The Pleasure's All Mine: Memoir of a Professional Submissive (11 page)

    Phil was making soft cuffs for my ankles and wrists from several pieces of white rope. He was preparing to attach me to the suspension bar that could be lowered to the floor or lifted toward the ceiling, depending on which way you turned the crank on the wall.

    “Oh, I don’t know.” He laughed sheepishly. “I read a lot of the bondage stuff in books, and I had a few sessions with a pro sub a couple of years ago.”

    It was only our second session together, but already I felt jealous about the idea of his playing with other people. He had asked me if I could come in to see him this second night in a row, even though I hadn’t been on the schedule. I had eagerly admitted to having nothing better to do.

    “You have, or haven’t, been suspended before?”

    “Haven’t been,” I said, “but I’ve been curious about it for a while, sir.”

    He let go of the rope and put his hands on my face, looking at me seriously. I raised my eyebrows back at him, not sure if I was supposed to say something else or just lie there. He smiled and kissed me gently on the forehead.

    “I don’t think I’ve ever played with anyone as genuinely sweet as you,” he said, picking up the ends of the harness again.

    “Oh go on,” I joked, waving at him with my half-tied hand. I was embarrassed to think it might show on my face how glad I was to hear it.

    He grinned at me again and gave a little shake of his head. “Now let’s see if I can get you off the floor without injuring either of us in the process.”

    As Phil turned the crank on the wall and began lifting me off the floor, I started to swing a little back and forth. I closed my eyes and saw the hilltop park across the street from my childhood home, or rather, the view of Los Angeles below its cliff. The kids in the neighborhood used to go there, even as teenagers, to ride the swings that faced the ledge over the steep, ice plant-covered hill. On a clear day, you could see downtown forty miles away, some of the ocean off to the left, and snow up on Big Bear Mountain if it was that time of year. You could also, if you had that kind of mind, see yourself vaulted out of the swing, either by choice or accident, when it was at its highest point, almost parallel to the upper bar it was attached to. You couldn’t see the ground below at that point, only the urban expanse beyond that cliff, as if you were already sailing out into it.
How far could I get, and would it kill me when I landed?
was what I always wondered.

    Phil lifted me higher, and suddenly my wrists and ankles began to burn. It was the first time I’d felt anything resembling actual pain with him, and it caused me a mixture of shock and alarm. I couldn’t really stand the idea of telling him that we had to stop what we were doing, but I knew the circles of fire on my skin would make me yell soon. I opened my mouth to say something calm and graceful.

    “Excuse me, sir.”

    I tried to clear my throat, realizing for the first time that my head was hanging in such a way that had made it hard to swallow for the last couple of minutes. Instead of helping, the attempted throat clearing made me start to cough, and each small spasm of my body made the ropes on my limbs dig in more deeply and painfully. I panicked.

    “It’s not — I can’t — it’s cutting me — please,” I started to babble, and then started to cry. Phil let me down as fast as he could and knelt beside me.

    “I’m so sorry! What happened? Are you okay?”

    He untied me and then held my head in one of his hands, looking at me with concern and fear. I put my hands over my face, ashamed, but unable to stop crying. It wasn’t even the pain or the irrational guilt I felt about not being able to take it. Phil’s reaction made me think about all the times that T had hurt me in ways I couldn’t handle, when I’d begged him to stop, and how he’d never looked at me afterwards the way Phil was looking at me now. I had felt like I loved T. I’d certainly tried to endure the things he wanted to subject me to. And I didn’t understand it: Neither his lack of tenderness nor my own willingness to put up with it made any sense to me anymore. It made me feel like I’d helped someone do something really horrible.

    Phil took my hands slowly away from my face so that he could rub each of my wrists. “I would never intentionally hurt you. I’m so sorry that happened—”

    “No, no,” I interrupted him, “it’s not that. And I’m okay.” I pulled one of my hands up to wipe around my eyes. He kept his soft grip on that same wrist, massaging the whole time.

    “So were the ropes too tight, or…?”

    “I don’t really know what started it. Maybe it was that my weight pulled too much against them? It just started to burn, and then…” I shook my head and swiped again at my face. “I think it’s just that I really like you, and it reminds me of the last person I really liked.”

