Lily Lloyd's Blog, page 4

Foster Care: A Marketplace Tale, Part 5

{Foster Care is fanfiction based on Laura Antoniou’s Marketplace series, a fictional world in which there is a large and secret market for consensual slaves who serve their owners under contract. In Part 4, Bette and Kelly’s personal chemistry begins to reach the boiling point, but here in Part 5, a new danger threatens to separate them forever.}

In the morning, I get the call I’ve been dreading from Chris Parker about the status of Kelly’s contract. I’ve sent Kelly off to the depannéur to pick up my morning coffee and run some other errands, and told her not to come back until I call for her. I don’t want her to hear this conversation.

“Technically, MacFarlane still owns Kelly, and his other property. I don’t think he’s going to come back to claim them, considering the fact that if he comes out of hiding he’ll almost instantly be thrown in jail to await trial for murder,” Chris says.

“But she never signed a new contract,” I said.

“Nor was she released,” said Chris.

“I don’t get it — if MacFarlane is in hiding, and can’t or won’t reclaim his property, why is Negel getting involved?”

“Well, Negel recruited MacFarlane to the Marketplace, and as the buyers’ rep for an owner who bought sixteen slaves over only two years, he made a lot of money in fees from MacFarlane. As the buyers’ representative, he also has an option to place a temporary hold on a slave whose owner is, well, indisposed.”

“Whatever happens, MacFarlane isn’t going to be buying any more slaves, so why does Negel care about keeping MacFarlane’s property from going back to the block? It’s not like he has to stay on the guy’s good side.”

“No, but if he represents an owner, and he takes possession of a slave for that owner temporarily, he’s guaranteed a bounty even if the slave is never reclaimed.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” I say, putting my forehead in my hand.

“How much is it?” I ask.

“It can be a lot, depending on how much the property is insured for,” says Chris. “And Negel’s training house and brokering operations — well, a lot of people speculate that they might have turned into a Ponzi scheme. He’s in trouble with money, and he needs more of it to keep everything going.”

“Great. Just great,” I say.

“The thing is, if you can hang on to her for the full year of the foster term, you can exercise your option to buy Kelly’s contract.”

“But only if I hang on to her.”

“Correct.”

“Got it. Thanks, Chris. Let me know if you hear anything from Negel. Or about Negel, for that matter.”

“Will do.”

I hang up and immediately dial Kelly.

There’s no answer.

It takes about three beats for me to hit full panic. Shit!

I throw my coat on and jam my feet in my boots. I run down the stairs, half falling down the last flight, and bust through the door, which I don’t even bother closing behind me. I run across the street to the depannéur.

“Did the young woman with the curly hair come in this morning?” I demand of the old guy behind the counter.

“Mademoiselle Kelly?” he asks. “Non.”

She’s been gone for twenty minutes. It doesn’t take twenty minutes to cross the street.

I flip open my phone. I installed a locator app on it, just the way I had on Diana’s phone. Looks like Kelly’s still got her phone. The dot is moving, rapidly, toward the airport.

I streak back across the street at full speed and get in my car, a tiny Fiat, and blast it right over the curb into the street, nearly sideswiping a recycling bin. I go down narrow, cobblestoned St. Sulpice the wrong way and swing onto the highway.

I have no fucking guns! I think. Fucking Canada! I didn’t bother to try to bring any up here, or buy one on the black market while I was here. Shit!

My phone, mounted on the dashboard, shows that whomever has Kelly got off two exits before the airport. The dot’s not moving now.

I get off the highway and roll into a district of distribution centers and warehouses sandwiched between the airport and Montreal’s major rail yard. Following the line on the map, I pull past a warehouse where the garage door is still open. I see two men in long coats standing in the doorway, their breath making steam in the frigid air. I pull around the block and into a narrow alleyway beside the building and cut my engine. I open the door to my car and shut it quietly, creeping along the side of the building, wishing fervently that I had a gun.

“We have to wait until she wakes up to get her through security at the airport. If we tried to take an unconscious person through security, we’d never make it.”

“How long will it take? We don’t have that much time before the flight.”

“Listen, if we have to buy another ticket, we buy another ticket. The fee is big enough — the cost of the ticket is nothing compared to that.”

I take the chance of peeking around the corner. Felipe! One of them is Felipe, the Marketplace doctor’s assistant!

Fuck, why don’t I have a gun? Felipe is huge — there’s no way I can take him, let alone him and the other guy.

I get an idea. I run back to my car and get inside, locking the doors.

Making police siren noises? There’s an app for that. I swear silently at my phone, urging it to download the app faster. It installs, and I play it — loud, but not loud enough. I take out a cable and plug it into the sound system of my car, roll down all the windows, and turn the volume up to 11.

I blast the siren sound at top volume. I hear panic inside the warehouse, and a black Town Car pulls out, trunk still open and flapping. But Kelly’s dot never moves. Thank goodness, they’ve left her behind.

I get out of my car and run toward the open garage bay of the warehouse — and straight into Felipe.

It’s like running into a brick wall. Felipe towers over me — he’s got at least a foot on me and probably close to 100 pounds, too. He cuffs me across the face with his massive hand, and I fly six feet sideways, my head hitting a 55-gallon drum. I see stars, but I don’t lose consciousness. I throw up my hand, pulling myself up on the edge of the barrel and I feel something on top of it.

Whatever it is, as Felipe comes towards me, I grab the handle and swing it at him as hard as I can.

It’s a pipe wrench, and I think I just broke at least three of Felipe’s ribs. I scramble to my feet while Felipe rolls back and forth in agony on the concrete floor, gasping for breath. I run back into the warehouse, still holding the pipe wrench. I kick open a flimsy office door and Kelly is inside, on a cracked vinyl couch.

I’m not a big person. Kelly’s a little taller and bigger than I am. But in the Army I trained to carry guys almost twice my size. I throw her over my shoulders in a fireman’s carry and run for it. Felipe’s on his hands and knees as I run by him, a puddle of barf between his hands. I have no time for him and not a single fuck to give about his predicament. I round the corner back to my car, piling Kelly into the front seat. I jump into the drivers’ seat, throwing the pipe wrench in the back, and I floor it, leaving a plume of dirt and gravel behind me.

Once I get a few blocks away, I pull over. I put my head on the steering wheel. Snot is streaming from my nose and there’s a cut on my head and blood trickling down the back of my neck. I lean Kelly back in the seat and buckle her seatbelt. I take her pulse — she’s alive, and it’s steady. I lift an eyelid and her pupils react, but she’s still out cold from whatever they gave her. I imagine Felipe had access to plenty of things from the doctor’s office, and I see a small puncture mark with a circular bruise on her neck.

They must have gotten her coming out of the apartment, I think.

I dial 911 and make a report of a man in distress at a warehouse on Pike Avenue. As I drive away, I hear sirens for real this time.

Lily Lloyd is the author of  Discipline: Adding Rules & Discipline To Your BDSM Relationship . You can find more of her writing at  The Black Leather Belt .

