Shy Guys Make Good Boys

Like any addict, I was starting to be one step away from that headspace, when falling to it would give me my fix. Just dressing for her after work gave me a sense of satisfaction. And when she answered the door, wearing her knee high boots and another black dress – long sleeved and with a high neck this time – I bowed my head so easily, lifting my eyes in a way I knew she would find pleasing. “Hello, Mistress.”

She closed the door behind me and right from the beginning was when I had that sense of something being up. I didn’t initially piece it together with that look from our last date as there wasn’t much to go off of, but Mistress was feeling… particularly domineering, in a way that was obviously so. She crooked a finger through my collar’s O-ring and I staggered. Her eyes flashed in satisfaction when I carefully braced myself against her hallway wall, rather than dare fall against her. “Good boy toy. I missed you already. Why don’t you be a good plaything and fix your necklace to me?”

I had to smile with a sense of wicked pleasure, when her eyes made me shiver with both want and fear. This was the reserved, held back Sonya, the version of her that had so calmly gazed at me in the coffee shop, except this version was amplified somehow, for some reason. I wasn’t sure why at first, but I adored it. There was so much control in those eyes, of a kind that was nearly sadistic, even while Sonya was not a sadist. “Of course, Mistress.” I obeyed with the softest touch yet, kissing her neck with the lightest flick of my tongue in the way she enjoyed most, so that she chuckled under her breath and reached up to stroke my hair.

“Good boy, but I want you in a different way this time. The rules are easy enough.” She spoke when she led me to a spare room down the hall, one that I hadn’t gotten to see yet. “Just take what you’re given. I don’t need your help with this scene, although I’ll have to give you a different safe word when I want you gagged.”

I shuddered at that and then felt all the more submissive when she opened the door to the new room.

It wasn’t exactly a dungeon, even while it somewhat was, in the strangest way. You see, there weren’t furniture setups in the way that Sulfur’s had, but it was clear what the open space was for with all the toys she had on the walls, with the screws in the ceiling and the chains hanging from them. I couldn’t keep from looking to her, couldn’t keep from smiling, amazed that I had gotten this comfortable with these ideas, enough to manage to smile so normally at her in that space. “Gladiator,” I said softly.

Her eyes were wicked. “Exactly that.” She was methodical when she lifted my shirt over my head, when I had the realization that for a lot of our forays, she kept me clothed. She seemed to enjoy the sight of me wearing what she told me to that much and I had the faint embarrassment of being stripped naked, that faint insecurity, but it was far away.

My pulse was pacing up and my mind was sinking down, so that I fell to the pleasure of obedience, stripping naked and following her to the chains, where she buckled her favorite studded cuffs to my wrists and used the ceiling chains to tether them above my head, spread wide. Next was the bit gag and I thrilled with the memory of writing about those kinds of gags. She didn’t stop there, though, no. She fitted me with a padded blindfold, then went on to bind my ankles apart with floor hooks. Last was the studded leather harness she fitted around me.

She held me at the end of it, her arms on my waist while she kissed my shoulder blades. “Now, yank the chains three times. There’s not a lot of slack, but there’s enough that it should make a satisfying amount of noise.” When I did it, she was right and I nodded that I understood, wondering at the headspace I fell into so easily.

It was suffocating, defeating. All she’d done was had that look in her eyes and tethered me in her bondage, but it was more bondage than she’d given me thus far and maybe that was part of it. I think maybe it was more that I had always been going to break for her, but it was a slow, even descent. I felt like her plaything, like a toy to amuse her, and that would have bothered me before. As it was, with her careful playing with me, it was starting to thrill me when it only made me fly higher, when it felt so damned good. With my blood’s racing, my skin tingled.

“You said you wanted to learn more to please me a few times now. And so far, everything we’ve done has leaned heavily to domination and submission.” I shuddered when I felt the crop’s leather slap trail across my thighs, the softest, threatening trace. She seemed to decide on a softer sensation, rather than pain, though, and I hissed out a breath when she stroked the crop ever so gently across my balls through the cage bars, suffering in a different way. For a moment, I remembered Christopher’s implying that pleasure could be a more sadistic control than pain and tried to shift on my feet in my cuffs, only to remember how strictly I was held. She laughed delicately when I fell still instead, suffering with a shudder, accepting it when it was my place in all this to accept what she wanted.

“This is me giving up just a little. I’ll show you some of what comes with that, with pleasing me and being more heavily mine. Just a little.” I heard a small sound, like the click of a cap being opened, when she pulled away and then shivered when she came back to me, her small hand so light with so much threat behind it. “For instance, I’m rather fond of making my male submissives into anal loving sluts.”

I barked out a rough cry behind the bit gag and made fists in the chains, but it wasn’t to yank them. Her laughter was chime like when she pressed her lubricated fingertips to my asshole and the cock cage was suddenly a new level of confusing hell. “But oh, look at you. Maybe this won’t even take long, little plaything.” I hissed, thinking that I should have been yanking the chains and instead, I was falling off another ledge a little deeper into something dark, something that was far more out of my control. It was another drop in the downward spiral.

Because I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t stop her. That should have frightened me but somehow, I wasn’t even as frightened as I would have expected. I was more numb to it and all I did was moan in acceptance when she ever so gently started with one of her fingers, working it inside of me so that I whimpered, so that I turned hotter than hell and then felt the punishment that came from trying to get hard and then couldn’t control that when that was something that always made me excited. No, I couldn’t feel nearly as much fear as I should have for something like that.

It’s another moment I like looking back on, when it really is kind of romantic in a darker sense. See, now I can tell you what it was. The truth? Fear is for people who have a choice, who can take their out. Acceptance is for those who can’t.

“Good boy toy.” Jesus fuck. Her soft coo of a praise felt like ecstasy and I moaned, riding back against her fingering me, so that she purred and added another finger. “I got you a training plug that night when I got toys, baby, along with a strap-on just for you. But it will be a while before I can use that second one.” It was torture in the sweetest, most all encompassing way. “Just take what I give you and let it happen, so I can introduce you to your new anal toy. If you take to it, you’ll be wearing it a lot.”

I moaned again at that, shaking when all I could really do was take what she was giving me. I certainly couldn’t think enough to do anything else.

I dreaded it when she pulled away, already understanding what came next. Sure enough, when she came back, it wasn’t her fingers she pressed to my hole. It was the end of a butt plug and she gave me the first taste of her reprimand when I resisted, shocking me when she so swiftly took the strap and struck it across my thigh, so that I barked out another animal sound. “No, open up for me and behave yourself. Besides, it’s okay. I love anal play and I want you to like it with me, baby. Trust me.”

Trust her. I bowed my head, fists still clenched, but I opened for her obediently with the realization that I did trust her. Holy hell, I trusted her with a hell of a lot actually. Sonya, a goddess both kind and merciless in her own way. I whimpered when she pressed the plug to me and this time it opened me up.

To me, it felt large, but I had never done anything with anal before, so anything probably would have. Even so, my whimpers of fear turned into begging gasps around my bit gag so seamlessly that in my thoughtless state, I couldn’t even remember when the painful pressure turned into something my body processed as pleasure. It was an exceedingly strange kind of pleasure, though.

Because it still hurt. It definitely did when I wasn’t used to these sensations, but it blitzed my subspace into something that made the rest of the world disappear. The only thing left was her and obeying what pleased her and holy fucking God, it was intense. I let it happen without fighting because it was pure fiery pleasure even in the pain. Hell, the pain only made it better, only made it more wonderful when she cooed at my side.

“Such a good plaything you’re being. Look at how hard you’re fucking back on this toy.” I let my head fall back in a desperate gesture to do anything at all, when I was too tightly bound and that was really the only action I was left with. It was true, that I was bucking back against her and she wasn’t letting the plug seat inside of me, instead making sure that I fucked back to the widest part, stretching my hole open almost viciously. She trailed the strap up my thigh and I whined, kind of hoping for a lick of pain when maybe pain would help me take back some control over the rampant pleasure that would have been wonderful.

Except for my cock cage.

She wasn’t kind enough to do that, but she did let the plug finally seat inside of me, so that the stretching sensation was replaced by a sense of fullness that felt a little too good, but at least the motion was a still one, so that I could attempt to process all the sensation I had.

Mistress took the moment to remove the blindfold and I blinked, wondering at how the image of everything seemed to change. I couldn’t focus on anything except for her. She was the only one who could take this whirlwind and make it make sense. She was the only one who could give me satisfaction when my satisfaction was reliant on her pleasure. “Look at you. You don’t know what to feel.” I whimpered and she laughed, her eyes alive in a way that I hadn’t seen before. It was in that state that it clicked, actually, when all I could think of was her and what she would want.

She was riding a control high, you see, and it sank in that this was the way she was balancing out the emotions she felt on our dates. This was how she was finding her way to keep control over herself, in a way that satisfied her sense of need for self control.

I had the thought that I adored her in that moment, more than ever. Her hand wasn’t cruel in the slightest when she grabbed me by my hair, but it was deliciously strict. “Now, let’s play a little trade game. I said that I enjoyed anal play too and I think I remember you saying you had problems giving harsher sensation. Let me teach you a little while we have fun with you on your knees and you show me how well you can lick and worship pussy.”

I made a soft noise of dread and understanding, holding still while she released my tethers and gag, then fell to my knees at her slightest touch, taking the lubricant with a feeling of terror that I might hurt her.

But then she pressed my face to her pussy and I lapped her like she liked most, moaning when she made that soft cry of pleasure above me, the same one she always gave when I started correctly. She was drenched off of this level of control and it made me close my eyes, grateful to her when she let me enjoy the taste of her for a moment, when she purred above me happily. “How good you’ve gotten with your tongue. We just need to give you more practice, baby, but I’m perfectly okay with that, with keeping you caged and with a toy in your asshole while you can eat me out for as long as I think you need.” Jesus, every word out of her mouth only tortured me and made her more wet and it was perfect that it did.

I only pulled away to answer, my voice sounding so far away. “Yes, Mistress. Thank you, Mistress.”

