“I’m going to give you six whacks with this,” he says, and then he does. As he does, I have to count them. I know not why – tradition dictates it. As if dominant men are notoriously bad at simple arithmetic and if I don’t count them he’ll beat me forever. Maybe I’ll forget to count them.

Thwack. Hot stings and tingling, delicious arousal. I’m already part way to moaning out loud and begging him to fuck me. The counting is a bit of a distraction, if I’m honest, but needs must.

“One.”

I settle back in, focusing on the warmth of the first stinging smack against my naked arse. Ready for a second, a third. Wanting him to give up control and just beat me like he doesn’t care how many.

“What do you say?”

“I… umm… I said it – ‘one.'” I resolve to speak up a bit next time, to avoid having this awkward break in the proceedings.

“But what do you say?”

Oh Christ, he wants me to thank him. Try not to sound too stroppy…

“Thank you.”

Phew. Back to the beating. Any minute now the next stroke will come down and it’ll knock this irritation away, putting me back into the place where I can just whimper and gasp and love it.

“Thank you what?”

Oh for the love of Christ.

Sir

“Thank you Sir” works in very specific scenarios for me – ones in which we’re role-playing that he’s my boss, or my teacher, or anyone in a position of authority (if you’re reading this, guys who might be likely to beat me at some point in the future, I have never yet had angry military commander berating me – a junior member of his troop – while spanking me over the desk with a riding crop. Just FYI). In an authority scenario, ‘Sir’ sounds reasonably natural, and I could – at a push – see me using ‘sir’ with a regular dominant who’d decided he wanted me to address him as such.

But in my lounge? When I’ve got my jeans around my ankles and you’re still half in your work clothes? It doesn’t feel right. I’ll call you ‘Sir’ if you want me to, and beg “please, Sir, can I have some more?” as you’re flogging the backs of my thighs and working me into an stinging ball of lust, but it only serves to highlight that what we’re doing is play. If I use a formal term, I’m highlighting the fact that we’re not really taking this seriously.

Daddy

I’ve never gone with ‘Daddy’, although I’ll admit to a slight kick of envy for those couples who use this word during play. Something about purring ‘Daddy’ at my partner during a particularly intense session makes me melt with desire. I strongly suspect this is something that’s been conditioned via porn (both visual and written) in which the word is often used as a neat, sharp shortcut to establish in the mind of the reader that this is a dominant relationship. He orders: she obeys.

But saying it out loud? To my partner? My partner who brings me Marks and Spencer sweets after work and calls me a twat when I tell him the worst of my jokes? No matter how horny he is, I think he’d struggle to suspend disbelief for long enough to be convinced I really meant it.

Mister/Mr Surname

In my opinion, this is an underused term of BDSM endearment. I used to do a lot of school role play (what can I say? I just love knee socks and the smell of chalk) and I could not get enough of the delight of using the formal names of some of my best friends. In the evening, when we were sipping wine and chatting, a guy might be ‘Mark’, but in the schoolroom when he stood in front of me and asked me what on earth I thought I was doing, he was Mr Smith. I’d talk about them to other ‘girls’ just for the pleasure of rolling their new names around my tongue. Mr Smith told me this. Mr Smith gave us homework. Mr. Mister. Amazing.

Again, though, the whole thing collapses in on itself when it’s my regular partner, because he’ll never be a Mister to me. A ‘Mr Smith’ would sound like a sarcastic hint that we should get married someday, or a means of expressing my displeasure – it would never naturally indicate submission.

Name

That’s the one. The name. When asking ‘what should I call my Dom?’ the question itself feels nonsensical. Because I’ve never had a Dom, much as the sex-focused part of my brain would have liked one. Thing is, the sex part of my brain doesn’t always have the control – it’d be knackered and withered within a week if I let it run as rampant as it wants to go.

I’ve known deliciously dominant guys, and guys for whom holding a whip is a fun Friday-night activity but not something they’re deeply drawn towards. I’ve played with men who speak to me in German, and beat me with rigid and unrelenting authority. Men who have laughed when I’ve asked to be restrained and railed sarcastically at me as they hitch my skirt up and bend me over their knee. I’ve known guys whose feet I’ve wanted to fall at, naked and sobbing and begging them to hurt me in ways I’ve not imagined yet.

