by Adira August
“He’s trying to reach ecstatic orgasm with you?” The therapist asked.
The reporter in Avia perked up at the way Harley said the phrase. “You’ve heard of it?” The therapist nodded.
“He seems completely focused on that goal,” Avia explained. “This that we’ve done, that he’s done to me for the most part, is to reach the ecstatic orgasm. It’s a lot more than just satisfying a craving. Somehow the dominance serves that, I think.”
“Can you give me an example?”
Avia blushed. And grinned. “He called me a rebellious wretch, said that’s why the sex took longer. He was right. I was doing what I wanted and not what he told me and - well - the longer part was, um -” More blushing. “Getting me to obey. The obedience isn’t about him being some control freak, it’s about the process, to get to surrender.”
“You have to surrender to him?” The therapist made another note.
“I think it’s myself I have to surrender to.” Avia shrugged.
“When you told me about him calling you rebellious, you were smiling,” the therapist observed. “As if the idea of being a rebellious wretch made you happy. Do you think you’re rebellious to elicit more of the controlling responses from him? So he’ll be more aggressive in his actions toward you?”
“I hope not,” Avia looked concerned. “That would be very manipulative. … Wait …. Crap …. Maybe. This is such a new thing for me, and I think, since there was no punishment formally in place … to be honest, I wasn’t making much of an effort. He was, and I wasn’t ...” She trailed off. How rude was that? He deserves so much better.
She turned back to the window, speaking to herself more than Doctor Harley. “I didn’t believe him. Accept what he said. I’m not committed to this journey, I just wanted to ... he’s so attractive, you know. Just being near him wound me up. I wanted, well …”
“To try him out?” Harley suggested.
Avia nodded slowly. “Yeah. … That’s a horrible thing to find out about yourself, isn’t it? That you’re a user. Yes. I think I wanted to try him out. And it was life-altering. From that very first time, I couldn’t imagine being with anyone else.”
Again, Avia pivoted toward Erin Harley. “What exactly is a Dominant?”
Erin Harley considered. “Let me ask you first, do you think this man is an Alpha male?”
“Oh, yeah. Most definitely.”
“That was emphatic,” Erin said. “Is it because of the way he behaves, very forceful and commanding?”
“No, B- he’s not like that at all.” Erin Harley’s eyebrows ascended. Avia explained. “I mean, in sex he is, but outside of sex I’d say he’s open. Confident. Maybe a bit arrogant, but he’s a highly accomplished person. He hires people to do most of the controlling.”
“Okay. Well, what you describe are typical Alpha traits. Alphas are dominant by nature. Male or female. But we all have both kinds of wiring, dominance and submission, and both connect to sexual pleasure. So when you say you have a submissive living inside you, everyone does. Even him.”
Avia flashed back to riding in his S.U.V., lying across the seat, “topping from the bottom” he called it. It was so exciting to pleasure him. And to deny him ...
She bent her head to bury her nose in his thatch of dark pubic hair, inhaling his warm musky scent. He was hard against her face on one side, firm muscles of his abdomen tightening against her cheek on the other. He feels as beautiful as he looks.
“Avienne … ”
She looked up at the sound of him whispering her full name. He stared down, eyes bright with wonder and need, his head back against the headrest, hands relaxed on the seat next to his thighs, as if he had surrendered.
She let her lips slide over and around the ridge of his cockhead, her teeth gently scraping him. He growled a moan, his hips rocked and she rode him, staying with him.
She felt his palm slide over the back of her thigh and up, kneading her cheeks and caressing her other thigh. His hand in constant motion, warming her.
She sucked him in earnest, now. His other hand grasped a fistful of her hair as he rocked into her, building to orgasm. Careful. Controlled.
She wanted him out of control, consumed with wanting her, insane with the need to come. She pulled back suddenly and flicked her tongue across his reddened over-sensitive glans as she slid her hand under his balls and stroked back along his perineum. Her middle finger found his anus and pressed.
