Explorations: Books 17-20 is live! Exceptional value in Mff BDSM smut!

No one will mind if I just repost the blurb again, right? Really, it's an incredible value, seeing as the books adhere to my code of all BDSM all the time. If Mff is your thing, I think you'll enjoy the Sarah books.

Buy the collection here!

Blurb:

Huge discount on buying the books individually! 

The fourth collection of Explorations comprises the "Sarah Books": the story of how my fantasy-avatar, at the command of her husband, invites her best friend to join their BDSM household, and of my own exploration of some of the most extreme regions of taboo fantasy. 

"Emily's Best Friend": The seventeenth book of Explorations opens a new chapter in the life of fantasy-Emily and in the fantasy-elaboration-in-writing of real-Emily. Unable to stop fantasizing about her best friend Sarah, real-Emily begins to write a steamy BDSM scenario in which Sarah, desperately curious about Emily's BDSM lifestyle, entraps Emily into a spanking from her husband; the result is an invitation to Sarah to join their household, and see for herself. 

"Emily's Naughty Classmate": The 18th book of Explorations continues the story of how, in real-Emily's writing, Sarah, Emily's best friend, came to join her household as a "naughty classmate" in fantasy-Charles' Victorian school for young brides. 

"Emily's Sister-Wife": The 19th book of Explorations continues the "Sarah stories," in which Emily tries to work out her fantasies about her best friend by bringing her into the fantasy household of her avatar, fantasy-Emily. There, fantasy-Emily and fantasy-Sarah undergo strict training in the ways of the marriage-bed from their headmaster, fantasy-Emily's husband, Charles. 

"Emily in Service": The 20th book of Explorations concludes the "Sarah" books with two scenes from fantasy-Emily's polygamous household: Emily's and Sarah's "benching day," when fantasy-Charles, as their "Headmaster," enjoys them both exactly as he pleases; and a day of lewd service for them, at Charles' command, to two strangers in masks. The identity of those strangers, revealed in part at the end of the book, will change the course of all their lives. 

These books of Explorations contain fiction elaborating the following sorts of fantasy that you may wish to avoid: ff, Mff, MMff, anal, toys, spanking, schoolgirl ageplay, watersports. The only other reason to avoid this one is if you're the woman here fictionalized as Sarah Cleveland, and you want to spare me death by embarrassment. It's intended for over-18 audiences who, like me, are interested in exploring the lines between pleasure and pain, dominance and submission, and fantasy and reality. All characters depicted are consenting adults.

What can be sillier than an #emilytilton cover reveal? An #emiltytiltoncompilation cover reveal!

Lo!

Are you basking in its splendor? I would have you wait until you can answer that question in the affirmative, before you proceed to read the blurb.

Oh, all right. Buy it here!

Blurb:

Huge discount on buying the books individually! 

The fourth collection of Explorations comprises the "Sarah Books": the story of how my fantasy-avatar, at the command of her husband, invites her best friend to join their BDSM household, and of my own exploration of some of the most extreme regions of taboo fantasy.

"Emily's Best Friend": The seventeenth book of Explorations opens a new chapter in the life of fantasy-Emily and in the fantasy-elaboration-in-writing of real-Emily. Unable to stop fantasizing about her best friend Sarah, real-Emily begins to write a steamy BDSM scenario in which Sarah, desperately curious about Emily's BDSM lifestyle, entraps Emily into a spanking from her husband; the result is an invitation to Sarah to join their household, and see for herself. 

"Emily's Naughty Classmate": The 18th book of Explorations continues the story of how, in real-Emily's writing, Sarah, Emily's best friend, came to join her household as a "naughty classmate" in fantasy-Charles' Victorian school for young brides. 

"Emily's Sister-Wife": The 19th book of Explorations continues the "Sarah stories," in which Emily tries to work out her fantasies about her best friend by bringing her into the fantasy household of her avatar, fantasy-Emily. There, fantasy-Emily and fantasy-Sarah undergo strict training in the ways of the marriage-bed from their headmaster, fantasy-Emily's husband, Charles. 

"Emily in Service": The 20th book of Explorations concludes the "Sarah" books with two scenes from fantasy-Emily's polygamous household: Emily's and Sarah's "benching day," when fantasy-Charles, as their "Headmaster," enjoys them both exactly as he pleases; and a day of lewd service for them, at Charles' command, to two strangers in masks. The identity of those strangers, revealed in part at the end of the book, will change the course of all their lives. 

These books of Explorations contain fiction elaborating the following sorts of fantasy that you may wish to avoid: ff, Mff, MMff, anal, toys, spanking, schoolgirl ageplay, watersports. The only other reason to avoid this one is if you're the woman here fictionalized as Sarah Cleveland, and you want to spare me death by embarrassment. It's intended for over-18 audiences who, like me, are interested in exploring the lines between pleasure and pain, dominance and submission, and fantasy and reality. All characters depicted are consenting adults. 

The Explorations series is a unique take on BDSM above all because of the strong individual voice of Emily Tilton herself, manifestly shaping the fantasy-elaborations of the series. Because Emily is interested in helping herself and others understand how BDSM can be lived within a mostly vanilla existence, the way most of us have to live it, Explorations has a unique element that Emily hopes will set it apart and make it useful: Emily has created a fantasy-version of herself (keeping to the tropes of the genre she knows so well, fantasy-Emily is an eighteen-year-old virginal bride with a self-abuse "problem"), whose fantasies and "realities" are the central subject of the stories of Explorations--but the real Emily also keeps her authorial, real voice in the margins, explaining and analyzing, and revealing from time to time the much more mundane, real version of the things Emily has transformed in the story of her fantasy-self. This doubling of the "I" in the first-person narrative of Explorations makes the series worth exploring all on its own. Come for the hot, dark, edgy, D/s, spanking, anal action. Stay for the exploration.

"Please unfasten your jeans" (a spanking story)

"I think," Charles said, "we'll have you keep that disgraceful bra on for now. I should like to chastise you while you are still wearing it, the better to join in your mind the article itself with the stern correction of the fault that you will undergo. Please unfasten your jeans."

It was so wonderfully like the moment when Emily Orn takes off her corset in Emily in the School for Wives (forthcoming next week, though to get ready you really should read Emily, Victorian Bride). To undo the top button of my jeans, because a man had told me to--what kind of girl was I if I did that? One sorely in need of training! Another twist in this tortuous path: in BDSM training goes in retrograde. We are trained to be bad, so that our masters can train us the more. The better we are at being naughty, the more pleasure we provide, and since naughtiness isn't naughty unless it's a violation of the rules, the rules remain firmly (heh) in place, like a butt-plug, simultaneously shaming and improving: Emily is a bad girl because she has a butt-plug in her bottom, but she's a good girl because she let master put it there, and because her bottom is learning to be good for master's cock. 

