"Gallifrey!"
Hannah's use of our safeword takes me by surprise. Sure, she's tied up, head down, arse up, with her hands cuffed behind her back, but I'm not doing anything anywhere near extreme. Ignoring all the paraphernalia, this is just a good old-fashioned doggy-style fuck.
"What? Are the ropes too tight or something?" I ask.
"Just...Gallifrey, please," she repeats. She sounds weary rather than annoyed.
Well, that's that then. I pull out of her pussy, remove the blindfold and start to untie her.
"Do you want me to blow you?" Hannah asks once she's free.
"No, its okay," I say. Few things kill an evening stone dead quicker than a safeword deployed just as you are close to finishing. I don't really want to end this evening with overly cautious obligation oral. "I just want to know what I did wrong."
That's bad phrasing, making it all about me rather than her, and there's an edge to the way that it comes out that I really didn't mean. I've clearly been thrown off by it. We have a rock solid relationship and this sort of play requires absolute trust, maturity and communication. What it doesn't need is whining doms.
As if agreeing with this assessment, Hannah sighs. Then she says, "Look, this might take a while to unpack. Do you mind if I shower first?"
"Sure," I say. It's probably not actually a bad idea to have some time to cool down. First though, I have something to take care of.
As Hannah grabs a towel, I plonk myself down in front of our desktop and open a porn site. I'm not really sure what I want to watch, certainly nothing mimicking what we were just up to. I pick the first thumbnail with a decent-enough-looking girl and skip straight to the halfway point. I'm done with my perfunctory wank and cleaning myself up before it reaches three-quarters.
Hannah's shower is still going strong, and I'm kind of left in limbo. In the end, I stick on a film review for a movie neither me nor Mark Kermode have much enthusiasm for.
Eventually, Hannah comes out with a towel round her head. We meet back on the bed, sitting awkwardly side-by-side. She puts her hands on mine.
"I didn't feel loved or respected," she says simply.
Stated so plainly, this sounds bad. It's also slightly mystifying. "Hannah, you know that you are..."
"Oh, I know. Don't worry, in our daily life, I know," says Hannah. "Just during...you seemed forceful, careless...what can I say? Disconnected somehow. Is there something wrong?"
There isn't anything wrong, particularly, except that it's mid-week and she wanted to play more than I did. As far as I was concerned this was a simple tie, tease and take session.
"I'm sorry. I'm just tired," I mumble.
"That's what you said last time."
It was. I'd forgotten about our conversation after last time. I'd come in doggy style in record time. She'd gently raised her dissatisfaction afterwards and I'd given some rote excuses. I was too quick, but it was late night midweek. I was distracted, but I did have a lot on at work. She'd probably thought she'd dropped enough hints that tonight would be better.
So, I'm an idiot.
"Right," I say. "Right."
I take her hand and give it a little squeeze while I think of what to say next.
"Did I hurt you?" I ask cautiously.
"Not exactly," said Hannah. "Not more than in any of our regular sessions, at least. It's just...I couldn't quite shake the feeling that you didn't care whether you hurt me or not. As I said, I felt you were disconnected - I don't know, from me, or from what was happening."
She's imagining things. But I'm not dumb enough to actually tell her that. At worst, I was guilty of just going through the motions. I don't feel much like copping to that either, though. "I see." I pause. "From my perspective, I was enjoying it. Maybe enjoying it too much?"
"Maybe." Then Hannah asks, "but why would this time be different from the thousand other times you've enjoyed it and I've not been freaked out?"
"Freaked out?" I'm genuinely worried now. Back in the early days of our relationship, Hannah would wield her safeword like an inflatable hammer, bonking me over the head with relish in an attempt to get her dom to act like she thought a dom should. That was when we were both green and neither of us knew what we were doing or exactly what we wanted. That was then though. These days we're mostly on the same page and it must have been years since she's dropped the safeword.
"Well, not freaked out exactly." Hannah backs down. "Disturbed, perhaps? I feel like I need to get to the bottom of this."
My heart sinks a little. Communication is important. I've said that and I believe that. But Hannah psychoanalyzing me for a few hours straight late on a Wednesday night is going to be pure and unending torture. Especially as I'm not fully convinced that there's a problem. At least, not from my side.
Still, her saying that there's a problem? That, in itself, is a problem. One that I need to solve to at least her satisfaction. I take a deep breath. There's nothing for it but to prostrate myself at her feet like the world's most masochistic sub for some deep, hard, and painful sharing. "I want you to tell me exactly how you felt at each stage of the session tonight..."
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Three days later and I've pulled out all the stops. Of course, I have. I'm not much of a cook, but the one signature dish I can reliably do, shepherd's pie, is resting in the oven. The dining table is fully laid and I've got a nice bottle of white wine and candles out ready to go.
I stick some background music on and later I've got a movie arranged. Us being us, the music is from Final Fantasy and the movie is Escape for the Planet of the Apes, the third of the classic run of the series that we've been working our way through.
She calls at seven to let me know she's on the way home. As I put down the phone, I wonder if running a bath for her is a step too far. I decide there are no steps too far, move some of the candles in there, and set the taps going.
When she opens the door, I'm immediately on my feet to meet her, taking her coat and guiding her into the dining room. There are a lot of 'What is all this?' type comments. I set her down. Soon the magical evening is underway.
In the end, we never quite do get round to escaping from that damn dirty planet although we do manage to leave Earth behind for a while. We decide over dessert that the movie can serve to break up two bouts of intimacy. Except, after the food, we go to wash, and that actually and unexpectedly turns into the first bout.
We've tried shower sex before and not been impressed, so when I lead her in, I'm just intending to rub some soap into her back and maybe massage her shoulders. I make the mistake of going a bit lower and lathering her breasts too, and when her hand reaches back and finds my cock already half stiff, we're suddenly off to the races. I take her hard against the shower glass, grabbing her hips and thrusting into her. It's in no way more extended than the sex she complained about last time, but the key here is that everything builds to a crescendo. We're all over each other and it's the spontaniety that makes it special.
We end up in the bathtub together even though it's not really big enough for two.
"This evening has been lovely," Hannah says as we soak.
"It has, hasn't it?" I say contentedly.
"But..." says Hannah. It's the smallest, softest 'but'. Nevertheless...
"What is it?" I ask.
"You know it hasn't addressed the problem," she says.
"It hasn't?" I ask in surprise, then play innocent. "What problem?"
