The cane impacted low across Emily’s bottom, the sound of rattan on skin sharp and loud. A second later Emily grunted. The sounds were to be remembered. As was the ripple in her flesh, and the slight, quickly controlled jerk of her hips. And the mark of that first stroke, flaring neat and thin across her bottom, emerging as a cream-coloured line that quickly turned pink and then red.  

Emily’s posture gave her immense sexual power, as she knew. She was posing, doing a show for her … whatever I was. I was Emily’s lover, obviously, but what was I becoming? We wouldn’t go back to how we’d been before. I didn’t think she’d want me to relinquish the rights I’d just acquired. I didn’t approve of my new rights, but I didn’t want to relinquish them either.

Emily moved her left foot to firm her stance. The movement signalled acceptance of whatever came, and that excited me. I swung the cane again. Lustily. It landed, loudly, an inch or so below that first stripe. Emily’s head and shoulders jerked up, her hair flying, but she almost instantly returned to position, releasing her breath in a sweet, low gasp.

Her fingers hovered a few inches above her feet. I’d told her to touch her toes, but I let it pass. The second stripe declared itself, a little below the first stroke, which had by now raised itself into a welt. Emily couldn’t see me as clearly as I could study her, but she could see when I braced my feet. So she sucked in air and held it when I raised the cane.

I arced the cane down, resisting the urge to make the stroke gentler, and watched a third stripe bloom, a parallel line across the best-padded part of her bottom. Emily’s third expulsion of breath was voiced.

Some time later I stopped to watch Emily’s bottom squirming, her movements blatantly sexual though she was no longer aware of or concerned about how she looked. Her buttocks were decorated by five straight, separated stripes. Her hands still pointed obediently down, but had moved beside her ankles, the fingers and thumbs splayed and taut. It was an effort not to put them in the way of the cane. Tears ran down the bridge of her nose, tracking down her forehead to her hairline. She made a small keening sound, more in her nose than her mouth.

I reached down and stroked Emily’s hair, and teary forehead. The other hand, still holding the cane, I put round her waist and pulled her to me. The keening noise was louder, though she sounded in some way comforted. Emily pressed her hip against me. I wanted to tell her, reassuringly, that she was a good girl, and then felt the absurdity of that. In what way was I an expert on goodness?

But I had to say something.

It was my first attempt at this sort of thing. “You’re so beautiful. You’re so brave. I love you.” And, because it seemed called for, “you’re a good girl. Really. I do know that.” Emily’s keening became sobs. So she had wanted to hear that. I stroked her hair. She reached her hand to take mine, the hand holding the cane.

Emily’s sobs slowly subsided while I held her, and she said, “ah-huh, ah-huh”. She was agreeing with something, though I wasn’t sure what.

Emily had just declared that she wanted to be punished. It sounded like an oath to me, so I added, “Being of sound mind, ekt.”

Emily looked, for a second, up at the ceiling. “Oh, utterly sound mind.” 

“Ok. Look, as far as I’m concerned, there are two things. You shouldn’t have let me wait till three in the morning before you called me. I’m going to punish you for that. So that’s, um, ten strokes tonight, for making me worry about you. Whether you were ok.”

Emily said, “Ok.”

“And Marty, the Marty … thing. You put yourself in danger. It was stupid, and I’m not going to let you do that again. So I’m giving you a dozen tomorrow, for putting yourself in danger. You were scared, and you scared the shit out of me. That is not going to happen again.”

She nodded, silent. I did some counting. “So you’ve got twenty-two strokes, over two days, and I think I’m being lenient. If it hurts, and I’m going to make sure it does, you’ve got it coming.” 

Emily nodded again, thoughtfully. She said, “I guess I do.” I’d given her more strokes than that before. It was on the severe side, but it wasn’t outlandish. I hadn’t mentioned infidelity, having sex with fucking Marty. Fucking Marty. That was on both our minds but we didn’t say it. We were both influenced by versions of feminism, in which jealousy was one of patriarchy’s darkest and most dangerous corners. We were trying to be cool about that. She said, “I suppose. I suppose that’s fair.”

