rest of the night. “

“Yes Sir…”  Her eyes were slightly downcast.  She had earned two things from me since she wore a training collar, since I chose her as one of the special ones.  Her permanent collar, which had been custom made for her at Object, a high end fetish store in Baltimore that did custom craft work.  And her name.  She had not started out with a name before me, but she had earned it.  Now I was taking it away for the night. 

“Does the girl understand?”

“This girl understands…Sir.”

I’d hoped to find some infraction which would provide an excuse to impose that penalty.  As much as she loved her name, she also responded powerfully to losing it.

I walked out with her on my arm, but when we reached the back, twisted her arm and pushed her into the short hall with the bathroom.  There was a single sink on the back wall and two tiny rooms to either side.

I didn’t see anybody staring conspicuously and propelled her inside, and pulled shut the door.  It had a huge and very reassuring bar and barrel lock.  The room was tiny and infernally hot, the walls painted black.  There was barely room to turn around.

I slammed her against the wall, padding her head with my hand, put my other hand around her throat and kissed her hard and brutal on the lips.  I didn’t kiss her often, and never gently, and it had a strong effect on her when I did. I didn’t put much pressure on her throat, but then I didn’t need to.

I pulled her away from the wall bent her over and said “spread standing.”  She bent forward until her hands touched the wall , with her legs spread apart.  We had been in the restroom less than thirty seconds when I raised her skirt and started fucking her.  I’m no endurance champion but I can last for a little while if I need to.  Now I made every effort to come within two minutes, driving into her as hard and brutal as I could.  I didn’t want her to come from it, and I was afraid she was still very keyed up.  This was use, being fucked in a toilet without any regard to her comfort.  I talked as I fucked her.  Unlike when she was masturbating on the couch, nothing I had to say had the slightest sexual content.

“When I’m through with you, you’ll need to wash your hands in the sink.  I’ll wait for you on the street, try to hail a cab.  We’re not going very far, but your shoes aren’t well set up for walking.  When we get to the hotel, you’ll go straight up to the room.  The traffic is thinning now, so we shouldn’t be too long getting there.  I have a few things to do, so I’ll join you.  The place can be a little rough, but you shouldn’t have any problem just getting up to the room.  Push a little harder, I’m going to come inside you….”

I was excited as hell.  It wasn’t the languorous excitement of sex, but a hard, sharp, slick excitement that came from brutalizing her, that came from fucking her without seeming to care at all, from using her like toilet paper.  I gave her no indication .

I came in three sharp thrusts, slid out of her and turned away without even looking at her, wiped myself clean and zipped up.  I ignored her as if she were one of the bathroom fixtures, a fucking machine next to the hand dryer, and walked out.  She had her orders.

*   *   *

The room was slightly chill.  The leaves had turned and Cambridge was cold tonight.  She was wearing clothes because the old apartment could not be heated as well as I’d like.  She knelt down on the floor.  This time there were no tricks, no evil games. 

“J…this has gone very quickly.”

“Yes Sir it has.” 

“You’ve been very responsive.”

“Thank you Sir.”

“This isn’t a moment I want to have anything else clouding.  I want to know if you want to accept my collar.  Please speak freely.”

“Yes Sir.  Without reservation Sir.”

“Before you do, I want to ask you one thing.  You understand the obligations that go with it.  But do you understand the ones that don’t.”

“How do you mean Sir.”

“I’m not your lover.  I’m your dominant. That means both more and less.  I may also be your friend out of scene, but that is something different, and if anything it’s a complication.  There are implied obligations as well as written ones.  Support.  Respect.  But there are limits.  I’m not a boyfriend.  This is something different.  I can only push you as hard as I do because I am not your boyfriend, not your lover.  Do you understand that?  You are committing to a sexual relationship that many people would feel is abusive or wrong.  And it is abusive.  In many ways it is one sided.  You can still back away now.  Are you sexually excited J?”

“A little…nervous”

“Have I done anything to sexually excite you in this scene so far?”

“No Sir.”

“Why do you think that is?  When I let you take a name before me, I brought you to the brink of orgasm.”

“I do not know Sir.”

“The reason I have not brought you to the brink of orgasm or any other trick is that you must be fully complicit in this act.  I am not ‘collaring’ you.  You are choosing to take a collar.  I am not your dominant telling you that you must or have to.  This is a choice that you are making. Do you understand?”

