A lot of you have heard my particularly strident complaints that there’s a distinct lack of both femgaze femdom and femdom romances. So… I wrote a book! A sweet, sentimental and wonderfully cozy story about two people finding each other and falling in love through femdom. It’s spicy as a gingersnap, but it’s also a story about the magic of finally feeling seen by someone who completely gets you.
Big city lawyer Trevor (personal injury, junior partner) has just been dumped on Christmas Eve. His fiancée’s return to her small home town has gone permanent after deciding to throw all in to save her father’s bakery. She blamed catching the Christmas spirit, but Trevor knows damn well that a reunion with a High School bad boy from her past is probably a much more significant factor than she’s letting on. Now he’s at a bar on Christmas day, trying to forget the worst Christmas of his life by burying himself in work. He’s ready to call Bah humbug! and stack billable hours, but holiday magic has other plans in the form of posh rich girl Elizabeth. She’s also smarting from a breakup of her own and makes him an offer: join her until New Year’s Eve for a get away in her family’s cottage and prove that the best way to get over someone is get under someone else.
Their chemistry is perfect, and Elizabeth’s never found someone so effortlessly able to be what she wanted. But with ghosts of relationships past haunting them both, can her sweet sadism and his desire to please be enough to see them together after the end of A Holiday Under Her Control?
It’s somewhere between 3 and 4 pm. He slips out into the narrow hall that connects his office and the bathroom to the main area of our apartment. When we moved in together, one room became his space, while I sprawl out in an organic extension of hobby clutter across the rest.
Thus, with his office, I feel like I need to ask to go in, even when it is not in use. Not in a forbidden blue beard’s secret room sort of way, but a matter of consent. The irony is not lost on me that at any moment I can stick my fingers in his mouth, maul his testicles or shove him into the wall and pin his arms over his head, but heaven forfend I retrieve something from his desk without checking first. Or go into the office closet and get some item like the tool box or our winter coats.
He didn’t request this rule, it’s a rigid cultural thing raised into me like fruit tree branches growing bound to a wire. Shoes off indoors, don’t start eating until the cook does, respect the room of another. Do not listen to music without headphones. Space. Quiet. Privacy.
But he’s out now, and I swoop in for a kiss even as he does lean to me for the same. I do that a lot, pitter-patter fast feet down the long hall when he is back from the gym in the morning to engulf him in a tackling embrace. Crane in when he’s brought back something from an errand outside (don’t leave people to put a load of groceries away alone, another Rule). Right now he can feel the edge of my desire and we are starting to cocoon ourselves in the erotic. I ask him if he is done work for the day. Unspoken that means: “is this a quickie before a last meeting or room for something else, more?”
A quickie means he will masturbate just to the edge of orgasm in front of me. Maybe once, maybe three times. Otherwise I will draw him into the bedroom a few steps more behind us, into the bed and more will happen
“Yes he is done,” but, getting my meaning, he says he will “visit the washroom first”.
Practicals, of course.
Have to respect them. The pull apart will happen and then he will come back to pick up where we left off. Probably in the bedroom, on top of the covers, or me on the bed and him beside it, stripping off his clothes.
Imp of the perverse, my hand snakes out, to his stomach, low, where his belly becomes his groin. When it is empty it’s hard to find, full and the muscle there feels tense. I press the absence of softness.
I have done it before a little bit. It’s the sort of half gross half playful thing you do to tease in the comfort of a relationship. We’ve never had an interest in piss play in the regular sense. No champagne coupe glasses of golden nectar, no human toilets. Just another kind of discomfort to play with. It’s like another game, my hand over his mouth and nose, taking his breath away. I always let it linger for a few seconds longer than when the involuntary struggling kicks in. Just enough to produce the illusion “you don’t know I won’t smother you”, so hind brain juices him with adrenaline while forebrain knows I absolutely wouldn’t go that far.
The unspoken threat in the press on his bladder, that I might leave him in discomfort until he pisses himself. There’s also the point of the moment: That he doesn’t get the dignified little pretend ritual where we both don’t openly acknowledge our bodies do taboo things. Humans are weird, we half self train not to mess in a coached operation of little plastic chairs and picture books, and then an elaborate ritual develops of accommodation. It’s not a room to piss and shit in, it’s the bathroom. The washroom. Even toilet, shamelessly borrowed from the french for washing oneself, is a minor impoliteness such that the word is navigated around. And used in a juvenile act of daring for a meme that only works because we think it’s dirty.
What I am doing now, pressing on his bladder is not really comfortable, but the nerve endings that control urination do double duty. That’s how you learn to do a kegel, stopping the flow of urine. The whole groin to ass area uses the same nerves and muscles to contain, eject and come. It’s a simple system too, normally the bladder, filled up, pushes internally to tell you to tend to it. When it’s full and you poke it the body demands attention, mistaking the intrusion for more urgency.
He winces, as I press. Just a little, over and over. His reaction nudges me on. I am drawn to that vulnerability, the slight extra hesitation of the extra taboo. Press. Press. I think that perhaps I will need to let him go soon. I think the game can only go so far. But, there’s pleasure there in holding him to the wait.
I want it to last. I reach into my own discomfort, a game of chicken. I nudge him towards our washroom door, almost next to the office he just left. Again, a threat. My presence prevents the polite rite of privacy. He is waiting on that urgency with a now incredibly hard cock. Now, with him in front of the toilet, I am alternating stroking up and down its length and pressing on his bladder again. He is making shy, squirmy twitches of his shoulders, sidelong glances, speaking in incomplete sentences, trapped in embarrassment.