The abrupt command to do something so shameful, as judged by the laws of society, always gets me ("Please unfasten your jeans"), and this moment was no exception. I couldn't help squeezing a bit, with my thighs. But Charles knew my tricks too well by now.

"Miss Tilton!" Charles exclaimed. "Just what do you think you're doing? I should think you had already earned enough punishment for your taste. Do as I've asked this instant. Unbutton your jeans."

Now I had a serious problem, because after the small squeeze I had been able to manage, to put my hands anywhere near my pussy was very likely to make me forget myself in some way. Indeed I groaned, as I undid the buttons of my fly, exposing the front of my now nearly soaked little red lace panties to my trainer's eyes.

"Just as I thought," Charles said. "I don't suppose I should have expected regulation undergarments under your jeans, when you flouted my rules under your shirt, should I? Please lower your jeans to just above your knees."

He had noticed that I had chosen the tight ones, and now he was exploiting it. When I had carried out his request, my eyes on the floor and my face hot both with shame and arousal, I was a picture of wantonness-in-training: flaming scarlet sexy lingerie, knees bound by slutty tight jeans. Charles stood. He had my paddle in his right hand, I saw now. Not good (but also wonderful).

"Miss Tilton," Charles said. "You have been found self-evidently guilty of wearing this provocative underwear. Because you are new to Smith's, you will be punished with the paddle instead of the cane."

Will. Be. Punished. Three simple words that could make my heart quail and my cunt flow. No escape: I was in training now, and I would be punished with the paddle in a few moments.

"But before I administer your punishment, I require that you demonstrate to me an understanding of why you are here. Without that, this condign chastisement will, I fear, be of no use to you, or to your husband."

"Glug," I said, more or less. This chastisement. . . of use to me or to my husband. . . I hadn't thought of that, that he could construct the training-constellation so that my beaten backside would redound to my husband's (his, of course) pleasure. That I was here, in training, so that my husband could have a bride who gave him the sort of pleasure to which a husband who could afford to send his wife to Smith's was entitled.

"'Glug' is not an adequate response, Miss Tilton."

"I. . ." I began. "I am here, Sir. . . to learn to. . . be good."

"Indeed, that is a fine beginning, Miss Tilton, but I begin to suspect that you are in great need not only of chastisement but also of more penetrating thought on this matter. What does learning to be good mean, for a wife?"

"It. . ." But he had come around behind me, and I strongly suspected that his right hand, with the paddle brandished in it, was prepared to. . .

"Aaaaaahhhh" I screamed, after I heard the gunshot crack and an instant later felt the blow upon my barely-pantied ass. Now he turned me over his knee, in the classical manner, bending my face to the floor. He took the waistband of my thong and pulled it down to just below my bottom.

"Learning to be (crack!) a good (crack!) wife (crack!) means learning (crack!) to please (crack!) your (crack!) husband! (crack)."

"Ah, Sir! No more! I want to be good! I want to please my husband!"

"Pull up those disgraceful panties, then, and listen to me." He stood me up, and then resumed his seat upon the throne. I wanted nothing so much as to rub my bottom-cheeks, but I pulled up my thong and put my clasped hands in front of me once again.

Good Lord. Training was the hottest fucking thing ever. It was schoolgirl and Story of O rolled into one.

Emily's Best Friend: the kernel #SatSpanks

In honor of the upcoming release of EXPLORATIONS: Books 17-20, I'm going to share a snippet from Emily's Best Friend, the first of the four books in the new collection, which together make up the "Sarah books." This snippet is the place from which all four of the books sprang--the breathtaking (for me) fantasy-moment of one's spanking being observed by a prurient friend.

Through the window Sarah watched as Charles pointed to the arm of the sofa. With disbelief and rising excitement she saw Emily dutifully lay herself down over it in her pretty blue skirt. 

Sarah’s breathing came harsher when she saw Emily reach her hands back and start to pull the skirt up. It couldn’t be true—her best friend was about to get a spanking for talking too long on the phone.

Now Emily’s panty-covered bottom lay upturned on the sofa-arm. Charles stood next to the sofa, looking down at it sternly. Sarah saw his lips move. Then she gasped as Emily put her hands back again, and started to lower her panties.

Blurb (buy the book here):

“Or what?” asked Sarah, quietly. 

“Oh, no, Sarah--please.” 

Then the bombshell. “Em, the walls at the Waldorf are thinner than you might think. My room was right next to yours on your wedding night." 

I was unable to speak--unable to think, really. 

"Come on, Emily—say it! Or what?" she was insistent, now. . . 

I swallowed hard, and whispered into the phone, "He spanks me."

The seventeenth book of Explorations opens a new chapter in the life of fantasy-Emily and in the fantasy-elaboration-in-writing of real-Emily. Unable to stop fantasizing about her best friend Sarah, real-Emily begins to write a steamy BDSM scenario in which Sarah, desperately curious about Emily's BDSM lifestyle, entraps Emily into a spanking from her husband; the result is an invitation to Sarah to join their household, and see for herself.

This book of Explorations contains fiction elaborating the following sorts of fantasy that you may wish to avoid: ff, Mff, anal, toys, spanking, schoolgirl ageplay. Also no fake old-sounding language. The only other reason to avoid this one is if you're the woman here fictionalized as Sarah Cleveland, and you want to spare me death by embarrassment. It's intended for over-18 audiences who, like me, are interested in exploring the lines between pleasure and pain, dominance and submission, and fantasy and reality. All characters depicted are consenting adults.

Read all the Saturday Spankings! 

The underthings of a harlot

(This story-post continues on from the last one. There are also some references to Emily, Victorian Bride and Emily in the School for Wives [forthcoming in ten days or so], in which a Mrs. Smith takes charge of "my" great-great-grandmother as a trainee before her BDSM marriage to a Mr. Wilkes.)

"Well, Sir," I said, "I'm afraid you're going to have be Mrs. Smith for me, as well as Mr. Wilkes. The first thing Mrs. Smith does is to make Emily take off her clothes."
This is the essence of training, in BDSM. Charles had ripped my clothes off countless times; he had commanded me to strip for him countless more times; but no time had been like this, for they had not been the beginning of a regime of dominance and submission--or, to be more precise, they had each been discrete regimes, which we had not thought to connect in a larger, continuing power-structure like, for example, a domestic-discipline marriage.

It was at this point that our marriage became recognizable as our own kind of domestic discipline (DD). It was really very unlike most of the relationships that go by that name--though to be sure the variety is already endless--because standard DD generally isn't egalitarian; indeed, complementarianism is at its core: one partner is the HoH (head of household) and the other is TiH (taken in hand), with respect to absolutely everything in their domestic arrangements, from the dinner table to the dungeon, if they have one. 

The problem was that that that was what we wanted--but only in the dungeon. Or, I suppose, also the bedroom, when I was being fucked or beaten there. Or even the dinner table, if Charles ordered me to drape myself over it among the dishes, and raised my skirt. . . The problem was that we wanted sexual DD, but not "real" DD.