Her laughter was a satisfied kind. “Of course. Now, let’s play a little harder. Use the lubricant on your fingers and you’re going to finger my asshole with it like I just did to yours.”

“Yes, Mistress.” God, it was terrifying. Something about that state of mind made the thought of harming her in the slightest seem like the worst kind of anathema.

In the end, though? I couldn’t keep from obeying and I did it to the sound of her sharp cry over me, one of the ones I was becoming addicted to. I finally lifted my eyes from admiring her pussy, when that was becoming something I bowed to, and stared up to see her clasping her tits, her face lifted back in ecstasy. “Good boy. I didn’t say to stop licking.” I hurried to obey that, filling her with my tongue in tandem with working my fingers gently inside of her ass, so freaking gently.

She rode me… and rode me. I don’t know how long she kept me like that. I only know that by the time she finished and pulled away, I had long since ceased to expect or think of asking for orgasm. I suffered through the torment of the cock cage by thinking of the next flick of my tongue and the next stroke of my fingers, and then the next, and then the next. There was nothing but mindless desire and fire, nothing but her voice to tell me what to do and I would have done anything she said.

“Good boy toy.” She pulled away to stroke my hair, though, bending down to lick some of her cum from my lips. “That’s a gorgeous look.”

“Thank you, Mistress.” I closed my eyes and leaned into her hand, while she enjoyed petting me. Whenever I looked up at her, she was staring back with a contented gaze, as if the sight comforted her, so that I looked back down. Bowing.

When she shook herself and unlocked my cock cage, I jolted with a hiss at the slightest provocation and she laughed, taking her thong where she’d put it to the side and raising it my cock head. “Now you’re going to cum for me, nice and hard in my thong again, so that you can suck it clean afterwards, little plaything.” I raised to her when she lifted me with a hand in my hair, crouching down to jerk me slowly. “Look at me, Ryan.” Like I could have looked away. I stared up into her eyes, trying like hell to wait for her permission when I could have hit a fucking wall with the force of the orgasm from that level of excitement.

She finally took mercy on me, whispering the command. “Cum for me, baby.” And I didn’t think there was anyway she could have made it better, when I didn’t think anything could have made it more intense, but she found a way.

She slapped my face and I shouted, a kind of snarl that was as pained as it was gleeful. Her laughter rang in my ear when I could finally hear again, when every last orgasm she gave me somehow felt more powerful than the one before it. I was on my hands and knees when I could think straight again and her hand was in my hair. She lifted my face, raising the thong to my lips. “Open.”

I did that, parting my lips to take her preferred gag for me, only flinching a little at the taste.

She took the strap and used it around my neck to lift my head back, rather than the crop that time, and I thrilled to that small rush of slightest violence coming from her smaller stature. “Suck and let’s hear how happy you are to do it this time, little plaything. Moan for me, too.”

I sucked. And moaned nice and loud.

But the last piece of the puzzle came from after a scene like that. She seemed to find her way back to her controlled comfort zone and I got the joy of bathing her, of being allowed to rub her shoulders. I got to flirt with her again, to tease her, and it was okay because she’d found her balance again. It wasn’t something I could fully empathize with, but it was something I could notice, something I could tell and try to understand.

The dangerous fire in her eyes was lessened and sated, you see, and I had the subservient thought that I rather enjoyed her slaking that need on my body.

——–

It went from there. She worked in a balance that fascinated me and every date or scene felt like something new to learn about her. One time, she was showing me another restaurant she liked and I learned her religious views.

“I was raised in a highly conservative and Christian household and hated being told what to think. So, naturally, I’m a loud mouthed atheist.”

It’d made me howl with laughter and she asked me the same, so that I considered it thoughtfully. “I don’t know, actually. I haven’t truly cared enough to think about it.”

“No? Really? See, that is fascinating when your mind never seems to freaking shut up. See, it took me a while to realize that too, but now I know what some of those facial expressions of yours are.”

I had to grin with the thought of my silences that were filled with long, mental pathways. At work, while fixing a spreadsheet for my boss, for instance, I’d entertained myself with the mental philosophy question that went like this: If you created a small, trial generation of artificial intelligence units and placed them in an Earth-like environment, how long would it take for them to naturally form groups and what was the statistical likelihood that AI created by a grouping species (humans) would never actually become a group oriented species?

Truth be told, I only refused ADD medication because being medically dependent sounded tiresome.

I looked back to meet her eyes, softly saying, “That’s not entirely true anymore. There is one time when it shuts up, Mistress.”

Her eyes turned warm with the look of fire and affection she could have and she fingered my cage key where it was always on her neck for our dates, so that I ached to serve. It was a moment of quiet when she knew which moments made me be still, even better than I did.

And then I would get a call a few days later, when I was at work. Her soft voice would give me an invitation that started with, “Are you doing anything tonight, plaything?”

“No, Mistress.” I started to thrill by the second one, to smile with the thought that Mistress needed to comfort herself on my chains and that I enjoyed the fuck out of that thought.

“Would you like to come and play?”

It made me shiver with her past threat of the strap-on that she’d gotten for me, when she’d cooed over me that night to tell me it would hurt and she’d turn me into her little anal gaping slut with it. “Yes, please, Mistress,” I answered breathlessly.

But she didn’t cross that line. She did give me the plug again, but it was to make me dress over it and to see me on my knees in her favorite outfit for me, while I whimpered for mercy, while she stroked me with the riding crop. “I was kind enough to give you a puppy mask, but it occurred to me that puppies don’t eat in the same way I’ve let you get away with.”

I bowed at her heels to eat from a dog bowl, throbbing with desire from the humiliation, especially when she only reiterated it with the crop to lick my shoulders with it. She made me finish that with what she called her puppy’s treat.

Her pussy. I whimpered, shifting on the toy she’d stuffed me with, sinking lower than low into darkest subspace, lapping her until she orgasmed again and again, until she was spent, even with her sex drive as wild as it was. “I think we’ll keep you waiting this time, when desire just does so much for you, little boy toy. Let’s see how hot it makes you.” It made me choke on a soft moan, so that she shushed me ever so encouragingly. “No, no. No whining about it. You’ve been so good for me and you can do this. I’ll be a kind Mistress and give you practice in these things. Since that anal toy is for long term wear, after we shower and I clean it and your cock cage, we can give you a night of practice with both. Why don’t you ask me for it?”

I stared at her heels and for a moment, I finally broke a little. “No. No, please.”

Her hand was strict again in my hair and I cried out in ecstasy when she slapped my face. “Ryan.”

It was a whisper, every last awful word a trial. “Please let me sleep in my cage and toy to get used to it.”

The only thing that made it bearable was that look of fire and hot pleasure in her eyes. “Good boy toy. That’s such a good idea, too. Of course you can and I’ll even reward you for asking.” She used her soft touch in my hair to pull my mouth back to her pussy and I inhaled hot sex, blind with desire that wasn’t getting release. It felt like hell.

It felt like fire hot heaven. She arched with the force of her orgasm when the exchange made her so horny and I clasped her closer, tongue fucking her frantically to help her draw every last second of bliss from her release in the ways she’d taught me to.

She was as bad as her word and I woke up in the night with another moment that made me realize that this comforted her, even while it made me whimper in torture. Because in her sleep, after dressing me in the toys, she was snuggled against my side where I lay on my back and she was petting the silky basketball shorts she had me wear to bed, over my cock cage. I lay still, trying not to shiver when it made me burn to think about, that she wasn’t even awake and my torment was her calming drug. She was merely like a sleeping cat again, lightly pawing while she cuddled from her fill of playing.

Even more terrifying, I didn’t have it in me to wake her. The thought alone was something I rebelled by submissive instinct. No, I carefully cradled her closer, shifting only slightly to give her easier access, holding back begging whimpers.

Another time, she took me to an ice skating show and later she called me over to teach me how to rim her asshole to orgasm, something that excited me, and by that time, I still hadn’t had orgasm, so I was seeing red with lust and every lap of my tongue was a flick with a plea. I was desperate to please her because if she wanted me to suffer more at the end of this one, then the only satisfaction I could have would be her pleasure and I took of that with a sense of very real frenzy. She lifted off her bed, where she’d chosen to lay on her belly, fucking her hole back on my tongue with her release.

“Good boy toy,” she cooed her pleasure. “That’s not easy to do either.” I stared up at her, dazed and shaking my head to clear it when all I could think of was how much I wanted to bury my nose against her pussy, when the scent was all I could think of. “Let’s give you a reward.”

That time she made me get on my hands and knees on the floor, fucking my ass with the plug while she jerked me off. “Cum for me. Show me how much of my good little anal slut you can be. You’re already such a cum slut and cocksucking slut.” I lifted a hand to clasp her arm closer to my chest where she held me, holding on for dear life with the force of that one.

“Thank you, Mistress. Thank you so much…” The words were degrading for the fact that I didn’t decide to say them. They just happened in the midst of my ears ringing.

“Such a polite, good little plaything. Lick your cum off my floor.” I crawled and did it.

That night I got to learn how to do her nails in a perfect manicure, while she quietly taught me what to do, letting me sit at her feet in contented happiness. She met my eyes with intimacy and tenderness after having sated her need for control. It was a cycle and it was one that I loved.

I admired her for it actually. You see, never once did she make it feel like my submission was a price I had to pay, even if it was something she seemed to need. No, see, she pet my hair too gently and took too much care in pressing my limits. She was too soft even when she was strict with her gestures. No, it wasn’t like that at all.

It was more like she was thanking me for understanding somehow. The night when I did her nails I remember kissing her wrists and then her palms, glad that she’d let me take care of her somehow, when she was so proud. Like I said, I didn’t fully understand, but I knew it wasn’t always easy for her and I didn’t want her to ever think I took it for granted.

She pressed her forehead to mine in reply and she didn’t say the words that night, but I think it was the night we both kind of knew they were waiting in the background. It all just needed a push, one little nudge. We went through date after session after training after date after denial after teasing. I wouldn’t say those words to push her comfort zone and she wouldn’t say them when it would be stepping over into something deeper and she wasn’t sure if that level was a good idea for us still. We fit together in a lot of ways, but that was one way where we certainly didn’t.

