When I sat down, the cushion was cold against my bruised behind but just that day, I didn’t care that I was sitting bare-assed on leather. It was still hard to speak and he didn’t push me. Instead, I leaned back and watched him. He looked taller from my lower vantage point, even more luminous and stunning. He had pulled up his zipper but not found another shirt. There was an intriguing symmetry to that: me naked from the waist down, he from the waist up. I could see his muscles flex under his skin when he reached into the overhead compartment to pull down a glass, then soften and realign in their original position.
“Juice?” he asked and I nodded. When he handed it to me, he added. “Good for your blood sugar.”
I managed a smile and picked it up. My hands were shaking and I wondered if he’d seen it, whether this was what had made him think of my blood sugar at all.
As I gulped down the apple juice, my body started to settle back into itself. The only sensation I can compare it to is that time of rest after a long session in a sauna or doing yoga, when your body feels soft and pliable, like a perfectly peeled egg, fresh out of its shell and for once, you feel like you know every muscle, every nerve ending intimately, utterly connected with every single atom in your body.
“It’s quite normal, you know, the silence.” He was leaning against the sink, watching me and I realized that it had been quite some time since I had finished the juice. I couldn’t have said how long exactly—it didn’t seem to matter either way. But I can’t remember ever having drifted off into introspection in company quite like that and his reassurance, given even before I could feel embarrassed, made me smile up at him. It was so easy to trust a man who was so in tune with my body, my feelings and concerns.
“During the last two hours, your consciousness moved to a different level. Some say a deeper one, where talk seems unnecessary, thought too. It’s beautiful on you. It makes you display your feelings on your face without anything to guard them. Some people call it sub-space.”
I nodded, smiled again and stared into the empty glass. When I looked back up at him, he was squatting in front of the fridge and produced something in a bowl.
“I marinated some prawns. I thought we’d go simple and a little rustic.”
He talked to me while he prepared dinner, again managing to make me feel comfortable despite the fact that I contributed very little to the conversation. He simply talked about food, that he liked cooking and intricate preparations. It was nice to watch, too, the way he carefully diced some onions and threw them into the cast iron pan with the prawns. They started to smell like coriander and curry when the oil started to sizzle around them.
He spoke about his dreams of self-sufficiency and of trying to go as far as he could, making his own jams, fishing sometimes, buying as little prepared items as possible. He set the table with fragrant home baked bread, butter, some cheeses and grapes. I wanted to help but he forbade me and for the first time since I’d lain down across his lap, we laughed together.
I was beginning to feel like myself again, just a calmer version as though something about our time together had effected a cathartic experience upon my mind and body. Already, I only remembered it somewhat vaguely as though it had happened in a different time or space and I was almost surprised when I rose from the sofa and winced as my sore bottom peeled itself off the leather.
“Let me see,” he demanded and gently bent me over the chair. My hands braced themselves against the warm leather while his brushed over my arse. I could hear myself sigh; wanted to sink into his arms again—it was so easy. But there was seafood in the pan and Paul smiled at the expression on my face.
“Let me get some lotion for you before we eat.” It didn’t take him long to fetch it.
“Good girl,” he whispered more teasingly than before when he saw that I had remained in the position he’d put me in. The effect was the same, need and lust and a pulsing sensation between my legs. It didn’t matter that in this moment I was more his guest than the submissive girl in his lap.