“Yes.  I understand.”

“And?”

“I would like to wear your collar, Sir…”

*   *   *

The District Hotel, the old Braxton Hotel , on Rhode Island was closer to Logan Circle than Dupont, but it was inexpensive.  I’d passed on the Jury’s hotels at the same price because I wanted this specific place.  A four storey walk up, built in 1913, it lacked charm or the ersatz posh atmosphere of the other downtown hotels.  There was nothing wrong with the Braxton, but it had a slightly run down feel, and the inside spoke of both “cheap motel” and “old downtown.”  It was a gumshoe hotel that might have come out of a Hitchcock film.  The guests were well dressed, but mostly foreign.  From the look of it the place was the center of operations for the Russian Mafia, rugged ex-KGB types in slightly rough Eastern European suits with clunky watches.

I took a good long time unpacking my things while she knelt at the foot of the bed.  Eventually I sat and patted the bed for her to join me so I could talk with her.

“At ease…I want to review a few things with the girl.”

“Yes Sir.”

“The girl knows the dangers of cardiac arrest, and that it is the greatest danger of asphyxia? The girl knows that while brain damage can result from oxygen starvation, cardiac arrest can happen at any time, and that while the length of scene creates a greater opportunity, there is a chance at almost any point.  You’ve read about the PVC issue, and the problem of respiratory and metabolic acidosis?”

“Yes Sir.”

“The girl has read in detail every single thing that she was sent to read by me and understand them, including the article regarding the potential for long term brain damage?”

“Yes Sir. Sir you have told her these things…”

I silenced her with a glance.  Of course I had.  And the purpose of this was not to tell her these safety facts that she had known for weeks.  The purpose was to excite her by heightening the sense of danger.  Of risk.  And as I watched her eyes get glassy and her mouth open, I could tell it was working.

“The girl understands that I am going to choke her tonight, and that my intention is to choke her until she passes out and keep her in that state while I fuck her unconscious body?  That this is different from what we have done before?”

“Yes Sir.”  There was an eager tremor in her voice.

“I require two things.  First I want to know if the reason that the girl wishes to do this scene is that she wants to die.  Remember the girl is in scene.  She is not permitted to lie.”

We’d talked about this for hours, and she had told me that wasn’t her primary motivation.  She had suicidal impulses, and had made an attempt during her freshman year in college.   I wouldn’t rule it out entirely.  There was no question that some of her obsession with breath control was sublimation of a desire for self-destruction.  I was hoping very much that she did not answer yes, but I needed to know.  If pushing to a more dangerous level were a surrogate for suicide that would change a good bit about tonight’s scene, and despite all of her claims otherwise, I wanted her to tell me here, now.  She wasn’t incapable of lying, but I did not think she would want to here.  In the end I trusted her, and if she had been lying to herself, now is the time she would catch it.

“Sir.  This girl does not deny that she still has self-destructive impulses from time to time.  And Sir is aware the girl has occasionally fantasized her own death.  But the girl honestly believes that is not the principal motivation for her desire to experience this, though she will confess it adds to it.”

I nodded.  “I think the girl knows that I want to use her…beyond…her capacity.  But in this case, the girl must be complicit.  Tell me what the reason is.”

She breathed.  “This girl wishes to be used.  This girl is also intensely aroused by having Sir control her breath.  This girl has fantasized about being controlled to the point of losing consciousness.  This girl has also fantasized about being used by Sir when she is completely unconscious because even though she would not experience this, the concept and knowing that it is going to occur are….”  up until this point her recital had been right out of the e-mails she had written, but now her voice broke “very arousing…Sir.”

She continued her voice still a little tremulous.

“Sir…this girl begs leave to ask you a question?”

“She may.”

“Sir.  This girl hopes…she knows that she cannot ….this girl hopes that you will choke her until you come, no matter how long that may be.  She does not want to die, but…the idea of being unconscious as long as is necessary to be used is…is” she stammered a little “fucking hot Sir…this girl begs you Sir…”

“The girl understands I will not promise anything in particular in this regard?  Correct?”   I could tell it was important to her, was the dark core of this fantasy.  But there were so many possibilities.  A promise I would have to keep.

