Close Your Eyes...

Close your eyes and listen to these sounds. The instant coffee granules fall off the spoon and swish into the coffee mug. The teaspoon clinks against the china. The fridge opens with that characteristic sucking as the magnetic rubber seal is broken open. The milk carton scrapes against the plastic as it is withdrawn from the fridge door shelf. The electric kettle bubbles and steams and clicks to a boiling stop.

I lift the kettle off of its stand and carry it across to the sink. I clamp my left hand around my FavouriteToy's right wrist and lean my weight in, pinning her splayed hand against the cold stainless steel draining board. I whisper in her ear:

"Yes, it's all about trust."

The scolding hundred degree centigrade water falls from the spout and washes down onto the back of her right hand. The damage is instantaneous. On contact the skin on the back of her hand goes into a shocking metamorphosis from its uniform even coloration to a violently mottled organic patchwork of red and white. All the muscles in her hand go into spasm. The pairs of opposing muscles battle to no advantage and the only movement is a barely perceptible sudden curling up of the fingers lifting the fingertips off the surface of the draining board. I anticipate the unconscious reaction of self preservation, the jerking of her arm and body to yank her hand out of harm's way. I force all my strength into keeping her hand pinned to the surface and continue to pour the scolding cruelty over the back of her hand for as long as it takes to inflict the weeping, blistering second degree burns.

When I stop, there is a moment of silence.

The first thing this pretty stranger says is

"I trust you."

It is what I had played for, but I am almost in disbelief at winning this prize.

I put down the kettle. My left hand still clamps her wrist down onto the wet rapidly cooling draining board. My right hand comes up and unties the blindfolding silk scarf. She looks first at me and then kisses me full on the mouth. She looks down at her mutilated hand and sees, no damage at all. A cup with the last of the unbearably hot, but not quite scolding water stands at the side.

"You bastard!"

She arrived in stockings and heels, she compiled with my wishes not to wash, she wore yesterdays thong, she met me at my flat for a first meeting. I think this calls for a little more than a coffee. I turn her around on her four inch heels and lead her back into the living room where the champagne is waiting.

--- ooo ---

I found my FavouriteToy on Guardian Soulmates, one of the more respectable online dating sites associated with a broadsheet newspaper.

Having spent some time dwelling on a rather more alternative BDSM website, the idea was that perhaps I should look to fish elsewhere, spread the net a little further a field, in order to find what I am looking for. And what am I looking for, well a broadsheet reader duh! Well not really.

I sent her a memo. Her profile said she was not interested in long drawn out correspondence as she finds that "boring, boring boring!"

My memo concluded with:

MarcusStrapp wrote: I hate wine (as you can see from my profile picture). I love to tease. I love to love. I am increasingly happy with breaking the rules. I don't do boring.

Hope to hear from you -- Marcus Strapp

Later that evening I get a reply:

WhoreInWaiting wrote: Love your profile, love your message, yes, you do tease and yes, internet dating is a nightmare. Your photos are amazing. You've got my attention now what?

I can't help myself:

MarcusStrapp wrote: Now what? Now what? Are you seven years old? We meet of course? :-)

I'd drive over and see you now, but I guess that would totally freak you out!

So how about dinner tomorrow?

My number is 07711 XXXXXX, (If you are feeling brave). You can prefix the number with a 141 if you want to withhold your number. You can call me anytime. Even tonight if you are a late bird!

-- Marcus

Have I judged it right? I have been a bit outrageous. I mean Guardian Soulmates isn't a BDSM site is it? Still it just felt like the right move to make.

I'm putting away the dishes and the phone rings. It's not a number I recognise. I answer and cannot place the voice. Then the penny drops. Wow, she is game.

It seems I have a live wire on the phone. She's obviously outgoing and apparently not too phased with my forthright approach. We start to pull apart each other's profiles. She makes mention of my interest in photography. I am a little coy on the subject. I comment on her profile picture and note that it is a professional shot.

There is that tentative feeling of the way. That delicate dance and play of making conversational advances and withdrawals in that search for boundaries. There isn't the safety of knowing that she has been exposed to and is interested in all the filth that one can assume of a member on BDSM website. This is a fish from a very different kettle. But by the time the clock has wound its hands from one day into the next, the conversation has turned to one of revealing secrets.

Like a bloodhound, I am off sleuthing around picking up scents and making inferences.

