I was too weak to stand, too weak even to rise from the table, and so Peter lifted me in his arms. He carried me into the bathroom and there sat me on the edge of the tub. As I smiled dreamily, enjoying the cool tile beneath my bare bottom, he uncuffed my wrists. I couldn't help but groan. Oh, how sore my wrists were! I'd never anticipated wearing the cuffs for so long, nor imagined how raw my wrists would feel afterward. Softer cuffs, I thought to myself. Next time, definitely softer cuffs.
While Peter drew a luxurious bath I stood up gingerly and turned so I could see my backside in the mirror. What I saw there took my breath away. My formerly-pale bottom was covered with bright red splotches from the crop, and from between my cheeks glistened the telltale evidence of my other more intimate use.
"Oh my god, Peter," I murmured incredulously. "Look what you did to me!"
Peter chuckled. "I didn't do that to you."
"Oh?" I giggled. "Then who did?"
Peter snuggled up behind me and slipped his arms around my waist, drawing me close as he kissed the base of my neck. "Why, my pet... you did that to you."
He was right, of course. I had opened the door to my submission and invited him in. I had no one to blame but myself, and no one to thank but Peter. Which I did now with a surge of love, turning and pulling him to me and kissing him again and again.
* * *
We soaked together in the tub, sipping champagne and just enjoying being together. I sat between Peter's legs, lying back against his chest, my eyes closed, smiling dreamily as I savored the feeling of the soapy water up nearly to my neck and Peter's arms so tightly embracing me. We didn't talk. Peter held me and kissed me, on my shoulders, my neck, my back. He seemed content to just hold me, and I was content to just let him. The warmth of the bath soaked the tension right out of me, the anxiousness I'd felt earlier, the ache from my bonds, the lingering chafing from the corset, the rawness of my bottom. The champagne made me tingle, and Peter's arms around me made me feel blissfully content. I felt as if I could stay like this forever.
As Peter cradled me in his arms, sliding his fingers ever so slowly over my soapy skin, he spoke gently in my ear. "Have I ever told you how much I love you?"
I smiled. "All the time."
"Well, if it's possible I think I love you even more now, Mrs. Peter Thomas."
"Mmm... Mrs. Thomas. I like the sound of that."
"Me too." He fell silent and held me for a long time, slipping his hand between my legs and stroking me there gently. Finally he murmured: "I'm going to enjoy your submission, Catherine. You have no idea how much, nor to what delicious lengths. But how did you know?"
I smiled dreamily. He was talking as if he thought my offer of submission was for more than just tonight. I knew I should tell him that I'd meant this only for tonight, but his fingers felt so delicious on me, his body so warm and soft against mine, that I just couldn't bring myself to. "How did I know what?"
"How much I would enjoy your offer of submission."
"I didn't."
Peter chuckled. "You're a terrible liar, sweetie."
"I didn't! I hoped is all."
"That's all?"
"Well..."
Beneath the warm water Peter tickled me gently. "Tell me, Catherine."
I let him tickle me a moment longer before I let him force my confession. "I found your books."
"Which ones?"
"The ones in the attic."
Peter was quiet for a moment. "You know about them?"
"Mmm hmm. Every naughty little one."
Peter chuckled. "You've been snooping."
"No! I found them by accident!"
"Uh huh, sure." But in the mirror I could see he was smiling. "And my books made you want all this?"
"No, I already wanted it," I told him softly. "Finding your books just gave me hope that I wasn't alone."
We lay together for a long time, not speaking. Peter held me in his arms and stroked me gently beneath the water. "How long, Catherine? How long have you felt like this?"
"All my life."
"Tell me about it."
I blushed. No, I couldn't, it was too embarrassing. And yet Peter firmly insisted. "I'm not asking you, Catherine," he murmured in my ear. "I'm telling you. Now out with it, sweetie."
So there lying back against him in the bath, his arms around me and my glass of champagne forgotten for the moment, I told him everything. I told him how for as long as I could remember I had fantasized about strong, handsome lovers who took me in the darkness, and often over my helpless protests. Who tied me up and made love to me through the night. Who blindfolded me and reddened my bottom with unseen instruments. Who controlled me. Who possessed me. Who stripped from me my modesty and my innocence and made me unequivocally theirs.