Our real marriage was not like my fantasy-Emily's through-composed BDSM opera of a marriage to fantasy-Charles. For that reason, we had not been able yet to develop any kind of build, any program. Suddenly, with this idea of training, coming from my Victorian tale of my great-great-grandmother, there was one.

"Miss Tilton," he said. "Please stand up and go to the living-room, and stand in the center of the rug, and wait for me. So we are clear, when I join you, you will be removing these slutty clothes you are wearing, so that your training may begin."

Yes, exactly. Nipples stiff and tingly, bad-girl thong slipping with dampness, I stood, blushing, and with downcast eyes went to the living-room. I folded my hands in front of my solar plexus like a good girl and stood, waiting, thinking about my clothes and my soon-to-be naked body, and what "training" was going to mean, while Charles cleaned up the dinner things.

Charles entered, and sat, in his throne (really, it's just a comfortable arm-chair that's good for blow-jobs, but calling it his throne still turns me on after all these years). I turned to face him, hands still clasped at my midriff.

"You may begin with your T-shirt," he said. "I want you to remove it, however, by crossing your wrists, and grasping the hem of the shirt."

I knew what he was going to tell me to do next, and I said, involuntarily, "But. . ."

"Miss Tilton," he said. "I am surprised at how much training it is turning out that you need. Are you unable to obey even a request so simple as this one?"

"No. . . Sir," I said, and did as he had bid me, thrillingly unable to look him in the eyes, face hot with the shame of the command that was coming.

"Now, if you please, lift the hem of your shirt above your head."

At least he couldn't see how red my face was, then, with my arms bound by the shirt, over my head, and my tiny red lace bra exposed to his gaze.

"Ah." Charles said. He improvised, "I think you know, Miss Tilton, that the regulation color of undergarments in my establishment is white. Am I correct in that?"

"Yes, Sir," I said, my voice muffled in the T-shirt.

"And yet you have arrived here for training in the red underthings of a harlot."

I gasped, and my knees trembled.

"Perhaps you do not know, then, what the penalty in this house is for wearing non-regulation undergarments that I have not specifically bid you wear."

"No, Sir."

"I shall enlighten you on that matter shortly, Miss Tilton, and in a manner that I hope will ensure you remember to wear appropriate underthings. For now, please remove your shirt completely, fold it, and put it on the coffee-table."

He was so very, very good at this, now.

The box with the butt-plugs

Do you want the real metaphor? It's the box, with the butt-plugs, to which I pay homage in Emily's Little Trainer and Emily's Naughty Classmate. That box appears at Roissy, in Story of O. Just to refresh your memory, although I rather doubt that anyone who's still reading this blog doesn't instantly remember about the box with the butt-plugs: When they (the "they" of Roissy--the masters) find that O is too tight, back there (you know exactly where I mean), they bring out a box. Inside the box are butt-plugs of increasing size, each of which can be fitted to a belt-and-chain affair that O wears from then on, until they decide that she has been opened sufficiently for their pleasure. Story of O is the only place I've ever seen the trope in that pure, nearly miraculously piquant, form--at least until I gave fantasy-Charles an identical box (a valise, for him).

That's what training, in this sense, is about. Suddenly I pictured my life as a never ending series of widening butt-plugs, and it gave me a warm feeling inside. Opening to Charles, but, more importantly, opening to myself--or, I suppose, opening to God--was what would keep me going.

No, I didn't want to realize the metaphor; that would be stupid, and would force me into adult diapers long before my time. (Being forced into baby-diapers, though--that was something I was into, as recounted in Emily and the Shameful Customs of Prophettown.) But as a place for grounding fantasy, as a way of thinking about how to live progressively. . . it works.

Perhaps this makes sense only to the subset of submissives (already a pretty small subset of the general population) whose fantasies revolve around their anuses (proper latin plural ani, by the way), and the various things other people--Dominant people--might insert into them. For us, it feels like that violation (and it never ceases to be a violation, which is its paradoxical charm, in the true sense of "enchantment") consecrates our very existence. Stupid, I know. But there it is--and I do mean "there."

The idea that that consecrating violation might somehow progress, that it might make us more and more holy as we become more and more pleasing to the lord who uses us, lies behind the fantasy of the box with the butt-plugs. You can find that box, transformed, in countless other anal tales: most frequently, its the girl or the guy who loves anal who has a broad range of different-sized things he wants to put in his or her own or someone else's fundament. Réage's image of the box, though, rocked my world.

So the thing for me to tell as the next part of this "real" version of the story is how The Bride's Tale (which is how I originally titled Emily Orn's narrative) affected my life, and in particular my life with Charles.

Briefly, he put me in training. I said one night, after cooking dinner for Charles, which I rarely do, and adopting the formal tone I generally use to let him know I want to play, "Sir, I've been thinking a great deal about how I can be a better girl for you."

"Really," he said, putting down his fork and looking into my eyes. After due consideration, I had decided on a sort of "brat" outfit: my tightest jeans and an old white T-shirt. Underneath, unbeknown to him, I had on red lace, something I probably wear twice a year, if that. The bra was tiny and the thong rode so low on my hips that I got that lovely "bad girl" feeling every time I moved, even if I was only reaching for the wine.

I cast my eyes down to where I had put my hands in my lap. "Yes, Sir."

"And?" He was accomplished now at drawing this sort of thing out of me.

"And. . . I was thinking about Emily--you know, my great-great-grandma. . ."

He waited, patiently.

"She learned how to be a good girl for her husband, didn't she?"

I risked a glance up at him. I could tell he was intrigued. "Yes," he finally said. "It certainly seems like she did."

(This was just fucking awesome by any standard, BDSM or not, I have to say. We were talking about a fictional character I had come up with as if she were my real ancestress, and somehow a model for my conduct and possible training. It was like having a real dinner conversation about going to Jedi Academy because you'd read about Luke Skywalker.)

"I think that, irregular as it may seem, . . . you should train me the way way she was trained."

"Um." Charles said. It's what he says when I've turned him on so much he doesn't know what to do. It may be my favorite sound on earth. "Um. How do we start?"

Emily, Victorian Bride is out!

Here's the book. 

Here's the blurb:

My fingers were clumsy on the latch, but at last the cover swung up to reveal, on a display surface of black velvet, something made of white silk and ornamented with lace; what it was was at first impossible to discern, as I had never seen anything like it before. Though it was folded slightly at the bottom, it was obviously fashioned from less material than a pocket handkerchief. 

“I shall not make you guess what it is, Miss Orn, since I can tell that you have not the slightest idea. It is a bridal garment that Mr. Wilkes has selected for you. You will wear it on your wedding day.” 

I spoke despite myself. “A garment? How can this be a garment?”