I whisper, “Do you want me to leave?”
He doesn’t say anything, maybe a little noise, more wriggling. That’s an affirmation, for us. He usually will never ask for more, maintaining the head space of cnc. He almost never asks to come, vocalizes most things in service to the idea that nothing that happens to him is with his enthusiasm.
More touching, kisses. There’s a black wire shelf over the back of the toilet, holding miscellaneous overflow. He is bent so his forehead almost touches the top shelf, occasionally bracing with one hand on the far side of it. Squirm. His body is at once turning away from and towards me, like a pinned animal involuntarily moving against what has seized in. I am standing to his left, and half behind him, looming and trapping him in the corner of the room.
“It’s going to be so hard to pee with an erection,” I murmur. Any acknowledgment on his part lacks coherent words.
This whole time I can feel my face is a bit hot, embarrassed by myself, daring, probing. It’s that act of dominant masochism. I am not frank, either. Even as I am charge, the taboos about this are as active in me as they are him. Rationally, I know this isn’t a big deal. I have seen friends sit on the mouth of another to piss. I’ve explored squatting on the floor of the shower with a past partner to see if that gave any sort of interesting charge (it didn’t, probably as much a factor of them as what I was doing).
My foot kicks, with my hands full to try to flip the toilet seat up. I can see the bowl, with its pooled water, the slight discolouration. I cleaned the damn thing literally the day before. The mold in the pacific northwest, unlike back east, grows fast in vibrant orange, like a rust stain. I can’t quite get the seat up that way and he finishes the gesture. He’s immersed in his own torment, participating.
I encourage, depriving him of even the least ability to hide, to have even this secret, or a whiff of the courtesy of a secret. I feel like I am holding him over a precipice, threatening to let go.
His cock is so velvety in my palm, his face a little rough, his touches, of me, in increasing desperation. His eyes are frightened but glassy with desire. I alternate between stroking and roaming his body, viciously pinching his nipples like I could pull them off. In one moment of that tussle I realize his right shoulder had dipped. He is pulling at his own cock, a spiral turning in on itself, pumping.
I press on his bladder again, crooning, “go on.”
He tries now, trying to compose himself to let a stream of urine out. Holding his cock to point it in the right place. It’s not going to happen. The muscles inside have spasmed, shunting one function to another.
“I can’t…” To call it a whine implies a crawling nails on a chalkboard wheedle that’s not in his tone, but it’s a whine of helpless admission.
I press on his bladder again, and pinch at his nipple, up under his shirt. “Go on.”
Again, more trying. He cannot. Squirm. Squirm. A single drop at the head of his cock that might well be pre-cum.
“I can’t.” He says in a whisper. Another long silent moment of my torment upon him. One more try, but I know he’s pushed as far as he can go. Not shyness or disobedience, but a wall he cannot walk through.
“Alright,” I say, beginning to pull back from him. “I’ll let you finish.”
As I walk out of the bathroom and close the door, I can hear the bang of the toilet seat dropping so he can sit down. It’s a last note of amusement. The same thing that makes me keep accidentally picking partners who are a little larger than average in the cock department seems through no effort on mine, to choose men who prefer to sit to pee.
Later business done, he will come to the bedroom and we will continue. But it is this scrap of the game we play together that will linger with me.
This is a tabloid thriller romp meets gothic romance into what I would probably describe more as caretaker whump appreciation of bad things happening to a male captive than anything traditionally femdom. Still, if your entry to this kink is more focused on the hurt/comfort male suffering part and the power fantasy of being a rescuer, this book has a lot to offer. And, if last week’s review (What Was Meant To Be) was too cozy for you, this one definitely won’t be.
Our protagonist is a mixed background, loose cannon artist, Lilith Bresson, coerced by a wealthy aristocratic Blaine Albermarle to come to her remote castle resort and produce a commission. There Lilith, or “Lily” meets Blaine’s pretty but damaged boytoy Finn, and comes to discover that the resort offers more than a relaxing getaway to discerning patrons. Our heroine has stumbled into one of those rich people sex-torture clubs where everything is available for the right price, and Finn is one of the prize victims in Blaine’s stable.
After a prickly start, Finn and Lilith begin to form a connection, even as Blaine seeks to ensnare more subjects in a web of blackmail. A cascade of badness follows. Everything and the kitchen sink happens to Finn in loving and lurid detail, while Lilith tries to fight back and wrestle with her own demons.
The tabloid framing, one with a paparazzi lurking for her as a minor celebrity they aren’t sure if they should destroy or worship, and the tawdry glamor of Lilith’s politician father, are equally integral to the setting, seaming together to amp up the drama while giving the audience a taste of a power fantasy of our own, one where it’s plausible one very angry young woman can destroy a criminal network in the manner of a more traditional hero slaying a dragon. If the BDSM without limits brothel with real sex slaves angle is a bit far fetched to read straight (not to mention the logistical overhead of the sheer level of blackmail gluing everyone to the situation), the added concerns of talk shows and award ceremonies almost serve to ground the story’s violent conspiracy excesses as precisely the sort of thing that same sort of media purports to be true.
Thus you can just absolutely feel the nasty, UK Grim atmosphere leaking through, a sort of tonal filter much like a Russian novel’s typical, almost hysterical bleakness. If the characters are largely trapped on an island castle at the whims of its master, so also is the setting one where leaving the resort is just being on a different sort of covert island torture prison.