Still, though, things find their ways.

By that, I mean, my idiocy forces them to happen.

——–

Sonya

It was the stupidest moment that finally shattered everything around me.

Courtney and I had a routine when it came to having that time of the month. We were both weirdly reactive to the same birth control, in the sense that we didn’t have to deal with it as often, but we still sometimes had one and we somehow still ended up on it at the same time. So she’d come over and we’d be bitchy and judgmental together where no one else could see.

This time we were watching a trivia show and Courtney was wrapped around me. “Ugh. Sonya, I don’t want to do things tomorrow. I don’t want to people.”

“You’re a therapist. You have to people.”

“Don’t make me people, Sonya.”

“I mean I guess you could just up and quit, but that’d be kind of shitty of you with a slake of appointments for a day.”

She made a low growling sound and I laughed with how playfully whiny she got, lifting my phone when it lit up with Ryan’s text. Feeling any better, Mistress?

I smiled with the thought that he knew how this went for me. I’d already dominated him during this time, choosing to wear jeans and boots the night before, and introducing him to the flogger across his cock, his balls, and his thighs. “Let’s see if you can cum for me like this, baby.” He’d been naked except for a blindfold and the good thing about being the one in control was that I didn’t have to even explain why I wasn’t fucking.

But, of course, Ryan knew me too well. When I’d had him on the floor of my toy room, I’d been soft, kissing up his thighs until he could get hard again. Something about this time of the month, when I didn’t have it overly often, made me feel… just soft. I don’t know another word for it. I’d felt gentle enough to suck him off when he got hard again, licking up his cock in slow, teasing laps, then opening wide to enjoy him. The rush of control it gave me to do it was different than the usual one, but it was still there with the thought of making him cum again, of seeing him lose control when I kept mine. It wasn’t my usual thing, but during that time, it was something I felt like indulging in.

At the end, I’d petted him and his voice was soft where he sat at my knees, his face turned down. “Mistress?”

“Yes, little plaything?”

“Are you hurting?”

And it’d made me smile that he somehow had an idea of what was wrong, that I’d acted just a little too different or maybe flinched a little too obviously for the eyes of someone who bowed. “Not a lot, love.”

“Would you like me to rub your shoulders and back?”

I’d let him do it, when those soft actions made him so content at the end of my training scenes, when he looked up to me during them with hopeful happiness, truly losing himself in the joy of getting those sweeter ways of serving me.

“Oh, so it’s him.” Courtney’s voice pulled me from my thoughts and I grinned sheepishly, so that she laughed, picking up a Hershey’s Kiss.

“He’s being adorable again.”

“Ugh, I saw him in Sulfur’s. That baby face is freaking killer in person, it really is.”

“I told you.”

I am, love, thank you. Not so bad today. And how are you doing?

When I looked up from answering, Courtney was watching me, a small, evil smile on her face. “What?”

She shrugged. “Not a thing, doll.”

My phone lit up with his answer. That depends.

On what, little boy toy?

I looked up with the knock on the door and Courtney lifted up from the couch, her long hair braided back like mine was when we’d both decided we liked that hair style. She was laughing. “Wow, I wonder who that could be? This is fun. I bet he doesn’t know he’s walking into the lion’s den.”

I threw a Hershey’s Kiss at her. “You play nice. He’s being sweet.”

She snickered. “Oh, but that’s when they don’t want you to play nice.”

It made me grin when I opened the door and he was standing there. “It depends on if cupcakes would cheer you up, Mistress,” he said softly, his eyes playful while he held up the box.

Courtney answered before I could, going to the door behind me. “Are they chocolate?”

Ryan froze and it was truly an adorable moment for the small fact that it was so… I don’t know, basic. I had to grin when he swallowed, when he bit his lip before he answered. “I should have brought more cupcakes.”

Courtney burst into happy laughter and grabbed him by his collar so that I stood to the side, watching him look back at me with his eyes begging me. “God, you really are the cutest damn thing. And so sweet, too. You did her nails last night.” Ryan nodded, wide eyed, and I realized he wasn’t sure how to address her. “It’s so pretty. I want one of you, little plaything.”

“I don’t like pain, please,” he answered instantly and it made me laugh in happiness, while Courtney looked to me in outrage, shoving him down so that he was forced to kneel at her feet.

“Why do they always think I’m going to hurt them? They always think that.”

“Because you always hurt them.”

Ryan’s voice was timid. “May I ask something?” Courtney tilted her head. “Your playmate.” He seemed to rush through it, to make himself ask the question. “Does he ever get to finish or do you really only let him have the cane?”

Her smile was wicked and she tightened a hand in his hair. “Wicked, too. I really like you, little boy toy.”

I felt flirty and it was a moment of fun, even if none of us had the intention of going anywhere with it. Ryan shuddered when I stroked him from behind, shoving a finger between his lips. “I think he likes the thought.” His eyes widened and he looked up at me desperately, shaking his head while he sucked gently at my finger. “No? Are you sure? I could always unlock your cock cage and find out for myself.” He moaned at that and Courtney giggled, petting his jaw.

“To answer you, love, he really doesn’t get to orgasm. He only gets to enjoy the amount of pain he can take for me while I get off on giving it. It’s intoxicating, the way the sadism high is so intense.” She grinned at him. “I don’t even really like getting off any other way anymore, if I’m being honest. Sometimes, I don’t really want it to end when it just feels better than sex to give pain.”

Ryan stared at her and I knelt down behind him to kiss his neck. “Forgive her. Sadists are weird.”

She grinned. “I’m not nearly as mean as Sonya is sometimes, though. Sure, I’m evil about pain, but Sonya can be way more degrading. Different approaches and all that.” She pet his hair to comfort him, evidently in her own mood of softness. “He was a strange one when he found me. It started out with curiosity from Venus in Furs after he found the book and he wanted to know what the real thing felt like.” She smiled. “He liked what it felt like and it went from there. I can play banter and tease, but I don’t do things without talking them through first.”

Ryan tilted his head with that same curiosity he’d had when I’d found him talking to Christopher at Sulfur’s, so that I had to smile. He had these little habits, these tics when his thoughts took off from him. “I’m glad he likes it then,” he said softly. “And with a way that’s safe. It seems like there’s too many stories online that people claim are real that make you hope to God they’re not.” He made a face. “I have to be honest. I stop reading true accounts – when I’m trying to write believably – if they use the phrase ‘the natural order of humanity’. Indoctrination just doesn’t seem all that safe to me.”

Courtney burst into laughter. “Oh, I like you. I like you a lot.”

He grinned in that puppy like way, pleased with himself in a way that made me laugh in his ear and kiss his neck so that he tilted his head and exhaled, another tell-tale sign of his. Although this one was one that went with the effect of his cock cage tightening around him when I aroused him. “I can’t say I like the gateway drug book of choice he had though.”

“No? Wanda not the Mistress to your liking?” Courtney grinned.

He made a face. “What the fuck was that ending? It makes me angry. Who goes to porn for a shitty ending? No one, that’s who. No one goes to porn thinking, ‘I hope the husband ruins the wife’s life after she finally tries assfucking’. At least not in visual porn. But can books give the courtesy of following the rule? No. Apparently not. They have to be all hipster about it. Wanda was downright cruel, not anything like Mistress, and she wasn’t so full of love at all-”

He snapped his mouth closed, going still, and Courtney’s grin couldn’t have looked more wolf-like. “Wow, you both seriously hadn’t said it yet, had you? Jesus, you’re idiots. I just had to see Sonya look at her phone over the past month to get it.”

Ryan turned his head to look back at me and she let him, releasing him. His eyes were wide and worried, but I couldn’t keep from smiling. “Love is probably a very good word,” I said quietly.

I’d been afraid of crossing a certain line, afraid of where it might lead. Because if I crossed that line, I went into the territory of something that would be painful hell to leave, and not in the good way. If I crossed that line, it felt like something deeper than what we’d been having, a lot deeper.

Except, when he said the word, even if it wasn’t that three word phrase, my heart leapt in happiness. He got me. Somehow, I’d found someone who understood. Somehow, I’d met someone who could put up with my control freak shit, as much as I used it to comfort myself and keep tight hold on my own control. “Do you want me to train you, Ryan, actually train you?”

His eyes lit up with excitement. “Yes, please.” And his voice was so eager, even while he kept it soft. “Yes, I would like that.”

“Alright. Hang out with us tonight and then I’ll tell you tomorrow how it will go.”

His excitement intensified when I didn’t offer him a say in it and he nodded happily while Courtney leaned forward again to stroke his hair. “You might regret that. I’m telling you that Doms can be more sadistic than a sadist by proxy, love.”

He leaned back against me and his voice was soft, so soft, in that way that came with the moment right before he fell into subspace, when he was always so easily pushed into it now. “I’m okay with that.”

I stroked him, thinking that I needed to break the moment, thinking that tonight wasn’t a scene. Although, maybe, on second thought, I could make a kind of game out of it. “Courtney, lay down on your stomach.” She glanced at me, shrugged, then did it, laying still. Ryan shivered when I grabbed his hands and pressed them to her lower back, lifting her shirt up.

Obediently, he rubbed her down in that soothing way I’d taught him to do with me, so that he got to indulge in one of those softer forms of serving that he loved so much. Courtney purred happily, so that he smiled.

“Oh, God, and he does massages? Sonya, I want one.”

“Get your own. This one is mine now.”

He practically radiated his pleasure with the thought, too. Well. We’d been dating in that gray area for months by then. Maybe it was really just about time anyway. I caved, I gave in, and the armor shattered. Although, I couldn’t say I felt all that awful without it.

Maybe it had always been a little too suffocating to keep myself in that stranglehold anyway.

——–

Ryan

Her text hadn’t given much away, in the sense that it didn’t let me know entirely what she had in mind for me. All I had to go off of was the tone in what she had said. You’re staying with me weekends, Tuesday nights, and Thursday nights until I’m done. You can safeword your way out at anytime. That’s something that doesn’t change, love.

Yes, Mistress.