 

Foster Care: A Marketplace Tale, Part 4

 

{Foster Care is fanfiction based on Laura Antoniou’s Marketplace series, a fictional world in which there is a large and secret market for consensual slaves who serve their owners under contract. In Part 3, Kelly settles in to recuperate from her injuries at Bette’s Montreal apartment. As Kelly’s health recovers, the sexual tension between Bette and Kelly grows, and in Part 4, Bette gives Kelly a very special task.}

The next day, after an early dinner, the sun is slanting in through the windows and the temperature is in the single digits, Fahrenheit, the way it is in Montreal when the sun is out. It’s actually warmer when it’s snowing.

She’s wearing nothing but her apron, bending over the woodstove and retrieving the teakettle to put more hot water in the French press for my coffee.

Some Marketplace owners frown on having property sit at a superior’s table to eat, but it’s my house and I like the company. Once Kelly finishes stirring milk and sugar into my coffee, she sits across the table from me, the morning sunlight falling on her hair. I put the Op/Ed page down and say, “I have a gift for you.”

“Oh?” she says. “A gift?”

“Yes. A gift of protocol.”

Kelly raises an elegant eyebrow.

“I only give out protocol to those who are ready. And only one new protocol at a time,” I say.

“Yes…sir?” she says, tilting her head quizzically.

“Boss. Follow me.”

“Yes, boss,” Kelly replied, walking behind me to the entryway to the apartment.

I stand before her and tug at the strings of the simple white canvas apron she wears. Once untied, I lift it over her head and hang it on one of the hooks on the coatrack by the door. As I do that, I noticed that she’s spotted the collar and leash and I can see her eyes get wide with that but she doesn’t own a dog…ohhhhhh expression.

“Kneel,” I say. I’m sure she’s been trained to do it in one fluid motion, but her injuries still have her off balance, and she uses her fingertips against the wall to steady herself, ending kneeling facing the door.

“No, don’t face the door. I want your back to this wall, the one with the mirror and the coatrack on it.” Kelly turns left, her back now to the wall.

“If I want you to greet me in the way I’m about to demonstrate, I’ll text you before I come home,” I say. “As soon as I text you, I want you to come to this spot, kneel down, and put the collar around your neck. The lead stays on the hook, and you are never to touch the handle of the leash. I’m the only one who takes it off the hook, do you understand?”

“Yes, boss,” Kelly says, almost whispering.

“I want you to come over here and assume the position as soon as I text and stay there for as long as it takes for me to come through the door. That might be thirty seconds or it might be twenty minutes. That’s not up to you, and if I choose not to tell you how long it will be, that’s my prerogative,” I say.

I reach out and take the collar in my hands, unbuckling it while I speak. “I want more than just you kneeling by the door when I arrive — I want you kneeling by the door, having spent whatever time I’ve allowed you thinking about your role. About your position relative to me. About the fact that when you’re kneeling naked by my door, connected by a leash to a hook on the wall that isn’t yours to touch or take off, that you are exactly where you’re supposed to be.”

I brush the hair away, bending down to secure the collar around her neck.

“This is where you belong,” I say. I look down on her. Her chest rises and falls rapidly and her face is flushed.

“You belong on your knees,” I say. “You’re made to serve — that’s not what you do, it’s who you are. You are my equal in worth, but not in authority. You are not my equal and you do not want to be my equal.”

I step back, leaning against the opposite wall of the narrow entryway.

“You’re not eyeballing me, and that’s good,” I say. It shows me that you understand your place. You know I don’t mind eye contact at other times, and that I even want you to eat at table with me. But when you greet me,” I say, stepping closer to her, “I want you chin up,” I say, putting a fingertip under her chin until she’s facing straight ahead, “eyes down. Shoulders back,” I say, pushing lightly on her shoulders with my fingertips. “Hands loosely clasped behind your back.”

“Spread your knees a bit. I should be able to put my boot here,” I say, placing my heavy, glossy leather boot between her naked knees.

“When I come in the door, you don’t speak until I speak to you, and you don’t move from this spot until I move you. You never, ever take the leash off the hook, or touch the handle of the leash — that’s for me, and for me only. Do you understand?”

“Yes, boss,” Kelly says.

“I expect you to make a common-sense exception to this rule when it’s needed. If the house is on fire or there’s a burglar coming through the door, you take it off the hook and run like hell, understand? It’s not locked on here. That’s because I don’t use locks. I expect a slave to not need a lock. I expect you to be well trained enough to stay where I put you for as long as I want you there, and sensible enough to know when an emergency merits that you stand up and do what you need to do.”

“Emergencies do not include bathroom visits, annoying noises, or being chilly enough to want to change the setting on the thermostat. If it gets dark? Then it gets dark; you don’t leave this spot to flip any light switches. If someone else rings the bell while you’re kneeling here, you don’t answer it: nobody’s home. If someone’s ringing the bell, it’s not me: I live here and I’ll let myself in.”

“Being on this spot, kneeling and naked, shows me that you understand that your role, above all, is to be available to me, whenever, wherever, and however I want you to be,” I say. “Do you understand?” I say.

“Yes, boss,” Kelly replies.

“Any questions?” I ask.

“No, boss.”

“Good,” I say. I pick up the handle of the lead and loop it around my wrist and start walking towards the living room area of the loft. Kelly, not expecting that, scrambles to her feet behind me and follows me closely. She has to; the lead is only six feet long.

“Down,” I say, as we approach my favorite leather armchair. She folds herself smoothly onto the meditation cushion that’s always there, at the foot of the chair and a little to my left. Her eyes get wide when she sees that I’ve installed a hook just under the broad wooden arm of the chair. I hang the handle end of the leash on the hook.

“Come closer,” I say. She leans toward me and I unsnap the leash from her collar. A brief flicker of disappointment crosses her face. I pat her cheek. “There there, you’ll be back on the leash soon enough, my girl. Now go get me a Coke, the game’s going to be on in a minute.”

She returns with a can of Coke and a rocks glass with ice on a tray. I take the glass off the tray, and she sets it down on the side table. “Down,” I say, indicating the cushion. “Face me,” I say. She turns toward me and I clip the lead back on. I lean back in my chair, take a sip of the soda, and flip the game on.

“Perfect,” I sigh.

I can see Kelly beaming out of the corner of my eye but I pretend not to notice.

******************

I’m not even Canadian, but I root for one Canadian team, The Montreal Canadiens, and the only team I really and truly hate is another Canadian team: The Leafs. Or, in my household, The Fucking Leafs. I think it’s in the water in Quebec: you turn on the tap, hate for the Fucking Leafs pours out in a torrent along with potable water.

There are few things more enjoyable than watching your team play a team you really hate. And I’m not Canadian, so I swear a lot more.

Kelly gets to hear all of my most creative swearing, things like: “You sewer-grate living cunt! That’s illegal checking, you ice-skating assbunny!”

Kelly’s shoulders shake in a desperate effort not to laugh.

“Why, Kelly — you’re not laughing at me, are you?” I ask.

“No, boss,” Kelly says.

“Well, that’s good. Because that could end up being a very serious infraction. The kind of infraction that ends up being very painful on your ass,” I say.

The broadcast cuts to commercial. “That reminds me,” I say. I’ve taught you the ‘kneel’ position the way I like it, but there are two more.”