She says "What are you some sort of amateur psychologist or mind reader?", I reply "No! I'm just interested."

Interrogation is a dance. If you are going to get the woman into the middle of the dance floor, you have to know all the steps and they have to all be in the right order and exactly the right time.

I learn that she is recently separated and recently on a journey of self discovery. Her recently stumbling upon Dita Von Teese has awoken such a surge of hunger to learn more about fetish and burlesque. She wants to know if and how it could possibly relate to her.

In short, from spending so long out in the sexual wilderness, she is now a woman whose sexuality has vastly outgrown her capacity to constrain it any longer.

Within the course of one conversation much has been revealed and a lot of ground has been covered.

It is designated that we will meet the next day.

She will wear stockings and high heels. (stop that chortling, yes I know that is entirely predictable, but my pleasure means a lot more to me than defying your expectations).

Now if that was all, I would be pretty damned pleased with things but, when I see fit, I do not stop at asking for the moon. I ask for the stars too, and whilst you're at it rob the skies of the breeze and the sun of it's warmth and put them all in a bag for me too. In this life I negotiate a little bit here and a little bit there, and that is fine until I address a woman, then I find it much the better to speak my mind, "I'll have it all please, and now, if you would be so kind."

And so, in addition to what I have bargained for, this Guardian negotiates the following from his Soulmate:

She will come to my flat, not the public meeting place that would be more sensible a venue for the meeting of a stranger. Well, she was attracted to respond to a man whose profile states that he is increasingly happy to break the rules.

She will wear the black thong she was wearing today, and she will neither shower nor wash her cunt nor wash under her arms before appearing here. She confesses to the horror she feels at having to sit in work all day in that unwashed state. But, I can read the subtext in the tone of her voice just how exciting she is finding it is to be subject to someone else's control.

The following morning, additional instructions are text to her phone. She is to take herself to the lavatory during the day and masturbate but stop short of orgasm. She is to text me when she has done this and confirm that she has complied.

An email is sent informing her of her safe word. Its use is explained and an explanation that should she need to use it, it would be more my failure than hers. I explain about the mechanism of safe calls and request that she has one in place.

This woman with no exposure to Ds had had, since her separation, just one meeting with a promise of the kinky. The man who had requested that she dress slutishly for their meeting. Her expectations were soaring sky high and yet her lack of experience and exposure meant that she had not fully visualised or given details to what it was that she wanted. Nothing more concrete than she knew she wanted to be fucked. She turned up as requested and, sadly, he seemed unsure what to do with her. As she recounted this, the sense of her frustration was manifest in the strained tones of her voice.

This is a woman who knows there is something out there. She knows there has to be a whole lot more. She knows it must be close at hand. She's feeling if she just looks behind the right door, pulls back the dark curtain, she is going to find whatever it is that will wash over her and get her completely soaking wet.

--- ooo ---

At 6:30pm I see her car arrive. I go out into the communal stair well and wait for her at the top of the stairs. She comes into view. I want to fuck her. It's not complicated.

I tell her to back up against the brick wall and stand still. She is standing one short flight of stairs below me.

I instruct her to remove her coat. I step down and collect the coat, the bottle of wine and her bag from her.

"Stay there. Don't move."

I return and disappear to deposit the items in my flat.

For Christ sake reader pay attention! This is someone who has not read about Ds yet alone experienced it. The direct instruction I have given her has raised her into a state of such anticipation that I can tell that she can hardly see straight. I know this because it is something that I do. I can empathise and feel what she is feeling.

"Before we go further, we have to discuss something. Are you here just for the kinky sex, or do you think you are prepared to try the submission. I have indicated the risks and the possible consequences in the latter. Everything in the way you have been presenting to me suggests that you are more than ready for this."

I have not laid a finger on her. In some sense the terrible state she is in is of her own construction. She is backed up against the wall like a wild animal. Her eyes are wide with anticipation. She could not be on higher alert if I were wielding an axe in front of her. Her breathing is causing her chest to heave. Her fingers are digging into the rough brickwork. She says in a voice barely louder than a whisper

"You know the answer."

"Yes I do."