When I went to her place for that first weekend that she set it, it was enough time that her time of the month had ended. Courtney wasn’t there anymore and somehow, that felt like a frightening thought, that it was just her and I and no one to stop her once she got started, when I was hers once she did get started. I went to her with a sense of being locked in a far more permanent harness, a collar around my throat that wasn’t coming off anymore.

Although, maybe it was silly to feel that way, when I’d been wearing her collar this entire time, since the start, when it fit just fine under my leather jackets and I could get away with it at work even, when I wanted to, along with her cock cage. She hadn’t told me to, no, but it had always been there.

“Good evening, Mistress.”

She smiled and I would say that I’d gotten used to how she could look in those short dresses and boots, but I didn’t think I ever would. No, I thought she would always look like my personal temptress in that outfit, but maybe that had a good deal to do with my orgasm denial and how it was a double edged sword when being denied made me hot.

“Good evening, love. You sure you want to do this? We can go on a date instead.” Her smile was soft and sinful all in one. “Check your courage.”

I swallowed with the repetition of the wording when the last time had come with my introduction to anal sex. Of course, now I had a fair bit of experience with wearing a toy in my ass, with that sensation of fullness, and she had gotten larger and larger with the toys she used to train my asshole. “I’m sure I want to,” I whispered back.

It was hot, so hot, looking down at her when she was right from before, when she had already mentioned how much she enjoyed my being larger than her when it meant I could get away from her, when there had never been anything stopping me from taking the key around my neck and freeing myself, stopping all of it. Except I wouldn’t. And that was the hot part about it.

“Brave boy toy,” she purred back, reaching up to stroke her hands up through my hair so that I lowered my head obediently with her gentle pull, wondering again at the pieces of the puzzle that made up my role in this, of that strange background image that was comprised of a few different pieces. It had to do with sitting at Christopher’s knees and enjoying my hair being pet in a manner that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with guiding control, those moments where I realized that she was giving me safewords to be so careful and I was being bad somehow when I wasn’t safe at all because I couldn’t stop her. It had something to do with how I craved to be led and to serve while she needed to control to let me do that. It was two puzzle pieces that fit together, jagged edges and strange flaws that shaped around each other, blending together in a way that felt like magic. And it did feel like magic. To look at us separate, one would think we were immiscible, and yet…

I held her close in the way she had taught me she liked the most, stroking a hand down her braid with a smile at the memory of all my Mord-Sith fantasies and placing the other at the small of her back, protective in one way without any of the taste of dominance that seemed to be mistaken for protection. It had started to feel like a dance with her if I’m honest, the balance beam of control and soft moments when she was delightfully proud and wonderfully wary.

“Good boy.”

“Thank you, Mistress.” I whispered it between another kiss.

It felt like the perfect timing when she pulled away and reinstated her distance, when her eyes turned to what I recognized as the Dominatrix who wanted to press me to my darkest edges. “Come on, little boy toy. Let’s get started then. My guess is that you won’t like this at first, but I could be wrong.”

That was the kind of thing to make me thrilled now that I’d committed myself to this.

She led me to her bedroom that time, instead of that wide open other room, and had me kneel on the floor by her bed. At first the nerves didn’t fully sink in. It was more a sense of the surreal, but then she came back to me with the cuffs and the blindfold. And I swallowed at the difference in her usual preferences, when I associated the blindfold with her more intense desires. She hadn’t been lying that first time when she said she usually preferred her male submissives left free to sight.

Once again, my adrenaline started to hammer my pulse up and my mind went down, in a slow, inevitable spiral. The leather of the cuffs felt like a studded embrace when she tightened them and chained them together behind me. My world narrowed down to a touch of fear and the feel of her.

But then I truly turned frightened with the next part. She reached down between my legs and I jumped to the sound of the cage’s lock clicking open, shivering in confusion so that she laughed. “How off putting, isn’t it? Once you get so used to the comfort of the cage. Don’t worry, you can always have it back, baby. Wait here for me for a moment.”

I shifted in the bondage, enjoying it, free to be hard without the steel confines and unsure how to process that. It was a thought to make me shiver, when I hadn’t been quite aware of how accustomed to her cage I had become. It felt like a large piece to that background puzzle and it confused me in no small way. I had a stray thought that maybe this was part of why she had me wait to kneel and then that I was conditioned far deeper than even I really thought.

Because I missed my cage. She was right to call it every word she had ever used. Comforting, cradling. One time she’d said, “Just think of it as my control you can always wear under your clothes.”

“How pretty you look when you kneel for me.” I lifted my face to the sound of her voice and leaned into her caress. My struggle against the cuffs was an instant of forgetting that I was restrained for just a moment, one that always seemed to happen somehow when she first touched me.

Of course I rarely seemed to forget a second time that I wasn’t permitted to touch a goddess for the moment. “I’m glad, Mistress.”

I had the sensation of standing on the last ledge over that endless darkness. The others had felt like steps but this one felt like something that I wouldn’t easily get back up from. And I wasn’t entirely certain what was in that pit. I did know that the darkness wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. It just was. It came with fear because it came with mystery, but sometimes mystery was romance. Darkness could hide monsters and evil, but it could also hide the kiss of a love or the embrace of pleasure when sometimes the light’s illumination could make one blush.

All I knew for the moment was there was an energy to the start of this, an undercurrent that was cumulative of every past scene, of every moment that most fascinated and confused me at once. “Jesus, Ryan.”

Whatever she heard in my voice aroused her and I could tell now by just the way her breath changed, something that made me smile. Somewhere along the line I had become sensitive to my small statured goddess. I turned my head how she guided me with a hand in my hair, nuzzling along her thigh, delighting to how soft she felt, shifting with her touch until…

I moaned with the feel of the strap-on cock she wore, then whimpered. She knew everything that most scared me and somehow this felt different than it did to accept her fucking my face with a toy. Once upon a time, that would have mattered.

It still made me shift, but I didn’t particularly want to struggle against her defeating me. “Open up, little boy toy.”

I opened, throbbing hard without a cage and that confused me, especially when she chuckled above me and I realized why when she nudged my mouth with the toy. I had to open wider to take her. All that training she’d done with her toys had been effective, true, but I couldn’t keep from a moment of adjusting to this one. She tsked over me with amusement in her voice when I gagged for a moment. “You can do better than that, when we both know you’re my little cock and cum slut now.” Jesus. I moaned around the toy and forced myself forward, when somehow she’d done what she’d promised and given me a new definition for being a good boy.

Good boys were slutty little playthings. I took her, opening up and pressing forward slowly but surely when she was kind enough to let me have a moment to get used to it. Once her kindness ended, I knew she’d take over, so I took it for all I could have, swallowing my way down the toy to get past the gag reflex. “That’s it.” Her voice was sweet encouragement and I purred as best I could with the feel of her hand in my hair. “Good boy. Now it’s my turn to enjoy.”

I braced myself and sure enough, she took over with a ferocity that made me burn. I couldn’t keep from choking one more time a few of her thrusts in and then yelped happily when she pulled away to slap my face, my mouth still wide open. She laughed above me and filled me up again while I throbbed, and then she moaned with a thrust forward, taking the pleasure that the strap-on gave her. It was game over from there, when I realized that she was taking her pleasure.

See, in some ways, some of the things she did felt more for my benefit than hers and they were often the more degrading parts, but I loved it when it was for her. I opened wide and accepted, so close to falling off whatever that ledge was, forgetting my own desire for hers because that’s how I needed it. That was the truth of a lot of that puzzle.

I felt all the more like a plaything, a toy for her to use. She was sighing out with every thrust into my face and she pulled away now and again just to feel the pleasure of giving me a full thrust of the toy. “It’s so good, baby. Wait. I don’t want to cum like this just yet. Sometime later, but this time I have something else in mind.”

I gasped for air when she pulled away, realizing how badly I needed it. “Yes, Mistress,” I managed to finally reply. “Anything.”

She helped me stand and it was her next command that made me realize how much I meant that one word. “Good little plaything. Come here and crawl up on the bed for me.”

Because it made my heart race. I knew where this was going and there was no denial about it. It was obvious in how she positioned me, pressing me forward after she helped me on the bed, so that I fell with my face down. She grasped the cuffs at my back just to rattle them behind me, just to excite me and it worked. I was impossibly hard with fear and need.

“Easy, baby.” I whimpered, shaking when she used the lubricant in the same way she always did. “Don’t fight me and be a good boy toy.”

“Yes, Mistress.” I wanted to, don’t get me wrong. I wanted to so bad, to keep her from fingering my ass so gently, pressing lubricant inside of me, but some horrific, dark part of me wouldn’t let me, not even kind of. It turned out that mind really did rule over matter in some cases.

It also turned out that my mind was hers. I arched with a soft keen when she pressed the head of the strap-on to my entrance, vaguely aware that I was harder than I’d ever been in my life. I couldn’t think past the suffocating subspace and I couldn’t find my way back to some salvation.

That’s when it started to sink in. That’s when the ledge started to fall away in a strange feeling of vertigo. She pressed inside of me with her own soft whimpers of eager excitement and it occurred to me that I had always hated Venus in Furs, beyond anything.

But at least Severin had a way out from Wanda, even if it was a way that made me angry, and now I knew that I didn’t. Do you want to know the truth of it? If Wanda would have been more secure in her desires of domination and if she’d been a little kinder about satisfying his masochism, she’d have been dangerous. Because he never would have escaped.

“Mistress. Please. I-”

She shushed me in the gentlest tone and I whimpered, accepting and unsure where my desire ended anymore and where hers began. The sensation of taking her toy was much like what I’d grown used to from her playing with me like this, with plugs. It was this growing painful pressure that wasn’t really pain, not when she was so careful. It was this addicting sensation of being forced wide, and it was the sensation of being raped… except it was far from rape. “Good boy. How brave you’re being for me. God, it’s so good too.” That last was a breathless purr of lust that made me quake. She curled a hand at my waist and the other still held my cuffs. I was vaguely aware of flexing my hands wide in some desperate gesture.

“God, please!” That last was a burst that made her laugh above me after she abruptly shoved deep.

