The Safe Word, part 1.

Saturday night, we got a hotel room. It was wonderful — it had a hot-tub in the room, and was right on the water, surrounded by yachts and the bay. There was a great restaurant within walking distance — although we drove, because the wind was murderous. Our daughter was at a sleepover with her cousin, and it was just the wife, me, and a bag of toys.

My wife is in charge now when it’s us, alone, and sex is in the air. No more topping from the bottom, no more worries about how much control I wield, or whether or not she’s really into it. She’s begun controlling the BDSM aspect of our relationship clearly and without any real control from me, and after the blood-drinking the night before, I was in her thrall. Yeah, her thrall. I know that one of the things that has always thrown me about BDSM is the flowery language — but once she had my blood in her mouth, once I was dominated so thoroughly that she had me pinned and was drinking my blood — I just felt all the fight leave me. I didn’t become a different person, but there was a new element to the relationship, a new sureness that she was in control. I told her about it, and she felt it too — that she was truly in command, truly powerful, truly dominant.

And Saturday was nice — she kept me off-balance. She likes flying without a script, not knowing what she’ll do next, and Saturday was random — she kept me guessing, bouncing from toy to sex to hot-tub handjob to knifeplay to pegging to whatever. Zip, zip, zip. ADHD for the dominant. It kept me reeling, one minute being held in the hot-tub and given a hand-job, the next having my parenium clamped and my cock and balls tied in leather and then tortured, a moment later being whipped in the balls with a crop and made to lick the precome off of it. She would get bored and peer into our bag, pull some toys out, attach some new thing to my body, hit me someplace else, and then strip it all off and make me do something else.

And she hit me with the switch a few times, and reminded me how much it hurts. I hate that toy, because it’s not the kind of pain you can be stoic about. You can’t be that tough as it whooshes through the air and hits you. The sound of the wind whipping past it makes you tense up in anticipation, and the pain is so sharp and specific that you can’t help but yelp. It’s the only toy I’ll try and catch, sometimes, when I’m not paying attention, trying to block it with my hands before it connects with my thigh.

And as we lay in bed talking, afterwards, I grabbed the switch, which was laying on a pillow. And I gave it a test swing or two through the air, and she caught the glint in my eye, and said, “Don’t you dare hit me with that.”

“Really? Not even a tap?”

She glared at me. I was being insolent in the midst of the playfulness, I knew, and I guess in the back of my head I wanted to see what she would do. We don’t mess with punishment play — BDSM is about strength-building for both of us, not corrective behavior. But I was in the afterglow of the beating and the clamping and the sodomy, and I thought I could get away with being playful.

“If you hit me with that, I will wear your ass out with it,” she said. “I’m not playing. Put it down.” She snatched at it. She doesn’t like the switch, doesn’t like pain except for certain specific, allowed types — breast-slapping, ass-spanking. Hitting her with toys, since our attempt at switching, is strictly verboten.

I swung it, and then at the last minute pulled back. It tapped her gently. No pain. No sting. I smiled at her. “Not even that?”

She grabbed it away. “I warned you,” she said. She got up out of bed lightly and stood behind me. I heard a “whoosh” and felt the switch hit my ass, and yelped. I shouted an apology, but it was too late. She was smacking me, over and over again. Hard.

“I have people at work giving me attitude all week, I have a three-year old at home, do you think I’m going to take disrespect from my husband? My slave??” she asked.

I was screeching as the switch bore down on my thighs, my lower back. She avoided my ass. “Please!” I shouted. It hurt worse than anything we’ve done, any beating I’ve taken.

“I warned you!” She said, bringing the switch down on me. “I told you not to do it. What kind of domme am I if I let you pull this?”

By now she’d hit double-digits. I was on my belly, trying to pull around, trying to cover my backside, afraid to roll over and have my genitals hit with the switch. I was not ready for that kind of CBT, and she wasn’t holding back — my cock would have been destroyed. But my ass wasn’t faring much better. I begged her to stop. “No,” she said calmly, bringing the switch down.

“The ballgag!” I shouted, ashamed of my yelping. I was not being very hardcore or heroic — I was just crying out with every shot. “Please, just let me have the ballgag!”

I had no idea how many shots I’d taken, but I could hear the “whoosh” of the switch and the razor-sting of it hitting me. “No ballgag!” she said.

And then the switch stopped for a moment. If I had to guess, we were closing in on thirty shots. My back was on fire. Tears were in my eyes, and my cock, which normally stands erect during a beating, was limp underneath me. I think I was close to just crying.

Then she offered up the exit: “You could always use the safeword,” she said slyly. “If it’s too much for you…”

I don’t safeword. I don’t want to. I want to bear up under the pain, I want to be strong and indomitable, I want my submission to be by choice, my actions my own as a gift to her. I want to give myself freely and out of strength. I do not want to be a creature of stinky-animal-fear, afraid of pain, weak and cringing. I know that’s not what safewords are about, but I prided myself on not using one yet. But then she started swinging the switch again, and three or four shots into this next round, I just cried out the safeword. Cried it out like a falling man reaching for a handhold, surprised to hear it out of my mouth, praying there’d be relief. Needing her to stop.

And the pain stopped…I wanted to weep in relief.