Aphrodisia VII - New Territory (1 of 6)
Kristel St. Johns
kjohns@chaos.x-philes.com

Rating: NC-17
Classification: SR
Archive: Please notify. (Redistribute with permission only,
and with
headers and disclaimers intact.)
Spoilers: S7 through "Orison"
Timeframe: After "Orison"
Keywords: Mulder/Scully Romance, Smut, BDSM
Summary: "I think we've passed from 'Beginner' to
'Intermediate.'"

Author's Notes and Assorted Blatherings:

Thank you always to my betas and test-reading crew.  You
guys are the best and work for wayyy too little pay: Indi,
Jennifer, Tiff, Shelba, Beth.

DISCLAIMER: The characters of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully,
And The X-Files do not belong to me. They are the property
Of FOX Television, 1013 Productions, Chris Carter, David
Duchovny and Gillian Anderson. They are used here without
permission.  No profit is being made by their use in this
story.

WARNING: This story contains graphic depiction of sexual
activities between consenting adults, including BDSM-
related activities. It is in no way, shape, or form
intended for younger readers. If you are under the age of
17 or sensitive to this kind of material, do not proceed.
Thank you.

If you have questions about the subject matter contained
herein, check out the resources page on my website,
http://ksaintjohns.topcities.com/.  This story is part of a
series and will make much more sense if you read the other
parts first.  You can find those at my website as well.

Feedback is welcomed at kjohns@chaos.x-philes.com

To be kept updated on the progress of the upcoming
installments in this series, join the Aphrodisia Updates
list by sending an email to "Aphrodisia_Update-
subscribe@topica.com" or visiting
http://www.topica.com/lists/Aphrodisia_Update/

See additional notes at the end of last section.

Aphrodisia VII - New Territory

My eyes fluttered open, my cheek pressed against the sheet
beneath me on the floor.  I stared at the flames in the
fireplace before me as their glow warmed my skin, trying to
divert my attention from my present position, trying not to
feel absurd, inelegant, vulnerable, exposed, and of all
things, aroused by all of it.  I was in a position of utter
debasement; my ass in the air, my knees spread wide, my
weight borne mostly on my chest and the arms upon which my
face was pillowed.  Worse, my backside was in direct view
of the door by which my Master would enter when he finally
arrived.  Such was his dictate, for me to await him in this
position which emphasized my availability to him.  It was
embarrassing to say the least, and I struggled with the
inner demon that told me to get up and try to salvage some
dignity before it was too late.

My attention drifted between sensations; my own breathing
against the folds of the sheet, the crackling of the fire,
and the occasional creak of an older house settling were
the only sounds that met my ears.  To my right, flames
flickered in the fireplace, heating my bare skin, and
beneath me the cloth of the sheet and the fibers of the
carpeting imprinted on the skin of my knees.  Occasionally,
uncontrollably, my gaze traversed the room, taking in the
blank off-white walls, an expanse of taupe carpeting, the
wood-framed futon, the merry popping of the fire.  Those
moments when I felt the need to let my vision wander were
becoming less frequent, though.  In slow increments, my
concentration turned inward and the world lost focus, until
all I was aware of was the trip-hammer rhythm of my heart
and the exciting, vaguely nauseous sensation of nervous
butterflies in my stomach.  My Master was coming.

I wasn't sure how long I'd been waiting there--time had
ceased to have any meaning.  I had been instructed to be
here in this position when he arrived, but I had no idea
how soon that would be.  It felt as if an hour had passed,
but relativity dictated that to someone who hadn't been
waiting in silence on her knees, it was probably much less.
Not that it mattered.  I'd wait as long as it took for him
to come to me.

When I first arrived at the house I had been thinking of
our play as nothing more than an exciting game between us,
a kinky diversion, but while I waited in our special place
my perspective changed.  When I prostrated myself by the
fire, my heart pounding, all I'd been able to think of was
the devastating sexual pleasure that certainly awaited me.
But after a few moments of kneeling in impatient silence,
his instructions replayed themselves in my mind, the
instructions he'd given me when he'd called me that
morning, and I felt myself calm.

"I want you to spend the time thinking about what it means
to give yourself to me, body and soul.  I want you to think
about whom you belong to, and why.  I want you to focus,
not on your own pleasure, but on pleasing me.  I want you
to remember that you will be there in that position because
I commanded you to be, and that today, doing what I command
of you is your only concern.  Nothing else matters but
obeying me and pleasing me.  I want you to think about what
it means not to belong to yourself anymore, to not be in
control of what's going to happen or when or why.  That's
all up to me.  When I get there, I want you to be ready for
me to possess you completely."  His final command had been
for me to keep my eyes lowered at all times.

I could have come from hearing him speak, floating to a
state of rapture on the wings of his caressing voice.  As
I'd showered, my hands crept upwards of their own volition
to cup my heavy breasts, fingers gently squeezing the
nipples to tautness under the cascade of warm water.  I'd
leaned back against the cool tile wall and stroked my
water-slicked skin, aching for his firmer touch that my own
hands couldn't hope to replicate.  The temptation to repeat
the gesture now as I posed in the specified position before
the fire was strong, but I didn't have permission for that.
I was to concentrate, to focus on my submission.

Unbidden, my thoughts went back over the last several weeks
since our aborted play-session.  The catharsis I
experienced when I finally began to confront what had
happened to me and what I did when Donnie Pfaster attacked
me in my home left me more certain of myself and ready to
move on.  Mulder and I had eased into play gradually week
by week, beginning with building upon the foundation he had
laid that Saturday when we had our confrontation.  My
challenge and my focus during our recent Saturday sessions
had been my total surrender, not only physically, but
mentally.

"If we're going to explore pain play," my Master had
reasoned, "I need you to be mentally in a place where
nothing I do to you is met with any sort of resistance.  I
need you to be able to not only accept and endure the pain,
but embrace it, not just because you necessarily enjoy it,
but because *I* have chosen to give it to you."

Those weeks of gradual build-up had finally led me to this
place and time.  Now, I had no doubt that I was more than
ready to submit myself to his control.  I was ready to be
possessed by him to the fullest definition of the word.

I wriggled a little, trying to gain a modicum of comfort,
and then sharply chastised myself for the movement.  When
he gave me my instructions that morning, he made it clear
that he was aware the position I was expected to wait in
would be somewhat uncomfortable but rather than resisting
the discomfort I was to go with it.  I was to cease to
think about myself as my own being and instead remind
myself that on this day, in this place, I was nothing more
than his possession.  We'd never assigned a specific title
to my role; slave, pet, toy--it didn't matter.  Whatever I
was, He was Master, and I was his.  I played it over and
over in my head like a mantra: I belong to him, I belong to
him, I belong...

Today, we would fulfill the promise he had made me before
Pfaster upset everything: we would begin to explore
different types of pain play.  We discussed it last Sunday
morning, during the time Mulder referred to as our
"debriefing" session.  Each implement he possessed had its
own "flavor" of pain, he explained, some of which I might
find less objectionable than others.  With a candor to
which we were gradually getting used to, he related some of
his experiences with Phoebe.  He told me how some of the
various whips she used were actually pleasurable, at least
on a mental if not physical level, when used correctly and
in the proper circumstances.  His plan for this weekend, he
informed me, was to give me a taste of each so that we
could decide what worked for each of us and what didn't.
So today, he would administer the first whipping that we
would do simply for the sake of the experience, rather than
for any sort of punishment.

I still wasn't sure what to make of the idea that I was
going to willingly, and perhaps even eagerly, allow this to
happen to me.  The prospect filled me with a delicious
mixture of dread and desire.  Last night we slept in our
separate apartments, for he'd wanted to heighten the
anticipation and give me time to prepare myself.  He, too,
needed time to get back into his headspace, to ready
himself for exploring my physical tolerance for more
extreme sensations.  I smiled wryly at my own use of the
euphemism.  I'd had weeks to adjust to some of the things I
learned about myself since we'd begun this whole thing, and
still I wasn't quite able to accept that it was possible I
might be turned on by pain.  Calling it by some other term,
one without the negative connotations of the word "pain,"
helped me to embrace the concept.

As time passed and my waiting drew on, the exposure and
vulnerability I felt in my pose eased and in its place came
acceptance.  It didn't matter what I felt.  All that
mattered was that this was how he wanted me.  In accepting
that imperative, the importance of everything else
diminished.  I didn't *stop* feeling vulnerable and
exposed--indeed, I believed that my feeling this way was at
least a part of his purpose in commanding me to position
myself in such a manner--but it was no longer significant
compared to the necessity of heeding his instructions.

At last the door opened behind me and, my concentration
broken, I instinctively pushed myself up on my arms to look
over my shoulder to see Mulder enter, carrying the gym bag
in which he kept our toys and supplies.  The second my
concentration lapsed, so did the mindset in which he was my
Master, and then he was just Mulder.  Perhaps he knew this,
because once he saw me looking at him, he spoke without
pause or hesitation, reclaiming his control over me and the
situation before any confusion could set in.

"Lower your eyes.  You're not allowed to look up today.
Get back into position."

I pulled my gaze away from his face and slowly lowered my
chest to the floor again, a spasm of excitement twisting in
the pit of my belly.  Behind me, I could hear him moving
around, taking off his jacket, doing--whatever.  It was
interminable, the amount of time he moved behind me without
coming near me or speaking.  I kept wanting to sneak
glances back at him, to see what he was up to, but I
determinedly kept my eyes from wandering.  I let myself be
comforted by the rustling and shuffling behind me, knowing
he was there and that everything was in his hands now,
including me.  I didn't have to control anything, didn't
have to make any decisions--I just had to obey him.

At long last, the whisper of his footsteps crossed the
carpeting, approaching me, and then stopped.  He still
wasn't touching me, though.  He could be inches or feet
away from me for all I knew.  What was he doing?  Why
wasn't he--?

Then I felt him kneel on the sheet beside me, his clothed
body brushing against my naked one.  Softly, slowly, a hand
swept over my hair from behind.  Had the touch been any
lighter, I might not have felt it at all.  There was no
other contact but that caress on my hair.  I shivered,
despite the warmth of the fire.  My scalp prickled as
though a current of static electricity had passed through
me, and my skin rose in gooseflesh.  My nipples hardened
painfully where they pressed against the sheet.

"Now you can kneel up," he said softly, moving away, and I
promptly did as I was told, raising my upper body.  A
second hand returned in the company of the first to my
hair, taking my head between them and holding it steady,
and then something hard brushed the back of my cranium.  It
was the fly of his jeans, I realized.  His crotch,
masturbating against my skull.  I felt him bend over me and
one hand ran down my neck and shoulder to my right nipple
and his fingers closed over it, pulling and squeezing
firmly.

I whimpered softly; even those caresses affected me
profoundly.  There was something different here, a new kind
of energy between us.  It was as though we had graduated, I
realized.  In those early months of our play, we were both
feeling our way through something strange and unexplored,
uncertain of how far or fast to take things.  Now I knew
what was expected of me; he didn't have to guide me
anymore.  My Master was taking us to a new level, where
things would be much more intense and less tentative.  His
whole demeanor was sterner, more intimidating and less
lenient.  I knew what was expected of me now; he didn't
have to guide me anymore.

*I think we've passed from 'beginner' to 'intermediate,'* I
thought with a secretive smile, pleased with the idea.

His whole hand closed around the flesh of my breast and
clamped down, hard enough make me gasp, but not
excruciating.  The tissue of the breast itself was much
more tender than the nipple in many ways.  It didn't have
the profound sexual effects when stimulated that the nipple
did, but it hurt more, and in a very different way, when
handled roughly.  I hated it when he squeezed the soft
flesh rather than simply playing with the nipple, yet
conversely yearned for him to do it more, precisely because
I hated it.  He knew this, and applied that knowledge to
set the tone of our encounter.

I felt my own wetness begin to coat my inner thighs.

His other hand moved to my left breast and repeated the
process of tugging and squeezing as he continued to brush
his pelvis against the back of my head.  There was
something strangely erotic about his doing that; it
emphasized my own submissive state in that it was pleasure
he took for himself, rather than asking or even commanding
me to give to him.  I had nothing to do but sit there and
be used by him.  His hands on my breasts were possessive,
territorial, touching me not to stimulate me but to stake
his claim upon my body.  I closed my eyes, transported not
so much by physical pleasure as mental stimulation to a
state approaching complete bliss.  This was what I had
wanted and had never received.  Not until Mulder.

Suddenly, his hands were gone and I whimpered again,
bereft.  The contact between his crotch and my head was
broken.  I heard a small, clinking sound and then he
reached forward to fasten the leather and steel collar on
me.  It was chilly against my heated skin and it took an
effort to keep from gasping at the shock of it.

"Who do you belong to?" he asked, his voice a dark,
seductive caress in my ear as he knelt behind me and cupped
my breasts once more.

"I belong to you, Master."  The vow was familiar and
comforting.  In some distant corner of my mind, I
recognized how silly this might appear to someone not
experiencing it, but I didn't care.  All that mattered was
the vital moment when he took ownership of me.

"That's right," he murmured, hands running over my body.
"All of this -- every part of you belongs to me."

I drew a deep breath and let it trickle out in a soft hum.
His hand passed over my belly and two fingers delved
between my legs, sliding through the moisture there.  Then
he brought his hand away and pressed the two fingers
against my lips.  I opened my mouth to receive them,
feeling the slippery fluid on my lower lip and tasting my
own smoky flavor as they entered my mouth.  "Yes, Master,"
I sighed tremulously when he finally withdrew his hand.

As ever, a distant part of my brain wondered at what I was
doing, at this strange contentment that descended over me.
I was willingly giving up the very thing our society said
people--especially women--should protect with their very
lives.  The caveat that he would give me back my freedom,
indeed my *self,* wouldn't matter to those who didn't
understand.  They would say I shouldn't want this at all,
and yet I wanted it more than anything on earth.  I was
happy.

