Courtney closed her eyes and her nipples sprung erect at his words.
“Whoa,” she whispered after a moment. “Uhm, I guess so.”
“It’s a form of bondage,” Mike said, shrugging. “Bondage and discipline are about dominance and submission. There are various ways to play it, master-slave, rapist-rapee, but the thing to keep in mind is that it’s all play. The point is for both parties to have fun.”
“Complicated guilty pleasures,” Courtney said quietly. “That’s what you were talking about.”
“Yep,” Mike said.
“So… what is your complicated guilty pleasure?” Courtney asked, still quietly.
“Shorts stuffed in your mouth?” Mike said, reaching out to stroke one nipple lightly. “Arms pinned? Hand on mouth? Guess. So what do you fantasize about when you’re masturbating, Courtney?”
“God,” she whispered. “Is it obvious? Is there some sort of mark on my forehead?”
“Not particularly,” Mike said. “And at this point I need to be careful…” He looked up and smiled faintly. “This should be interesting.”
Pam appeared in the opening to the companionway and looked at both of them blearily.
“How come you’re still alive?” she asked, shaking her head. “Much less up? Much less…” She looked at Courtney, still sitting on the couch naked, her head down. “Much less… God!”
“Morning, Pam,” Mike said, smiling. “Coffee?”
“How many times last night?” Pam asked, sitting at the table shakily.
“Orgasms?” Mike asked. “You have to keep count. Engagements? Three, I think.”
“What was I?” Courtney snapped. “A quick breakfast snack?”
“No,” Mike said, leaning over and kissing her on the head. “You, my dear, were a truly great wake-up. My joints aren’t even stiff anymore.”
“I need some clothes,” Courtney said, hugging her breasts.
“I’ll arrange,” Mike said, getting up and going to the cabins. He came back with a towel. “Here.”
“Is that all I get?” Courtney asked. “All that you’ll… permit me?”
“For now,” Mike said with a grin. “Pam, when you walked in, we were discussing… guilty pleasures.”
“Like two at a time?” Pam asked, shaking her head. “I’m not sure I’m ready for that.”
“No, actually we were discussion dominance and submission,” Mike answered. “Coffee?”
“Coffee?” Pam said, screwing up her face in confusion. “You just trot that out and ask if I want coffee?”
“Cream and sugar?” Mike asked. “Black?”
“Cream and sugar,” Pam said, shaking her head.
“Dominance and submission is the last love that dare not speak its name,” Mike said, getting her a cup of coffee and carrying the cream and sugar over. “Say when.”
“When.”
“Despite the fact that most studies put it as the most common fantasy,” Mike continued, sitting down by Courtney. “Something like fifty percent of women are willing to admit to submission fantasies. The total is probably higher.”
“I know girls who…” Courtney said, adjusting her towel. “Well, they’re definitely not submissive.”
“I think of it as a bell curve,” Mike said. “Some women are towards the dominance end all the way to full mistresses. Some are so submissive that they’re full masochists. The ‘do anything to me, Master’ types.”
“Do you know any of those?” Pam asked.
“I’ve known a few,” Mike admitted. “Not many. I don’t really travel in the circles, what’s referred to as the ‘scene’ among those that really get into it. But many females, I’d say most, fall somewhere in the middle. They enjoy being dominated, and I’m talking about in agreed to scenes here, not in day-to-day life, but they’re not full-scale masochists. They may even like to be spanked and told they’re bad girls or whatever, but they don’t want to be whipped until they bleed.”
“Pass,” Courtney said hastily.
“But… well…” he said, pausing. “What went on between Pam and me last night was not that far from what went on between Courtney and me.”
The two girls looked at each other for a second and then, almost simultaneously, dropped their heads and shook them.
“Girls,” Mike said, trying not to laugh, “there’s nothing to be ashamed about. You’re both very nice young ladies who have an… interest. Apparently, I might add. You certainly each seemed to have a good time.”
“I did,” Pam admitted, looking up. “But… it’s pretty hard to just talk about it.”
“Talking about it is important,” Mike said. “For a few reasons. One of them is that, well… do you want to continue to play? I mean for more than just today and tomorrow? That’s one thing to talk about. Another is the details of what you’re interested in exploring and, more importantly, what you’re not willing to explore. The term for it is ‘negotiation.’ ”
“I don’t want to be one of those weirdos who goes around town being led on a leash,” Courtney said definitely.
“Agreed,” Mike said. “And now we work out the details. Would you be willing to wear a collar here on the boat? Inside? Outside when we’re out of sight of other boats?”
Courtney writhed for a minute on the couch and took a deep breath.
“I don’t know,” she said, looking at Pam.
“Well,” Pam said, “I don’t know about you, Courtney, but I just got horny again thinking about it.”
“Thank you,” Mike said, nodding at her. “Let me lay some pretty boring groundwork. Dominance and submission, and bondage and discipline, first have to involve trust. You have to trust that the dom, in this case me, will use his intelligence and skill to not push you past the point that you’re comfortable. A scene is something like a scary movie. You go see a scary movie and there’s a bad guy chasing some girl around and killing her. That’s scary, but you know it’s not real. D and S is the same thing. It’s setting up something that in real life would be terrible. Rape. Being owned as a slave. Being forced to submit to a stranger, like a cop, for some reason. All of them, effectively, revolve around rape. But the difference is, the sub is in control. The sub can, at any time, say ‘I’m done’ or ‘time out, we need to talk.’ You can’t say that in real rape.”
“How do you do that?” Pam asked. “I don’t think I could have talked most of last night. I was too…”
“In the moment,” Mike filled in. “When a sub is fully in the moment, they often describe it as flying, like an out-of-body experience. But that moment can get broken very easily. Trust me, you could have if I’d pushed past your boundaries. Do you like anal sex?”
“No,” Pam said definitely.
“Then if I’d rolled you over and gotten out the butter?” Mike asked, grinning.
“You would have had a fight on your hands,” Pam said.
“You definitely would have been out of the moment,” Mike said. “I didn’t push at any real boundaries last night. It was far too soon, for one thing. What you do is you say ‘yellow’ if you need a time out and discussion. You say ‘red’ if you’re done, take me back to shore you asshole! If you’re gagged, and if we do this you’re going to be gagged a lot, you grunt in the gag. What you don’t do is say ‘stop’ or ‘no’ or ‘please.’ Those mean ‘more and harder, master.’ ”
Pam grinned at that and dropped her head, shaking it from side to side.
“I have a hard time with the way that you just trot stuff like that out,” Courtney said, shaking her own head. “I kind of like it, but it’s hard for me to accept how… open you are about it.”