The Secret Life of a Submissive

I swallowed hard, trying to quell my nerves. I was trembling.

The room was still and there was complete silence. Seconds ticked by. I was tempted to ask Max what was going to happen next. What he was playing at? What was he going to do to me? Hadn’t he said that he would tell me what he was going to do? Despite being desperate to say something, I was also painfully aware that less than half an hour earlier I’d signed up to the ‘not speaking unless spoken to while we were together’ thing and I’d already broken the rule once. This was going to be so much trickier than I had imagined. At forty plus I’d never willingly kept quiet about anything in years. I had an opinion and a wisecrack for every occasion.

It was so quiet now that I swear I could hear my heart beating. Where the hell was Max? My senses struggled to reach out from beyond the mask, struggling to track him down. Had he slipped away? Gone home? Had I blown it already with the whole Sir thing?

Finally, after what seemed like an age, I heard Max moving and sensed him circling around until he was standing behind me, so close that I could feel his breath on my neck. I shivered.

We were standing in my sitting room, and – if I had taken my mask off – I would have been able to see us both reflected in the mirror that hung above the fireplace. Being unable to see meant that I was totally focused on every sound and every sensation. That alone was heady stuff. Max stroked my cheek and I sighed with a mixture of relief and an intense abstract rush of desire.

‘There, not so bad, is it?’ Max said. I didn’t know what to say. It was much, much worse and much, much better than I’d imagined. My whole body felt as if it was awake and waiting, tingling, every molecule listening for whatever it was that was coming next. Excitement, expectation – it was hard to pin down exactly what it was that I was feeling.

Max’s fingers moved down across my shoulder to the zip of my dress. Very slowly he began to undo it. I felt my pulse quicken and swallowed hard to quell the heady mix of nerves and exhilaration. He pressed his lips into the curve of my neck, to my spine, sending wave after wave of tingling sensations through me.

He ran his fingers through my hair, tugging at it, toying with it, moving my head around. I wasn’t sure if he expected me to resist or go with it. I started to tremble, adrenaline coursing through my veins like champagne as his lips brushed my naked shoulders, breathing me in. I felt the zip working its way lower; Max was unhurried, his fingers deft and confident.

I realized I was holding my breath. We hadn’t kissed since we’d met, at least not in a sexual way – our lunch at the restaurant had ended with a handshake and the kind of peck on the cheek I’d give to a maiden aunt. Those kisses on my shoulders felt as if they were seared into my skin.

Doms didn’t kiss their subs on the mouth, he’d said. It had made sense then, but now? I was going to say it felt weird to be undressed by a man I hadn’t kissed but actually when you got right down to it the whole damned thing was weird.

‘Don’t try and rationalize it,’ Max had said, when I’d been trying to work out, and justify, why I wanted to do this. ‘You’ll drive yourself crazy. Just accept that this is what you like, and want, and that it is a part of your nature. This is what you need, Sarah. It’s not strange or weird; it’s just part of human sexuality. I can give you what you want.’

Easy for him to say. Although I was beginning to realize that he was right. I hadn’t felt so alive in years. I felt like a present being slowly and skilfully unwrapped by him. This was what I had written about for so many years; this was what I had dreamt about. Finally here I was. This was for real.

As Max’s fingers brushed my skin, I could almost see the sensations in my head, like pinpricks of light exploding in a sea of velvety darkness.

I shivered as the zipper slipped down another inch or two more, stunned by how long he was taking. How long was it since someone had taken the time to do this properly? My emotions seesawed back and forth. I wondered if Max was expecting me to call a halt. The safe words we had agreed on were: gold for ‘everything is OK’; silver for ‘please slow down’; lead for ‘stop, stop now’.

He was taking it oh-so-slowly, the slightest touch of his fingers, lips and tongue making me gasp.

Gold, silver, lead: I repeated the words over and over in my head. It would be so easy to stop this before it even began, but I didn’t want to stop – far from it. I wanted it so much. I had waited so long to play this game for real. Behind the mask, crazily, I closed my eyes and tried to remember the last time I had felt this excited, this turned on or this bloody nervous.

Max eased the dress off my shoulders and let it slip down over my arms before letting it slither to the floor. Despite the mask I reddened, extraordinarily self-aware, imagining his expression as he looked me up and down, imagining what he could see.

He made a soft throaty noise of approval. ‘Nice,’ he purred. ‘Very nice.’

Under my dress I was wearing a black satin corset and black seamed stockings teamed with black court shoes. Max and I had had long email exchanges about what I liked to wear and how he liked his submissive to dress. We’d exchanged dozen of photographs of outfits. Before today’s meeting Max had asked me to send him pictures of my favourite lingerie and a selection of dresses – without me in them – so that he could choose what I wore for our first real encounter.

From now on whenever we were together, he explained, he would decide what I wore. He would email me instructions and would also go through my wardrobe, and we would go shopping for anything he felt I lacked. And from now on when we were together I wasn’t to wear any underwear.