“Please, what? Please, more? I’d love to, baby.”

And she worked the toy back out before she shoved deep again before I could answer. My skin had the sensation of white heat more intense than her denial training and I couldn’t stop shaking, especially when a cold sweat broke over my shoulders. The terrifying part was that I’m not even sure whether my body truly enjoyed the sensation or if I just loved how much I hated it so much that it overrode everything and turned my world into too much blind frenzy to separate any of the sensations anymore.

I only knew that once she started working me over in a rough rhythm, I definitely wasn’t going to be able to tell. I was stretched and opened, more than she’d done it yet, except now she was fucking me instead of just working a toy and it made a world of difference. It made my moans and cries swirl together. In between them I was aware of begging, but the pleas that started in my mind changed by the time they reached my tongue somehow. “Please, harder. Please, please, more, please, I-”

“I’m glad you like this, baby. You’re going to get off like this a lot. Tomorrow night, I’m going to show you how it feels with your cock cage, as well.” That made me grit my teeth and whimper with the mere thought of the torture it would be, when I was so hard that it already hurt. “This time, I thought I’d be nice about it for your introduction, but don’t make me regret it.” She’d slowed her pace to make sure I could understand. “You aren’t going to fuss when I do start with the cage. And right now, you’re going to wait for my permission before you cum in my thong again. And even after that, I want to hear you moan for me with how much you’re a slut for your cum now, understood?”

She rattled the cuffs almost viciously and my voice was raw when I whimpered, “Yes, Mistress.”

“Good boy toy.” She went back to fucking me while I sank down in the knowledge that I was likely going to spend a lot more time being fucked than I would ever be allowed to do it. And that was something I knew oh, so well.

I already knew it from how little she actually wished for sex and how much more she wanted control. The collar on my throat felt so tight all of a sudden with that sensation of falling into a dark place. Mistress’ rhythm turned brutal and I arched, wishing the action was to try to escape in some way when this was painful and she promised me more pain with it later.

But her breaths over me were coming shorter with her excitement and arousal, while mine were coming shorter with my efforts to hold back orgasm even if she wasn’t touching me. It was enough that the rock of my hips backward ensured my cock brushed against her bedspread every now and again… and then I cried out with the realization that I was fucking back against her like a toy whore.

“Please, please, please, please…” I couldn’t seem to remember another word.

She answered with a sharp cry of her release, a sound that seemed shocked that she should abruptly find so much pleasure, that she should cum that hard off of my degradation. But she followed it up with a snarl so fast that I had an image of her slamming that pleasure back with iron control, reaching around me to stroke my cock with her thong, the lace too much for me to hold back from when it felt so damned good after what she’d done.

Thank God she snapped out the magic words for me. “Cum for me, slutty little plaything. Show me how much you love it.” I barely even heard the last part when my world seemed to shudder and then went white behind the blindfold. I couldn’t even cry out, but I know I hissed out an animal sound and snapped my teeth in her bedspread, biting in an action that was pure self preservation, when I thought I might not keep my sanity if I didn’t do something. She was laughing above me and I was shaking and then-

I went still. And this time there wasn’t any getting back from that subspace, not fully. There would always be some tether, some hold in my mind, when I felt broken by the knowledge of that one moment when I hadn’t been trying to arch away from her. Peace. Calm. It was this stillness, this satisfaction, the wake after a storm.

One hell of a storm. One hell of a wake.

Mistress stroked me down my back, a soft and tender motion of reward. “Good boy toy. That was intense. Still with me?”

“Yes, Mistress.” It made me give a tentative laugh, with the thought that I had almost passed out from her. I shifted when she withdrew the strap-on, exhaling in humiliation when it made me feel gaped and used, filthy and desecrated in the best way.

“Such a content little plaything when you’ve been used. I like to think of training you so well, baby, when you’re so submissive, when you bow so well. I don’t even think you realize some of your reactions now, like how you immediately look down in respect every time I touch your cage key. You look like you’re dying to be at my knees, no matter where we are.” I lifted to her hand’s stroking, thinking she was correct that I probably didn’t even think of all those innately subservient behaviors, but that I believed her without a shadow of doubt.

I believed her, you see, because I knew what I was to her now. I knew, even if she didn’t see me that way. I knew, even if she might not realize what I was and how I thought. I thought it likely that she wouldn’t, but also hoped that didn’t.

“It’s gorgeous,” she breathed. “Every single time it makes me burn to have you back in my collar, to tease you in some way, any way. It drives me insane sometimes, baby, just thinking of the fact that you’re wearing my cage, that you give me the key before every date. It drives me crazier that you’ve never tested boundaries. You realize that, little plaything? I told you a single time that I hated bratty behavior and, even though I’ve confessed to being a brat when I played, you have never mentioned it or displayed anything less than the most respectful and playful mischief. And even then you look at me with this gorgeous fear. You’re so submissive that you won’t even press my rules and it makes me feel… It almost hurts how bad I want to see you bow and lick my pussy. One time I want to video the look on your face when you do it so I can show you how you look. You close your eyes and lift your hands like you’re worshiping, like my perfect little slut.

“And I want to train you better so badly, until you need to serve, until you thank me when I fuck your ass while you wear your cock cage because you’ll know that you need it to feel satisfied.” She lifted me when I was still a little out of it, pulling me up and back so that I was kneeling down while she pressed against my back, holding me close while she whispered the last in my ear. “You already become so confused without it and see the cage as comforting. Just think of it. When it tortures you while I tease you, it will make you so thrilled and happy, baby. You’ll love showing how good you can be by drinking your own cum, even though I know you hate the taste.”

“Yes, Mistress.” It wasn’t quite a broken sound, when I wasn’t quite in what I would call a broken state. You see, the word “broken” has always implied something that needs to be fixed. I didn’t need to be fixed because I didn’t want to be.

Because I’d never felt so peaceful in my life. There was nothing to fix when being “broken” made me better.

“God, I’m horny again just thinking about it. Just your voice gets to me. Let’s hear you in a different way, however. Open up.”

I obeyed, taking her thong in my mouth and cringing to the strange taste of semen, but I remembered how I was supposed to behave quite well. And I did, moaning for her, nice and slutty like she wanted. It turned me on to do it when I knew she was hoping for a twisted conditioning out of it. People associated their own sexual sounds with feelings of pleasure already, just by nature, but Mistress knew how delightfully conflicted and confused I was about drinking my own cum.

So she made me more conflicted in the best and most humiliating way.

“Listen to you.” Her voice was a taunt, mocking when I was just obeying her, unfair in her condescension and hot because it was. “You love the way you taste, don’t you, baby?”

“Mhmm.” I made sure it was loud and excited just like she wanted, flushing with the indignity of it, with how mortified it made me feel just to do it. She tugged off my blindfold so that I could finally see her and I bowed my head as soon as I saw her eyes, with how victorious and proud she looked. It made me moan with dread and excitement all in one.

I was in the darkest place I’d ever been in my life, my headspace so suffocated and I was frightened of… how much I wasn’t really as frightened as I should have been.

Because the part of my mind that knew I should have been afraid couldn’t find its way back to a loud enough voice. It was a dangerous thing, in some way, at least when I considered it later. Subspace came with a great deal of trust required when it started, when it was frightening how far you might go to please another person.

And if you kept playing, it was just as frightening to consider that you might find a point where you didn’t want to stop bowing at all.

It was the kind of thing that could have easily been darker than it was, though. It was true that I was more subdued than ever when she took me to her bathroom, when I still couldn’t think through the satiated mental haze. I lay down in her bathtub and cradled her against me at her command, smiling when she felt so small against me, when it felt right to hold her like that. That time, she bathed me instead of the other way around, a touch of caretaking dominance where she watched me, speaking to me softly. Except, where she had spoken with me after scenes before in an attempt to pull me up from my headspace, it was clearly different this time. She kept me still with a touch of command in her voice. It was fascinating how the intention to stay in control changed her in such small ways and how those small ways were everything to me.

When she had me shift for instance to start with shaving me, stroking the razor up my leg while I blushed just for a moment, and the caretaker touch had a strict undercurrent. It wasn’t even a specifically identifiable idea or feature, but something made up of all that was her. It was the way she touched my knee to make me spread for the razor, maybe, or the way her eyes held mine with an expression that quelled any questioning I may have had before it reached my mind.

Or, in another smallest moment afterwards, it was when she softly asked, “Would you like to play chess with me tonight, Ryan?”

And even though it was a question for a choice, it felt like a choice she didn’t have to give me and her voice still commanded that I be respectful. “Yes, please, Mistress.”

Of course, I think there were two reasons why I didn’t feel as much fear as I should have. The first one was one I had already started to realize, the one that finally made me see the picture formed of all those little puzzle pieces. It was another idea I had written in a dozen different ways, the fact that there were differences in levels of submission. There were all different kinds and they all struck me as beautiful and fascinating, even if I was reversing the gender roles of my stories from my own fantasies.

There were submissives who wanted to play light scenes, to have fun, like most people did with their loved one. They just wanted to let go for a few hours and to feel the stress fade away. There were others who wanted it as an integral part of their relationship, ones who wanted the dynamic to be a background static sound in a way. Not in the sense that they wanted to obey all the time, but more in the sense that they wanted it to be a possibility all the time. Then, of course, there were some people who wanted to indulge a fetish that had nothing to do with submitting. There were masochists who had submissive tendencies and masochists who just needed the release of torment and pain. There were all different kinds, as many as there were people. I’d done hours and hours of brainstorming for different story possibilities, researching as many real life accounts as I could, asking people online who might be willing to talk about it under mutually anonymous tags, with, of course, permission and respect.

But I think I was something else to her, something that she didn’t define and didn’t intend. I had the realization that sometimes a person’s role in a relationship was defined by their heart and maybe wasn’t even mutually agreed upon. Because I think my role to her was something she hadn’t chosen at all.

