by Jean Johnson
Krais hesitated, but not out of reluctance to touch himself. He debated a moment internally, then started by feathering his fingertips over the back of his other hand and arm. “How, ah . . . vocal . . . should I be? Do you need to hear my every thought as I experience these things?”
“Ideally, yes. The more we communicate what is going on with each other, the more successful we will be in learning how to interact with each other,” Pelai stated.
Stroking up to his biceps and back, Krais frowned softly. “I’m not sure about that . . .”
“What part makes you hesitate?” she asked.
“I . . . I feel like I’d be exposing myself, but you’d still be closed. You only need to know about my reactions. You don’t have to tell me anything about yours, whether you find this arousing or boring or annoying . . . and that seems . . . lopsided.”
“You have a point,” she conceded. “Normally, a Disciplinarian would not reveal such things to a penitent in her care. Even then, some communication must take place. But I’m going to be treating you a lot more like a subservient. A doma and her subservient engage in a lot more communication than a doma and her penitent, and that includes showing my reactions to what is happening to you. On the other hand, you might not want to hear a lot of my reactions,” Pelai warned him. “It might get very intimate.”
“I can handle intimacy,” he told her, switching hands so he could caress his other arm for a bit. “That is, if you can handle me being completely honest in these lessons.”
“Sessions, not lessons, so you don’t reveal the full truth to your family,” she corrected absently. “I was just hesitant because we may have been colleagues at times, but we have not really been friends, let alone lovers.”
His hands paused in their caressing. Krais studied her a long moment before he blinked and admitted the full truth. “I have always found you attractive, Naranna Pelai. But I always knew you’d never blindly follow my father, so . . . I emphasized our differences in my mind so that I could ignore being attracted to you. Does that bother you?”
She tried not to smile. “You penned the right words with my own ink. That is exactly how I’ve felt about you.”
Narrowing his eyes speculatively, Krais ghosted his hands over his chest, teasing his muscles with his fingertips. Trying to entice her. “And now that we are free to be friends? Will you be honest with me?”
Leaning forward, forearm braced on her uppermost knee, she purred, “I want to enjoy watching you arouse yourself all the way to a climax in front of me.”
He blushed under his sun-brown, tattooed cheeks, and cleared his throat. “That, ah . . . that could happen. We’ll have to see.”
“Well, technically I did not say you could caress your chest . . . but I like a man who takes initiative,” she reminded him. “I dislike having to constantly tell a partner what to do.”
“That would be work,” he intoned mock-solemnly—and got her toes planted on his pectoral muscle with a simple admonishing lift of her leg. “Okay, okay, I’ll behave . . . Doma Pelai. Doma Pelai’thia,” he corrected himself. “I apologize. I need to use your proper title. Forgive me.”
“Outside these walls, call me Pelai’thia,” she decided, wiggling her toes a little bit against his chest. Like most Mendhite men, he wasn’t very hairy, but he did have a little dusting of hairs around his sternum and nipples. The ones around his sternum tickled her toes, inviting the bit of toe-play. “In a place like this, with privacy, you can still call me Pelai. It’ll remind me to stay at least somewhat humble in the face of all the power I now command.”
He gingerly covered the top of her foot with one hand, holding her toes against his chest. Krais decided to give her a piece of verbal honesty. “I think I like the feel of you touching me like this. It’s . . . strange. No one has put their foot on my chest . . . unless you count my brothers literally trying to walk on me when we were boys. But it feels good to be touched by you.”
Her turn to blush. She cleared her throat . . . and wiggled her toes against his flesh once more. “Well . . . I’m glad. I’ll end up touching you a lot soon.”
“True. Would you like a foot massage?” he offered. “I probably won’t be the best at it, but I can be gentle.”
“Not right now, no.” She wiggled her toes one last time to mollify him, and lowered her foot back into its knee-draped position. Purrsus stretched out his black-tipped legs and pressed his paws against her thigh before relaxing again. “Another time. Caress your chest for me, Krais. Don’t neglect your arms. Caress your face, too, and your hair. You have beautiful hair.”
