A Romance of Submission and Dominance
Is this the first chapter of a novel? The decision partly depends on the interest of readers like you who are willing to express your reaction in emails, PMs, or public comments.
The story is true. Some of it is factual. Thank you to pita, my submissive partner in D/s and crime, for helping me to live it, to write it, and to dig deeper into myself. Thank you to Sophia Jane, my partner in writing, for helping me to dig deeper into my characters. And thanks to you for reading it. – Joe
Prelude: What Will Be
On the front porch, a woman stands naked except for a collar and cuffs. She goes to her knees in the yellow mist of a Georgia morning before a naked man, somewhat older than she, who sits in a wicker chair. Neither of them preen nor hide from the other. They are comfortable in their nudity. Water dripping from leaves and branches makes the only sound a summer shower has left behind.
Her knees are spread and her hips rest against her heels. Her hands rest palm upward on her thighs. Her head tilts down as if it would be presumptuous to look up. She is not only at peace, she is stunningly beautiful to him. The way he looks at her is tender.
She waits. His voice is quiet, deep, and affectionate. "A beautiful morning," he tells her.
"Yes, Sir," the woman responds, and then adds, "I suppose ...."
"How can you doubt it, little one?"
"It is beautiful," she admits, "but I hate having my new hairstyle caught in the rain."
He is silent, regarding her carefully. Then he asks gently, "Is there something I should know?" Their conversation is a morning ritual, and he is watchful at any note of discontent in her.
She shakes her head slowly; her red hair catches the sun as it moves softly across her shoulders, and light sparkles off of her collar. "No. The day will be what it will be, Sir."
His brow furrows. The creases in his forehead are deep and his eyes penetrate her. Like the gray wolf in a picture on the wall in their den, she finds this look omniscient and emotionless when she is fixed by it. Her head bows further, and her breath comes faster. She doesn't always understand what makes him look at her this way.
"I think it is best if you spend a few minutes in your room, dear one." His voice is low and friendly. "You are unsettled," he explains. "I will call you in a bit."
The woman rises gracefully, in a single, fluid motion and pads into the house with short, silent steps. She likes it that he sees into her heart so easily, but it is unsettling. She goes to a door off the living area that leads to a room, which once was a large closet but is now hers.
She has had such a room in every place they have lived. This one is painted pink. It has a pink rug, a chair that has been hers ever since she has been with the man, a white and pink rabbit, and is organized around a picture of a child ballerina who is looking wistfully out of a window. When the man gave her the picture years before, he told her it could tell her everything she needed to know. The child soon became comfort and inspiration to her.
On the porch, the man finishes a mug of chai she had brought to him. He stands and stretches in the yellow light, a lean and weathered body freeing itself from the gray night he carries from bed each morning now. He is thinking of her.
She is unsettled; he might guess part of the reason, but she is able to sometimes settle herself, and that is preferable; but when she can't understand the problem, whether it is hers or his, she will ask him for help to find her focus and natural docility.
He moves easily and swiftly, arranging furniture so there is space around the large, white column at the corner of the porch. From there it is possible to see three counties. He quickly arranges loops, cuffs, and hooks that tinkle and rattle from heavy eye hooks at the top, middle, and base of the column. He goes indoors and returns with a black whip called a cat-o'-nine-tails. He brings a towel and a container of water with ice rattling against the sides and places a holder of straws next to it. Finally, he adjusts a clear path to the hammock suspended at the shady end of the porch.
When he is done, he goes in, knocks on the door to her little room and asks the woman to come out. When she re-enters the living room, her hands are fluttering like birds; she is anxious. She turns to him and, head down, asks if she may ask a favor.
"Of course," he says with concern. "You know I am yours."
She goes again to her knees. "It's nothing serious, Master," she says, speaking clearly. "I need help dealing with hormones and the crazy energy in me. I feel scattered and self-absorbed."
The man bends down to take her hands in his. As he straightens, she raises her head to look into his eyes for the first time since she knelt before him on the porch.
"What do you want me to do?" he asks her.
The woman tells him what she wants, bowing her head again, and the man nods; he helps her to her feet and they walk, he a step behind her with his palm resting lightly on the cool skin just beneath her waist, back onto the porch. There, she goes to face the corner post he has prepared and takes a deep breath.
She adjusts the cuffs on her own wrists and ankles. He snaps a quick release latch from the ceiling through her outstretched wrists, gently spreads her ankles, and latches one end of the lower chain through the left "D" ring of her ankle cuff, and the other end through the right ring.
He moves up her body. He has designed restraints that allow her maximum sensation and some control over the feeling she receives. She has small rings through her nipples and each of her major labia; he hooks the small chain around the column at the height of her hips to the labial rings, and then the chain at chest height to the nipple rings. The woman is quiet, eyes closed, head tilted back and her lips slightly parted. She is waiting patiently for what will be. There is neither need nor desire in her to struggle.