"What's your safeword?"

"Flukeman," I whispered.

"That's good, very good, Kat," his lips brushed my ear.
"Very good.  Now, here are the rules for today: I'm going
to need you to talk to me, because we're going to be doing
some new things and I need to know if you have any trouble
with what's happening.  Don't be afraid to use your
safeword.  Any screams, moans, or cries will be interpreted
as a good thing unless otherwise stated."  There was a
smile in his voice and I grinned in spite of myself.
"You're not allowed to look at me or what I'm doing.  Keep
your head up, so I can see your pretty face, but your eyes
down.  And don't expect me to pleasure you; if I choose to,
I will, but it's my decision.  Understand?"

"Yes, Master."

"Good."  He pressed against me, his fully clothed chest
against my back, my head reaching only to his shoulder.  He
stroked me, slowly and firmly, from breasts to belly to
thighs and back again.  Sometimes his hands slipped between
my thighs to dance along the folds of my sex before
continuing along their journey.  One finger would rock
along the crevice from perineum to clit, sliding with
delicious friction back and forth.  Then he wrapped an arm
around my waist and held me firmly against him as he
pinched my nipple with gradually increasing pressure, until
I moaned and struggled futilely in his grasp, becoming ever
wetter as the ache of arousal grew between my thighs.

"Get on your hands and knees, Kat," he finally commanded,
taking his hands away.  I immediately moved forward into
position and listened to the rustling sounds behind me.

Only a moment had passed when his cock slid along my cleft,
and I felt his denim-clad thighs brush mine as his shirt
hem swept along my buttocks.  *He didn't even bother to
undress,* I thought, a quiver of lust and shame shaking me.
I might have been offended in other circumstances, but here
it only heightened my desire.

He slipped inside me easily and I moaned with pleasure.  He
felt so wonderful filling me, hot and hard within my body.
The sides of his zipper rasped against the backs of my
thighs.  He began to move quickly, with no pretense of
gentleness.  I gasped as he slammed into me and panted as
each thrust shook me.  I braced my weight on my elbows and
let my head hang forward, my cheek resting on my forearms.

"I want you to hold your weight forward like that, but push
yourself up on your hands," he said raggedly after a
moment, his breathing labored with the effort of the
frenzied fucking.  I did as I was instructed.  I felt him
bend over and curl his arms around my thighs and suddenly
he rose, pulling me off my knees so that my lower body was
in the air.  I cried out in surprise, my lower body
supported now only by his arms around my thighs, lifting
them up over his narrow hips.  Instinctively I bent my
knees and hooked my ankles together somewhere beneath his
shoulders, my feet banging against his back.

Once we were secure in this new position, he thrust forward
again.  "OH MY GOD!!" I cried, not sure if it was pain or
pleasure causing me to shout.  He was penetrating me far
more deeply than anything I'd ever experienced before.  It
was good, but so intense; too much, too deep, too helpless
held this way.  Part of me wanted to ask him to stop, and
part never wanted to stop; the depth of his intrusion into
my body was more than offset by the incredible pleasure.

"If you're not okay, let me know," he commanded between
clenched teeth.  "That's your job today--if I don't hear
from you, I'll assume everything is all right."

"It's...good," I replied breathlessly, dizzy with sheer
mind-numbing rapture.  "Please..." I couldn't complete the
sentence begging him not to stop.

He didn't.  I screamed with each forward surge, the angle
of penetration far more extreme than anything I'd ever
felt, but it felt so wonderful.  He was merciless, and I
wondered if he was testing me to see if I really would
alert him to any distress.  This fucking was just a shade
short of brutal but I wasn't about to stop what he was
doing.  It was enough to make one believe in out of body
experiences, the way I felt disconnected when the rapture
reached the point where I could no longer bear it, the way
the sensation burgeoned until my body couldn't contain it
any longer and I was sure I'd explode with it.  I was no
longer myself, but some strange creature of light and pure
feeling.  There was definitely pain each time he rammed
forward, and I had no doubt I'd end up sore for the
experience, but I reveled in it, yearned for more.  It
wasn't even that I didn't mind that it hurt; I enjoyed it
for that exact reason.

I came with a scream.  It didn't matter that he hadn't
touched my clit or pressed against my g-spot or made any
particular effort to cause it, I climaxed explosively just
before I felt him come, groaning behind me.  My arms gave
out and I sank trembling onto the sheet with a sigh of
relief.  As incredible as it had been, I felt exhausted by
the experience and needed a breather.  I didn't think the
human body was equipped to handle that much sensation at
once.  Gently, he lowered my legs to the floor, his
softening cock slipping from me.  I sighed at the sense of
loss.

End of Aphrodisia VII - Part One

Aphrodisia VII - New Territory (2 of 6)
Kristel St. Johns
kjohns@chaos.x-philes.com

Aphrodisia VII - New Territory

Lying down beside me on the floor, his breathing harsh, he
stroked my back lightly.  I turned my head to look at him,
but he stopped me mid-motion.

"Don't, Kat--" he said ominously.  "There're reason I want
you to keep your eyes lowered today," he explained gently.
"One is that I want you to come to terms with the fact that
you can't change, or guide, or control what I'm doing.  If
you're watching me, you're going to be thinking about what
I have planned, trying to presuppose me and worrying about
what's going to happen.  You've got to let go of that.
I'll do exactly what I plan to do, and you will accept
that.  Also, when we're here, I don't want you to look at
me and see the person you deal with every other day of the
week.  It confuses the authority issue and takes your
concentration away from your submission.  I think keeping
our playtime separate is important, and there will be
consequences each time I catch you breaking this rule.  Do
you understand?"

Yes.  Yes, I understood perfectly.  Unable to look into his
familiar, beloved face, he was a stranger to me, as far
removed from the Mulder I knew as he could possibly be.  I
trusted him completely, because in my mind I still knew he
was the same man, but on an instinctual, visceral level, it
denied me the sense of security provided by looking at him
and knowing Mulder was still there.  Now my security was to
be derived from another situation, not from the familiarity
of Mulder, but from the absolute possession of my Master.
If he wanted to give me any margin of comfort, he would do
so, but it was in his hands.  As for rules and
consequences, they were an ingrained part of me, something
I understood and heeded on the most instinctual level, and
he knew me well enough to incorporate the predisposition
into our play in such a way that my obedience was almost
guaranteed.

"I understand, Master," I murmured.  He kissed the side of
my face and then moved toward my mouth, taking my chin in
his hand to turn my face toward him.  He claimed my lips,
softly at first and with increasing passion, his tongue
intruding, exploring.  I gave a pleasured sigh, melting
into him.

In a way, it was amusing.  Here we both were, him looking
forty in the eye and me not far behind, only just now
having the most profound sexual experiences of our lives.
I'd had lovers who were Mulder's present age, and the
result had been a fairly sedate sex life.  I certainly
would never call their libidos prolific.  In contrast, it
was almost absurd how insatiable Mulder and I were, how
once the floodgates of physical contact were opened, there
was no going back.  We couldn't get enough of each other,
and I had to wonder; if he was supposedly past his sexual
prime at this age, what had he been like when he was
younger?

After a long moment, he pulled back and my eyes fluttered
open, meeting his before I could prevent it.  I immediately
corrected the error, but he had already noticed.

"That's one," he remarked.  "I'll be keeping track."

I gnawed on my lip, another ripple of combined pleasure and
fear running through me.  I didn't need to be told what
"keeping track" meant.  There would be an accounting for
every failure to obey.  As someone who spent her life
living by rules and consequences, I could respect and
understand that concept.

I cleaned myself up with a towel I'd set nearby upon my
arrival and sat on the pillow on the floor while he began
to lay out our "toys," including the implements that
heretofore were used only for punishment.  We would be
using those items today, I knew, but for an entirely
different reason.  My heart began pounding in my chest.
How could I possibly consider willingly doing this?  My
upbringing hadn't been quite cosmopolitan enough to foster
an understanding of how people could enjoy pain.  I'd heard
of it, of course, but I always experienced a sense of
revulsion at the idea, accompanied by a spark of--
something.  Interest or curiosity, perhaps even excitement?
Those people were doing something out of the mainstream,
something taboo, forbidden.  Dangerous.  It was all the
things that had always fascinated me, but I'd never been
able to admit to that fascination until now.  And the
scientist in me wouldn't let it go unexplored.I found
myself watching him as he laid out the crop, quirt, signal
whip and paddle.  Then he added something else to the
collection: a flogger with numerous suede tails.  So soft
they appeared almost fluffy, each tail was an inch wide,
but very thin.  The flogger trailed with a whisper across
the futon where he set it, perhaps two feet long with a
contoured handle.  How would that feel, I wondered.  We
hadn't discussed adding anything new to the picture, but--

"That's two, Kat," my Master's voice interrupted my
musings, and I quickly jerked my eyes away from his
preparations.  I closed them instead, to avoid the
temptation of sneaking another peek, trying to calm the
wave of anxiety that passed through me.  I had consented to
do this, bottom line.  I had consented to turn myself over
to his control and let him do with me what he wanted.  I
had no say in the matter, I told myself, finding comfort in
the thought.  My only job was to accept what was going to
happen and surrender to it.

I heard his approach at last, and turned my face up, my
eyes still closed.  His breath was soft and warm against my
ear as he went down on one knee on the floor beside me,
pulled me to him and held me tenderly.  He cradled me
between his legs, rocked me, pressed my head back to his
chest and held me there, letting me hear the soothing drum
of his heartbeat.  His hands stroked me everywhere,
trailing lightly over my skin in a way more comforting than
erotic, cuddling me all the while.  When the caresses did
become sexual, they were still slow and gentle, running
over my breasts and buttocks, up my thighs to stroke the
damp folds between.

"Answer me honestly--do you think you'll be all right if I
tie you?" he asked in a hushed voice.  Nothing could
eradicate my trepidation at the knowledge of what was
coming, but even so, I felt myself grow languid and pliant
beneath his touch.  The fear became a quiet murmur in the
back of my mind, rather than a scream of terror.  "I would
feel better," he continued, "until I'm sure of my aim and
control, to know you can't move."

Did I think I could handle being bound?  Over the
intervening weeks, I'd done a lot of emotional processing
of my experience with Donnie Pfaster, and I knew I felt
safer and less edgy now.  I wasn't afraid of having my
ability to be strong taken away anymore.

Suddenly, I saw the reason for the game of invisible
bondage he'd started in that aborted attempt to play weeks
before when I'd had my breakdown, and continued in more
recent weeks as we regained our momentum.  He had been
preparing me for this, this voluntary and absolute
surrender.

"Yes, Master, tie me if it pleases you" I replied in a
whisper.

"Okay.  You know what to say if you get into any trouble.
Stand up, and move over here--" he guided me to a spot a
few feet from the futon.  I stood there with my eyes
closed, feeling as though I was swaying in the middle of
the room with nothing nearby to support me.

"Open your eyes.  See this?  It's a quick release clip--"
he held out an odd-shaped steel clip and hooked the ring of
one of the suspension cuffs onto it.  "If you have trouble,
I can have you down in a second."  It happened so fast I
couldn't see precisely how he did it, but in a swift motion
of his hands and a split second, the ring of the cuff was
freed.

Contrary to his instructions, I glanced up as he buckled
the cuffs securely onto my wrists and noticed an eyebolt
had been screwed into the ceiling at some point.  He
clipped thin chains to the rings on my cuffs with the
quick-release mechanism, then pulled my arms up together,
stretching them to the point where there was only a small
amount of slack in the chain.  I gripped the straps that
passed through my fists and held them tightly.  He turned
me to face the wall and took me in his arms from behind,
once again pressing his body close to mine and cuddling me
for a long, silent moment.

His large hands splayed over my torso as he held me.  The
warmth of his body suffused me, even though his clothing.
Our breathing took on the same cadence as our bodies
relaxed.  His hold on me was firm and unyielding and I took
comfort in it.  Eventually, his touch once again became
erotic, travelling to my belly and breasts.  He tweaked my
nipples, pulling harder as my sensitivity increased.  Two
fingers lazily circled my clitoris, waves of pleasure
emanating into my body from that touch.  At last he pressed
a kiss to the back of my neck and moved away.

"I love you," he murmured, and his fingers went to my
shoulders.  Slowly, he dragged his nails down my back, not
hard enough to hurt, just enough to make me notice.  All
down my back, nerve endings awoke to that touch.  He
repeated it a number of times, until the skin of my back
tingled warmly.  The scratching moved down my buttocks and
thighs until they, too, tingled, hypersensitive to even the
lightest contact.  I gasped in discomfort when his
fingernails slid once roughly down my inner thighs, then
they disappeared entirely.

I stood there with my arms stretched over my head a long
moment, unable to see what he was doing behind me.  I felt
aware in a way I never had before, every sound, every touch
amplified in my sensitized state.  I started when something
soft and cool touched my ass, rubbing across it lightly.  I
didn't recognize the sensation, and the only item that soft
he possessed that I hadn't felt before was the flogger.
Surely he wasn't going to use that thing on me right out of
the gate?  I wasn't accustomed to it--the very sight of the
thing frightened me.  A flogging went beyond a paddle,
beyond a riding crop, to the very extremities of my
comprehension of the phenomenon that is pain play.  When I
thought about floggings, I thought of sailors on the high
seas, tied to masts with their backs scoured raw and
bloody.  I thought of slaves of the old south with scars
crisscrossing their ebony skins.  It didn't matter that the
flogger, when I had seen him handle it, looked light and
soft as a feather--I didn't want it touching me when I was
so damned nervous already.

I was about to open my mouth to protest when it landed on
my back between my shoulder blades with a soft "whoomph!"
and rush of air, as though I had been hit with a pillow
rather an implement of torture.  Nevertheless, I screamed,
startled by the unannounced impact.