He ducked his head and curved his mouth in a remarkably shy little smile. “Mother used to say I had hair like an ink waterfall, when it was brushed out smooth. Sometimes I wish I could grow it out long like a little boy again. I had to cut it short while we were down south of the Sun’s Belt half a year ago, when it was summer down there.”
“Long or short, it’s beautiful,” she told him. “Now touch yourself, or your next lesson will be in the feel of a flogger wielded by an expert.”
“Yes, Doma,” he murmured, and started touching his chest again. Chest, arms, shoulders, chin and cheeks, brow and strands of shoulder-length hair, which brought his fingers down in range of his chest again. The gentle touches he used both soothed and aroused him, but only mildly for the latter. “It feels good, but . . .”
“ . . . But?” she prompted.
“It used to get me aroused,” he confessed. “Now it just . . . pleases. It’s pleasant, but that’s all.”
“Scrape your nails lightly down your biceps,” Pelai ordered.
He blinked, but did as she commanded. That provoked a shiver. “Oh.”
“Go on,” Pelai murmured. “Caress yourself some more . . . then scrape yourself in other places.”
The contrast between those scratches and feathersoft caresses made the next few scrapes pleasurable. But when his fourth scoring crossed one of his nipples, Krais gasped. That . . . that aroused him. Unbidden, he did it again, and shuddered, not just shivered. “Oh Goddess . . . !”
“Feels really good, doesn’t it?” Pelai asked, pleased by his reactions. Even a little enthralled by them. To her, watching him discover what he liked best felt special. “Claw at your thighs!”
She didn’t shout the words—in fact, Pelai spoke quietly—but the urgency she put into the command made him instinctively bring both hands down to his inner knees. Without hesitating, Krais scraped upward, toward his groin. That felt incredible. A sound somewhere between a gasp and a moan escaped him. A featherlight stroke downward, another scrape up . . .
He whimpered, shuddering. He tickled and scraped again, panting. And a fourth time, moaning, “Godddess . . . !”
There was no doubt whatsoever that doing just that little bit of sensation play turned him on. Pelai eyed the evidence of it, the lump beneath those folds of blue cotton, lifting up the material in a rather blatant way since it no longer had the containment of a fundo wrapping it into a pouch. As much as she wanted to reach down and touch it, test its firmness, feel along its length, gauge its girth through the fabric, she refrained.
Instead, she asked softly, “Did you realize that this qualifies as sensation play?”
Krais shook his head, his blue-black hair flicking back and forth over his shoulders.
“Pinch a nipple. How does that feel in comparison?” she asked. “Remember, answer as fully as you can. I will not judge you for anything you say, but I will judge you if you refuse to say anything. So . . . be honest. How does it feel, compared to scraping your inner thighs?”
He blushed, hesitating. After only a few seconds of doubt, he lifted his hand to his chest. Pinched one flat brown nipple, surrounded by tattoos for strength and resilience. “It . . . it feels kind of nice, but also . . . not as exciting. Not as . . . I don’t know the word for it, I’m sorry, Doma,” he murmured, unable to
meet her gaze. “It’s not pleasure, exactly. It’s something else.”
“Not as . . . stimulating?” she asked.
He nodded. “That’s the word.”
“Try twisting your nipple, and try pulling it out from your chest,” she directed. “Be gentle. At least, at the start.”
Again, he hesitated a few moments, no doubt steeling himself, then tried what she suggested. A pinch and a twist felt good, in a painful way. Lips parting, he tried it again, a little harder, and moaned faintly. “I . . . I can’t believe . . . “
“Tug on it, Krais,” Pelai told him. “Stretch out your flesh. Enjoy the sensation of it aching and stinging.”
He did so, and shuddered. His kilt twitched, a bobbing pulse of interest connecting his nipple to his still hidden shaft. Krais felt her gaze on his chest, his groin, his face. Knowing she watched him made him feel shy and unnerved. His grasp eased in his uncertainty and his flesh slipped free, snapping back more or less into its original position. The areola around his hardened nipple now felt tender. Even a little puffy, just a tiny bit swollen. And very sensitive. Just lightly rubbing it sent waves of pleasure straight down to his groin.
