The Pleasure's All Mine: Memoir of a Professional Submissive by Joan Kelly

smelled, on those occasions when he had let me face him and be close enough to take it in.
        Phil wound one length of the rope twice around my left ankle, slipping two large fingers inside the loop to make sure it wasn’t too tight against my skin, and then pulled it a few times around the leg of the chair. While there was nothing about being tied up in intricate ways that technically turned me on, I liked bondage sessions anyway. Even when the ropes were tightened in a manner meant to relay interesting sensations, real pain was never involved. I could sit or lie there, with nothing expected of me, as the person dominating me worked away for long stretches of time. Really, I could recommend it to anyone who had an aversion to actual work.
        “What made you feel you weren’t right for each other?”
        I stared at the top of Phil’s blond-gray head as he knelt in front of me, and watched the muscles in his broad shoulders move under his button-down blue shirt while he continued his work with the ropes, the chair, and my ankles. While I took a second to think about my answer, he glanced up at me and offered an encouraging smile. He looked to be about fifty or so, although his moderately tanned skin made it hard to tell whether it was time or the sun that had made the cute little wrinkles around his mouth and eyes.
        “Mostly, it was that he wanted a slave,” I finally answered, “someone who would take anything and everything from her master, and I’m just not built that way.”
        This wasn’t entirely true either. T hadn’t ever insisted on the kinky lifestyler’s version of “slavery” with me, nor had I even wholly rejected the idea of it myself. There had been, and were still, times when I wanted nothing more than to feel like I really belonged to someone. But I couldn’t think of how else to avoid the specifics; ascribing our breakup to differing levels of interest seemed a way to say the issues hadn’t been anyone’s fault.
        “So you see yourself as more of a masochist than a sub?”
        Phil finished the knot he was working on and picked up another piece of rope to use on my upper body.
        “Not… well… I think I don’t really know what I am yet,” I finally admitted.
        I flashed on the very first time I’d met T, when he had used his belt on me and drops of melted wax from a long white candle that tickled and stung my nipples at the same time. I had not been able to think of much else until our next meeting. I also recalled the many times I’d been afraid to see him after that, even as I’d remained fully compelled. I would go, full of dread, the memory of gritting my teeth and breathing like a pregnant woman who’s refused an epidural still fresh in my mind from the last time. I’d only had a real hypnotic rush after the first and second meetings — the rest of our dozen or so times together had left me confused and upset, by both his advancing tortures and my reluctance to just say no. Whenever I’d tried to talk to him about how I wasn’t enjoying the things we were doing as much anymore, he would put his fingers inside me. Why, he would ask, if you don’t like it, why is your body so open to me right now? Why are you drenching my hand? How could I tell what I was in all that?
        “Lift up for a second,” Phil grunted, pulling a piece of the rope through my legs from the back, positioning the strand so that it ran between my cheeks and in a straight line between my legs.
        As soon as I sat down, he pulled the rope taut, making me gasp from both the surprise of it and the sensation. He then held it firmly while threading it through the harness he’d made around my breasts. A minute later, he began tugging rhythmically on the harness in a way that felt like a strong finger pressing between my legs. Grateful to have my attention focused on something besides T, I leaned my head into the back of the chair and closed