I told him how one night during my freshman year in college I'd come purely by chance across the movie "9 1/2 Weeks" on cable, and how I'd been so enthralled with it that the next day I'd rushed out and rented it and watched it over and over again. I told him how that same year I'd participated with our campus theater group in a float in a local parade. It had been a pirate theme and I was chosen to be the fair maiden. I'd stood up there on the float in front of everyone, my dress tattered, my back to the faux mast and my arms pulled back around it. The bindings around my wrists had been fake, looped loosely over and over so they looked real enough, but in my mind they'd been real, and as I'd put on my helpless, struggling maiden bit as the pirates surrounded me I'd trembled with excitement. I'd worn my sexiest, laciest bra and panties beneath my fair maiden costume and from time to time a gust of wind would come along and part the tatters of my dress just enough to offer a fleeting peek to the parade goers. It had been enough to raise a terrible blush in my cheeks, and yet with my hands "bound" I couldn't very well reach down and protect my modesty and so I'd found myself being a bit more the helpless maiden than I'd planned. That night I'd hardly slept a wink, masturbating over and over to the fantasy of being plundered by the pirates, my fair innocence rent asunder again and again as I struggled helplessly.
I told him how in the weeks following my public display I'd been so hungry to feel the snugness of bonds for real that one night when my roommate was out I'd lain on my bed in the dark and tied my own ankles to the bedposts with stockings, and bound my own wrists in front of me as tightly as I could with another, and masturbated furiously as I tugged at my own self-imposed bondage. It was a routine I'd repeated over and over whenever I'd had a chance, a self-indulgence I'd never before admitted to anyone and
which I now blushed to relate to Peter.
I even confessed to him the one event that more than any other had fueled my fantasies: my fateful doctor exam.
"What?" Peter chuckled. "You have a thing for doctors too?"
I blushed. No, I murmured. Not exactly. It had been in my first months as a freshman at the university. I'd gone to the student health clinic for a routine checkup. In the examination room the nurse, a kindly, graying older woman, had taken my blood pressure and checked my temperature and then given me a folded exam gown and told me to undress and put it on, that the doctor would be in shortly. Only the moment she'd left me alone I'd gotten distracted by a phone call from Kim (the subject of which I can't remember to this day for the life of me). It hadn't been the phone call that was important so much as the fact that when the doctor knocked and came in I was still fully dressed and the exam gown still sat folded on the table. He'd smiled and made some polite joke or another and then asked me: would I mind please undressing and putting the gown on so he might examine me? I'd stood frozen, blushing madly, as he turned and busied himself at the counter. He'd been young and handsome, and more embarrassingly than anything seemed not about to leave the room. I couldn't do it, couldn't undress with him standing right there. And yet he'd glanced to me again and with that same polite smile told me: it wasn't anything he hadn't seen before. Now would I mind please undressing and putting the gown on? He was quite busy today. And then he'd busied himself at the counter again. I did it quickly while his back was turned. Blushing madly, tingling though I'd no idea why, I undressed as quickly as I could and slipped the gown on. My fingers had trembled so badly that I'd not been able to work the little ties, and so I'd ended up just holding the gown loosely closed. The entire time I'd felt, or perhaps fantasized, that he was watching me out of the corner of his eye. Probably it was just my imagination, but the effect was the same: I tingled all over with a strange arousal that I'd never felt before.
Afterward I'd hurried back to my dorm room and there, still tingling and thankfully alone, I'd stripped and hurried into bed and masturbated furiously. I was heady with arousal from having been "ordered" to strip by the handsome doctor, from being so intimately examined by him, from the touch of his strong hands on my nakedness and the sterile coldness of his stethoscope and at every moment the blush-inducing fantasy that he wasn't a doctor at all but one of my dark, mysterious strangers who owned me in my dreams. It had been such an innocent experience, and yet so powerfully arousing. I'd skipped the rest of my classes that day -- entirely unlike me -- and spent the afternoon in bed, masturbating furiously to relieve the delicious tension that seemed to not want to fade until I'd worn myself out and fallen blissfully asleep, my hands tucked between my legs and the young, handsome doctor filling my dreams.