Hands
By Gray Lily | July 3, 2008
“Put your hands above your head.”
I am standing almost naked in the middle of Michael’s living room, pleasantly buzzed on biting, kissing, caressing, and submission. This is the first time we have engaged in anything more intense than a brief spurt of controlled play and I am simply floating in amazement.
I raise my hands tentatively until they are equal with my shoulders.
“Up. Over your head. Keep them there,” he says. I am starting to learn the various inflections in his voice – when he is being soft and lenient, when he is testing me, and when he expects immediate compliance. This time he means it.
I lace my fingers together and extend my arms over my head. I am completely vulnerable to whatever he has in mind and it is starting to worry me. He has no implements of pain and displeasure other than his hands and his teeth, but these are certainly enough. My breasts are already bruised and sore, new bruises on top of old, and I am certain I will not escape his grasp without more.
Michael feels his way over my torso, starting at my throat and moving down over my breasts and stomach with his hands and mouth. Light soft kisses are interlaced with tangy sharp bites and warm deep caresses. My hands stay above my head even when my instinct is to reach down and protect myself or flutter them above his shoulders in distress. Then he bends over at the waist and presses his mouth to the tender skin on the insides of my hipbones. That most gorgeous of spots, where the belly joins the hip and the curve of a woman’s body is brought to light. Just below my navel on the right side, he sinks his teeth in.
My hands quiver in the air above us, my elbows feeling like they are being drawn down forcefully. I want to grip his shoulders, press my fingertips into his muscles and protest the force with which he is biting me. I want to push against his chest and shove him away from me for hurting me so badly I can’t breathe. I want to encircle his head and neck and hold him tightly to me in an attempt at some solace from the pain. Instead I am forced to endure this sharp, stinging, aching bite with no relief except his hands steadying me.
One hand is in the small of my back, pressing me towards his teeth, holding me upright and captive. The other is over my hipbone, delineating the area he is marking. I am firmly caught between two points of steel and no amount of wriggling is going to facilitate an escape. Michael is incredibly strong when compared with my relatively small frame and muscle mass and as much as I enjoy struggling with him, I know it is a lost cause. Unless he wants to turn me loose, I am not getting away.
I draw in a sharp breath and hold it for a moment longer than I should. I can tell I am exacerbating the pain by tensing up so I force myself to relax. He digs in just a tiny bit more and I whimper faintly. Even when he relents and lets loose his hold with his teeth, he does not let me go. His mouth moves across the smooth softness of my belly to a complimentary spot on my left hip and he bears down again. This time I moan through the pain and concentrate on breathing. This is the hardest thing I have done in many months and it shows in the amount of effort it takes me to keep my hands up and my body under control.
Finally he releases my skin from his teeth and wraps himself around me. I fall into his embrace and let out the breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. My arms come down around his shoulders and I let go of my control.
“That’s it. Deep breath,” he whispers. “Do it again. Blow it out this time.”
I inhale deeply and sigh heavily against his shoulder. The second time I put some effort into expelling the air and the tension in my body instantly releases. I melt further into his arms and his chest and his shoulder and look up at him. It is moments like this that I need a kiss to reassure me and it is moments like this that he always gives it to me. The two twin spots of angry red heat on my belly fade into the background as I lose myself into him.
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Photos
By Gray Lily | July 3, 2008
Michael shot a series of photographs of me on one recent warm evening, outside in a park just as the sun was setting.
Like words describe my world, photographs describe his. He strives to capture with his lens what he sees and feels and wishes to express, and he does so with incredible sensitivity and precision. I have seen many of his photographs and have always envied the way he is able to perfectly portray the beauty and grace of his subjects. Every moment seems to tell its own story and begs the imagination to create more details. Even more importantly to me, every shot is imbued with just a tiny bit of him.
Unfortunately, I am relentlessly wary of having my picture taken. I have never felt comfortable in front of the camera. I am harshly critical of the images that result and have never felt that my portrait is worthy of positive attention. I see myself as, while not exactly unattractive, certainly not beautiful or comparable to many of the photographs I’ve seen of Michael’s. It was only through the urgings of friends and Michael’s own continued interest that I agreed to let him aim his lens at me.