    “I see. And you’re not over him.” Phil sounded a little disappointed, but understanding.

    “It’s not even that, really. I’ve never been with someone who was both really sadistic and really kind, like you. Something about it makes me happy and sad at the same time.”

    Phil brushed a thumb gently across my cheekbone, wiping it temporarily dry. “So you really like me, huh?” he asked seriously, and when that made me laugh, he laughed too.

    I nodded and closed my eyes, and we stayed that way until Hillary’s voice cut through on the intercom about ten minutes later. As he helped me up off the floor, he asked if he could see me again the next night.

    

    

    Phil had not known exactly what time he’d be coming by, so I’d brought a change of clothes with me to my day job and gone right to the dungeon after work. I found Samantha working the desk and no one else around when I got there at six.

    The front door buzzed loudly as I was getting dressed, and I took as deep a breath as my new underwire bra would allow before heading toward the lobby.

    “I’m here to see Marnie,” Phil announced, and held up a hand in greeting when he saw me coming through the kitchen. “Would you like to talk back here for a minute?”

    I motioned behind me toward the Dean Martin, and Phil nodded sweetly at Samantha before following me back. Sometimes I still had trouble believing he was as sexy as he was in session — he had such an exaggerated air of harmlessness about him, otherwise. Even though it wasn’t like he came off as a jerk or anything, it still seemed like a bit of a contradiction.

    I closed the Dean Martin door behind us, and turned around to a close-up of Phil’s button-down shirt. He put his arms around me, and I turned my cheek against his chest, resting my hands in the small of his back. I could hear the whisper of his lungs filling up and emptying through the thin cotton covering his chest.

    “I didn’t really need to talk with you first, I just wanted to hug you before anything else.” He sounded sheepish.

    “That’s not very sadistic of you,” I teased, and he laughed and hugged me harder. “No, it cute,” I said seriously, and he let me go so we could talk face-to-face.

    “Is that very impressive to a submissive — for a dominant to be ‘cute’?” He was smiling when he asked, but didn’t seem to be joking.

    “I don’t know what anyone else wants,” I shrugged, “but I find everything about you impressive.”

    He leaned forward and kissed my forehead. “My kind of gallow standards!” he laughed.

    “That’s not true,” I shook my head. “It’s just — I don’t know if you can understand what it’s like for me, what a relief you are for me. I’ve never met anyone who I could play this intensely with who didn’t also get on my nerves somehow.” He chuckled at that but I went on. “Really. You lack a sort of, I don’t know, arrogance that I really had begun to think was part of the genetic makeup of dominant men.” At that he laughed out loud.

    “Lacking a sort of arrogance — I’ve never had a compliment like that before.”

    “I probably sound pretty judgmental, huh?” Now I felt sheepish.

    He put his hands on my shoulders. “You sound like someone who’s careful about who she plays with. As well you should be. You’re quite special.”

    “Thank you.” I pulled him close to me in another hug and then stepped back. “We should probably get back out there, or they’ll start to worry.”

    Phil paid Samantha for two hours while I got our usual supply of toys from the little closet. We didn’t end up using any of them this time; neither of us seemed to be able to get enough of him just using his hands on me. Within a few minutes of our arrival upstairs, he had me bent over with my elbows on the bench to hold me up while he massaged my lower back gently and then ran his hands over as much of the rest of me as he could reach. I could feel how careful he was with his own body, bringing it close enough behind me that I kept getting a slight tickle from the fabric of his pants against the backs of my thighs, but still holding it firmly apart from me as well. When he put his hand briefly between my legs and moved two fingers in a circular motion over the most sensitive part, I didn’t stop him, the way I had with the other couple of clients who’d tried it.

    “Can I tell you something, sir?”

    He pulled his hand away and moved beside me, leaning down to hear.

    I felt a little awkward, then. I had meant to try and say something about how he could touch me under my G-string if he wanted to, but once his hand was gone from that area, it felt like a pushy request. Then I felt anxious as well. What if he didn’t want to touch me there, like that? What if he thought, because of my job, that I was someone who might not be clean enough down there to put a bare hand on? I wished I hadn’t opened my mouth, convinced now that it was a disastrous choice, but he was looking at me so intently and with such openness, I felt like it would be an insult to turn away from him.

