Turning the Tables, part 2 [fiction]

"You left me such great things to play with," I said. Stepping in close, I let the velvety falls trail along his back, lightly, teasingly. I wondered if he could tell what was touching him. His back arched, seemingly trying to follow the leather as it left his skin. I prodded him with the end of the handle, sinking it firmly into the ropy muscle beside his spine until he straightened back up.

"But you're the best toy of all." I drew my arm back and let the flogger fly, and was pleased when it landed approximately where I had aimed. Aiden jumped, and I grinned.

Taking a step back to allow myself room, I swung again, then pulled into a backhand swing in the crosswise direction. The tails traveled in an arc behind my left shoulder and then my right as I settled into a figure-eight pattern. I focused on the X on his back, right shoulder to left hip and left shoulder to right hip, right to left, left to right, back and forth, top to bottom. My shoulder entered the swing and then my chest, and the skin of his back started to turn pink.

The room got dimmer, and I realized the air stream from the heavy falls had put out the candle behind me. I relit it from the one in my hand, set them both firmly in their holders, and moved them out of harm's way.

Keeping the tails in line with each other presented an interesting challenge, differing on the forehand and backhand strokes. They wanted to get away, to cause trouble I hadn't permitted. I focused hard and breathed slowly and deeply. They did what I wanted them to do, within reason.

Eventually my shoulder tired, and I switched sides, but realized once the handle was grasped in my off hand that I didn't trust myself to land on target. Making a mental note to practice that, I stroked the tails into a compliant river of red suede and wrapped them around his neck with my hands. I pulled him back against me, nuzzling my face into the top of his neck and taking his skin between my teeth. I bit down, gently at first and then harder, and was rewarded with a small squeak.

"You're being such a good boy," I told him. "Isn't it easier when you're not fighting me?"

He shook his head side to side.

"No? Well, that's all right." I sighed, feigning disappointment, wondering if he could hear my smile. "Nothing good comes easy." I released his neck from the tails and drew my free hand down his back. His skin glowed warmly under my fingertips. I caressed him softly for a moment, then dug my nails into him and raked a set of lines from shoulder to waistband. They flashed white, disappeared, and then reappeared in light red, accentuated nicely by his pink flush.

"You just need a little encouragement." I put the flogger on the floor and made both hands into claws, sinking into his skin on either side of his spine. Some of the purple wax trails caught under my nails and flaked off, fluttering to the floor at my feet. When my fingers reached his ass, they caught in the top of his shorts.

"Why didn't you take these off earlier?" I demanded, hooking a finger in the waistband and snapping the elastic against his side. He managed a shrug. "Because you were too busy fighting me," I answered, pulling them down to just under his cheeks and smacking first one and then the other with my open hand. I walked to the table, selected something that had apparently been borrowed from me without my permission, and walked back.

"Do you like these shorts?" I asked, and he nodded. "I hope you enjoyed them while you could," I said. "This is what happens when you're stubborn." I held out the waistband with one hand and sank my pocketknife into the knit fabric with the other. It took some work to get through the elastic and the seams, sawing carefully to avoid stabbing Aiden in the leg while I worked. When I had opened one leg, the shorts gave up and slid down his other leg, falling in a heap around his ankle.

I put a hand between his legs and stroked his balls. "Much better," I said. "Now I can get to all of you."

Correcting a Pathway

Starting to learn about this game from the other "side of the fence," as Bruce calls it, has restarted my learning in general. Some time ago, I looked for information about being a good sub, and there was a surprising dearth of it. It seems I was looking in the wrong places, as I'm now learning almost as much about bottoming as I am about topping.

I'm not sure exactly what went wrong or when; it was a process. But I let it take me to a negative headspace that I'm only now starting to see. I don't have the words to draw anyone else a picture of it yet. It's not that clear even to me. I will say that I let a lot of things happen that I shouldn't have.

I don't refer to boundary pushing, at least not in its usual sense. I'm not saying that Aiden has pushed me too hard. I enjoy testing the limits, and it has nothing to do with having gone "too far" in any given activity. It's a switch in my head, like the switch that puts the train on the left or right set of railroad tracks, that's sometimes just wrong.

When the switch is in the right place, I can be pushed hard and far and things will probably go well. When it's not, even the smallest thing will shove me off in the wrong emotional direction, and I don't stop and correct. I roll with it, waiting to see where it goes until it crashes into disaster, because that's the only place it has ever gone, the only place I know how to reach.

It feels strange, realizing I need to back way up and almost start over, but I think that's the necessary correction. I think I need to safeword out of that headspace the next time I feel it, to prove to myself that I don't have to go there and to start building a new pathway over the old one.

The question is, will I remember at that time that I decided this choice is important?

