The Pleasure's All Mine: Memoir of a Professional Submissive by Joan Kelly

of my skin. “I’m going to spank you now,” he said softly, and I started to hyperventilate a little. “Hey” He let go of my wrists and squeezed my upper arms gently. “Are you okay with this?”
        “I’m… it’s just…” I couldn’t seem to breathe deeply enough. “I think I’m a little nervous. I’ve never done this before.”
        “It’s okay,” he said, now smiling. “I’ll take it easy.”
        But I wasn’t afraid that it would hurt too much or that he would go too hard. I was afraid of what I would sound like, look like, act like, once I was doing the thing that made me the most excited of anything else I could imagine.
        “Come over to this side, and lay across my lap,” Tim guided me to the right of him. He held my waist as I folded myself over him. “You can hold onto my legs if you want.”
        I held onto him for balance, and for proof that this was really happening, not another of my daydreams. When he ran a hand over the curves of my cheeks, letting the edge of his thumb trail down the split between them, I dropped my shoulders and let my chin rest on the side of his knee.
        “Are you ready?” His left hand gripped my rib cage firmly.
        “Yes,” I said, aiming for more of a purr but hearing what sounded like a croak as my voice box wrestled fear and euphoria.
        I think it’d be most accurate to say that Tim gave me my first “patting” that day, rather than anything that technically resembled a spanking. His pace and the weight of his hand as he let it fall were careful and soft, just as he’d promised.
         How does a person get a guy to break a promise like that? I worried silently. Maybe next time I’d have a chance to convey my sturdiness and he’d kick things up a notch.
        After about five minutes, he helped me to my feet and offered another stiff embrace. “I expect an e-mail from you tonight, detailing your thoughts and reactions to what we’ve done so far,” he instructed, before walking me silently back to the Computer Science building.
        I sat down to write him immediately, grateful for the chance to tell someone, anyone, how exciting it had been, and how much more I was ready for. I told him how I’d had these fantasies for as far back as I could remember, and that I’d never felt as excited with anyone before as I had with him. I liked regular sex a lot, but it had never left me so uncomfortably, perpetually aroused as that afternoon with Tim had. I wrote that I couldn’t wait to learn more about what it meant to be a submissive and masochist — as he’d told me I was, in an e-mail sent right after our first meeting in the woods. And I thanked him for being so much fun, and so nice to me.
        I received his reply after my last class on Monday. He was going to have to cool things down for a while, he said, take a break, as his girlfriend was having a hard time with their open relationship all of a sudden. He was sorry, but he loved her and wanted to make it work between them.
        After the initial shock, I decided that none of it was true. I was convinced that he was reacting solely to my eagerness — that I’d liked it too much, wanted more of it too badly for him not to feel like I’d stolen the thrill of the chase away from him or something. I realized too late that his instruction to be open with him about my reactions was actually a call for e-mail porn — not the outpouring of raw hope I’d sent off to him in fevered anticipation.
        The next day, I burned every piece of kinky literature and spanking porn that I owned. I’d told one friend about my trips to the woods; when she asked for an update later that week, I claimed to have lost interest in him. It would be five years before I’d try anything like it again.
        Through no fault of Tim’s, school went downhill for me from there. I took a pre-existing self-destructive streak and ran with it, until my