I wasn’t quite as tired anymore and part of me was praying he’d forget all about the beautiful meal he’d prepared and would pull down his zipper again but those flashes of skin on skin, of his cock deep inside of me stayed in my head and nowhere else. And it was there, bent over the chair, inhaling that typical leather smell, that I realized how vast the chasm was between my mindset before we entered the kitchen and the one then. Before, I didn’t think of anything past his touch, past the present. I didn’t worry or hope nor did I try to conceive of any expectations. I just existed in the moment, just like he’d told me to. I hadn’t been aware of it at the time, but now I could feel the difference, the heat and the longing, the half-subconscious flashes of how I could get him to fuck me right here, right now. I looked at him in a new way when he pulled his shirt back down over my ass and drew a chair out for me. I don’t know if he noticed, but he smiled and kissed the top of my head before he washed his hands and joined me.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, not for the first time as he held a bowl of bright greens out to me—I recognized baby spinach, arugula and romaine hearts. He’d sprinkled diced onions and freshly cut basil over the mixture and served it with a simple olive oil and balsamic vinaigrette. I ladled some on my plate and chose two prawns and a piece of bread. Not consciously buying time, it did take me a few seconds to turn my contemplative state of mind into a sharing one.
“Good,” I said, quietly against the raw quality of my throat and voice. “Really good. Like I have a new body.” And not just a new body, a new mind as well: a reboot that cleared all the junk in my temporary files. There was peace in the way I regarded the moment, a lack of immediate judgment and instead an ability to stay open and vulnerable to the world around me.
The satisfaction in his face was obvious. He reached for some food himself, piling it on his plate without sharing my compunctions of appearing too greedy before looking back up at me.
“Is it supposed to be so... meditative?” I asked, but wrinkled my brow. “I don’t know how else to say it, that doesn’t seem like the right word.”
Paul chuckled. He tilted his head to the side.
“Because most meditation techniques don’t include either sex or pain?” There was no need for an answer but I nodded anyway. “They
do
exist—there’s nothing pure that religions haven’t tried to co-opt for their purposes. Pain, submission, utter surrender of the self is part of many religions.”
I thought about this while tasting his prawns and bread. He was a good cook, but clearly my state of mind was doing its part to add to the sensory experience of taste and texture. To speak and eat at the same time seemed like sacrilege, but with that thought I was back at our conversation.
“So you think it’s... like a religious experience, this kind of... you know?”
Smiling that knowing little smile, Paul shook his head. “That’s not quite what I said—that would be awfully grandiose of me. Particularly in regards to my own role in the experience.” Snorting a little, he reached up and reset his glasses in a way that always made him so gentle and thoughtful, all those little lines around his eyes still crinkled in a smile. “I just meant that these stimuli are powerful, for anyone but especially for people like us whose sexuality draws from them so much.”
I thought about this as I pushed a prawn tail around the plate with my fork. I tried to feel into myself, forging paths into these newfound countries that were blossoming out of my emotional landscape like snowdrops in spring.
“Tell me what it felt like for you,” he asked, his eyes focusing on me with that intensity I was beginning to associate with him. He just had a way of regarding me that seemed to blend out the rest of the world as though nothing else could be interesting enough to be worth interrupting his focus for. It made me shiver and blush, too. Holding his gaze was not the easiest thing to do, especially now that my mind had left the place where each word of his was a rule to live by, but I was practicing—several seconds each time.
“It was like... I was floating,” I tried, “like every care in the world had been taken from me. There was only one thing left.”
“What was that?”
I hesitated, then looked down at my food and shrugged. “You,” I all but whispered, then quickly shook my head. “I suppose not you specifically, just you—the person putting me into that state. All that mattered was... pleasing you, doing what you wanted me to do, making you happy.”
My face burning, I tried to turn back to my food but it was hard to swallow and I had to reach for my glass, doing my best to avoid his glance. Maybe I wasn’t quite as removed from him as I had thought, because once out of my mouth, I could hardly believe I had uttered all those words. Paul didn’t seem surprised, though. He just had that mild smile on his face and nodded.
“That’s why I brought you out of it,” he explained gently. Surprise must have registered on my face because he reached over and brushed a strand of hair behind my ear. “I was surprised you went down so hard. It’s not something most first-timers reach, especially since you hardly know me.”