For the Sake of the Thing

Yesterday I took the opportunity to grab a mulligan of Thursday. I had more and better plans, and had acquired some better props in the interim. I also remixed my playlist, making it longer by two tracks and removing an irritating pop that had snuck into version one. I set up the iPod and speakers, put a nylon strap under the mattress, laid out my chosen toys, and dressed in a black rhinestoned bra, black lace thong, and black knee-high socks with a pink and purple heart motif.

Not all of the toys got used, which was the plan. Getting out more than I need gives me flexibility to choose the right one for the moment. A pair of wolverine claws alternating with a fuzzy boot cover worn over one forearm were good entertainment when used on his back. A large portion of the scene became an experiment in flogging with music. I'd listened to the songs I was using enough to know the high and low points, the bridges and bass drops. I made use of it, striking with the rhythm, pausing when the beat did, teasing with the breeze of whiffed tail tips on long suspended notes.

Aiden didn't react to most of it. His only communication was when a tail got away and struck him in the neck. My flogging skills are okay but not yet wonderful. I'll get there with practice.

I closed by rolling him onto his back and riding us both to orgasm, removing his blindfold before we got there but leaving the cuffs on. Even my approach and entry into orgasm patterned itself with the music; it really is part of me. It's easier to control and manipulate me with music than with anything else.

When we were done, I dropped hard, curling into a panting, teary-eyed mess on his chest. I got so far into my head in scene, thinking and watching and listening and planning and analyzing and moving, that I was amazed at the emotion that emerged afterward. The passionate side of me was watching the scene from the corner, I guess, waiting patiently for its turn at the end. I wrapped myself around Aiden and held him tightly, grateful that he seemed to be in no hurry to go anywhere.

I asked him for feedback, since I got pretty much nothing in scene.

"I have a great time any time you come that hard," was his response. That made me smile, but wasn't informational.

I tried asking about his boundaries and preferences, and he said he didn't know what they were after not thinking about them for fifteen-plus years. I pointed out that he gave very little feedback in the moment and he seemed slightly surprised, then said that perhaps the lack of reaction stemmed from watching BDSM porn, in which the bottom is expected to be as stoic as possible. (Not in my experience, but apparently in his.)

He agreed when I suggested it that he has more fun as a top when I'm a reactive bottom, so at least there's that. I explained that I can just take his lack of reaction as boredom and an indication that I need to make him react with more stimulation, but that I didn't want to wave that assumption around without stating it first. I'm willing to find his boundaries by exploration, but I need him to know that's what I'm doing before I begin. Playing top is already scary for me, since it's new territory, and playing with a nonreactive bottom makes it even more nerve-wracking. I certainly don't expect wanton screaming if it's not obviously called for, but complete stillness and dead silence mess with me. It feels like dropping a rock into a pond and having it mysteriously disappear without a single surface ripple. Was that good? Bad? Indifferent? Now what do I do? More of that? Something else? Quit and walk away?

He told me that there's a wide range of things he can enjoy if I'm enjoying them, but that just leaves me feeling at loose ends. I'm not doing these things because I like going through the motions. I'm doing them because I like what they might do to him; I like his reaction to my actions. If I wanted to swing a flogger or draw with a knife for the sake of exercise, I could do it without my favorite sexy human being on the other end.

Misstep

I like newbie practice nights when Aiden can't get childcare...if I stay home, we get several hours of time together. Disadvantage: we have to keep the noise down to not wake up the kid. Advantage: it's not work hours, and it's dark outside.

I wanted to add music to our scening; I've wanted to do it for quite some time, but the last time I suggested it to Aiden, he said "That's a great idea!" and then ignored it like all of my other "great ideas." Now that I'm doing my own scene design, though, it's up to me. I spent a couple of weeks sifting for new music, building playlists of old and new, sorting it into categories and giving it ratings, rearranging my playlists, and finally, using Audacity to build one of them into a smoothly transitioned single track.

I took advantage of last Thursday, or I tried. It went fine, at least from Aiden's perspective, so that's something. But I learned a lesson about insufficient planning that I won't soon forget. My playlist was a tad too short, I couldn't find half the physical objects I wanted, I started to chicken out of the scene as soon as I got home, and then I forgot several of the things I did get together once in scene. He said it was an interesting experience to be on the receiving end of something that got labeled "incorrect" when it didn't seem that way from the bottom. I was glad he had a good time, but Disappointment took a solid chomp out of my ass and I gave myself a very bad evening.

Note: making your own vampire glove by sticking thumbtacks through the fingers of a glove sounds like a good idea, but the result is that the tacks turn themselves around when applied to a victim, and insert themselves in your fingertips instead of his back.