“Fucking bitch!” he cried out, his voice thick with his arousal.
The fist in her hair lifted her mouth off of his cock as his other hand came down hard on the bottom of her ass just above her spread thighs.
WHAP!
Dominance and submission, each of them had enjoyed both.
“But, if he has submission inside him, why did you say he was a dominant?” Avia asked.
Erin Harley shook her head. “Not ‘a’ dominant, just dominant by nature.”
She set the tablet aside and sat forward. “You see, Dominant with a capital ‘d’, is a word people apply to themselves as a description of a culturally-defined role they play. The word is imbued with assumed behaviors, such as controlling a partner with discipline. They must have a partner who self-identifies as submissive, in order to successfully occupy the role.
“Natural Alphas are dominant by nature. People others defer to automatically, assume are in leadership positions, even when they aren’t. They are popular amongst their peers, subordinates and bosses. Confident rather than commanding, unless in a position of command, in which case, they’re comfortable leading.
“When under the authority of another,” she went on, “their generally high self-esteem means they don’t resent authority. It’s just situational for them. Alphas don’t look for fault, they look for solutions. Does this sound like the man you know?”
“Absolutely. I mean, I haven’t seen him in all those situations, but that’s just how I’d expect him to be.”
Harley made another note. “You said you feel he cares for you?”
“Yes. I’m sure of it.”
“And you mentioned you have strong feelings for him?”
Avia nodded. “He’s smart and strong and compelling and caring and beyond sexy and beautiful.” She gave a helpless shrug. “I don’t know how not to love him.”
Avia smiled ruefully, “Truth is, I feel like Wednesday morning I accidentally drove into some alternate reality. My life is still my life, my work I love, my great friends, my family … But everything’s changed. And it keeps changing. The way I see myself and my future, the way I understand myself as a sexual being and a woman. It’s all so fast I’m not sure I know what I think or feel or believe because that might change tomorrow.”
Avia continued to stare out the window. The sight of open space and the solid unchanging mountains balanced the feeling of being trapped by her overwhelming feelings and chaotic circumstances. And being pushed to face herself by the sex researcher.
“Avia, do you consider yourself an Alpha female?”
“No,” she said immediately. “Talli, my sister, she’s the confident, center of attention, try anything one.”
Dr. Harley picked up her tablet. “Older or younger?”
“Younger. By a day,” she said. She didn’t wait for to be asked. “Identical twins. Born either side of midnight.”
Erin Harley looked up. “In my opinion you are definitely an Alpha female. It accounts for you wanting to experience dominance, but only by him. It also accounts for your resistance, goading him, as you said, into more spanking, more controlling. It’s natural for an Alpha female insist the male demonstrate his sexual confidence and ability, before consenting to sex.”
“But,” Avia looked worried. “Does that mean I’ll never be able to really submit or get to this Ecstatic Orgasm?”
“On the contrary, if you want it, you’ll be a great submissive and possibly even have a chance to reach the goal. But only if you want it for yourself.”
“
Oh. Good. Okay,” she frowned. “You sound like getting there would be a huge accomplishment or something.”
“Avia,” Erin spoke gently. “Ecstatic orgasm is a myth. There’s no documented case in Western scholarship of anyone ever achieving it.”
The words echoed in Avia’s mind. She shook her head. “That doesn’t make sense. This man has been taking women on this journey for years.”
“I see. How many actually achieved the goal?” Erin Harley asked.
She opened her mouth and hesitated. Closed it. Did he ever say specifically he’d gotten to ecstatic orgasm with anyone?
“I don’t know.” She admitted, surprised. But they’d all signed the nondisclosure agreements. He couldn’t tell her if they did. Or didn’t. Avia returned to her chair.
The older woman glanced at her watch. “This might be a good time to shift into the more general questions you have for The Week. Unless there’s something else personal on your mind?”