There isn’t anything you would associate with Lilith being a traditional dominant, and indeed she’s put through almost as much shit as the male lead. However, the fanfiction classified aesthetic of whump is something I talked about before as a place where a lot of the porn for dommes hides. If the damsel-in-distress trope has a lengthy history of being a covert excuse for bondage and lingering over a helpless feminine victim and her suffering, here too is the gender flip option.
This is a great read for a chilly autumn evening, where you want something juicy and just a little bit horrific to titillate you into the shivers.
TL;DR
Imagine a role reversal Orpheus and Eurydice, if the captive was in as close to actual hell as possible. Caretaker + whump victim struggle their way to an escape, with very much a flavour of a fox trying to get out of wolf’s den, only to exit into a forest where the hounds are already baying for a hunt.
We were 3/4 of the way through an episode of Mice & Murder when I realized we were starting to procrastinate on our pre- planned play time. He is going in and out of a doze because he has already seen this episode, but he’d also put this on in the first place after we’d already watched the back half of the prior one and Saturday is definitely drawing to a lazy close with things, or rather him, left undone. That won’t do. I tell him to pause the show and strip, while I start rummaging to find my latex catsuit in the three boxes the latex is stored in. I have wanted to do this since yesterday, almost did it last afternoon of my own volition, but his work day ended early and instead we cuddled with his head against my chest and the stress of things seeping from him in an almost audible hiss.
It wasn’t the right moment then, not just for his obvious state of stress, but because I have been a bit fragile too. While he would have been able to transition from the vagaries of tech industry imperial court nonesense into helpless little bitch mode, I knew then I would need more emotional uplift from him than he was prepared to give if I was going to hurdle into into the head state to treat him like a besotted fuck toy and not obsess over my own troubles. You can do the surprise firm pounce on a stressed person, but not when you can feel the raw edge that if something goes wrong in your bullying, on your side, you might end up in tears.
Instead, the other day I had vocalized, around previously scheduled D&D sessions and farmer’s market trips, I wanted to take time to do more than the casual default we had gotten into the pattern of doing. This weekend Something More should happen. And it was important I put it on our mental calendars, because we aren’t doing it as much these days, and that’s not what I want for us.
It’s a hazard, in couples that live together, that kink stops being An Event. Even as you still have the sexual energy of a couple of rabbits, you can just coast on your prior exploits. It’s not a dead bedroom, or a default to vanilla, either. It’s almost that the emotion/narrative of all the elaborate nonsense that has passed between you so far wears a reliable groove where trying hard is no longer necessary. You get the couple version of how you can get so comfortable with your particular kink you don’t need to read the whole story/watch the film/finish the fantasy to come, just the idea of it. In a couple, much as you can look at eachother and toss out just the punchline to a running joke to make the other person laugh, with mutual kink dynamics of any tenure you can just hit one or two of the right spots and bam, you go from slightly in the mood to done, cozy together and discussing what veggies in the fridge need to be cooked up first before they wilt into the trash heap.
It’s not that that’s not nice, in itself. In fact that’s sort of the ideal foundation, but if that’s all you do, over time it starts feeling like just how easy it is comes is at the expense of the potential highs of putting in a smigen more effort. I’d even told him maybe after an episode of Dimension20 we should play, but now I can feel the inertia of the cozy bed and when I start hearing the little whistle of his semi unconscious breath I know, very starkly that if I don’t say something now, all that is going to happen is some makeouts, and edging session and then I will make myself come and there’s nothing left of the day but dinner.
And honestly I am not tracking this episode either, just surfing erotica on my phone intermittently. I can almost perfectly visualize the episode ending in another 10 minutes, be kissing, and the way that just immediately goes to me coming and then him making roast chicken and the peach cobbler I also planned. So I take control. The TV goes off. I tell him he is going to help me suit up. We are going to do this.
Of course there’s another delay. He makes a trip to the bathroom and I need to pee before this suit is going on, so I sort of wait around in anticipation unable to do much else. I am both psyching myself out and being cross enough with my own brain that I am in a simmer of horny and cranky. I remind myself that I trust him and if things don’t actually click this late afternoon it isn’t the end of our kink life. Now he is chilled out enough I can be insecure without is just being a buzz kill.
So, dressing, we talk about how I am worried the suit won’t fit (I am learning to deal with a healthier, but fatter body) and navigate around how I messed up my shoulder last month in a way that compresses my ulnar nerve. That’s been the other major damper on our play. It’s hard to feel attractive when extending your right arm causes immediate 7/10 pain. But the injury is better and the suit fits fine. Kink Engineering does good work and while there is a lingering stiffness on my injured side I can feel from the latex full body squeeze, it’s trivial.
I remind myself of the same thing I did after our first play time and he drove me 4 hours home. I trust he wants to be here and knows how not to offer what he doesn’t actually want to give. I trust him to be an adult, not a martyr, and a veteran kinkster who long since discarded unreasonable kink expectations. There’s like 5 minutes of polishing and sort of trying to get into the groove. I am still so jangly it feels like he isn’t there, in that mindless lust state, but I am also aware even if he was, my brain is enough of a scumbag to lie he isn’t. So I tell him to choose the position I am going to fuck him in, and snatch the harness from where it hangs in the closet.
Of *course* the dildo I want is missing, and he has to get up to help me find the box of cocks. We go through and “um, pick one of these three” moment with some other reluables, but I find the general, a more implausible toy. There’s my hair and fluff stuck to it and I am distracted by cleaning it. If I was more organized, I would have had my chosen cock in hand before I suited up, but that’s not who I am. I tend to play by inspiration, not a script, even my own. I walk tiptoe to the kitchen sink so as not to lubricate our floor worse from any silicone that drips off me. Silver, out of the three, picks the bumpy white one he usually prefers.