I stand up in front of her. “Kneel up,” I say. She kneels, her body upright from the knees. “No, hands at your sides for this one. And this is an attention position — I want you to look at me when I ask for it.” Kelly looks me in the eye. “Good. Typically when I ask for this I’m going to give you a command. But for now, kneel down.”

“There’s one more position, but you can’t perform it on your own until that soft cast is off your wrist,” I say. I circle around behind her, and she stays facing forward obediently. I cup my hand behind her neck. “It’s called ‘kneel back.’ Normally, you would put your hands behind you on the floor to support your body,” I say. “Spread your knees a bit, that’s right. Now, lift your hips. You’ll have to lean back onto my hand.”

Kelly’s body is arched back, her hips thrust out and her knees spread, kept from falling only by my hand cradling the back of her neck.

“This position exists to give me access to your body,” I say. I slide my other hand down her body, stroking her torso. I slap one of her thighs. “Wider,” I say. “In particular, access here,” I say, slapping her pussy lightly with my hand. I can feel her body jerk slightly, and she begins to tremble with the effort of remaining open to me.

“Understand?” I say. I trail the fingertips of my free hand along her labia, parting them.

“Yes, boss!” she gasps.

“Good,” I say. “You’re wet. Did kneeling by the door turn you on?”

She hesitates slightly and I slap her lightly on the cheek. “I own what’s between your ears too, Kelly, not just what’s between your legs. If you think you have the privacy of your thoughts, you’re wrong.”

“Yes, boss,” Kelly breathes, “I was aroused by kneeling by the door for you. And by the…the leash.”

I push my fingers into her cunt and she gasps.

“So you like being at the end of a leash, hm? Trailing along behind me like my personal slut?”

“Yes, boss!” Kelly says. I don’t think she can hold the position much longer, even with my hand supporting her behind her neck. I withdraw the fingers of my other hand from her pussy. “Kneel down,” I say, and she collapses onto the cushion, the shiny links of the leash trailing between her breasts and looping back up to the hook on my chair. She looks like she’s just finished the first big drop on a roller coaster. I return to the chair and sit in it. I put my hand on her head.

“Breathe, Kelly. Take a deep breath and let it out. Good girl.”

The Habs rout The Fucking Leafs. It is a very good day.

Once the game is over, I lead Kelly to the bedroom on the leash. She shoots a glance at the abandoned tray and glass. “Do it tomorrow morning,” I say.

She can’t hide a smile when she sees there’s another hook installed on the baseboard beside her pallet. I hook the handle of the lead onto it as she lies down on the narrow futon beside my bed. I throw a blanket over her and lean down.

“I don’t have to tell you not to jerk off, correct?” She shakes her head no, vigorously. “Good. What’s between your legs doesn’t belong to you. No touching,” I say.

I undress, throwing my clothes in the wicker laundry basket. I’ve always done this with the lights off, or come to the bed in a robe or pajamas. Today I don’t bother with the modesty and strip my clothes off only a foot from her slave pallet. I slip into bed and snap off the lights. Let her get a good look at me, I think. I don’t hit the gym for nothing.

“Good night, Kelly,” I say.

“Good night, boss,” she says.

*****************

Lying there in the dark, I can hear Kelly’s breathing, and I can tell from it she’s not asleep. It’s not like I can sleep, either; the throbbing from down below is insistent.

I’d really be torturing her if I jerked off only a few feet from her when I know she can’t, I think.

But I like inflicting that kind of torture.

I slide my hand down my body and between my thighs. I own plenty of sex toys, but I never use them on my own, only for partnered sex. If it’s just me, I always just use my hand.

I slip my hand through my curls — I haven’t had any need to trim in awhile; it’s been ages since anyone saw me naked. I’m wet and ready and I press my fingertips rhythmically against my clit the same way I’ve been doing it since I was a wee kinky lassie.

My eyes have adjusted to the dark now; I can see Kelly perfectly well in the dim room, and I’m sure she can see me. I make no effort to hide what I’m doing, and she makes no effort to hide that she’s watching.

I’m very turned on, and the fact that she’s watching and can’t do a thing about it turns me on even more. It’s been so long that it takes only a few moments for me to get close to climax; I feel it coming closer; my hips start to thrust involuntarily against my pressing fingers, my back arches, and I come with a groan.

Christ, that was good. I’m sweating and panting, sprawled on my back. I turn over on my belly, letting my hand trail over the side of the bed. I reach out and brush my wet fingertips across Kelly’s lips. She whimpers as she sucks my juices off my fingers.

When she’s done, I pull my hand back, and without a word, snuggle down under the covers and fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Lily Lloyd is the author of  Discipline: Adding Rules & Discipline To Your BDSM Relationship . You can find more of her writing at  The Black Leather Belt .

 

Foster Care: A Marketplace Tale, Part 3

 

{Foster Care is fanfiction based on Laura Antoniou’s Marketplace series, a fictional world in which there is a large and secret market for consensual slaves who serve their owners under contract. In Part 2, Bette rescues Kelly, the property of a Silicon Valley billionaire who’s retired to Costa Rica and gone off the deep end. She starts to become committed to Kelly — and in Part 2, we learn just how deep that commitment goes. }

Maybe it was the hockey, but Kelly seemed to improve dramatically over the next few days, enough so that I began to train her to do some simple errands. This morning we go across the street to the depannéur, where I show her which daily paper I took, what brand of coffee and juice I like.

Watching her buying the items at the counter, I enjoy seeing how the gruff, sixty-something owner, who never gives me anything more than my change, succumb to Kelly’s effortless, artless charm. It’s like walking around town with my own personal Audrey Hepburn.

We move on to my drycleaner, where I acted pretty much like a mime, and the clerk gave me the You Do Not Speak French I Cannot See You treatment. I sigh, determined to wait him out, and fish out my phone to check my email.

“Bonjour, j’aimerais faire nettoyer ce costume, s’il vous plait. Il y aun tache de cafe sur la manche de la veste, la, vous voyes?”

I look up. That’s Kelly! Speaking French!

“Oui je vois. J’enprends note. Voici votre ticket. Ce sera prêt vendredi apres midi.”

Out on the street I pilot her around the corner into a cobblestoned alleyway and push her face against the cool granite of the building. I swat her ass with my gloved hand.

“That’s for not telling me you speak French, you little minx. If there’s anything else I need to know I expect you to be forthcoming, do you understand?”

She nods, making that face people make when they’re trying not to smile and failing.

***************

If Kelly is well enough to sass me a little, then I figure she’s well enough to leave the apartment on her own, and maybe even for a bit more.

“I want you to go to the shops downtown and pick out some clothes for yourself,” I say.

“What would you like me to wear?” Kelly asks.

“Do I look like I dispense girly fashion advice?” I joke.

While she’s out, I take out my toolbox and find an extension cord for the electric drill. I drill a hole in the baseboard next to the little slave pallet where Kelly sleeps next to my bed, and install a hook. I install another, shoulder high, next to the front door. And a third I drill right into the wooden upright of my favorite leather armchair. Then I flip open my pocketknife and slit the tape on a cardboard box that had been delivered earlier that day. Inside is a simple dog leash — six feet of shiny chain links and a leather loop for a handle. Underneath some packing peanuts is a simple leather dog collar.

