Swallowtail is a novel that traces the narrator's gradual acceptance of submission.
Previously: The narrator has given Dex blanket consent and is prepared to explore what submission to her might mean. As the narrator becomes more comfortable with submission, his dom continues to test his limits.
***
Dex has asked me to clear my schedule for the upcoming long weekend. She says that she has something special planned for me. A challenge. She says that I'm ready for it.
"It won't be easy," she says.
I shrug.
"You'll hate me at times."
"I can't imagine that."
"Then you don't really have a good imagination."
I pick her up on Thursday afternoon at the tattoo studio where she works as a piercer. She throws a large black duffel bag into the back seat and then slides in beside me. She kisses me on the cheek and squeezes my thigh.
"Where to?"
"North," she says.
Dex is quiet for the first half hour of the drive. I sense an uncharacteristic uneasiness about her.
"What's wrong?" I ask.
It takes her a while to answer. "Plans are always abstract until it's time to realize them. Now I'm not sure about them."
I feel a tingle of anticipation and apprehension. "Your plans usually work out well."
"Usually. I don't want to make any mistakes."
"You usually don't. If it looks like you are, I'll let you know."
"Please do."
Dex and I both know that I've never invoked my safeword. I've been close several times but I've never uttered it. I used to think that taking whatever Dex dished out was a matter of pride, but the truth is that Dex has always stepped back from the precipice before taking that last disastrous step. She has developed an uncanny sense of my limits.
"You have my consent for whatever it is you have planned. Unreservedly. I trust you. You know that."
We finally leave the city and the suburbs that ring it like an ever-growing blight. We're moving more quickly now, using the back roads that Dex knows. The sun touches the horizon and the shadows of the trees and hydro poles stretch across the road like a UPC code.
I know that Dex has committed to whatever she has planned when she reaches into her bag a few minutes later and withdraws a leather collar.
"Put this on."
I glance at it but don't touch it. I'm surprised and a little unnerved. Although we're in the middle of nowhere and alone and it's unlikely we'll meet anyone, this is the first time I've worn anything like this outside of the safety of my four walls. I hesitate for a moment longer and then drop down to the speed limit. Being stopped for speeding by some bored cop is the last thing I want. I hold the steering wheel with my knees and fasten the collar around my neck. To the ring at my throat she snaps on a leather lead that she allows to rest across her lap.
"Now these," she says, laying a pair of wrist cuffs on my thigh.
With Dex's help I manage to kit myself out without crashing and breathe a little easier. A little. In the back of my mind I hear my mother. Her voice is unexpected and unwelcome. I remember that she had this thing about clean underwear, in case I was in an accident. The logic eluded me. Certainly if the accident were bad enough, thought my kid brain at the time, it was conceivable that I'd crap myself anyway. Perhaps a drop or two of pee. Would my rescuers check my underwear? Think less of me if my Fruit of the Looms were less than pristine? I doubted it. Regardless, I can hear my mother now: See, this is what comes of ignoring my advice. See, there's a slippery slope—ignore the underwear and this is what happens. No self-respect. My mother, I'm sure, is rolling over in her grave now. Chastity device, collar, and cuffs. What if there were an accident?
Somewhere in heaven, an angel is cringing.
Somewhere beside me is a different story.
I sense Dex watching me from the shadows of the passenger seat.
"What did you have planned again?" I ask.
"A challenge. A test."
"I haven't studied."
"I'm sure you'll do fine."
We've been driving for a couple of hours now, more or less north. There are farms that I can discern in the failing light. Fences around scrub and rocks and woodlots. I don't know whether the fences are designed to keep the scrub in or scrub bandits out. There's the occasional lake too, black as ink, and then more of the same—scrub, rocks, lakes. Darkness slowly claims the land and occasionally a car passes us, going the other way. Radio reception has gotten worse and after scanning what little is available, I turn the radio off entirely. The old Mercedes doesn't have a CD player.
"Much farther?" I ask.
"An hour. Maybe less. We're making good time."
Dex reclines her seat and she takes my hand from the stick shift and places it on her upper thigh, pushing up her skirt in the process. She strokes my fingers for a few minutes, and then there's an unmistakable nudge, an unspoken command. I ease my hand up a little. I caress the smoothness of the now-familiar terrain. She spreads her legs a little more and I take a chance and explore her. There it is—the wetness, the warmth, the promise of things to come.
