Arethusa, cuffed and clipped, fixed tightly over the whipping bench. There’s something abstract about that image, her arm close to me but fixed down, her thighs behind the wood of the bench.

Her photographer has a wooden paddle in his hand, and it has proven to be the harshest implement she’s ever encountered. She’s about to be taken.

It is night, under a full moon, and over the moon. We can hear creatures around us, possums and sugar gliders shocked by the things humans will do, when it’s time for a very deep, very savage kind of sex.

She told me later that this encounter had become her go-to masturbation memory. That made me incredibly happy, and weirdly proud. It’s as dark, in the Dark Lord sense, as I’ve ever been.

“Please punish me, Sir,” she’d said. 

She knew that punishment was coming, whatever she said, but it’s sexier to ask for it. She’s admitted that sometimes part of her thinks that if she asks very nicely she might get a stroke or two off. But another part hopes she won’t, and she would be very disappointed if she did.

Once in position, over the whipping bench, she’s on a ride. Submission becomes some kind of fairground attraction. She’s bought her ticket, and now she hopes it as exciting as she can bear. 

You don’t control a rollercoaster while you’re on it. But afterwards yours eyes sparkle and your face glows. 

She’s asked nicely and, as far as I could tell, sincerely, to be caned, and of course she will be. 

But there’s always the warm-up first. The leather paddle doing good, loud, work. She’s still worried about the caning to come, but she knows that the warm-up is a good thing: erotic and sensual in itself, and also a sign of care. I can’t be as angry with her as I’m pretending. 

Soon, she knows, we’ll fuck, and she will pretend to be very sorry and I’ll pretend that I’ve only just forgiven her. Hypocrites, we Doms and submissives. In a way. But we also know each other closely, and we know the truth, too. 

She knows she won’t be allowed to come for at least an hour. And that when she does, she’ll finally be told what she already knows: that she’s a good girl. 

Marks. We both loved her marks. They tell a story, and she could see that story just by turning her back on a mirror and looking over her shoulder. 

These marks told two stories. She’d just been punished, a nice straight set of stripes from the cane. That was one story, a very traditional one between a Master and his slave.

But there were also warm blotches on the outer side of her left buttock, and another, a little lower on the outer side of her right thigh. They tell a different story. We’d fucked after her caning, because it’s such a submissive and accessible position, and we both need to feel each other, hard, after she’s been punished. 

But the best thing of all, about that position, is that I can spank her, hard, while we’re fucking. It helped her feel surrendered, plundered, while we’re fucking, and we both loved that sensation too.

The glow of the handprints tell us both about the glory of that sex.

And now she’d been caned, fucked and spanked, and we’re catching our breath. But she’s still not allowed to rise. There’s a paddle, not far away. And it’s about to become part of her life.  

… you wank because you’ve just been punished.

I am standing with two cups of tea, watching you. I’m not sure you know I’m there. I am aroused, I am happy, and I am smitten.

A submissive woman gets to do a lot of waiting. It may as well be in a pretty place. 

It was just before six in the morning, so there was bright light, but no neighbours around to hear if a girl cries out. I’d spanked her good morning, but the idea of taking the paddle-testing part outside seemed to occur to both of us. 

Because I’d just made a wooden paddle, and obviously it had to be tested. To see how it worked as an instrument of pleasure, for those who like a heated, impacted bottom (which, from our different perspectives, was both of us), and how it might work if I had to use it on her in discipline. 

The paddle passed, triumphantly. It was, in every possible way, hot. I’m not a very woodwork kind of Master, but it seemed I could make a good paddle. 

But before the action begins, there’s always a wait. Time to feel humiliated, and just a little nervous about the chance of an early-morning neighbour encounteri9ng a naked, brightly spanked girl, obviously in position to take more, and wondering if the people on the far side of the valley will hear the impacts and her vocal responses. 

Her Master, meantime, is watching, enjoying the pause and the beauty of the morning, and the beauty of Arethusa. 

Arethusa was, of course, no stranger to the cane. She was a good girl and she tried, but she’d blown her budget that week buying blankets and an eiderdown printed with Gibli Studio’s mysterious creature Totoro. She had something of a Totoro obsession. 

As a result she’d run out of money for the fortnight, and I had to tide her over. Her Totoro obsession wasn’t why I loved her, but I did think it was loveable. So I wasn’t at all angry, but I also knew my duty as Master.

So she found herself in my dining room again, bent over the table. The day’s main course.

She’d had her warm-up strapping, and knew there would be a short pause before I reached for the cane that perched on the table beside her. The table had two messages for her, as well as the presence of the cane.

The first was the cushion, that told her that I wanted her to suffer no discomfort except what I inflicted. And the box of tissues, that told her I intended that she would be crying before this lesson was finished.

But when it was finished, she would have her tears wiped away, and the tissues held so she could blow her nose, and them, without her being allowed to rise, we would set about making her feel better. Discipline isn’t cold: it’s intensely and overpoweringly intimate. 

Two nymphs in my garden. I felt very classical.

The warmer nymph was holding the tawse across the paler nymph’s bottom. That was the only time warm nymph was ever allowed to touch that tawse.

There are rules and etiquette about submissives and disciplinary implements. I followed those rules because they made psychological and sexual sense.

Normally she wasn’t allowed to touch it. it touched her.

It’s corner time for Arethusa, after the spanking. I’m not sure why I told her she had to do her time in the corner, until she could be welcomed back as a good girl, on tip toes. 

She liked the attention to detail. If I’m to tell her what to do, I should be interested in exactly what she does.

I liked what tip toes did to her legs. And it was a nice mini-sign of obedience, that … well, it pleased me. Both of us.