    “I just was gonna say,” I cleared my throat, “I could take this off if you want me to.” I straightened my arms and took one hand off the bench, pulling at the waistband of my G-string. “But we don’t have to,” I said in a rush, before he could answer.

    I swear it almost looked like he blushed in the faint light of the room. “Thank you for offering. But I don’t want to do anything you’re not honestly comfortable with.”

    “I wouldn’t have brought it up if I were uncomfortable.” I looked into his face, no longer worried about what he would think of me, of my body. “I want you to feel like you can touch me everywhere.” I turned to stare again at the bench in front of me. “I want to feel what it’s like to be touched inside. By you.” I held my breath, afraid that this last might have been over the line.

    He moved behind me again, and I sighed with relief when his fingers hooked the elastic around my waist and pulled it down over my hips. He helped me step out of my underwear and then placed it neatly on the bench in front of me.

    His finger felt much softer inside me than it sometimes did against my skin, the familiar roughness melting away so that there was only warmth and an easy pressure. I had a few seconds of worrying about what I was doing. What if these rooms were secretly rigged with hidden cameras, or Hillary found out in some other way? Would she or the others understand what it was like for me? Had it ever been like this for any of them? Or was I the only one who ever felt tempted, let alone gave into it?

    When our time was up, Phil helped me collect the things we hadn’t used and then took me by the shoulders as we were about to go back down the stairs.

    “I’d love to just talk with you, if you’d be comfortable with that. If it’s not too late for you after the shift is over, I’d love to buy you a cup of coffee.”

    I couldn’t think of what to say at first. I was thrilled that he wanted to see me outside of here; I knew also that it was even more against the rules than the naked touching I’d initiated earlier.
It’s not fair, though. Am I really supposed to pass up the chance to like someone this much, just because we accidentally met here instead of somewhere else?

    “I would love that.”

    He leaned his face in toward me, and I had enough time to stop him if I’d wanted to, but instead I leaned a little toward him and kissed him back when his lips brushed against mine.

    “But we have to be quiet about it,” I said, pushing him slightly away. “I could get in trouble if they knew I was going to meet you after work.”

    “I won’t say a word.”

    We agreed that he would wait for me outside in his car and follow me wherever I wanted to go after that. I took him to the Bob’s Big Boy a few blocks from my apartment building. I had to get up early to go to the office the next morning and didn’t want to have to drive a long way home later.

    “I’ve never felt like this with anyone before. I’m a little in shock from it, frankly,” Phil said.

    “It’s the same for me,” I agreed, and we both fell stiffly silent as the waitress leaned in with his cup of coffee and my lemonade.

    “Really? So with the other dom that you’d told me about, the one from your personal life — surely you’ve had some feeling like this before?”

    It was a sincere question, not some attempt to get me to reassure him that he was better. I shook my head, and glanced at the people in the booth across from us. I could see their mouths moving but couldn’t make out what they were saying, and decided the opposite was probably true as well.

    “I felt… excited by him, but I never felt this happy.” I looked over at Phil. He was frowning, concerned. “I never trusted him, I guess is what it was. Not like I trust you.”

    He reached a hand across the slightly sticky tabletop, his fingers in an open search for my hand. I reached my own hand across and let him hold me.

    “There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.” He looked serious, but there was something hesitant in his tone as well.

    I knew that I felt attracted to him beyond what I’d felt for any other clients. But if we started some kind of personal relationship, would he at some point ask me to quit the dungeon job? And would that be a fair request? I’d known since my first shift that I wanted to be able to quit my straight day job as soon as possible; would I be able to stomach it again indefinitely just for Phil? Did I even
want
to have to make that kind of a trade-off just for a relationship? Although we hadn’t talked about what he did for a living, I had the impression that he wasn’t exactly a rich guy who’d be offering to support me. He’d made some remark during our second session about how after the next time, which was tonight, it might be a while before he could see me again. I figured his disposable income had run out for the month, and was flattered that he’d felt compelled to spend it all on seeing me so many times in a row.
If all else fails, just try to look thoughtful for a minute or so, until you can figure out what you want to say.