I really want to call them ‘Daddy’, or ‘Sir’. I am envious of the people in relationships where they can subdivide their play and make it – to my mind – more intense and all-encompassing. Where play is a deeper experience than the kind of casual tennis-match style of my own BDSM.

But ultimately, I’ve never ended up in the kind of relationship where it’d feel natural to call someone ‘Sir’ or ‘Daddy’ – even when he’s got his cock in the back of my throat and is taking swipes at my arse with a riding crop. When we’re in the pub, he’s [Name], and when we’re sitting on the sofa playing Fable 3 and arguing about whether we should have sex with the hairdresser, he’s [Name]. Beating me feels like an extension of the other stuff we do: different category, same tone.

What’s in a name? Everything.

How the hell do I dominate a man? If your partner has any kind of submissive tendency, and if – like me – you’re enthusiastic yet clumsy when it comes to wielding a whip and calling someone a ‘filthy puppy’, at some point you may have heard the two most terrifying words in the English language:

“Surprise me.”

(more…)

I have a huge amount of admiration (and, OK, a dash of envy) for people who can do open relationships well. I’ve tried, and failed, to come up with a long-term open solution that works for me, and have come to the conclusion that I’m perhaps not sensitive or competent enough to do openness well.

Which is why I love hearing from people who do – who have found a good balance of communication, enjoyment and honesty that allows them to balance the feelings of a few different parties. If anyone says it’s easy I struggle to comprehend, because for me it’s always been a mountain I couldn’t hope to climb. So above all I love hearing from people who’ve recognised the obstacles, worked through the difficult bits, and come up with something pretty damn special. This week’s guest blog is from Jenny, who’s got a story about open relationships and kink, as well as some great advice for those who might be struggling with similar worries.

Open relationships and kink

Communication in a relationship can be tricky at the best of times, and things only get more difficult when one of you is kinky. Asking for something in bed can be tough. Asking for something outside of your relationship feels impossible.

If you don’t ask for what you want, you might never get it.

I wanted to share my story because it’s a positive example of an open, kinky relationship which I am very proud of.

I’m happily coupled up with an incredible woman. We were friends before we started dating and are closing in on our first year together. On top of all the stresses of a new relationship, I had the added concern of telling her about the other important person in my life: my very close friend who happens to be my dominant.

He has a girlfriend too and they’ve been together for years. After much discussion about sex, BDSM and our respective love lives, we came to the conclusion that we’d like to explore our kinky bucket lists together. His girlfriend wasn’t into submission and I prefer being topped by men, even though I’m a lesbian. We get on and find each other attractive, but we’ve no romantic chemistry at all. We were confident it wasn’t going to get awkward or messy: we knew what we wanted from each other right from the start.

With this in mind we set about asking for our partners’ permission to get together every month or so and indulge ourselves in play.

It was a scary thing for both of us: his relationship is long established and he didn’t want to jeopardise their future together, while I‘d just started dating my girlfriend and didn’t want to scare her away. It was something we both wanted, however, and we didn’t want to impose our niches on partners who weren’t into it. Equally, we didn’t want to do without for the rest of our lives. So we asked them.

I wanted to be completely honest in starting our relationship. I told my girlfriend that I’d spent our first few dates secretly hoping she was kinky, which was a disservice to her. I wanted to appreciate her for who she was, and she is truly fantastic. I’m a firm believer that it’s very tough to get everything from one person. It’s too much pressure. So I wanted to have a romantic relationship with her and be kinky with someone who wanted it as much as I did. She was understanding and patient and after hearing all she needed to hear from me, gave me the permission I had asked for.

In return she is allowed to know as much or as little as she likes about our scenes, and to request certain acts are off limits. The same goes for my dominant’s girlfriend, who also gave her permission a few days before.

We got permission about nine months ago, but it wasn’t a case of getting an “ok” and then skipping off to the dungeon whenever we feel like. My girlfriend and I are in constant communication about our arrangement. Each time I schedule a scene I check in with my girlfriend, that she’s still ok for this to happen and each time I come home we spend time together as a couple and check in again. I remind her that I love her and if she wants me to stop, I will. She tells me she loves me and trusts me to remember her even when I’m with someone else.

