Bottom Space

I stood in front of my upstairs bathroom’s full-length mirror, turning this way and that trying to get a clear view of the dozens of red marks and welts that covered my asscheeks, upper thighs and shoulders.

This was an entirely new experience for me. There were in fact a string of entirely new experiences in my sex life lately. But how I, who had always been dominant, a top man and a sadist, had ended up on my hands and knees on Sioban’s carpet, trying to hold myself still while she striped my ass with a wicked, rubber quirt, a deadly cane and a heavy leather flogger.

Hot tears had flowed down my usually calm face and I had hurtled forward onto the carpet when the one particularly hard stroke had landed. Sioban had curled up behind me, her naked body and lush breasts pressed against my burning body.

She whispered in my ear.

“Get up, Sean. There’s only a little more of this”.

“Yes, Sioban” I murmured and had somehow pulled myself back up onto my knees and elbows to await the next blow.

The next five strokes had been far the worst. She felt the sadist in her rising up, she would later tell me and had reveled in the feeling. Those were certainly 2 or 3 of the marks that I was presently staring at in amazement.

Sioban and I had met 6 or 7 weeks earlier at an S/M play party slash picnic in August. I had come to the party alone and had no preconceived ideas about playing. I had seen Sioban dressed in pure slut fetishware and sitting alone on a lawn chair. I approached. We made some small talk. I started by asking her if she’d like to try out my new mahogany spanking horse.

Small talk at an S/M play party is not small talk anywhere else. In fact, many people do years of therapy before they can manage the truth telling and naked reality of two BDSM players negotiating for their first scene.

Sioban had tentatively agreed and we were starting the negotiation process - what one likes and what one doesn’t, what the persons, usually the bottoms, limits were, when two arms had wrapped around my head and neck and large soft breasts had pressed against my head.

“Are you going to play with this guy Sioban?” I heard a warm familiar voice from behind me.

It was Donnatella, a female domme friend of mine and one of the co-sponsors of the party, a wonderful woman and a voice in the lifestyle.

“This guy” she continued “I love this guy! A wonderful top and a wonderful guy. You’ll be lucky to play with him.”

“Thank you Donnatella” I said. “You look especially beautiful tonight.”

With a recommendation like that Sioban and I soon found ourselves wending our way through the crowds to the basement dungeon where my horse awaited. I followed her up the stairs and through the house admiring her shapely ass and legs. This was her first public play party and she was nervous she said. Relax, I told her, you’re in good hands.

And we did play; a very mild scene but pleasant enough that we exchanged email addresses before we went out separate ways at the end of the evening.

And after some heated email correspondence and some wonderful and lengthy phone calls we met. Ate Sushi. Went back to my place to play. Life was good. We were intensely happy. Both of us, I thought.

Soon we were doing lots of things together. Dinners, hikes, movies and pool. And play. Always with me as the top. I thought that our scenes had gone well but apparently she did not. I was too tentative she said one night. I worried too much about her and fussed too much. I should “take her by the hair and make her do things.”

But when we tried that we failed as well. That failed scene ended our Play together for awhile but we remained very close friends. We would play pool together or hike with her dogs, stay up late talking about any and everything. We kissed, hugged and occasionally even had vanilla sex but that wasn’t the focus of our relationship. Besides, she had another Dom who she had played with and was Playing with again. He seemed to push all of her buttons and I suffered frequent bouts of jealousy. Despite our problems, Sioban and I remained extraordinarily close, often talking on the phone until we were both so sleepy we could barely hang up.

I loved her, she loved her Dom and my tears flowed on a regular basis. But I continued to see her, her friendship even more precious to me, as she grew ever closer to her Dom.

We had spent a weeknight together - not a very common event and we hadn’t slept well. At coffee the next morning I felt her pulling away as she sometimes did. We went out separate ways. For some reason - lack of sleep probably - that day was particularly awful and painful. I had to go to the john twice during the day to cry. My emotions were all messed up but I tried to hang on - thinking of all the wonderful and amazing things that we had done together.