It didn’t seem to matter. I think it started as soon as she gave me the option to let her choose the dates we went on, to let her tell me when to hold her hand. I think it started with the realization that this was who I was and this was the most stable I had always felt. It came with the realization that approval from someone like Christopher Love who, by his own admission, valued obedience meant that I really was well behaved for Mistress. It was the approval that came with being a good reflection on her. But it was still more than those things, too. It was the fact that I wasn’t escaping the subspace I was in, not fully, because I didn’t want to. I wanted her to tell me what to do to her heart’s content. I wanted to serve her in any way that would help her or give her pleasure because that was the thing that made me most fulfilled and happy.

If you combined all of that, I was fairly certain the end picture was not of a submissive… but of a slave. It had nothing to do with chains, cages, or collars and everything to do with the fact that I hadn’t been able to say a safeword for a long time by then.

It really does sound so romantically dark, in some way. In some deeper way, maybe it was a little bit of a dark self realization, to understand how deep submission ran for me. I was still thinking about it when we played chess, too, when I watched Mistress dress me to her liking after shaving me, shivering with how it felt a little strange to be so shaved. The embarrassment had faded in favor of happiness that she was so obviously pleased. I grinned when she fixed my cage back, nipping her when she allowed me to give her a kiss.

It only got better from there, though. If that was the moment where it struck me, then the morning after when she woke me up to solidify the morning routine she had started with our dating was when it started to really sink in. She had already started these threads, with things like our bathing together, where she had taught me how to turn her under the water and how to warm her to make her feel a relaxed pleasure. Now, she added to it and it wasn’t the splotchy pieces of playing that had come from dating, but the beginnings of strict ritual that started as soon as I woke up.

Her touch was light when she stroked me awake, when she manipulated me to command me in a sleepy voice, “Start with kissing my waistline.” Devious excitement pulsed through me and it only got better with every small instruction. I obediently started at one side and kissed my way down her leg, until I got to kiss her toes, and then worked my way back up the other leg. It even felt a little like a religious ritual, when it was so slow, so reverent, and I thrilled to the thought of her being my goddess. By the time I reached back up, her sleepy voice was more awake and filled with an excitement of her own, especially when she finally grasped me by my hair and lowered my face to her pussy, breathing, “Suck.” And I knew what to do. I knew from how she had trained me how to eat her out in the ways she loved most. I worked my tongue, touching her in the ways she liked to be held, hooking an arm around her leg when she liked the touches of romance.

But the best part about it and the thing that made it sink in? The details she gave me in her commands made it clear that this was something I could look forward to every morning. That was how I would wake her, while wearing my cage, and it would never have my release in it when she wanted me to start the days after I spent the night with the thoughts of her pleasure and nothing else. If I’d been anywhere within saving after falling off that ledge the night before, I wasn’t when she started every little thing that she would start with me.

I only had one fear left, though. I had written about slaves, too, you see, and the facts of them as I had learned in asking questions was that they weren’t the fantasy people thought of. They required a lot of care and a lot of structure. It took a special kind of person to be a Master or a Mistress, to even have the real desire to enjoy that level of control over another. Of course, I thought Mistress was every bit that special kind of person.

But I hoped I didn’t displease her with how submissive I was. I hoped I wasn’t a stressful kind of partner for her to keep, even if I did have a slave’s heart for her, even if I was struck with the realization that I had never been able to be just her boyfriend. To that end, I didn’t bring up what I thought was the state I found the most fulfillment in to her. I just bowed as she wanted, enjoying every routine she would give me and grateful that she did. I did make sure to apologize in the smaller, quieter ways I could think of, in my kisses for instance. I hoped to give her the fantasy of it that everyone seemed to like, with a lot of love, and to never make her worry about the rest.

So I just let go. I accepted. I adored and it was wonderful.

Of course, if you know anything about BDSM relationships and communication skills… well, you might see where the logic was incorrect and unfair. You might see where I had been playing a dangerous role all along.

——–

Sonya

Courtney always had this philosophy that she liked to talk about a great deal, when she was such a romantic at heart. Her idea was that every relationship that involved some form of coexistence had some kind of flaw, by nature. She started with the idea that human characteristics were neither inherently good nor bad. Her favorite example was the characteristic of “selfishness”, when it was often paired with negative connotations. The idea went that it wasn’t negative. It was just a trait. The positive side of selfishness was that a person with that trait would find ways of survival that someone less inclined to it wouldn’t think of or be capable of. The negative was that they didn’t easily put other people before themselves and oftentimes overlooked the wellbeing of people they wanted to care about.

So, with the logic that all things had a good and bad side, her idea was that when you combined two people with their own set of traits, there would always be some sort of flaw that would become apparent. Two people who were easygoing and got along incredibly well might easily fall stagnant in their relationship, for instance, when neither of them felt the ambition to make it more than it was.

I can’t speak on the idea with much experience because I’ve always genuinely been horrible with any relationship. I can’t give myself easily to another, not in the ways that most people would like. I can’t share my thoughts easily, let alone my emotions, and if I do share, then I balance things out with being a suffocating bitch. Ryan, on the other hand, was somehow so incredibly submissive that it made my suffocation something he enjoyed, so much so that I couldn’t keep from opening up. It just went with the trade of control somehow. People think that Doms or tops are robotic or these distant entities in fantasies sometimes and it’s not true.

The real truth is that Doms feel as much as anyone else and that no one knows a Dom as well as their submissive, especially if the submission has an intense depth. No one knows someone as well as a person who craves to please that person and it’s stupidity to underestimate the things that a submissive will notice.

I was stupid enough to underestimate those things and to think that my emotions made me lesser, which would lead to my flaws with Ryan. For months, I held back some last part of myself and the infuriating thing is that it wasn’t even a meaningful part. There wasn’t a good reason for me to hold that last little bit. There really wasn’t because I knew what was happening between us. There was no way I could watch him start to wake up before I did in the mornings and feel him kiss me automatically, these slow, perfect kisses that made me smile in excitement with the pleasure he could give.

There was no way I could cry out in orgasm so that he lifted back up my body where I could stare into his eyes while he happily said, “Good morning, Mistress,” so that I laughed without knowing where this was going, how deep it was getting.

It didn’t stop there either. He started doing more intricate decorations with my nails when he loved the softer forms of submission, the kind he definitely felt as the most intimate. He loved it when he got to touch my hair, the rare moments I left it down, and he stroked me so that I couldn’t help but close my eyes. He always ended up breaking and begging me to let him brush it or to teach him how to braid it, in such a timid way that it made me nod. With every passing night he stayed with me, the sex became secondary and the control became everything. He loved things like getting to play with massage lotions to discover what relaxed me most and I loved feeling his leash in my hand while he did it.

The flaw? The flaw was part of the same characteristics that made sure he was the one person I would open up to, the same characteristics that made that rare and beautiful when I couldn’t open up to anyone.

Because that fear that held that one last part back, that didn’t call our relationship what it was, was part of me and the submission that made up everything about him wouldn’t allow him to so much as speak a word against it.

Even when he finally beat me at chess after taking my queen sacrifice, having watched the moves I loved most so well, I didn’t break that line. Even when he bowed to everything, his eyes sparking with happy contentment when I told him what I wanted to do to him, I didn’t. I started to take him to Sulfur’s, playing humiliation games that made him shift in fear when I decided I liked the idea of seeing him degraded in the main dungeons, where anyone could watch.

Thank God for friends, though. Sometimes those are necessary to let you know how much of an idiot or coward you’re being. In my case, it was a little bit of both.

——–

Ryan

I got outed for misbehaving at Hall’s summer party.

Nathan tried to keep me from people for as long as he could, but eventually he called me on the work phone he had given me. “Alright, I was trying to wait for this one because Dr. Hall and his wife are pretty chill and their guest listings seem to keep Dad occupied the most. But do you mind?”

“Of course not.”

Huh. Wow, I really meant that too and thought about the fact in my office at work. Sonya had started to enjoy Sulfur’s fetish club more and more and somehow, being made to bow to her when her friends were around had made social situations seem a little less, ah, intimidating.

Nathan paused. “I almost thought you sounded cheerful about it, but that can’t be it.”

I laughed. “Well, it’s not so bad anyway.” Besides, Sonya was always on Mrs. Hall’s guest list, since she worked for her. During one weekend, my Mistress had taken me along to one of her events, making me hold her arm when it was fitting, a small and wicked smile on her face whenever I obeyed those small commands. Somewhere along the line, control had turned into sex for me and it felt like being teased where anyone could see when she gave me commands like that.

My method of writing had been fun but suddenly I was getting a little eager to get out so long as she was with me. So, when it came to the night of, she drove us to Hall’s house while I was actually getting… excited.

“Little boy toy.” Mmm, I had once worried that she might not want to give me the levels of control I craved, but whenever she looked in my eyes and saw my submission, she seemed all too content to rattle me by my collar somehow, to call me a pet name or give me a command when she could. And people always seem to think that these relationships are somehow less human in some ways, as if a Mistress and slave can’t flirt. Maybe for someone else they are, but it wasn’t at all like that with her. “So, is Kara Rhys ever going to publish again?”

Ah. She knew the answer. She knew everything, when I couldn’t find it in me to ever even attempt to keep a secret from her, goddess that she was. It would feel innately wrong somehow. Well, she knew almost everything except for that one small piece I didn’t want to bother her with. “I’m… not for sure. I have the ending to the story her muse wants to post and it’s finished, but I was hoping that finishing it would be enough for her. She still won’t let me get back to writing what I have outlined though.” That was some of the truth, anyway. The rest of it was a little deeper than I thought my proud goddess might be comfortable with and it didn’t matter so much anyway.

Sonya rolled her eyes over at me and I grinned at the exasperation. “Well, the good thing about being a submissive, Ryan, is that you have someone to blame for things like this. Post it.”

“Yes, Mistress.” My grin widened. We’d had hours of conversations where she told me things she loved about being a top and one of those things was that she loved being the bad guy.

“I love getting to tell someone to do it and face the consequences for them. Seriously, it’s fun. If someone gets angry at them for the decision that I made, I always take credit and then watch the person who had a problem when they realize they’re arguing with me and not the usually introverted person they thought.” She’d been talking about being an R&D manager, which had made me laugh. I had gotten to start visiting her at work with her permission and it made me thrilled to see my small statured goddess turn her eyes to someone who wanted to give her an issue. “Are you sure you want to do this?” She would say.