"That did *not* hurt," he stated, and I could hear
amusement heavy in his voice.

"No, of course not," I muttered, embarrassed by my
reaction.  "Just startled me.  Sorry."

"That's okay," he replied softly.  "Don't be afraid to let
me know if something's wrong."  He punctuated the command
with another stroke of the flogger.  It created a large
sound, but virtually no pain.

"It's just a suede flogger," he informed me
conversationally.  "I think you'll like the way it feels.
Just relax and go with it."  He swept it over one buttock,
then back across the other, in quick, light strokes.  The
fluffy suede lashes created a breeze that cooled the
moisture on my inner thighs.

As my nerves eased, I did indeed begin to enjoy it.  As
though he were massaging me rather than beating me, I felt
the tension in my muscles ease.  It didn't matter that
there was actually no pain, the mental drama and decadence
of being bound and flogged was enough to have me moaning
softly with each contact.  In my own mind, I became a
medieval serf, a peasant girl with my gown ripped down the
back, tied to a post and being whipped for some infraction
of the authority of the feudal lord under which I lived my
life.

After a while, he moved the flogger from my buttocks to my
shoulder blades, landing rapid blows across my back.  The
rush of air blew my hair forward to tickle my face.  I let
my head fall forward to give his strokes better access.
The fantasy forming in my mind deepened, and the arousal
between my legs sharpened.  The lashes came sweeping across
my back from one side, then returned traveling in the
opposite direction.  Only when he wielded the whip full-
force on the final few blows did I sample some of the pain
that could come from a genuine flogging, and then it was
gone.  The light suede lashes were gently swept across my
skin before disappearing entirely.

He moved around my body, stroking my skin softly until he
stood before me.  With my eyes downcast, I could see the
tails of the flogger swinging freely beneath the point
where he held the handle in his hand.

"Turn your face up, look at the ceiling," he instructed,
and I did so, letting my head fall back.  I had a
frightening feeling I knew his purpose, which wasn't even
allowed to come to fruition in my mind before, in the same
rapid, back and forth strokes he had first used on my
buttocks, he began to sweep the flogger across my breasts.
I gasped loudly in shock and surprise, my head snapping
forward to stare at him.

"Three, Kat," he announced ominously and I quickly tilted
my head back once more.  Unruffled, he continued his
actions, flicking the flogger gently back and forth across
my nipples.  The peaks were sensitized enough to feel a
slight discomfort, but not a great deal, and certainly not
enough to be called pain.  More than anything, I was simply
shocked that he would even conceive of whipping my breasts.

The small swipes with the ends of the tails across my
nipples gave way to larger, sweeping strokes of the suede
strips across my whole torso.  In my peripheral vision, I
could now see he was moving his arm in a figure-eight sort
of motion, sweeping down on an angle across my chest before
coming back in the opposite direction.  The blows took on a
regular rhythm to which I became accustomed, and I closed
my eyes and let myself ride the sensations.

Eventually, the force and speed of the blows eased and then
he was there, embracing me, running comforting hands over
my skin, which was flushed with desire.  He held my body
against his, soothing me, stroking me, sometimes chastely,
other times erotically and I sighed, melting into his
caresses as he ran moist open-mouthed kisses over my face
and shoulders and neck.

"That wasn't so bad, was it?" he prodded teasingly and I
felt a stab of embarrassment at my initial response.  I
shook my head, unwilling to speak and disrupt the seductive
spell in which I was enshrouded.  He had taken something I
had dreaded and turned it into an experience that was
nothing short of magical.  Adrenaline surged through me,
leaving me feeling invigorated.  Now I felt greedy.  I
wanted more.

My Master withdrew, the lack of his warmth leaving me
chilled.  In a moment he returned and ran something silky
over my buttocks.  Fur, I realized.  A second later I came
to the conclusion it had to be the fur-covered side of the
paddle, for it had none of the malleability of the mitt he
used on me.  My heart pounded, my pulse thunderous in my
ears.  He didn't strike me with the paddle yet, simply
swept it over my skin, back and forth, in slow circles.  I
shivered, gooseflesh rippling across my body.

He withdrew the paddle and then struck me with it, without
warning.  The fur-covered surface connected with a muffled
thud and I yelped in surprise.  I felt his hand on my
shoulder, steadying me.

"Relax," he said soothingly.  "Go with it.  Just let it
happen."  He punctuated the command with another swat of
the paddle.  This time I managed to restrain myself from
another startled exclamation.  It really didn't hurt; the
sound was a little unsettling, but even though I felt the
impact it wasn't uncomfortable.  Of course, I knew he
wasn't striking me with anything near his full strength.

The next impact was harder, and did register as something
more than just contact.  A warm, gentle prickling spread
throughout the spot then faded.  That stroke was followed
by several more of comparable force in quick succession
until my whole ass was warmed by it.  The swats came even
harder then, the heat of my buttocks increasing.  The blows
jarred me, creating a motion that traveled with a fresh
wave of arousal through my vagina and abdomen.  The fur on
the paddle lessened the impact somewhat, but not enough to
keep it from being felt.  I moaned softly in my throat and
found myself moving my hips to get away from the paddle and
the sensation it created.  It wasn't so much that I wished
to escape the pain--which really wasn't all that great--as
the fear I had of the pain itself.

Perhaps it wasn't even the pain I was afraid of, I thought,
but my own reaction to it.  So far, I would have to put
this paddling into the "feels pretty good" column.  But how
much of that was the fact that he wasn't hitting me very
hard, and how much of it was the way I perceived the blows?
Would it still feel good to me when the force of the blows
increased to a level where pain would be inflicted?  I
didn't understand how the mechanisms of masochism worked,
and that lack of comprehension frightened me.  Was it as
simple as the way one's nerve endings interpreted different
signals, so that pain equaled pleasure?  But in my lifetime
of experience, pain had not equaled pleasure.  I certainly
hadn't gotten off on being shot in the gut.  Surely there
was a point where the two were, indeed, delimited, but
where did that point lie?  And was I honestly going to go
there?

Suddenly the train of thought derailed as his left arm
wrapped around my hip and his hand dipped between my legs.
I think we were both surprised to discover how wet I had
become during the proceedings, throwing me into a whole new
spiral of confusion.  His fingers slid effortlessly into my
slick sex even as the paddle continued to rain heat upon my
ass, eliciting another moan from me.

"Well, there's one question answerned," I thought I heard
him murmur, his tone amused.  Indeed, I silently concurred.
There was no denying the effect this stimulation had on me.

Completely aside from feeling divine, his fingers within me
and the arm around my hip kept me from moving away from the
blows.  In fact, he pulled my hips back so that my ass
jutted out, creating an easier target.  The next stroke
introduced the cold leather surface of the paddle and I
yelped again.  The sound changed from a thud to a sharp
snap and the skin blazed in a way it hadn't with the fur-
covered side.  That had been a deeper sort of impact; this
didn't really go beyond the surface of the skin, but it
stung much more.

His strokes slowed, each one landing with a sharp burn that
rapidly dissipated into a warm tingle before the next blow
fell.  Now things were getting uncomfortable; with his arm
holding me stationary I was unable to move to avoid the
oncoming strokes, and a feeling of helplessness washed over
me.  I couldn't stop him, couldn't escape what he was
doing, and that thought was at once both frightening and
reassuring.  I had the same problem I always encountered
with being unable to control what was happening to me, but
the fact that I couldn't alter the situation made it
somehow easier to accept.  If I had the freedom to stop it,
surely I would have to, wouldn't I?  Wouldn't any normal
person?

The swats of the paddle were constant and merciless now,
and my skin had progressed past that not-unpleasant tingle
to being ablaze.  Small moans of pain escaped me with each
impact, each fresh wave of heat over my burning flesh.
Through it all, though, were his fingers inside me, curving
to press against my g-spot, the heel of his hand rubbing
against my clitoris, adding a wholly different sensation to
the mix.  Pleasure intermingled deliciously with pain, and
not even the pain was truly painful, not something to be
escaped but rather craved.  I whimpered low in my throat,
unsure of what to make of what I was experiencing.  All I
knew was that at some point, I'd begun to enjoy the biting
caress of the paddle as much as I did his fingers inside
me.  The fluid seeping down his fingers and my thighs were
proof of that.

The paddle moved down from my ass to the backs of my thighs
and I cried out as suddenly that tender skin was set afire.
Several more rapid strokes fell and I yelped with each one,
finding a comforting release in the vocalizations.
Somewhere in my mind, I knew these blows were softer than
those he'd landed on my buttocks, but the entire flavor of
the pain was different and more frightening.  Through the
fear came the knowledge that I was still enjoying myself,
which only served to scare me more.  Only three or four
strokes passed before I began to whimper for him to stop.
I was increasingly frightened when he didn't do so
immediately, but instead he tapered off his blows before
setting the paddle aside and running his hands over my
flaming skin.

End of Aphrodisia VII - Part Two

Aphrodisia VII - New Territory (3 of 6)
Kristel St. Johns
kjohns@chaos.x-philes.com


"I'm stopping now because it's time for a break," he
murmured, caressing my ass gently.  "You need to understand
that the decision to do so is mine, and no amount of
pleading from you will change that.  I have to assume,
since you didn't specifically tell me something was wrong,
that was just a general, all-purpose 'I'm frightened'
request to stop, right?"

I nodded, licking my dry lips.  Nothing had been actually
wrong.  Begging him to stop was more of a panic reaction to
too much stimulation than anything else.

As I tried to sort out what was happening in my head, I
felt something nudge my lips and realized it was a water
bottle.  Lowering my face from its upturned position and
closing my eyes I pulled greedily at the sipper nozzle,
taking a long drink, and then sighed when he withdrew.
Already I felt forlorn with him no longer touching me, even
to strike me with the paddle.

I raised my face to the ceiling again and stood silently
while he felt my fingers to make certain my circulation was
still good and then he began to caress me once more.  Down
my neck and shoulders and over my breasts his hands
traveled leisurely, wandering my body seemingly at random.
As the residual burn of the paddling faded to a soft
tingle, his fingers pulled roughly at my nipples, bringing
new distressed gasps forth from my throat.  The fingers
clamped down brutally, eliciting a pained moan, and the
next instant I felt his soft hair brush my belly and
realized he had gone down on his knees before me.  As he
pinched my nipples harshly, his tongue darted out to seek
my clitoris.

I could only spread my legs a little farther before all my
weight would be supported by my arms suspended from the
ceiling.  To do that would create an unbearable stress on
my shoulders and I groaned in frustration at my inability
to provide him with better access.  Even as the pain in my
nipples grew to the point where I could barely tolerate his
hands, my hips thrust restlessly forth, seeking his mouth.

Abruptly, he released my nipples and grabbed both my
buttocks, dragging my hips forward to meet his mouth and
sucking on my clit.  I cried out hoarsely in surprise,
clenching my hands tighter around the straps of the cuffs
at the momentary panic of instability.  It went against my
instincts to feel secure with him supporting my weight in
such a manner and I struggled for balance.  He brusquely
commanded me to hold still before returning his mouth to my
clitoris.

Within moments he had me moaning and panting in relentless
pleasure.  All memory of pain faded and all that existed
was his mouth upon me, even as his hands kneaded my sore
buttocks and his fingernails lightly scored my sensitized
skin.  I was at the brink of climax before he stopped and
rose again.  He warm breath, scented with my own essence,
brushed my ear.

"I told you it's my right to give you pleasure," he
reminded me gently, running a single idle finger over my
clavicle.  "But I'm going to offer you a deal.  I still
want you to alert me if you have trouble with what's
happening, but unless you're in genuine distress, you're
not allowed to ask me to stop.  Maybe later, when we're
both more comfortable with what we're doing, you can plead
with me if you want to, but not now, not while I'm still
learning what your limits are.  If you don't give off any
false distress signals for the rest of today, I'll let you
come tonight.  If you do, then you won't be allowed to come
at all again today.  Got it?"

"Yes, Master," I said softly, nodding.  He kissed my mouth
gently and murmured his love to me once more.  It was
cuddle time again, I realized, as he once more took me into
his arms and held me tightly, stroking me until I relaxed.
The comfort and gentleness were as delicious as the
pleasure he'd given me with his mouth a moment before.  "I
love you," I whispered, nuzzling the crook of his neck.
His response was a deep sigh and the tightening of his arms
around me.  I didn't say that nearly often enough to him,
but I recognized it was especially important to make sure
he knew it now as we explored this new territory.

After a long moment, he pulled away again, moving into
position behind me once more.  Seconds later, a small patch
of something cold and hard touched my skin.  The riding
crop, I deduced from the size and texture of the object.
He spent a long moment caressing me with it, running it up
and down my thighs, over my buttocks, my back, around the
curve of my waist to my belly.  Tapping it lightly against
my inner thighs, he urged me to spread my legs and then
slowly dragged the crop between them, sliding it over the
moist crevice until I moaned softly.  It was neither
enjoyment nor discomfort which induced that moan, but
rather the knowledge that he was using something designed
to inflict pain and applying it to my center of pleasure.
He pulled it back and forth along my sex again, and then
ran it over the crease of my ass.  I was terrified and
elated all at once, and in that moment, if only to myself,
I was able to admit honestly that I wanted him to hit me
with the crop.  I wanted the pain and the pleasure and
whatever else might come with the experience.

He circled in front of me and ran the crop over my breasts,
its surface now warmed by the contact with my skin and
carrying both the heady, masculine scent of leather and my
own musky essence.  He caressed my shoulders and breasts
and belly and thighs as he had my back and ass, stroking me
softly with the crop, but never striking.  I felt a moment
of worry--would he strike me on the breasts?  The crop
would be an entirely different sensation from the suede
flogger in that regard.  Instead, he patted and tapped the
upper slopes of my breasts for a moment, not hard enough to
create any real pain.  The crop became an extension of his
own touch, loving and tender and sensual, foreign and
comforting all at once.  Finally, I felt the brush of his
clothing and the heat of his body as he pressed up against
me, encircling me with his arms.  He dropped a kiss on the
top of my head, and at the same moment struck with the
crop.