When he is done, he stands by her and bends his head to kiss her open mouth. His sex stirs. He asks her if she is alright and ready to begin. She nods. He gives her a sip of the water and, when he sets the water back on the table, picks up the whip.
The knotted leather whispers through the quiet air of the Georgia morning. Against her shoulders it makes a snapping sound. At first, each time it lands the woman cries out and writhes against it. His motion is fluid, controlled, and he gradually moves the strokes lower on her body. He watches each stroke hit its target. Her bottom quickly becomes pink and then shows a series of crisscrossing welts. He is listening to her and after each stroke his eyes scan her body and her face for the signs of what she wants and needs from him.
The whip hums and snaps through the morning air again and again. After awhile, the woman no longer cries out but softly moans and then, gradually, becomes silent. She has stopped writhing and she seems to be pushing into the strokes and pulling gently against the nipple and labial clamps.
A drop of spittle trickles from the corner of her mouth. His sex is hard with the energy he feels at owning her in this way. His rhythm never varies, and he sees small spots and streaks on her skin where blood has begun to seep.
He is watching her carefully still and begins to see the signs of what some call subspace, a trancelike euphoria where she is no longer capable of good judgment but is afloat on waves of sensation, like a hawk on high winds that soars and floats above sparkling trees and grasses far below. Her head rolls in circles from shoulder to shoulder. Subspace was, from the first, easily won, but still it is a prize they both cherish.
He allows her to remain in the place she loves, a head space free of the need to be locked in herself and her stresses, for as long as he feels he safely can.
Then he changes his rhythms, interrupts his strokes, pauses, gives rapid, staccato flourishes until he sees he is disrupting her stupor. He speaks her name and stops the flogging.
Now he moves as quickly as he has all morning and loosens her fastenings, beginning with her feet and ending with her hands, after he has turned her toward him and put his shoulder so that she can lean against him when he frees her.
He carries her to the hammock, gives her water to drink and unwraps a large piece of the dark chocolate she loves. While she nibbles on it, he spreads cool lotion on her welts and on abrasions left by the whip. He notices that the morning birds sing louder. Later he will help her apply an antibacterial cream.
For now, he climbs into the hammock and holds her to him, her face against his throat, and she cries with the release of the emotions that had been unsettling her. At first she cries sporadically, then with a burst she sobs and at last settles to a low, soft keening. He holds her continually and tells her she is his good girl.
After a time, she dozes. He continues to hold her and finds himself dozing off, too, grateful that his tired right arm no longer needs to be under constant control. He visits the place inside himself where darkness often hides and decides it has retreated once again, perhaps into the forest across the field. He feels the muscles begin to twitch in his triceps, and feels the ripples of muscle in her back as she, too, relaxes.
He listens to the birds and thinks "This is what the day should be" while the hammock barely moves. When she wakes, the sun is high. She is playful now and begins to touch his soft penis. As he begins to stir at her touch, he teases her "What's a fatalist like you doing in a nice hammock like this?"
She is playful now. "I've told you, my submission is what I am, Sir." But she is also intent. Her hand and fingertips bring him, quickly, to full erection. Her touch is magic, and his cock begins to twitch of its own accord.
She caresses him for a long time. Finally, she raises her head and asks: "Sir, will you come for me this beautiful morning?"
"No, pita," the man says, smiling at her. "Your submission is beautiful, and you, and your lust ... but I'll give you that part some other day perhaps."
"It's a long day, Sir," she says, "and it will be what we make of it." But her fingers slow, and minutes later he becomes aware of a soft breeze at his loins. He has to think whether it is her breath or a lost breeze.
"I wonder," she says quietly, "what Lexi's new med student boyfriend is like."
Her comments often sound irrelevant. "Are you concerned she isn't ready to be submissive?" he asks.
"Oh, I still think she'll be more of a domme." She pauses, then thinks out loud. "I was just hoping my daughter finds someone who will fly a thousand miles to give her a pink rose."
He listens to her breath as she drifts off into a deep sleep. Her shoulders rise and fall in rhythm with the slight motion of the hammock.
The man watches across the field where cottonwoods at the edge of the woods shimmer in the sun. Beyond them, from a tall, shadowy oak he sees a hawk leap forward and climb toward the sky where it will search for prey.
He smiles as he recalls, as he does every day, the woman who taught him to love, and he thinks, too, about the woman asleep on his shoulder who has brought him back to it.
From the line of trees, a mockingbird begins its list of songs. He knows there is darkness deep in the woods and imagines gray forms moving silently from shadow to shadow. He wonders what the wolf will be doing on such a beautiful morning.
Chapter 1: Touching Down
"Touch yourself. Sit where you are, pita, and lift your skirt."
"I'm in the front hall. Someone ..."
"Sit on the steps."
"The guy next door is paint..."
"Pita, no one can see. Touch yourself."
"Yes, Sir." He heard her sigh but ignored it.
"You don't have panties on, do you? Are you aroused?"
"No, Sir. And no, I'm not."
"I want to tell you about your spanking bench.... I finished it."