Part of the agreement is that if either his partner or mine gets uncomfortable and asks for us to stop playing, we will without question. We enjoy playing and exploring our niches, but our commitment is to our girlfriends. We appreciate that what we’ve been given is something special, something that strengthens our relationship with our partners all the more.

Juggling both romantic and kinky relationships is tough – and not just practically. Scheduling a scene when we’re both off work, both our partners are busy or out of town and when one of our houses is free is almost impossible.

We have to keep talking about the arrangement all the time. Everyone has to be clear and what they do and do not want and how to communicate that. We are each responsible for our own thresholds and protecting them. We also have to trust that everyone else is aware of their own limits and will communicate them clearly.

None of us have been in an open relationship before so we’re working it out as we go. The two of us have never been in a Dominant/submissive relationship either. There’s a lot of chat involved every which way. It’s hard work but it is worth it.

The one thing I’ve found the hardest is asserting my needs when it comes to negotiating between romantic and kinky relationships. I have no intention of being prioritised over my dominant’s girlfriend, but during D/s scenes, the circumstances are altered slightly.

In one of our earlier scenes my dominant received a phone call from his girlfriend, which he took. The feeling of abandonment was compounded by my already vulnerable state in the scene and I was incredibly hurt. I did not feel empowered in the scene to ask that he not take the call. After thinking about it, and even discussing it with my girlfriend and getting her opinion, I asked for us to turn our phones off when playing. Now, when our partners call on a day we’re playing, if they get answer machines they know why they can’t get through and that we’ll contact them as soon as we turn our phones back on. This rule makes me feel more secure when I’m being submissive.

Having rules like this does not mean we love our girlfriends any less, but it is part of the responsibility we have to each other as play partners. Both relationships are significant and require communication and effort. Neither can be taken for granted.

As previously mentioned, I often involve my girlfriend in my D/s relationship. If something is playing on my mind it shows and she is gracious enough to ask if I want to talk about it. This shows a great deal of trust and patience, which is a beautiful quality in the woman I want to spend my life with.

By some miracle, the four of us now socialise as well. We don’t discuss the arrangement, but it isn’t ignored. The fact that we can share a meal together and enjoy each other’s company as two couples is something that’s very precious to me. There’s no tension or jealousy; we all know where we belong.

It is scary to ask for something you really want, but if you’re ready to have an honest conversation about it, and keep having those conversations, there is always a chance that it can work out.

Sometimes, better than you’d hoped.

Content warning: Every single thing that happened in this blog post was consensual, enjoyable, beyond wonderful. If you are likely to be triggered by male dominance, and role-playing sexual aggression, you probably won’t enjoy this, but I most certainly do.

Sometimes the difference between a lovely fuck and a powerful orgasm can be just one sentence. It’s true: it’s really, undeniably true.

When I’m alone, coming up with a new scenario which will power the majority of my wanking for the week, the most crucial things aren’t the settings or the characters, but what they say to each other. There’s no point conjuring a threesome with two guys (one much older, one my age) who strip me from the waist down then fuck me over the table during a police interrogation if they refrain from actually interrogating me. The difference between an idle daydream and a full-blown wank fantasy that’ll bring me directly to orgasm, is what the people say while they’re fucking.

“Do you want this? Tell me you love it. Say it. Say you want my dick. Can you feel that? Yeah. You. Fucking. Love. My. Cock.”

It’s important that they punctuate the filthier words with a fuckstroke between each. I know not why.

Often I forget how important these little phrases and sentences are when I’m having actual sex because… well… often I forget to speak when I fuck, as does he. We’re so busy enjoying the feeling of sticky hardness – why would we need to mention to the other just how much we love it? But the other day he said something so good it made me remember.