I play my fingers over the yielding geography of her sex for a few kilometers.
"Beats the hell out of 'I spy'," I say.
"It's too dark, but I think so too."
I glance over to her. There's something arresting about the paleness of her moonlit legs that emerge from her hiked-up skirt, splayed against the black leather of the seat. Her eyes are closed and her lower lip is clenched between her teeth. One hand loosely holds the lead and the other rests against a thigh.
There's no hurry. She has voiced no expectations of me and so I explore her aimlessly. I divide my attention between the road and the flesh beneath my fingers. The car reels in the distance.
She gives a little whimper, almost lost beneath the hum of the tires on the pavement. My fingers have grown slick and I'm tempted to focus my efforts. I don't. Her slow burn is my reward. I might get nothing in return. Not immediately anyway. It doesn't matter. It's enough to elicit this response, to know that I can.
Besides, this might be my only chance this weekend to have her pleasure in my hands, to subject her to some of the torment that she may have planned for me.
She's smiling now. She knows what I am doing and I have no doubt that she'll exact her revenge. After a few desultory strokes I decide to bring her up again.
"Bastard," she whispers.
Another hum of pleasure. Her hand alights briefly on mine and then retreats. She's leaving this to me.
I see that her hands have found her breasts and are kneading them.
I pinch her clitoris between my thumb and forefinger and roll it. There's an intake of breath which is held for several seconds. Then there's a whistling moan. That's it. Quiet as always.
She lifts my hand takes my fingers into her mouth.
"Oh," she says after she has licked my fingers clean, "take the next right."
***
I know that we're getting closer now. There's a question that's been preying on me for some time. It has been on my tongue before but I've never asked it. It might be the time, now that Dex is satisfied and before she exercises her authority over me. Casually, I say, "You've said that you were a sub before. You never told me exactly what happened."
Dex doesn't answer immediately. "Does it matter?"
"I want to know."
There's another long moment of silence. Then she says, "You're right. I was a sub before." Dex takes a deep breath and I'm afraid that she'll go no further. She's talking to the window, looking out on the gloom. "We had a no-sharing agreement. I drew the line at having him share me around. I wasn't ready for that. Not with him. I didn't trust him, which should have been my first warning. He had problems with restrictions. One day he made the mistake of thinking that his authority over me was absolute. Maybe he confused my submission with weakness. He said my refusal to please him by pleasing his friends showed an unforgiveable lack of commitment on my part. Whatever. One night I was bound and gagged when he asked me again if I'd be willing. He knew how I felt and I didn't expect him to ignore my wishes. I couldn't talk and I couldn't signal. He thought it was funny. He kept asking for the signal, even when his asshole buddies went at it with me."
"God. That's rape."
Dex shrugs. "I waited for a week. I was submissive. I made him think that I'd been broken. He thought that the dust had settled, that I'd been taught an important lesson about submission, but I had a plan." She takes a deep breath. "He liked it when I tied him up. So one night he asked me to do it—tie him up and please him. So I did. I wrapped him in Saran Wrap. This was a new one and I could tell that he thought it interesting and was wondering where I would go with it. I stuffed his underwear in his mouth. He didn't like that as much though. It was then that I asked him for his safeword. Of course he couldn't speak. There could be no signal either. Then I got a pair of scissors. I'm sure he thought I was going to cut it off."
Dex shakes her head and pauses for a moment. Her voice has become almost a whisper. "I cut a hole in the wrap and pulled his cock out of it." She takes a deep breath. "I had been piercing for a year or so by then so I gave him some. Most of the ones in my portfolio, in fact."
I shudder, picturing the scene. I'm speechless.
"I suppose he could have called the cops or come after me or something. He never did. We were finished. You must think I'm a psycho."
"No." Actually, that is exactly what I'm thinking.
She smiles weakly. "And that's why I can't be a sub any more. And that's why I promised myself to be a better dom than he was. And that's the same promise I'm making to you."
***
Dex directs me off the highway and onto increasingly small and obscure roads. It was dark before but now it's completely black and our world is reduced to what little the headlights choose to reveal.
"Slow down," says Dex.
We're crunching along a gravel road.