“How do you feel?”
“I . . . liked it,” Krais confessed quietly. “But I’m uncomfortable with you watching me do these things. I’m not protesting my punishment,” he repeated yet again, as much for himself as for her. “But I am uncomfortable.”
“Tell me exactly what part, or point, or thought makes you feel this discomfort,” Pelai urged him. “Pin it down and pen it in detail.”
She didn’t rush him, thankfully. Krais organized his thoughts over several seconds, forced himself to acknowledge them, and confessed softly, “I fear you using this against me, this knowledge and these memories, to humiliate me somehow.”
“That is an understandable concern,” Pelai stated. “I can reassure you that I will not use them against you in harmful ways . . . but you and I both know that trust grows strongest when deeds match words consistently, time after time. You know that, right?”
He nodded. A thought crossed his mind. Krais forced himself to look up at her. To look into her deep brown eyes, darker than his own, and confess, “I do already know you’re a woman who speaks what she writes. If you say you won’t use any of this against me, I will believe you.”
“Outside the context of convincing your father that you’re being punished, I will not use any of this against you,” Pelai compromised.
Krais grimaced. “That . . . is uncomfortably honest, but I suppose it’s reasonable.”
“Well, dismiss him from your mind,” Pelai said, and flicked her hand like she might flick a few crumbs off a table. “You like scratching, but not so much pinching. You like twisting, and you like pulling. Which did you like more, the twist or the pull?”
Her frank question made him blush. Clearing his throat, Krais thought, and said, “I think . . . twisting. But twisting and pulling felt good, too. Actually, yes. If I had to rate them from . . . least to most enjoyable . . . pinching, pulling, twisting, and twisting-and-pulling.”
“How hard are you?” Pelai asked next. “On a scale from limp to the point of no return.”
He chuckled ruefully at her comparisons. “That’s hardly useful. I don’t know the intermediate choices.”
“Ten fingers, ten points,” she told him. “Zero is limp, ten is ejaculating.”
“Um . . . six to seven. It . . . it was an eight a few moments ago,” he admitted. “But these pauses to analyze my feelings are calming me down a little.”
“Hm. That does bring up a different question, and yes, I do expect you to answer it,” Pelai warned him. “When you stroke yourself, and you do it to a climax, how fast or slow do you usually take?”
“Oh, Goddess,” he muttered, looking away in embarrassment. “Do I have to answer that?”
“Yes.”
He rolled his eyes skyward but Menda didn’t descend through the ceiling on a cloud to rescue him. Oh well. “I . . . It depends on whether or not I feel I have time. If I’m in a hurry due to lack of privacy, and am just relieving pressure, not very long. If I have privacy . . . half an hour to an hour. Rarely under fifteen minutes. I, uh . . . I enjoy the ache of anticipation.”
“ . . . You do realize that ‘ache of anticipation’ you just described is a solid part of sensation play, right?” Pelai asked pointedly. At his confused blink, she clarified it. “Denial of pleasure in the face of arousal is a form of sensation play. That ache of unfulfilled lusts, the anticipation of having to wait. . . . If you keep yourself aroused just shy of the point of no return, that’s called ‘edging’ your pleasure. The term comes from holding yourself at the edge of fulfillment. It’s considered a punishment for subservients and penitents alike because it causes the target to become frustrated with need.
“A skilled Disciplinarian can keep their bottom—the subject receiving their activities—on the edge of release for quite some time,” she added honestly. “I suspect you never heard about it because your father doesn’t do much sexual disciplining, does he?”
Krais shook his head. “Not in the least. Not as far as I know. He loves Mother deeply, and I think she may have requested he avoid such things early on in their courtship. I’m not completely sure, but . . . either way he doesn’t do any sexual disciplining of the household subservients. She certainly doesn’t. I’ve never seen it, or sensed it.
“I think Foren and Gayn each learned of these things, since their training progressed a lot farther than mine, but it wasn’t an aspect of our household . . . Actually, now that I think about it, that would explain why several subservients kept getting tossed out, and why they seemed so disappointed,” Krais mused, thinking about his family’s history. “I know many of their kind long for sexual disciplining.”