I gave a shrill, high-pitched gasp at the sharp crack of
leather against my buttock.  A second later, heat filled
the spot where contact had been made, causing me to pant
softly.  A second blow followed, and then a third, my small
sounds of surprise and discomfort muffled against his chest
as my ass quickly grew hot again beneath the persistent
blows.  He held me for some time, raining steady strokes
over my butt and thighs before finally releasing me.  There
was a moment of blessed reprieve as he circled behind me,
but it was short lived as the blows returned with greater
strength and less recovery time between.  The force and
tempo of the strokes increased, and though my front now
felt chilled in his absence, my ass was on fire.  My gasps
became small cries of pain, and I bit my lip to stifle
them.  They were uncontrollable, and yet I didn't want him
to stop just yet, and I was afraid he might if I evidenced
too much distress.

A particularly loud snap of the crop against my flesh broke
through my resolve and I let out a small wail of alarm, but
to my relief he didn't cease.  He wouldn't, not until he
was ready to do so, or unless I used my safeword, I
realized thankfully.  I became freer with my vocalizations,
transforming the pain to yelps which somehow made the
physical sensations easier to bear and made room for the
pleasure that was lingering under the surface of all the
fear.

The pleasure.  I didn't understand it entirely myself.  The
sound of the flat leather surface snapping against my skin,
the heat that emanated from the point of contact, the
impact I could feel in the juncture between my thighs...
All of these combined to create a sensation as elusive and
indefinable as any I had ever encountered.  There was no
drama here, no fantasy in which I could submerge myself and
claim it was the mental stimulation which turned me on.
But with each impact a jolt of pleasure ran through me, and
with each passing moment, I felt myself begin to approach
that state I had touched occasionally when he employed the
nipple clamps to inflict pain upon me.  It was a state of
euphoria where *everything* felt good and I felt more alive
than I'd ever known I could be.  The heat on my skin sang a
sensual melody along my nerve endings and the rest of my
body hummed in pleasure with the chorus.  The wetness was
spreading over my inner thighs again and I could no longer
deny that I was aroused by the pain that he was giving me.

I moaned softly, in anxiety and denial of the thought and
as I did so the blows came even harder and faster, sharp
and merciless against my heated skin.  Each impact seemed
absurdly loud in the otherwise silent room.  My moans
transformed into cries that echoed off the blank walls, and
it hurt, God yes, it hurt and I enjoyed it.  It stung and
burned unbearably and I wanted it to stop, I wanted it
never to stop, I couldn't take any more...Dear God, I was
terrified!

"Flukeman!"

There was an instant when I was afraid he might not have
heard me over the cracking of the crop against my skin, but
the blows ceased immediately and suddenly his gentle hands
were there on my ass, caressing and stroking.  He held my
hips and pressed his cheek to my buttock, rubbing his face
against the hot skin.

"Shh..." he murmured while I trembled in my bonds, my
breathing gradually slowing.  He kissed the spot his cheek
had just caressed, then began to run his tongue over my
buttocks, along the small raised welts that would disappear
in a matter of minutes.  He soothed me that way for a long
moment before finally speaking again.

"You all right?" he asked, holding me with his arms wrapped
securely around my waist and his face against my ass.
"What happened?"

"It...it was just--t-too much," I mumbled at last, finding
speech inordinately difficult.  It was everything I could
do to put that small sentence together. I knew I was
leaving him with the implication that the pain had been too
much to bear.

*It wasn't too much,* a small inner voice prodded.  *You're
just scared again.*

"Do you want to stop?" he queried, without a hint of
disapproval or censure or reluctance in his tone.  If I
answered yes, he'd free me from the cuffs immediately and
find something else to do.

*Do I want to stop?* I asked myself, my mind reeling.
*Yes.  No.  I don't know!  I don't want to know these
things about myself!*

He was giving me the freedom to end this, to take back
possession of my own body and mind.  I could shield myself
from disturbing epiphanies I never wanted.  All I had to do
was answer with an affirmative.

I couldn't do it.

"No," I said finally.  As frightening as I found the idea
of him doing these things to me, I found the idea of him
*not* doing them downright unbearable.  Guilt flooded
through me, and I was angry at myself for misusing my
safeword.  More than anything else involved in this exotic
relationship we were forming, the safeword was a gesture of
trust.  He granted me the right to use it with the express
understanding that I would do so responsibly.  It was not
intended to be used just because I wanted to change what
was happening, or because I wanted to step back from the
edge and get my bearings.  If he wanted me to be on the
edge, then I had no business saying otherwise.  He'd
promised me a reward if I refrained from giving off false
distress signals, but I did precisely that.  I even chose a
means of doing so that he would always heed instantly and
without question.  I'd abused his trust.

I felt wretched as he rose and enveloped me in his arms,
holding me, placing soft chaste kisses along my skin,
stroking me tenderly until my nerves abated.  When he
released me and once more took up position behind me, I
drew a deep breath and stilled myself for what was to come.
I wouldn't make the same mistake again, I swore to myself.
I jerked when the crop struck me, feeling a small patch of
flame on the surface of my skin, and hissed between my
teeth until the sting faded, then repeated the process with
the next blow.  Soon, the strokes rained without pause over
my buttocks and I again felt that suffocating sense of
dread in realizing that, though undeniably the sensation of
pain accompanied the blows, I was enjoying the beating,
perhaps more because of the pain than in spite of it.

This was insane!  I could not be turned on by pain.  I
wouldn't accept it!  The idea that I could possibly be a
masochist--it was twisted, it was wrong, it was contrary to
everything I was ever taught and had come to believe about
what I should want.  My breath came in shallow, hitching
gasps as I readied myself to use my safeword again and get
away from this madness.

*If he were really your Master, you wouldn't have the
option of stopping him,* that inner voice mocked me.  I
swallowed the word burgeoning on my lips, stunned by the
thought.

I was doing it again, I realized.  I had given him total
ownership over my body and being on this one day of the
week, but this was the first time I really understood what
that meant.  If he truly possessed me, then I had
relinquished the right to say no to anything other than
outright harm, an extreme I knew Mulder would never take me
to.  The safeword was a marvelous safety net, but to use it
for no other reason than to assuage my own fears and steal
back the control I had willingly yielded to him was
cheating.

If I meant what I said when I affirmed, of my own free
will, that I belonged to him, that avenue of escape was
closed to me.  I had no choice but to surrender to him and
what he chose to do with or to me.  The only alternative
was to admit that this game was a farce, that I didn't mean
the declaration I made every time he placed the collar
around my neck, and to leave this place and never come
back.  I didn't ever do things by halves; it wasn't who I
was.  It wasn't the way I was raised and it wasn't the way
I chose to live my life.  If I made a commitment, I saw it
through, or I didn't make it at all.

If I used that word and ended this now, I ended it for
good.  I would have to tell Mulder I had made a mistake and
we would go back to our lives.  We would be partners and
lovers still, but this special and superlative brand of
ecstasy we found while exploring this game would never be
ours again.  If I used that word, I was permanently giving
up what we had found here, not because we were incapable,
but because my own knowledge that my "surrender" was
nothing but a sham would prevent me from ever allowing
myself to come back.

I couldn't do it.  I had learned too much about myself,
recognizing both the deep-seated needs and the new
developments that made me who I was.  This was just too big
a part of what I needed to let it all go that easily.
Cementing the decision in my own mind, I released a
trembling breath and refocused my thoughts on what was
happening to me.  As far as I was concerned, unless I
legitimately felt I was in jeopardy-- a position I was
absolutely certain Mulder would never put me in--I no
longer had a safeword.

As though privy to the mental resolve I had reached, my
Master increased the force of his blows.  What had been a
minor, exciting discomfort became actual pain.  It was the
sort of pain I felt when he had punished me, sharp enough
that even the cramping tension of arousal deep within my
belly was overridden by the burning of my skin.  One after
another, those merciless strokes landed on my flesh until
each breath was accompanied by a small, breathless scream.
My fingers clenched hard around the straps of the cuffs, my
eyes squeezed tightly closed and in my mind I repeated my
new mantra.  I belonged to him--he could do with me
whatever he wanted.

Suddenly, the blows lightened and eventually faded away,
leaving the skin of my ass a blazing field of sensation.
He ran his hands softly over the flesh, his fingers
feather-light, and I shivered, startled to find I was
trembling.

"What?" I heard him murmur, as though from a long distance,
and it was then I realized that I was gasping out words
intermingled with my hitching breaths.

"...belong to you..." I whispered, feeling another surge of
arousal as I did so.  I felt euphoric, weak and invigorated
all at once.  I wanted him to hold me and I wanted him to
fuck me within an inch of my life and I wanted to run a
marathon.

My whispered declaration affected him deeply.  As he took
me in his arms, I felt a shiver run through his body.  His
embrace enfolded me tightly enough to leave me unable to
draw a deep breath as he pressed tender kisses to my
shoulder and temple.  His denim-clad hips rubbed against my
abraded ass with delicious pressure while he rocked me
softly.

"You do belong to me," he replied and I sighed happily.
"And you are the most amazing woman on the planet, Kat.
You handled that perfectly.  I love the way you move when
you're trying to get away from the crop, and the way you
cry out when it hits you.  You're so brave, and so
beautiful, and I love seeing you like this and knowing
you're all mine.  My beautiful Kat."

His words heightened my arousal until I wasn't sure what I
wanted more: the comfort of his arms around me, or the
feeling of his cock inside me, or the taste of the crop on
my skin again.  "Will you fuck me, Master?" I asked in a
slurred murmur, unable to muster enough energy to raise my
voice.

"In a moment I will," he assured me.  He reached up and
felt my fingers, which were slightly cold from being above
my head for so long.  "How are your hands?" he asked.  "Do
you think you'll be okay being bound this way a few minutes
longer?"

"They're fine," I replied, some coherence returning.  "I'll
be all right for a little while yet."

"Good...just a couple more minutes.  Let me know if it gets
to be too much."

"Yes, Master," I agreed, elated that he still planned to
continue.  He pulled away and I closed my eyes, listening
as he made whatever mysterious preparations he required for
what he had planned next.  When I heard him come around in
front of me, I opened my eyes again, immediately dropping
them in accordance with his rules.  What I saw hanging from
his hands, however, frightened me.

Alarmed, my eyes flew open wide as I espied the quirt.  Its
dual, sharp-tipped lashes flicked forward like a serpent's
forked tongue, and I gasped in alarm.  I quickly glanced up
at him, once again afraid.

"That's four, Kat," my Master's voice reached me
menacingly.  "There will be one hard stroke with the signal
whip for every time you disobey me today.  Now close your
eyes."

I stood there staring, unable to believe he would use those
sharp leather straps on my breasts.  Surely he wouldn't...

"But you can't--" I protested, too shocked by his intent to
obey his directive.

"That's five.  Close your eyes, now."

I closed them with a shudder of fear running through me.
"Please don't," I pleaded in a whisper, unable to resist
despite the knowledge that I was tempting the addition of
another stroke of the signal whip, which my one brief
experience of had led me to dread more than anything.

"Kat," his voice was soft and patient as his hands claimed
my breasts, molding and squeezing them softly, then with
increasing pressure.  "Who do these belong to?"

"You," I whispered helplessly, elation and terror warring
within me.  "They belong to you, Master."

"And that means I can do with them what I want, doesn't it?
I can kiss them--" he punctuated his words with the actions
he described, "--or pinch them, or squeeze them, or even
whip them, can't I?"

"Yes, Master."

"Good.  Now, no more disobedience.  Hold still and be
quiet."

"Yes, Master."

End of Aphrodisia VII - Part Three

Aphrodisia VII - New Territory (4 of 6)
Kristel St. Johns
kjohns@chaos.x-philes.com

I stood there too afraid to even tremble, and a moment
later a muffled "thwack!" reached my ears, followed soon by
another and another.  Hesitantly, I lifted one eyelid to
see what he was doing, to find him using the quirt on a
throw pillow, biting his bottom lip in concentration.  He
struck it repeatedly, aiming for and, I noticed, hitting,
the same spot each time.  I became so engrossed watching
him that I only belatedly realized I was disobeying and
hastily looked down and closed my eyes.  A second later,
the sounds of his practicing ceased and I once again felt
his hands on my breasts.

He caressed me for a long moment, then placed a gentle kiss
on my parted lips and moved away.  A second later I gasped
loudly as the tips of the twin leather tongues connected
sharply with the fronts of my thighs.

More than anything, it was surprise which opened my eyes
again.  Without breaking his prohibition against looking
up, I could still see he had gone down on one knee, taking
careful aim from a few feet in front of me.  He drew back
the somewhat floppy-handled quirt by holding it by the grip
with one hand and running the length of it through his
other, back over his shoulder.  Then he would release the
tails and swing it over-hand in a gentle arch, letting it
flash out to lick my thighs.  Tiny pinpoints of pain blazed
into life where the pointed lashes landed, leaving me
squirming and rotating my hips in discomfort.

I belong to him--he can do with me whatever he wants, I
chanted in my head.  I tried to focus on my breathing,
keeping it slow and steady and counting each breath.  In
that way, I could distract myself from what was happening
to my body.

As he had with the paddle and the crop, he started out
slowly and softly, allowing me time to get used to the
sensation before increasing the force of his blows.  My
attempts at self-distraction gave way to new vistas of
sensation that turned out, once again, to be more
frightening in theory than painful in practice.  He hit me
with only the tips, flicking them sharply across my tender
flesh.  It was a small, biting pain, dissipating quickly
and leaving none of the lingering burning on my skin I had
experienced before with the other implements.  Each stroke
drew a yelp from me that increased in volume and intensity
with the force of his blows.  My counting was completely
defeated, each breath its own entity as I yielded myself
and became absorbed by the moment rather than seeking to
escape it.

