I'm Anastasia Steele, and I'm sure you all know my story quite well. However, there is a more recent incident involving Christian that you haven't heard about yet. My motives and actions will become clearer as I get further into my story.
By the way, call me Ana; Anastasia can be a bit of a mouthful, and even Christian uses that in most of his conversations with me.
If I may indulge in a digression, I was indeed named after the Grand Duchess Anastasia, the youngest daughter of the last Russian Tsar, Nicholas II. She and the rest of her family were killed by the Bolsheviks in 1918.
I was the opposite of a "red diaper baby," my parents, oddly enough, being proponents of monarchism. Of course, any real aristocrats would have laughed at their pretensions.
So let's get back on track.
One Saturday afternoon I was sitting on a sofa in our Manhattan penthouse, awaiting Christian's return. My clothes were a rather standard dark gray business suit, a white blouse, nylon stockings, and middle-height black heels. My skirt was a on the short and tight side.
My brown hair was pulled up so that it was in a bun at the back of my head; my make-up was well done but subtle.
The most notable thing in my possession was an item I had borrowed from Christian's "playroom." It was a medium-length tawse, a leather spanking belt that had been invented in the British Isles -- Scotland at first, I believe.
The business end of these things are divided into two or three leather "tongues," I would call them; mine had three. The other end had a wooden handle so that the person wielding it could have a proper grip when swinging it against someone's behind.
When Christian walked into the apartment, I was holding my tawse in my right hand and tapping it against my left one. My right leg was crossed over my left knee.
He was about the say something when he saw me and he stopped in the middle of the room. Before he could react, I said, "Christian, don't sit down right now. I have something important to talk to you about."
I suspect that he was so unprepared for me to tell him what to do that he, well, just did what I had requested. Without thinking about it, perhaps, he put his hands into his trouser pockets.
I quietly but firmly said, "Take your hands out of your pockets."
He did that, and he folded his hands in front of this body. Yet he had gotten over his initial surprise and he smiled at me.
"Ana, I see you have borrowed one of my toys from the playroom."
"I wouldn't call it a toy. It's an implement, a tool with a very specific purpose."
"Do you even know what it is called?"
"Of course, it is a tawse."
"Very good. Now, would tell me what inspired you to retrieve it?"
It was obvious from his expression that he didn't take me seriously; he thought that it was all some kind of elaborate joke. Boy, was he ever wrong.
I said, "Bear with me, this is going to take a bit of explaining."
"That's fine; I'm not going anywhere."
"You certainly are not going anywhere."
He frowned at that, but I had my response ready. "I admit that I look at some porn sites; I know that you do too. Usually, I prefer photos to videos, but that isn't the main point."
"I have no objection to you looking at porn."
"There is a specific type I am talking about, usually categorized as domination or BDSM. I don't mean those where people have themselves wrapped in cellophane or whatever."
"Even I don't understand the motivations behind those."
"In any case there are many photos and videos dedicated to, let's call it, spanking, discipline, correction, and so forth. There are men dominating women, women doing it to men, same gender combinations of male on male, female on female, even transgender, which might be called a category in itself. It's a very varied assortment."
"I am familiar with most of that."
I had a very clear idea of what I would say that day. "It struck me what an amazing variety of positions and scenarios there are, and whether people are restrained are not. I suppose I don't need to describe all of the possible scenes."
Christian could be quite perceptive at times. "I gather that you have been imagining yourself as a dominatrix."
"Yes, you are quite sharp. Not the black-leather kind, but more like the strict manager or professor type. Or the strict girlfriend type." I made a gesture to indicate the clothes I was wearing.
He tried to make light of it. "Is that the way you see our relationship, as boyfriend and girlfriend? What, are we going to the prom next?"
I stood up suddenly and stepped towards him. It was subtle, but he flinched a bit and moved slightly backwards. I realized that I gesturing using the tawse.
"Girlfriend is a fair approximation I suppose. The thing is, Christian, I have a bone to pick with you."
At some point on an earlier day, he had slipped up and admitted that his mother had used that expression and he had hated hearing it. He got quite defensive. "Haven't I given you everything you ever wanted? I even set you up in your own publishing company."
"Yes, and that was just darling of you, but there is more than that. You see, you have become rather arrogant and you think I am subordinate to you in some way. You need to be taken down a few pegs." That was a rather silly way to put it, but it was the best phrase I could come up with.
"I don't agree with that at all." Then he made another weak statement. "And you have certainly gone along with everything I've proposed that we do."
"That is true, but I've been thinking it over." I put the folded-up tawse against the bottom of his chin. "Christian, you have been very good at dishing it out, but you haven't taken any of it yourself."
He knew what I was talking about. "You mean my dominance, as you would put it."
"You were the one to come up with that word, not me. The time has come, for the good of both of us, to even that out."
He tried a sneering act, but he didn't do it very well. "I suppose you think that you can just do whatever you wish?"
"I don't just think it, I know it. I mean, you do whatever you wish."
Rather than explaining that more explicitly, I went off on a digression. I looked down at the belt and said, "In Scotland and I guess later in England, they would give offenders thirty-six strokes of the tawse on their exposed buttocks."
For some reason, I liked the term
exposed buttocks.
I continued, "Maybe it's apocryphal, but supposedly they would have a smooth stone there so that those who had been whipped could cool off their blazing backsides."
"Sounds like a legend to me."
"Whatever, listen to me for a moment. There's an instructive spanking video I've seen online. It's supposed to be in Edwardian England, I guess, and it shows this headmistress lady punishing one of her female students."
"With a tawse, I assume."
"Very good. Now this student was West Indian or something. She was about twenty or so, and she was smaller than her formidable-looking teacher. She had to lift up her skirt, open up the back of her bloomers, and take eighteen tawse strokes on her bare behind."
He said, "So you must have gotten aroused by watching this. Who did you identify with, the teacher or the student?"