“This girl trusts you Sir.”  It hit me like a wrecking ball.  Whether I promised or not.  I knew what she wanted.  She had put her fantasy into my hands.  I had known it all along of course.

“Is the girl wet?”  I asked. 

“Fuck yes, this girl is wet, Sir…”

I had choked Jennifer before of course.  With my hands.  I had put my hands around her neck the night I first collared her.  She was no stranger to breath control.  But I had never brought her even near to unconsciousness.  My technique was sparing.  More pressure for effect than any real deprivation of air.  A few seconds at most.  I could make her dripping wet just by lightly placing my hand around her neck now.

But tonight would be different.

*   *   *

The cellphone connection is a little faint, but I can hear her fairly well.  I am in my car, staring at the ass of a U-Haul in bridge traffic.  I know that she is in the apartment in Cambridge, that Danny has not come in yet.

It was worse than usual. 

“Will he break up with you if you come down,” I asked.

“Yes, I think so.”  She sounded clinical and detached. “That’s why I want to come.  But then a part of me doesn’t.  Fuck.  This is the only real relationship I’ve had since I graduated.  But God, he’s like a little boy, he’s like my submissive.  I think I feel obligated and…I don’t want to be alone.”  I could hear the tears edging into her voice.

“At the risk of quoting fucking Alec Guinness, ‘you should do what you feel is right of course.’”

She was pissed off at the truism and her edge gained that hardness I associated with Jennifer in public.  “At the risk of quoting Alec Guinness from a better fucking movie, ‘sometimes you feel you’re nearer the end than the beginning.’”

“Nicely put, but you haven’t been with Danny twenty-eight years.”

There was resignation in her voice.  “It fucking feels like it.”

“Why do you want this.  Now?”

“I….oh jesus fuck I need to feel you controlling me.  I am falling James. “

“Well, do you want to come or not?”

“Oh Christ I want to.  How…how bad is it for you if I don’t.”

“Well Jenn, I’m not going to lie to you.  I booked all this stuff on pretty short notice.  You know I’m not really rich, so the trip isn’t nothing to me.  The airline is about two fifty, that’s non-refundable.  The hotel is about one twenty five, I’d have to cancel it no later than tomorrow morning.  I wouldn’t spend any money on taxi, food and all if you didn’t come down.  I’m not going to lie to you and tell you I’m happy about it, since you were the one who didn’t want to wait until the New Years’ party.  But I can bear it.”

“Fuck.  Would you ask for my collar back?” I could hear her starting to cry.  I loved her tears but not these.  On the other hand she was playing me even now.

“No Jenn.  But I am also not going to be responsible as your dominant for breaking up your relationship with Danny.  If you want to break up, do that.  But don’t pressure me into scheduling a session we hadn’t planned on, then try and get me to guilt you into keeping it as an excuse to break up with the useless boyfriend you are dependent on.  If you want to break up, break up.  If you want to fly down then do.  But do not try to make me make the decision for you.”

“You’re…my dominant.  Sometimes I need you to make decisions…”

“I can’t decide this for you.”

“But you never even let me know if you fucking care!  I don’t know if you give a shit if I come down there or if it’s just another girl and another night for you.”

I paused.  Drew in breath.  “I gave you a collar Jenn.  I care.  Enough that it hurts.  I shouldn’t even tell you that.  I am supposed to be solid for you.  But I suppose that doesn’t mean not letting you know if I have any feelings for you.  Well, I do. Yes, I want you to come down…” I let my voice trail off.

She wanted to know what would happen between us if she gave up her boyfriend entirely.  It was a question that made me afraid, because there were two answers.

She wasn’t talking, so I continued….” I do not want that to be why you break up.  When it comes to Danny, I’m only your friend.  If you break up, I’m behind you.  But it’s all you.  I can’t tell you to.”

“Do you think I should?”

“Jenn…” my tone was warning.  “Ask Annie what she thinks.”

She stopped crying and her voice got hard.  “As my friend, do you think I should break up with him?  Who would I have to depend on?  You’re always fucking saying I can’t trust you, because you’re so fucking wild and unpredictable like Sam fucking Spade!”