The 21st book of Explorations takes the series in a startling new direction. Real Emily, to escape from the fantasies about Sarah that have been tormenting her, has her avatar fantasy-Emily receive a manuscript written by her great-great-grandmother and namesake, Emily Orn. That manuscript tells an astonishing story: Emily Orn and her husband Edmund Wilkes were part of a "Great Drama" of Dominance and submission in Victorian England, and the first part of Emily Orn's "Bride's Tale" narrates the beginning of her initiation into that drama at the hands of Mrs. Smith, whose establishment has the mission of preparing submissive brides for their wedding-nights.

This book of EXPLORATIONS contains fiction elaborating the following sorts of fantasy that you may wish to avoid: ff, Ff, spanking. It's intended for over-18 audiences who, like me, are interested in exploring the lines between pleasure and pain, dominance and submission, and fantasy and reality. All characters depicted are consenting adults.

Emily, Victorian Bride #SatSpanks

Greetings from the sceptred isle, land (of course, with the sceptre and all) of the cane, best of implements! I'm here in the UK for a short visit, and there couldn't be a better place from which to send you a snippet of Emily, Victorian Bride, just out on Kindle (click here!). As you'll see, it's in certain ways quite different to the stuff I've released previously. (Among other things, I'm rather concerned that the lengthy sentences I write in my Victorian stuff will bring the wrath of the Headmistress upon me!)

Here, a governess writes to Edmund, the betrothed bridegroom of Emily Orn (Victorian bride and "my" great-great-grandmother), concerning certain interesting details of his future wife's conduct as a girl.

"Accordingly, as Miss Orn sat at her writing desk and I in my teacher’s chair, I began kindly to question her about her disturbed sleep; her confusion at my questions afforded me the opportunity of asking whether she had been troubled lately by any new or unwonted thoughts; at her demurral I was forced to assume rather a sterner tone and to inform her that it would go much easier with her if she were to confess any infractions of which she might be guilty, than if she were to be discovered in them. At that Miss Orn began to cry, and I thought (though the event proved me to have been deceived) that I had spoken with her in happy time, and that it would be easy to extirpate the sin. Again I assumed a kindly tone, and I said that she had been detected in her pursuits; that she would have to be punished, but that she would be the better for it; that the thoughts and feelings she was experiencing had ruined many a young woman before her, but that with my help she would still make the wonderful marriage we all expected of her; even that I had myself in my youth been subject to the same temptations. With all due obedience, Miss Orn rose from her desk and brought me my walnut hair-brush from its menacing place of honor on my escritoire. At my command, Miss Orn bent over the desk and grasped its corners, then held still while I pinned her skirts and lowered her drawers to reveal a girlish posterior that was nevertheless in the slight fullness of its little peaches, and in the little wisps of hair that peeped from between her thighs, beginning to ripen into the allure of the marriageable maiden. 

“Finally, she sobbed quietly as the sharp, repeated sound of the hairbrush upon her reddening bottom-cheeks rang through the little room, and her posterior showed the evidence ever more clearly that in the miniature universe of the school-room such conduct as hers will have its just reward. 

“One hundred strokes of the hair-brush had Miss Orn that afternoon (I record the number for your information, since proportions are so important in these matters); she took her supper in her bed-chamber, lying over a bolster with her lovely posterior (to which I had allowed her—under my supervision, and with my assistance—to apply a salve) exposed and shining apple-red in the lamp-light. Between the backs of her thighs one could just make out the new-shadowed furrow of her charming maidenly virtue, whose exposure seemed to me likely to encourage in my pupil the modesty necessary for the future."

Here's the blurb for the book:

My fingers were clumsy on the latch, but at last the cover swung up to reveal, on a display surface of black velvet, something made of white silk and ornamented with lace; what it was was at first impossible to discern, as I had never seen anything like it before. Though it was folded slightly at the bottom, it was obviously fashioned from less material than a pocket handkerchief. 

“I shall not make you guess what it is, Miss Orn, since I can tell that you have not the slightest idea. It is a bridal garment that Mr. Wilkes has selected for you. You will wear it on your wedding day.” 

I spoke despite myself. “A garment? How can this be a garment?” 

The 21st book of Explorations takes the series in a startling new direction. Real Emily, to escape from the fantasies about Sarah that have been tormenting her, has her avatar fantasy-Emily receive a manuscript written by her great-great-grandmother and namesake, Emily Orn. That manuscript tells an astonishing story: Emily Orn and her husband Edmund Wilkes were part of a "Great Drama" of Dominance and submission in Victorian England, and the first part of Emily Orn's "Bride's Tale" narrates the beginning of her initiation into that drama at the hands of Mrs. Smith, whose establishment has the mission of preparing submissive brides for their wedding-nights. 

This book of EXPLORATIONS contains fiction elaborating the following sorts of fantasy that you may wish to avoid: ff, Ff, spanking. It's intended for over-18 audiences who, like me, are interested in exploring the lines between pleasure and pain, dominance and submission, and fantasy and reality. All characters depicted are consenting adults.

Submissives need training (about spanking stories)

It had reached a point where I blushed any time anyone said Sarah's name, and I was pining for her the way I had pined for Charles in the Fall of 2000. (I didn't go into that part of that time in the posts where I covered it, because it wasn't all that hot: single girl plays with herself every night fantasizing about the same guy's cock in her ass. Really if I'd tried to describe it it would have been like an eroge game where you choose the girl, the positions, and the backdrop, but with only one girl (me) and one position (one that's frustratingly absent from eroge, actually, but doggy-style substitutes pretty well) and maybe four or five backdrops (hotel room, classroom, library, train, apartment).)

That was the way I was fantasizing about Sarah, though, even when Charles was inside me. Not, I thought, a good sign. Thank God I could confess to him, though!

"Should I command you to tell her?" Charles asked one night.

"No!"

"Is that a cold No or a hot No?" (That's our code for that oh-so-tricky "Does "no" mean No?" business.)

"Cold. . . I think. Let me get back to you."

Later that night I requested the spanking whose details you'll find in the italics at the end of Emily's Naughty Classmate. The next day I "found" my great-great-grandmother's narrative, which begins in Emily, Victorian Bride (forthcoming, soon!). I quickly became obsessed with that instead of Sarah, and I stopped blushing, and Sarah and I could go shopping in New York again without me getting wet whenever we passed Victoria's Secret.

Here's why, as far as I can tell: it was the training thing.

Training, in several aspects, is a strangely essential part of BDSM. "Strangely," because, I suppose, I associate my kink above all with punishment, and most of all in the humiliation involved, for the possibly best example, in having one's panties pulled down for a spanking. And although training regimes often involve punishment, I associate real training regimes not with punishment but with a drive to improve the self and to undertake tasks that will accomplish that improvement.

Of course, that's the progressive in me talking, and it shows that I've dissociated learning from the institutions of education, in a way that would have been completely alien to everyone living just fifty years ago, and remains alien to many people even today.

