“Maintenance spankings are when the spanking is simply part of the calendar. Once a week, every night, whatever works for the relationship. Meaning,” he said when she frowned at him, “I would not wait for you to do something wrong, then spank you. I would spank you not only whenever I pleased in the general course of things, but also on a schedule.”
“Aschedule?”
“I find that expectations and anticipation lead to the most delicious places,” Conrad told her.
“Is that how you...keep them obedient?” she asked, feeling as if she was flailing around, trying to get the vocabulary right.
Or maybe it’s not the vocabulary you’re worried about, but how much you long for all these problematic things he’s talking about so casually—but she didn’t want to listen to that voice inside her.
“I expect obedience, yes,” Conrad said, and she could hearlayersof steel and stone in his voice, then. She could feel it like his hand against her pussy once again. “There are some BDSM relationships that appear to be predicated on the submissive acting like a brat and the dominant punishing that brattiness as it occurs—or not, to the dominant’s taste. But I don’t do brattiness. I don’t much like it in a single scene and I would not tolerate it at all in a more permanent arrangement.”
“Because all of your orders are so perfect?” she demanded. A little hotly, she realized after she threw the words out.
But Conrad only regarded her in the same patient way he always did. “Some people will tell you that BDSM is all a great bit of theater around the fact that despite everything you might see to the contrary, the submissive has control. And on some level, that’s true. Because it is her consent to any act that gives it its heat. Its power. But if you go deeper than that, there is a power exchange. And the power exchange is not about who’s dominant and who’s submissive, who gives consent or who capitalizes on it. It’s exactly what it sounds like. An exchange.”
Her throat was dry. Her eyes felt wet again. What was happening to her?
Conrad’s dark eyes were a blazing thing, hard and beautiful. “As much as you trust me to work within your boundaries, and perhaps push them a little, I trust you to allow me those things. It’s a balance. One can’t work without the other. I could tell you a thousand different theories about why that is, and what it is, but what it comes down to is that BDSM is a highly stylized practice of intimacy.”
This time she didn’t try to make a joke about cilantro or ball gags.
And she thought he nearly smiled again. “Because the difficulty with intimacy, Rory, is not in you. But what you, through the other person, see in yourself. Most people do not enjoy that mirror.”
“Have you had that?” she dared to ask.
“Yes.”
And he offered nothing more. But her ribs seemed to hurt, because all of this was significantly more direct than any conversation she’d ever had with a man before.
But of course, that was his point.
It occurred to her that she didn’t actually know what kind of man he was. Did he play around—either with or without a partner’s knowledge? “Do you have it...now?”
“No,” he told her. “I haven’t had that kind of relationship in a long time.”
“What happened to your last one?” she asked, and was confused when he laughed.
“You sound so scandalized. What are you imagining? That I beat her black-and-blue and she escaped me with nothing but a collar around her neck?” As he had once before, he gave the impression of rolling his eyes without actually doing it. “That is a story of abuse. What I had was a relationship. A mutually exclusive relationship of consenting adults involved in a power exchange. And when it had run its course, we separated. Is there something about that that is inherently more dramatic than your average divorce? Or even a run-of-the-mill breakup?”
“How did she break up with you if she had to ask you permission to speak?” Rory asked.
Conrad’s mouth was still curved. “What makes you think she was the one who broke up with me?”
“Okay, but if you’re the one who broke up with her, why? If this power exchange thing is the be-all and end-all—”
Conrad sighed. “I don’t think you’re really all that interested in my ancient history, Rory. I think it makes you feel braver to question me. I take the responsibility for the kind of sex I enjoy very seriously. That’s part of what I like about it. You have your casual dates. Your curation. But I have scenes in which I sit down with a woman and discuss, frankly and honestly, what is going to occur. And then I arrange an experience to both of our mutual satisfaction.”
“But—”
“And what I think you’re really interested in is spanking.”
She shook a little at that. Maybe a lot. “I wouldn’t sayinterested, necessarily.”
“Maintenance spankings, in particular. I find them fascinating myself. But don’t worry, that’s more of a relationship thing.”
And Rory, who had never been spanked in her life, felt suddenly outraged that he was excluding her from the option of whateverrelationship spankingswere.
When his eyes lit up again, she knew he could tell.