He shook his head and fixed his gaze on me. "This is no act. I'm being as open and honest as I can with you. I understand you, Kate. You can relax with me. You can just be. Believe me, I won't judge you except when you disobey my orders or don't try hard enough to comply."
Disobeying his orders… Why did that both arouse me and irritate me?
"I'm so conflicted about this."
"I know you are." He reached out and took my hand, stroking his thumb over my palm and even that sent a stab of lust to my groin. "You're afraid. Your modern feminist sensibility thinks this is wrong, that submission is wrong, but that primal part of your brain knows it's right."
He leaned in closer, then he ate a forkful of crepe himself, chewing thoughtfully. He watched me, his blue eyes determined.
"You have to get over your self-judgment and accept this for what it is. Submission for you is just the way you prefer to experience sex. Nothing more, nothing less. There's no deep meaning to it. It just turns you on."
"It shouldn't."
"There you go – that judgmental Superego. Kate, D/s the way we will practice it is safe, sane, and most of all, consensual. That's not just a slogan. I believe it. D/s is not illegal, it's not damaging. It doesn't diminish you in any way. If you sign the contract, we'll have lots of mind-blowing sex in the way that really appeals to us both and you'll sleep really well at night when we part." He forked a piece of strawberry and popped it in his mouth, chewing briefly. "Simple."
I took a drink of water, needing something to distract me from that look of certainty on his face.
We finished the dessert and he described his band members, how often they played and how their gigs at small venues kept him busy most nights. But he had a few open slots a week and would like to see me on those nights, either at his place or mine.
"But tonight, I want to come to your place so I can see who you are when you're not with your family."
"I don’t know…" I was incredibly aroused, but I was also incredibly afraid.
"If you want, no sex tonight. Just talk. We can go over my personal limits and discuss yours. No touching and no sex unless you initiate it."
"And if I sign an agreement? How much say do I get in what happens between us?"
"When we're together? Sexually? None. The purpose of the agreement is for you to give that power over to me to decide what happens. The only out you have is your safe word, but once you use it, that's it. We stop. Full stop. So don't use it unless you really mean it. Don't use it unless what's happening is too much for you to bear. At first, you can use 'yellow' as a sign you need to slow down or pause. Red will be only for full stop, and once we're over the initial training. A submissive enjoys some uncertainty, because it's arousing. But real fear and bad pain? That's when you use your safe word. Other than that, other than your hard limits, you leave everything up to me. What, how, when, where, how often."
"I shouldn't need a safe word, Drake, if all we're going to do is fuck. Remember – no pain."
"I told you I'm not a sadist. But sex can get intense. Bondage scenes can get intense. I'm not into pain, but a binding can accidentally get too tight, or you can be emotionally overwhelmed. I will punish you if you misbehave. Sometimes, punishment can be too intense."
"What kind of punishment?"
"We'll have to negotiate that."
"Lara said you'd likely spank me."
He smiled. "Does that upset you?"
"I'm not a child."
"Spanking is merely to reinforce dominance. It's not supposed to be about hurting you."
"How can it not hurt?"
"It won't hurt too much, then."
"How do you know what too much is?"
"I'll show you. You'll tell me. I'll stop at that point."
I shrank in my seat, disheartened. I didn't want any spanking.
"Look, Kate, hopefully, if I do this right, you'll never need to use a safe word but it's there just in case."
"I don't know about the spanking part," I said. "We're going to have to talk about that."