“And you lied to me. That’s more. One more day. Another six.” That was cheating, increasing the number after Emily had agreed. But I’d said it without thinking, and once it was said the rules seemed to say that I couldn’t go back on it. I’d have to remember not to do that again. “So that’s what it’s going to be.”

“That’s a lot, Jaime. I don’t know if I should …” She shrugged, impatient with herself. “No, okay. When?”

“We start right now, Emily. Go get the cane. Bring it to me.”

Emily gazed at me, then nodded without speaking, and left. It seemed she didn’t call me “sir” when it was real. The canes were in a cupboard with other toys and tools in Emily’s room. She returned holding a thickish length of rattan, about four feet long. But she didn’t immediately offer it to me. “I don’t have to take this if I don’t want to.”

She meant to say that she was reaffirming her choice and her consent, but I misunderstood her. “No, you’re right. You don’t have to.” That was the right thing to say.

Then I said, “But you deserve it, Emily. You really deserve it.” That wasn’t so good; I’d thought that I wasn’t going to be a bully.

I followed with worse. “Emily, you lied to me. And you fucked that – you fucking hurt me, Emily.” 

Emily stopped. A tear spilled, began its trail. Then gleaming tracks down both cheeks. Emma wept silently, still holding the cane. I said, “Oh fuck, I’m sorry.”

Punishing Emily seemed to be a hot idea. It was also terrifying. I’d no longer be able to rely on the politics that I’d put together to allow me to accept my sexual desires. I’d have to fly without a map, immediately, and work out something new.

She was less fussed about the politics than I was, because we both knew that in any discussion over sexism the woman is always right. I might have to flounder round, trying to come up with reasons, but she didn’t. And she had no reason to worry about getting the cane. She liked getting caned. If she didn’t get caned for this reason, there’d be another reason coming along soon enough.

It came down to this, for both of us: we could carry on being awkward with each other, or we could do something new and scary that meant we’d fuck and forgive. There were arguments for and against this, but the lust of it led in only one direction.

My face was cold, pale and sweaty as a slice of picnic chicken. Emily was as pale as she ever gets, a speckled brown egg. “Yeah, well. Suppose you punish me. Okay. What happens?”

I was used to pretending to be a disciplinarian. Actually being a disciplinarian, the real thing, was stranger and more emotional than I’d imagined. “I suppose … Well, I’d tell you to go and fetch the cane. You’d do as you’re told. And then I’d cane you. And … No, that’s it, really.”

A day ago, Emily might have said something like, “Oh no, sir, pleeease not the cane,” and we’d have taken the game from there. Instead she said, “Okay then.” She stared at a point on the floor, just before my feet.

“Emily, look at me.” Emily looked up, then cast her eyes down. I realised, relieved, that part of her was still play-acting. Sure, she was ashamed, and afraid of the cane, but she was also enjoying her humiliation, and hoping I’d make it worse. I could talk to both Emilys. “I’m giving you one last chance to decide, okay? This is the chance, right now. If you say, ‘Yes, I deserve the cane’, then we’ll start. But if you can say, ‘No, I don’t deserve to be caned,’ then we don’t start. Nothing happens.”

“Um. Well, what happens if I say I deserve it, but I still don’t want you to cane me?”

I hadn’t thought of that. “I’d be pissed off with you.” I shook my head. That was bullying. I’d feel better about this if I managed not to be a bully. “I mean, truthfully, I would be pissed off with you. I’m pissed off now. But I’d forgive and forget. It’d take a while but it wouldn’t take forever. So if you say nothing happens, then nothing happens.” 

“You wouldn’t leave me?” 

“Jesus, Emily! No, I won’t leave you. Absolutely not. Not matter what. I love you.” It was true, though I didn’t sound very loving.      

“Okay. I love you too. Um, what was I supposed to say?”

“Well, whatever the hell you’ve decided should happen. It’s your choice. Oh. Right, the words were: ‘Yes, I deserve the cane.’” 

“Ok. Yes, I, Emily Maria Viviani, deserve the cane. No, really; I totally fucked up. You absolutely should punish me. With the cane. I really deserve it. I need you to punish me. I know I do.”

Once she’d said that our world changed. I pretended not to feel the vertigo. 