I knew plenty of people who go in for elaborate, custom-made collars. But I’ve always liked the utilitarianism of repurposing an actual dog collar — as much as I adore giving the right girl some bling, I also want a girl who will humble herself to wear a dog collar for me if that’s what I want.

I clip the collar to the end of the lead and hang the leash by the handle on the hook beside the coatrack.

*********

Kelly comes back with a profusion of bags full of a fresh but simple wardrobe for herself. She also comes back with a few things I hadn’t asked for, including some fresh flowers and a bottle of decent Bordeaux.

Diana taught me to encourage this kind of improvisation in a slave, mainly by being so brilliant at anticipating needs I didn’t even know I had. As I watch Kelly flit around the apartment I feel a slicing pang of loss; for a minute I missed Diana so much tears stung my eyes. I face away from Kelly as she works and take a deep breath. Diana doesn’t want my tears, and Kelly doesn’t need them.

I sit down in my favorite chair and flip on the TV for the pregame. It’s the third night of a three-game series with the Bruins, and thus far we’ve watched the whole thing together, me in my big leather armchair, her sitting beside me, naked on a cushion on the floor.

She trots up behind me and hands me a glass of the Bordeaux, and seats herself on the little cushion by my feet.

She’s wearing a Habs hockey jersey, and nothing else.

This is so much better than nakedness for me. I feel instantly, dizzyingly aroused. The tips of the laces at the throat dangle against her breasts, and I can see through the jersey that her nipples are hard.

I sip the Bordeaux through the first period, and the Habs start to really get their game on in the second.

“Do you know what a power play is?” I ask, as I slip my hand down into the open neck of her jersey.

“No,” she gasps, as I take one of her nipples between my thumb and index fingers and squeeze.

“It’s when one team has a player in the penalty box. The other team has a numerical advantage. A team can have as many as two players in the box,” I say, slipping my other hand into her jersey and finding her other nipple to give it a vicious squeeze. “With two players in the penalty box they can’t possibly fight back,” I say, squeezing harder. Kelly’s hips thrust forward and her head is thrown back on my lap now, her lips parted. I ease off on the sensation and her eyes open, still unfocused.

“My glass is empty,” I say. Her lips are so close. I still haven’t kissed her yet.

Lily Lloyd is the author of  Discipline: Adding Rules & Discipline To Your BDSM Relationship . You can find more of her writing at  The Black Leather Belt .

 

Foster Care: A Marketplace Tale, Part 2

 

{Foster Care is fanfiction based on Laura Antoniou’s Marketplace series, a fictional world in which there is a large and secret market for consensual slaves who serve their owners under contract. In Part 1, we meet “fixer” Bette, who is dispatched to Costa Rica to retrieve Kelly, the human property of a former Silicon Valley billionaire who’s suspected of murdering his neighbor. Kelly is in pretty bad shape as Bette returns her to the U.S. — Lily}

At the other end, as promised, there’s a doctor. There are x-rays and a CAT scan of her head.

In the flat, sallow light of the hospital room, I have a weird thought: she looks worse than Diana did when Diana was dead.

Diana died in a car accident a year ago and except for a broken nose she just looked like she was asleep.

Kelly looked like Clint Eastwood in Act 2 of one of those 70′s spaghetti westerns where he always had to get the shit beat out of him before eventually prevailing over the bad guys.

I flip my phone open again. “Who do you have for foster?” I ask Chris.

“Nothing solid, but we’ll have something lined up for her within 48 hours. She has to stay in the hospital anyway for longer than that probably anyway, right?”

“I wanna keep her,” I say.

*********************

The fact that she’s a Canadian citizen makes it easy for me to bring her home with me. Hell, I could marry her and become a Canadian citizen myself, I think.

I’m getting ahead of myself. She hasn’t even woken up and said one word to me or anyone else yet, for fuck’s sake.

I call home and order three twin-size futons.

******************

She woke up. She passed the neurological exam. Apart from asking where she was, she didn’t talk much.

I told her that I didn’t have anything to do with MacFarlane, that she wasn’t even in the same country with him anymore, that she was in the United States and safe.

I asked her if she had anywhere she wanted to go, or anyone she wanted to see, but she just closed her eyes and went back to sleep.

**********************

Even Negel’s contracts have a foster rider — if your owner dies, if your owner goes to jail, if your owner goes batshit crazy — you are entitled to foster placement: a safe place to stay until you figure out what you want to do.

Kelly didn’t seem ready to make any big decisions. She had two more operations to put pins in her wrist, and with all the pain medication even a short conversation was often something she couldn’t stay awake for. When she was ready to be discharged, she still seemed too tired and shell-shocked to decide what she wanted for lunch, much less what she wanted to do for the rest of her life.

She could do a lot worse than my apartment in Montreal, I thought. And I like telling people what they’re going to have for lunch. It’s refreshing to not have to repress my native bossiness all the damn time.

***********

I walk behind her up the stairs to the apartment. I carry my luggage, and she carries her left arm, cradling it as if it hurts.

Inside, she stands by the door, unsure of what to do. I lead her by the hand to my bedroom, where a plain narrow futon, fresh and white, lies on the floor beside my bed.

“Take your clothes off,” I say. I help her with her blouse, and with the zipper of her skirt. She lies down on her side, facing away from me. I open the large black chest at the foot of my bed and pull out a white down comforter and throw it over her. By the time I close the chest and look back at her, she is already asleep, lips parted, breathing deeply.

There doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day for Kelly to spend sleeping. She’s like a baby – she wakes up to eat and use the bathroom, and then goes back to sleep. I have robes for her, but she seems entirely comfortable going about the apartment naked, despite the still healing cuts, scrapes and bruises that cover so much of her body. Of course, she mainly goes from room to room where I’d placed some more small futons in places where I typically work or read — one by my desk, one by my favorite chair where I read or watched television. Each one has a down comforter, and she walks to the closest one, slides under it, curlsonto her side, and in a moment or two, she’s asleep again.

****************

Fostering in the Marketplace is a formal system — they don’t just give out shell-shocked property to somebody’s cousin Vinnie, and they don’t forget about them once they’re placed. Once a week, a Marketplace-friendly doctor would visit my apartment to check on Kelly’s progress.

I can never quite figure the doctor and her assistant out. Are they property? Is one of them an owner and the other a slave? It’s none of my business, really, so I don’t ask.

I do observe Kelly’s exams, though. The physician’s assistant always comes with a large case — something a bit like a folding massage table, only deeper, and with attachable stirrups.

Once the table is up the doctor examines Kelly, narrating her findings out loud, as her assistant makes notes, the notepad looking tiny in his enormous fist. As far as I can tell, he never talks.

“Felipe, please help me turn her over,” the doctor says. With gloved hands, she inspects the cuts and welts on Kelly’s back, and wordlessly shoots her hand out; her assistant puts a tube of gel in it, which she spreads lightly over the wounds.

The doctor bends Kelly’s leg at the knee and examines a deep cut on the bottom of her right foot that had been stitched shut. “These are ready to come out,” she says. “But we’ll do that after. Felipe, help me turn her again.”