When I got home from work, I was still all emotionally screwed up. I sat down to answer my email and I just started typing a letter to Sioban. The words “I want to bottom for you on Saturday” came out.

We had joked about the idea - after 10 years in the scene I had never bottomed for anyone. I trusted Sioban so much and I wasn’t getting the cosmic connection from our Dom play or from our vanilla sex. I wanted this I said, I needed to FEEL this, I said.

I wrote her not to keep me waiting. She didn’t. Within hours I had email from her. I was a little disappointed when I read it. We’ll see, she said. Let’s talk about it on Saturday because we both might want to change our minds, she said.

We had made plans to hike and eat dinner at her place but it had been a tough week and after a lovely lunch and a beer Sioban said, “Let’s take a nap - 45 minutes or an hour”

“Do you mean ‘Nap’? Sioban, or nap?”

“Just come and lie down with me for awhile”. She took me by the hand. It would have been foolish and or impossible to refuse.

We talked. We kissed. We laughed. We didn’t sleep but it was too sweet for words. We talked fearlessly. We cried. We confessed to each other, a thousand imaginary ways that we each thought we had hurt one another. We kissed. We cried. We didn’t talk about my bottoming for her that evening.

After our ‘nap’, I worked on her apartment for awhile, installing several new “attachment points” in her bedroom. At some point recently, I had stopped worrying that it was her Dom who was getting all the use of the things I did for her. I loved her and I tried, in my way, to make her life better.

We decided to eat a quick supper and see the early movie. We showered together as we always did, washing each other, shaving (her pubes always bare), kissing and laughing. We didn’t talk about my proposition.

After walking the dogs, we headed out. At the last minute I went back to my toybag and grabbed the handcuffs I’d brought. Just in case. Maybe I would turn the tables and try to “grab her hair and make her do it”. Maybe she would grab mine, as short as it is. We changed out minds on the way to the theater. We played pool. Laughed. Had one drink. Did I mention that we played pool horribly? So awful. Two or three ugly games of 8-ball and we HAD to leave.

As we walked to the car, arm in arm, I know that we could both feel the electricity building.

Sioban had driven. We sat in the car quietly for a moment.

“So…” I started.

“I guess we should negotiate” Sioban said.

“We really don’t need to” I said. “I know how to stop if it gets to be too much”.

“I’ll be cruel,” Sioban said.

“I’m expecting you to be” I said bravely and leaned over to kiss her.

We were uncharacteristically quiet on the ride back to her apartment. In the parking lot we held each other’s hands. Sioban kissed me.

“Are you ready?” She asked.

“Ready” I said. “Oh yeah, how should I address you?”

“Can you say my name with respect?”

“Of course, Sioban” I said.

“Then do that” she said. “Damn, I wish I’d brought the handcuffs.”

“I did” I laughed and reached into my jacket pocket and handed her the silver handcuffs.

“Do you have the key?” she asked as she took the cuffs from me.

“Of course, Sioban” I said.

After we had stepped into her apartment, I knew the scene had begun. Claire grabbed me by the collar and pushed me down to my knees. Using my leather jacket to bind my arms behind me, she clicked the handcuffs onto my wrists.

“You’re a dangerous man, Sean and I think you could overcome these handcuffs and overpower me. You’re not going to try that, are you Sean?”

“No, Sioban” I said, as submissively as I could manage.

“I’m going to take you to the bedroom and warm you up and then we’re coming back out here for the pain portion of the evening.” She pulled me to my feet and with a hand between my shoulder blades, pushed me toward the bedroom.

I knelt on her bedroom floor while she readied the toys she would use to dominate and punish me.

“Be patient” she said, “I’m going to have to move things back and forth. It’s nearly eleven and we can’t be waking Mrs. Sterling again, now can we?”

Minutes later, I was stripped and chained to one of the hooks that I had installed earlier.

“I’m going to warm up your back and then turn you around and warm up your front. Are you ready?”