For a second Emily didn’t react. Then she jolted, as if she’d been hit by an invisible tennis ball. She blushed, equally suddenly, and looked away. “Oh,” she said. “Oh.” She turned back to look into my eyes. “I don’t know, Jaime.”

“You asked me to cane you. If I caught you smoking?”

But she saw the doubt in my face. “Well, yes… But that was then. Anyway, Jaime, you said you wouldn’t. You said you can’t punish me just because I do something you think is wrong.” This was true. I’d turned her down, with self-admiration. “Remember?” 

“And you said you wanted me to punish you when you fucked up. That was just about smoking. Well hell, Emily, this is bigger than that.”

Emily would’ve gone on apologising forever, and I’d have gone on making her feel worse while acting as if I was being nice, also forever. That would be boring. This was dramatic.

One thing we’d learned together was that we had a mutual taste for drama.

“I haven’t given you the right, Jaime. Not for this.” 

“I think I should punish you.” Emily frowned. She knew I wasn’t convinced of that. “Well, what do you think? Do you think you deserve it?”

“Of course.” That was dismissive. “Well, okay. Yes, I do. I was really stupid. And I was mean. I hurt you. Of course.” That was less dismissive. “I’d deserve anything you did to me. Well, to my ass, anyway. But that’s not the point, Jaime. You said you wouldn’t punish me for real things. Not for real. You said you couldn’t. We’re supposed to be equals.”

“It’s your choice. We’d be equals if you choose it.”

“So you’d punish me for fucking another guy. But you’d want me to ask you to first. You’re saying that would make us still equals?”

“Um. Well, it’s your choice. And it wouldn’t just be for fucking Marty.”

“Oh, because you’re too high-minded to be jealous.”

“I never said that.”

“Jaime, you’ve got every right to be mad at me. And you are angry with me, you know you are.”

“Okay. That’s true.”

“So, I say I’m a bad girl and then you cane me. Only difference is that this time it’s real.”  

“It’d be real.” I hadn’t changed my mind about the politics: I didn’t believe any adult has a right to tell another adult what to do, let alone punish that adult. Everything I felt about sexual politics, plus my basic anarchism, was against it. But this wasn’t between citizens. It was between Emily and me, and though we weren’t open about it, it was about sex as much as justice. 

She sank to her knees. She wasn’t pleading. Not to be let off. We looked at each other, with nothing new to say. It helped that I knew that Emily wanted and intended to lose this argument.

She didn’t exactly want the cane, but she wanted to have been caned.

Then she wouldn’t be in the wrong any more. Neither of us liked occupying the moral low ground. Punishment would make her good again: I’d have forgiven her, and more importantly she could forgive herself.

But I was certain that her real reason was the same as mine: sex. It had been one thing to play dominance and submission games. But this was about making my dominance and her submission real, with real-world consequences. That seemed hot.

Emily said she’d spent the night with a guy called Marty. I knew and despised Marty. He sold pills, and like a lot of doctors Emily liked her psychopharmaceuticals. She said she hadn’t set out to meet him, and they weren’t having an affair. Spending the night with him had been a wine-fucked mistake, she said, and she’d hated lying to me. I said, truthfully, that I believed her. Emily said she didn’t intend to let him anywhere near her again.

That night he’d been dangerous. She’d undressed him and sucked his cock, and then he’d fucked her on the floor.

But afterwards she’d sat on his bed. I saw her, at this point in her story, patting the bed, smiling at him, with his come in her. That vision didn’t make me happy.

But Marty’s mood had turned suddenly and he didn’t join her. He’d paced the room and shouted, and at one point held his closed fist against her mouth. Then he’d pushed her, so she bounced off a bedside table on the way to the floor. He’d stalked off, muttering, and not come back. Emily, still too drunk to do anything effective, had crawled onto a mattress in another room, pulled clothes and eiderdowns and pillows on top of herself and slept. She got out as soon as she woke up. Someone had followed her car. That was why she’d looked so scared when she arrived. 

Marty was dead, two years after this story

There was something wrong with Marty. He sold middle-class drugs to doctors and lawyers, but he also sold drugs that cops took more seriously. He did it so openly that even I knew about it. He mixed with gangsters because he thought they were glamorous, but his indiscretion and violence were making him unpopular.