This woman in at a cusp in her life's path. She was a wild child tamed into a conventional marriage. A rise in her own capabilities, development, career and empowerment caused her husband to withdraw from her. She became a threat. She tried harder and harder but with every move she took towards him to bring fulfilment and purpose into their relationship, his fragile male ego recoiled, because once again she was the instigating force and that just compounded his feelings of inadequacy. As a result she has spent years in isolation from adult intimacy. She has been living in a sexual vacuum. The want of something more has played on her day after day after day with the building force of the grass shoot that cracks the concrete paving slab in a struggle to reach the sun. This woman is now so committed to finding out what lies behind the curtain that all concerns of safety and rules have been left behind. Not even a risk of being murdered can keep her from stepping forward to touch this. She has to know, at any cost, what lies behind the curtain.

I am the one to be in receipt of this. It is in to my hands that she places herself. Rules do not apply here. She has placed me in charge of her life. Right now there is nothing I cannot ask of her.

"Raise your skirt."

In the public space of this communal stairwell she starts to tentatively inch it up over stockinged thighs.

"Raise it all the way up you fucking whore."

She lifts the hem to reveal the stocking tops and thong.

She is fully compliant. She is also a bitch on heat. She is as ready to leap upon me as I am ready to leap on her. (Later on she will tell me how her sexual expression just seems to intimidate men). But I am not having any of that. I totally dictate how this is going to go down. I have ploughed too much into the planning of it all to have it go any other way.

In some senses there has been metamorphosis from human to animal. I cross the landing and my right hand catches around her throat in a strangulating hold. Her eyes widen even further. She holds her breath.

"You are my fucking toy. You understand? I can do what the fuck I want with you. Got it?"

She nods her head and I close in and kiss her. I release the choking pressure on her throat. Her whole body trembles.

"Keep that skirt up!"

I manoeuvre her towards the stairs

"With each step say 'I am a whore'."

We slowly step our way with her chanting her mantra. We get through my front door and she is led into my lounge. Everything has been prepared. The ceiling hooks, ropes, bamboo poles. The sideboard is laid out with floggers, paddles, knives, cuffs, gags, canes.

"Stand there don't move."

I trace my fingers along the side of her neck. I run my hand into her hair and grab some and pull it. She whimpers and throws her mouth onto my lips.

"I knew I wanted it to be you. Fuck me, please fuck me!"

I pull away.

"Stand there don't move. I tell you what, I'll say what we do and when."

"Oh yeah?", she shoots back.

"Yes, really."

I step around to the other side of the coffee table and take a seat on the sofa.

"You look stunning."

"Thank you."

It's a thank you in that tone that has equal measures of pride and "do you mean me?" doubt.

"Remove your knickers and place them on the coffee table."

On four inch heels and nothing to hold on to she has to be careful not fall to achieve this.

"Place them on the edge of the coffee table nearest me, with the filthy disgusting messy gusset turned up and on show."

She does as she is told.

"What a fucking disgusting mess. Who made that filthy mess?"

With a sheepish tone, "Me."

I can feel her cheeks burning, and I can feel my verbal abuse literally winding her like a clock spring.

"Kneel down and lie across the table with you nose buried into your filth."

There is no protest.

I get up from the sofa and walk around behind her.

"Open your fucking legs whore."

She lets out a small whimpering sound and then spreads them,

I step between her legs and viscously kick them wider apart.

"Fucking open them for me."

As I kick her she whimpers again, and I know that sound, it is the sound of ecstasy.

I arrange her arms on the table so her hands are level with her head. It is a beautiful position of submission.

I start to touch her. I run my fingers down her neck, across her arms, along her back..

She is revelling in the experience of being focussed on. Perhaps more than anything, that simple aspect of being someone's desire is the most rewarding. Years of being ignored or at least taken for granted in the bedroom and now, on this evening she is under the spotlight. She has the full intensity of my scrutiny.

I turn my attention to her nyloned legs.

"You will always wear nylons when I ask. It is non negotiable. You will wear them to bed when I ask. You will wear them in bed all through tonight."

I do not need to ask if she has understood. This is a statement, not a question.

"Well I must say I am impressed."

I grab hold of her hair and pull her to her feet and drag her into the kitchen. I think we should have a coffee.

I let her watch me fill the kettle and get the mugs out.

I leave the kitchen and return with a silk scarf and blindfold her. I go on to make light conversation about... trust. And she hears the swish as coffee granules fall from the spoon into the coffee mug. She hears the teaspoon clink against the china...