Forty minutes on the edge

I said the word at dinner, somewhere between the salt and a question about his mother. He finished the bite, chewed, and only then I saw it land: the fork slowed, his eyes went down to the plate. He has known the word since last winter. “Session” means one thing: the cage comes off tonight, and he does not come.

I finished my food without hurrying. He cleared the table, washed up, and never once looked at the clock, though I knew he was counting. A session never starts straight after dinner. I give him an hour, sometimes an hour and a half — for the dishes, for a shower, for waiting. The waiting is part of the forty minutes; I just don’t count it.

At half past nine I called him into the bedroom.

Hands

He knows the order and still waits for me to say it.

“On your back. Across the bed. Hands behind your head.”

He lay across the bed so his feet hung off the side and laced his fingers behind his head. I don’t tie him. He holds his own hands there, and that is the one thing I require of him in a session: don’t help yourself, don’t get in my way. The first time, he lasted until the third round, then a hand came down on its own and I locked him without finishing the count. He has held since.

I took the key from my neck and set it on the nightstand, turned toward him. He looked at it — he always does. Then at me. I was in my dressing gown, the one I’d watched TV in, and I hadn’t changed on purpose: a session is not an occasion. It’s a Tuesday.

The lock clicked, I slid the cage off and set it beside the key. He exhaled. For the first minute I do nothing. I sit next to him on the bed and watch him become himself: the warmth comes back, the skin flushes, he fills and grows heavy under my eyes without a single touch. He is still ashamed of that. I am not. That minute is mine, and I’m not giving it to anyone.

The count

I take him up slowly. A dry palm, then oil from the drawer, then two fingers, barely there. I know the edge before he does: the stomach draws in, the thighs turn to stone, the breath gets short and climbs into his throat. A second before, I take my hand away. Completely, touching nothing.

“One.”

He let out a breath like a man surfacing. I waited for his stomach to stop heaving and watched his face. In a session he has to look at me. The first few times he closed his eyes — I stopped and waited until he opened them. Now he looks on his own, and the look is the same every time: he doesn’t know how many more.

The second round is longer than the first. The third is shorter, because the body remembers and runs at the edge by itself. On the third he started asking. With his eyes first. Then:

“Mistress…”

“That’s a request. One extra.”

He shut his mouth. No asking during a session — he knows, and every couple of months he tests it anyway. I ran my nails along the inside of his thigh, where the skin is thinnest, and his whole body jumped as if from a live wire, though I hadn’t touched him yet.

On the fourth the first drop appeared on his stomach. Clear and heavy, it slid toward his navel, and he saw me watching it. He went red. Forty-two years old, head of a department, seventeen people under him — and red to the ears because his wife is watching him leak. I lifted the drop on my finger and held it to his lips. He licked it off. Without asking, without turning away.

“Four.”

I gave him more time than usual — kept my hand flat on his chest and felt it pounding. Then the fifth, the penalty round. By the end of it he was shaking so hard the pillow slid, the knuckles of his laced fingers had gone white, his lips were moving without sound. I know what he whispers: he counts to ten to hold on. It doesn’t help, but he counts. I kept him right on the edge longer than in any round before — one second, two, three — and took my hand away.

“Five.”

He froze. He was waiting for six. I picked up the cage from the nightstand.

The lock

The cruellest part of a session isn’t the count. It’s the minutes after, when the cage has to go on and there is nothing to put it on: he is standing, trembling, and not going down. He needs to calm down, and he can’t, because I’m sitting next to him with the cage in my hand, waiting. He stares at the ceiling and breathes through his mouth. I don’t help — no cold water, no conversation. He has to do it himself.

It took nine minutes. I watched the clock on the nightstand, next to the key. When it was possible, I put the ring on, then the cage, slid the lock in and pressed. In a quiet bedroom the click is loud. The key went back on its chain, the chain went back around my neck, under the gown.

He lay without moving. Then he turned his head.

“Thank you.”

It isn’t politeness. A year ago I would have thought he was mocking me. For forty minutes he was closer to what he wants than in the three weeks before, he got it not once, and he thanks me for that. I still don’t fully understand it. What I do understand is this: he says thank you, and for three days after, the house is quiet and good.

“You can put your hands down.”

He did, and they shook for another five minutes. I lay down beside him without taking off the gown, he lay with his face to my shoulder, locked, and I noticed I was breathing faster than I should. I got something too. Not an orgasm — I took that the next day, with his tongue, and I took my time. That evening I got something else: for forty minutes a man was entirely mine, with no work, no mother, no tomorrow. Only my hand and my count.

Three days

In the morning the coffee was on my nightstand before the alarm. The kitchen floor shone so hard I could see the lamp in it. He caught my eye across the room and asked what else he could do, and I said “nothing” and watched that make it worse. It lasts about three days. Then it lets go, and he is an ordinary husband again, who can forget the bins.

I hold a session every two weeks, sometimes less often. More is no good: he’ll get used to it, and habit kills the edge. He doesn’t know when I’ll say the word. Sometimes I don’t know myself until dinner. I look at him across the table, at the fork, and decide.

• Say the word early and casually. An hour of waiting with dishes in his hands works harder than any strap.
• Don’t tie his hands. Let him hold them himself: it’s his part of the deal, and he will be proud of it.
• Count out loud and make him look at your face. Closed eyes are a way of leaving you — don’t allow it.
• Don’t help him go down before the lock. Those minutes are half the lesson.
• No more than once a fortnight. He should wait for the word longer than he remembers the session.