Chapter One

 

Walking up the steps of Miriam's broad front porch removes the clutter from my mind, stills my soul and allows the flutter of nerves in my tummy to extend downward toward my crotch where the sensuous thoughts of submission have their origin. I often feel more at home here than I do in my own house. Miriam's grand Victorian home is beautiful in its own right, worthy of the praise it has earned, but it is not the sumptuous house itself that transforms me, but what happens inside its doors that has drawn me back to its welcoming ambiance once again.

I began my day flushed with arousal, with my hand between my legs and my thoughts centered on the one desire that refuses to be silenced. I am sure the dreams that inspired this waking masturbation were themselves inspired by weeks of self-inflicted pain-although I am a masochist to some degree, and pain in this case is strictly of the mental sort.

The first stirrings of my current agitated state had their beginnings in the fall, when I felt a familiar sensuality arise in me when we harvested the garden. The feral scents, the loamy earth, the taste of the dirt from a fresh plucked carrot all converged at once, drawing me into an inexplicable feeling of surrender that I often experience when my bare feet are firmly planted in the soil. Accompanying the emotional submission that arose in that unbidden moment was a fierce masculine presence that overwhelmed me with embracing arms and a significant authority over my being. I felt an elemental transformation, where in my thoughts, my attitude and my behavior, I became an acquiescent slave, ruled by this significant masculine energy and its firm hold over me.

Does this sound like nonsense? Of course, it did then and it does now. That domineering phantom does not exist. There is no body, no face, no physical form, no real voice to this male presence-even though I seem to hear it speak to me. Despite my vivid impressions, however, this unseen lover is strictly a product of fantasy. This is what I told myself as I tried to restore my sanity that fall afternoon. This is what I always say when I attempt to shun its erotic power. I shook off the feeling and went on with my task, while in the back of my mind I found myself enjoying the strange experience.

On one particular fall day, I was alone in the garden digging potatoes when I felt a certain shift in my being. A familiar one. Unlike previous experiences with this curious phenomenon, on that day I had no desire to stop the sweet rush of surrender as it hit me squarely in the gut. I practically orgasmed on the spot, and then spent several minutes enjoying my imaginary friend and the words his whispering voice interjected into my thoughts. This phantom Dom embodies the essence of authority, compassion and wildly wicked lust. I desire all three, and the more I dwelt on those significant elements the more I relished their beauty, the more my body, mind and emotions craved the real thing... a real dominant man to enter my life.

The sad result of that brief episode has been the desperate emptiness left gnawing at me when the erotic feeling eventually passed. But since then, the desire for surrender has become acute, and I have nowhere to turn for the real life experience of surrender that my being longs for.

I have considered that this seeming need is a product of some psychic hole in my life, the consequences of grief and the stress of a busy life. Though I've often wondered if the events of the last several years are responsible for these dreamy flights of sexual pleasure, I know better than to place much emphasis on my daily affairs.

The huge hole in my life was not caused with the death of my husband, who had the audacity to die three years ago when he crashed his motorcycle into a tree. Nor is it due to the rocky relationship with my twenty-one year old daughter, or the fact that my teaching job has been less than fulfilling over the last year. What aches inside my soul has everything to do with sex, and the peculiar twists it takes inside my private fantasies. The genesis of my aberrant lust began so early in my life that I can't recall when I first felt it grip me as scenes of abject submission played through my thoughts. For years I consigned that lust to a small corner of my life-either late at night or early in the morning-when from a discreet hiding place in my mind I'd withdraw my kinky fantasies and let them run wild until I achieved the orgasmic release my body so greatly needed.

Having a husband, offspring and a job teaching freshmen English at the local community college have always been my excuses for not addressing this lusty kink. But with Tony gone and my youngest, Sam, a very independent eighteen year old, my excuses have vanished-which is what brings me to Miriam's broad front porch and compels me to ring the bell on this sunny April day. I shudder thinking what obscene things I might set in motion by this visit to my friend, but after weeks of trying to quell my desires, I find myself in the one place where wishes like mine can be made real.

Miriam is a professional Domme, a woman I've known since college when we lived on the same floor during our freshman year. Even then she stood apart from the rest of the incoming freshmen with her unshakable self-confidence and earthy charm. She shunned the usual traps of freshman life- parties, skipped classes and the woeful lack of focus found in many first year college students. She completed her BA degree in three years, her masters in anthropology in a two year program and was on her own by twenty-three prepared for the rest of her life. I have yet to know what about her field of studies has to do with her current life and the profession she's chosen. Although the connection may seem remote to some, I'm sure her study of anthropology has something to do with her choice of careers. Miriam has never impressed me as someone who does things purely for the personal satisfaction.