Suffering some post-scene drop and a lot of frustration, I went to bed early with my iPod. Aiden came to find me. He sat down and asked why I was in bed, and I couldn't bring up good words, but I knew I needed a hug. He started to get up, and I sank my fingernails into his arm; my first reaction was to turn away, but I made the effort to reach out and say I needed him in the only way I could muster at that moment. He walked away anyway.

Feeling like I'd taken a punch in the stomach, I got out of bed, put on slippers, and left the house. It was a chilly fall evening. I took a walk around the park across the street and finally settled under a tree, out of view of the street. Hiding in my hoodie, I listened to my playlist and wondered where it had let me down.

The problem, really, was exactly the opposite: I had let down my creation. I'd set out to bring Aiden into my musical world, to show him my experience, to invite him to a part of me he'd never experienced, and I did it badly. His introduction to my world should've been explosive and amazing, but a series of small screwups that would have been inconsequential alone or in a different circumstance instead combined to an experience that was not exactly as I imagined, and was therefore a complete failure. The scene itself was fine when taken by itself. The scene as it served a purpose in my head, the purpose of showing my private world to Aiden, failed.

I returned to the house and went to sleep.

The Presentation [fiction]

There is one problem with office dinners, and it's not the company or the food - it's the speeches. I stole a glance at Aiden, unable to tell for sure but guessing he was as bored as I was.

"...from the beginning we have been supported by our friends and neighbors..."

I'd lost track of how long Fred had been droning on from beside the projector. The dinner was gone, the lights were dim, and I was having trouble not falling asleep. I dug my fingernails into my palm, hoping the pain would make me feel more alert, but it didn't do much.

Aiden stifled a yawn, and I grabbed his hand and sunk my nails into his forearm. His eyes widened in surprise, and then the sleepy look was gone and the corners of his mouth were twitching. The sidelong stare and raised eyebrow only made me want to do it harder.

"...the communities in which we live and work..."

I tightened my grip, breathing into my fingers and wondering if I could draw blood. Aiden shifted slightly in his chair and his chest peaked as he took a deep breath. The room was silent except for Fred's voice and the occasional click of his mouse as he moved between slides.

Leaning forward slightly gave me better leverage. Aiden tried to pull his arm away, but I squeezed his wrist and pressed it to my thigh. The force required for him to get free would cause a noticeable commotion. He stopped moving.

"...but things were a little different back then." Scattered laughter arose from the tables.

Aiden was no longer watching the CEO, but had fixated instead on some point in the ceiling. Slowly, deliberately, I dragged my nails up his arm, watching with satisfaction as the white tracks I left turned pink and then red. He took another deep breath but stayed otherwise still.

We were at the back of the room, all the people in nice clothing with their sides or backs to us. Only Fred was looking my way, but I was willing to guess that the light from the projector had him pretty well blinded. I slid my chair back a few inches.

"As you can see here, there was a problem with the design..." He turned slightly so he could point at the image on the wall, and I grabbed my chance. As quickly and quietly as I could, I pushed my hips forward and slid off the chair onto the carpet. Ducking under the floor-length tablecloth removed the rest of the light, and I took a second for my eyes to adjust.

Putting my hands out to avoid attention-getting incidents such as cracking my skull on a table leg, I turned awkwardly on my knees in the cramped space and found Aiden's feet. My hands slid slowly over his knees, up his thighs, to his lap, where I unbuckled his belt and unbuttoned his pants. The belt made its distinctive clinking noise, and I grabbed it, hoping no one had noticed but unable to check through the tablecloth. Aiden's hand closed over mine, and I released the noisy buckle into his care.

I took took caution with the zipper on his pants, more than I needed to, knowing that the light brushing of my fingers over the fabric was a torturous tease. When I eventually freed him, he was hard as a rock, and I grinned hugely to no one as I wrapped my hand around his shaft and squeezed him tightly.

There wasn't much room between the table and his lap, but by putting my shoulders between his knees and my chin on the seat of his chair, I was able to get most of his cock in my mouth. I reached my arms around the sides of his chair and grabbed his ass, holding tight and pulling his hips toward me.

Unable to adjust my position, I came frighteningly close to choking, but swallowed hard and pulled it together. I teased him with my tongue, licking and sucking, brushing him with the just the very tips of my teeth. One of my hands just fit under the edge of the table, and I snuck it up his shirt. He tensed as I sank my claws deeply into his chest and raked them downward, and then he was shaking and I was swallowing frantically to avoid drowning.

I had sat back on my heels and was licking my lips when I heard applause. I panicked for one eternally long second, thinking somehow we had been caught, and then realized that Fred had finished his speech and everyone was expressing their gratefulness that he had stopped. The lights came up as I scooted out from under the tablecloth and returned to my chair. If you act like nothing out of the ordinary just happened, people will believe you remarkably often.