i.

The tone was set by D. on Saturday morning, with an unexpected legs-in-the-air spanking. His spankings are always unexpected, because he always springs them on me first thing in the morning when I’m barely conscious. I blame his cock, which likes mornings far more than either of us, waking me with hot, velvety nudges against my hip. Next thing I know my hand is slipping around his hardness of its own accord, and then I’m slithering under the covers to kiss him awake … and before I know it I’m on my back, squeaking as he lifts my legs and lands several stinging smacks on my poor, sleepy bottom. Everyone hates this position, but that morning it seemed particularly acute: I was excited from suckling him, my clit slightly swollen, and every spank seemed to reverberate through my exposed sex. Any kind of punishment between my legs is an absolute limit for me – the rest of my body likes pain, but my cunt is for pleasure only – and the nearness of the smacks made me flinch. It was edgy in a delicious, confused way, my fear warring with my pleasure at the spanking until I was desperate for him to fuck me.

Which he did, very nicely.

ii.

I’d made sure that my tawses were in my toybox before Penny came round on Saturday evening. Before she arrived I spent a little time tidying, enjoying the naughty ritual of sterilising my sex toys and putting them neatly away.

The last time we’d talked in detail about play, I’d suggested that perhaps a stricter persona might work after all, but as it happened the evening held no place for roleplay of any kind. We were helplessly, entirely ourselves. We talked and talked and talked, and then we kissed and talked some more, and when we went to bed it was relaxed and playful and completely without artifice. We spent a lot of time admiring each other. When she spanked me I was inclined to giggle rather more than I should have, not because it was funny but just because the fact of her desire for me seemed so ridiculous – and so delightful – in the light of my desire for her. We tumbled on the bed, wanton, drowning each other in caresses and words.

She put me over her lap and tawsed me, trying each of my leather straps and paddles, experimenting with the noises she could elicit as I tossed my head and gasped and couldn’t seem to keep from laughing. Some of them were a little long for easy aim in that position, but despite our laughter I remember it as quite a serious tawsing. The strokes were hard enough to dispel any idea that my fearlessness with her was due to lack of severity on her part. I still don’t know why I’m so fearless with her, except that I feel so completely at ease with her as a lover.

My good humour was infectious. After counting a first set of strokes in English (twelve, I think? My memory is struggling with the details) she started getting me to repeat lines after her, punctuating each with a stinging stroke with the leather tawse. The theme was self-care. Let’s see if I can remember: I will get enough sleep – I will eat proper meals – I will snuggle my cat – I won’t let dickish clients screw me around - by this time I was laughing helplessly despite the smarting strokes, breathless, owwwwing for all I was worth every time the tawse landed, but not in the least bit cowed. “You forgot one,” I quipped when she paused.

“Oh indeed, minx?” She wasn’t sure whether to hit me or indulge me, but that’s okay, because they’re kind of the same thing.

“Yes – I will treat Penny like a queen.”

At which she laughed unreservedly, rewarded me with another stroke, and told me to start again from the beginning.

Later (after more talking, more kissing and more laughing) she got her harness and the larger of her cocks out of her toybag, and I leaned back and drank in the sight of her as she dressed. I’ve only ever had sex this way once before, a cheap drunken fuck with someone I didn’t particularly like in my second year at university. I’ve never really counted it. So, in a way, Penny took one of my few remaining virginities that night. We fucked vigorously, joyously. I arched my back for her like a cat in heat, to discover that my thighs were longer than hers; so we rolled over and I rode her, hard and fast, neither of us able to control our movements. I remember her hands on my breasts and waist and hips; her face as I came, tossing and – even then, I think – laughing with pleasure. When I reached down she was soaking wet, and she lifted her hips, urgently – “fuck me, somehow, any how, I don’t care.” I slipped two fingers underneath the harness, and she ground herself down on my hand, crying out as I fucked her as furiously as she had just fucked me.

iii.