That one is kind of meh for strapon play because it has a hollow core at the base you are supposed to lodge a bullet vibe. I think this is an unfortunate choice, and it makes it worse for thrusting, but I am not going to nitpick after asking, because that’s a bedroom confidence killing move and I did offer. And, in fairness it’s a visually pretty toy with ridges just where they need to be. If the designer hadn’t given it a vibe pocket it would be my number 1 too.
However, at the lubing him stage I determine that his ass, usually drum tight, is pretty loose today. This is incredibly variable, with some days it being a bit tender, too. Not today, perhaps due to the on his back spread V he chose. My fingers just shloop in, as my gloved hand works him over. I can get four to the knuckle easy, his absolute limit on his best days.
Butt stuff is always a delicate process, emotionally, because even cleaned out you may find something. I can’t even call them “surprises”. That’s like opening your fridge and being surprised it has food in it. Pretty universally, the one getting filled is in a much more emotionally vulnerable place because they are worried about being an object of disgust. But, today he is clean, not even notable santorum. An idea, already planted from my rummage of the cock-box forms.
He is already edging away while I work, as it’s the other trick to open someone up- and every stab of crooked fingers into his prostate is getting significant reactions. Reader, lest you doubt there is anything going on other than this sort of physical mechanics there is significant dialogue being exchanged by way of psychological stimulation, but up until this point things aren’t quite feeling they click for me. When I am jamming him into proper groans I start feeling the connection I want, but it’s still taking a while to warm up.
Chronic pain, body changes, all that bullshit really get in the way. Yet it’s the most pain free day I have had in a month and I am still pushing through the sort of bad feeling hangover. I do end up giving him a few thrusts with the strap-on loaded with his ridgey pick, but this isn’t quite it. I make a judgment call.
The ruddy, plump headed general had already been thrust into his mouth after it’s impromptu rinse. I’d left it lying on the bed next to his hip, and I scoop it up, announcing that he is going to take this for me, too. I am pretty sure he’s limber enough for some moderately advanced anal invasion.
Fucking men in the ass in your terns is not the universal apex of dominance, but the knowledge of his body combined with my fetish for larger insertions is making things lubricate on my side as much as he is opening up on his. I don’t force it, nudging, with many groans and whimpers on his side.
It’s actually hard not to stop here because the noise he makes in pain and the noise of not really pain at all but just hitting the spot just so are pretty similar. That’s where my experience with him matters. After pulling the literal plug well before his limit numerous times, I know that if I stop now I will be over cautious. I can, as it’s after all as much my prerogative to stop at my limit as much as everything must stop at his. But precisely because of the number of times I have stopped sooner than he’d have liked, in this moment I know just how much further I can go.
We have never discussed this as an official safeword, but I know now the moment it turns into a harsh, “Fuck!” is actually the stop point. We aren’t there yet, but it’s a nudge forward/nudge back kind of thing where one step away to ease up only means two steps deeper, after.
I drop into soothing encouragement. He is so focused on the challenge at hand that he won’t have more than mono syllables or little head twitches to work with. That’s more than enough and the general is several inches lodged, exactly where I want it.
At this point it’s not about depth but travel. In, out, never entirely popping free. His hand is still pumping his cock up and down in a way that’s basically instinct to him. The toy is gliding nice and easy. There’s a definite sensation of finite space and resistance on my end, gripping the flared base and leaning into it, but it’s neither a hard block nor rough scrape. I couldn’t tell you in minutes how long this goes on. Honestly the whole thing feels pretty brief, in hindsight. In the moment it’s enough, the way pleasurable sensation lingers, like a mouthful of something delicious making things seem to extend past the gulp, chew, linger, mmm, and swallow.
But, Silver is particularly quickly undone to size… if I can get it in. A whole sideline exploration into inflatable plugs has taught me that he’s a combo of a tight ring, but weak to a firm jam up against the underside of his cock. The general, and probably my encouraging but persistent running patter about how he is taking it, he is going to take it, this is for me, etc… have got him to the point where he yanks that hand away from his cock, now, with a great deal of urgency. He utters something about being close.
I wasn’t going to make him come, I planned, prior when I first started thinking about slithering into the catsuit, to leave him wanting. This always happens, every time things get prolonged. I tell him he may.
Well, precisely I tell him if my cock and only my cock forces him to come that was meant to happen. And it does. It’s like pushing him off a precipice all that manual edging placed him on, but it’s also a sensation like the invader in his ass is forcibly displacing the semen out of him. After he is done he stays in position looking utterly drained, even as I ease the dildo out of him and post it into the sink as well.
Check ins do not end where I expect, however. He stays put and spread, but as sandbagged as he is acting there’s and insistent second wind. I chase that to see where it goes, with his hand back on his cock and another, fresh dildo wedged into his mouth.
Crooning more nonesense mantra about holes and their utility quickly shows he has a rare second go in him. I am on my period, and what I want, to engulf him, feels a bit too much. I slick my thighs with more lube and get him to fuck those instead. That isn’t quite right, though it feels good.
The catsuit has an access zip, but it’s in the way and I am too slippery to come now with this on. I make another decision in the moment and send him to get a fresh towel. The tampon gets posted into the bathroom trash.
When he is back, there’s a bit of a decline in turgidity and I can see things sliding into performance frustration because at first it’s not wanting to couple up they way he hopes. I take charge again and essentially grab him by the brain, commanding with firm confidence it doesn’t matter. I wrap my legs tight around him. His job is to rut. He will obey. Doing that and even losing a small lake of cum earlier isn’t enough to stop him going the rest of the way hard. Then he is mine, completely engaged. I croon that he will fuck to exhaustion or until he breaks and falls.