There was pleasure to be had here as well, I realized.
Toward the end of the whipping with the crop, the pain had
become severe enough that it no longer equated to pleasure
in that strange alchemy of sensation he created for me.
The same had been true of the paddle.  The pain of the
quirt, however, was sharp and fleeting, of an entirely
different "flavor" from the crop or paddle, and was
accompanied by a delicious fear that had the muscles of my
sex clenching greedily.  By the time he moved to my breasts
and repeated the process, I was panting heavily in a
combination of pain and desire.

He spent a very long time on my breasts, pacing his strokes
at a leisurely rate.  The swing of the quirt, the bite of
the lashes, the sting of the contact all came and passed in
their turn, until my breasts, as with my thighs, were
mottled with small red marks that gave me a secret
satisfaction when I caught sight of them, even as I cried
out in pain.  The licks of fire gradually tapered off,
leaving me panting, my skin moist with perspiration as
though with exertion.

"That's good, Kat," my Master murmured to me, laying aside
the implement of pain and lavishing praise and caresses
upon me.  His hands gently cupped my breasts, soft fingers
soothing away the lingering sting of the quirt.  "You
handled that beautifully.  I'm very proud of you."

I glowed and preened under his compliments, but soon his
fingers seized my nipples and began to pinch.  This
combination of pain and pleasure I knew very well and I
panted my way through the increasing pressure.  In short
order, I found my nipples grasped by the familiar vise of
the nipple clamps and he was gone, passing behind me once
more.

At some point, my ass had quit burning, my skin cooling
while he bestowed his attentions upon my breasts.  I was
highly sensitized to his hands as they ran over my buttocks
and thighs, but the heat that lingered after the crop had
finally dissipated.  I felt something cool and soft as
velvet brush my flesh, rubbing softly over the surface of
my skin.

The flogger again, I thought as the scent of the new suede
wafted reached me.  Delicious anticipation sizzled through
me, a jolt of excitement I was powerless to contain.  The
first blow he struck was full strength, the soft tails of
the flogger impacting with a force that teetered on that
magical threshold between pleasure and pain.  The sound of
the blow was enormous, thundering in my ears, the
percussion causing my eardrums to ache.  The blows rained
down without pause or mercy, fast and hard.  It didn't hurt
nearly as much as the paddle or crop, but instead began to
relax me, like a brutal massage.  The impact caused my body
to sway beneath my bound hands, which in turn jostled the
clamps I wore, creating a whole other level of sensation as
my nipples began to ache in ever-increasing measures.

"Tell me what you're feeling, Kat," he commanded, panting
with the effort of swinging the flogger.  "Do you like
this?"

"I--" I stammered, unable to complete the sentence.  He was
asking me not only to accept that I enjoyed pain, but to
admit it aloud.  I didn't know if I could do that.

"Answer me, Kat," another thundering blow crossed my
shoulder blades, followed by more.  Under the unceasing
repetition of the blows, the mild half-pain I felt when he
first swung the flogger full-force became an unrelenting
ache.

Yes, I liked it, I thought deliriously, feeling the force
of his will, to which I had so utterly capitulated,
battering at the vestiges of my reticence.  I remembered
the times, during our most intense scenes involving nipple
pain, when I had felt transported to a place of sheer
sensation, where I existed only as a being of pure feeling.
That feeling returned now, all the more powerful because I
was gradually coming to a mental place where I could
embrace it rather than resist.

"Yes," I whimpered under another blow, then again, louder,
"Yes...Yes."

The strokes of the flogger immediately began to taper off,
sweeping gently back and forth across my shoulder blades,
getting ever softer until finally it disappeared
completely, leaving me breathless and stunned.  Relief and
regret mingled inside my mind as I sought to make sense of
time and place.

"Are you all right?" he queried, enveloping me in his arms
as he began the startlingly painful process of removing
first one nipple clamp, then the other.  He stroked my
breasts softly as I sighed and allowed my head to roll back
on his shoulder.  I felt limp and drained, alive in ways I
had never imagined and yet utterly boneless at the same
time.

"Yes, Master," I murmured.  His hands slid up my arms and a
moment later, my cuffs were released from the chain that
suspended them from the ceiling.  I whimpered as the new
freedom made me aware of the stiffness in my shoulders and
arms, and my Master solicitously guided me to the futon.

"Here, lay down," he urged gently, placing me upon my
stomach.  He quickly unbuckled the cuffs from my wrists and
tossed them carelessly aside, giving me a shoulder rub
until the ache eased and I lay pliant and drowsy beneath
his touches.  All the time, he spoke soft words of praise
and admiration to me, telling me how well I had handled
what he did to me, how brave and strong and beautiful I was
and how proud of me he felt.  By the time he was finished,
I was humming with contented desire, ready to be fucked but
reluctant to break this tender intimacy.  He lay beside me
and held me for a long while.  I faded in and out of
reality a few times, and I wasn't precisely certain how
much time passed before he rose and retrieved the bottle of
water, wrapping an arm around my shoulders to help me sit
up and drink it.  If I were to venture a guess, a good half
hour or more passed before I came back to myself.  The
entire while, he cuddled and soothed me as I slumped
against his chest in a daze, awareness returning in slow
increments.

"Now," he said at last, "I think there's the little matter
of a fucking I promised you, but first, we have to deal
with your disobedience.  Six strokes with the signal whip."

"Six!" I protested weakly, lifting my head.  "But you said
fi--!"

"Did you or did you not watch me while I was practicing
with the quirt?" he asked pointedly.

Muttering, I conceded the sixth offense.  How the hell he
knew I'd watched him was beyond me, because I was positive
he'd never once glanced in my direction.  In my altered
state, I was almost ready to believe that dominance imbued
omniscience.

"Get up on your hands and knees," he instructed me
brusquely, and I sensed he still wasn't comfortable with
this aspect of his responsibilities as the dominant.
"Let's get this done so I can get on with fucking you."

Reluctantly, I rose up on my knees and presented my
posterior for the whip.  From my one previous experience
with the signal whip, I was not eager to taste it again.
Especially after today's session, I was coming to realize
that there were varieties of pain I found arousing and
others I did not.  I had enjoyed the crop more than the
paddle, for instance.  The sensation had been entirely
different.  I was sure, just from my prior encounter, that
the signal whip would not create a flavor of pain I
particularly cared for.

I felt the single, knotted cord brush across my ass,
lightly back and forth with increasing force until my skin
was once more warm and tingling.  Then, without warning,
the first stroke landed with a sharp, whistling sound,
blazing a trail of liquid fire across my skin as I writhed
and whimpered against the pain.  Unlike the crop and
paddle, both of which created a sting that quickly faded
after the instant of impact, the single-tailed short whip
left a line of heat that was slow to recede.  My Master's
hand caressed the tender spot softly, drawing an
uncomfortable gasp from me, and as the pain began to abate,
a second stroke landed.

I whimpered loudly and shrilly, wriggling as though I could
dislodge the lingering burn.  On the next stroke, I jerked
away, going so far as to nearly flip all the way over.  I
was tempted to make my escape but was prevented first by my
own uncertainty and then by his restraining hand in my
hair.

"There will be another stroke for each time you cause me to
miss," he vowed.  Shuddering and reluctant, I resumed my
position on hands and knees.

Three more times, the process repeated itself, until I had
six lines of pain running across my ass, three on each
buttock, and I was biting the comforter beneath my face to
keep from shrieking.  Tears burned my eyes, but when my
Master disentangled my hands from the covers and pulled me
into his embrace, I went willingly.  Rocking me slowly back
and forth, he soothed away with loving murmurs the pain
which he had administered for my disobedience.  I was
reminded of the few times in my childhood that it had been
necessary for my father to spank me, and how he had always
cuddled me afterward and never left until he was satisfied
that we were once again right with each other.

When my Master kissed me at long last, I yielded my lips
eagerly, parting for him and welcoming the intrusion of his
tongue into my mouth.  My hands grasped the back of his
neck and hungrily pulled him closer to me, desperately
enflamed with passion.  When I would have leaned back and
pulled him down atop of me, he resisted, taking the time to
kiss me leisurely, exploring my mouth, nibbling on my lips
until they were swollen and numb.

Contrary to his claims of intending to fuck me, he very
slowly and thoroughly made love to me.  He eased me back
and claimed my breasts with his mouth and hands, until I
was squirming and moaning beneath him, before his fingers
traveled further down my body and delved between my legs,
sliding in and out of my slick sex easily.  His thumb plied
my clitoris while his fingers set a slow, delicious motion
within me and soon my moans gave way to small cries of
delight.  He trapped one of my legs between his, spreading
me wider open, and cradled my body as he ran impassioned
kisses over my face and neck and shoulders.

"Come for me, Kat," he murmured.  "Come for me, baby.  Let
me see how beautiful you are when you come."

I opened my eyes, staring at the ceiling in dismay.  This
was wrong; he shouldn't be doing this for me.  I hadn't
earned the reward he had promised.

"No!" I gasped, sitting up and pulling away from his hands.
"Please don't."

"What's the matter?" he queried, in an instant changing
gears from passion to tender solicitude.

"I didn't--you shouldn't--" I stuttered for a moment, my
disorientation working against me as I fought for the
proper words.  "I lied."

"How did you lie?"

"When I used my safeword earlier," I answered slowly.  "I
shouldn't have used it.  It was for the wrong reasons.  I
wasn't in danger and I didn't feel unsafe.  I was just
scared and wanted you to stop."

"I'll never punish you for using your safeword," he said
solemnly.  "That's what it's there for.  And it's for
emotional distress as well as physical.  If something was
wrong--"

"Nothing was wrong," I countered sharply, frustrated by his
predisposition for giving me the benefit of the doubt.
"That's the problem.  I just wanted to make you stop, and
that was the only way I could think of.  But there was no
reason for you to stop--I wasn't in trouble.  It didn't
even really hurt all that much.  I was--I was trying to
take back control, not giving it up the way I was supposed
to, and that's why I used the safeword.  You told me not to
send up any more false distress signals, but I did.  By
your rules I shouldn't be rewarded after that."

A moment of silence passed and then he nodded.  Slowly I
lay back down, expecting, even somewhat hoping, that he
would simply crawl atop me and fuck me without thought for
my pleasure.  But though the foreplay was most definitely
over, his manner was no less sensual as he slid his body
along mine, moving into position between my thighs and
kissing me tenderly and deeply.  With a tremulous sigh, I
wrapped my arms and legs around his body, clutching him to
me as though I would crawl through his skin.  No matter how
tightly I held him, how deeply he filled me, I couldn't get
close enough to him.

All that mattered in that moment was the feeling of him on
top of me, his flesh filling me.  I held him too strongly
to allow for much movement, and so we laid together,
rocking in a slow, steady rhythm with his weight pressing
me into the futon and his skin hot and slick against mine.
Some time later, he came with a shuddering gasp as I smiled
past his shoulder at the ceiling, happy beyond reason.  By
the time he rolled off of me and spooned his body against
mine, I was asleep.

End of Aphrodisia VII - Part Four

Aphrodisia VII - New Territory (5 of 6)
Kristel St. Johns
kjohns@chaos.x-philes.com

I glanced over at Scully as she slipped her hand into mine.
We were outside the pub where a local BDSM society held
their Tuesday evening "munch."  We had a long debriefing
after our play session Saturday, during which she informed
me that she enjoyed the play immensely, and we decided that
if we were to continue on our present course, it would
definitely behoove us to investigate some sort of support
and information system.  We decided to proceed with the
plan we had formed some time ago: to become acquainted with
the local BDSM community and see what resources we could
find there.

The success of our encounter Saturday went a long way
toward reassuring me about the direction in which we were
taking our D/s relationship.  I was hesitant about
introducing pain play into the situation, but it seemed
like the proper step to take, if for no other reason than
to provide Scully with a thorough exploration of her
submissiveness.  My reluctance sprang from my own
uncertainties.  I had no interest in making Scully suffer,
but conversely I was afraid of finding sadistic tendencies
in my own nature.  I'd seen into the minds of monsters too
many times, enough that I was half-afraid I might be a
monster as well.  I was scared that if I undertook to
perform what seemed on the surface to be violent acts, some
ravening beast lurking inside me, an aspect of my own
personality that I frequently feared existed, would charge
forth to wreak havoc on poor Scully.  It was ridiculous, I
knew, seeing as I'd cut off my own arm before harming her
intentionally, and yet I hadn't been able to shake the
dread of what might lurk within me.

But as I slowly got into the rhythm of our play, that fear
dissipated.  I found that my concentration had been focused
on what she was experiencing, and my attention centered on
her safety and her reactions.  I freely enjoyed the
gratification that indubitably accompanied what I was
doing, because my pleasure in no way originated from the
idea that I was hurting her.  Rather, it came from the
movements and sounds she made in time with the elemental
rhythm of the whip.  It came from the scent of her arousal
and the knowledge of her surrender.  It came from the
moment when, by the tension of her muscles, I saw her cease
to struggle against what was happening and instead
relinquish herself to it--to me.  It came from the fact
that she trusted me with her most vulnerable self and from
the knowledge that what I was doing, I was doing to fulfill
that trust.

Slowly, I was becoming less afraid of myself and the harm I
might do either of us.  I was finally allowing myself to
enjoy our games, not just for the fact that I was pleasing
Scully by participating, but because it brought me pleasure
as well.  Her yielding to me was at once heady and
humbling, filling me not only with power, but also with an
enormous sense of obligation and responsibility.  Physical
pleasure aside, it was an emotional thrill more profound
than anything I'd ever known before.  We had crossed an
important line, and now I wanted more.