Avia pulled out her notebook. “I need to know why humiliation is arousing. I didn’t tackle the question for my readers in the original article because I couldn’t find an answer.”
“You didn’t find an answer,” Erin said, “because no one has one. Lots of hypotheses, conjectures, assertions. But no facts. No universally agreed-upon theory.” She watched Avia makes some notes. “Avia, do you have a safeword?”
Avia looked up in surprise at Erin’s return to the personal. “Not a normal one. With him, it’s his way or the highway. I can trust him and submit, or resign from Companionship. Which, in fact, I did.”
“But you’re still with him.”
Avia smiled. “We’ll be negotiating new terms.” She shifted in her chair, not ready to abandon the humiliation topic. “So, do you have a theory about humiliation?”
Erin shrugged. “My ideas are diametrically opposed to those of some of my colleagues. The most commonly accepted idea is that humiliation is a form of masochism. It’s psychic pain instead of physical pain, but shares the dynamic.
“‘Masochism’ itself, is an umbrella term to cover the general phenomenon of experiencing sexual pleasure in response to receiving sexual pain.” She paused for a sip of coffee. “Some believe it’s learned behavior and others that it serves as an escape from self-awareness.”
Avia wrote rapidly, shaking her head a little. “I’m not an expert,” Avia said. “But if anything, humiliation makes you - well -” She turned red one more time - “me, it makes me hyper-aware of myself.”
Avia thought for a second. “I’m also not a masochist, I don’t care who wants to dump the label on me. Sometimes the thing that should be pain, during sex, just isn’t.”
Erin smiled and nodded. “Noted. And sometimes it is pain, and there are people who want that, at varying levels of intensity. As for humiliation, in my private notes on the topic, I refer to consensual humiliation as a key to self-awareness. Opening a path to sexual arousal that was previously blocked.
“Humiliation between consenting partners,” she went on, “especially with a caring dominant partner well-versed in triggering humiliation, allows the subject new freedoms. When control resides with the dominant, the submissive can finally access feelings and acknowledge desires she may have been repressing.”
Avia flashed on a moment from her first meeting with Ben, when he’d explained Ecstatic Orgasm …
“Are you saying you will - do something - that will allow me to transcend normal consciousness and achieve euphoria?" She used a precise definition of the word “ecstasy.”
“Exactly,” he replied. “That is, after all, what orgasm should be for you.”
“And I’m going to get this, how?”
“Through total submission achieved through perfect obedience. This allows me to lead you to peak experience.” He saw a quick flash of skepticism before her mask of impassivity returned.
“Perfect obedience gives me euphoria?” she cocked an eyebrow.
“The only path to ecstasy is surrender, which gives you perfect freedom,” he returned.
“That’s not even a logical construct,” she objected. “If I’m submitting to your will and obeying your commands, what freedom is left for me?”
“The freedom to truly feel,” he said.
“He explained it,” Avia said out loud, interrupting Harley mid-sentence. The therapist sat back and waited. “He said what you’re saying the first time I met him, I just didn’t understand, until now. ‘Perfect obedience gives you the freedom to feel.’
“That’s what you’re saying, too, isn’t it?” She asked Harley.
Erin drank off her coffee. “Parents, teachers, culture can build a dam of shame behind which some feelings and desires are walled up. Sexual humiliation, compelling someone to do the forbidden, shameful act, say the forbidden words, is like sledgehammering a hole in that dam. So the feelings of shame are accompanied by the repressed feelings. In this case, sexual arousal.”
Avia wrote furiously, wanting to get it all down. “And that’s what all the ‘no, don’t/yes, I will’ talk during sex is about? Needing to feel controlled. The dominant partner takes all the responsibility, and the guilt.”
A realization struck her like heat lightning. “Holy shit, he’s right! That’s why there’s no safe word, no ‘slow down.’ It’s just do it or don’t. Otherwise, I could have stopped him. This way, it frees me to enjoy something forbidden because I have no choice.”