It turned out she could thrive in a resistance fueled work environment, something that I admired. But then I had realized that it fit everything I knew about her. Seeing it in person had made me bow lower to her that night when we got home together, though, when something in it just made me feel more submissive than ever. My voice had been both aroused and subjugated when I knelt in the doorway like I was supposed to when we got home together, where she leashed me and left me to bow in meditation. It was the ritual for me while she fixed what she wanted to eat for the night. Sometimes it was the same thing she made for me, depending on if it was something I could neatly eat from my pup bowl.

Just thinking about every small ritual made me burn anymore. It didn’t matter if she gave me release often during a week when everything made my skin feel like I was hot all the time, when release only made me feel all the more needy to please my goddess. Even then, when we were on our way to a party I had once hated, I was in a state of pleasure, when I lived to serve pleasure at her knees so often.

“So, why does Nathan keep up with you so closely for these things?”

“Oh, that. He makes sure I never have to attend data conferences, so long as I have the spreadsheets ready and annotated for him so that he can translate them on my behalf. It doesn’t give him much problems to do so, from my understanding, but sometimes his dad gives him a hard time that I’m not there. So he found these kinds of parties as a compromise.”

Sonya finished pulling into Hall’s, parking off away from the house in their lot, and then stared at me. “Wait a second… Ryan, he translates those for you just so you don’t have to face his dad?”

I followed her lead to get out of the car, nodding. “Yes, Mistress.”

“And then messages you like this right up until you bother him for permission to leave?”

Uh oh. Mistress seemed to find that both irritating and endearing in some way. Her eyes were narrowed and she hadn’t gotten a chance to use me for release before she left. Instead, she had been forced on a schedule and had given me commands for our clothes. She’d been in an aroused mood even then, enough so that she’d allowed me to dress her, watching me kiss the boots she’d chosen while she stroked my forehead with a riding crop.

I shifted on my toes, getting excited when I knew that fire and knew that it hadn’t been satisfied, when I knew that desire she would get for more control, one that held hands with the endearment she could feel. She had already realized how antsy I could get in social situations and I also knew her preferred way of making me be still.

I had even more trepidation when I realized we were mostly shadowed and to ourselves. I couldn’t keep from a small exhale of excitement when, sure enough, she caught me with a hand in my hair, her face alive with her playfulness when I couldn’t keep from grinning. “You’re going to stop that, goddammit. That man deals with enough bullshit and evidently plays the part of your bloody babysitter on top of it, so you’re going to stop adding to it. From now on, you’ll behave yourself, understood? Leave Nathan alone and stop bothering him for permission to leave these damned things.”

It gave me the sensation of wanting to wag a tail again, when anytime she acted like this made any aspect of life better. It made everything more enjoyable, even something I had hated, like social interactions. It was a game that had ceased to be a game when I couldn’t leave her control anymore, but that still didn’t stop how enjoyable it was. I exhaled happily when she shoved her fingers in my mouth, thinking of the cock toy she’d had me practice on for the past few months. She loved to take me to Sulfur’s and to make me take it over and over, calling me her good little cocksucker so that I burned in humiliation. When Courtney was there, it was all the worse because her friend would laugh with sadistic delight and give Mistress encouragement to bring me all the lower.

“Yes, Mistress.” I said those words more than any other now and I liked it that way.

“You bother him anymore and I’ll leave you in your cock cage for a few weeks.”

That made me moan because I knew what that meant. I wore my cage almost all the time and the moments when she released me were moments I’d learned to thank her for even while I started to feel anxious when being without it. It was an awful threat though because it meant I would take that strap-on of hers every night she had me stay with her while being locked in pain, whimpering with every stroke when I loved how it felt for her to fuck me so much. She was usually kind enough to let me out of it when I took her like that, keeping me locked once a week as a reminder. Sometimes, she would leave it on twice if she was feeling like she needed more control and that was all the more torturous, to be the vessel she used to comfort herself with.

“Yes, Mistress.”

She was in high spirits that night. I liked the thought of it, too, when we both knew that meant I would spend a fair bit of time at her knees, worshipping her pussy later. If I was really lucky, she’d let me serve her asshole too, something that always made me burn. “Good boy toy…” I grinned with the wicked sound in her voice, loving her for it. She stroked my hair back in that soft way she had after she did something rough. It reminded me of all the nights when she’d chain me for her amusement, making me take whatever she wanted me to take when I usually wore my anal toy and cock cage all the time now. Sometimes it could be something domesticated like making me kiss up her boots for minutes at a time so that she could stare down, excited off of degrading me. Other times, it was far less so, where she would take off my cage only to spend time flogging the fronts of my thighs, periodically making sure the strands snapped down on me where I was wildly hard from it.

Still other nights, she’d introduced me to a fucking machine, something that made me shiver to think about.

But afterwards was when I was allowed to serve her in softer ways, when she was comforted and okay to allow that kind of submission. I loved getting to curl up at her feet and manicure her nails, methodically cutting and then filing. It sounds weird, but it was softer and when I was done she always let me snuggle her, carefully so I didn’t mess up my work. She’d even let me experiment with little rhinestones and patterns, let me play with different strips of glittering tips. She let me form lightning bolts and Mickey Mouse outlines, seashell patterns and shimmering tips.

It always struck me as a kind of balance in the same way she balanced roughly holding me by my hair with petting me so gently. I couldn’t keep from gently laving her fingers where they filled my mouth, adoring her.

Nathan’s voice made my eyes snap wide and I had forgotten that he was the one person who could out me. “If it’s any help in his case, he saves me almost every day doing what he does and he’s been very good since he started wearing your collar months ago.”

I went still, swallowing nervously. Mistress had said a thing or two over our time of dating that made me realize just how bad I really had been, you see, how much I really had misbehaved. See, even over the past few months when she’d intensified things and I’d kept my revelation a secret for myself, she would mention the collar sometimes. For instance, she would ask me if I would prefer her to hang onto it when I went home. Small things.

But she had never commanded me to it like she had with the cock cage. Even if we played long distance, I was guilty in the sense that I knew she didn’t think of me as being in her collar then. And it was one of those things that I kept to myself along with how I felt about my status to her when I didn’t want to bother her with it.

Because, er… I sort of never took the collar off after she gave it to me, except to keep it clean.

Mistress’ hand tightened in my hair again because she knew that control comforted me most when other people were around. “Oh?” I swallowed, trying to discern the sound in her voice. She had a kind she used when she was trying to hide her emotions. Sometimes she wanted to hide it far more than others and even if I could tell something was hidden, even I couldn’t tell entirely what.

“Mhmm. When he wears it, he’s… phenomenal.”

I silently thanked him. I usually kept it hidden but he’d caught me a few times when I had taken my jacket off. Even if the collar wasn’t discreet, I didn’t want to be without it. I thought about the rest of his words though and those made me curious. Did I really work that much better?

Now that I thought about it… he was probably right. She made everything better when she steadied me with command.

Mistress’ voice allowed me an insight into how she felt. It was softer and I felt a kind of relief, having been concerned she would be stressed after knowing that. “That does go in his favor. But I’m still pissed after finding out you have to drag him to anything, when you make sure he doesn’t even have to do conferences. He’s introverted, not a child. Go, you.”

It made me snicker, skipping when she shoved me forward, when even these damned boring parties felt like a dirty secret. Of course, I still had some underlying nerves… And she wasn’t kind enough to release me from those. “Mistress, I-”

“Later.” Her eyes were direct and they sparked, but it made me anxious anyway. She chuckled at the sight of my nerves and I thrilled to the thought of being made to amuse her when we walked into Hall’s mansion together.

She made me wait in a rare form of sadism, made me stand at her side while she watched me glance at her every now and again. It was only for an hour but it might as well have been an eternity. I took her hand when she commanded and she smiled at the look in my eyes. “Worried?”

“Yes!” I kept my voice down and she grinned.

“You should be.”

Oh no. At least the last time I had been misbehaving at one of these had ended with my meeting a goddess. This time I hadn’t even been misbehaving at the party. I’d just been doing it… well, everyday when I wasn’t with her for a few months, but still.

My thoughts spiraled away from Mistress’ fun and she did intend it to be fun, I knew, a playful little game where she made me antsy while commanding me to hold her hand or fix her hair. But I couldn’t keep it from getting away from that with thoughts of those few secrets I had kept.

Oh, God. But you knew she didn’t think of you like that. It would have been one thing if I’d have just been wearing her collar all that time, but well… Don’t even think innocent. You kept tugging on it so you could think of her controlling you.

Okay, yes, but it wasn’t in that bad of a way!

Oh, God. What if it was? What if this all made me a bad boy? I had never crossed her rules! What if it was crossing her rules if I knew I was her slave and couldn’t say the safewords she always gave me, but wasn’t saying anything? That was the kind of thing that made a difference, right, when it involved both people? What if all of this was me being bad? What if I made her punish me? Mistress wasn’t a sadist! She didn’t like giving pain. What if-

“Oh, my God, Ryan, my game is getting way out of hand.”

“I’m sorry.” She was staring at me with this look of playful exasperation to soothe me. “I’m really sorry. I have to tell you something.”

Her smile gentled. “Ryan, whatever it is, it’s okay. Come on.”

I followed her and my anxiety somehow only intensified when she led me outside, holding my hand, when I realized she was going to talk with me in private finally. Although, maybe that was good. I wasn’t playing a very good escort of a boy toy when I was so distracted with my own awful guilt. “I’m sorry,” I said instantly. “I should have told you about the collar but it started as this innocent thing, it really did, just my being silly or something, but it became more than that and now it feels wrong that I didn’t tell you and-”

“Ryan.”

“And now I think I’ve probably done something really kind of messed up and it’s maybe this awful thing to you when you trust me to tell you when things are too much, you know, and I know that it has to be this anxiety of being a top and that it has to be unfair to you now that I think about it but I didn’t really think about it before because I couldn’t tell you when to stop, I just couldn’t, but none of it was too much-”

“Ryan, I know.”

