Right

The blanket wrapped tightly about her otherwise naked body, she kneels before the fireplace. As she basks in the warmth of the fire, she watches the wild dances of the many flames, drawn in by their hypnotic movements. Focusing her attention on the yellow-orange light, she falls inside herself, deep into her mind, thinking back upon the evening, an evening her overprotective father would absolutely abhor.

She had first heard of bondage in the high school locker room, when a few of the older girls in her gym class boasted about having been tied to a tree or a bed or even just a chair, and how their feeble struggles would turn on the guys in their midst. At that time, she had never even dated, let alone kissed a boy, and simply could not understand how a girl's restraint could be so enthralling to a guy, how being secured in an inescapable manner could possibly be considered "erotic."

It was not until the end of her first year in college when she trusted someone enough to even allow him a simple glimpse of her bra strap, let alone bare her body to him. Yet even he had talked admiringly about bondage, about taking his time in methodically tying a girl to the bedposts, then using a sharp knife to slice the clothes from her body as she quivered in anticipation and in fear, then watching her squirm and listening to her grunts and cries as he hurt her in various ways, and if she had aroused him enough with her futile struggles and her plaintive cries, he might just undress and make her scream yet again – this time in pleasure. Fifteen minutes later after relating those bizarre details, he had been banished from her dorm room, never to be invited to return, yet his words had somehow touched something deep within her, something she did not understand.

Kneeling now before the fireplace, intensely watching the mesmerizing dance of the fire, she still does not understand.

Working a closing shift at a local convenience store that summer, she was home alone for the majority of each day, her father busy at work and her mother long ago deceased. Even though she did not understand what was happening inside her mind, inside her soul, she felt compelled to learn more. The Internet became her library, providing her with virtually an unlimited number of resources. The stories, the movie clips, the audio files, the pictures, the instruction manuals, the adult stores, the chat rooms, the online diaries, all these resources were suddenly at her fingertips – she needed only to think and type, and suddenly new realms of bizarre, forbidden knowledge was presented to her.

The knowledge was ingested, internalized. Somehow, she was never sated – the more she read, the more she heard, the more she saw, the more she craved. She typed again, and again, and again. She read again, and again, and again. She heard again, and again, and again. She watched again, and again, and again. She could not find enough to satisfy her quest in understanding exactly what it is the was so appealing in the shaming and punishing of scores of young women – seemingly simply for the biological fact that they were born into this world as females – for seemingly all the submissives (her preferred term, as "slaves" carried too heavy a historical weight) were unquestionably female.

Classes resumed, and friends – male and female alike – commented admiringly that she seemed to carry herself with a renewed sense of self. She felt as if nothing had changed, yet those comments carried a lot of weight, filling her with the "renewed sense of self" with which they had attributed her. Except for a few new somewhat-modest clothes upon her return to college, the only change in her life was her summer research in a subject the haughty faculty certainly would not tolerate in an academic institution.

In the following few years, she became more and more aware of bondage in mainstream media. The underwater chain bondage of the Bond Babe in Tomorrow Never Dies stayed imprinted upon her memory for a long time. Sailor Moon's entrapment among the vines of an Earth-threatening asteroid also intrigued her to no end. These occurrences of bondage seemed to appear more and more often, further fueling her need to learn more.

In time, it seemed that thoughts of bondage consumed her. She looked at the thin metal posts of the beds in her dorm room, inspecting the metal for signs that the room's previous occupants may have used these same posts as anchors for some wayward girl's (consensual?) restraint. She attended a friend's volleyball game and looked up toward the rafters of the gymnasium, almost instantly imagining the twelve women all suspended from the metal supports in the ceiling as they struggled for freedom. Her roommate returned late at night with a flushed face, walking a little gingerly, and she speculating if she had just spent time being punished by her boyfriend just for being female. She visited a friend in a nearby dorm and wondered if the candles lining the lone window were ever used to torment a bare breast with their melting wax. Occasionally, a guy's belt would catch her eye, and she found herself conjecturing if he had ever beaten his girlfriends with it.

Eventually, she admitted the inevitable to herself: She was curious about bondage and dominance, about sadism and masochism. Yet she felt it was a secret she had to keep hidden deep, deep within her.

Still, she attempted to learn more. Summer came, and she returned to the same summer job, working the same closing shift. With her father at work during the day, she resumed her research in earnest, and finally began to part with some of her hard-earned money. A pay site subscription provided a new plethora of "reference materials" to her, while online auctions provided her with easily-hidden, unlabeled discs with all sorts of videos to watch on her computer in the privacy of her bedroom. Yet as she cringed at the sight of a heavy leather whip slicing yet again into a nude woman's curvaceous flesh, she longed to feel that pain, to experience that humiliation, to cry those tears, to produce that scream. For some reason, she wanted to feel the rough rope biting into her skin, the candles' wax being unceremoniously poured upon each nipple, the handcuffs chaffing her thin wrists. For some reason, she wanted her body to be cut open by a brutal lashing, bruised by powerful slaps, dented by vicious bites, violated by enormous erections.

That last realization scared her more than any other at the time. Even as she kneels before the fireplace years later, that simple thought still startles her, even as she finds she craves it.

Into the dancing flames she gazes, remembering the moment when she knew she had found "the one:" the one who had surprised her with his gentlemanly care, the one who had captivated her heart, the one who had challenged her intellectually, the one who had confessed his fantasy of restraining her and hurting her intensely before pleasing her with an equivalent level of passion. Only then did she finally allow him to see more than just a bra strap. Only after that did she finally allow him she the skin hidden underneath all the clothing. Only after that did she finally allow him to explore her very core.

Yet not until years later could she finally admit to him that she so desperately wanted to make his longtime fantasy a reality – not for him, but for her. She remembered the tears she had shed – the tears of shame, the tears of vulnerability, the tears of relief – as she revealed her deepest, innermost secret to him, right here in front of the fireplace as his enormous erection filled her completely and he surrounded her with his love and his devotion.

Now, she kneels before the fireplace, the flickering light of the many dancing flames unable to pierce the blanket to illuminate the painful markings. She can still feel flakes of dried wax clinging to her chest and stomach. She can still feel the rawness of her wrists from the metal cuffs worn as they dangled from a secured bolt in the basement ceiling. She can still feel the throbbing in her derrière after the lengthy spanking. She can still feel the bite of the clamps at the base of her nipples. She can still feel the power of his hands at her throat as he made love to her. She can still feel the vulnerability and fear and trust that fills her every time they play. Yet somehow, despite her overly-protective upbringing, it all feels right.

It simply feels right.