Still unusual for us, it’s the latter, intense, even more so than the first time. He is limp on top of me and I am holding him, reminding him he did a good job. Only when he recovers do I turn firm again. This catsuit is coming off because I want an orgasm and it is now in the way.
He helps me slither out, careful of the fragile material. I am on my back and he is helping, at my direction, with how I want my breasts touched. My orgasm is not long after that, finally, long awaited.
I don’t recall much of the rest of the evening other than the chicken and potatoes, and that we both cleaned off somehow. I do remember two sets of cozy pajamas, and holding him with many uttered affectionate statements of love, but the rest blurs into the many nights that have been and will be just like this one, in bed until we are asleep.
Cozy, autumnal and… autistic representation? This gentle femdom contemporary romance is an absolute comfort read to grab as the season transitions. While people are a lot more familiar with her previous exploration into femdom, with her immensely creative take on the billionaire romance genre of “Preferential Treatment”, Guerre released this one to perhaps a bit less acclaim, but no less quality. Consider this your chance to grab an underrated gem.
Ok, enough gush – what are you in for?
Wes Sorenson has one last hurdle in restoring his family’s resort, an arranged marriage to Rain Kateb. Per her old fashioned father, Rain isn’t able to function in the outside world and a husband is the easiest solution. If Wes wants the final piece of missing land she’s a non-negotiable part of the deal. Rain is autistic, and this is handled extremely well. One of the most awkward parts of neurodivergence is the general conflation with having high support needs in some areas with being low capacity in everything. Much of the story is told from her perspective as she gets out of the stifling control of her father and learns to find her own two feet. And very refreshingly, not all the challenges she deals with are attributed to her autism. Rain grew up in an artist’s commune and is navigating being both biracial and steeped in very different cultural norms of her hippy mother for the first half of her life.
Although Wes sets her up as a roommate he thinks he is expected to care for, Rain quickly overturns his expectations, with a take charge dynamic even as the writing permits her to be unsure and experience growth. This is one of the places Guerre shines, with a dominant being vulnerable without undermining her. Expect wholesome and accepting idealized small town vibes and a very omnipresent autumn atmosphere, as Rain comes into her own. Autistic readers please be reassured, Rain is not here to inspire anyone else, not even her love interest. She’s here to be inspired, recognized and admired.
That being said, I further emphasize the “cozy” label. There’s no intense stakes heavier than getting out of the house, and nothing approaching physical violence. Also, while I found Wes very plausible as a character, as a rescuer he is less useful at direct help and possibly more useful at eventually getting out of her way. While her journey was to discover just what she was capable of, his was to give people more credit and be a bit less selfish. You don’t have to be too patient for him to catch up with Rain, but he can be a bit dense and starts from a very unfortunate place- by the time he realizes what he’s got he’s dug himself into quite the hole. And don’t worry, their happily ever after is also addresses their relationship challenges in a very satisfying way.
TL;DR
If a pumpkin spice latte was a femdom romance, this would be it. Small town, fall, autism rep and a heroine taking charge in the bedroom while she learns to take charge of her life outside it.
This is not the first time I have written about this, nor do I expect it to be the last. This time the trigger was participating in a podcast about sexuality and realizing that though I had written about the kink/asexual spectrum connection a bunch, I haven’t really explained why the two are complimentary in a rigorous enough sense. I also wanted to do some sort of typed up summary of another phenomena, where after talking about asexuality or how it works I find a lot of folks, kinksters in particular, find the definition surprisingly resonates with them.
Needless to say, this got long.
Explaining asexuality always is posited on needing to explain how sex works in a broader, global sense. As I have written in other blog posts, most folks tend to define asexuality in a very rigid binary, imagining a person with no erotic desire or inclination. This can be part of being asexual, but it really isn’t the only part.
Attraction (that’s inspired erotic desire for another person) is not the same thing as arousal. The core of asexual identity presumes not so much whether or not you are capable of arousal, but how you experience attraction.
The problem with telling people this is that asexuality hides in plain sight. For example, homosexuality tends to stand out because the behavior associated: attempting to get into relationships or have sex with people in a way that breaks normative social barriers, not having sex is the baseline human state. Likewise, being immersed in stuff that could or could not be interpreted sexually (e.g. artistic nudes, music about really, really wanting someone else in a body responsive way) is the background radiation of human cultural existence. And, having sex with people you are in no way attracted to is so common as to not be considered remarkable. It’s generally regarded as unfortunate, but some of the most conservative societies can be very into compulsory sex done out of a sense of duty rather than inherent horniness.
So, if you go around not being into what your society (or subculture) generally identifies as ok to be sexy, as long as you are willing to perform the behaviors associated with your social role your internal thoughts on the matter are going to be treated as trivial or specific to you. The folks who absolutely won’t or can’t cooperate with the expected behaviours are treated like a pitiable minority, either eccentrics, shirkers or people with a medical issue, be it physical or psychological.
You, reader, who is probably a more sensitive soul, almost certainly adopts the position that nobody should be compelled to fuck anyone. You probably feel incredibly sympathetic – someone should help those poor people not do sex! And, you are generally able to accept these people fit the label of Asexual. Otherwise, if you think about this at all, you generally only do so in the context of biology, where some living things clone themselves.
Here’s the current assumptions around how the typical way people are sexually wired work:
Humans are expected to default to being attracted to a fair number of whatever the gender(s) they are into. They are expected to be this way sans anything other than that person existing and them being aware of that fact, or maybe getting a good look at certain bits of them or the whole body. That’s being allosexual, the opposite of asexual.