It was as though a curtain had been pulled open, revealing
behind it the marvelous vista of possibilities of where
this could lead us now that I no longer had cause to worry
about what I might do.  The erotic potential of these new
activities was boundless as long as we were both willing,
but these were not the sort of games one jumped into
unprepared and uneducated.

We were both nervous about this step.  The discussion we'd
had months ago about the fact that we were both deeply
private people still held true.  There was a definite
chance we might be seen by someone who would carry tales,
or by someone whose job it was to spy on us for evidence of
impropriety, or we might even be recognized by someone
already in attendance.  Both of us had made the news at one
time or another, though luckily, despite the press
surrounding the Donnie Pfaster ordeal, Scully had been able
to avoid the cameras and hadn't recently been plastered
across the six o'clock news.  My primary inclination was to
stick to the shadows, to fulfill my reputation as Mr.
Paranoia and assume that anyone could be a spy for those
who would use this against us.  But the fact was, the act
of us sleeping together was enough to doom us, for
technically Scully was an agent under my supervision and
therefore the relationship subject to anti-harassment
regulations.  We didn't need to be kinky to get busted.
But we weren't going to live in the shadows, weren't going
to behave as though we were ashamed.  We had lives to lead,
and we wanted to live them together.

But even that need to live a life approaching normalcy I
might have dismissed in my need for self-isolation, if not
for one fact: I was a novice top, and half the time what I
did was conducted by guesswork and intuition.  I practiced
with the whips and crops for hours on end whenever Scully
wasn't around for weeks to be sure I felt ready to use them
on her in an extended scene.  I lifted weights to make sure
my arms didn't tire and cause a mis-stroke, and still I
nearly decided not to go through with it.  It was a
dangerous game in the hands of the unwise or unwary, and I
didn't want to harm her.  Finally it was that fact that
made me decide we didn't have any other option but to seek
out the company of others who shared this interest of ours.
If Scully and I were going to continue the D/s play, I
needed to be exposed to others who knew better than me what
the hell they were doing, for her safety.  If Scully hadn't
felt comfortable attending the munch, I would have gone
alone, so deep was my determination to keep her safe and
protected from any blunder on my part.

A cursory glance around the interior of the pub revealed
nothing of where the people hosting the munch might be.
The place was filled with average, unremarkable people.  I
spent a long moment scanning the room until I espied,
toward the back, a sort of banquet area filled with long
trestle tables, as opposed to the booths and smaller tables
in the front of the pub.  If a large group was going to
assemble, no doubt that was where they would be seated.
Already, there were small clusters of people here and there
in that area.

As we drew closer, it became clear that there was a
marginally higher ratio of pierced/tattooed/leather-clad
people in the bunch gathered around the long picnic-style
tables than might normally be seen, but perhaps not as much
as I expected.  Discussion and laughter flowed freely among
the groups, but there were no behaviors in evidence that
could be considered abnormal or deviant.  As far as anyone
on the outside looking in could tell, all these people were
a bunch of friends meeting for dinner and beers.

"Are you here for the munch?" a soft contralto voice came
from behind us and we both whirled to face the person who
had addressed us.  It was a striking woman in her late
thirties, small and thin, with snapping dark eyes and a
spectacular head of thigh-length dark hair.  Her irregular
features could hardly be called pretty, but the way she
carried herself and the two or three small streaks of white
running through her hair were certainly attention-worthy.
"Sorry to startle you," she laughed.  "You just had the
'what the hell am I doing here?' look on your faces I see
every time someone new shows up.  I'm Tamara, and my top,
Blade, over there--" she nodded toward a huge African-
American man of indeterminate age in muted conversation
with another couple-- "is sort of the founding father of
this particular munch.  It's one of my duties to keep an
eye out for newcomers and make sure you don't run away
before we have a chance to corrupt you properly."

I could see Scully blink at the woman's flippancy, which
was slightly off-putting.  I extended my hand and Tamara
grasped it firmly and confidently.

"I'm Marty and this is Kate," I introduced us as Scully
shook her hand in turn, venturing a wary smile.

"Well, come on and have a seat.  Everything is on one tab
and we're on the honor system here.  Just leave enough cash
to cover your meals and a tip in the basket there in the
middle of the table before you leave.  Be sure to leave a
*generous* tip, if you can.  The waiters here work their
asses off for us, and ensuring their goodwill is the way we
calm the proprietor's qualms about allowing the kinky folk
to gather in his wholesome establishment," she informed us
with slight sarcasm.

Tamara slid onto a bench seat toward the end of the long
table and Scully and I claimed the seats across from her.
She was dressed casually in faded blue jeans and a tight
black long-sleeved t-shirt.  A hint of a tattoo could be
seen above her breast where the v-neck of the shirt dipped
down.  Her merry candor, while initially unnerving, was
tremendously helpful in dispersing our unease.  Beside me,
Scully sat quietly alert while our hostess began a long and
well-rehearsed introduction to the munch and the people who
attended it.

"You'll meet a lot of people with 'scene' names, like
Blade.  It's nothing unusual.  I guess you might assume
it's because this is Washington and probably half the
people here work for the government in one form or another,
but the truth is you can get fired from just about any job
if you're outted as being a pervert.  Several people here
can attest to that," Scully and I both squirmed
uncomfortably.  Surely that was the worst thing she could
have told us at that point in time.  I squashed my instinct
to bolt while Tamara continued, unaware of our nervousness,
"But I think also, people just get off on the drama."

A short, plump African-American woman with large glasses
and bobbed hair approached and gave Tamara a warm hug and
kiss in greeting.  She was dressed in a crisp white blouse
and short plaid skirt and carried a stuffed teddy bear
tucked under her arm.  She wore a large button with the
words "Daddy's Girl" emblazoned upon it.

"This is Belinda," the introduction was made.  "She's been
around a couple years and has taken it upon herself to act
as a sort of protector for all the new female subs who show
up."

"I keep the vultures away," Belinda clarified cheekily.

"Vultures?" Scully asked, an eyebrow lifting.

"You haven't seen a feeding frenzy until some of the single
het male tops find out there's a new sub-fem on the scene,"
she threw out the scene jargon without pause, assuming we'd
be able to keep up, which we did--barely.  "I just make
sure they give the poor girl some breathing space.  You're
with someone, so you shouldn't have cause to worry," she
informed Scully.

"She's also our resident knives expert," Tamara added.
"There's always somebody willing to act as the fruit
platter at the play parties when Belinda's doing the
cutting."  A little startled by this announcement, Scully
and I cringed as we were introduced by the names we had
given Tamara.  Belinda sat down beside Tamara and hauled
out a Polaroid from her purse.

"See?" she handed the photo to us and Scully and I both
smiled in absurd relief to realize the "fruit platter" was
a presumably naked woman lying on a table  and covered in
artistically arranged sliced fruit.  "I sliced all the
fruit on her, physically, so she was the cutting board as
well as the platter--without a single nick, I might add,"
she declared proudly.

A waitress finally arrived to take our order, and Belinda
joined in the conversation we'd been having with Tamara,
explaining the purpose of the munch and what we'd encounter
from the people here.  For the munch itself, socialization
was the primary purpose.  It was a chance to get to know
other people, a place to find potential partners if you
didn't already have one, and a place to discuss issues
affecting the leather community.  There were clubs,
seminars, and workshops that also took place around the
city, each appealing to a different type of player.  Issues
ranged from the psychology of pagan sex magick to the
proper care and cleaning of leather goods, from do-it-
yourself sex furniture to S&M safety practices.  I made a
mental note to check out some of these last types of
meetings.

The munch was also a place where you could find various
items which might not be available at your local fetish
shop.  There were a couple whipmakers who brought samplings
of their wares and took orders for custom-made implements,
and a couple people who specialized in designing or making
leather and fetish clothing, as well as other services.

"Before you leave, you'll have to check out the swap box,"
Belinda urged.  "It's over there in the corner.  That's my
daddy, Mike, standing next to it."  Scully shot a glance at
me and I shrugged gamely.  She'd asked me what age play was
all those months ago and here was a real live example.
"The idea for the box is this: if you have a toy you don't
like, or are tired of, bring it to the munch and leave it
in the box.  Then you go through what's already there and
see if you find something else you like.  The contents of
the swap box are always rotating, so if nothing strikes
your fancy keep checking back and when you find something
you want to try out, go ahead and take it.  With good
leather gear and sex toys being as ungodly expensive as
they are, it's a good way to get to try new things without
shelling out the outrageous prices you'll see in the fetish
shops.  All we ask is that anything you bring to the box be
cleaned and disinfected, and that HIV positive people not
leave any toys which have come into contact with blood or
bodily fluids."

The people around us were, we learned, from all walks of
life.  There were probably a higher percentage of
government employees than would be present anywhere else in
America, but professions ranged from medicine to computers
to day-care providers.  Some were dressed in everyday
street clothes, others a bit more outlandishly.  We saw
tattoos and piercings in strange and unusual places,
alongside other people who were virtually unmarked.  The
main impression I came away with was that no one here could
be considered "unusual" in any fashion.  Not even Spooky
Mulder.

As our meals arrived and were consumed, other people came
by to introduce themselves, or to greet Tamara or Belinda
and thus be introduced.  Eventually I became aware of the
slight hesitancy and awkwardness both Scully and I shared
in this social setting.  We'd been insulated from other
people for too long, I thought guiltily.  Neither of us
knew anymore how to relate to others socially.  There was
always a pause before we introduced ourselves, a discreet
but unmistakable summing up of the other person as the
opening volley of a conversation was made.  We were
bordering on downright anti-social, I realized unhappily.
Had I done this to Scully?  I didn't care so much about
myself, I was used to being alone, but surely Scully had
been more comfortable with people before she joined the
wild ride that was the X-Files.  Troubled, I sat back and
watched Scully interact with the others.

Eventually, Tamara's top, Blade, also joined us,
approaching Tamara from behind as she and Belinda kept up a
steady and helpful stream of conversation.  He threaded his
massive fingers through her coal-black hair and pulled her
head back until she was looking up at him.

I heard a small hitch of breath from beside me and turned
my head to see Scully watching them.  Her lips were parted
and her pupils dilated, her forehead creased with
consternation as though witnessing something highly
intimate and yet unable to look away.  Through the cotton
of her blouse, I could see her nipples peak and understood
with a flash of insight that the exhibition of power-play
between the two was turning her on.  Her eyes were riveted
on Tamara.

"Have you ordered for us yet?"  He asked in a rumbling bass
voice.  He wore a black leather vest over a white t-shirt
that strained over the muscles of his biceps.

"No, Sir, I was waiting for you," she answered with a
sublime expression.  I could understand why Scully was so
captivated by the display.  I was staring, too.

Tamara scooted over on the bench to make room for him and
he sat across from us.  When the waitress arrived, he
autocratically placed an order for both himself and Tamara,
without even asking what she wished to eat, while she
smiled serenely.

We were treated to a lesson on how their particular branch
of the D.C. leather scene came into being.  Blade had been
active in the community for over thirty years, dating back
to the time when the main S&M scene was the gay biker gangs
with their clubs and initiation rites.  Eventually, the
leather scene had spread out and been adopted as a
lifestyle by others from all walks.

We also got some personal history about our companions.
Blade and Tamara had been together for five years and were
both involved in other romantic relationships.  They only
played together, with the knowledge and consent of their
partners.

At that knowledge, I squirmed uncomfortably.  What I felt
for Scully was too powerful and all-consuming to leave room
for anyone else.  Though I was familiar with the concept of
polyamory, the practice of having "open" relationships with
the knowledge and consent of all involved parties, it
wasn't anything I would remotely consider doing myself.
There had never been any question of exclusivity between
us.  It was simply an assumed fact.

There were some single people in the group, but a lot of
couples.  We were introduced to a pair by the names of
James and Anne as they stopped by to tell Tamara and Blade
good-bye on their way out the door.  James was wearing a
collar and stood obediently a step behind Anne, who was
dressed in a somewhat subdued version of your stereotypical
leather goddess outfit.  Anne was, we learned, a
professional dominatrix and James her live-in slave.
Another woman, dressed much like Belinda and as obviously
into age-play, was introduced with her "daddy", who was
actually a woman.

"This bunch is pretty pan-sexual," Belinda explained as she
gestured around the room, pointing out various people we
might want to get to know and explaining their 'kink.'
"You have some groups specifically for gays, or lesbians,
or for different types of play.  I've actually recently
become involved with a support group for sub females, or at
least, self-identifying females."

"Self-identifying?" Scully asked, obviously intrigued.

"Anyone who lives their daily life as a woman," Belinda
clarified.  "You and I would, of course, be allowed.  So
would Marie over there," she gestured to a tall, willowy
transvestite at the end of the table.  "But Ben--over
there--who just dresses up occasionally at the parties,
would not.  The group started because of the difficulty
some of us encountered with being a submissive female in
today's society.  A lot of feminists have a problem with
what we do, maybe not so much because we're submissive, but
because we're *het* submissives.  It's okay to bottom to
another woman, but not to a man, or so the current theory
says.  They accuse us of reverting to type.  The way I see
it, that's a pretty ironic declaration when you consider
the definition of feminism is a woman having the right to
choose to do what's right and empowering for her.  If we
find that empowerment in submission, then aren't we
actually living the very spirit of feminism?"

"We're a political bunch," Tamara interjected with a
sardonic smile, and Belinda ducked her head apologetically,
realizing she'd been evangelizing.  "It comes with the
territory.  And it's not quite that cut and dried, either.
Belinda and I are both bisexual, polyamorous switches.  We
play with multiple partners and we top and we play with
other women.  You get all kinds here, but it's hard not to
get into the 'my kink is okay, yours is not' mindset."

"Speaking of politics," Belinda jumped in, changing the
subject so quickly that Scully and I both blinked.  "Before
you leave, you might want to stop by the end of the table
and pick up some of the brochures there.  We're selling
memorabilia for the Paddleboro Defense League, if you're
interested."