In the middle of a vigorous, angry, role-play shag in which I played the horny desperate one and he played the dude who was using me as a convenient fucktoy, he said something so perfectly pitched that I couldn’t help but come. I was close, of course – the vicious pounding coupled with a lot of foreplay (and by ‘foreplay’ I mean ‘him beating me as I sucked his dick, then beating me harder if I didn’t do it exactly as he asked’) meant I was teetering dangerously close to the edge of orgasm. He had me on my knees on the edge of the bed, curled into a ball and gripping my ankles.

The power of one sentence (don’t worry, I’ll get to what it actually was, I promise) stayed with me for far longer than a simple “I’m gonna come now” or a “your cunt feels so good.” Both of these things are great, of course, but they don’t linger in the same way as something totally unique, something new. Something – like the following phrases – that guys have said to me and I haven’t been able to shake from my head.

Some of these are years and years old, but I still get wet when I think about them.

Sexiest things ever said to me

“Get on my cock.”

Simple, effective, casual. The use of ‘get’ rather than ‘sit, making it ever so slightly colder and more distant. Drawled with a lazy sigh, as he unzipped his fly and pulled out a thick, satisfying erection that he’d been packing for a while. Drawing our chit-chat to a close with an order so confident I couldn’t bear not to comply.

“Sssh.”

The first time a guy used this I was surprised that no one had used it before. I’d had ‘be quiet’ and ‘careful of the noise‘ as gentle reminders not to disturb the neighbours, but this was completely different. It had nothing to do with what he feared others would hear, and everything to do with him embracing the role of the dominant one – ordering me to do something that was difficult for me, so I could better concentrate on what turned him on.

You were expecting some more unusual things guys have said, though, right? How about this…

“I want to put a scoop of ice cream down the back of your knickers and bury my fucking face in it.”

This phrase, whispered in a voice hoarse with lust, struck me dumb for five minutes. We were sitting in a pub, deciding on whether or not we’d fuck again, whether the aching need for each other outweighed all the rage we felt for each other elsewhere. It was such a perfect expression of the weird love/rage/lust that we both felt, with an extra dose of worshipful need. I didn’t fuck him that day, but as we parted at the train station, in a mournful ‘goodbye’ hug, it took everything in my power not to bite into his neck.

Where were we? Oh, the sexiest thing. The one I promised to tell you at the beginning.

It was during the most vigorous minutes of the fuck, as I was trembling with the effort of trying to stay in position. “Keep hold of your ankles,” he told me, and my cunt tightened. As he shoved his dick into me with sharp strokes, I struggled to keep hold of them – to maintain the tight, curled posture that allowed him, standing up by the side of the bed, such easy access to my cunt. My neck hurt, and I shifted, losing grip on one of my ankles. He grabbed my hips and pulled me back.

“Hold that position.” Each word punctuated with a fuckstroke, just like it is in my dreams.

I held it. I held it for longer. I slipped again. By this point he’d given me enough ‘that’s it’ and ‘good girl’s’ to have me dripping down the inside of my thighs, which were shivering with the stress of staying still and the beginning of the build to a hard, heavy climax.

Then I slipped again. And he said it:

“If you don’t hold this position, and I can’t come, I’m going to beat you so hard.”

And I came. Squeezing around him and shuddering all the way from my thighs up to my chest, I came so hard I thought I was going to push his cock out of me. Which I would have, of course, if he hadn’t been in ‘dominant’ mode, and holding me tight against his crotch so he could feel every single inch of my cunt throbbing and constricting around his dick. Milking the spunk out of him as he tipped over the edge too.

I imagine that line, like the ice-cream one, or the first ever gruffly-whispered ‘sssh’, will stay with me for a long, long time. I may forget how it felt, or the way the room looked, or the tingling feeling of his huge palms slapping my naked arse, but that sentence won’t leave me – it’s pitch, timing, tone, all perfectly tailored to my individual kinks. When I’m old and frail and incapable of holding that awkward sex position, I’ll remember the guy who ordered me to, and bite my lip with nostalgic desire.

Yes, we live in a patriarchy. And in our patriarchy, men are generally at a bit of an advantage in terms of money, power, opportunity, and so on. But I’m not going to talk about that today – I want to talk about power and penetration. Specifically the idea that the power in any kind of sexual play is, by default, in the hands of the penetrator.