Then there’s anyone who fits the following: they experience attraction like this not at all, sporadically or require some additional factor. These people are all on the asexual spectrum.
Allosexual
Attracted to people reliably without other modifiers other than being whatever gender(s) matter to you and some influence of taste.
Asexual
Attraction to others is absent, sporadic, rare or requires some other factor, such as an intimate connection.
When you say that, a large number of people cross their eyes and look bewildered.
“Pawn of the Cruel Princess” by Rebecca F. Kenney is a dark romance aiming for the trope of enemies to lovers. It’s got an ostensible femdom premise (male war captive of female royalty) but a decidedly switchy tone. Like many works trying to focus on sexual slavery while also trying to keep the characters likable, it relies heavily on external pressures pushing the couple together and forcing the female lead, Ruelle, into a more carnal dynamic with Ducayne.
There is a plot here, as well, with shades of Gideon the Ninth. After our main characters’ introduction and torture room meet cute, we learn the flower of the youthful nobility (and their pleasure thralls) must congregate in one isolated place to party. Once at the resort, bad things must be grappled with and whodoneit mystery is presented. Ruelle brings enemy captain Ducayne to spite her Crown Princess sister, but also because she is attempting to politic her way into her own survival when her wicked sister eventually ascends the throne. Despite having virtually no time to train Ducayne, with the help of a magic tattoo and some negotiation, Ruelle secures his cooperation to at least vaguely attempt to pass as her submissive thrall.
The sister and the family dynamic here is extravagantly abusive. The society, for their part, is hypersexual with a great deal of focus on the owning and training of their thralls. This appears to be a common practice on the island shared by both Ruelle and Ducayne’s respective nations. Our framing device for why any of this needs explaining is that Ruelle is a virgin who has yet to cooperate with debauchery expected of a noble.
Ducayne, for his part, instantly decides he doesn’t care about the side of a war he is on, but maintains an intense quantity of pride and belief in his own right to autonomy. He is also spends a lot of time thinking about the bad relationship he has with his mother.
Both characters speculate they are kinky thanks to abuse from their parents. Much hay is made of the heroine’s inherent masochism, something that she is deeply uncomfortable with. The hero is forever pinning her against things and making threats. In this society, being aroused by bottoming is apparently shameful, and both characters grapple with discomfort that they are aroused by it, Ruelle more so than her thrall. There is something here about space for switches and lovers of primal, but if you are turned off by the sub manhandling the dominant and at least one scene of pretty much flat out non-con with another man for Ruelle, you might be annoyed.
I know this is a hot button issue for a lot of femdoms that even in fiction we don’t get to avoid being disempowered,, not to mention the external pressure that we are just feisty subs who will eventually be taught better. If anything that could even hint of that is triggering, you might want to skip this one.
On the other hand, for all of Ducayne’s bluster, his growing feelings for Ruelle quickly come to form an ongoing basis for his willing cooperation with his own subjugation, and he’s clearly aroused by being sliced up, verbally abused and manhandled by Ruelle. There’s more turbo brat here than full dominant from him, and his own violence towards Ruelle rapidly starts to resemble a sort of service topping. Ruelle is incredibly erotophobic and Ducayne’s role is to largely safely confront her with her own desire in a way that she can eventually accept. Inversely Ducayne shifts from being horny-for-his-enemy to deciding that she’s almost as much a prisoner as him and assuming a role of rescuer.
Also expect interludes with all the background characters, who are of every possible orientation. There will even be a sort of light love triangle with potential for a thruple explored, but this book isn’t aiming to be menage, just keeping most of the focus on kinky sex, more kinky sex and rather intense violence.
To its credit, when we get to the ending, while all romances must have a happily ever after (HEA), we also don’t get the sense this pair will transform to vanilla. They will probably remain stabby and primal, but ultimately the hero decides to accept something that keeps him subjugated to the heroine.
TL;DR
Domme-to-switch non-con with a brat and a very violent, gory plot. A lot of stabbing and slicing from the heroine. I found it perfectly readable, but the emphasis on the heroine’s masochism still needs flagging.
It has been true for the entire lifetime of this blog that fictional depictions of dominant women are really limited, and most typically tailored to what subs are attracted to. Or being more precise, what a certain paying audience of sub men will purchase. This standard tends to depict dominance in women as a vocation performed for the benefit of subs (or their vulnerability and persecution fantasies) and is often gender regressive as heck.
For example, there’s a whole dialectic around the ubiquity of strapons- is this like the little fake beard Queen Hatchepsut wore in her official portraiture, to project authority, or is this a rare overlap of the ostensibly hetero into queerness? Either way, it’s practically compulsory to penetrate and very rare to see depictions of your penetration if you are a dominant. Likewise much frustration is noted that dominants are seldom depicted as attracted to or even liking our subs. Not so in hetero male dominant/femsub land, where the slave princess fantasy is perfectly common in the stuff targeting women. And, at the very least in the porn for men, there’s definitely no shortage of degradation, but the femsub is at least the main event.
This has a carry-on effect that if your version of femdom doesn’t look like most typically available versions of it, you are more likely not to realize your desire. In the inverse, a lot of lifestyle dommes share their lightbulb moment was finding an image or story they just vibed with (often outside of conventional porn altogether) and chasing that feeling down the rabbit hole. Further, when all depictions of you are so very limited, if you are a dominant you get endlessly frustrated by a conga line of idiots who think fiction catering to them is an educational documentary about you.
