I found my voice again. “We’re talking flogging? Whips? Paddles?” I’d seen guys using those online, and while I’d first thought of those actions as violent, I hadn’t been able to tear my eyes away from the screen. I’d noticed the way the guy on the receiving end looked when it was all over.
Relaxed. Flushed. Even euphoric, begging for more.
I also remembered what had passed through my mind when I saw his face.
I want what he’s having.
Stefan’s fingers laced through mine.
“Yes, all those things can be part of it, but I wasn’t thinking of that.”
I blinked. “You’re going to hit me with a feather duster? Whip me with a scarf?”
He smiled. “Actually, I was thinking of a spanking.”
Of all the things I’d expected him to say, that wasn’t it.
My pulse quickened again, warmth surged through me, and there was a tightening in my chest.
Spanking was such a simple word, and yet where my mind took me was anywhere but simple. It went back to those images I’d seen late at night. The ones I’d told myself were just fantasy.
Stefan brushed his thumb over the back of my hand.
“It doesn’t need to be extreme,” he said in a quiet voice.
That was becoming very clear. Whatever this was, it wasn’t about extremes.
It’s about something far more unsettling than that.
I tightened my grip around his hand.
It isn’t the idea of what he mightdothat gets to me, but the fact that I would let him.
That I wanted to do this.
My heart still thudded, but no longer in a frantic, uncertain way. Now I was standing on the edge of something new, realising I wasn’t being pushed into it, but that I was considering stepping forward on my own.
Stefan waited, and I knew he was giving me space to choose.
That made all the difference.
I took a breath. “Okay.”
Somewhere underneath the nerves, underneath the questions, I knew I wanted to find out how it would feel to let go, to trust Stefan not to let me fall.
I swallowed. “Just… your hand?”
He nodded. “You decide on how you want it. Soft, firm, light, intense…” He locked gazes with me. “This is all about trust. You’d be handing me the reins, making yourself vulnerable. Letting go.”
What passed through my head was that this sounded intimate as fuck.
Stefan tightened his grip on my fingers.
“People get the wrong idea about impact play. They think the person delivering it has all the power.” He chuckled. “They aresowrong. It takes a strong person to trust someone, to let them play with you. And it also takes a strong guy to step away from stereotypical thinking about what a manshouldlike, to explore different ways of expressing himself sexually.”
I brought my fingers to his lips, and he blinked.
“I think… I think I want to try that.” The words came out more firmly than I’d heard them in my mind.