“Yes, Sioban.”

Her warm-up was not too severe: lashes with several of the floggers culminating with the punch of the heavy leather flogger, interspersed with the cat - pure sadism as she made sure the knotted ends “wrapped”. Sioban described the welts and bruises these “wraps” would make and promised that they would be the least of the marks that I would leave here with.

“Warmed up” to Sioban’s satisfaction, I was tied spread-eagled on my back on the living room floor, my arms and legs stretched tight, no gag or blindfold offered.

I heard the clothespins only seconds before the first one bit into my left earlobe. My armpit and several across my chest next followed my neck to my nipple. A blue plastic hemostat was placed there. I moaned and bit my lip trying in vain to turn the pain into…anything else. I thought to breathe down in the way my Kung Fu Master had taught me, evening my breaths. The assault of clothespins continued down my belly, the inside of my thighs and several of my toes…the pain there was ten times more intense than even…well, anywhere but there - six on my balls and cock then the corresponding toes, fingers, earlobes on my right side. The pain was very intense, more than I had previously imagined that clothespins could contain. I was moaning and try as I might; I could not get my breathing under control.

I cried out “Jesus Christ. The little mother fuckers hurt!”

She played the clothespins. The pain was everywhere and white hot. I could not see how it was connected any way, shape or form to pleasure, even though I had witnessed and inspired and absorbed pain’s effects, erotic and otherwise, many times.

Sioban began to remove the clamp and clips. What I had thought was a threshold of pain was crossed and recrossed again and again. I was shaking and sobbing by the time she removed the clips from my groin and sadistically flicked at the “blue bastards” on my tiny, even for a man, nipples.

When the blue bastards were finally off I wanted nothing more than to curl up in a fetal position, but Sioban had other ideas.

“Be still,” she said roughly. “I don’t want to get wax on my rug.”

“Oh, Jesus, Sioban” I moaned. I was still shaking. My eyes still full of tears.

“Look at me!” she said.

I looked up at her beautiful face, into her beautiful multi-colored eyes that I had loved to get lost in.

Sioban smiled cruelly, “Be still”.

The candle only 6 or 8 inches from my chest, my stomach, my arms, my groin. Liquid fire at that altitude. Twenty drops turned to fifty. I was moaning steadily and shaking again by the time she stopped and of course started up this time with my own switchblade scraping the wax from me, pulling out chest and belly hairs as she went.

I couldn’t control my breath, the shaking, anything. I was not aroused but I was certainly stimulated, undeniably alive.

She worked around my, just out of my peripheral vision.

My bonds were released, first my arms, then my legs. My hands flew to my aching nipples, then my sore scrotum. I curled up and tried to slow my tears. Sioban placed her lush naked body against me.

“I want to really hurt you now” Sioban whispered in my ear. “I want to introduce you to real pain - the cane and the quirt. I want to make your skinny white ass plaid with my marks”.

“Yes, Sioban.”

“I don’t want to tie you. Will you stay still?”

“I’ll try, Sioban”

“This is a yes or no question!” She barked at me. She was well into her topspace.

“Yes, Sioban. I can stay still”.

“We’ll see about that,” she said. “Up. On your knees and elbows. Ass up!”

The first dozen with the heavy flogger were moving, thudding and not all that painful.

The next 20 or so with the cane were far brighter, the pain explosive and electric.

A heavy rubber slapper was worse yet and my shaking and my tears returned. My breath was coming in erratic gulps but I had yet to even consider safe wording or even asking for mercy - a word just short of “yellow” that we had negotiated before we’d begun.

The first cut of the quirt send me flying forward across the bed, curses pouring from my lips.

Sioban grabbed me by my hair then and pulled me back into position.

“There’s only a little more of the Sean. Don’t disappoint me now. You’ve done very well so far, hold still for these last.

I tried to count in my head but the quirt was like fire - across my back, my ass, my thighs as loud and bright as the cane with more lingering effects. Sioban ran her fingers over the spots where my body was already showing the marks.

