My personal understanding of polyamory is strongly informed by a epiphany I had a few years ago. I’d just started getting together with D. – we weren’t particularly serious yet, but were beginning to get that way. I was still involved in a dalliance with another couple, and was more than half in love with the woman. The point at which I accepted my feelings for her – even as I accepted they weren’t reciprocated – energised me in such a way that I found myself more able to fall in love with D. Since then my experiences have backed up my belief that love is self-replicating and synergistic. It is the opposite of zero-sum; love expanding in one point of the network does not lessen the love in the rest of the network, but feed into it. When I am in love with one person, it gives me more loving energy in the rest of my relationships.

Sexual energy works the same way. Partly, the libido is like any other appetite – it is enlivened by exercise. Just as having more love makes you more loving, having more sex makes you more horny.

2010 so far has been the year of new lovers. I really didn’t have the time or energy for new romantic entanglements last year, and my vague attempts to sub to a woman without my head breaking continued to be problematic. This year, something seems to have shifted. I’m finding myself with much more energy for new people, and so far all of them are switchy or toppy women. I am massively grateful to Penny D, my co-pioneer in this process, for helping me open the door in my head (and I very much hope she will feature in many of my stories this year). But I didn’t expect the explosion of reciprocated interest and opportunity which followed hot on her heels.

This week, then. One of those weeks where intimacy begets intimacy; where electric encounters not only re-energise me (and allow me to feed that energy back to other partners) but in some magical way, seem to directly re-energise everyone else in my network.

It started last Thursday night, with an intense play session with Tom. It was our first for a few weeks, and provided a release for all the desire that had built up during our acting weekend. I spent part of the evening showing him some of the stills from the shoot we did with Zille in December, which re-ignited all sorts of hot memories (and our intense crushes on the lady in question). Then I showed him the two Control and Reform DVDs I’ve promised to review at some point (soon, I hope!), one of which shows an astounding, severe whipping during which the model, despite her valiant attempts to act unhappy, cannot quite disguise the fact that she is falling deeply into subspace and absorbing the pain with a deep, calm joy. It’s not particularly in character but I love the scene almost because of the visible discrepancy between the character’s and the actress’s reactions.

In bed, I lay on my tummy as he spanked me. It was long gone midnight and we occupied that dreamlike space which seems to wrap around you like a bubble when you’re making love in the middle of the night. I dropped so swiftly and deeply into subspace that I remember very little of the scene. I remember the sensation of his hands, each smack far harder than I expected, but so warm and intimate that I was able to stay grounded, react to the pain without fear. He rubbed between each stroke, and I crested wave after wave of sensation. My responses were quiet at first, small gasps of breath, shudders passing through my body. He moved from hand to my wooden ruler – gentle at first, but then biting into the backs of my thighs again and again, the impossibly sharp sensations contrasting with the palpable gentleness of his other hand, resting in the small of my back.

I was convinced that the next implement he used on me was my grown-up leather paddle, and responded as warmly as if it was. I love that paddle, and although it hurts like hell, there’s something reassuring about it. It’s an adult, sexy implement, very much for play rather than punishment, and however much it hurts I tend to respond more with arousal than distress. I remember, though, when he switched to another, similar implement – heavy leather again, but very different in touch – and I looked over my shoulder and saw the leather paddle in his hand, and the senior brown tawse lying on the bed beside him. The tawse which normally freaks me the hell out, which I cannot take without a huge amount of fuss. I had lifted my hips to meet it, accepted the force of each stroke as it coursed through my body. Which just goes to show how much of this is in the mind.

The next night – Friday – I had a long-awaited date with an elegant lady I first kissed almost six years ago. It’s taken us this long to finally hook up properly, and the evening was decadent and genteel: we dressed up in evening wear and Venetian masks, danced together at a late-night gallery opening, and once back at mine she licked champagne off me and called me her nymph. If I was a nymph, she was a goddess: serene, graceful and with a natural dignity and poise. She arranged me to her satisfaction on my hands and knees, and purred over my body, running her manicured hands lightly over my back and bottom. She murmured an arch, rhetorical commentary as her fingers teased and slapped my prominent rump. “Now, how does one go about the spanking of a naughty nymph? Perhaps one might start with a sharp smack here …” It was light, tantalising, and made me hungry for more.

On Saturday D. came over, and surprised me by obliging my unspoken need for something harder. I can rarely tell when he’ll be in the mood to play, and it’s usually a delicious surprise when he does. Perhaps I commented on the fine quality of his leather belt earlier in the evening, and put the thought in his head? However it came about, I found myself lying on my tummy again, fresh and naked from my shower, while he ran the doubled belt over my eager skin. Lying flat made the belt easier to take than when he requires I arch my back for it. He started gently enough that I could respond with enthusiasm, but the strokes got harder quickly enough to satisfy my hunger. I found myself yelping and hissing through my teeth as the pace and intensity increased, no longer worrying about expressing my enjoyment, just responding instinctively to the powerful combination of pain and pleasure. His hands on other parts of my body increased my eagerness, and after he’d whipped me to his satisfaction he rolled me over and – another wonderful surprise – licked me until my other craving was sated. By the time he’d finished I felt thoroughly spoiled, and more than ready to return the favour and pamper him in return.

The first few days of this week mostly consisted of work, but last night Tom and I had something to celebrate (good news related to a new business venture of his). I wanted to show him the rest of the stills from the shoot with Zille, knowing what mood it would put us both in. Entrepreneurial excitement spilled over into physical desire. As I was getting into bed I surprised both of us by climbing on top of him for a passionate kiss – which somehow turned into me on my front again, and him switching me with fast, rapid strokes that left me panting. Again, I found myself dropping into that trusting place where my first responses were quiet, breathy; making space for him to hit me harder and faster, saving my yelps for what I knew was to come. He finished with a long series of hard strokes, the thin whippy switch biting into my bottom and thighs with an almost unbearably high-pitched sensation. I let the pain wash over me, neither resisting nor struggling. I’m not sure what I enjoyed more: the knife-sharp, intense switching; the warmth and desire in his voice as he called me his good girl; or my surprise as he drew me into a kneeling position, stood in front of me and aggressively thrust his ready cock into my mouth. As I pleasured him I revelled in the sensations, in my own arousal from the whipping, and in the clear evidence of how much he had enjoyed it.

This is the sex life I missed having last year. I don’t expect it to continue uninterrupted, but oh, these little sequences of encounters, each feeding energy back into the next, are truly lovely when they naturally happen this way.