Communication is the key to any relationship, and that's even more true in a D/s relationship.
I loved the scenes we'd been having lately, but we still hadn't been managing to have scenes as often as I'd have liked. We'd only been managing to play about once a week, which left me feeling somewhat needy.
One night, about a week since our last scene, I brought this up with my wife as we were going to sleep. I said that it seemed like she kept putting off play time when she was stressed or tired, whereas I saw our play time as an important form of stress relief, so being stressed actually made me want it more frequently than normal. She explained that she did tend to think about our scenes as something that she had to plan and prepare for, and when she was already stressed, that was just one more thing that she didn't have energy to deal with. I said that I really wanted her to be able to use me as an outlet to help address her stress, so that she could view our playtime as fun instead of as an additional weight on her shoulders. We talked a bit about how we were both still coming to terms with her sadism and my masochism and how we both wanted her to be able to really let her desires loose. We also agreed that we both enjoyed her flogging me and that it had been too long since we'd done that. She said she understood what I was saying and agreed that she would try to look at our play time as more of an outlet than as something more for her to deal with, and we agreed to play again the following night.
The next day, she had me set up the over-door St. Andrew's Cross on the closet door in the guest room. The closet there has a sliding door, so the cross we had didn't work that well with it, but I did manage to get it up. However, the position of the door in the room wasn't the best for flogging, so I wasn't sure we were going to be able to use it. I suspected that she would just wind up having me lean over her exercise machine to be flogged, as she always had in the past. (As a result of talking about the logistics, we decided to bite the bullet and order a real St. Andrew's Cross. But that wasn't going to arrive for many weeks, so we'd have to make due with what we had for now.)
We also dug out the large mirror from the back of our closet. It's the kind that's meant to be mounted on a wall somewhere, but the previous owners of our house had left it leaning against the wall of the closet when we moved in, and we'd never bothered to move it ourselves. But I had suggested that I'd really like to be able to see us in the mirror while we play, and she was willing to indulge me. We didn't have a good space to actually mount it on the wall, but we did move it to a more accessible spot, so that we could take it out and position it where we wanted it when we played.
That night was finally play time again. Given our discussion the previous night, I was pretty sure flogging was going to be on the agenda! But we'd also been talking about her pegging me again, since we'd both enjoyed that so much in our last scene, so I wasn't sure what else we might wind up doing.
After I put our son to bed, we went to our room. I stripped and put on my collar and asked her what she wanted me to do.
She told me to take out my blindfold, her strap-on harness, and the lube. She also told me to get her floggers. I picked the long leather one and the medium-length suede one, which I love for warming up. I took everything into the guest room.
Then she told me to bring the mirror and the LED candles into the guest room. I did that and then spent a little time setting everything up. I found a spot for the mirror off to the side, where I could look over to it to see her flogging me while I was leaning against the exercise machine. I also turned on the candles, but they didn't actually provide enough light for flogging, so we wound up needing to leave the room's light on.
I came back into our bedroom, kneeled before her, and asked if there was anything else she wanted me to do. She gave me a kiss and told me to go wait for her in the guest room.
I went back to the guest room, grabbed a pillow, and kneeled down in front of the mirror in the position she loves: my ass resting on my ankles, knees spread, elbows out to the sides, and my hands clasped behind my head. Staring at myself in the mirror, I made quite an image: a nude man wearing nothing but a collar and a metal cock cage, completely open and available for use. It really made me feel submissive.
Soon, Mistress came to the room, leaned against the doorframe, and looked down at me. She was wearing a sexy teal babydoll with black lace cups that covered her areolas but left most of her upper breasts exposed. I could see the key to my chastity cage on the chain around her neck, dangling between her beautiful breasts.
"How are you doing?" she asked with a smile.
"Good, Mistress," I said, returning her smile.
She stepped into the room, and I watched in the mirror as she walked behind me and ran her fingers through my hair. "What do you want?" she asked me.
"I want to feel like yours, Mistress. I want to feel your dominance."
"Okay," she said and pointed toward the exercise machine on my left, expecting me to stand up and lean over it.
I stood up and faced the machine, looking to my right at the mirror. I could see myself standing there, my caged cock hanging between my legs, my collar signalling my submissiveness, and my back and ass available for whatever Mistress wanted to do to me.
I watched as Mistress grabbed the medium-length suede flogger and started swinging it in circles, warming up my ass with it. She started facing the mirror but then turned around to face the other way in order to get easy access to both of my ass cheeks.
