very good girl, aren't you?" or they were sitting at the kitchen table, eating pizza, talking about Rome, and what she wanted to see there most of all, and how he would take her there, and at what hotel they would stay, and how he wanted to make love to her all night with the sound of the fountains in the background. That was strange, because it was the first time the phrase “make love” had been uttered by either of them, but as October wore on, vanilla sex began to enter their repertoire. It was never a huge thing: nine times out of ten, what they did could only be described as fucking, but with that as context, sometimes it even seemed kinky to pretend they were a normal couple–like the first time she was on top during sex, and she cried because she had never thought she could feel so connected to someone else as she did looking down into John's eyes, seeing them lit up with joy at the thought that his cock made her feel so good.
The talking was the best part because it was so different from what she'd grown up with. Her parents were wonderful, and she loved them, but as far as she could tell they never talked much with one another, let alone with their children. Their beliefs about self-determination didn't extend to helping a girl who wanted to live in ancient Rome or medieval England determine how best to act on that passion. The invariable response had always been, "That sounds really interesting. You should ask the librarian about that, Sarah." At college, she had begun to have real conversations. She remembered thinking one night at dinner in the dining hall that she and her friends were having a real conversation about real things: politics, theology, literature–things that she had just never talked about at home. Her conversations with John in October and November about themselves, about Roman history, about kinkiness, were a kind of ultimate realization of the dream she had seen coming true at college–words that really mattered: dialogue that seemed to build something missing before.
John wanted to know about why Livy's early history of Rome fascinated her, about how she'd found Mommsen, about what she wanted to do, and see, and be. If she had to pick one thing from October and November that she always wanted to remember, it was after he had put her collar around her neck for the first time, and she sat in his lap on the sofa in front of the fire, with him in jeans and T-shirt and her in, well, nothing except the collar, and they were (she was sure no one would ever believe it, but it was true) talking about Roman history.
That was one of the many forms that aftercare took for them. She wouldn't say that aftercare was her favorite part, because that seemed to her to betray her absolute need for the spanking and the caning and the brutal sex, but it was certainly the sweetest part. The first time it happened that way, with her collared, in front of the fire, was at about 2 a.m. on Sunday 29 September, when she had been enjoyed by John in every way a man can enjoy a woman, and she felt the very beginnings of what John told her was called “subdrop”. The fire was very warm, but she still shivered a bit in his arms.
"Shh, Sarah. Shh. It's OK. It's normal. I'm here. I'm holding you."
"John... is it wrong?"
He snuggled her close, and kissed her brow, then her lips. "No, sweetheart, it's not wrong."
"But... the things I want..."
"The things we need," he said firmly. "The things we need to find fulfillment."
"Do I really need them? Aren't they bad? Don't we have to ask God to take away our sinful desires?"
"Sarah," John said. "This is who we are. Never deny it; it leads only to pain. I spent twenty years married to someone who could never understand that it was natural that I need the things I need. I had to hide it from her. I don't want you ever to feel that way, whatever happens to us."
"Was she right, though? How do you know that it's natural?" Sarah started to become agitated. "How can it be
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