The line between control and submission blurs for a bi couple.
“Are you sure you want to do this, Olivia?” the man asked.
I’d never been less sure of anything in my life, but certainty wasn’t the point. I looked, not at him, but at Beth. “Yes,” I said.
“Pants off and up on the table then,” he said.
It was a small room, a cubicle really, and I felt all elbows as Beth and the man moved back to give me room to undress. I could almost hear them sucking in their breath, like people trying to fasten a pair of too small jeans.
I felt myself starting to blush as I climbed onto the table. I’d had a sea salt scrub and fake tan turbo-spray last week, precisely so I’d look good at this moment, and I’d even worn my best La Perla thong, although I knew the first thing I’d have to do was take it off. I’d stood in my chilly bathroom, listening to Taylor Swift on Spotify as the depilatory cream did its smelly, tingly work – my whole pubic region was now as smooth as an alabaster egg. But nothing stopped the red scorch of shame flaming across my face and chest as I had to get naked in front of them. I’m not a natural exhibitionist. That was one of the first things Beth found out, which is why she puts me in these situations. It pushes me past my boundaries.
Since we got together, nearly two years ago, I’ve been pushed past quite a few things I would have said were non-negotiable limits. And Beth’s always there, watching, cool, taking care of me by making me face the things I fear most of all, even though, most of the time, I don’t know I’m afraid of them until she tells me what my next challenge is and I discover that I’m terrified all over again.
Three weeks ago she told me she wanted me to have a piercing. I was sitting on the floor between her feet, naked, rubbing the side of my head against her thigh so my short spiky hair tickled her flesh. I’d just made her come, using my tongue to circle her clit while my thumbs pressed rhythmically on her swollen outer lips and my fingertips brushed up and down her inner thighs. The combination of sensations and pressures drove her crazy – she’d become almost catatonic with pleasure, her muscles locked, her posture tense with ecstasy. Her juices were drying on my mouth, pulling my lips taut as I waited for her to tell me what would happen next. Her fingers tangled in my hair as she lifted my head to look at me.
“I think you should get pierced,” she said, and I felt the fear and excitement rushing into me.
People always get me and Beth wrong in two ways. First, we’re not lesbian: we’re bi, so one of Beth’s occasional challenges is to send me out to ‘find a man’, a task that’s almost excruciating. Her demands are rarely simple. “Over forty, and musical,” she’ll say, or, “Under twenty with a moustache,” and then, assuming I can locate some guy who fits her parameters, I have to seduce him enough to bring him to my flat, where she will be waiting. Given that a threesome is the biggest male fantasy, it’s amazing how often these blokes can’t cut it when one of the three is a Domme like Beth, confident she’s the one in charge. But when they can… well, it’s sex with a man who’s being told what to do to me, by a woman who can make me come harder and faster than I thought possible. It doesn’t get better than that!
The second thing people get wrong is they think slim, pale Beth is the sub. And me – bigger, darker, more butch in appearance – they take for the Domme. But most people have no idea how the sub/Domme thing works; they get their ideas from Instagram where it’s all 24/7 and black patent leather. Beth and I don’t live together; we’re free to see other people, and I’m never expected to do anything I don’t want to. But… if I say no to Beth… well, I don’t know what happens then, because I’ve never tried. The whole point, for me, is to test myself against what she proposes – the tougher the test, the more I learn. Sub is misleading – I’m no passive puppet – and Beth’s demands are designed to make me stronger, not weaker.
Like the BDSM scene says, it can’t be explained; you either get it or you don’t. But one thing we all agree on is this: when you have perfect trust in each other, built on stringent tests of that trust, you can have the most extreme, mind-blowing, intense sex ever.
Beth was watching my face, assessing my reactions. I’d had my ears pierced when we first got together, one of my earliest challenges, and the sound of the piercing gun thunking through my earlobes hit me in flashback. I thought about how it would sound – and feel – ‘down there’, and shuddered.
She ran the fingers of her free hand round my right nipple. “I was thinking here,” she said, “but you imagined something else, didn’t you, Olivia?”
She’s so good at this, tripping me up, showing me my preconceptions and where my unconscious fears, and desires, lurk.
“Stand up,” she said, and I stood. “Clit or lips?” she asked, reaching out until her hand touched me and her fingers were sliding between my legs to test me. I was already soaked and as she ran her index finger along me, opening me, I gasped. “Lips… that’s what you were thinking, isn’t it?” And she pushed her fingers into me gently, curving them forwards so they pressed against my G-spot, and laid the flat of her other hand on my belly and pushed. I felt her fingertips and the palm of her hand – and my flesh trapped in between. I came fast and without a sound.