They turn Kelly onto her back and put her feet in the stirrups. “Note that there’s no sign of sexual activity,” she says. The doctor turns to me, and I just shake my head. Kelly wasn’t even capable of dressing or washing herself — sex hadn’t even crossed my mind.

Although now that it was crossing my mind, I made a mental note to look up portable tables with stirrups. I’ve always had kind of a thing for that, but it’s one of those things that hasn’t made it off my bucket list and into my real life yet. I shift a little in my seat. How long had it been since I’d had sex? Or even jacked off?

If I’m getting turned on by furniture, the answer is way too fucking long. Maybe I should just go for the random hookup to take the pressure off, I think.

***********

I send Kelly back off to the futon in my bedroom while I speak to the doctor. Felipe, the wordless climbing-wall sized assistant, goes downstairs, and in a minute, I hear the Town Car idling out front.

“She’s lost a lot of weight. Is she eating?” the doctor asks

“Not a lot. She gets about halfway through a meal — but I’d say she’s only eating about half of what I am, and she’s a bigger person than I am.”

“But no nausea, or vomiting?”

“No,” I say.

“The pain medication may be suppressing her appetite, and it’s almost certainly causing the drowsiness. You can cut down to four times a day. Call me if her appetite does not improve, or if you see anything else you think I should know about.”

“Thanks, Doctor. See you next week.”

I watch through the window as the elegant doctor approaches the Town Car. Felipe holds the door for her. He has a handsome, dark face, kind of Aztec looking. He sees me watching, and I wave.

To my surprise, he waves back.

************

Just as the doctor had speculated, Kelly began to perk up as soon as I reduced the amount of pain medication she took.

She was hungrier, too; she’d finish her plate, and when I nudged mine at her and told her to eat, she’d eat what was left there, as well.

After we work through today’s breakfast I get up from the large teak dining table, carrying the dishes to the kitchen.

I turn to the counter and begin putting away the eggs and cheese I’d used to make some quick omelets. I hear water running in the sink and I turn around: Kelly is standing at it, naked, doing the dishes.

This is one of those little miracles that I’m always afraid will disappear if I interrupt it. I wordlessly hand her a white canvas apron and went back out to the living room. I sit in my favorite chair and smile at the falling snow.

*******************

Seeing Kelly walk around the house in nothing but an apron is doing wonders to thaw out my libido, which has been in the deep freeze since Diana’s death. Something about just the apron turns my crank in a way that even complete nudity never has.

I know Kelly wasn’t ready for that, though as her foster I am within my rights to use her to meet my own sexual needs as long as it doesn’t interfere with restoring her to health. But she’s too fragile for that still.

I cannot fucking believe it, but while I I’m sitting there cruising Craigslist Montreal, fantasizing about picking up a partner just for the night, I get a call from none other than Geoff Negel.

There wasn’t much unusual in Kelly’s file until she met Negel — she hadn’t done anything wrong to end up in the situation she’d been in; she’d just had the misfortune of running across the Marketplace’s most unscrupulous trainer. He’s a fraud who covers up his incompetence and greed with new-age, shallow-California justifications about how the Marketplace had to change.

But hey, that’s just my opinion. TL; DR – the guy’s a douchebag.

“Bette, I want to thank you for taking in Kelly after the terrible crisis in Costa Rica.”

“That’s funny, Geoff. She’s been here with me for weeks and I haven’t heard a peep out of you until now. I’m not sure why you’re thanking me when you don’t actually give a fuck.”

“Well, of course I care — I care about every client I train and place with an owner.”

“Oh?” I said. “You trained fifteen others that you placed with MacFarlane. Do you even know where the rest of them are right now?”

“Sadly, no — in the crisis, many of them fled and no one knows where they are. Of course, Kelly ended up with you as a foster caretaker, so her whereabouts are known, thank goodness.”

“Geoff, why are you calling me?”

“Well, as you know, fostering has a one year limit, and during that time, a slave’s original owner can reassert their rights of ownership.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?! You place sixteen slaves with a defective, dangerous owner and now you want to give them back?!”

“Oh, no, no, no, Bette. Of course, we can’t do that, but I still have to fill out the paperwork.”

I sit there. I really genuinely want to beat the guy with a stick. He’s sitting here talking so calmly about sixteen people — sixteen human beings! — that he handed off to an unhinged gun-nut and then forgot about for a month. How could he even be calling me?

A calmer part of myself says, in the back of my mind: why is he calling you, Bette?

“Geoff,” I say, “Now isn’t a good time. I’m afraid I can’t talk right now.”

And I buy myself some time: I hang up on Negel. What the fuck is that little shitweasel up to?

I don’t remember standing up from the chair, but now I’m back and forth in front of the bank of windows, the snow whipping against them, my bootheels striking the wood floor loudly with each stride. I turn around, and there’s Kelly, standing there in her apron looking frightened.

I’m kinda slow on the uptake sometimes. It takes me until that moment to realize that it isn’t just the principle of the thing. It isn’t just that I oppose Geoff’s ways of using people up and discarding them with every fiber of my being, although I do.

My heart is pounding and my mouth is dry and my hands are shaking because I want to keep Kelly. I want to keep Kelly, and the thought of someone taking her away has shove a cold block of fear and anger into my chest that is too big for me to hold.

I want to run across the room and grab her and hold her, but up until this moment I haven’t even touched her except to change her bandages or cover her with a blanket.

`”It’s okay,” I say. “You’re safe. Nobody’s taking you anywhere.”

She still looks scared. Of me, I realize. Negel filing an appeal for her return might be scary, but Negel isn’t in the room – I am.

I look at her chalky, frightened face and deliberately lower my shoulders, open my hands.

“You’re safe from me too,” I say. “Come here,” I say. She crosses the room, coming within four paces of me.

“Closer,” I say.

Still wearing nothing but the apron, hands clasped behind her back, she stands close enough to me that I can see the shift as her pupils dilate.

“Come sit here next to me,” I say, indicating a small meditation cushion next to my favorite chair. She folds herself smoothly on it, and I sit back in the broad leather armchair. It’s quiet enough that we can both hear the snow tapping against the windows. Slowly, I rest my forearm on the broad wooden arm of the chair, and allowed my hand to dangle over the edge.

I am just barely touching her hair and I find this utterly thrilling.

With my other hand I pick up the remote and put the game on — Canadiens vs. the Bruins, playing only a few blocks away at Bell Centre.

“We’re a Habs household, just so you know. Rooting for teams other than the Canadiens will not be tolerated.”

 

Lily Lloyd is the author of  Discipline: Adding Rules & Discipline To Your BDSM Relationship . You can find more of her writing at  The Black Leather Belt .

 

Foster Care: A Marketplace Tale, Part 1

 

{This story is fanfiction set in the world originally created by Laura Antoniou in her Marketplace series. There’s intrigue, unhinged billionaires, plenty of lesbian sex, kidnapping, BDSM, AIG-style financial corruption, and strap-ons. What’s not to love?

If you’ve never heard of The Marketplace, it’s a fictional world where there is a large and hidden network of consensual slaves who serve owners under contract.