In any case, lifestyle dommes generally agree that porn is collectively failing us.
Dealing with this is still a work in progress. Unfortunately a lot of folks get stuck in a frankly SWERF style approach – they decide that since most porn (and pop culture depictions of dommes) are garbage, that it’s actively malicious on the part of the people who make it to keep doing so. While I do think that the almost exclusively “Mistress Manual” dominatrix-in-a-box source of approach on the education side is actively bad, you have to be more nuanced in your tackling of the problem. Getting into a war with the existing content creators about how they are pandering internalized misogynists or fixating on the bad fake subs who just want to be catered to isn’t working. I say that as someone with a lot of yelling about not getting anything approaching the rep I want.
At best, if you fixate on trying to stop the existing content, all you do is make everyone miserable and some Republican/Conservative politicians cream their suit at what good potential ally you might be to their latest (bad faith) protect the kids crusade. But, we should be able to discuss the problem without doing things like trying to redefine the larger category of Femdom to mean “stuff only me and my friends who agree with me are into”. Sure you can argue yourself blue in the face that femdom should centre women’s pleasure more than it does, but the current content situation will point out that we are assuming the people involved don’t enjoy it. You can see how that’s a subjective dead end?
And, inversely, I am not saying to turn your brain off completely. There is value in consciousness raising discussion. All media is subject to criticism and pointing out trends and implicit biases is one of the ways we bring change and establish community with people who feel similarly. But is our goal here less content overall? Or is it more of the good stuff for dommes?
I think it should be the latter, and for that there’s a very big, slow next step. We are going to need to spend a lot of money or make our own erotic content, if we feel otherwise. You are also going to need to grapple with systemic barriers that exist outside of the business (and amateur hobby) of erotic or otherwise deviant to the norm content.
I’m also going to take a controversial stance and put porn, erotica and romance into the same general category.
To outsiders we are a typical sort of couple in the Pacific Northwest: a gymnast bodied Midwestern blond built on compact, slim lines and a penchant for short sleeved polos as casual wear, and a long limbed heavy hipped pile of curves in black and jewel toned low effort alt fashion. We live in still mildly mortifying comfort (to me): nice gym with Cross Fit (for him) and Pilates (for me). I am learning to crochet at a Stitch and Bitch. We go to the Farmers Market biweekly and there’s fresh berries with most breakfasts. Once a month or so, we take his practical little car into Seattle proper from our exurb situation and do something cultural with an art show or music.
You would assume correctly our politics are progressive and our hobbies involve things like tabletop RPGs or board games. There’s thousands of versions of us walking about, drawn here by climate, employment and the privilege of not having your values and aesthetics be the lunatic fringe.
Unlike many people, we are latex fetishists. Other than being hard on the pocket book, this presents its own risks.
Rubber, in its natural state, is neither shiny nor inclined to slide easily over the contours of the body. Latex clothing is hard to get into. It sticks to you and it’s not particularly resilient, tearing under too much rough handling. If you want in to your wardrobe you are going to need to make yourself slippery, and ideally you will want something that buffs what you are wearing to a gloss.
Those who are familiar know this means copious amounts of silicone lube, a clear, oily feeling substance that’s insoluble in water and largely inert.
Oil (as any person with good sex ed knows) will cause the material to start to break down. That’s why you don’t use oil based lubes with traditional condoms. Talcum was the old timey solution and is now known to regularly contain asbestos – so much as baby powder has switched to corn starch, so is this used as an alternative, though as you might imagine it does nothing if your goal is shine. I also find powder based lubricants gum everything up while adding more of an abrasive than a shiner. A fancy process (chlorination) gives pieces a permanent slightly duller gloss, but takes away some of the stretch and gives it a papery feel.
The solution is the aforementioned silicone lubricant. Made (elementally) of the same stuff as the sand on a beach and the glass in your windows, it’s a modern miracle of science that gives us much more rugged baby bottle nipples, a caulking agent, easy demolding bakeware, hair defrizzer, bendy yet body safe dildos you can sterilize by boiling, and this. You get it for a bit of extra money online or through specialty (sex) shops, because even the good pharmacies in Canada tend to only stock water and occasionally oil based options.
Maybe we will discover, years from now, that we’ve made a huge mistake with this magical material, but for now we have bottles of this all over our home. Guests over means a quick whip round to retrieve them lest they require explaining. Sure it’s a bit odd to have it everywhere, but it’s handy. We use it for edging Silver, several times a day if that can be managed; for sex where it plays nice with my flora; and of course for the rubber escapades I mentioned, which compliment the whole BDSM femdom thing we have going on.
Getting dressed in rubber is about like the cliche corset yanking scenes in bad historical films combined with trying to haul a pair of mid aughts skinny jeans up to your shoulders. That is, if the garment in question cost more than most of your wardrobe and sometimes as much as a wedding dress, of course, and also needed silk stocking level careful handling. To do so you slick yourself up and the inside of it up. That’s palmfuls of silicone on your limbs, but also any expanse of you that you want the garment to go over AND squirting liberal dollops of silicone into the garment and then smoothing it all over.
You also don’t want the garment to be too slick outside, until you have it on, lest it sproing from your grip and you pull it on. Most pieces have a zipper down the back and there’s all sorts of hacks like using a boot lace and a safety pin to pull them up, but generally you also need to hold the garment closed while you pull. A second pair of hands dressing make all the difference, and there’s a technique on top of it, in dressing. Like getting a toddler into a snow suit, firm but not too firm. If you have sharp nails you further can protect your outfit by wearing gloves.