Avia grew excited and turned shining eyes to Erin Harley. “That’s right, isn’t it? The more control he has, the more he dominates, the less guilt or shame can interfere or make me not feel my own feelings because I think they’re wrong.”
“Avia,” the psychiatrist looked serious. “You have to have an extraordinary amount of trust in someone before it makes sense to give them control at that level. That’s the kind of trust that’s earned over time. Through mutual experience of one another.”
“I hear your concern,” Avia responded and gave the therapist a reassuring smile. “Work issues are about to slow us way down, give us time to figure out how to move on together.”
She was suddenly overwhelmed by an urgent desire to talk to Ben. She stood. “Thank you so much. I think I have what I need. Can I can call you for clarification if I need that later when I write the next installment?”
“Absolutely,” Erin nodded. “Also, I’ll be in Denver at the Breckler-Michelin Institute two days a week on a joint research project with the U.C.H. until mid-January.” She tilted her chin down and peered at Avia over her glasses. “If you want to meet for lunch or decide you’d like a therapeutic perspective again.”
Avia considered this. “You think I’m in need of therapy?”
“I think,” Erin Harley said, choosing her words carefully. “You’re in need of a safeword if you’re going to be in what sounds like an intense, highly sexualized relationship with a man who self-identifies as a Dominant. In fact, if he objects to the idea, that’s something I’d consider a serious red flag.”
Avia hurried down the hallway to the exit pulling out her cell. As she slid to her text screen, he she hoped Ben had a few minutes to meet with her when she got back to Denver. Leaving next week on business, she assumed he’d be swamped today, as tomorrow was their second Session. Their final Session, unless they found a way to move forward with the Companionship contract, and scheduled more.
She stopped at the door and touched “send.”
U HAVE A COUPLE MINUTES FOR ME TODAY? COFFEE?
She slipped the phone back into her pocket. Avia pushed through the door to the parking garage. Something pinged nearby.
“How about now?”
That voice. That deep, resonant, masculine voice. Avia felt her heart expand and her whole face light with a grin. He’s here. She raised her head.
Benedict Hart leaned casually back against the side of the Volvo, long legs crossed at the ankle. His grin matched hers, but his came with a dimple and a dark comma of a curl that fell over one brow. Avia stood
for a moment admiring him. He was wearing a navy blue boatneck sweater, the wide ribbed “collar” that stretched from shoulder to shoulder made his chest look even broader and more solid.
A white dress shirt, open at the collar gave a glimpse of the deep shadow of his sternal notch. A large watch, heavy, gold, peeked out of the sweater at one wrist. He wore a black belt studded with holes all around and dark blue denims. Black suede half-boots. He looked like he smelled good.
Avia wanted to shinny up his body like a kid after an apple at the top of the tree.
Ben cocked his head at her and uncrossed his legs. “Are you going to come over here and say hello or just stand there eye-fucking me?”
She walked toward him slowly. He straightened up, waiting for her. When she reached him, she just kept walking until the front of her body pressed firmly along the front of his. She felt the hard, cold buckle of his belt against her stomach. A bundle of warmth at his crotch nestled against her abdomen. She tilted her head back to look up into his surprised face and darkening indigo eyes. “Hello.”
Ben’s hands went to her biceps. He pulled her into him harder. But just for a second or two. Then he pushed her back gently, until their bodies were no longer in contact.
“Do you have plans for today?” He asked, his voice husky, one hand brushing her hair back behind an ear.
“I have to get my apartment ready for my sister and her husband. They’ll be staying there next week. I have to go over the Madigan trial notes.” She smiled. “I want everything done today so I only have you to concentrate on, tomorrow. No distractions.”
His fingers kneaded her shoulders as she spoke and a pool of need heated between her legs. How does he do this to me?
“Give me your day. Trust me.” He said and his hands dropped to his sides. Questions jumped to her lips. What does that mean? How will I get ready fro Talli? When will I be home? She looked out at the flatirons.