“Ten more” she said. “Only ten more. You can do it”.

I said, “No, No, No” as she delivered the strokes, all ten, the last few worse than all the others combined and I was sure I would never breathe again, never stop sobbing, never stand, never sit down.

Sioban rolled me over onto my side took off the bra she’d been wearing while she tortured me and curled up being me and held me. The tenderness of this and her soothing words opened up a flood of emotion and a deluge of tears.

“I’m right here baby,” she said. “Let it go, I’m here to catch you. Go with it. Feel it…”

Sioban turned me over onto my back so that I could look at her while I…what? Laughed? Cried? Both at once for awhile? All the time, she was there…a buoy, an anchor, and a beacon. While I shook and laughed and cried.

As the tremors subsided, I started to feel the welts and weals and bruises. Sioban at some point put ice on my nipples and some of my marks. I had to pee.

“Wow, Sean” Sioban said finally. “You really let go. You were really flying!”

“Was I?” I groaned.

“Oh, yeah” she said. “I thought maybe with your training and all, you wouldn’t be able to let go”.

“But that’s what I came here to do” I croaked.

“Well, you did it, baby!”

“Thanks” I remember saying.

“Thank you!” she said very sincerely. “You were wonderful”.

“You were…very cruel,” I said and a smile passed both of our lips almost simultaneously.

“I was, wasn’t I?” she laughed then but the cruelty had gone from the sound of her laughter.

“Here, let me help you to your feet. Careful”.

I negotiated the bathroom. Leaned against the wall and coaxed the urine flow.

Sioban joined me. “Wanna look at your marks?”

“Sure” I said craning around to see.

She adjusted the mirrors till I could see.

“Sam makes me come in and look at mine” she said. We admired her handiwork together, silently.

“They’re something,” I said. “That rubber quirt is nasty!”

“Yeah. I know”.

“Like lightening,” I said. “Who needs electrical play?”

Back on her crisp clean sheets I was still flying, faintly levitating above the surface. Sioban was lying face down and I had spooned alongside her. I began to pass my left palm over her skin.

Immediately, Sioban started. “Jesus!”

“What’s with your hand? It’s HOT!”

“I don’t know. What do you mean? Hot?”

“Can’t you feel it?” Holy Shit! Like HOT!”

As she said the words, I found that I could indeed feel it…heat energy…fairly pouring out of a 2” circle in the center of my left palm. A roaring orange sun.

“Try it with your other hand” Sioban, ever the scientist suggested.

I did. Neither of us could feel a thing. But the left hand - that was another story! Energy was absolutely pouring out of me and apparently into Sioban.

“That feels so amazing,” she said. “How are you doing that?”

“Damned if I know. It is amazing! I can feel my hand burning from the inside. Nuclear! Or "Like Stigmata!” I said, laughing.

“My skin is about to have an orgasm”, she announced. Sioban had told me such a thing before so I knew that it could just be true. She moaned as I measured every inch of her back and backside with the roaring furnace in my hand.

“Turn over” I ordered and Sioban complied.

If anything, the front of her body pulled more energy through my Holy Wound. She moaned and babbled and at one point told me that she was so high that she didn’t want to breathe anymore…I was sure that I would break her concentration and mine when I barked “Don’t even think about that” to her. But the energy flowed and flowed, concentration, intention or not. Another pass of my healing hand over her back and we drifted off to sleep, still spooned together.

I went home after breakfast. Sioban and I didn't see very much of one another for a long while after that night. But amazing things have continued to happen to me and I've continued my 'growth curve'. And slowly but surely she and I have gravitated back towards one another. Dinners at first and then a game or two of pool. It's not everything it once was but it's a good great amount.

We've even Played together…with my girlfriend and with her top and the Play was a rousing success. Although we've kept a distance and kept the over-analysis to a minimum she is and always will be my friend unlike any other. We have worked hard and our efforts have been rewarded.

The world is a more beautiful place with Sioban in it. And life is good.