Laura recently issued a book of fanfiction based on her Marketplace world entitled “No Safewords,” which I found entertaining, sexy, and comforting in the way that familiar worlds often are. When I saw Ms. Antoniou speak in Providence a few weeks ago, she mentioned that she would have liked to see more lesbian stories submitted for the anthology. I got ya covered! The story’s setup takes a page from the true story of John MacAfee, Silicon Valley billionaire who retired to Belize and is now in hiding and wanted for murder.}

Foster Care

by Lily Lloyd

“You’re shitting me,” I say. “He’s Marketplace? I know he’s a billionaire — but he’s batshit crazy.”

“Negel got him access to the auctions,” Chris says.

“Oh. Well, that explains a lot.”

Jack McFarlane had made a mint in software, sold it to an even bigger company, then retired with all his money and toys to Costa Rica. Honestly, nobody thought he was that crazy when he left the States, but he seemed to pull a Captain Kurtz down there in the jungle. The stories got weirder and wilder as time went on, and then, he finally pulled something even the Costa Ricans couldn’t be paid or intimidated into ignoring: he shot his neighbor in the face with an assault rifle in a dispute over a noisy dog.

His neighbor was a pop singer whose career was a source of national pride, so that was pretty awkward. More awkward was the fact that he went on the lam and had started issuing unhinged electronic missives from the jungle to a blogger at Wired Magazine whose Twitter avatar, he said, was “cute, in a hot librarian sort of way.”

And MacFarlane? Had bought 16 slaves through the Marketplace.

A lot of this came out in the tabloids, along with plenty of photos of the man’s home arsenal, which included 81 assault rifles, a rocket launcher, and a tank, which although miniaturized to the size of a golf cart, had a fully functional howitzer. The tabloids, of course, didn’t know about the Marketplace and just went on about MacFarlane’s “harem” of beautiful young women. They didn’t mention the house servants, or the driver, or the bodyguards, who were, of course, also Marketplace.

“I know this isn’t your problem, Bette, but I thought your diplomatic skills might be useful,” Chris said. “One of them doesn’t have a passport and we’re having trouble getting them out of the country.”

Sigh. Diplomat. Well, that’s what my passport and my car plates said, but I’m no diplomat: I’m a fixer, and a fixer who was retired and trying very hard to stay that way. Why, I just paid off a housing inspector to look the other way on my newly-installed woodstove, a modern one from Finland with no scrolly bits and a tiny recess for a teapot.

And now I’m supposed to leave? Fuck.

“She’s an American citizen, isn’t she? Just have her go to the Embassy and they’ll take care of it,” I said.

“They’re trying to keep her in the country to testify against MacFarlane.”

“Just her?”

“All the others managed to get away.”

I look out the window. It had started to snow in Montreal last week, and tonight it was sheeting down between the streetlamp and the depannéur across the street where I picked up the paper every morning. I adjust the old windows, which are still pretty drafty, and pulled my robe tighter around me. I’d have to pack my own bag. When was the last time I did that? I hadn’t gotten on a plane, or even bought a ticket since…

“Listen, you know that you can count on one hand the number of times I’ve overstepped like this in my life,” Chris says, a cab honking in the New York background of his call. “And I know I’m overstepping now, but I’m only saying this because I really believe it. I think you need to get out of the house.”

I sigh. The last time I saw Chris was at an auction, and instead of making a purchase, I ended up getting so drunk that I have no idea what happened next, although the resulting rumors and the epic hangover gave me a pretty good idea. I’d woken up in the guest room of a brownstone where Chris was working as a trainer. The next day, after I could bear opening my eyes in a fully lit room, I booked a one way ticket to Montreal, the last place I’d been really happy, and that’s where I’ve been for the last six months.

“Okay,” I say. “Give me the information.”

**************

I don’t know where the fuck I can buy a Mac power adapter in Costa Rica. Or, for that matter, a charging cable for my phone. Upon unpacking, I realize that I had forgotten several other vital items: for one thing, the panties I was wearing were apparently the only pair I had with me.

Sigh. Everybody thinks I’m so capable, but half of it was Diana. I check and recheck my pockets — passports, wallet, notebook, pen, dollars, pesos. I have no idea how many times I do this a day now that she’s gone, but it’s enough to make me tired and sick of myself. It used to be her job, and for the past decade I never had to worry about it. Now I worry about it a dozen times a day: Fuck! Where’s my wallet?! Oh, it’s in that pocket now. I’ve changed from James Bond to Columbo: grumpy, disheveled — oh, stop thinking about it, I tell myself as I walk into the tiled and palm-shaded courtyard of the hotel. I buy a hat and a pair of sunglasses and let myself into the Jeep that’s been arranged for me.

The sun and the wind feel good and Costa Rican radio ain’t half bad. By the time I arrive at MacFarlane’s finca, 45 minutes from the city center in a tony ridgetop area called Las Palomas, I’m in a pretty good mood. I stop well short of the gate and take in the scene. There are a couple of guards, but they don’t look like military or police — private security.

This is one of those cases where being female is a big advantage. Large armed men don’t see me as threatening, so I can generally walk right up to them without them pulling a gun on me or having them call for reinforcements. At least the first time they meet me, anyway.

They talk about me in Spanish as I approach. They think I have a nice ass, and if they’re saying that they think I have a nice ass and don’t speak Spanish. That’s fine, I don’t want them to know that I do.

“Is Kelly still here? I used to see her at the club, and I heard she’s still here. Isn’t it horrible what’s happened? I heard everyone was gone except for her and I feel so bad for her.” I let my voice slip up into a higher register and channeled the Real Housewives of Orange County — a rich piece of trophy-wife fluff.

“No, she not here.”

“Oh, did she go back to the States? Is she okay?” I know she’s still in the country, of course.

“She went to hospital,” the big one says.

“Oh, no! She didn’t get shot too, did she? Oh, I’ll have to send flowers! Is she awake? Oh, this is terrible!” I said, as I laid my fingertips on the big one’s forearm and even stroked them back and forth a bit. I was really camping it up now. In my mind, I had one of those dogs that fit in a purse and a deep and meaningful relationship with my cosmetic surgeon. “You don’t think they brought her to the city, do you? Why, I don’t even know WHERE to send the flowers. This is so terrible!”

“No. Not the city hospital. Santa Marta.”

“Oh, thank you so much.” I say.

I even swish my ass a bit in what I imagine to be the finest trophy wife fashion as I walk back to the Jeep.

Kelly is in a hospital, which is not good. It’s a private hospital, which is good. The guards at the door to her room, however, are not private security but actual police, which is very, very not good.

The hardware that police in other countries carry runs the gamut. If you’re from the US, you’re probably not used to the paramilitary look of the police in many countries — the last time you got stopped for speeding, the cop probably had some standard issue combat tupperware on his hip, but she wasn’t carrying a submachine gun. This fella, however, has something in a nice extended clip sitting in his lap while he catches up on the doings of The Brangelina in an English-language edition of People.

I sit on a bench in the hallway and sift through the issues of People, some of which are recent and some of a vintage that can only be ascertained through carbon dating. The officer’s phone trills, and he fished it out and snaps it open. His face assumes that familiar expression of Heterosexual Man Being Harassed by Wife.