The garment (except for fresh from whatever atelier that made it) will also already have at least some silicone residue on it. For storage, after a wash in a very gentle (unscented!) soap, you rinse in cool water with more silicone mixed into that, leaving a surface coating. Once dried you further pack it with archive friendly tissue paper, so it won’t do the other thing rubber likes to do, which is stick to itself to the point of fusing. After it’s on, something will feel misaligned and you will probably gloop a bit more silicone in through neck or arm holes.
In short, you will be wearing a skin tight rubber bag very full of lube. The process of getting it on will also be surprisingly taxing, wrestling a full body resistance band. It wants to grab and pinch fleshy bits, at least if you don’t smooth it right or it doesn’t sit on your widest points just so. Then you will do activities that make you sweat even more, mixing with the aforementioned lubrication. And maybe other fluids.
When the deed, whatever you were doing, was done, be it a fashion shoot or fornication, you will be even more damp. Getting out is usually easier, with the sweat/lube mix enough to slide everything back off into a distressing crumpled pile on the floor. The first thing you will notice, once stripped, is that you are absolutely freezing. Your body in the latex adjusted itself for what it thought was the height of summer humidity. With the gear off, all that sweat and lube is now lukewarm and chilling fast as it drips off you. You will probably immediately want a shower.
And you will discover the other magical property of silicone lube is that it lasts and lasts. You will be spectacularly moisturized. If you used it in you, your cavities will still have traces a day later. After you wash your clothes, the sink or bathtub will need a good scrub. And while if you were smart your play (or model) space was protected by drop cloths (nothing says sex appeal like draping the room in old bed sheets!), but somehow or another it will also get everywhere else.
On carpet it tends to vanish into the “try not to think about this too hard” situation the way most invisible contaminants are left to rest. On tile or linoleum, well…
Our apartment is done with that currently fashionable, grey-beige faux wood linoleum, in all the main areas. The kitchen, living area, bathroom and the long hall that connects everything else is the same glossy grey, varied enough in texture you won’t spot where the pattern repeats, smooth and easy to spot mop. It beats carpet in my kitchen, but it has its own drawbacks. Remember how I said the first thing you want after latex comes off is a shower? Thanks to the layout of the place, that’s a near half minute trek in a connecting long bit that joins kitchen/living area, bedroom, office, bath and some rather large closets. Inevitably, somehow in the most trafficked area a few drops of silicone find their way. Invisible until you step, just slippery enough to make your foot slide askew and check your balance.
Days later, every latex session is still a slip and fall hazard, but worse, a camouflaged surprise one that can materialize anywhere down that hall.
This happens every damn time. You can mop it, but you can’t see it. Finding it is caressing your hand against a smooth surface and looking for something just a bit more slippery. Soap and water helps, but it’s not a perfect solution because of that aforementioned lube’s staying power. Even bringing out the big guns of a teaspoon of dish soap on where you think the spot is, and you very well can miss just a micro drop.
Dear reader, if my debauchery someday does me in, it won’t be breath play gone wrong. It won’t be a folie à deux into increasingly deranged power exchange, nor sadomasochism loosed to run riot. It will be a mundane slip fall where I break my neck because one tenth of a gram of lube escaped the mop four days after my submissive spent fifteen minutes in a neck to toe rubber sleep sack.
The Pacific Northwest is pretty and reliably temperate most months of the year. My life is taken on some comfortable aspects and some aspects of disquieting idleness, sitting in the sort of lucky it feels like impolite bragging to share.
I got married last month and elopement at a courthouse dressed and simple white broderie anglaise, quick vows and paperwork with two witnesses. I did so because I love him and this is the most reliable shot we have at together, forever. That’s staring down the gauntlet of more paperwork and a long exile from my homeland. But I can be very confident in my belief Silver is worth it. He’s worth is because he is wonderful, inspiring, makes me happy and is confidently happy to do the complex kinky things we both crave.
My writing brain hasn’t been with me for the last little while. Nonetheless, the desire and my sexuality maintains. It’s a relationship where, at a distance, we’d call thrice a day and have the energetic enthusiasm to edge him silly each time. Together, we share a bed every night in an apartment that feels much too nice and I plan a little gathering in the fall, with family, to celebrate my marriage.
I make tentative steps outside the home, to a femdom munch in Seattle, monthly, run sharper and smart than mine ever were. If you are in town you should go, and can easily find details on fetlife. I already met one reader, which is fun. Though those pesky health issues linger, I do my best to stay involved where my stamina lets me.
The kink remains foremost. We prioritized that from day 1. He is as randy as a man half his age and it fits what I want. It’s simply there, often light, a hand reach to his throat away. Likewise, I find him beautiful. He’s a Midwestern, blue eyed, built more spare in frame with a gymnast’s propensity to bending, under a relentless maintained layer of shoulder to ankle muscle. This is balanced at equilibrium that he neither wants to return to actual utility for his white collar life, nor allow into neck stiffening thickness.
My own body is softer, a little wonky, but the urges are still there under the flesh. I want and I remain hungry for this. I miss the energy I used to have, to do things as much as I used to, but I peck away where I can. I’m learning to crochet, and maintaining the health I do have by using the gifts of where I live to try to push myself to exercise as regularly as I can manage. It’s paid some dividends.
If you imagine our household s something of elaborate protocol, him constantly demeaned, you would be wrong. It is with respect my hand takes his throat. That he affectionately comes where I am curled on the couch in a nest of blankets and kisses the tops of my feet. Our vows did not reflect the ownership of my Property, true, but they carried in them the seed and scaffold under which we do what we do.
I think I have the best anyone could want or aspire to.