I’d stared at him. Seriously?

Max had nodded.

I hadn’t gone braless since God knows when, and I certainly had never gone knickerless. When I protested about how awful fitted clothes looked without some sort of support under them, Max conceded that with some outfits, yes, I could wear a bra, but he would decide which ones, and the only bras I could wear in his company should fasten at the front unless otherwise instructed. A submissive’s body no longer belongs to her, he said, and she should always be available for her Master. I stared at him. ‘Available?’

He nodded.

Now Max trailed a finger across my shoulders in the same way you might stroke a piece of sculpture. It was the most astonishing sensation, hard to put into words. Dressed to please, elevated to an object of pure desire and pleasure, I have never felt more female or, perversely, more powerful.

‘You look fabulous,’ Max murmured after a few moments more. ‘Put your hands behind your back.’

I did as I was told, lulled by his voice and a peculiar sense of euphoria.

Max caressed my shoulders and neck, his touch proprietorial. One hand stroked up and down my back while the other hand worked its way into the top of my corset, his long, strong fingers cupping one of my breasts. His thumb brushed across my nipple, which stiffened in response. He let out a soft sigh that made me quiver, my skin tingling, electrified by his touch. His hands were cool and almost dispassionate, caressing, squeezing, exploring and kneading.

I gasped as the intensity increased and he nipped and twisted my nipples, before folding the top of the corset down so that first one and then both breasts were exposed.

I could feel the cool air on my naked flesh and a charge of expectation. I could sense his growing excitement along with my own. All the joking and banter were over and I realized that Max wanted and needed this as much as I did. He moved so that he was standing in front of me. I felt his lips close around my nipple, sucking, nipping, biting, drawing my nipple deep into his mouth, making me gasp, the sensations coursing through me like ripples of white light.

As Max pulled away, my body clamoured for more. His lips moved to the other nipple, eagerly licking and sucking his fingers as they worked on the heavy swell of my breasts. As he pulled away, I heard a sound I didn’t immediately recognize. An instant later I felt the unexpected bite of something cold and metallic clamping tightly down onto my nipple. I shrieked in surprise and pain, trying to pull away as little teeth bit down harder, holding the clamp fast, and as I exhaled I heard the tinkle of bells.

I discovered later that they were nipple clamps with a string of tiny silver bells hanging from them.

Now every movement, every shudder and every gasp were echoed in silvery tinkling sounds. The teeth bit into my engorged nipples, sending tiny hot splinters of pain and pleasure through me.

‘Beautiful,’ Max whispered, stroking the bells’ strings, making me gasp.

Max and I had talked a lot about what I liked sexually, areas I wanted to explore, things that were a definite no-no and represented a deal breaker – the hard limits beyond which I wouldn’t go – and those things that I might like to try once my confidence had grown. I’d told him things I had never told anyone else. I’d just signed off on it, hadn’t I? We’d definitely talked about the fact I didn’t want to be tied up until I knew Max better, so I didn’t think twice when something cool and smooth clicked onto one wrist, although I had a blinding flash of revelation as the second cuff snapped home.

I gasped and opened my mouth to protest. Bugger the no talking rule.

‘What the hell do you think you are you doing?’ I gasped, little bells tinkling furiously. I struggled to free my hands, even though I knew it was pointless.

‘That’s what the hell do you think you’re doing, Sir,’ said Max. ‘You said no ropes. And now I’m going to have to punish you for talking without permission too.’

I was stunned. Semantics: Max had got me handcuffed and helpless with semantics. There was some part of me that loved the fact that he had outwitted me and another part that was furious. Not much of me was anxious.

‘Do you want me to stop?’ Max asked, serious now. ‘If you’re not happy I can always take them off.’

I found it hard to speak.

‘Are you OK?’ he repeated, seeking an answer. ‘I’m not going on until you tell me.’

‘Yes, I’m fine, just bloody annoyed,’ I snapped, after a second or two, and added more haltingly, ‘Sir.’

Max laughed. ‘Pleased to hear it,’ he said, ‘and I’m glad to see you’re getting to grips with the Sir thing.’ As he spoke he traced the line of my jaw with a finger.

Despite the trick, I felt more excited than I had in years. I also had no doubt that had I asked Max he would have taken the cuffs off. I couldn’t have gone this far if I didn’t have an underlying trust in him and feel inherently safe. No one else can make that call for you. I trusted him.

‘Are you ready?’ he said.

Ready for what? ‘I think so, yes – Sir,’ I said.

‘Good,’ Max said, and I could hear the warmth and approval in his voice. He led me across the room and had me stand while he settled himself on a chair. He stroked me gently until I was completely still and those little bells finally stopped ringing.

‘I’m going to put you across my knee and then I’m going to spank you. But before I do, I want you to ask me to do it,’ he said.

I froze. ‘I have to ask?’ I said incredulously.