That night, after we’d sealed our intimate bargain with a long, deep kiss, he maneuvered me into his bedroom, pushed me back onto his bed and slowly – giving me every opportunity to call it off or just cry scared, which would have been no lie – folded my skirt up onto my tummy. My lacy bikini panties were carefully removed and dropped to the floor while a possessive hand tapped my thighs apart. A strong male finger flicked between my naked folds for just the barest of seconds – coming away quite drenched with welcome juice, I was sure, as the conversation about expectations and rules had been more than enough for my body to begin to overflow and dribble onto my panties – before a hot, wet mouth claimed my already perked and aching clit. I arched and bucked, but he rode me out, never missing a beat of rubbing his broad, insistent tongue over that pulsing spot.

A shamefully scant few minutes later, John had brought me to such a crashing high that I couldn’t form a coherent sentence . . . my eyes were out of focus and there was a buzzing in my ears. I had come so hard my teeth were tingling from lack of oxygen, and the fingertips I dragged lazily down his broad back as he settled into me for the first time were dark-tipped and slightly numb.

But my pussy certainly wasn’t numb as it fought the need to yield to him in its acutely sensitive state. John caught my eye and penetrated me fully in one quick thrust, bringing us closer than we had ever been physically – and for me, I knew, emotionally and spiritually. “Finally,” I heard him groan. It seemed to slip out of him sharply, almost reluctantly, as he began to move within me.

As he took me for the first time, our eyes remained locked together, and John repeated just one word over and over. “Mine.”

Now, lying over a hubby in the middle of our big bed, my butt hanging out there as if I was offering myself up to that God-awful, intrinsically evil strip of rubber, I had been his for nearly five years. Five stingingly blissful years of being almost embarrasingly indulged and spoiled and scrupulously looked after, as well as blistered black and blue on more than an occasional, completely consistent basis – but always, always with love. Never, ever in those over eighteen hundred sometimes very hard, sometimes very easy days had I ever felt anything less than completely loved and adored.

Even at moments like this, when the count was only a quarter of the way through the hundred lashes he’d promised . . . and would – with no doubt at all – end up delivering to my quivering hind end.

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“A- a h-hunnerd,” I trembled back at him, broken voice wavering badly.

Without another word, he stepped back into place to one side of me, drawing back the fish-tailed strap and letting it fly.

As the next in what was to become a long series of screams was torn violently from my throat, I knew that all would be right with my world as long as this man loved me.

“Noooooooo mooooooooooooooooorrrrrrrrrreeee pllllleeeeaaaassseeee!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, absolutely certain that I was going to have no voice at all tomorrow.

He stopped and looked at me with those dark gray eyes, the rest of him all thoughtful and boyish, almost benign in faded jeans and a plain black t-shirt . . . except for the wicked rubber strap in his hand. “How many strokes did I say I was going to give you when we started this, sweetie?” came the inevitable, deep velvet question.

I was panting, no longer able to draw a full breath – shuddering and crying and shaking and wishing – beyond anything else at that particular moment in my life – that he would relent from what he had said . . . just this once.

But I should have known better. John did not hand out punishments lightly, and thus his punishments were pretty heavy. When I agreed to belong to him – in a surprisingly casual exchange that he somehow turned into an impromptu cermony involving a certain amount of a good white wine and him claiming every inch of my body, mind, and soul as his to care for and protect (even from myself) – I knew that it would be forever, with or without the mumbled words of a cleric or civil servant.

• 

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And I knew that it would often be very hard to accept exactly what belonging to him meant, elementally, to each of us.

To me, it meant that I gifted him with my obedience. I don’t follow anyone blindly – even him – and I don’t give myself easily, and John knows that. But when it comes down to it, my take on things is not always the most pragmatic or practical, and I have never known him to set a rule that I considered to be frivilous or spiteful.

To John, it meant that he could indulge himself sexually with me in any way he preferred – but always with an eye to me and my well-being, of course – even when he was waling the tar out of me. He assumed the mantle of responsibility for me and to me as if he had been born to it, peeping into all areas of my life, but choosing his targets with a wisdom I had come to have a great respect for, even prior to our arrangement.

John had been my hovering best friend since before high school – always mature beyond his years while I seemed stuck at adolescence, and sometimes much, much younger. He’d always been there for me – often rolling his eyes at my antics or quietly restraining multiple rounds of “I told you so’s” – through innumerable illnesses and boyfriends and two deadbeat husbands.