I froze where she had led me to Hall’s garden, where there weren’t a lot of people and she had easily found a place to let me have a moment. “You do?”

She smiled. “Not all of it, but I’d be lying if I said I was innocent, love. Tell me something. Why haven’t you really posted that story?”

I glanced to the ground, realizing that she knew the rest of the reason why. Because the reason had changed. It wasn’t so much that I was afraid of those desires anymore. It was… Well… “My muse sang all about you. What if I wasn’t good enough? It doesn’t seem like I could ever do someone like you justice when you’re a goddess and what if people don’t like it? It’d feel wrong against you somehow, that I didn’t paint your picture with enough color in my words.”

Her eyes were so gentle. “You want to know how I knew that it changed? I wasn’t sure quite what the terror changed to, but I knew it had, you see, baby, because you started writing again. A lot. And you smiled when you did it, when before you sometimes seemed kind of frustrated when talking about it. But Kara Rhys has still been silent.”

That was true enough. I could write again, but it still wasn’t coming out quite right when there was a story that was already down and hadn’t been shared at all. And that was her story, which only made it worse somehow. It was another guilt of mine that I wasn’t telling the one tale that mattered the most to me. Truth be told, I might have been able to live with that, if the story I’d written didn’t also somewhat confess my other, worse guilts, if it didn’t have my far too romantic thoughts.

“I could see that, Mistress.”

Her eyes danced. “Ryan, I’m sorry.”

I blinked. “For what?”

“You’re right. Some things aren’t fair to do to tops, but I think maybe you’re being too hard on yourself. Because sometimes tops are just being fucking morons. Sure, we trust you to stop us, but we also have eyes and a brain, or at least most of us do.”

I held out my arms to ask her permission and then gently hugged her when she granted it, stroking a hand across the backs of her shoulders. “Oh, Mistress. You make it necessary for me to be a bad boy toy sometimes when I’m torn between needing to scold you for being too hard on yourself and not wanting to be disrespectful.”

She laughed and I grinned with the victorious thought that I had managed to bring her pleasure. My Mistress wasn’t very kind to herself, I had learned, although she had nothing at all like self esteem issues. She merely held herself to a higher standard than she would ever hold another to. “That’s not what you should scold me for, little plaything. You should scold me for not calling a little slave toy what he is, when you already obey everything I say.”

I nuzzled her hair happily, feeling like ecstasy off of her saying the word outright like that. It made her laugh again and she pressed me away from her so that I grinned sheepishly. “Sorry. I sometimes forget where we are.”

Her laughter turned harder. “Sometimes? Wicked thing. And are you sure you want me to think of you like this? If I’m not nice to male submissives, I’m definitely not nice to something lower than that.”

Lower than that. I wanted to shudder at the wording of that and then realized that Mistress was being wicked when she kept her eyes forward and grinned a little, when she knew how much I had started to love her degradation. “Yes, please, Mistress.”

She paused a moment. “Well, then, I have a few problems to fix. Slaves really shouldn’t be allowed to leave during nights of the week.”

I couldn’t keep from laughing a little. “You bring up a very good point, Mistress. I’ve gotten way too much time off. It’s far too much freedom for any plaything to have.”

“Exactly. It’s just wrong really and not very effective slave training.”

Oh, God, there were certain phrases and words she could say that would make me strain against my cage. I liked the thought of “slave training” a little too much. “It really doesn’t at all.”

“And now that you’re such a slut for being fucked, just making you wear the cage while you take it once during the week is really too nice. I think three times would be a decent reminder for you. It’s really quite kind, actually, when it’s the lesser half of the week.”

On, no, it just got worse. I shuddered. “I… I could see that, Mistress.”

Her laughter made my heart sing, though. “That was one to make you stutter. Little boy toy, you’re still too cute for your own good.”

“Thank God for that, Mistress.”

She kissed the back of my hand. “Ryan, I do need your permission for one thing, though. Just one.” I glanced at her when that made me a little wary, but she smiled. “Every now and again, I’d like Courtney to play with us at Sulfur’s, as opposed to how she usually just watches and taunts you or makes suggestions.”

“Y-yes, Mistress.”

Her glare made me give her a sheepish, apologetic smile, but I couldn’t give a different answer. Courtney kind of scared the hell out of me, when she really did turn out to be a purest form of sadism. I had finally gotten to see it when she orgasmed off giving a man a caning, when his sounds and the way he’d jarred with torture had thrown her over the edge of pleasure. Mistress had made me watch with her hand harsh in my hair while I sucked my cum from her thong, which she’d used as my gag. Courtney had grasped her sub’s hair and sank her teeth into his neck like a wolf, feral while she rode out her lascivious high against his thigh where he was chained. Let’s say I had a healthy fear of her, enough that it made me curl into Mistress’ side while I’d watched.

Mistress shook her head wryly before she answered. “To comfort you, it’s just because she’s bitchy enough to tell me when I’m being stupid.”

Suddenly, I understood. It made me tighten my hand in hers briefly, in a soft thanks, when I knew why she wanted to keep her friend close. I wouldn’t try to trouble her with some things and she was too much my perfect goddess to sometimes move things forward, when she was so careful and always had been so careful. Sometimes I didn’t think she could see it, but I could. She remained distant, that was true, but there were some things that she kept back out of concern when I was too submissive. I had first realized it during scenes, when she would watch me so closely and when she would back off of an intense moment to check in with me. Her eyes were different with each time and maybe to her it felt like a weakness.

I thought she was beautiful for it. “I don’t think I would use those words, Mistress, but I think she would make things a lot easier for you. And I would be grateful for that.”

Sonya, the goddess. She tugged me closer and she was quiet for a time before she finally spoke again and it was with a different voice, one of her commands. “Live with me, Ryan.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

She smiled. “Also, I mean it. Post the damn story and go back to writing. You’re turning obsessive.”

“I would hate to be obsessive, Mistress.”

She gave me a narrowed gaze and I grinned, thinking that at least the ways we didn’t fully match each other were more on the entertaining side, while our romance was more on the darker side. Because, well, it’s really quite a bit better than the other way around.

I thought it was insightful of my perfect goddess to think of adding her friend in playtimes, when so far in our relationship, those necessary steps had to be prompted by external factors. It made me thrill to the thought that Mistress never once considered the shortcoming as something that would impede her way. It made me horny actually. You see, to me things like that were stressful, obstacles that I didn’t handle very well.

My Mistress, the woman, that vexing entity named Sonya Moore… She calmly recognized a problem and, almost like swiping an irritating fly, came up with an idea that she thought would mitigate the problem, without breaking sweat or so much as flicking a perfectly manicured nail, one that I had decorated when she had allowed me the delight of serving her that way.

I lowered my gaze when she walked me back to the party area, my pulse a thunder in my ear. I couldn’t take my eyes off her for the rest of the night but I couldn’t bring myself to look directly at her when a goddess like her commanded respect.

Her slave. I already thought that I might have been that for a long time to her, but what would it become if she fully thought of me that way? She had already proven to me that she truly was not as kind and playful to male subs, that she could effectively, with harsh intent and terrifyingly dainty grace, break someone like me with nothing but her sensual touch. Instead of my anxiety of having to confess to her, I had a delicious thrill that had changed with the magic of her domination games, with my consuming need to serve her pleasure. It was darker again and it was my preferred fear to feel now. She took away all those things that made me afraid in the bad ways and gave me these new ways, things like a fear of what I was about to beg of her that night.

I don’t know what it was about the night, besides watching her almost snort in disdain at a problem that got in the way of her enjoying her domination over me. She hadn’t used me before we left that night and Nathan had caught me with her, but Nathan had already seen me with my collar and that thought didn’t humiliate me. Well, it did in a way, but it was more of a way that made me feel happily subhuman, inferior.

And I loved that. I loved it, you see, because the truth was I had been thinking of myself as her slave and I would have never brought it up to her if an external force hadn’t brought it up, but I spent my nights imagining her calling me that, having me that way for real, instead of my serving her in my quiet, secret way. It made me feel selfish sometimes, how badly I’d wished she’d tighten my collar and have what she willed of me, that she’d treat me as something far less than human, a creature of service and nothing more.

When we got back to her place, though, after watching her through the night and after she had used that one magical word… “Baby, one more time. Are you sure you want to keep going farther?”

I hesitated and then resigned myself to my one selfish moment. “Please tell me to get on my knees, Mistress.”

I couldn’t just do those things even then, when I didn’t want her to feel uncomfortable with how closely subservient I had become to her. Beyond that, the acts felt strange and dramatic for the time being and, though I loved them so much, I wasn’t a very dramatic person. For the time being, I couldn’t just get on my knees for her. I couldn’t just beg.

That was the reality behind my selfish desire. I wished I could be able to get on my knees like that, to just bow when we were finally alone and to feel like it wasn’t dramatic at all.

Mistress smiled a very gentle smile. I don’t know that she fully understood the entirety of the desire, as she wasn’t a mind reader in the same way that no one was, but there was an understanding in her eyes that said she could guess a few emotional ideas. “I suppose that lets me know where this might be headed, Ryan.” She cupped my cheek. “Do you know that I should be scared of how close I feel to you, but I can’t even find that in me when you are so purely the way you are. I’ve never actually gotten so close to dating someone in the way that I’ve gotten with you and…” I kissed her palm when she let me, studying her curiously. “And the thing is that you’re so submissive, baby, that we never even directly said we were exclusively dating. And you just let me get away with that.”

“Oh, that.” I held her closer when her shoulders were a little tense, in a way that I’d learned meant she could use some warmth and support. “It was okay. It was always okay. You never had to directly say so, Mistress. I just knew.” I grinned and touched her nose. “If I may, Mistress, you don’t quite seem to have a problem with the emotions you feel when you have control. But if directly saying the words makes you uncomfortable enough to avoid it so, then I’ll find my security in other ways.”

Her eyes took on a cast that made me warm in a way that started in my heart. “Get on your knees, Ryan,” she finally said softly.