So, as I climbed on the table, cold as lizard-skin where the skimpy paper towel didn’t cover it, and settled myself into position, I stared at the ceiling. Which would be worse; to show fear, to seem to enjoy this moment, or to act as if I wasn’t bothered? The last – definitely.
Beth always reminds me, “We’re not about being cool. What we do should never, ever, be blasé – if it doesn’t fill the moment so that we’re living on the edge, then there’s no point. We’re not stepping outside ourselves to watch with detachment, we’re inhabiting ourselves to the exclusion of everything else.”
Fine words, but she wasn’t the one offering herself up on this damn chilly and slippery altar. I wanted to hold Beth’s hand, but she wasn’t going to offer and although it was my role to ask and hers to grant (if she felt like it) I couldn’t get the words out.
I was scared. Not nervous or apprehensive or even frightened. Scared.
“Are you sure…” the man began.
“Yes!” I cut him off. I wanted to shout, “Do it before I faint, or wet myself or something!” but I stuck to repeating ‘yes’ again.
I felt the man’s hand, warm through the plastic glove he wore, rest briefly on my pubic bone as he settled the instrument in place. Then his fingers pressed my labia, lifting and stretching the sensitive flesh, and without warning I was aroused. Maybe it was the cold air on my skin or the way his hands moved me so deftly, or perhaps it was adrenaline, but I had never been so instantaneously ready to fuck before, except when I was discussing the piercing with Beth. And it must show, he must know and Beth must know – both of them watching as I got swollen and wet.
I felt Beth’s hand on my shoulders, as cool as the man’s were warm and if I thought I’d blushed before, it was nothing to the heat and embarrassment that coloured me now. I wanted to close my eyes, so I kept them open. I wanted to tense up, so I relaxed. What I couldn’t control was the way my body offered itself up for sex; nipples tightening as though Beth had pinched them; thighs hinging open; mouth dry; hands slick with sweat and the desire to reach out and grab somebody, anybody, and press my fingers into their flesh, press my mouth against theirs, grinding my hips into them… I opened my hands out and laid them, palm up, against the scaly chill of the table’s edges.
If I tipped my head back a few inches I’d see Beth, standing behind me, her face as cool and controlled as her hands. Watching Beth lose control was exciting, because it was so rare and so total. Making Beth lose control, making her come – well, that was power, real power. It was the only time our roles reversed and she gave herself up to me.
Not a useful thought. I tried to suppress it but it was too late – I was seeing Beth on the table and me standing over her, using a vibrator so that no part of me was touching her but all the same, every part of me was involved in making her come. I didn’t exactly groan, but I definitely made a hot and horny sound, like a reverse gasp and, as I did, I felt the piercing gun press against me, cold and unstoppable on the slick heat of my body and the sound as the man operated it was like a staple, that’s all.
But I felt the coldness instantly – it was only a little metal bar, but it was like ice; then the cold faded to heat, hotter and hotter, and the man’s fingers were capping the bar and he moved round the table to do the other side.
I was sure I was going to come. If he touched me again, if he pressed down on my pubic bone, if I felt the cold power of that thing about to shoot through me, I was going to come. I wanted to come. My hands were gripping the edge of the table to push my hips up into the air, like I was offering myself to him.
“Actually, I think that’s enough for today,” Beth said.
There was a scream building behind my teeth, an argument on the tip of my tongue, because I wanted that cold/hot sensation so badly – but I never, ever, went against Beth’s wishes.
“OK.” The man sounded quizzical but moved away. I heard him at the door.
“We’ll come back in a few days,” Beth said, and my heart lurched with happiness.
The door closed. I didn’t move. Beth’s hands slid down my body until they cupped my breasts and I saw her upside down.
“Beg,” she suggested.
I begged, I pleaded, I cajoled and requested and implored and she moved round the table, her fingers inching down until they found the metal bar the man had put into me. There she paused.
“Now?” she asked.
“Now,” I said, and her weight came down on me, her fingers entering me as her tongue pressed flat on my clit. I came.
Afterwards, while I was dressing under Beth’s gaze, I wondered who was in the other cubicles and if they’d thought my scream was pain. No, they must have been able to tell it was pleasure, surely?
“Next week,” Beth said and I paused, waiting. “The other side.”
I nodded, submissive, keeping my eyes down so she wouldn’t see how the idea pleased me.
The man was waiting outside as we left. I saw his face. I recognised the expression of need and greed and fear and for a moment I felt sorry for him. But he had to find his own way past his boundaries, like I’d found Beth, so I just smiled and whispered, “Next week,” as I passed.