“I’m not a disinterested party, but yeah.  I haven’t known you to be happy at home since you moved in together.  The other question is aimed at me.  If you want to talk about that, we’ll talk, but not in reference to your breaking up with Danny.  It’s not an either or.”

“Okay…”

“I’m losing the signal here…this phone is dying.  I’ll talk to you in IM tonight.  Please let me know.  It would help if I can cancel the hotel.  I’d rather not be on the last minute here.  “

“’kay, I’ll let you know….” Her voice trailed off.   “James?”

“Yeah?”

“If I broke up with Danny.  What would you…want to do?”

“What question are you really asking Jenn?”

The gentle hiss of cellular silence hung between us. “I don’t know, exactly.  I’ll talk to you later, ‘kay?”

“Sure kid, take care.”

*   *   *

“Kneel, two, on the bed please.”

“Yes Sir…” I can hear the anxiousness in her voice.

She kneels, legs apart, hands on her thighs, palms up.

“Stretch your legs out in front of you.  Once we start I’m going to push you down and take you hard, and I don’t want to break your knees.  Try to keep your hands turned out.  I want to see the back of your hands, see if they’re clenching.  There is no real point to a safety sign for this, since by definition I am going to strangle you past the point of no return.  Once I begin I will not stop because the whole point of this exercise is to continue beyond your endurance.”

“Yes Sir…”

“I’m hoping you’ll panic towards the end, and if you end up grabbing my arms and clawing at me, that’s fine.  It’s not going to stop me, and you can’t really hurt me…so from this point on…wrestling rules.”

“I will need you to arch your back a little…let’s slide a pillow under you.  I’m going to have to pin you between my cock in your cunt and my hands around your neck.  I need a little tension on you so you don’t just roll out the side when the panic hits you.”

I didn’t need to tell her this, really.  I was doing it as I spoke.  She raised her hips in response to my touch, and I pushed the pillow under her.  But telling her about it had a psychological impact.  This scene was all about her emotions, and I wanted her as aroused and conflicted as possible.  I wanted to draw every ounce of fear I could out of her.  Fear of panic.  Fear of what I would do to her.  I could see her panting a little, and make out a few red patches on her skin that showed when she was flushed and excited.  I felt her fear and it excited me.  I did not want to stop, but I wanted to wring every emotion I could from this scene.   That was why she was playing with me.  Anyone could tease.  I was making her afraid.

And she was trusting me to do it.

“Yes Sir.  This girl does not believe she will panic Sir.”

I smiled down at her.  “I’m not going to be disappointed either way.”

I’d be in a slightly uncomfortable position, having to push my hips down a little and hold my weight on my thighs.  The point was to constrict her throat, not to put all my weight on her neck.    

“I am going to immobilize your legs because I don’t want you fighting at an importunate moment.  Your legs could give you enough mass to twist, and that would mean twisting your neck under stress.”  The truth is I was going to immobilize her because I knew that being bound made her hot, and I was telling her because I knew that hearing me say it would make her more excited still. 

Everything I did now was to heighten her sensation.

I let her hear me snapping the spreader bar together, then lock  each cuff around an ankle. 

I knelt in the triangle formed by the spreader bar and her legs, slid another pillow behind her back so her head was up, then slid my hands into the comfortable position around her throat. 

“I’m going to try to choke out with my hands.  We need to be careful because I don’t want to crush your windpipe.“  I tensed my back, and bent over a little, pushed another pillow behind

Her neck always felt good in my hands.  Slender, warm.  I felt her swallow beneath my palms and I could always hear her breathing quicken whenever I took hold of her like that.

“I am not going to clench hard until you are close to coming.  I don’t want to work your air way down over the course of the scene, so it’s going to be one push.”

I raise my eyes to look into her face, and the slight tremor in her body makes me instantly hard.  Her eyes are wider than I have ever seen them before, and in that moment she looks terribly young.  Her face is young and pretty but looking at me that way she seems like a child, almost so much that I am scared to go on.

 “Are you ready?”  I ask.

“Yes Sir….”  I can hear her voice shake a little.  Her lips barely move.  I feel her swallowing and breathing fast, but her body is held terribly still. 