When Michael showed me the pictures he had taken of me, out there in the falling darkness, my desire for him and my joy at being the focus of his attention clear in my eyes, I was stunned. The woman in the photographs is so far beyond what I expected that it took me several hours to accept that it is indeed me. She is beautiful, confident, serene, joyous, and playful… so many things that I believe I am not.
In the midst of him sending me the digital versions of the photographs the next morning I expressed my disbelief to Michael via IM.
“I’ve never seen myself like this before.”
His reply brought tears to my eyes.
“This is how I see you.”
For the absolute first time in my life I almost understood why the men I have loved have always found me so desirable. In that moment I could almost see myself through Michael’s eyes. I could almost feel his attraction to this woman, whoever she might be, and I could almost believe it was me.
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Eating
By Gray Lily | July 1, 2008
My love/hate relationship with food continues and continues to grow. The days when I can simply eat what I want, when I want, without expending an inappropriate amount of thought on the topic are few and very far between.
Until this year, I have never had an issue with food or eating. I was slightly chubby in my younger years, almost tiny as an overworked college student, and pleasingly plump as a happy young professional. I returned to my exact pre-pregnancy weight with absolutely no effort within two months after the birth of each of my daughters, eating whatever I wanted. I didn’t diet, exercise, count calories, or worry about my weight. I was fine with who I was and how I looked.
Two years ago, when I started becoming seriously involved with Chris, I lost about fifteen percent of my body weight without meaning to. I became so wrapped up in serving him, meeting his needs, and playing the game that I changed my eating habits and thereby cut my caloric intake considerably. I also stopped eating at work because of a new routine and stopped eating at night because I was too busy writing. The pounds melted away and I never put a thought into it.
I enjoyed my svelte new figure and the confidence that came with it but I put no effort into maintaining it. Regardless of my inattention, the weight has stayed off. Unfortunately in the last four months it has been threatening to drop even lower. Even though I am approaching my “ideal” weight for my height, most people who know me well at all are starting to worry. The five pounds that have vanished in the last few weeks have left me confused and on the edge of worry.
For the past month, just the thought of food has made me nauseous almost every time I consider a meal. I can trick myself into eating by not thinking about it – grabbing a bite as I am serving the children at work or my daughters at home – or by eating a few very specific foods, but most of the time I fight the instinct. I feel the hunger, and the nausea, and the lightheadedness but I can’t get over my almost complete revulsion to food.
In those rare instances when I do eat more than a few mouthfuls, I almost instantly regret it. The feeling of food in my stomach is so like the feeling of being hungry and sick that I can no longer distinguish the two as separate. I got so near the point of illness this evening after eating dinner with my girls that I forced myself to lay down and breathe deeply until it diminished. I am pretty sure that my physical symptoms are a reflection of my emotional status, but they are so sustained and pervasive that I sometimes fail to see the connection. Even when I believe I am happy, loved, appreciated, and satisfied, the physical unrest does not disappear.
My therapist assured me, several weeks ago when the symptoms were at their worst, that they were attributable to anxiety. My emotional distress is being manifested in my inability to enjoy eating and the constant tangle of emotions in my stomach. I’ve added to that my belief that some part of me is trying to exert control in a world where I feel so many things are run by chaos. But at what point do my efforts at control themselves cross the border into creating chaos and wreaking havoc? How do I convince my subconscious to give up control and let common sense run the show?
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Throat
By Gray Lily | June 30, 2008
One of Michael’s dearest habits is in direct conflict with one of my biggest triggers.
Since the first night we started spending time together, he has been brushing the back of his hand against the front of my neck, desensitizing me to the feeling. I told him very clearly that having an open palm placed over my throat scares the bejesus out of me and puts me into a defensive mode faster than anything else. He understood my fear, but I also understood that his desire was to cradle my throat in the palm of his hand while he kissed me.
Each and every time we spend more than five minutes together kissing and caressing each other, one of his hands rubs gently across my throat. He uses the rough back of his hand, running his knuckles gently over my skin while kissing me senseless. His skill at using positive reinforcement indicates just how seriously he takes this proposition. He isn’t trying to force me into accepting his hand, he is teasing me into wanting it.