The other week I wrote something disgustingly filthy about pegging (aka strap on sex). In subsequent discussion, a few people talked about me ‘having the power’ and ‘being the dominant one’, which was interesting. Even when I’m fucking a guy with a big fake cock, I don’t tend to feel that dominant. I get waves of it occasionally, but it struck me that we do tend to assume that strap on sex gives the wearer an immediate power boost. That it’s the cock that’s synonymous with power. That no matter how doe-eyed and submissive I usually am, just by strapping it on I have performed a transformation into a powerful sexual superhero.

Are strap ons powerful?

Of course, there are a lot of expectations around being the penetrator. Watch most mainstream porn, or even most mainstream romance, and men tend to be seen as the ones in control – the ones doing. Men fuck, women get fucked. But of course, although this is the way the story tends to play out, there are a hundred different problems with it, as there are with most of our expectations around gender.

Naturally the obvious point is that not all men have dicks, or indeed want to be the penetrators. Likewise there are many women who can be powerfully sexual, who can penetrate and fuck, while their partners (male or female) prefer to be more passive, more laid-back. And – in the kind of situations I enjoy – there are many people who switch between the two.

I enjoy sex in which I am the fucker rather than the fuckee, and to be honest I don’t usually need a strap on in order to do that. In the right mood and with a fair wind behind me I can shag a guy using only my delicate, weak, unpowerful vagina and he’ll still feel as if he’s been used like a fucktoy.

Your dick as your weakness

Not only can you be powerful with no dick at all, but there are certain sexual situations in which a penis can be the very opposite of a powerful tool: it can be your weakness, your misery, and one of the ultimate symbols of submission.

Knowing you can penetrate me with your dick might give you power in the eyes of a society with a skewed view on genitals, but it’s not going to make you feel that powerful when you’re lying on my bed, constrained by an order not to come, twitching and moaning as I rub lube gently into the aching head of it. Nor when I squeeze it to just before the point of pain and you beg me to put it in my mouth. And certainly not when I lie on my back, with your bound wrists behind my neck, and tell you to fuck me without coming.

As you pull out, shaking with the need to come and pleading with your eyes, your penis doesn’t feel very powerful, does it?

A dirty story to illustrate the point

So are strap ons powerful in and of themselves? The fact that they don’t give direct pleasure to the wearer does give the wearer a certain element of control. Maybe I’m the ‘powerful’ one when I fuck a guy with a strap on purely in virtue of the fact that I feel nothing – that I’m wholly focused on what I can do rather than what I can feel.

Except even that doesn’t really work, because this lack of feeling can also be harnessed to make the wearer feel deeply cowed and submissive. Ask the guy who loved the trembling feeling of submission so much that I used to wrack my brains in bed at night trying to think of new and better ways to make him feel small – the guy who, eventually, I ordered to fuck me with a strap on.

He got hard and shook and begged me to let him fuck me – wrists bound behind my head, as above. I turned him down and dressed him in the strap on harness instead, letting him fuck me with cold, rubber strokes until I came – twitching and clenching around a cock that couldn’t feel it. A cock with no desire, no sensation, no power. Then I told him I was done, and he curled up hard and aching and unable to fall asleep.

What makes a powerful dominant?

Power isn’t contained within a penis – real or fake – and it doesn’t accrue to you just because you are the penetrator. This is one of the many myths we’ve been fed for a number of years, which we still tend to play up to in much of our fucking. I certainly do most of the time – as a straight female submissive, dominance and dick usually go hand-in-hand. I want to be on the bottom, I want to be penetrated: I need to get fucked.

But it’s nice to take a step outside this every once in a while – think about what it is, exactly, that makes someone powerful. It might be different for different people: what makes him powerful is his voice, and the way he has with commands and words. What makes her powerful is the way she can speak volumes just with her eyes or a turn of her head. What makes them powerful is their imagination – the fantastic new things they can order their sub to do, that brings both parties to the brink of shivering climax.

Power isn’t contained within a particular object, or act, or person: it’s a complex, intricate thing. And it’s good to remind myself of that every once in a while – not only does it give me a better perspective on what I truly love about dominance, it also gives me loads of new ideas.