The drops came, and he is still waiting

The glove had been on the nightstand since lunch — blue nitrile, just the one. He saw it when he tidied the bedroom and asked nothing. He was trained out of asking a long time ago, and a glove on the nightstand means one thing: tonight he goes face down.

He served dinner at seven. Ate little, drank water, kept setting the glass down. He was on day eight in the cage, and at that point he is always the same: quiet, catching my eye, holding his back too straight. I finished, pushed my plate away and said:

“Dishes later. Shower, then lie down. Face down.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

While he washed, I spread a towel on the bed and set out the lube and the massager — small and curved, the one we bought two years ago and he still hates. Not for the pain. For the fact that nothing ends after it.

We milk once a fortnight, whenever his time in the cage passes a week. A urologist once told him that letting things build up is bad for him. I agreed with the doctor and added a note of my own: coming is not required. That has been our arrangement since. The body gets serviced; the wanting stays where it is.

Face down

He lay as told: face in the pillow, arms under his chest, knees slightly apart. His skin was hot from the shower and still damp at the small of his back. I didn’t unlock the cage. That is the whole point of the evening: the lock stays, nobody touches him in front, and whatever comes out of him comes out on its own, without his help.

I pulled on the glove — he heard the snap of the cuff against my wrist, I saw his shoulder blades tighten — squeezed lube onto my fingers and warmed it for a second. Then I went in. One finger, slowly, to the second knuckle. He breathed out into the pillow and went still.

His prostate is easy to find: a little forward, towards the belly, a firm bump the size of a walnut. I found it and started stroking with the pad of my finger, the way you smooth a crease out of fabric. Even, unhurried, one tempo. At first he lay quiet. Then he started breathing through his mouth. Then his hips jerked — once — and he put them straight back where they were, because he knows: no moving.

The first drops came after about eight minutes. I didn’t see them — I saw him shudder from head to foot and the towel under him darken. Clear, warm, stringy. It isn’t an orgasm. The body simply gives up what it has stored over eight days, and he himself is left with nothing: nothing clenches, nothing pushes, nothing lets go. It just runs out of him.

“Don’t squeeze,” I said. “Breathe.”

“May I…” he began, into the pillow.

“No.”

He never finished saying what. I knew anyway: press himself against the towel for one second. No. I picked up the massager after the second wet patch — it is wider than a finger and reaches deeper, and it makes his calves tremble. In, tilt, let go. From there it works by itself, off every breath he takes.

I peeled off the glove, sat down beside him and laid my palm on the back of his neck. Kept it there about ten minutes. He shook, sweated, leaked drop by drop onto the towel and did not come. Between his legs a lock, under his belly a wet towel, and on the nightstand a key I had no intention of picking up.

When the drops stopped, I took the massager out, wiped it and said:

“Done. Up. Dishes.”

He didn’t get up straight away. First he turned his head — face red, lips bitten, eyes wet, not from tears but from strain. He looked at me as if he were waiting for something more. I was waiting for him to stand.

The dishes

He washed up in his underwear and a T-shirt, and from the sofa I could see how he stood: feet a little wider than usual, shifting his weight from one to the other, because under the fabric nothing had settled. His body had been emptied; he had not. That is what milking is: the body is allowed to give, the man is not.

Normally he talks over the dishes — about work, about tomorrow. That evening he said nothing. The water ran, plates clinked, I drank my tea. Once he stopped, braced both hands on the sink and stood like that with his head down. I thought I had overdone the pause, that I should at least have let him press against the towel. Then he straightened up and went on, and the thought left.

“More tea,” I said.

He brought it. Set it down. Didn’t leave — stood by the sofa until I looked up.

“What?”

“Nothing. Thank you.”

He was thanking me for putting him face down and leaving him with nothing. I nodded and sent him to bed.

Morning

He slept badly — I heard him turning, getting up for water. In the morning he was up before me, and when I came into the kitchen the coffee was already made and he was at the stove with his back to me.

“With milk?”

“As always.”

He knew as always. He asked so he could hear my voice, and from how it sounded, work out whether I was pleased. I took the cup, sat down and watched his back. Mornings, he usually fusses, drops something, rushes. That morning he moved slowly and precisely, like a man carrying something full inside him and afraid to spill it.

Here is what I understood over that coffee. When I let him come, I get a contented husband for a week. When I milk him and give him nothing, I get a husband who waits for my word every minute of the day. The contented one disappears into his phone. The waiting one stands at the stove with his back to me and doesn’t turn round until he’s called.

I never did open the cage — not that evening, not the next day. Two days later I put him down again, without the massager this time, fingers only, and kept him there longer. The drops came later and there were fewer of them. His breathing was steadier, but his shoulders were like stone. He is learning to carry it. I am learning not to feel sorry for him.

• Leave the cage locked. The point of milking is that the body gives and he doesn’t get.
• Glove, lube and towel — out in plain sight from lunchtime. The waiting works as well as the fingers.
• Don’t press. Stroke the bump evenly, one tempo: the drops come from patience, not force.
• Straight afterwards, a job: dishes, tea. He needs somewhere to put his body while it is still humming.
• Don’t soften in the morning. The way he serves coffee after a night like that is the result.