I push her hair out of my way, let go for a moment.  I run my fingertips along her cheeks, down the sides of her neck.  I run the rough palm of my hand down her exposed back.  She is looking into my eyes.  Her eyes seem less wide now, but there is a still fear in them.  I push her up a little, lower my body and slip inside her, and she opens her mouth a little.  She usually closes her eyes but now she looks into mine like I’m a lifeline and closing her eyes will cut it off.

It is always intense to enter her.  I have fucked her once already tonight but this time I savor the feeling of my cock sliding into her.  She is incredibly wet.  I have to pace myself if I am going to pull this off.  I begin rolling my hips up into her and return my hands to her throat.  She always responds but now she begins rocking against me hard, I tighten my hands around her throat for about half a minute and release, then do it again thirty seconds later.   I can feel her breathing get hard then stop.  My hand constricting her throat is still one of the most sensual things I have ever felt.   

I can’t describe the look in her eyes right then.  I don’t know what I’m seeing.  You can make up a lot of things that you see in a girl’s eyes and some of them are true.  Trust, admiration, fear, desire.  I can’t tell which this is, it’s some new state.  I think there is a tear forming in the corner of one of her eyes, and I feel her body shudder once, though I’m not stopping her breath at all.

“How are you doing?” I ask after I let her have a breath…

“Uhh….I’m pretty close….uhh…Sir.”  She is trying to remember how to address me, but she is caught up in the feelings in her body.  She is sheened with sweat.

“Within a minute?”

“Uhh…maybe…don’t know”  Her words are coming in ragged, harsh, gasps.  She is panting, staring up…her eyes a little blank and glazed now, is forgetting everything except what is happening between her thighs and that she cannot breathe.

I give her another thirty seconds with my hands, then release.  The chokehold I have on her does not really cut all of her air off, though it comes close when I tighten it.

“real close now….” she gasps…her eyes are a little less glazed now and there is light in them, she’s looking into mine again.

“This is it then.  You will not breathe again until I have come in you…”

“jesus….fuck” she says, bucking up, her hips hard against mine…  “do it.”

I tighten my grip again.   “Can you breathe?”

She nods slightly “no” and begins driving herself into me frantically….I feel her come, hard, straining against me, her hands fluttering on her thighs, hands spasming.  I keep up the pressure, delighting in her spastic bucking against me.  I tighten my grip slightly, and as her orgasm begins to give out she shudders then kicks spasmodically, her legs shaking the spreader bar.  

She is beginning to panic and fully realizes that she is not going to be released with her orgasm done and that hits her like a wall.   I can feel the next orgasm slam through her like a train as she regains just enough clarity to realize she is going to be suffocated to unconsciousness and that she cannot physically break away from me.  Her body explodes against mine.  She slams against me out of control, no longer looking at me, head thrashing wildly from side to side.  Without the spreader bar to constrain her center of mass, she would probably break away from me with the violence of her orgasm.  I struggle, fighting just to keep my cock inside her as she hammers against me, completely lost. 

She slows a little as if tiring.  Her eyes closed while her head was turning back and forth, and now she opens them and looks into mine.  I can’t read what I see there.  Her eyes begin to glaze slightly and her mouth works but only a little bubble of spittle comes out.  Her mouth and eyes open wide, and an aftershock of her come hits her, a nervous twitch that feels like a death spasm.  Her mouth opened once again, slowly.

Then she was out.  I expected her eyes to flutter closed but they didn’t.  She just glazed and stared but there was no motion.

I had actually lost a little of my arousal in her reaction, the struggle taking some of my attention.  My first thought is wonder at how good her superheated, sweat drenched, body feels in my arms and against me.  No longer struggling she had no weight. 

They say when you are dying your life passes before your eyes.  Maybe.  Maybe when you are killing someone else, your life with them passes before your eyes.  I seemed to see our whole relationship…the party, the collar…hanging out…the slow days of occasional chatter on IM…all at once.  Time slowed down, it couldn’t have been more than one or two heartbeats.

Right now, I should let her go.  She had come incredibly.  There was no possible benefit for her in this. She was experiencing nothing now, and every second I kept her unconscious risked her life.

If I loved her I would let her go, not risk her life.  I felt a rising panic.  What if she was already dead, what if she’d died just now.  I knew that was stupid but the fear kicked through me hard. I was still thrusting in her…time was very slow.  One thrust.  Two.  I couldn’t feel anything, like thrusting through a badly made condom.

