Intimate (6 page)

We met at a local café and at the time Karen was probably thirty-five? Maybe thirty-seven…

Anyhow, we had been introduced through a mutual friend. I was still on my search for a compatible submissive woman with whom I could form a long-term relationship, and Karen was an experienced submissive who had just come
out
of a long-term relationship.

She was a slim-built woman with auburn hair.

Auburn… do people still say that – or do they say reddish-brown? I’m not sure, but you get the picture.

She had a tattoo of handcuffs on the inside of her right wrist and a thin strip of leather, knotted tight around her throat. She was wearing a long flowing loose-fitting dress and walking funny.

Yeah, really. It wasn’t quite a limp. It was more of a pained, uncomfortable gait. I shook her hand when she came through the front door of the café, and we sat together in a corner booth. Once the waitress had gone, we started chatting about all those forgettable things that are small-talk until I asked her about her experiences in the lifestyle as a submissive woman.

Karen had seen every aspect of a submissive’s life – the highlights and the lowlights. Her most recent Master had put her in a car with several men and given them all permission to fuck her during a long drive home. Apparently, half-way to their destination she fled from the car, humiliated and furious at the way her man had treated her… and that was the end of their relationship.

Other Masters she had served had been more considerate – too considerate apparently. The fine line between contentment and frustration was very fine indeed. I got the impression that Karen was looking for someone who would be firm, but without using pain as punishment.

And then a bizarre thing happened.

We started negotiating her submission to me.

I say bizarre because at the time it was. Now, with hindsight and more experience, I realize that Karen was a thoughtful, experienced submissive who knew what she wanted from a relationship. She wasn’t going to go willingly to just any man who showed an interest; this was her submission she was offering and she wanted to be sure the man she surrendered to was worthy.

Smart lady.

But at the time it was like we were negotiating the sale of a house. The entire conversation was about likes, dislikes, and what we could accept. We tried to find middle ground. We chatted in an amiable way but Karen had a list – yes an actual handwritten list – of all the things she wanted to know from her potential Masters… how punishments would be handed out, what she would be expected to wear, how she would be required to behave in certain situations, as well as some specific hard limits.

I, on the other hand, was a little more instinctive. I didn’t see the point in contracts or agreements because the relationship – like every other relationship – would always hinge on a majority vote of one. If either person was unhappy or unsatisfied, the relationship just didn’t work, and that seemed particularly true in the BDSM lifestyle.

Anyhow, the waitress started hanging around a little more often and a little longer than was necessary. I’m sure she had overheard some aspects of our conversation and had become intrigued.

Karen sensed it too. She flashed the young woman a venomous glare and declared to me in a voice that was louder than necessary:

“I’m sorry. You probably noticed I was limping when I arrived, and since then I’ve had a hard time sitting still. It’s because I had my clitoris pierced a couple of days ago and it’s still tender.”

I shit you not! That’s what she said in the middle of the café on a busy Saturday morning.

The waitress disappeared and we did not see her again.

Karen wore the leather strap around her neck for a specific reason. She said it was a subtle message to others in the lifestyle that she was submissive but without a Master. It
was
a subtle message. If she hadn’t told me, I, for one, would never have made the connection.

When it came down to it, Karen knew a lot more about BDSM than I probably ever will.

I have never been an expert on the lifestyle.

Never.

Karen knew the ‘craft’ of the lifestyle, and regularly attended social gatherings with likeminded people. I, on the other hand, had never mixed with others who enjoyed BDSM. I’d always done my own thing, made my own rules and I was perfectly happy that way. I didn’t feel I needed to mix with others on a social level. What I was doing worked for me and the ladies I trained, and I needed nothing more. I never have.

There’s no right or wrong way to engage in BDSM play. As long as it’s safe, sane, and consensual… well you’ve probably heard the expression before…

Anyhow, I’m getting distracted. Sorry, my mind does that sometimes. My thoughts go off in a direction and my mouth follows. The point of telling you about Karen is this: she was a confident in-control woman who enjoyed the submissive lifestyle, without compromising her wants and needs. I respected her for that. To some men I am sure her confidence and knowledge would have been intimidating.

At last!
Now I’m finally coming to my point…

Think about your own life. Maybe you’re in a relationship with a man and you would love to explore the BDSM lifestyle with him – but you can’t understand why he is so reluctant.

Sound familiar…?

Believe me when I tell you that a guy’s sexual confidence hangs by a thin thread. You’ve been reading about the BDSM lifestyle. You know the language and maybe some of the sexual positions and aspects of submission too.

Compared to your man, you’re well-researched.

Your guy, on the other hand, most likely knows little or nothing at all about BDSM.

That’s damned intimidating for a guy. What if he makes a fool of himself in front of you?

What if he doesn’t measure up in your eyes to the epic performances of all those erotic romance heroes you read about?

A lot of women assume a dominant, confident attitude to sex is something every man automatically inherits. They don’t.

Just because a man can hammer in a nail, does not mean he’s qualified as a carpenter.

* * *

I know what you’re doing.

You’re sitting, listening to me, but in the background, beneath the sound of my voice, your mind is playing back over our conversation and you’re wondering if anything I have said contained some deeper, more significant meaning, right?

Right.

Well it didn’t… but somehow I don’t think that’s going to stop you from analyzing everything word-for-word. I feel like you do that a lot, actually.

