In the dark, k felt another little piece slip into place.

She wasn’t accustomed to this dark, to the blindfold: she wanted to know, she wanted to see what was coming her way, whether it was a leather paddle, a small clamp, a hand. She thrilled to the anticipation as much as to the sensation itself: seeing (for example) the instruments of her own destruction, laid out in a row in ascending order of cruelty, never failed to make her knees weaken and her cunt drip.

Today was different: M had allowed her a brief glimpse of his kit — an assortment comprised largely of common objects, with perfectly innocent uses — before blindfolding and cuffing her. The restraints provided an extra reminder that she was his prisoner, his plaything, for as long as he cared to confine her here. Another surge of arousal, and another little clunk as something deep in her mind — or was it elsewhere? — dropped into position. Her gears were racing, her nerves fraying in the best possible way, the expectation of release building within her along with the certain knowledge that release would be denied until M felt sufficiently magnanimous to grant it.

The sting between her legs brought her back into the room. He had struck her, with what she could not be sure, The flat of his hand? A flogger? One of his improvised paddles, a paint stirrer from the hardware store? She didn’t know, she didn’t care: the pain and the endorphins combined with the sensory deprivation aroused her in a way she hadn’t know was possible.

“You’re elsewhere, pet. I’m here.” k couldn’t tell, through the blindfold, just where he was: angry? Bemused? She had no idea, had no visual cues to guide her. He had that knack for modulating his voice just so, so that not only could she not tell what he might be thinking but his very tone, the timbre of his instrument, shook her insides even more,

Clunk.

The sudden pain in her right nipple focused her, brought her back into the room from wherever her mind had been wandering. He always seemed to know, and he always was able to yank her strings so that she appeared where he wanted her, when, and how he wanted her. How he wanted her was aroused: wet, willing, aching to be used, consumed in whatever way might please him, She allowed herself to momentarily drift along with this thought when her left nipple, too, flashed with pain. Of course she didn’t know what these clamps were, how they attached, whether they were essentially independent — screw-back earrings — or something more elaborate, a pair of butterfly clamps with a connecting chain that would tighten their grip when it was pulled.

k shuddered and sighed, relaxing into her multiple discomforts: the bite in her nipples, the way her stomach dropped when she knocked on the door, the knots that formed and unformed and formed again when he spoke close in her ear or touched her sex (however gently, or not). She tried to remember if she had ever felt so compelled: to meet a stranger, to disrobe for him, to submit so fully and so immediately. She could not; she had not; she’d sworn, always, that she would not; and yet here she was.

Clunk. Another piece of her carefully constructed public persona shed itself. She pushed the thought aside; there was no thought to push aside. She was here, in this room, in this moment. Soon she would be — what? Consumed. Awash in her own arousal. Lost. Found.

Clunk. Another bit dropped into place. k closed her eyes and let the flood of sensations — the lust and longing, the pain and pleasure, the need and desire and want — wash through and around and over her. She thought she heard herself cry out but couldn’t be sure. She thought she heard him, but she couldn’t be sure.

Lately she had always been hearing him, imagining him, wanting him. She imagined his hands, rough against her skin; she imagined his invasive fingers; she imagined his dark eyes piercing through all of her pretenses, seeing who she was underneath all the armor.

Clunk.

The armor clattered all around.