I don’t know if I really know what love is.  But I know that she said “I trust you.”  I know that she is lying here limp in my arms because she chose to be used by me in a way that was completely selfless.  To serve my pleasure by giving up everything to me…first her orgasm, then her breath, allowing me to possess everything of her.

The voice in my head tells me I should let her go now!  She is already slick with my come.  Dominants have many secrets they keep to make their submissives safe.  Things that appear to be dangerous but aren’t, tricks pulled with a blindfold on.  This will be one more.  She will never know how long she was out, or what I did to her if I do not tell her the truth.

“This girl trusts you Sir.” 

All of this happens with the world stopped.  It takes me another two thrusts to regain my equilibrium. I think, totally out of place a sort of poetic archaicism.  “What a strange way of life where we hurt the people we care about.”  I think maybe it is a quote, but I do not know who said it or why.  Maybe I read it in some book or am paraphrasing.

I have become totally lost and I have to focus.  I do not have much time.  I must do what I have taught her.  Focus on nothing but what is present.  I force my attention to the feeling of her limp, empty body in my arms and the heat comes rushing back to me.  I think of why she is in my arms motionless, that I have choked the life from her, and that she has given this to me so that I can use her and I give a literal growl.  My cock pistons into her, her slack body slammed forward against my arms with every strong thrust.  I do not count seconds.  I do not count anything.  I think only of what she has done and of how she feels against me.  I see her head bobbing slightly her mouth open, and it lolls to one side, her chin brushing my wrist, bobbing without volition driven only by my cock, and that pushes me over the edge.

I do not come so much as the orgasm is ripped out of me.  I think I give a hoarse scream or sort of roar when it happens.  There is nothing but her in my world, and I am coming in her and it is the most powerful erotic event of my life.

I come in three strokes and by the third I am thinking again.  My hand is already releasing.  Nothing happens, she is lying with her eyes glazed, head turned to the side, mouth open a little.  I expect to be panicked that she does not respond, but I am filled with a peaceful calm, like nothing I have ever felt before.  I am inside her body and I have all the time in the world. 

I slap her across the face, not too hard.  I am ready to slap her harder but she draws a great shuddering breath and roars back to consciousness…I hold her head and shoulders up as she coughs making sure her breathing passage is straight and open, feel her gasp, begin to breathe more normally.  As soon as I am sure her breathing is returning to normal, I let her fall back against the pillow.   

She begins to cry when she stops panting, which I expect, and I sink beside her to let her rest her head on me.  After a moment she stops suddenly, maybe feeling the same peace that has come over me.  I stroke her hair with my hands and let her lay against me, holding her.  This is good.  For a few more moments there is still nothing in the world but what has happened between us.

She looks up finally with a hesitant smile.

“It’s over…” I said.

She nods, her face relaxes.  “Wow…fuck…”

“How did it feel…”

She shakes her head “no” slowly.  “I don’t know exactly.  It was…very fucking intense.  I think I’m going to get a headache.”

“When you’re ready to be left alone for a moment, I’ll get you some Advil.”

“It’s okay.  I just need you to hold me right now.”  She draws another ragged breath, sobs once more, then as abruptly is smiling.  She shivers against me her body still limp. 

“How do you feel?” I ask.

“I love you.”

I nod.

“I love you.” I say.

I have said “over” and that means that the scene is done for that night.  For the first time since four thirty in the afternoon, she is Jennifer, and I am no longer Sir.  

I stroke her head.  She was too hot at first to pull against me, but she is cooling very rapidly now.  She is in a state that could be considered mild shock.  I pull her against me and she collapses face against my thigh.  I pull the blanket around her.  She holds my wrist with a small hand. 

She starts to cry again.  Not sobbing, just tears rolling down her cheeks.  I can feel them wet on my thigh. 

I run my fingers through her hair, rub a little at the red place on her neck.  I can feel her breathing against me, strong and fine.  My fingers stroke her hair like a child, smoothing furrows.  She is expressionless.  This is aftercare.  I do not talk because there isn’t much that I can say that will matter.  Eventually I stroke her cheek, run my fingers across her lips. 

“Are you ready for some Advil?”

She nods her head “no” against my thigh.  “Water please.”