But BDSM is nothing if not atavistic and nostalgic: the violation of innocence is its stock in trade, and the reason we love it so is that it returns our innocence to us so that it can be re-violated. A glance through The Pearl shows that although we look to Victorian times for our inspiration for classic BDSM practices, the Victorians themselves looked to earlier times: we all want to go back to a time when there was more innocence around.

That is, we want to be trained, because training is the progressive removal of innocence and its replacement with experience. Traditionally, this transformation occurs within a power-structure; what was holding me back from these insights was precisely that I no longer see power-structures as conducive to learning, and so I didn't see that training in the old sense--training in the schoolroom, with the cane hanging on the wall--was an expression of the power-exchange that lies at the root of BDSM.

Why did I fantasize Sarah in a schoolroom with Charles as our headmaster (Emily's Naughty Classmate and Emily's Sister-Wife have this material)? Because I craved what I call the "training constellation." What I had been missing was precisely the part of training that I had learned to dissociate from training--the nostalgic, atavistic, old-fashioned part: the standing in the corner with your skirt pinned up and your panties down to "learn a lesson" part.

It didn't have anything to do with really learning, was the thing: learning was a metaphor for the metaphor of BDSM power-exchange. So my love for Sarah was, I think, my psyche trying to find a way to get the progressive violation of innocence going, under circumstances where I was beginning to think there wasn't anywhere for Charles and me to go from where we were.

My great-great-grandmother Emily Orn solved that for me, when I sent her to a place called Smith's, my own BDSM version of L’Escole des Filles. She was in training, there, and suddenly, in my own Smith's in Greenwich, so was I.

Concerning Emily's Best Friend (a spanking story, kind of)

The process of writing Emily's Best Friend was, truth to tell, frightening. The image from which it started, of Sarah outside on the street, looking in my window, watching me get ready for a spanking, was so powerful that I almost didn't know how to develop it. Why was she there? How did she feel about seeing me about to be spanked, about what it told her about my marriage and about me?

My breakthrough was the idea that she had entrapped me because she suspected she might get to see me spanked; with that came the image, incredibly exciting in and of itself, of why she suspected it--because she had heard what was happening on our wedding-night, through the walls. Now Sarah was fully implicated: there was no way she was going to escape discipline herself, having been so naughty.

The following step, of imagining fantasy-Charles' reaction, was the truly scary part. It was way, way too easy to write him, à la René and Sir Stephen, as deciding that fantasy-me should procure Sarah for his use, and commanding accordingly. Real-Charles, as he read this stuff, said "I'm not touching that with a ten-foot pole." "How about with a seven-inch cock?" I asked. "No comment," he said.

Polyamory is a strange area for us. We've been completely faithful to one another, since that night in New York in 2001, but both of us have poly fantasies. That we've never really even seriously discussed trying to plan something around them is probably due to our over-developed super-egoical idea that we don't want to face the embarrassment that would result if we were to make an overture to the wrong person.

In Emily's Best Friend, the fantasy is polygynous and only polygynous: Charles has asserted his right as husband to command me to bring Sarah to him, in the style of the patriarchs. (Whose patriarchs? It doesn't really matter, and I'm not going to insult anybody by naming a specific one in a specific old book, but you can find them if you look.) Polygynous fantasies came first for me, because they were such standard fare in the erotica I was reading (remember The Pearl!--May and her bed-mate Susey in "My Grandmother's Tale" were mainstays of my virgin-bed.)

But just as the fantasy of being made to watch my Master use another girl (as May watches Mr. T---- enjoy Susey's maiden charms) is potent, so is the one of being given by him to other men, to perfect my submission: to feel in the cock of another man--perhaps a cock much bigger than Charles' own--my Master's authority; to feel defiled by his (or their) seed, but to be grateful to be defiled, for Charles has willed that I be defiled. That's a frontier I haven't yet crossed in EXPLORATIONS, but will have to, someday soon, I think: fantasy-Charles will have a friend over; I think that's how it will start. He'll tell fantasy-me that I'm trained enough to be given to other men, and that I'll be pleasuring his friend that evening. I'll do a passable job, but Charles will still beat me because I. . . (making this up on the fly, now) I'll protest when Charles gives my ass to his friend (Look, I know it's all second-hand Réage. Sometimes I think my entire imagination is secondhand Réage.).

Charles said to Joe, "Her ass is my favorite--tonight it's all yours."

"What?" I shrieked, from my position on my knees in front of them, dressed only in the red thong Charles had specified that morning.

"Joe, I'm sorry you had to hear that," Charles said. "Emily Smith, you are going to get a whipping for that, and Joe may stay to watch if he wants."

"Please. . . no," I said, my breath coming in short gasps, thinking about pineapples but also thinking about a terrible kind of arousal that was spreading from the fear in the pit of my stomach downward.

"Joe," he continued, "of course if you would like to beat her, too. . ."

"I think that might be nice," said Joe in a voice much deeper than Charles'.

Yes, I think it might go that way--and then, the next weekend, perhaps a house-party where fantasy-Emily's hostess duties are quite extensive. . .

Anyway, that was a bit of a digression, but I suppose it shows that letting go of the fantasies of the real, individual, specific Sarah, as I mostly now have, has left me free to pursue polyamory in new directions.

Emily in Service #SatSpanks

This is an excerpt from the 20th book of EXPLORATIONS, Emily in Service, which came out on Kindle this week. It's, um, very naughty. There are a couple of spankings, but (caveat lector) they're in and among a very large amount of (IMHO) scorching hot BDSM sex, with trimmings like schoolgirl ageplay and watersports.

Then I felt a rush of air, and heard a crack right next to my ear, and felt Sarah's bottom tense next to me, and heard her cry out, all at almost the same moment. My eyes flew open to see the leather paddle being pulled away from Sarah's bottom.  

CRACK! It struck again. Sarah sobbed. "Please, sir. . ." she said, "I'll try harder. . . I promise!" CRACK! Seeing the paddle strike so close to my face was, to my horror, intoxicating. Sarah's bottom jiggled delightfully as she tried in vain to ease the sting of the spanking.

Here's the blurb:

 "When I saw the rocking-horse, I was instantly sure that Charles had found a kinky carpenter somewhere. The rocking-horse was astonishingly beautiful, in the colorful style of a carousel pony (though it was much smaller, so that, presumably, a man might stand conveniently behind a girl who rode it)."

The 20th book of Explorations concludes the "Sarah" books with two scenes from fantasy-Emily's polygamous household: Emily's and Sarah's "benching day," when fantasy-Charles, as their "Headmaster," enjoys them both exactly as he pleases; and a day of lewd service for them, at Charles' command, to two strangers in masks. The identity of those strangers, revealed in part at the end of the book, will change the course of all their lives.

This book of Explorations contains fiction elaborating the following sorts of fantasy that you may wish to avoid: Mf, Mff, MMff, anal, spanking, ageplay, watersports. It's intended for over-18 audiences who, like me, are interested in exploring the lines between pleasure and pain, dominance and submission, and fantasy and reality. All characters depicted are consenting adults.

