In your presence, my posture changes. My shoulders are slightly rounded. I let my long black hair cover my face. My eyes tend downwards. It's not deliberate. It's the effect your presence has on me. This is not a game. You do not call me "slut, bitch, whore". I do not call you "master, owner". I don't pretend to understand a relationship where those words mean anything.
But I submit to you entirely, knowing that in doing so, I am letting you become a part of my psyche. I am transferring my ego to you, so that my rationality and my emotions can flourish in the space they leave behind. Imagine a future when I could grant you control of my hands or my legs or my speech. What happens when I'm with you is the same, but I'm granting you control of part of my mind.
And of course, I would grant you that control in an instant: become your puppet, to do with as you will. Because I trust your will ultimately, utterly and completely. Your penetrating intelligence understands me like no one ever has. You understand my desires and needs better than I do myself. You respect my own intellect. My intellect and my emotions I will never surrender.
You understand the nature of the ultimate responsibility that comes with the power I grant you. And you will never, ever, abuse that trust. And that is why I love you. And why I can't imagine this journey ever ending. And if it does end, months or years in the future, then I know that what we have shared will be infinitely precious. Something that few human beings, aimlessly buffeted through their trivial quotidian lives will ever be able to understand.
You stand nonchalantly in the corner of the anteroom. Jeans, t-shirt. No shoes or socks. No matter. Your presence is immensely calming. Even before you say anything I can feel the warmth of that presence, and I can feel the worries, cares and conflicts that constitute my ego abate.
I peer up at your through my bangs, and you almost imperceptibly nod, meet my gaze with your abysmally deep eyes, and give me a subtle but devastatingly alluring smile. I know that look is something only I will ever see. And with that, our minds interlock. And I reveal my smile to you in return.
You stand more upright, and gesture for me to disrobe. It's warm. The window is open, and a cooling breeze gusts in. There is a profound stillness in the room as I slip off my simple summer dress. There's nothing underneath. I fold it gently, carefully and place it on the foot of the bed. You watch my every movement. Not commenting. Not critical. I stand next to the bed. My gaze still lowered, and my long black hair covering the upper slopes of my breasts. I'm naked, apart from the beautiful jet, amber and antique silver necklace you bought for me in Sacramento.
You turn round with fluid ease to the door behind you, and open it, motioning me through. You've been in the room for hours, preparing. It's always a delicious anticipation to enter whichever sanctuary I know you've created for me. You are endlessly resourceful. As I pass by you, you gently grasp my naked shoulder, and turn me towards you. I tilt my head up to yours to receive a subtle kiss. I feel your essence radiating through the places on my shoulder where you grasped me. I feel a deep calm, like the onset of meditation. Time slows. I am conscious of the hairs on the back of my neck and on my arms pricking. And I enter the chamber.
Today, it's bare. White, blond wood. Diaphanous drapes billow in the breeze. Sunlight floods it. A sensuous tropical smell of sandalwood and musk pervades. At the far end of the room is an object I've never seen before. A wooden St. Andrew's cross six feet high, the bars in the shape of the letter X. You lithely slip into the room behind me. The door clicks shut. Excluding the outside world. Now, it's just you, and I.
After a pause precisely long enough for me to form the question as a thought, you speak for the first time. Quietly, authoritatively.
"They're cedar -- over 100 years old, but I've been smoothing and sanding them for the past few weeks. That scent is their long-locked away sap, released for the first time in a century." You're endlessly capable with your hands, and your mind. I'm awed that you've created this for me.
I walk automatically towards the cross, feeling the restrained power of your will. You speak. Without inflection.
"I'm going to hurt you."
I inhale sharply and close my eyes. A deep calm envelops me.
Your voice justifies the thoughts and memories which I am allowing myself to replay in the theatre of my mind. I think of a fragment of our poem: "We take the golden road to Samarkand". The golden road. My journey. You: my guide. I mount the platform on which the cross stands. The wooden surface is rough on my naked feet.
Your will demands me to touch the smooth timber in front of me with both hands, and slide them along the surface, feeling the texture of the surface you have prepared under my fingertips. My arms draw, up and out, matching the angle of the cross, and my belly falls snugly against the central point. The chiasmus. The meeting point. I stretch a little, and notice that my wrists each lie at the same height as a groove cut in to the wood.
My head remains bowed as you approach, and you lift each wrist from the wood, slip a pad of soft leather underneath, and then deftly pinion each wrist to the cross with a hemp rope. I allow you to manipulate me: my muscles provide minimal resistance.
I love the details. Your preparation. I imagine you thinking how the wood would feel against my skin. Too hard? Chafing? And then you select a square of soft leather. Maybe you place your own wrist against the wood, trying different materials underneath, until you find the perfect leather. You'd smile, as you take the leather and cut out two identical pads. And then you select the right weight, texture and gauge of rope. Your work in this detail alone takes maybe two hours. Two hours when I wasn't even there, and you were preparing for my pleasure. How can I not love you?
You tie with a complex knot. It lets you pull my wrist against the cross, snugly. I recall our first meeting. The knot you tied for me then...
My right hand is secure. My upraised arms cause my breasts to rise. You take care not to touch me. You secure the left wrist, gauging the tension. I smell your clean freshness as you move around me, busy in your work. I part my legs, matching the lower limbs of the cross, until my feet touch the inner angle where wood meets floor. You bind my ankles to the cross. More loosely than my wrists, so my ankles have some freedom of movement. The act of opening my legs causes more of my weight to tell on my bound wrists, and the sinews of my arms stretch. I have to balance by standing slightly on tiptoe, and I realise that keeping the equilibrium between my feet and my wrists will, in itself, be a trial.
Throughout, my head is slightly bowed, and I keep my eyes closed, losing myself in my remaining senses, as you execute your plan.
I'm perfectly arrayed and framed on the cross, a vitruvian woman. My sinews taut, my weight telling on the bonds, my breasts lifted. I recall an article you once showed me about proprioception as an aesthetic sense, and now understand what you are so cunningly demonstrating.