I ease her head to a pillow and walk across the room, still naked, pull bottled water from the toybag, and bring her two Advil and two Tylenol.  Back on the bed, I raise her head to drink.  The water slops a little from the side of her mouth as she sucks, then she nods it away and sits up under her own strength.  She takes the pills from me and swallows, drinks some more of the water. 

I lay down and try to pull her back onto my lap but she pulls back, wanting to sit up.  I stroke her shoulder feeling suddenly very distant.  I know how to force her back to me, but now is not the time.  She folds to the side and curls up, back towards me.  I let her stay that way for a minute or two, stroking her hair and back, trying to figure what is going on.  She’s moved only a few inches but she is a world away from me now.

“Jenn.”  She does not respond.  “Jenn?” I say again more forcefully.  Now is not the time to be the harsh Dom, demanding that she come to me.  I have the right because she still has my collar.  But it would be a betrayal of trust.  This is aftercare and she trusts me to do what she needs.  I get up and walk around the bed, go down on one knee so I can look into her face, hand on her cheek.  She looks miserable like a child who has been hurt.

“Jenn.  Please tell me what it is?”  I say it firmly but gently, stroking her cheek softly.

“You said I love you.”

I nodded.  “Yes.  I’ve said it before.  Not often.  I meant it.”

I know that this is what I am afraid of, finally breaking.  We are going to talk now.  And she is going to want things from me.  She is afraid.  I am afraid.  The fear is real about what is going to happen to us, not the play fear of a session.  This is real, even more real than when I choked her.

I stroke her hair and arm and she unclenches a little.  I think how beautiful she is, lying like that. 

She finally spoke. “You know I’m breaking up with Danny…even if he hasn’t dumped me.  I’m giving him a chance to go first, but he has no self-respect so he won’t.”

“Yeah.  I was pretty sure of that.”

“I haven’t told him yet.  It’s going to suck James.  He’s going to freak out at me.  He’s been so loyal, followed me around like a puppy dog.” 

“I’m sorry.”

“You know I’ve been talking to Annie.  I’m thinking of moving.  Maybe going into grad school.  Maryland or maybe GW.  What do you think?”

I kneel closer to her looking into her eyes.  “You want to know if you should move down here?”

“I didn’t say….”

“…sure you did.”

“You don’t want me to.”  She said it flat, but it was a question, and I sensed fear behind it.

“No.  I’d like you to be down here.  But that’s not the real question.  The real question is if you come down here do we start dating?  I see Lisa once a week.  Most of the time, BDSM is a weekly or biweekly session like this.  If you get an apartment where we can meet then….we can go there.  I can’t make you drive up into the mountains on weeknights, so otherwise, we’ll still be at hotels and that’s...a constraint.  As much as I like to play the role, I am only so wealthy, I can only manage that so many times a month.  Weekly, maybe twice a week.”

“Would you even want to?”

“Yes and no.  Jenn I think you would make a wonderful girlfriend.  I feel very strongly about you, stronger than I’ve felt about anybody in a while.  I’d love to fuck you two three times a week.  But you need to go home and think about what you want?   Do you want to come off a steady relationship into a girlfriend boyfriend relationship with a thirty six year old married man?”

“I don’t know, maybe.  You’re sixteen years older than me, it’s not like I care what people think.  You’re presentable, you’re fun at parties.  You already know some of my friends.”

“Jenn, I like you.  I just want to warn you of one thing.  If you want that relationship, this one may change.  I can’t say how.  Think about it.  Some of it would be hard.  It is hard to be nervous about meeting with the guy you sat on the couch an ordered pizza with the night before, that you ate cereal with in the morning.  How long before this loses its edge.”

She gave a breath but didn’t say anything at all.  After a moment I went on.

“There are other things too.  You’re going to want your own circle of friends.  How is that going to work?  There’s some overlap.  We both know Annie.  But how would you feel introducing me to your friends from school?”

She shrugged.  “Fine. You hang out with people no older than I am.  And I don’t have to introduce you to all my friends and I don’t have to meet all of yours.  That’s not what this is about.”

“How many of those guys are going to want to date you if you have an older married dominant as a partner.  Most of them will piss blood terrified of me, like those college boys I scared off when I first got hold of you.  They’re already scared of you.”