Because she’d parked her car outside his place, many people would have stored the licence number, her name and our address. I hoped it was only a cop who’d followed Emily home. At that time in Marty’s life, which ended a couple of years later, he was dangerous. He was also tall, good-looking in the style of the very young, skinny Clark Gable, and on a good day he could present his outlaw act as romantic. 

So on top of the usual reasons for being annoyed when your lover fucks someone else, she’d chosen a stupid and slightly evil man, and she’d put herself in harm’s way. I was angry and I was scared. 

I’d caned Emily lots of times. That wouldn’t be new. But the meaning had changed. That’d be new territory for both of us

I thought about punishing her. She’d asked me to cane her for smoking, when she was trying to give up cigarettes. So there had once been consent in principle. But she’d hurt me and I wanted to hurt her back, and I was suspicious of that desire. She might deserve punishment, but I didn’t trust my motives. Revenge seemed a bad one.

We talked. I said she’d scared me. She said she was ashamed of herself, and sorry. But when everything was said, nothing was resolved. Our talk went in a circle, over and over.  I was hurt, and I’d been scared, and then I was angry; she said was sorry, and then sorry again.

Eventually, in the second hour I broke that circle, and most of my own rules along with it. Partly I was motivated by boredom: it must be time to say something new. “So. Emily. So what should I actually do? This is a bigger deal than you smoking a cigarette, wouldn’t you say?” 

Emily still smoked cigarettes, though she knew better and wanted to stop. I praised and rewarded every smoke-free day, and I was patient while the cravings made her almost continuously angry. She got through a month without smoking, and that should have been that. But after three months she started again.

It’s odd, in retrospect, how hard I resisted accepting the right and duty to punish

Soon after that relapse, Emily asked me to help by taking control. She suggested that I should cane her if I smelt tobacco on her breath or clothes. Not caning her for play, not for sex: a real punishment, hard enough to hurt and make her want to avoid getting another punishment like it.

She wanted to fear the consequences more than she craved the nicotine. I’d had discussions like this before, and I refused, again.

Punishing Emily for smoking probably would help her give it up, and she’d enjoy being a submissive girl who got punished if she didn’t do as she was told. I could see that. But I still didn’t think I had the right to do it. I’d managed to find a way to do bdsm without acting like a sexist bully-boy, and I didn’t want to lose the formula.

On occasions like this, it was acceptable to call me “Sir”

Emily called me “sir”, but only when she was naked.

This issue grumbled on in the background. My rule against assuming real power suited me. It kept me comfortable politically. Emily was finding that it didn’t really suit her. I knew she wasn’t quite satisfied, but I decided to stick with the rule.

Until Emily unstuck me.

One afternoon there was a party. I had to work, so Emily went without me. I expected it to wind up by about ten or so, and to see Emily before midnight. By early morning I was worried. Emily’s car had recently been in an accident. It hadn’t been her fault, but it made it easy for me to imagine harm.

I called police and hospitals and ambulance services. Just after two she called me. She was staying at her girlfriend’s because she’d drunk too much to drive home. I told her I loved her and went to bed.

Oh, this is going to be all awkward, isn’t it?

But the next morning that girlfriend called and asked for Emily. I caught myself in time not to say, “Isn’t she with you?” Instead we chatted cheerfully, and I promised I’d get Emily to call when she got home. 

So when Emily came home – she looked scared – I passed on her friend’s message.

And I waited while she understood that I knew she’d lied. We knew we were about to enact a boring cliché, but we were stuck with it.

The previous episode is here.

Sucking my cock had to be made awkward for Emily, because she liked my cock in her mouth. It was, she said, both velvety and hard, and it tasted like I smell, which was apparently good. She could also feel my pleasure, and she took pleasure from that.

She should have enjoyed doing something that she liked, but she liked her pleasures complex. Her sensual enjoyment of having my cock in her mouth diluted the more intense pleasure she wanted, of feeling that she’d surrendered and lost herself in serving.

She wanted to suffer for her service. 