I arrange my face to indicate studious attention to the celebrity deeds and misdeeds reported by the magazine in my hands.

Ah, his mother in law wants to move in. He does not want this. The wife does not want this either but does not feel able to say no.

And? There’s no money for a little nearby apartment for the mother-in-law.

Bingo.

*********************

Bribery is so much easier than they make it look in the movies. You don’t really need an envelope or a dark location or any of that bullshit. You just need money. I strolled down to un cambio and cash in about two grand in American dollars, and on my way back I pick up the local version of a Sno-Cone, made with chunks of pineapple and syrup. It beats the shit out of 7-11, I can tell you that much.

I love bribing people. My work makes me happy.

So? I bribe Mr. I-don’t-want-my-mother-in-law-in-my-house to look the other way for a little bit when I come back after dinner. He even helpfully tells me when the shift change is and offers to give me a handcuff key. I tell him, “Keep the key. I’ve got one already.”

Like I don’t have a handcuff key. Pfft. What do they think I am? Vanilla?

*****************

Dinner’s quite nice, a light white fish in a sauce of freshly diced tomatoes and mild peppers, followed by Ubiquitous Flan. I stick to soda water with lime and stroll back to the hospital, where, as promised, there’s nothing but a copy of People on the chair next to the door.

*****************

I wish I could get used to this shit, even if that would make me like my utterly efficient and completely dead inside colleagues in the large and growing industry of fixing shit when everything goes pear-shaped. But I haven’t and at this point that means I probably never will.

MacFarlane didn’t shoot her, but she might have been better off if he had. There’s a cast; tape around the ribs, another cast. I can’t tell what color her eyes are — I’m not sure she can open them. Her arms and back look like she’s been dragged behind a tractor through a quarter mile of thorn bushes. I flip open the disposable phone and call Chris.

“I’m gonna need a doctor at the other end,” I say.

*****************

It’s more complicated since she can’t walk out with me, but apparently there’s an epidemic of mother-in-law moving in syndrome, and I get to make another five people safe from its horrors — two to get a gurney, one to drive an ambulance, and another to give me a rundown of her medical condition and enough pain meds to get her through the flight. He hands me everything along with a few more bags of saline to keep her hydrated.

********************

I know this means I’m a sick fuck, but I like sitting next to her on the plane, even though she’s not conscious. I was a medic in the Army and I like being useful. Or, really, what I like is having been useful, and sitting next to someone who’s not going to die in the next 15 minutes because I settled that shit.

The private jet — supplied by another Marketplace owner — has an entire mini fridge exclusively for champagne. I’d been told to make use of anything I needed.

I take out one of the bottles and open it. Kelly doesn’t even flinch as the cork pushes into my hand with a loud pop– she’s out cold. There are two flutes on a tray. I fill one and sip, looking at the empty flute.

That’s what Diana and I used to do, coming back from a job. Champagne. We’d each drink a glass of champagne to toast another job well done.

Sigh. I think I left one of my fucking bags in Costa Rica. Fuck it. Nothing was right and everything hurt. But I don’t drink the whole bottle or dip into the copious supply of Vicodin; instead, I read Kelly’s file.

*******************

MacFarlane bought Kelly three years ago at the same auction house where I’d bought Diana over a decade ago. It was a first-time contract for Kelly, who’d been trained by a reputable outfit in Chicago.

Originally from Toronto, youngest of five children, art degree, some success as an artist, spotted at a large event in New York.

I flip back again to the first page. Two year contract, but the date is four years ago. I flip to the end, where the contract renewals are supposed to be. Nothing except records of repeated calls to MacFarlane with no response.

Two year contract, but she’s been there for four years, with no renegotiation and no contact.

She’s not a slave, I think. She’s a hostage.

[Stay tuned for Part II!]

Love poem

love_poem_1_small










love_poem_2_small










love_poem_3_small










love_poem_4_small










love_poem_5_small










love_poem_6_small










.slideshow_container_0 { }

.slideshow_container_0 a { text-decoration: none; }

.slideshow_container_0 .slideshow_slide { margin-right: 2px; }
.slideshow_container_0 .slideshow_slide_text h2 { text-align: center; font-size: 1.3em; }
.slideshow_container_0 .slideshow_slide_text p { text-align: center; }
.slideshow_container_0 .slideshow_slide_image { }
.slideshow_container_0 .slideshow_slide_vieo { }

.slideshow_container_0 .slideshow_description { background: #000; width: 100%; }
.slideshow_container_0 .slideshow_description h2 { color: #fff; font-size: 1.3em; text-align: center; }
.slideshow_container_0 .slideshow_description p { color: #fff; text-align: center; }

.slideshow_container_0 .slideshow_transparent { filter: alpha(opacity = 50); opacity: 0.5; }
.slideshow_container_0 .slideshow_transparent:hover { filter: alpha(opacity = 80); opacity: 0.8; }

.slideshow_container_0 .slideshow_controlPanel {
width: 21px;
height: 21px;
margin-left: -11px;
background: #000;
border-radius: 2px;
-moz-border-radius: 10px;
}

.slideshow_container_0 .slideshow_controlPanel ul { }

.slideshow_container_0 .slideshow_controlPanel ul li {
margin: 3px;
width: 15px;
height: 15px;
}

.slideshow_container_0 .slideshow_controlPanel ul li:hover { }

.slideshow_container_0 .slideshow_play {
background: url('http://theblackleatherbelt.com/wp-con...') 0 0 no-repeat;
}

.slideshow_container_0 .slideshow_pause {
background: url('http://theblackleatherbelt.com/wp-con...') -15px 0 no-repeat;
}

.slideshow_container_0 .slideshow_button {
margin-top: -20px;
height: 40px;
width: 19px;
background: url('http://theblackleatherbelt.com/wp-con...') no-repeat;
}

.slideshow_container_0 .slideshow_previous { }

.slideshow_container_0 .slideshow_next {
background-position: -19px 0;
}

.slideshow_container_0 .slideshow_pagination { bottom: 16px; }

.slideshow_container_0 .slideshow_pagination_center { }

.slideshow_container_0 .slideshow_pagination .slideshow_currentView {
filter: alpha(opacity = 80);
opacity: 0.8;
}

.slideshow_container_0 .slideshow_pagination ul { }

.slideshow_container_0 .slideshow_pagination ul li {
margin: 0 2px;
width: 11px;
height: 11px;
background: url('http://theblackleatherbelt.com/wp-con...') no-repeat;
}

The Art of Sexting

A few weeks ago, Dan and Dawn of the Erotic Awakening podcast asked if any listeners had any advice about the finer points of sexting.  And I thought, well, who doesn’t appreciate a finely crafted sext?  However, there’s just SO MUCH MORE kinky stuff you can do with a modern smartphone that stopping at the mighty but humble sext just seems like a missed opportunity.

You see, your cell phone is the electronic equivalent of Home Depot.  There are so many damn pervertibles in there it’s not even funny.