“Maybe I sometimes want them scared off,” she said.  “Want to be able to be safe.  Keep them at a distance.  I can be pushed so easily.  Do you think I like that?  That’s why I make it so hard.  If I don’t…fuck…”

 “I really want you.  I want to show you things.  Teach you.  But if we start just being casual… “

“Fucking stop it James.”

“Stop what…”

“What you’re doing.  You’re pushing me away.  Listen to me.  I’m tired of you being fucking noble.  Telling me all the reasons giving me all the warnings why you’re bad for me.  Better than half of that is bullshit anyway. You’re not that fucking scary.  This is serious James.”

“Jenn…I don’t want to lose what I have with you.  I want you as a submissive…it pleases me more than anything else in my life right now.”

“Is that all I am to you.  A submissive to play games with and use as a fuck-toy?”

“I never said that.  I just said it’s hard to mix.  In the end it means having two relationships with each other instead of one.  How would tonight have worked?  Your lover might have chosen something different than I did.  You know you never even asked if I did what you wanted.”

“I didn’t have to. “ Her voice was quietly intense.  “You did what you said you would.”

“Your lover might not.  I don’t know, I can’t honestly say.  There isn’t a fuckload about romance that suggests that the way you show your love is by fucking your lover after you choke her unconscious.  That’s a pretty fucked up approach.  Everything in the normal world says that’s fucked up.”

She was looking at me.  Her eyes were dull.  Her body was less tense.  Her hand traced patterns on my forearm.

“James.  I need you to tell me the truth.  I am on the line here.  And all you’re giving me is a bunch of bullshit warnings about how you can’t commit much time, and how we might not end up the same.  Fuck it, if I was cautious would I have started dating you in the first place.”

 “I need an answer from you James.  Not a fucking lecture.  I don’t want caution and what might or might not happen.  I need to know if you want me.”

“I already told you I do.”

“No…” she replied dully, her voice hollow.  “You didn’t.  You said ‘I love you.’  Then you said a bunch of other distancing words, to make sure I didn’t think you were emotional or anything.  And in the end I don’t know which to believe.  I need you to drop the fucking hard-bitten act for a few minutes and talk to me about my life.  And yours.”  

“What do you want me to say?”

“If you want me then this will work itself out.  It may not be perfect we may lose this or gain that or we may break up.  When you’d fucked me I said ‘I love you.’  You said it back.  That was a great time to say it because it was in the heat of the moment and you can forget about it.  You say that to say it all the time cheapens it, and I agree.”

“Love isn’t a fucking magic bullet.” I said.  “It doesn’t make everything better…”  Even as I said it, I knew I’d made up my mind.  That I’d let the conversation get this far..she was still lying on her side.  She looked young, vulnerable, I thought of her face when I’d choked her, how innocent she looked.

“I never said it does…“

I looked into her face.  Her eyes were wide now, and I could see pain in them.  It wasn’t the pain I saw when I hurt her.  It was somehow different and it made me respond differently.  I didn’t want to make it worse, to add to it.  I wanted to comfort her, to make it go away, to protect her from it.  I did not want her to hurt that way.  Her pain made me feel hurt and empty too, and I wanted to stop it.   

I shook my head “no” and took her face in my hand.  Not roughly like I had before, but tenderly.

“I’d like you to move down here.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m in love with you and I want you with me.  I need you.  You’ve become really important to me.”

“Thank you…” she said, sounding a little tired. 

“I am not sure exactly how things will work out, but I’ll try if you will.  I’m sorry if I was an ass. I’m afraid to tell you how I feel.  Afraid you’d think I was weak.  Afraid of losing you as a submissive.”

“Sleep…” she said.  “My fucking head hurts.  That’s what I needed to know.  You won’t lose me.”

“Night Jenn…”

“Night…”

She did not have a content smile, but a blank expression.  But I knew it would be alright with her then.  I came around and eased into bed on my side, and she curled up against my body.  Her hand clenched into a fist, but it was gentle, resting on my chest.

 “You need more Advil?” I asked

“No, I’ll feel better in the morning. Thank you.”

I shook my head and said “No…thank you…” but I think she had already drifted off to sleep.

I was awake for a long time but I wasn’t unhappy, and when I finally slept I did not have any dreams.