But pain? Was I really turned on by this or just the whole situation? I don’t want to think about it now. Back on the bed, lying next to him I was in distress and close to panicking at the thought of 10 more blows from that paddle. Even if my body responded to it, my mind wasn’t ready to.

I couldn’t speak.

His

I watched her lips begin to move, without noise.

They moved again. This time, those perfect lips made meaningful shapes. She was mouthing words.

“What?” I asked, softly.

There was a pause as she gathered her strength enough to compose a sentence.

“How do I get back?” she asked, shakily.

The question threw me. She was lying desecrated in my bed like a ransacked church, her body battered and her flesh glowing, and I thought she was asking the way home. It was 3am, and she was certainly in no condition to travel.

“What do you mean?” I asked, suspiciously.

She swallowed, rallied her strength, and with concerted effort, she finished her question and it chilled me to the bone.

“How do I get back… … … to being me?”

Her eyes were blindfolded, makeup smeared across her cheek, her backside was glowing red with the rawness and welts of the smacks I had given her. And then the profundity of what she’d said hit home. I suddenly realised.

She was underwater.

I’ve mentioned Beau’s breathtaking ability to submit and slip into subspace a few times before. It’s such an unusual talent that I’ve never encountered it before, and knowing how to react to it isn’t an instinct for me. It’s something that I really have to consider. Here’s why it’s hard sometimes to know how to react when she’s in this state.

While I know that without proper supervision, subspace can be dangerous (like waking someone from sleepwalking I guess), Beau often looks so supremely content and meditative in this state that I actually don’t want to bring her up. She looks like she’s enjoying being empty, and I’m jealous of this state. It’s not something I can do, and I know that if I could do it, I would want to surf that feeling and explore it for as long as possible. So I have a conflict: does she need to be brought round, or does she want to wrap herself up in this surreal sensation?

After I orgasm, I usually leave her alone for a few moments so she can retreat into herself and recuperate. But this night, Beau wanted to be brought back up quickly.

Just a handful of hours earlier, she had been the flirty, confident, don’t-give-a-fuck-what-you-think girl that I love spending time with. With our feet overhanging the Thames and in the darkening evening, we’d sat and talked through so many subjects; love, romance, sex, friendship, nature, even relativity. I had told her that from a very young age I knew that the universe couldn’t possibly be infinite, otherwise there would be an infinite number of stars and the night sky would be a single sheet of blinding white light. At one point, a tourist boat floated rapidly past  and we noted that the passenger walking along its length was walking at about 3mph by his own reckoning, but about 15mph relative to us due to the conservation of momentum.

“How do I get back to being me?” she asked, lying blindfolded, sore, raw and thoroughly sexed on my bed.

I was still recovering from my orgasm, but it was quickly obvious that Beau was so deeply under water that she needed a lifeline. I thought for a moment.

Hers

He stopped.

He took off my collar, then undid my blindfold. I held it over my face with my hands hiding from him. I didn’t want to look at him.

How do I get back to being me? So far underwater, I had lost my way. Vulnerable little me, laying naked on the bed, hiding my face in shame.

‘First of all, take off this and let in some light.’ he slipped the blindfold away and I couldn’t see much as my eyes adjusted.

‘Now look at me.’ I couldn’t, I covered my face with my hands instead. I couldn’t face him. I was too embarrassed, about what we did, about the paddle, and especially about, “Little pain slut”.

His

“If you were on a train travelling at 30mph”, I said eventually, a little uncertain of myself, “and you threw a ping pong ball forwards at 10mph, how fast is that ball travelling?”

Her perfect lips broadened into a quiet smile as she resurfaced, rolled towards me onto her side, and propped her head up on my thigh.

Hers

I laughed.

There she is, that girl back on the Thames. Rum and coke in hand laughing at childhood discussions of physics. I could see the surface. I looked at him briefly, and relaxed, then buried my head in him as he covered my naked body.

Part guest post from Pechorin, The Blog Of The Unknown Hedonist