At that phrasing, Pelai rolled her eyes. “That will be enough of that kind of thinking, Puhon Krais.”
He blinked and frowned up at her. “What? What did I say wrong?”
Raising her hands, she fluttered her fingers in mock-magic and said, “Their kind.”
“I . . . don’t understand.”
“Obviously.” Knowing he was losing his arousal, Pelai still couldn’t let this one pass. “Krais, remember the grid I told you about? Dominants to the left, submissives to the right, tops at the top . . . ?”
“And bottoms at the bottom, yes, it’s only been a little while since you said it,” he pointed out.
“Yes, and everyone is on the same grid. Everyone is on the same grid,” she repeated, sitting forward and staring into eyes the color of freshly oiled teak. “It isn’t ‘their kind,’ as if subservients are some strange outlander from some other nation. It is our kind. Your father has warped your thinking into separating himself—a dominant top—from submissive bottoms . . . but we are all equals because we are all on the grid.”
“But . . . normal people don’t play Disciplinarian-and-subservient games,” he protested, gesturing off toward her front door and the city—the world—that lay beyond it.
“And how, exactly, do people make love and create children?” she countered dryly. “Krais . . . everyone gives a little and demands a little. Everyone does things for their partner’s pleasure, and receives things from their partner for their pleasure. At least in healthy relationships. Giving is like a subservient, demanding is like a Disciplinarian. Doing things for someone else’s pleasure is being a top and . . . ?”
“ . . . And receiving pleasure from a partner is like being a bottom. I see that now,” he murmured, gaze lowered and subdued in thoughtfulness. “I . . . didn’t see that before now.”
“You grew up with only two corners of the grid on display. Two far corners, dominant top and submissive bottom,” Pelai explained. “Most people fall in the middle, where it’s well-balanced and fairly even. Some people are farther out toward the edges. And some
people roam all over, one day preferring to deliver, another day to receive. Sometimes preferring to order, and sometimes preferring to serve.
“There are plenty of people who wander out of the balanced center to go exploring into a corner. Some do so out of curiosity, some do so out of desire, some do so because they are coaxed or . . . Well, if your brothers hadn’t been coerced into trying to become Disciplinarians, if they had come to it of their own inclinations, they may still not have passed Menda’s test of their character, but they could’ve been certified to become an authorized Dominant, servicing the willing subservients in the city.”
“Father always looked down upon those,” Krais dismissed. Or rather, revealed, wrinkling his nose. “I suppose that only confirms further his dislike for sexual disciplining, since he said such people were only interested in flesh games, and not the purification of mind and spirit that a true subservient seeks.”
“Which is probably yet another reason why you hesitate to get in touch with your sensation-seeking, flesh-game-enjoying nature,” she said gently. “There is nothing wrong with it. Your father’s many attempts to claim otherwise are not the reality. What is done between fully aware, freely consenting, mentally and emotionally and physically mature partners, enthusiastic about everything that happens throughout the whole of it, is fine. That is one of the oldest rules of Gods and Man, and it sits among those written down at the First Convocation.”
“Treat others as you would wish they would treat you,” Krais murmured from the schooling lessons all children in Mendhi learned, in a land where record keeping was as old as recorded history. “Whatever is done when fully informed and freely consented to by those who are mature is acceptable in the eyes of the Gods. Whatever life throws at us is our fate, and will not always be fair; what we do with it or about it is our destiny, which we can make for better or for worse. Mortals have free will, and because of this, no God or Goddess can completely alleviate all the suffering in the world. Rather it is up to us to help ease each other’s suffering . . .”
“I know what you’re going to say,” Pelai murmured when he trailed off at that point in the list, falling silent. When he peeked at her in curiosity, she shrugged. “We have free will, and individual tastes. If the Gods banished the pain of being scratched from all humans . . . you’d never again be able to arouse yourself quite like that thigh scraping you did. And that would be a shame, wouldn’t it? Given how much you clearly enjoyed it . . . ?”
