(Continuing that excerpt from “Between the Lines”: thoughts about pleasure, while delivering my second-ever successful spanking.) 

There was something else. Once again there was that strange, almost telepathic intimacy between us as I heated and marked her.

I knew that the sting in my hand was only a distant echo of the much fiercer pain in her skin, and – though I wouldn’t like that sensation if I were to experience it myself – I seemed to be able to sense the way in which Maureen was experiencing that pain as pleasure, and so I could feel that pleasure along with her.

I also knew, just as surely as I knew that I felt her pleasure, that she could feel my pleasure in watching, holding and hurting her.

 This isn’t a mystical claim. Telepathy is an illusion. It’s that when people focus closely on each other’s reactions – and between a dominant and submissive this mutual focus is very intense – they can develop such a strong intuitive and empathetic understanding of the other person’s feelings and sensations that it feels very like telepathy.

I wouldn’t enjoy being hurt, and Maureen would have no interest in hurting me, but we somehow each knew how the other’s pleasure worked, and we could each access and enjoy those different and complementary pleasures. Later, I’d discover further pleasures in bdsm, but those were already enough to absorb me.