I get the impression that you’ll often find yourself playing back over conversations wondering to yourself, ‘What did that person
really
mean?’

Do you know what I’m talking about? I can’t see whether you’re nodding to yourself from over here.

Do you think that might also be why you tend to keep people at bay when you first meet them: why you’re reserved and unwilling to give away too much of yourself until that person proves themselves genuine?

Are you nodding again?

I’m asking the question of you because I’m curious, but also because I feel that you and I, over the course of just a short time, have got something going here – some kind of a growing bond of understanding, and maybe even trust. It feels like I’ve known you all my life, and that’s a little bit exciting because I know how naturally wary and reserved you are about people until you really get to know them.

How did it happen? How did we get to this place where I would call you a friend, in just a short time talking to each other?

Maybe it’s because you’re such a good listener. Or maybe it’s because this intimate conversation we’re having right now is good for both of us in its own way…?

Crazy… but a good kind of crazy, don’t you think?

* * *

Look, there’s another woman I really want to tell you about.

Her name was Christine and I met her at a time in my life after I had enjoyed some good long-term experiences with submissive women, but I was, at that moment, between relationships.

Christine came into my life at just the right time – never as a potential long-term partner, but as one of those people you encounter briefly whom you connect with on a singular level.

For Christine and me it was sex. Just sex. Outside of the bedroom we didn’t have a lot in common and nor did either of us try to bridge the gap. We were happy with the simplicity of the arrangement. It was an
‘ask no questions’
understanding. For all I knew when she left my apartment, Christine went home to a husband and three kids. I never asked, and she never offered to tell me.

Oh. Do you mind if I pace? I do that a lot while I’m thinking. Somehow it makes it easier to talk, to gather my thoughts into some kind of coherent order. I really want to tell this story properly because in a way, my encounter with Christine is one of the reasons you and I are having this private conversation right now. Inadvertently, Christine was responsible for me writing erotica.

So… um, the pacing thing…? You don’t mind do you?

I met Christine through my work at the time. I went to her home after hours to interview her for a kind of client satisfaction survey. It was a questionnaire that took about forty-five minutes to complete.

When I rang her front doorbell, there was no answer. I waited for a few minutes on her front porch and then went around to the side of the home. There was a shoulder-high steel gate. I pulled it open and walked into the backyard of the house.

Christine was in her swimming pool, just wading across to the steps. She saw me, and her face lit up into a particularly friendly smile. She waved and called out a greeting. I watched her climb out of the pool. She was wearing a lemon yellow bikini that looked good against the color of her tan. She padded across the tiled surround and shook my hand. Droplets of water clung to her lashes like sparkling jewels.

“I wasn’t expecting you,”
she said.
“I thought it would be someone else.”

Hmmm...

Now I’m not the smartest guy in the world, but I do know when a woman is lying, when she makes a mistake, and when she deliberately tells a blatant lie because she wants you to know she is lying but finds it easier to tell than a brazen truth. This was one of those.

Christine knew it would be me visiting – my secretary had called and confirmed the appointment at lunchtime.

I kept my expression neutral while Christine toweled her hair dry. Her eyes were slanted with sexuality, her lips pressed into a pout like she was anticipating a kiss. She excused herself for a minute and went back to the edge of the pool for her sunglasses, then stood, with the late afternoon sun directly behind her, and ran the towel slowly over her legs and across her breasts. Her nipples were hard, poking through the damp fabric of her tiny top and the bottoms of the bathers were so transparent I could clearly see the cleft of her sex through the material.

Christine was a shaver… or maybe a waxer…

She asked me if there was anything I would like, delivering the question from under hooded eyes, her words loaded with innuendo.

I said nothing.

We had met a week before at my office where I had spent a couple of hours talking to her about our product range. She was polite and curious – maybe just a little flirty – but she certainly was not provocative. She was attractive, educated, and well spoken.

Suddenly now she was something else entirely.

She rested her hand on my forearm and drew me through a set of glass doors, out of the sunlight and into the shade and gloom of a spacious kitchen. She smelled of chlorine and suntan lotion.

She went to the refrigerator and bent from the waist to search the lower shelves. The material of her swimmers rucked tightly up around the cheeks of her bottom.

Okay… so you get it, right? Christine, because of some unknown attraction, or maybe some unknown desperation, was coming onto me. I’ll skip the rest of the prequel and move the story along, okay?

We tumbled into her big bed and Christine lay on her back. She was thirty-four when we met, with surgically enlarged breasts that pointed at the ceiling and natural blonde hair…

I peeled the damp bottoms of her bikini off and asked her what aroused her.

It turned out that Christine had two fantasies. In the first, she was a naughty teenage girl away at some kind of summer camp. She imagined her instructor catching her masturbating and then the man in her fantasies proceeded to punish her by bending her over the bed and fucking her roughly from behind.

Okey-dokey. No problems, I decided. In fact it fitted with my own fascination for domination and submission

But there was a problem with the second fantasy. I pride myself on being able to please a woman, but with Christine I met my Waterloo. Her second fantasy was to be lost in a forest. Suddenly the vines of a tree wrapped themselves around her wrists and her ankles, restraining her so she could not move. Then… and I am not making this up… another vine appeared from out of the tree and impregnated her with ‘tree semen’.