 Here's the link to buy: Emily in Service. For more information about the crazy EXPLORATIONS project, click on the link!

Check out all the Saturday Spankings!

Fantasizing "Sarah" (in re spanking one's best friend)

(Now that I'm doing other things besides these story-posts, I'll start linking up the different bits of the story so that you can find earlier episodes more easily. This post continues on from this previous one; in the story-posts I'm currently narrating the process by which the books of EXPLORATIONS came into their naughty existence. If you want the whole story, start here.)

(Parts of this post appear in Emily's Naughty Classmate. I hope that makes you want to buy that book!)

Then. Then there was "Sarah." I've spent a really long time thinking about why I became fixated on her in the time just around my wedding. She was my maid of honor, and it had been a while since we'd gotten to spend any time together. She's a producer for network TV in New York, and whenever we're together I feel five times cooler and ten times smarter than I do at any other time. I was also floating on a cloud of erotic energy, and constantly thinking about possible new ways to play, because Charles' and my Saturdays had started to assume a recognizable pattern--one that I loved, but which, as a pattern, seemed to be putting us in danger of staleness, down the road.

It was under those circumstances that I started to fantasize about Sarah in a way I never had before. I added the material about her that's now part of the first three books of EXPLORATIONS. Then I started writing the stuff that became Emily's Best Friend, Emily's Naughty Classmate, and Emily's Sister-Wife. The hotness of that material frightened me, frankly. (Charles loved it, I knew, from the way he would read over my shoulder every night, but I think he could tell that I was troubled by what was flowing from my keyboard. So he was guarded in the way he responded to that material in our play. For example, if I threw out "Please, Sir, tell me how you'd fuck Sarah," to see how it felt, he'd hem and haw, and say something like "I'd fuck her really hard?" [I suppose the question-mark is a bit unfair to him, but only a bit.])

The fantasies about Sarah may be the only time ethics really got in the way of my fantasy-life since the day I read Story of O and really started to work on the problem. I pride myself--absolutely pride myself, at this point--on being able to justify every fantasy I actually act on, whether to play with myself to it or to play it out with Charles as a piece of fiction that produces a kind of erotic catharsis. If, in a worst case scenario, I can't stop thinking about some horrific mass-rape, I transform it, usually through the very same lewd keyboard I'm using for this account of myself right now, into something defensible.

(Two techniques for that are my standbys. Either: 1) it's all about me, and I'm the victim of the sex crimes, taking upon myself the sexual aggression of the men of the world, and triumphing over it or, in truly Réagean fashion, succumbing to it and undergoing annihilation in the end [the first time I fantasized my death was jarring, but so was the first time I fantasized eating shit]; or 2) everybody's been through an extensive BDSM selection process à la "Anne Rice writing as AN Roquelaure" [or à la my own Prophettown--see especially Emily and the Lusts of Prophettown]. The latter is easier, but it gets old after a while.)

But having fantasies about someone you love to whom you can never confess those fantasies doesn't really get softened by changing her name. It was particularly strange because I'd never been fixated on any real person at all before in an erotic (as opposed to a romantic "I want him to be my boyfriend/knight-in-shining-armor" way), except Charles in the months when we were dating, before our trip to New York. In some strange and utterly unexpected way, I had fallen in love with Sarah.

Did it have something to do with Jacqueline in Story of O? Jacqueline is a glamorous, top-tier model while O is a second-tier (or so I read it) photographer. Sarah was a New York TV producer while I was a currently unemployed, and really never to be glamorously employed, baby lawyer. O eventually is more than happy to deliver Jacqueline up to René and her sister Natalie to Sir Stephen. I was becoming more than happy to abuse myself while thinking of having Sarah over my knee, over the pillows, grabbing her ankles, while I held the paddle--or while Charles did, and I watched, and then. . . 

Whether I was right to see the link or not, the possibility had started to direct my fantasies, and I was fantasizing Sarah as my junior training-partner and, worse, junior-wife. And that's how we got to the scene I narrate at the end of Emily's Naughty Classmate (though I'm getting just a bit ahead of myself here):

Finally, one night, I went tearfully and knelt in front of Charles, where he was reading in his throne. "Sir?" I asked. "I want to confess." It's a very good way to say that I want to improvise a scene, of course, and has that lovely hint of the sacred, too. I had put on my most schoolgirlish outfit: blue skirt, white blouse, white cotton panties, black thigh-highs, and flats. Really it's nearly the same outfit you'll see Sarah and me in in the next book.

Charles had been so absorbed in his book that he hadn't noticed me disappearing or what I had come back in wearing, so when he looked up to find a tearful schoolgirl at his knee, his distracted expression quickly changed to surprise and, then, interest. I've learned that calling him "Sir" has just about the same lubricious effect on him that his calling me "ass-wife" has on me, so his interest was already rising higher, as it were, presumably at the thought that the schoolgirl's bottom would soon be bare, and subject to his authority.

He put his hand out to stroke my hair, in that wonderfully degrading way, a way fit for dogs, that drives me wild. Truthfully, I didn't know what exactly I was looking for except a hard, hard spanking for writing my best friend and me into the position in which we find ourselves at the end of this book. Part of me thought that I shouldn't be aroused; that part was distressed at the ache in my loins to which Charles' stroking my hair had given rise. Another part of me thought that the only way to put some kind of boundary on these fantasies was to frame them inside my play with Charles, and to let Charles' sexual discipline of me for them, and for my elaborating them in writing, somehow transmute them into a healthy part of our sex life--or at least as healthy as any part of a sex life so twisted as ours can ever be.

It's all in the shadows of Emily in Service (a spanking story)

The inspiration for the first half of this book came from a scene at the end of the book that even more than The Pearl shaped my pre-Story of O fantasies, Richard Manton's Aphrodizzia, which I discovered so climactically (heh) in Sarah's father's desk. I worked hard to add the perspective of the girls over the bench, but really the only saving grace of the crime against my sex I've perpetrated in that scene is perhaps the addition of a contest between fantasy-Sarah and fantasy-me, though that contest is in itself terribly (wonderfully) degrading.

The second half of the book is plot-driven, and I don't want to give it away, but in its basic outline it's a fairly standard, if watersports-adorned, MMff BDSM scene, with the twist at the end.

Blurb (the excerpt at the top is from the awarding of the prize to the winner of the contest):

"When I saw the rocking-horse, I was instantly sure that Charles had found a kinky carpenter somewhere. The rocking-horse was astonishingly beautiful, in the colorful style of a carousel pony (though it was much smaller, so that, presumably, a man might stand conveniently behind a girl who rode it)."

The 20th book of Explorations concludes the "Sarah" books with two scenes from fantasy-Emily's polygamous household: Emily's and Sarah's "benching day," when fantasy-Charles, as their "Headmaster," enjoys them both exactly as he pleases; and a day of lewd service for them, at Charles' command, to two strangers in masks. The identity of those strangers, revealed in part at the end of the book, will change the course of all their lives.