That’s why I reached under her shoulders and cupped her breasts, taking a hard nipple between the thumb and forefinger of each hand. I squeezed until her face showed that it hurt, then relaxed for a few seconds and squeezed harder.

Emily lost her rhythm, then found it again and worked on, eyes closed, oblivious – I had to imagine – to everything but her pain and her service to her man’s cock in her mouth. She’d told me she thought she could come just from this, though we never managed to keep it going long enough to find out.

I knew to watch the skin of Emily’s shoulders at this point. I released her breasts and unbuckled my belt, pulling it in one motion from the loops of my pants. There they were, in response to that sound: Emily’s goosebumps on her shoulders and the upper slopes of her breasts.

I folded the belt, holding the buckle, and swatted the loop down her back, so that the leather would swing down and under her, the end striking the undercurve of her bottom.

I kept the slaps coming, though not hard. The goal wasn’t to hurt her but to allow her to tell herself that she was being whipped, quite unfairly, while she served like a good girl. Emily made small, indecipherable sounds, her head bobbing intently.

But soon I had to pull back from her mouth, and lift her head. We looked at each other, my thumb a poor substitute in her mouth, my fingers caressing her cheek. I said, “Emily”. She closed her eyes, still focussed inwards, and did not reply. I knelt beside her then, kissing her shoulders and undoing the ties with fumbling urgency.

When I’d freed her Emily stretched and rubbed her wrists, then helped me to undress, also urgently. I lay on my back on the carpet, for her to straddle me.

I sat reading in the living room. Emily had spent all day working in the wards, so she was intellectually tired and didn’t want to read. She sat on the couch opposite me, picking up a book and putting it down again, sighing loudly.

Off!

She watched and saw irritation on my face, because it’s hard to pull me out of a book, but then she saw a glint of amusement, too. That micro-expression was, in a sense, my consent.

A game had started, and Emily was no longer bored. I pretended to ignore her, but she knew I was now noticing where she was and what she was doing. I turned more pages, letting minutes pass. Finally, I said, “Emily.”

She stood in front of me. “Sir?” I was Jaime most of the time, but when there was something in the air I was “sir”.

“I want you to take your clothes off, now, Emily, and kneel.” I pointed at the carpet between my feet.

“Yes, sir.” Emily pulled off her shirt and bra, then her jeans and so on, making a point of how speedily she obeyed orders, if only someone could be bothered to give them.

She knelt, quivering naked, her hands reaching slightly behind her to touch her ankles.

“That’s very good. Good girl. Thank you.” The command style I’d evolved with Emily was excruciatingly polite. Emily, naked, was hard to ignore, but I pretended to, turning more pages more or less at reading speed. Her eyes were on me, alert for movement like a puppy watching a human with a tennis ball.

Eventually I got up and took, from a ledge, some cords that we’d bought at a fabric shop. I knelt beside Emily, taking her left hand and tying her wrist securely to her left shin, a little above her ankle. I did the same with her right wrist and right shin.

To Emily the symbolism and the sensation of having her movements restricted by bonds was important in itself. This particular tie, with her knees bent and her wrists secured to her shins, was simple but forced her to remain in a position that was unmistakably submissive, that could not have any meaning other than sexual servitude.

I pretended to read then, from time to time glancing at her. After a few more minutes had passed I tipped her forward, so that her face, shoulders, breasts and knees pressed down on the carpet, while her bottom was thrust up in the air. Emily’s ties forced her to shuffle her shoulders and knees, face pushed into the carpet, trying to find a comfortable resting place.

We’d found, in previous experiments, that when Emily was tied like that no comfortable place existed.

But her restless struggling was beautiful and sexual, and her face, as she watched me, open-mouthed, from the floor, was bright red. I knew that she was thoroughly roused. Time passed, while I pretended to read and really watched Emily shift and struggle. 

Eventually I took a handful of Emily’s thick black hair and tugged her up, tilting her back up to her kneeling position. She shuffled forward, following my hand, which tugged her by her ear now, and lowered her mouth onto my lap.

I undid buttons, but precisely because Emily’s hands were tied, I left it to her to extract my cock from underpants and shirttails. She closed her teeth on my underpants and pulled.