Restraints

Anna asked me to bring my handcuffs to her place. She wanted to see me tied up and dominated for a change.

She said she had no dominatrix wear, so she would have to do this naked.

I agreed, with some trepidation. She’s an amateur. I was a little concerned that she might unintentionally hurt me, but primarily concerned that she would talk too much, which just doesn’t do much for me.

But she can’t learn unless we learn together, so on the appointed evening, I packed the cuffs and headed over.

She opened the door wearing loose cotton sweats, her hair still wet from a shower. We kissed.

She said she was really too tired to go through with the whole bondage thing. Would it be all right if we just had dinner and went to bed early? That was fine with me, I said. I left the cuffs in my coat pocket.

We ate noodle soup and talked. She talked, as she often does, about our relationship. She is very analytical about it, chewing over every interaction and possibility with great deliberation.

I am very much in favor of conversation within a relationship. It helps to be sure that each person is seeing things from a common vantage. For us, it is particularly important, given our initial misunderstanding about monogamy, and the way our sex often veers toward the boundaries of her experience.

However, as I’ve told her, I have never been in a relationship that was so thoroughly examined as it transpired.

As she talks, I think she is drifting once more to expressing that she does not want to be together. I lose the thread of her talk; I prepare myself to be dumped again.

She asks when she will see me again. It’s just not enough, she says, to see me once a week. With my parenting responsibilities and work—not to mention my ambitious sex life—it’s hard for me to see anyone weekly, much less more. But I am pressed, and agree to meet again in three days.

It means giving up some work time, but I will make that sacrifice.

We go to the bedroom. The sex is intense and intimate, as it is between us. In the course of things, I am devouring her pussy through shuddering orgasms. I flip her, and lick her ass. I tell her I’m going to fuck her ass, and I do.

We were at it for a long time, hungrily trading positions. She cums many times; I don’t cum. Eventually, I fall asleep as she talks to me.

I wake in the morning to her touch on my chest. I open my eyes and we kiss. We are soon having sex again. It’s more aggressive than the night before.

At one point, she masturbates to orgasm as I watch.

After a while, she says she needs to get ready for work. We go to the shower, and soap each other. As she rinses, I kneel, my mouth on her cunt, drinking the water that curves down around her belly.

You didn’t cum, she tells me. I’m fine, I say. She is impressed by my endurance, she says, but she also likes me to cum. She wants to give me pleasure.

I put my arms around her waist. You do.

She wriggles loose. She turns, crouches down, and raises her ass to me. “You have five minutes.”

I open a condom fast.

I am in her, fucking with fast, long strokes. I press my hands on her hips. I move a hand to the back her head, pressing down. It’s too much, she says. I relent.

She climbs onto the bed, lying on her back. I climb on top of her, and I am inside her again. I hold her arms down. “Less than a minute,” she says.

I pull out, and strip off the condom. I stand up, then sit on her belly so that my knees hold her arms down. I jerk off. “You like that, don’t you,” she says. “Being in control, having power.”

I shoot. She squirms under me, trying to get loose, to no avail. I struggle with her as the orgasm moves through me. Loops of cum cover her chest.

“I have to shower again, and I’m already late,” she says. She seems pissed. I don’t get it, but I often don’t get things with her. I clean up and get dressed. We head out together. As we walk, she is warm. She kisses me. I suppose I was wrong about her anger.

That night, she calls. I have friends over, and really can’t talk.

That’s okay, she says. I just wanted to tell you that I don’t like the rough sex. And I don’t like anal. Can we say we tried it and it wasn’t for me?

This is not a conversation one has when one really can’t talk. I tell her, of course, this has got to be good for you, too. We can have a fine time being vanilla.

As we hang up, I think: I will be astonished if this round of our on again/off again relationship lasts two months.