Of course, neither of us knew what the Paddleboro Defense
League was, prompting her to explain.  Only a couple of
months previously, in Attleboro, Massachusetts, police
raided a private play party.  As Scully and I were also
unfamiliar with the concept of play parties (I wanted to
hazard a guess but was unwilling to make any assumptions),
our hosts were obliged to backtrack and give us more
information.

A play party was a gathering of BDSM practitioners, a.k.a.
"leather folk," meeting to socialize and also to perform
scenes in a group venue.  Usually they were privately
hosted, though some bars hosted a "Fetish Night" at which
play could also be done publicly.  It was not, contrary to
the way it sounded, an orgy, they were careful to explain.
Though most S&M play is, at its core, sexually motivated,
these parties tended to be less about sex than about the
other aspects of the play, Tamara clarified.  It was more
along the lines of extended foreplay.  Intercourse was
often prohibited as such parties, and in fact was
prohibited at the Attleboro party.  You might see someone
stripped naked and whipped, but you wouldn't see anyone
fucking.  It was simply a group of friends indulging a
common interest, almost like a dance club.

In the Attleboro incident, police were supposedly
investigating reports of some stolen stereo equipment from
one of the nearby lofts in the old warehouse complex...

("At eleven o'clock on a Saturday night," Belinda
interjected, scoffing.)

...when they witnessed people lining up at the door of one
suite of rooms, paying someone at a table.  The guests at
the party were asked to make a donation to cover the cost
of space rental, as well as food, beverages, and latex
supplies for the party.  The police entered the party
without a warrant, which wasn't obtained until four o'clock
in the morning, some five hours after they first entered.

The raid on resulted in two arrests.  The first was the
host of the party, on charges ranging from operating a
business without a license to running a place of
prostitution to possessing objects of "self abuse."  The
definition of items of "self-abuse" under the specific law
referenced for his arrest would also make the distribution
of condoms illegal.  Additionally, the host was charged
with assaulting a police officer.

The other detainee was a woman at the party whom police
claimed to have witnessed beating another woman.  She was
charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon,
under a Massachusetts statute which states a person cannot
"consent" to be assaulted, even for the purpose of sexual
gratification.

"Makes you wonder how many boxing matches have been busted
up in Massachusetts," Blade commented from where he had sat
while Tamara explained the history of the incident.

Aside from the extremely belated attainment of a warrant,
there appeared to be some questionable search and seizure,
including a list of names and email addresses of the people
invited to the party.  The press painted a picture of
people being "recruited" for these kinky sex parties over
the Internet.  The "dangerous weapon" the woman had been
charged with using turned out to be a wooden spoon, which
many players carried for use as paddles.  Someone at the
munch this evening was selling wooden spoons emblazoned
with the "Paddleboro" logo and the black and blue "Leather
Pride" flag in support of the legal defense fund.  There
were also black t-shirts with a picture of a pair of
handcuffs declaring "THIS was non-consensual."

Scully and I exchanged wary glances, unsure how to respond.
As law enforcement officers, assault on a police officer
was a serious issue to us.  Sure, the rest of the charges
sounded like complete bullshit, but without further facts,
we could not, in good conscience, either support or
denounce the acts of either the participants at that play
party or the raiding police officers.  We did promise to
pick up some of the literature on our way out, if for no
other reason than to be in possession of more facts on the
matter.  Being involved with these activities and with our
jobs being what they were, it would help considerably to
know what we were up against if these two facets of our
lives should ever collide.

Talk of the incident in Attleboro led to a discussion of
the state of the leather community in other parts of the
country.  Portland, Oregon, we learned, had something
called a Sexual Minorities Round Table.  It was a forum in
which representatives from the gay, lesbian, and leather
communities met with law enforcement officials and
lawmakers to ensure that such misunderstandings were not an
issue.  There was campaigning from members of the leather
community around the country to institute such forums in
other cities.  San Francisco not only tolerated its leather
folk, but embraced them, going so far as to allow a BDSM-
oriented street fair every year, much along the lines of
the Gay Pride parade.

End of Aphrodisia VII - Part Five

Aphrodisia VII - New Territory (6 of 6)
Kristel St. Johns
kjohns@chaos.x-philes.com

We left the munch with a whole cache of names, email
addresses, and information we hadn't had before.  I think
we were both relieved to find the people we met to be so
ordinary and approachable.  There was a slight hint of the
exotic counter-culture we anticipated, but not nearly as
much as we expected.  There was no pageantry or
outrageousness at the munch; the people we met were no more
or less normal than ourselves.  There were varying degrees
to which the BDSM activities in which they participated
affected their lives and their lifestyles.  Though we had
known before that we were not alone in our interest, now we
finally understood that we were part of a community.

Scully was quiet on the drive home, a state I wasn't sure
heralded well for our situation.  Had she been put off or
intrigued by the people we met?  Did she wish to continue
pursuing the D/s play, or had she seen or met someone that
made her change her mind?

"You know, I still don't get the age play thing," she
announced out of the blue, her voice flat as she shifted in
the passenger seat to face me.

"Don't get it or don't want to get it?" I inquired, giving
her a sidewise glance as I recalled her initial distaste at
the idea.

"I don't know.  Both, maybe.  I just don't feel the need to
sexualize that particular dynamic in my life.  And I know
it can take other forms, but even so I don't understand the
point of pretending to be a child.  I'd feel silly."

"You think so?  You've said you like yielding control--
being a child is place in life where you have very little
personal control, anyone can guide you, tell you what to
do, where the rules and discipline of an authority figure
are the very center of your life."

"That's true, but that's not what concerns me so much,"
Scully replied, shifting in her seat again.  "I have to
wonder about the mentality of the 'adult' in such a scene.
When I try to make sense of what they get out of such a
scene, the best I can come up with is that it's a healthy
outlet for an unhealthy desire.  That somewhere in their
cerebral makeup, they share some of the same desires as,
say, a pedophile, the desire to exercise complete and utter
control over something smaller and weaker and more
innocent.  But unlike your average pedophile, these people
have intact the portion of their reasoning and
comprehension that says 'No, that's wrong, I won't do that'
and so instead they seek an outlet with a consenting adult
assuming the role of a helpless child."

"I think you're being unfair to them, Scully," I countered
after a moment of thought.  "Just because I like tying you
up and fucking you while you play the role of slave-girl
doesn't mean I am at all turned on by the idea of actually
kidnapping someone, subjugating them, and forcing my will
upon them.  That's why it's called role play.  It's not the
role you play that's the turn on, it's the fact that you're
playing it.  It's getting to see the differences between
the woman I know you to be and the persona you're assuming.
For them, I would venture to say it's not the idea of
interacting on a sexual level with an innocent that turns
them on, but rather the drama of the role play and the
sexual gratification that, for them, can only be provided
by another consenting adult."

"Are you saying that's something you'd like to try playing
at?" she asked me, arching an eyebrow in an attempt at
disdain.

"I'm a hedonist at heart, Scully.  I'll try anything once,"
I shrugged, unconcerned by her attempt to turn the
conversation back to me and my preferences.  "The point I
was trying to make was that there's probably more to the
experience than either of us would assume.  Maybe they just
find it to be fun."

"Well, sure, I suppose it could be fun if you didn't feel
like an idiot doing it," Scully retorted, folding her arms
stubbornly over her chest.  The too-stubborn set of her jaw
and defensive posture made me smirk.  I looked at her for a
long moment as we came to a light, trying to decide if I'd
get my balls handed to me on a plate if I assumed there was
a little too much protesting going on...and was wrong.

No.  I wasn't wrong, I resolved with an internal nod, and
turned at the light.

Scully blinked in surprise.  "I thought we were going to
your place."

"Nope," I answered, grinning.  Though we had only been a
few blocks from my apartment, I made the trip over to hers
without speaking, despite her best efforts.  By the time we
arrived at her door, she had given up grilling me.

"You got any Catholic school uniforms left, Scully?" I
asked, holding her by the elbow as I hurried her into the
building.

"Yeah--in a box in my mother's attic, not that they'd fit
me," she replied.

"Then improvise," I commanded, ushering her into the
bedroom then walking out.  Her outraged huff followed me
into the living room where I began neatly tucking away the
loose papers and file folders on her desk.  It wouldn't do
to have the files crumpled or otherwise...damaged.  I
rifled through the drawers until I found what I was looking
for, which I laid conspicuously on the now-bare surface of
the desk.  In a perfect world, the desk would be in the
middle of the room, facing the archway between the living
room and bedroom, so it would be the first thing she would
see when she came out, but I really didn't have time to
move it.  I was still in my suit and button-down shirt from
work, so I pulled the tie from my suit coat pocket and put
it on, using my reflection in the window, and buttoned the
top button of the blazer.  Ideally, I'd be wearing tweed,
but that just wasn't going to happen, so I'd have to make
do.  Finally I slipped my glasses out of my breast pocket
and put them on, letting them hang a little low on my nose.
It wasn't perfect, I decided, checking myself out one last
time in the window, but it would suffice.

I sat myself down in the chair, trying to look officious,
and turned when I heard a noise behind me.  Scully stood in
the archway, her hands folded behind her back while she
squirmed uncomfortably, rolling her eyes in exasperation as
if to say "Happy now?"  I felt my eyes widen at her
improvisational skills.  Somewhere she'd located a pleated
navy blue skirt, which she had rolled at the waistband to
shorten it.  It was an old trick, a parochial school-girl
mini-skirt.  Below the skirt was a stretch of bare skin
that ended in navy knee socks and loafers.  Her legs looked
impossibly long.  Her top was a plain white button-down
blouse, with the top two buttons negligently left undone,
and she'd pulled her hair back in a short ponytail.  It was
as though she had shed twenty years, and she somehow
managed the coltish combination of gangliness and grace
that is the curse and blessing of youth.  Her face was
carefully clean and devoid of obvious makeup, though it
looked like she may have used lip liner to add a little
extra poutiness to her mouth.  Then she pulled out the
object she'd been holding behind her back and slipped it
into her mouth, and I nearly swallowed my tongue.  Saints
preserve us, Scully had found a Tootsie-Roll pop.

I confirmed the theory I had put forth in the car in that
instant, I realized.  No fantasy could be sexier than the
reality of Scully fulfilling it.  It wasn't the school-girl
image she portrayed that caused my cock to stiffen in my
pants.  It was the fact that *she* was the one playing the
role.

She scrutinized me for a moment, then slowly withdrew the
sucker from her mouth as she leaned insolently against the
archway, crossing her arms underneath her breasts.  Behind
her eyes, mischief intermingled with nervousness, as though
she wanted to join the game but wasn't sure of her footing.
For that matter, neither was I.  I doubted my own wisdom in
initiating this role play.  This wasn't the solemn,
studious young girl I'd always imagined young Dana Scully
to be.  This Dana Scully gave men of the cloth enough
impure thoughts to keep them in confession for a month.
This Dana Scully would be the death of the nuns charged
with her intellectual and spiritual guidance.  This Dana
Scully was trouble.

"Sister Mary Roberta said you wanted to see me, Mr.
Mulder," she finally spoke, falteringly, as though she had
to force the words to come.  Which was no doubt exactly the
case.

"Yes, Miss Scully," I replied gruffly.  "Your homeroom
teacher, Sister Margaret Sebastian, tells me you've been
late to class every morning for the last week."

"Sorry," she shrugged carelessly, striking the perfect note
of innocence and impertinence.  She still wasn't
comfortable, but she was starting to get the hang of it.
"My boyfriend's been having car trouble.  It seems to stall
at every stop."

"You're not supposed to be riding to school with your
boyfriend, are you, Miss Scully?" I asked severely.
"That's why we provide a bus, so that none of the students
need be late because of--car trouble.  Isn't that right?"

Another indolent shrug, and the sucker slipped back between
her pouty lips into her mouth.  I felt myself grow harder
inside my slacks as she hollowed her cheeks sucking on the
candy.

"Besides, Miss Scully, your teacher told me that she saw
you in the parking lot with your boyfriend a full ten
minutes before class begins.  That should be plenty of time
to be at your desk before the bell rings, shouldn't it,
Miss Scully?  Unless you're doing something you shouldn't
be doing."

Suddenly her contrived insolence fled, and she was all
wide-eyed innocence.  "Please don't tell my parents," she
whispered urgently.  "They don't know--they think I ride
the bus."

Fuck me, I thought in amazement, surprised by her turn-
around.  She was actually getting into it.

"I don't see any reason why your parents have to know," I
responded after making her wait for an anxious moment.
"But here at the school, we have rules.  And we have
consequences for breaking those rules."  I lifted the
wooden ruler I had salvaged from the bottom of the desk
drawer and turned it over in my hands.  "If you are
prepared to accept those consequences, we can forget this
matter.  Are you prepared, Miss Scully?"

"Yes, Mr. Mulder," she murmured, ducking her head in
chagrin.

"Then turn around and bend over the desk, Miss Scully," I
commanded and rose from the chair while she obeyed, putting
the lollipop down.  When she presented her backside to me,
I flipped up the pleated skirt to reveal the simple pair of
white cotton bikini underwear she wore beneath.
Admiringly, I caressed her rear before sliding the panties
down onto her thighs, baring the smooth buttocks.

"There will be twenty swats with the ruler, Miss Scully," I
informed her.  "Ten for being late to class, and ten for
breaking the rules about riding the bus."  I saw a small
shiver run through her, but judging from the scent of her
arousal, it was one of anticipation rather than fear.

I started out softly, warming her up with gentle swats that
left light pink streaks across her pale flesh.  She
squirmed and wiggled beneath the strip of wood, gasping
softly as I increased the force of my swing on the fifth
stroke, snapping the makeshift paddle sharply against her
skin.

