Safe Word

One night, quite a while ago, K and I were playing rough. He got deep into me, physically and emotionally, was holding me down, hitting me, telling me he owned me — body, mind and soul.

I was crying and saying “no”. I was consenting: “no” is not a safe word for us. Though I was crying, begging him to stop, being angry and pushing back (and I was actually furious), I consented to everything that he was doing to me. I enjoyed being made a wreck. I was fighting against the helplessness he gave to me while hoping, deep down, that I’d lose the fight.

Then K did something very, very small, that I had just told him I hated the night before. This is not something he’s allowed to do to me; it’s a hard limit. When I say “very, very small”, I mean miniscule. This thing is something that most people would not mind at all — they might find it very slightly annoying, if that. At that moment, when I was angry and in tears and fighting for all I was worth, I wondered: did he do that on purpose? Was he really trying to break me? The dark but exhilirating place he had sent me became, suddenly, a pitch-black, terrifying nightmare. When K is doing things to let me submit, it often feels like he’s pushing me along the edge of a cliff; he might nudge me off, but he’ll always catch me. But this time I was in free fall.

I tried to push him away, and I said “no!” loudly and angrily. He didn’t stop. A second later, I remembered to say my safeword. Part of me feared that he wouldn’t listen.

K pulled out and let go of me immediately and asked, “what’s wrong? Did I hurt you?”

I rolled into a fetal position and started to sob. He sat on the bed, away from me, not touching me, waiting, concerned. I wanted him to touch me, but I couldn’t say so. My emotions were too overwhelming — I didn’t even know what I was feeling. I only knew I had to cry. Eventually, he asked if I needed some tissue, and I was able to say, “yes”.

After he came back with the tissue, I told him I wanted him to touch me, though I didn’t want to be held yet. After I cried some more, and could breathe and think, I told him what had happened. He hadn’t even realized what he’d done. It was such a tiny thing, and an easy mistake to make in a raw physical and emotional moment. Like stepping on a cat’s tail in the dark. He apologized and said he’d try even harder not to do it again.

That night made me feel closer to K than I ever had. I had trusted him before, but now I trusted him with everything: body, mind, soul. I knew he would take care of me, and do his best to avoid causing me harm. I had known before that he would listen to my safe word, as one “knows” what a place is like from pictures and descriptions of it. But I hadn’t known it in my bones. We hadn’t gone there. K told me that he trusted me more, too, since now he knew I would use a safe word if I needed to.

When I calmed down, I asked him to continue what he had been doing. K was surprised, and made sure I truly wanted it and was ready for it before starting again. He dominated me, fucked me, made love to me, owned me. It was an amazing night.