overstimulated

If you're in a switch couple, do you each get a spanking from the other on your birthday? Not being in one, I wouldn't know. Having two boyfriends already means I get two birthday spankings, one from each of them. But - even more unfairly! - I also get a spanking on their birthdays.

Mr C turned 31 last Tuesday, and to celebrate I took him out for one of the most decadent meals we've ever shared. Nine tiny, exquisite courses accompanied by perfectly matched wines. We had the place to ourselves and enjoyed the full attention of the waiting staff, who seemed to like us - at least, we chatted to them quite a lot about the food and wine, and they gave us an extra course for free, apparently for no other reason than because we praised the rest of them so highly. By the end of the meal I was giddy and overstimulated. I've heard about food being aphrodisiac before and thought the idea was silly, mostly because I took the word literally. Eating this meal wasn't physically arousing. But it was sensual and hedonistic, awakening my senses and focussing all my attention on bodily pleasure. I don't eat food like that very often, and I found the complex, subtle tastes challenging and beautiful. As I tried each course I felt that my tastebuds were already becoming more discerning, better able to unpack the sophisticated, surprising flavour combinations, to savour and appreciate individual elements and how they interacted. The sensory overload left me excited, flushed, faintly dizzy.

I'd booked the meal early so we'd have time to play afterwards. I had fretted a bit, when choosing the restaurant, about whether a five-course taster menu would be far too much food. The quantities felt perfectly judged while we were eating - we took our time, but as each plate was taken away we were impatient to experience the next gastronomic bliss lined up for us. After petit fours and espresso we were full, but not over-stuffed.

By the time we got home from the restaurant an hour later, however, we both wanted to lie down. It had been an intense experience, and neither of us was in a hurry to do anything too energetic until we'd recovered. We cuddled and drank tea while we waited for our bodies to process the sensory deluge we'd just inflicted on them. I was a bit worried that I'd get so sleepy we'd have to cancel our play session (I have a bad habit of putting pressure on myself to play on special occasions, even though I know that feeling pressured is likely to stop me being able to relax enough to enjoy a scene). My back was hurting as well - one of my shoulders had been twinging all evening. Mr C massaged it for me, but I tentatively suggested that the most effective way of relieving the pain would be to flog me - he has a soft, heavy, lambskin flogger which is all gentle thud, and no sting.

He liked the idea, and after asking me to strip down to my stockings and panties, had me kneel on the bed, holding onto the headboard with my back arched. The flogging started oh-so-gentle, almost frustrating as my muscles in my back cried out for harder impact. He'd barely begun to really work on the sore points between my shoulderblades when he stopped, and decided to move me down the bed so he could cane my breasts.

Now, I love having my breasts caned. It's only been done a couple of times, but I lovelovelove it. I love kneeling with my knees apart, aroused and trembling as I hold my hands behind my back or above my head, exposing my breasts to my tormentor. I love the sensation of vicious flicks from a tiny, flexible cane or switch, strokes on the small, firm mounds of my breasts that make them bounce and me gasp. I love and hate the strokes that land directly on the nipple with a piercing flash of white-hot pain.

But tonight, I just wasn't in the right headspace. My back still hurt, and I had a mild stitch between my ribs from eating so much rich food. At first Mr C tried to tie my wrists to the bars of the bed, and when that didn't work for one reason or another I offered to just grip the footboard; but something (don't ask me!) had left a gluey residue on the metal bars of my bed, as if a sticker had been peeled off, and it got all over my fingers. Ew! By the time I'd wiped my hands clean, the mood had been pretty much lost. I was trying to be good, I really was - but my focus just wasn't there. I kept forgetting to ask permission to speak or fetch a drink or water. Mr C was firm and thoughtful and patient, but despite both of our best efforts our connection wasn't quite clicking.

After a flick on my right nipple made me screech and break position to clamp one hand over my breast, he realised that this wasn't going where he wanted, and moved me back to the head of the bed so he could resume the flogging. That worked better - the muscles in my back finally started to relax, and I sagged gratefully under the weight of the strokes. Afterwards he took me over his knee for a warm-up spanking, and he was gentle enough that I could find the familiarity comforting, could begin to let go.

Once my bottom was thoroughly pink I arranged myself in my usual position, bent over pillows in the centre of the bed, for the tawse. I have a light-weight black tawse which gives a warm, sexually-charged lick that isn't frighteningly heavy. It's soft enough to be sensual, but with enough sting to give it that edge I crave so deeply. I writhed as he whipped me with it, getting increasingly turned on. When he was satisfied that I was sufficiently warmed up he told me that it had been a long time since I'd experienced a proper implement tour, and that he intended to remind me what some of the toys in our collection felt like. Starting with the junior cane, a flexible crook-handled 6mm rattan - the first cane he (or anyone) ever used on me. He gave me 12, each one a sharp, swift bite that faded quickly, light and stinging.

The next cane up used to be called the "senior" cane, in the days when we only had two. It's only 2mm thicker than the junior cane and just as whippy. These days I can laugh about how light it is, how far I've come since I was scared of it. I was given 18 with this one, starting my count from 12. They hurt, but I tried to just relax into it, let the strokes wash over me. I struggled through them without too much difficulty.

When he drew me up for a hug and to check up on me, I felt completely floppy. I was coping alright with the scene, but I wasn't really with it. I was just too sleepy. He asked how I was and I said I was okay, but very tired. It's not that I wasn't in the mood for it - I was happy to submit to his intentions, to try be obedient. But my energy levels were very low, and apart from desperately wanting to please him, my heart wasn't really in it. Our connection was nowhere near as fired up as it's capable of being; our intimacy wasn't as raw. I wanted to give him a good end to his birthday evening, but I wasn't craving this; I wasn't so attuned to him that every sensation lit up something inside me; I wasn't lively and responsive and completely attentive to his touch. I was just tired. It happens to all of us.

Mr C could have given up at that point, and I am so, so glad he didn't. Our D/s dynamic has been increasing in trust and intensity as we've matured together, and although it's been a rocky road in places, things have been steadily growing deeper since we re-affirmed our commitment to each other last autumn. We still don't have the formal structure and protocols that we developed when he was first training me, when I was still a teenager, but I've grown up a lot since then and we're reapproaching something similar from a different angle, as equal adults who respect and trust one another. It's difficult, re-learning how to submit to him as an adult when I have the memory of the naive, unsustainable ferocity of my submission to him as a teenager lingering in my mind, begging the comparison. But I think we're on the right track, and each scene we've played over the last few months has taken us further down our shared journey, strengthened and affirmed our connection.

(to be continued...)