Last night, as we prepared to say goodbye for several days, I leaned back into him for one last kiss. He turned to me, placed his hand at my chin, and held my face loosely as he kissed me. It was the most natural thing in the world. No panic, no immediate drawing away and drawing in of the breath, no instinctual flight response. I just kissed him back and felt the weight of his hand supporting my jawbone. It wasn’t until he dropped his hand that I actually noticed what he had done and opened my eyes to stare at him.
“You… it’s just… I,” I started. I knew what I wanted to say but I was stunned that such a momentous occasion had simply come to pass with no fanfare. It took Chris nearly a year before I would submit to his hand resting against my larynx and even then it was always accompanied by an adrenalin-induced high, never by relaxed acceptance.
“You had your hand on my throat,” I finally managed to say.
“I know,” Michael replied, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. He had expected it all along, I am sure, so finally achieving his goal came as neither a surprise nor a challenge. He has gentled me into a place of complete comfort, trust, and vulnerability where I understand that his hand on my throat is nothing more than a sweet gesture of domination and affection. Somehow my subconscious has learned that he has no intention of harming me and simply wants to hold me that much more closely.
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Look
By Gray Lily | June 30, 2008
I was sitting next to Michael at the weekly kinky social gathering, watching people flow and coalesce around us, thinking about a conversation I needed to have with Chris. I peered around Michael’s shoulder, and a few other people standing in the way, to see if Chris was occupied at that moment or if I should try to make my way over to him. Michael noticed, as he always does, and asked if I needed him to move so I could get up.
“Not right now. I need to talk with Chris about tomorrow but I don’t want to do it yet,” I said.
I sat back and tucked myself behind his shoulder, feeling the weight of his body against mine as he leaned back slightly. He turned his head and looked down at me out of the corner of his eye, a look I have come to know well in the last few weeks. Sometimes he is simply looking at me out of what I believe is sheer disbelief that I am sitting so closely next to him, but sometimes he is telling me very directly and very quietly that he expects something from me.
This time he let it go and went back to whatever conversation was going on around us.
The second time I glanced Chris’s way to judge the small circle of people around him, Michael didn’t say anything. A moment later, however, he stood up.
“Excuse me,” he said to someone standing next to him. “Gray needs to get up.”
“I do?” I asked quickly, sliding across the seat and standing up. My heart skipped a beat and I wondered what was going on.
“Go talk to Chris.”
He resumed his seat and I was left without a place to sit and his expectantly raised eyebrow. I stifled a “Yes, Sir” and maneuvered my way through the half dozen bodies between Michael and Chris. Once I was near Chris’s shoulder, I stood quietly and waited for a pause in the conversation, or for some of the people gathered around to leave, or some other more opportune moment. I was anxious about imposing myself on him and bringing personal business into a social event but we’d already agreed to have this conversation at this time so I knew it was completely appropriate.
I was fidgeting mindlessly, not saying anything, when I caught sight of Michael watching me, his head turned back over his shoulder slightly to assess what I was doing. It was startling how clearly I could read the message he was trying to convey just by the look on his face and the tilt of his head. He was ordering me to stop stalling, talk to Chris, and resolve the issue so I could get back to being fully involved in the present moment. My stomach flip-flopped, I swallowed hard, and then I turned to Chris.
“I wanted to talk to you about tomorrow, find out when might be a good time to get together,” I said, inserting myself into his space as assertively as I might with anyone else I know. Chris greeted what I perceived as my interruption with nothing more than a nod of his head and we proceeded to make plans for having coffee and chatting the following afternoon. I could almost feel the weight of Michael’s gaze on my back as I talked, but when I turned around, I realized he wasn’t even paying attention to what I was doing. He’d seen me initiate the conversation with Chris and evidently that had satisfied him.
I walked the few steps to Michael.
“May I please sit down?” I asked quietly.
He smiled indulgently at me as he stood.
“Did you get everything straightened out?” he asked as I slipped past him.
“Yes. We’re meeting at three for coffee unless he gets too busy. He’s going to call me and let me know,” I replied, properly chagrined. If it had been up to me I would have stalled the conversation until the last possible minute just to give myself something to worry about and to create feelings I could use to torment myself. Fortunately, Michael was having nothing to do with it. He, like so many other Dominants I know, is very results oriented and won’t put up with any wishy-washy waiting games. I was just surprised by how well his message was conveyed despite an almost complete lack of conversation and with only one look over his shoulder.
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