Impact play, whips, bondage safety (not involving rope), needle play—um,no, thank you—and more. Honestly?
I was impressed. This wasn’t just a “get your rocks off” place. I mean, sure, I’m certain that’s exactly what some people did, but it really was a place of education, too.
Going through the information also helped me define several hard limits right off the bat, in addition to needle play.
Nothing “medical” would be on my sexual menu, thank you very much. Although the electrical play class intrigued me, even though it involved both violet wands—no clue—and TENS units. The latter I was intimately familiar with because we had one and used it frequently on my sore back and legs after particularly brutal days when I had to operate and spent hours non-stop on my feet. The cupping class also piqued my interest. I’d had that done to me before when I’d seen an acupuncturist for back pain years earlier and had enjoyed it.
“We can watch classes and not participate,” he reminded me. “Same for demos. If there’s anything you’re curious about, we can watch as little or as much of it as you want.”
“And you won’t force me to do anything?”
He closed the folder and faced me. “Baby, I’m not going to ‘force’ you to do anything. You’re a grown-ass adult, an accomplished surgeon, and fully capable of making up your mind.”
“Maybe this is what’s gumming up my brain,” I admitted. “You want control, but you won’t force me to do things?”
“We will negotiate limits. You can have hard limits—like no needle or enema play—and you might decide you have soft limits, like you want to try something, but want me to nudge you toward it. We’ll have rules. If you agree to a rule, I expect you to obey it. That’s part of defining our relationship.”
“And if I don’t?”
He set his mug aside. “For example, Lilah told me you have a tendency to goof off when you’re working on continuing-education stuff and leave things for the last minute.”
“Narc,” I muttered. “Snitches get stitches.”
“One of my rules might be you finish your work immediately or I change the passwords to all the streaming services so you can’t goof off.”
My eyes widened as I stared at him. “You wouldn’t!”
“Wouldn’t I?” He waggled his eyebrows at me. “Lilah would change them for me.”
“She would, too.” It was spooky he used that example, because while working through my last round of CE credits she had threatened to do exactly that when I tried to leave everything until the last-minute.
“Let’s discuss orgasms.”
I perked up. “Yes, please!”
“I meant my rule that I’m in charge of that now.”
“Oh.”
“As we define our relationship, there will be punishment for disobeying me about that.”
I scowled. “What if I just do it and don’t tell you?”
“Why would you do that when all you have to do is ask for permission? There might be times I’m at the station for three or four days in a row if there’s a bad wildfire and we’re short-handed. Do you honestly think I’d tell you no if you asked?”
Sipping my hot chocolate to buy myself some time, I pondered that. “What kind of punishment?”
“No, let’s stay on topic—why would you agree to a rule you don’t plan on obeying?”
The uncomfortable silence required me to actually think on that topic. “I guess I wouldn’t agree to a rule I didn’t think I could obey,” I finally said.
He nodded. “Okay, then. Let’s use another example. I will require you to check in by text to let me know you’re home or at work or wherever unless I’m at home when you return. Not to control you, but because, again, there will be times I can’t be home. It will make life easier on me not worrying if you’re broken down or in an accident. Right?”
I nodded. “That’s fair.”
“If you forget to text me because as soon as you arrived at work you were swamped, that’s not something I’m going to punish. If you repeatedly forget to text me when you get home at night, or before you leave for work, then we’ll need to have consequences after an appropriate training period.”
“‘Training period’?”