This was a very nice warm-up - she'd obviously listened to what I'd said about wanting to be warmed up more before the heavy strikes! The suede flogger wasn't that painful at this speed and strength, but it was doing a great job of getting the blood flowing and making my skin nice and sensitive.
After a minute or so, she paused to come up behind me and run her fingers over my ass. "How are you doing? Is this a nice warm up for you?"
"Yes, Mistress, this is great!"
"Hmmm, you're not that red yet." She lifted her hand and gave me a firm spank on my left cheek. I jumped in surprise. It was stingier than the flogger, but it wasn't really that painful. She spanked me a few more times, some on each cheek. "See, sometimes, my hand can get you redder than the flogger." I could hear the satisfaction in her voice.
"Yes, Mistress," I smiled. I was glad she was indulging herself.
She stepped back and resumed flogging my ass. She was using the same circular motion she had been before, but she was starting to ramp up the speed and strength just a bit. The progression felt really good to me - the pain was ramping up slowly, giving me plenty of time to adjust to it.
She paused again and stepped up next to me to run her hands all over my front, from my chest down to right above my cock cage. "How are you doing?"
"Very good, Mistress!"
As she trailed her hands back up my front, she pinched my left nipple, which made me gasp. She must have liked seeing that pain on my face, because it immediately gave her an idea. "Go get your nipple clamps."
"Yes, Mistress," I replied.
I went to our bedroom, got my nipple clamps out of our toy drawer, and brought them back to her. I expected her to take them, but she didn't.
"Put them on."
I blinked in surprise. She was making me put them on myself?! That idea really made me feel submissive.
"Yes, Mistress."
I put the first one on my left nipple. It really hurt! I took a deep breath and then connected the other clamp to my right nipple, which didn't hurt quite as badly this time. This left the chain hanging down between them.
"How does that feel?"
"It hurts a bit, Mistress. But not too badly."
"Good. Face the exercise machine again."
I resumed my position, again looking over to the mirror. I could see the nipple clamps on my chest and the chain hanging between them as Mistress resumed flogging my ass. She continued slowly ramping up the speed and intensity of her strikes.
Periodically, she would pause her flogging, step up next to me, and tug on the chain of the nipple clamps to see my reaction. I gasped at the sensation and jerked my head back as I worked to master the pain.
After she'd done this a couple of times, I turned my head to face her and said, "You can pull harder on that if you want, Mistress." She didn't reply, but she did smile at me, and I could tell she liked the idea.
By this point, she had reached full intensity with the circular motion she'd been using, so she switched to overhand strikes. These felt much stronger, and my ass was starting to sting, but it was much more manageable after she had warmed me up so much first.
Next, she moved on from my ass to my shoulders, going back to the circular motion to give them a slow warm-up as well.
I looked over to the mirror again. I could see this beautiful blank look on her face as she flogged me, like she was using all of her concentration on where she was striking me and didn't have any attention to spare for what expression was on her face. I loved seeing her so focused, and I hoped that this really was the kind of outlet that she needed for all of the stress she'd been under.
After a little while, she came over to inspect my shoulders and run her hands up and down my front teasingly. This time when she grabbed the chain on my nipple clamps, she tugged much harder. It hurt like hell! I yelped and stomped my feet, fighting for a moment to deal with the pain.
"Are you okay?"
I breathed out. "Yes, Mistress. It hurts, but I can handle it. Did you enjoy doing that?"
She smiled at me. "Mmm hmm."
"Good. Then do that as much as you want to, Mistress."
She stepped back and resumed flogging my shoulders, now switching from circular motions to figure-eights. She also started slowly increasing the speed and intensity, just as she'd done with my ass earlier.
After another pause to pull on my nipple clamps again, she finally switched to overhand strikes. These hurt more, but she was still using the suede flogger, not the leather one, so it wasn't terrible - but I knew it would get worse later.
After a number of strikes on both shoulders, she paused again to run her hands over my back to see how my skin was doing. "Mmmm, I love how warm and red your skin is getting."
She decided to scratch my back with her fingernails. The feeling was exquisite! It made my nerves dance to receive those scratches on skin that was so sensitive from being warmed up. I squirmed and gasped as Mistress made a giant "X" with her nails across my upper back.
Then she went back to flogging me again. She continued using overhand strikes, slowly increasing the intensity.
Finally, she asked, "I love seeing your skin like this. Are you ready for the big guns now?"
"Were you hitting me as hard as you can with the suede flogger, Mistress?"
"Close to it, but not quite the hardest I can go."