"Tell me, Miss Scully, your boyfriend--he's an older boy,
isn't he?  College aged, right?" I asked on the tenth
stroke while she moaned.

"Yes," she panted, a hint of obstinate rebellion in her
voice as I landed the eleventh blow.  "He's nineteen.  He's
a--" The twelfth swing cracked against her skin-- "man, not
a boy."

Ah, the true Dana Scully peeks through.  I knew her dating
bio.  She always had a thing for older men.  Authority
figures.  I could use that.

Thirteen.  "And do you like older men, Miss Scully?" I
queried calmly, swinging again.  Her ass was now taking on
a vivid red hue.  I gave her the fourteenth and fifteenth
stroke, each one harder than before, and then I demanded an
answer, placing a firm hand on her back to hold her still
while she squirmed.

"Yes!" she gasped loudly on the sixteenth blow.  I didn't
reply as I finished off the final hard strokes in rapid
succession, while she squealed and struggled against the
hand holding her down.  Then I set the ruler on the desk
beside her and gently caressed her lightly welted buttocks,
blowing across the heated skin to cool it.

"Tell me, Miss Scully," I murmured, running my hands
possessively over her ass, squeezing and kneading her
buttocks while she moaned.  "Has your boyfriend done this
to you?"  I slipped a finger between her thighs to find her
wet and the cotton of her panties soaked.

"No," she whispered, shaking her head so that her ponytail
bobbed.  "Not yet."

"No?" I asked incredulously, running a teasing finger
lightly back and forth over her labia.  I withdrew my
finger and sucked on it as I ordered her to turn around.
"Has he done this?" I queried, unbuttoning her blouse to
the waistband of her skirt.  I pulled her sensible cotton
bra cups down so that the garment caught under her breasts,
spilling them out and forcing them upward.

She shook her head again, batting her eyes innocently.
"You sure?" I insisted, cupping them in my hands and
thumbing the nipples.

"Well, maybe a little," she answered, blushing.  I leaned
forward and took one pink nipple into my mouth, running the
flat of my tongue over it until she gasped.

"Has he done that?" I demanded when I pulled away.  "Or
this?" I pulled the other nipple gently with my teeth.

"No!" she whimpered, closing her eyes, her hands falling on
my shoulders.  I teased her nipples for a moment longer
before I pressed her back against the desk, lifting her
under the armpits to sit her on the wood-grain surface.

"That's good," I murmured, scooping up both her breasts and
pressing them close together to lick rapidly back and forth
between the nipples.  "Because you're mine now, little
girl," I crooned, the line feeling a little absurd on my
tongue.  "Mr. Mulder's gonna take good care of you."

I went down on my knees to draw her panties down her legs
and dropped them on the table, glancing up at her.  She
looked young and wild sitting on the desk with her legs
spread, her breasts thrusting boldly out of her open
blouse.  I threw her skirt up off her thighs and covered
her clit with my mouth, pushing her shoulder so that she
leaned back upon the wall behind the desk, relishing her
breathless cry as her fists clenched and unclenched on the
desk beside her thighs.  I slowly licked over her mound,
savoring the nectar of her arousal from the slick, swollen
folds of skin and the springy auburn curls.  I slipped two
fingers inside her, twisting and wriggling them to
thoroughly coat them with moisture before I withdrew one
and slid it farther back, carefully inserting it into the
tighter opening behind.  As I stroked her clit firmly with
my tongue, I fucked her slowly and purposefully with both
fingers.

Soon she was growling and writhing above me, incoherent
with passion.  I loved this, loved the rhythm of her
movements in counterpoint to mine, loved the totality of
her surrender to the pleasure I gave her, loved the
tightness of her surrounding whatever part I happened to
have inside of her at the moment.  I loved the trust with
which she gave herself into my hands.  I loved the sounds
she made as she reached a breathless, shuddering climax,
her muscles pulsing and contracting around my fingers and
her fluids leaking over my lips and tongue.

She sat hunched over, limp and panting on the desk with her
knees draped over my shoulders as she recovered from her
climax.  Her face was flushed and her eyes glittering as
they met mine.  I rose slowly, removing her legs from my
shoulders, wiping my hand clean on her discarded underwear
and tossing them carelessly on the floor.  I purposefully
shed my suit coat and loosened my tie.  Then I opened my
belt and fly, letting my cock spring forth as I took up
position between her legs.  My hand threaded through her
hair and roughly pulled her head back, forcing her face up
so I could kiss her as I positioned my cock with my free
hand and slid inside her.

"Ohh...God...feels...good..." she panted against my lips
when I began to move with short, rhythmic strokes.  She
tasted like the candy she'd been sucking on, her lips
sticky with sugar.  Her sheath was exquisitely hot and
tight around me, encasing my cock in a vice of fire and I
groaned, knowing I wouldn't last long.  Determined to keep
up the game until it was over, I cupped her ass in both
hands and pulled her closer, holding her in position as I
pumped in and out relentlessly, as though unconcerned for
anything but my own satisfaction.  She wrapped her arms
around my neck and held on tightly, her breasts crushed
against my chest, until I came with a low groan and a few
last jerky thrusts.  It took me a long moment to recover as
I stood there, leaning on her small form until I regained
my strength.

Finally I pulled myself upright and fastened my trousers,
straightening my clothing and making a show of smoothing my
hair while she watched me quizzically.

"I'll expect to see you in my office again tomorrow if
you're late to class, Miss Scully," I said with a stern
look at her, pushing my glasses up on my nose from where
they had slipped.  With a becoming blush, she tucked her
breasts away and buttoned her blouse, then slid off the
edge of the desk.  She bent far over, giving me a good view
of her shapely ass as she retrieved her panties from the
floor and approached me.  Smiling cheekily, she tucked them
in my shirt pocket, then picked up her Tootsie-roll pop and
gave it a slow lick, before turning her back and walking
back to the bedroom.

When she emerged from cleaning up in the bathroom, all hint
of the adolescent seductress gone, I was laying sprawled on
the bed in my boxers, my hands folded behind my head.
She'd put away the skirt and blouse and donned a cotton
tank top and satin underwear.

"That was fun," she commented, crawling up onto the
mattress beside me.  "Even if I did feel silly."

"You didn't look silly," I replied, giving her a leer.
"Good thing you don't dress like that for work.  Remind me
never to challenge you to improvise again.  I'm obviously
outclassed at that game."

"I sure never had a principal who looked like you when I
was in school.  Good thing, too.  I had quite enough impure
thoughts to confess as it was," she giggled and I stared at
her, enraptured.  When did Scully begin giggling?

I took a moment to flip through the last year or so in my
mind, trying to pinpoint the moments when these little
changes became evident.  When had we ceased to be the
humorless, compulsive workaholics we were for so many years
and had started to make room for fun in our lives?  Was it
after Antarctica?  That sounded right.  Stuck on Kersh's
manure patrol, the work that had once consumed us became
something from which we required frequent escape.  We'd
begun socializing more together, Scully accompanying me on
"unofficial" investigations, me dragging her out to haunted
houses on Christmas Eve, baseball lessons in the park...

"What?" she asked finally, prodding me with an elbow and
snapping me out of my reverie.

"Nothing," I shook my head, dispelling the train of
thought.  It didn't matter when it had begun or why, only
that we were here, together, and we were happy.  I wasn't
going to spoil that by analyzing it to death.  I reached
for her and pulled her down until she lay on top of me,
nuzzling her neck.  "How ya feelin'?" I asked, cupping her
buttocks and squeezing softly to test how much residual
soreness there might be from the ruler I'd spanked her
with.

"Mmm," she grunted noncommittally.

Concerned, I pulled back to look at her closely.  "Scully?"
I prompted.  "You *are* okay, aren't you?  Is there--"

She snorted a brief laugh.  "Yes, Mulder, quit worrying.
I'm okay.  I just--I'm still trying to get used to all of
this.  I'm enjoying it way more than I ever thought I
would--or should--and I don't know what to make of that
fact."

That I understood completely.  I was only just now starting
to come to terms with the fact that I could inflict even an
erotic level of pain upon Scully and be okay with it, much
less enjoy the hell out of it.  I don't think either of us
ever expected to find our very natures challenged by this
game.

"I don't know what to tell you, Scully," I shrugged as she
rolled off of me to her side of the bed.  "You are who you
are, and it's a part of you.  It doesn't change you, or
change the way I perceive you, or how you should perceive
yourself.  But I'm not telling you anything you don't
already know, am I?"

"I just wonder where it ends," she said thoughtfully.
"Does it escalate?  Is it a ruler today, a bullwhip next
week?  I looked at myself in the full-length mirror just
now and was disappointed that I didn't have any marks.
Where does that lead, if I should decide that marks are
something I want to have?"

That one stopped me cold, causing me to back up a step.
I'd only just gotten a handle on the idea of causing pain
for her--I wasn't ready to tackle inflicting any sort of
lasting physical damage.

"I don't know where it leads, Scully," I said carefully,
wanting to give myself time to consider her words and what
they might mean for our play.  "My only experience with
this was one in which it went somewhere I never wanted it
to go, for all the wrong reasons.  I never had a chance at
finding any sort of comfort zone or discovering what turned
me on as opposed to what was just painful and humiliating.
You have a chance to discover the good parts, the ones that
work for you, and I intend to be there with you the entire
time.  And as long as we can continue to find something we
enjoy about it, I say quit worrying and just go with it."

"Mmm," she grunted again, and I knew she wasn't convinced,
at least not entirely.  Setting back on my knees beside
her, I nudged her to roll over onto her stomach.

"Lemme take a look and see what kind of damage we've done,"
I urged, now nervous over what sort of injury I might have
inflicted.  When she was lying on her belly, I eased her
underwear down over her hips much as I did earlier, and
surveyed the soft skin of her derriere.  Tiny white raised
lines crossed her skin and I touched them lightly with my
fingertips, eliciting a shudder and a sigh from her.

Somehow, the sight of those marks was reassuring to me.
They were proof, of a sort, that I could do some of these
more extreme activities with her without lasting harm.  She
wasn't bruised or scarred--just a few small lines were all
that remained, transient and temporary.  They'd be gone by
morning and what I had done to cause them I could do again
without inflicting any more harm than I had this time.

"Tell me why you wanted to see marks," I prompted,
caressing her.

"Well, it's like I told you before--I seem to perceive them
as badges of honor, as trophies," she answered, her voice
muffled by the pillow.  "If I undergo an ordeal, even one
from which I derive some pleasure, like what we've done so
far with the pain play, I seem to feel like I should have
something to show for it, something to look back upon and
remember it by."

Of course.  My perfectionist Scully, who took such pride in
her achievements, whether it was closing a case or taking a
beating.  "There *are* marks here, you know," I commented,
tracing them slowly.  "They're small, and they won't be
there long, but you can feel them."

She sighed again, heavily, as I leaned forward to follow
the small welts with my tongue.  My hands moved up to
massage her back as I licked over her buttocks,
occasionally sliding my tongue along the crevice between.
It was late, and we'd need to get to sleep soon, to be at
work the next day.  Early in our relationship, we'd had a
difficult time finding balance between sleep and sex, and
it took weeks of dragging ourselves through the day quasi-
comatose to finally realize, contrary to the demands of our
sex drives, we weren't eighteen anymore.  It was a dilemma
I once again found myself confronted with as my cock gave a
small twitch of arousal.

"Don't tease," Scully grumbled sleepily from where her face
pressed against the pillow.

I wanted to make love to her again, to feel her surrounding
me once more.  Anal sex had made its way into our everyday
sex life during our hiatus from the D/s play after Donnie
Pfaster, and I wanted to feel that exquisitely tight
embrace of her body around my cock again.  I wanted to feel
her sob and shudder and to know that she trusted me to take
her to places that she's never trusted anyone else with.  I
wanted to lose myself within her.

Early in our relationship, I'd felt the need to cram as
many tactile memories into each moment as possible, certain
that something would happen, that it couldn't possibly
last.  I refused to live like that now, however.  Scully
would be there in the morning, and tomorrow night, and the
day after.  I could enjoy being in the moment, but I didn't
need to live each instant as though it would be our last
together.  She was here to stay.

So though I wanted to bring her to the very limits of
passion once more, instead I laid beside her and took her
into my arms.  She stretched an arm out to shut off the
lamp, and in the darkness we slept.

END OF APHRODISIA VII

Notes:  I have attempted to describe the events of the
incident in Attleboro, Massachusetts accurately to the best
of my ability with the information available, with the
exception of the fact that the actual date of the incident
was July, 2000.  I imagine this story takes place sometime
earlier in the year 2000 than that, but for my purposes
here, I'll pretend Paddleboro already happened.

Bottom line: these incidents can and do happen.  Six people
were arrested in 1999 in San Diego on public lewdness
charges when a play party was raided.  The jury dismissed
the charges against the first defendant brought up for
trial of what's now known as the San Diego Six, with a firm
chastening of the prosecutors for wasting a jury's time,
prompting the DA to drop the charges against the other
five.  It was a victory for the leather community but there
still remains the legal fees that these bogus arrests
cause, not to mention the emotional trauma resulting from
being arrested simply for living a different lifestyle.
There is also a world of difference between the mentality
of San Diego and Attleboro, and the Attleboro defendants
could likely see a much less understanding jury than the
San Diego Six.

Your personal liberties are at stake here.  If it can
happen to these other people, it could happen to any of us,
to be prosecuted--or persecuted--for what we do in the
privacy of our own homes or in the company of select
acquaintances in a private gathering.  Get involved.

For more information, visit http://www.paddleboro.org



"With you...there's no easy answer, it's true.
You changed the equation I add up to.
And all of the things that I thought I knew,
You turned it around!
I'm amazed, when push comes to shove, what I'd give to you--everything.
I'm amazed, the hallways I wouldn't mind crawling through--and I'd do it for
days and for days..."
     Poe, "Amazed"