I’ve finally decided on a pseudonym for the graceful goddess I went to the Venetian masquerade with a few weeks ago: Serafina, after Serafina Pekkala, although with her high cheekbones and blonde locks she looks a little more like Mrs Coulter than the Finnish witch queen.

She, Tom and I spent Sunday in the company of a small group of beloved friends, performing Renaissance drama for our own amusement. She looked stunning in a corset and petticoat, and we managed a certain amount of flirting and surreptitious necking during the play. (Afterwards she insisted I take a photo of the marks left on her back by the tight lacing: a hint of what was to come.) We’d agreed beforehand that she would stay the night, but the plan was very nearly abandoned when I, sleep-deprived and full of wine, nearly fell asleep on them before the evening was out. I decided I was a bit over-peopled, and retreated to Tom’s room with a book and a mug of herbal tea. The peace and quiet was clearly what I needed: after a little while I woke up a bit, and found myself thinking how nice a spanking would be.

When they came up I popped to the bathroom, and climbed the stairs again to discover the two of them entwined. The rest followed naturally. Serafina is an inexperienced but enthusiastic switch. She and Tom hadn’t played together before, and she seemed more nervous about bottoming to him than topping me – until we talked it through, and she realised that enjoying the sensations of being spanked or whipped didn’t mean she had to be submissive; that it was possible to enjoy the sensations on her own terms.

The next four hours passed in a haze of lust. Tom put me over his knee, talking over my head to her about his technique, pointing out things of note, inviting her to observe the responses he elicited. The two of them purred over my bottom, remarking how pleasant it was to have such a canvas. Their spanking styles were almost opposite – Tom experienced, effortlessly heavy-handed; her hesitant at first, but increasing in confidence, favouring stinging, stiff-fingered smacks on my crease and upper thighs. They passed me back and forth, talking about me as if I wasn’t there. When the time came for her to experience Tom’s hand I stroked her, part sympathetic, part nervous with the strangeness of watching her be topped – and part, secretly, sharing in Tom’s sadism and wanting to watch her overcome.

Fleeting images: me being bent over pillows to be whipped; Sera being taught to use the riding crop and the cane. Tom giving me rather more demonstration strokes than he strictly needed to. My confused response as she found her stride and gave me a series of smart strokes, not sure if I was happy for her achievement or sorry for myself. When Tom bent her over to taste what she had just dealt me, I suggested he build her up as slowly as possible with rapid, bouncing strokes from the thinnest switch. I could see her melting underneath them, exactly as I do.

I remarked at one point, while Sera and I were jointly adoring Tom’s cock, “I always forget how pornographic threesomes are.” It was an athletic tangle of limbs, flushed and sticky. I remember Tom instructing me to worship her graceful cunt, while he whipped my raised arse. She and I kneeling up face to face in the middle of the bed, kissing and caressing while Tom flicked his softest flogger around our pressed-together bodies. Me supporting her head as she succumbed to the heavier thuds of the lambskin thongs, her hair in my face, her breasts against mine. Later, Tom indulging himself with a demonstration of severity, telling Sera to watch while he gave me six with the Big Black Stick. Of course I devoured them, husky with pleasure as I gasped out my count; and she murmured in disbelief as she watched the welts blossom in time with my lust.

A final image: me, kneeling, a demonstration object again, hands behind my head while Tom cupped my throat, and clipped first one, and then another clamp onto my erect nipples. Cold stabs of pain – many months since I last felt this – shooting straight between my spread thighs. Tom’s eyes burning into mine. And then two hot, wet mouths closing around cold metal, softness of warm tongues exploring the sensitive, squeezed flesh until I was dizzy with sensation. I spread my legs unconsciously wider, desperately wanting to be touched, to be fucked … Then the clamps being removed after they’d pleasured me into oblivion; the throb of blood pouring into my injured nipples, into my cheeks, flushing my collarbones and throat.

We finally collapsed in a sweaty heap sometime after 2am, having kept Tom’s housemates rudely awake for the last few hours. We were very apologetic the next morning, but even though Sera had to get up at 6.30am to do something unlikely at the other end of London, I don’t think any of us had any regrets.