Here are a few things we covered in the podcast:

*  The Art of Sexting.  Sexting, like dirty talk, makes some people feel awkward and uncomfortable.  Solution?  Allow yourself to feel that discomfort.  It doesn’t last.  Also remember that sexting can be one-sided — so long as you both agree on that in advance (otherwise the person doing all the typing with their thumbs may feel that you’re ignoring them and it might hurt their feelings).   In fact, sexting often ends up being a little one-sided: as one partner gets aroused, well — one handed texting is even more difficult than one-handed typing.

* Pervertible Apps.  My favorites?  Location-aware apps.  I like knowing where my s-type is all the time. One important point:  I don’t open that app because I want to control her — the reason I open it?  Because I miss her.  But most location-sharing apps are reciprocal — if I can see you, you can see me.  Now that’s not very D/s, is it?  I like Life360′s family locator, which I can set to be one-way if I wish.

* More pervertible apps:  What about to-do list and task list software?  Now you can automate putting your s-type to work!

You can hear all that and more on the podcast: Erotic Awakening #236

Note from your host

Psst!  I’m still here.  Just really busy with work.  I’ll be in three cities in the next 7 days — FL, PA, then back home.

Sometimes travel can be really good for writing, though.  All those hours in a hotel room!  I might actually dig into my drafts bucket and polish up some of the stuff in there — there are some wonderful pieces waiting to be finished!

More Positive Reviews For Discipline

I get such nice mail from readers about my book, Discipline.  Really brightens my day!  Here’s one that I thought was really interesting, reprinted with permission of the writer:

Hi Lily,

Just wanted to let you know that I just read Discipline — in one 2-hour sitting! It was one of the kinky books my husband got me for Christmas.

Actually, it was initially the one I was least excited about — I didn’t think I was much into general D/s “rules” as we are mostly “in the bedroom” kind of folks at this point.

But in the end, it was the book I enjoyed the most: more than Tristan’s books, or the Dossie Eaton books or other big names. Your book was not only well-written and fun to read, but real and insightful.

It offered something so valuable for relatively new players that I had been looking all over for: real stories of what actual creative people DO in D/s and also reality-based fresh ideas that now we can explore.

So many kink books are at one of two poles: all about vague psychological and communications advice or technical tie this rope here guides. Yours was practical, but personal. Plus, I related to the vanilla-to-kink marriage transition aspect.  So thank you and good luck with the book!

– Mrs. Bibliophibian

I love that I was able to win Mrs. B. over — “Discipline” covers an aspact of kinky relationships that doesn’t seem all that interesting at first glance: the rules we set up that, taken together, define our dynamic with our partner.  When we say we have “a dynamic,” what do we mean?  First, all relationships have a dynamic – the underlying and often unspoken set of rules that govern how two people interact.  A common relationship dynamic, for example, is the pursuer-distancer dynamic: one partner is always trying to get closer, while the other partner responds to that by trying to get more space.  Often, one or both people in the relationship are completely unaware of what they’re doing, or that they could consciously choose to do something else — the dynamic is their default behavior, their default response to things that happen between them and their partner.

To me, one of the most compelling aspects of BDSM is the opportunity to consciously create a relationship dynamic — together and on purpose, with the goal of creating a relationship that’s satisfying, fulfilling (and kinda sexy!).

The process of doing that is the process of writing (or rewriting) the rules.  Some of these rules might be really simple but very profound, like: “Who gets the final say?”  Others might seem less heavy-duty, like a greeting ritual, but still serve as a bulwark against the tide of vanilla crap that can overwhelm any relationship by choosing to consciously reconnect every day, even if only for a few minutes.

Once you realize the power of consciously rewriting the rules of your relationship, it’s both pretty fucking exciting and suddenly impossible not to notice the rules that have been around you all along.

[It's not always easy to figure out where to start, or pick rules that will actually work.  If you, like me, are the kind of nerd who says WAIT THERE'S A DOWNLOADABLE WORKSHEET FOR THIS?! GIMME!!  you can find a downloadable version here. -- Lily]

That Scary, Scary Tantra Business

No lie, this is what happens when you Google “Scary Tantra.”

I do some fairly intense BDSM play — flogging, whipping, caning, wax, the dollar store’s entire inventory of clothespins.  And you know what scares the fuck out me?

Tantra.

It’s all that eye-gazing. I can’t avoid the sensation that something bad is going to happen.  It’s scary.

I was thinking about this because I saw an announcement about an upcoming episode of Sex Out Loud Radio — and it’s going to be about Tantra.

People who know me in real life know that I’m not really big on eye contact; in fact, I find our culture’s emphasis on sustained eye contact a little stultifying.  I tend to look at people as a form of visual punctuation.  I’m making a point.  If I make eye contact with you during sex, particularly during orgasm, something momentous is happening.  (I don’t know if Holly or Bryce realize that.  They probably do).

Bryce and I have tried Tantra.  Our primary guide to the experience was Barbara Carellas’ “Urban Tantra.”  I don’t think I would have gotten into tantra at all without Barbara’s book, simply because the woo factor was too high.  (I’m an atheist, and I think I went through a period of being an atheist in the way only a convert can be an atheist.  For awhile there I wasn’t just a nonbeliever, I felt pretty hostile about any kind of deity hanging around.  Bad breakup with my Boyfriend in the Sky, Mr. God, yanno?).  I also appreciated that the illustrations for the books weren’t just M/F couples but included people across the spectrum of gender & sexual orientation.

Bryce and I tried it as a way to reconnect (our dynamic is fairly intense — it’s normal for us to have variation between being super close and feeling more distant than either of us would like.  Neither of us regards the dynamism of our relationship as a problem, however: we just have really interesting material to work with).

As a method of connection, sitting facing your partner and focusing on giving and receiving touch and eye contact definitely works.  However, unlike BDSM, it never led to sex because one or the other of us would have such a strong emotional reaction.  (As I write this, I kind of realize the superficiality of using Tantra as foreplay; I know it’s way more than that.  However, when we got into it, we definitely saw sacred sex as the thing we were investigating.  For us, it just didn’t lead to sex; it seemed to tap into this strange wellspring of grief).

I still think there’s something in there.  Maybe tantra would help me with my lifelong aversion to eye contact.  Before you ask, I’m fairly neurotypical — I’m not on the autism spectrum, and I’m not even particularly shy; in fact I like people, I’m extroverted and I do a fuck-ton of public speaking.  My aversion to eye contact has been a lifelong thing; it’s something that I have tried to get over, primarily for my career, just the way that I took lessons to shed my accent as a young person (yes, I really did that.  I was very determined to claw my way into being a stowaway on SS Middle Class, and I didn’t care which midatlantic accent I had to impersonate to do it).

I have this feeling something is down there.  But I also have that feeling when there’s a horror movie and a cheerleader is at the top of the stairs saying, “Bobby? Is that youuuuu?  Are you down there?”

I have the feeling what’s down there are my own personal monsters.  Also the whole idea of, you know, actually living in a body, which has always been something I’m a little skeptical about.  I walk around — it’s hard to describe.  I’m a fairly armored person.  I’m alert.  I’m not dwelling in my body the way I think some other folks are (people who do are always so sexy, no?).  I wonder what it would be like if I did and I wonder if I would like it or hate it.

Image:  Wonderlane via Compfight