I blushed and my mouth fell open but he quickly shook his head and corrected himself. “Oh, that’s nothing to be embarrassed about, it doesn’t say anything bad about you. I was merely surprised. Pleasantly surprised, Iris. But usually by the time a woman is so open and so vulnerable in front of me, I know more about her, her wishes, her limits, her fears. You said it, all that mattered was to make me happy. It’s a state in which you can be manipulated quite easily... and I wanted to make sure you got a break from it, got to reassess and talk about it.”
He was speaking for a long time and I admired him for the simple and casual way in which he discussed matters of such delicacy. Manipulation, sex, submission—it still made no rational sense in my head but my body was responding to him even then, even when he was just explaining the theory.
“Thank you,” I answered and reached for his hand. Smiling, he squeezed it and then turned it around until my palm faced the open air and he could trace the curved lines with his rough fingertips.
“Was it anything like what you expected?”
I thought about this and shrugged. “I really... really don’t know what I expected.” Like he, I had my eyes fixed on my palm and the casual, yet oddly deliberate motions of his fingers. It tickled only just enough to feel good. “But I couldn’t have expected this. Can I ask you something, too?”
“Of course, anything.”
“What’s it like for you?” I scratched my neck. It was still burning hot under my fingers. “I mean, if for me it’s all about surrender of the self, and pain and giving up power. What’s it like for you?”
Paul’s finger stilled. I could see that he was considering the question, that this time,
he
had to find the words to explain something inherently inexplicable.
“Firstly, it’s... not really a choice for me. I assume the same is true for you. I can rationally understand what submissives feel, why it gives them so much pleasure and I can see it in your eyes, in the way you move, in the tension of your muscles. So I know it works, but I could never feel it exactly the way you do. Similarly, you might not ever feel exactly what I’ll try to explain. It’s... I’m not a psychologist but I have come to believe that not unlike sexual orientation, there’s nothing I can do about what I need sexually, but of course I tried, especially when I was younger.
“I have never met a conscientious dominant who hasn’t gone through that phase of self-loathing and doubt, where you can hardly distinguish yourself from some common wife beater or rapist just because those images and fantasies resonate with you in a way you know they shouldn’t.”
I blinked and looked down at the table. My heart was racing and my fingers shook a little around the glass. “I kind of... I thought something was wrong with me, too.”
Paul squeezed my hand. “There’s nothing wrong with you Iris, nothing at all.”
“How... how did you stop feeling this way?” I asked.
Paul looked at his salad—he hadn’t eaten much of it, concentrating instead on the prawns, his Camembert and bread.
“You know this stuff was much more difficult before the Internet. Now that I’m older, I can usually feel my way through a conversation, get a feeling for a woman but back then I was pretty lost. I suppressed it for a long time. It didn’t turn me into a nice guy, believe me.” He looked down and an expression of pain crossed his face. He quickly recovered though. “I got a divorce and spent some time throwing myself into work. And then there was the Internet and a little later than most people I realized that with a few clicks there were hundreds of women interested in receiving exactly what I had always wanted to give. It was... like a fresh start.
“But you asked what it is like for me. It’s not easy to answer without a long story. In the beginning, there’s that undeniable rush of power. The very idea that a beautiful woman would lay down her individuality, her decisions, her basic human instincts to do what you say... it was addictive. Makes you feel so much larger than life, you know?”
I nodded although I didn’t. In a way, even listening to it froze a certain part of me that had been hot and throbbing only minutes before. And there it was again, that unsettlingly knowing smile.
“It didn’t last long,” he went on. “I was lucky. Some people get stuck in that phase, in the power rush. It makes a chill run down my spine now when I listen to them.” He shook his head but smiled at me, momentarily seeming to search for words. Finally, he threw up his shoulders and shook his head.
“I went back into another period of doubt. This craving for power had started to feel hollow, almost... boring if that makes any sense at all. I went to meetings, talked to other people, but that didn’t help. I’ve never been one to build my identity on my sexuality and I couldn’t really find anything in common with those who did. So I stopped, I moved here and thought I’d start a new—a different kind of life. I’d made some money with the scripts I’d written and I was tired of the lifestyle in LA.