Miriam answers my knock within a few seconds, opening the door with an inviting smile and her shapely body dripping with erotic intent. She stands nearly six feet tall in her stocking feet and much taller in the stilettos she commonly wears. Her voluptuous form is so pleasingly sexual that I sometimes think I'll fall into its luxurious cushion and melt into a liquid climax. Today, her auburn hair falls in a smooth cascade around her shoulders-normally it's swept into a tight bun at the back of her head. She absently tosses it over her shoulder when it falls in her eye, then reaches for me, welcoming me into her arms for a generous hug.

"So good to see you, Marlena," she purrs in my ear before pulling away. Her dark eyes flash a look, suggesting she knows the purpose of my visit, but I know she won't say a word about my mission until I've spoken about it myself. "You said you wanted to catch up," she repeats the gist of my message to her two days before.

"It's been a while, hasn't it?"

"Humm," she hums aloud, "I believe it's been three years... not counting the obligatory Christmas card, and that brief lunch we had last fall."

This is a small dig. I'm not a great correspondent-but then neither is Miriam. And yet even she will acknowledge that our relationship has passed the test of time, when 'catching up' hardly takes but a few minutes.

Miriam's grand old mansion rises three stories high, and like many houses of its vintage, there's a sweeping porch across the front wrapping around one side and a tall round turret off the second story. Ghost stories about its previous owners were common until Miriam swept them aside with a broad broom and took up residence, declaring that stories of ghosts, goblins and other assorted legends were strictly overblown. She spent the next ten years turning the creepy mansion into a stately example of turn-of-the-century architecture, while at the same time generating an entirely new series of rumors to add to its beguiling charm. Although she went to work immediately restoring the mansion to its past glory, it was the extracurricular activities that inspired gossips to speculate about her evening soirées with numerous male and female visitors. While she may have had the whole town buzzing about strange sexual activities, she went about her life with such inherent poise that no one dared confront her to her face-in fact, she was able to mute the self-righteous, charm the pants off most men and convince most women that she was a prime example of the successful modern day female.

Today, she leads me into her private parlor, as opposed to the larger sitting room on the other side of the entry hall. I feel a bit smug having such easy access to this restricted room. More than once, I've seen the Domme lash out at those who've tried to enter without the proper authority and the scene was never pretty. Several years ago, one poor girl on her first day in the house became so lost that she mistakenly stumbled into the parlor while Miriam was serving tea to three guests, including me. The price of the girl's ticket out was a swift six cuts of a bamboo cane administered on the bare pink skin of her upper thighs right in front of Miriam's guests. The irate Domme gave an awesome demonstration that none of us would ever forget. She nearly cut the skin and made no apologies for that fact. Denise and Christine who'd joined me for the afternoon were appalled as usual. As usual, my crotch was fluttering anxiously with arousal by the time the second cut landed. Of course I never shared that fact, but Miriam knew.

Although she's often scared me with her chosen lifestyle, she's never scared me away. Unlike many of our college friends who long ago wrote her off as too strange to bother with and too peculiar to understand, we seemed to be a seamless fit of personalities-probably because I'm determinedly acquiescent, while she is a woman firmly in charge. In college I secretly hoped some of her aplomb would rub off on me. In Miriam's world, all relationships whether male/female or female/female come down to one person in a dominant role, the other taking a submissive one. The nature of our own relationship was clear from the first day we met.

This is why I come here now-to have what I can find nowhere else. A few seconds in her parlor and the aura that shrouds her world settles in around me. My mind shifts in attitude, giving into a submissive point of view-once here I understand who I am without second guessing myself. I wish life was that easy in the outside world.

After a few glib moments of pleasant conversation, Miriam sighs, sits back in her ornate Victoria chair and says: "So Marlena, are you going to beat around the bush this time, or get straight to the point?"

In an instant, we both flash back three years and recall the circumstances of our previous meeting in this parlor. Recalling the two occasions on which I sought her professional help, a blush rises on my cheeks. Those times were very similar to now, when my pent-up desires needed more than bedtime fantasies to take the edge off. Taking her question to heart, I blurt out succinctly, "I need a man."