This book of Explorations contains fiction elaborating the following sorts of fantasy that you may wish to avoid: Mf, Mff, MMff, anal, spanking, ageplay, watersports. It's intended for over-18 audiences who, like me, are interested in exploring the lines between pleasure and pain, dominance and submission, and fantasy and reality. All characters depicted are consenting adults.

NOTE: The books of Explorations are short, but are almost entirely BDSM sex. For the softer side that fills in the romantic bits, read Emily's blog!

The Explorations series is a unique take on BDSM above all because of the strong individual voice of Emily Tilton herself, manifestly shaping the fantasy-elaborations of the series. Because Emily is interested in helping herself and others understand how BDSM can be lived within a mostly vanilla existence, the way most of us have to live it, Explorations has a unique element that Emily hopes will set it apart and make it useful: Emily has created a fantasy-version of herself (keeping to the tropes of the genre she knows so well, fantasy-Emily is an eighteen-year-old virginal bride with a self-abuse "problem"), whose fantasies and "realities" are the central subject of the stories of Explorations--but the real Emily also keeps her authorial, real voice in the margins, explaining and analyzing, and revealing from time to time the much more mundane, real version of the things Emily has transformed in the story of her fantasy-self. This doubling of the "I" in the first-person narrative of Explorations makes the series worth exploring all on its own. Come for the hot, dark, edgy, D/s, spanking, anal action. Stay for the exploration.

Another silly cover reveal! Emily in Service

UPDATE: Emily in Service is here! Click on the link! Go ahead, I dare you!

So, reader, I've decided that your constitution is strong enough to handle marketing posts like this one. Here's the way I think it will go down from now on ("go down"--heh): 

Twice a week, usually Tuesday and Friday, I'll publish one of my rambling things about how EXPLORATIONS came to be, and the fun stuff Charles and I do in our BDSM play, and how it all changed over the years, and how really it's all OK from a philosophical and psychological point of view, and how we all just need to stop worrying and enjoy our kinks. 

(I actually messed up and published yesterday the post about Prophettown that was supposed to come out today, but that's fine, because it means I can do this awesome cover reveal today.)

Other days I'll occasionally (OK, maybe frequently) venture to share this sort of thing, which makes me feel like I'm telling you what's up with this strangely-slow-to-flower career as a BDSM author. Also, that lets me participate in such fun stuff as the Saturday Spankings, which I'll do for the first time this week!

So, the cover reveal. Yeah. Well, if this is your first Emily Tilton cover reveal, you may be shocked. It's all in the shadows. Think about that.

Here's your scorching hot, blog-exclusive excerpt (best to stop here if you're faint of heart, especially about anal):

I shook my head, despite myself. I saw his right hand move to get something, heard the air moving, then felt it, and the paddle: CRACK. "Ah, no. . . oh, please, Charles. . ." CRACK. "It's--I--" CRACK.

I opened my mouth, and took the Sarah-stained cock into it. I looked up, into his eyes, and saw a savage lust in them that made me try to grind my hips against the bench in search of release. CRACK. "Don't try that, you little whore," Charles said. "Don't. . ." CRACK, but weaker, because he was coming in torrents inside my mouth, in my hair, on my nose and cheeks.

Here's the blurb:

 "When I saw the rocking-horse, I was instantly sure that Charles had found a kinky carpenter somewhere. The rocking-horse was astonishingly beautiful, in the colorful style of a carousel pony (though it was much smaller, so that, presumably, a man might stand conveniently behind a girl who rode it)."

The 20th book of Explorations concludes the "Sarah" books with two scenes from fantasy-Emily's polygamous household: Emily's and Sarah's "benching day," when fantasy-Charles, as their "Headmaster," enjoys them both exactly as he pleases; and a day of lewd service for them, at Charles' command, to two strangers in masks. The identity of those strangers, revealed in part at the end of the book, will change the course of all their lives.

This book of Explorations contains fiction elaborating the following sorts of fantasy that you may wish to avoid: Mf, Mff, MMff, anal, spanking, ageplay, watersports. It's intended for over-18 audiences who, like me, are interested in exploring the lines between pleasure and pain, dominance and submission, and fantasy and reality. All characters depicted are consenting adults.

Prophettown (introduction to a fantasy-land of universal spanking)

The Tales of Prophettown (see Emily, Ravished by Porn, for their beginning point in the books of EXPLORATIONS) began as a separate project, one which didn't have anything of an overt narrative nature that was connected to me. The kernel was two hotnesses, as I suppose I tend to think at the most basic level of the erotic narrative dynamics that get me wet. 

(If you wanted me to, I could do something elaborate and psychoanalytic on that; castration and the assumption thereof, jouissance and supplementarity, desire as opposed to need--but that stuff has an amazing ability to turn hotness into boredom. There was a time when I thought if I could outline every one of my hotnesses and analyze each of them in turn in terms of castration I would, à la Freud's dream of the talking cure, be free of them all and able to live a healthy, chaste, productive life. [I guess my plan was carefully to except vanilla sex from the hotnesses of which I was curing myself, so that I could take a little pleasure--not too much, mind you--in my eventual husband's colonization of my womb for the purpose of reproduction.] Thank God it turned out to be folly--it turned out that the best I could do was develop a set of tropes for future narrative elaboration--always of course accompanied by further, unending self-abuse.)

The two hotnesses that gave birth to Prophettown were of an innocent girl being awakened to sexuality by reluctant porn-viewing (most often, when I go back to this well for some inchoate day-dream style fantasization, it's a young wife whose husband has decided that their vanilla marriage isn't satisfying; his solution is to bring home some porn and make his innocent bride watch it, all the while telling her that she's going to have to undergo this and that of what she's seeing while she, horrified but aroused in spite of herself, protests. Spanking can be added at this point, if I haven't already come, but usually the husband telling her that he's going to fuck her ass gets me where I need to go.) and of a wedding-night in a strict religious community where the bride is both completely innocent and entirely under the authority of her new husband. Together these hotnesses yield the "training video" The Prophet's Way: the Marriage Bed, described in Emily, Ravished by Porn and Emily's Sacred Porn.

To explain the Tales of Prophettown, I should confess that in their original versions, they were the kind of thing a BDSM writer can write for her own purposes but which for ethical (and marketing) reasons she could never publish. To put it succinctly, there was no consent-structure in place: the brides of Prophettown were young and they were not given the chance to refuse their bridegrooms' demands.

Because he enjoyed the material so much, and wanted to see it elaborated further, Charles suggested that I try to integrate it with the story of fantasy-Emily and fantasy-Charles. That's how the second half of Emily, Ravished by Porn and then the entireties of Emily's Sacred Porn and Emily and the Lusts of Prophettown came about, all of which are transcriptions of action from the "training-video" interspersed mostly with "reactions" (one-handed reactions, if you know what I mean) from fantasy-me. In the course of integrating that material, I developed the idea of Prophettown being a community of consenting BDSM adults, I think mostly because I had framed the fantasy-us story as something potentially-publishable. It turned out to be a very interesting challenge to make everyone eighteen and unrelated, and to make everything they did consensual.

The result was Prophettown as you find it in EXPLORATIONS so far. The narrative is about to return there in what I hope will be an unexpected way, too, now that it's established in the world of fantasy-us that Prophettown probably exists somewhere in their "reality."

In any case, the process of writing the Tales of Prophettown that grew out of the initial idea of the D/s DD training video was interesting, and the process of transforming it into the findings of fantasy-me's research even more so. There was something about the characters and their town that made me want to know more about them. Was Chuck really that awful? Was Barbara a switch, or a top who was pretending to be a sub?

The whole thing was complicated by the fact that Prophettown had started its existence as a non-consensual sort of place, which meant that the characters' motivations had to be changed pretty severely. In the end that provided some nice insights into the meaning and operation of my own BDSM orientation, and especially into the way my fantasies relate on the one hand to the things I play out with Charles and on the other to the things I do in the real world, where rape and exploitation are real things that I fight against with every fiber of my being.

TEASE: Three #spankingstory authors to be disciplined together Monday!

UPDATE: Here is is, in all its figgy glory!

Like all literary figures who hope to share their great thoughts on such recondite matters as ontology, epistemology, and incredibly hot spankings, I've been thinking a great deal about social media lately. In the process of that thinking, I enlisted the help of two of the lights of the smut-firmament, Renee Rose and Sheri Savill. 

Renee gave Sheri and me some sage advice about the use of certain. . . special words. Well, Sheri and I went a little overboard in attempting to launch our little barques on the seas of eroticism, and we all paid for it. . . 

Our fun little collaborative #spankingstory about what happened, especially the #figging, will be up on RomancingtheKink on Monday!

Re-writing my sex-life (another spanking story about spanking stories)

So I wrote the story of our night of nights as if it were the real wedding-night of an eighteen-year-old fantasy-Emily. There was something about re-writing my erotic life that felt exhilarating: writing myself as more innocent than I ever was, really, since reading The Pearl on the ferry, and making Charles' cock the first real cock I had ever seen, while at the same time intimating the extremity of my submissive nature in the story of my discovery of porn, gave me the feeling that in writing this for Charles I could make him a love-offering that would really show him what was in my heart. 

I've never really felt bad about the five guys I slept with before him, nor is it really an issue for him, but both of us are very much bound into our fantasy-lives, and relatively traditional in our tastes, so, by way of the kind of fantasy-wish that you know can never be fulfilled and wouldn't be a good thing even if it were fulfilled, I often wish that I had come to his bed a pure, innocent virgin, to be instructed in the ways of pleasing a man.

The funny thing is maybe that when I wrote the first version of Emily's Submissive Wedding Night I tried to make fantasy-Emily completely innocent, but it just didn't work. The line between ravishment and that other thing is authentic but unstated consent. The only way I could find to make virginal Emily consent interestingly was to give her a kick-ass fantasy-life before her marriage.

(I should say that it was pretty easy to make her consent uninterestingly--like this:

I felt so funny between my legs; it was strange and new, but I was sure that whatever Charles wanted to do to me there would be wonderful.

See what I mean? The words "strange" and "new" would have had a workout, but without much explanatory, or erotic, effect.)

For related reasons--that is, wanting to experience something I hadn't gotten to experience in the original version of events, I wrote the first versions of Emily's First Submission and Emily's First Spanking from Charles' perspective. As far as I can tell, the core of my submissive nature is the desire to be used--that is, to be treated as an object. 

Most of the time, when I write for Charles and for my own purposes of exploration (this includes when I'm writing to get myself off, of course), I like to write from my own perspective as sub, or from the perspective of another sub, because the paradox of willing the surrender of one's own will appears very piquantly when told from the point of view of the one who's surrendering. There's a certain perfection of objectification, though, that can't be achieved that way: the only way to make myself perfectly usable is to narrate myself as an object and not as a person. To see fantasy-Emily as the pure object of Charles' dominant lust was a wonderful, if very dark and even disturbing at times, adventure in erotic writing. Indeed, for me the only definition of "sexy" that really gets any traction over the concept is "fit for objectification"--that is, I think that there is no arousal, and no sex, without the feeling of using and being used by the other.

The huge region of my sexuality that's devoted to spanking (call it "Spankopolis" to continue my hackneyed but also time-honored exploring-metaphor) is a really interesting place from that perspective. From my earliest memories of spanking fantasies, spanking took shape as an act that's intended to teach a lesson. That is, it's not on the surface of it a use of the erotic object, but rather, in appearance at least, a strange form of communication. If I write, for example, in Emily's First Spanking

"Emily, if you will not tell me what I asked, there is nothing else for it. You must be punished. You must lie over the arm of the sofa, Emily, and learn a lesson."

"Oh, Charles! Oh, sir! Oh. . . p--please. . . P--please don't. . . d--don't spank me. . ." 

"If you will not obey me, my dear, I have no choice. Now lay yourself down, and don't make a fuss. A grown-up girl like you needs to learn what happens when she disobeys her husband."

the hotness comes from the way fantasy-Charles is taking fantasy-Emily in hand, and telling her that whether she likes it or not she is going to feel his justice on her backside until said backside blushes crimson. It doesn't seem like the reason reading that passage makes me, well, moist is that I'm thinking about being used for Charles' pleasure.

But, since I'm getting all philosophical, I want suggest that that obfuscation is precisely the magic of spanking that has so many of us spankos yearning to be over an authoritative knee. After long years of thinking about my BDSM orientation, I've decided that, at least for me, spanking actually exposes the very essence of how objectification produces pleasure for both top and bottom. It is a communication, but it's a communication with oneself: I am spanked because I am a little girl/naughty wife/slut/sub; and, I think, on the other side, for the top, I spank because I am a husband/Dom/Master. In the classic mode of the fetish, it transfers the objectification that's at the heart of the erotic to another register, the register of spanking that we spankos know and love so well: the hand, the hairbrush, the paddle, the cane, knickers down, corner-time, six of the best, "Hands!". (If you're like me, even those words, bare of context, made you damp just now.) Spankopolis has its own language, and that language puts us in our arousing places just as sex itself does.

To put it another way, I think spanking is a kind of pure erotic mode of communication. That mode is terribly bound up in our hangups about childhood and school and family, of course, which is what raises the basic hotness to fever-pitch, but that basic hotness comes I think from the same place the rest of my submissive orientation does: when Charles spanks me he is telling me that I am his wife (there's the objectification!), and he gets to spank his wife, just as he gets to enjoy her in any other way he pleases. Excuse me while I do some private exploration.