Tymber Dalton - Domme By Default

I remember how my friend Carole laughed in my face when I told her I'd never write romance books .

"Girlfriend, you already do. Just because you don't think of a book as a bodice-ripper makes it any less a romance."

That shocked me.

That should have been a hint. In a book it would have foreshadowed the earthquake about to rock my soul and sanity.

Nada.

I wrote a lot. The erotica was fun to write, and after finding out the MMF ménages were great sellers, it gave me even more incentive.

Bless my husband's heart, he uncomfortably squirmed when he read through the parts where the guys got it on. I was okay with that. Frankly, it relieved me.

I think it would have bothered me if it had turned him on.

How little did I know.

My teasing comments at the time didn't help the situation, as it turns out.

After six months of writing and selling the erotica, we were having a fairly hot session in bed one night. The fantasies and foul language were flying. He'd revisited the fantasy of me making him ride naked in the car one night, taking him somewhere, parading him around, like at a deserted beach.

Leading him around.

Commanding him.

He was really into it, so it didn't hurt to play along.

"What else would you like me to do?" I purred in his ear.

I barely heard his whisper. "I'd like you to play with my ass."

I froze for a second, because he'd never in over ten years of marriage even hinted at this before. Not like this. Not that it freaked me out...

Okay, so it freaked me out. But not for that reason. The fact that my husband, the man I thought I knew so well, pulled this rabbit out of his ass, so to speak, startled me.

What else didn't I know about him?

"Does that bother you?" he asked in that same, scared whisper. Yes, I'd identified the tone. Terrified.

Shitting bricks worried that I'd freak out.

"No, it doesn't bother me." Well, it didn't bother me.

Freaking out about something and being bothered by it can be mutually exclusive reactions.

I didn't want to ask, but did anyway. "What else do you want to do?" Was this a road I even wanted to follow?

He tucked his face against my shoulder and I almost couldn't hear him. "I wouldn't mind playing your slave," he whispered.

We'd switched the game back and forth many times over the years, a bit of fantasy fun that ended after all the orgasms were over and we rolled over to go to sleep. Pillow talk.

Mostly talk.

Never much in the way of action, especially outside of the bedroom.

This was different. His voice, his demeanor.

I took the chicken way out. I pretended it was no different than anything else we'd done. One surprise in a night was almost more than I could safely process without hurting his feelings or steamrolling his emotions.

A writer acquaintance of mine published a story about a man who is trapped on an alien planet and ends up as one of the alien's pets. The guy was gay and submissive—a sub.

It was a story that simultaneously disturbed and wowed me when I first read it, one of those stories I had to digest for a while, go back and re-read several times to get the full impact. The emotion more than the sex is what got to me.

Yeah, I mean, I'll admit I'm one of those pervy women who doesn't mind the thought of guy-on-guy action in fantasy life. Don't want to see my husband doing it with another dude, but fantasy in my head or watching strangers on the internet, it's all copacetic.

He was using my laptop one night and looked through some of my e-books. "What's this one?" he asked, clicking it.

I choked a little on my tea and laughed. "You probably won't like that one, honey. It's male-male D-s."

"Dee-ess?"

"Dom-sub."

"Oh." He read it.

Later that night we were making love and I noticed more of an urgency to his actions than I'd seen in a while. Some of the e-books I'd bought were pretty racy.

All right, erotic. Happy?

I finally had to ask. "What did you think of Syd's story?"

"Hmm?"

"The alien pet story. What'd you think of it?"

He froze. I felt the fulcrum tipping as if we were actually lying upon it.

"It was good," he whispered.

Why was I going there? "It didn't freak you out?"

He didn't answer.

I had to say it. The silence was killing me. "Lots of straight guys like anal sex. It's no big deal."

Part of the tension drained from him. I felt him relax against me. He still didn't look at me, his face pressed against my stomach, his lips warm and damp against my flesh.

"Yeah?"

I stroked the back of his head. How long had he wanted this and been scared to ask it?

And how much more was there?

"Yeah." I loved the feel of his hair between my fingers, soft and smooth. I left my hand resting on the back of his head, gently cupping it. "If it's something you want, it's okay."

He kissed my stomach. "Okay. Thank you."

But the story wasn't about anal sex, although it contained it. It wasn't even about a gay relationship.

It was about a Dom and a sub. An Owner and a pet.

A Master and a slave.

I closed my eyes. "What else did you like about it?"

Mentally I chanted to myself, Shut up shut up shut up!

He froze again. I felt him watching me, didn't need to look to see he studied my face.

"It was a good story."

This was not my husband's voice, the strong, confident tone I was used to hearing.

This soft, nearly submissive whisper was new, alien territory.

"What did you like about it?" I calmly asked again, hoping he didn't pay attention to how my heart raced.

He took a long time answering. I still felt his eyes on me, testing, gauging, trying to spin the answer in any way he thought wouldn't totally flip me out and send me running for cover.

I felt him rest his chin over my navel. "I would like to do that." Another long pause. "For you. With you."

"More than just play?"

He kissed my stomach and rested his cheek against my flesh. At ten o'clock at night he had a little stubble on his chin, scratchy, real.

"Yeah. More than just play."

Breathe , I thought. Air in, air out.

It took me a moment to sort things out in my mind. "What do you want to do?" I asked, trying to confirm what I'd heard in the least threatening way possible.

"I'd like to be your slave."

Okay, so I did hear him right.

"I need a little time to get my head around that." I thought about things I'd seen on the internet, stereotypes I wasn't comfortable with. "I won't go around beating you like a dog. I can't do that to you, I love you."

"I don't want that," he whispered. "I want you to be in control. Not just in the bedroom. I want you to be my Mistress."

Okay then.

I couldn't believe she didn't freak out.

I did some research and no, we weren't exactly textbook bondage folks. Although touring through a few sites left me drooling for some of the restraints, my dick throbbing when I imagined how it'd feel to have her truss me up.

I didn't have any idea how to vocalize to her why I needed this. I trusted her. I've never trusted another person in my entire life as much as I trust my wife.

Once the kids were on their own, it wasn't unusual for me to walk naked around the house in the evening. She enjoyed it, and I know I did. Once we started this, I would voluntarily shed my clothes as soon as I got home and stay that way until I had to dress to go to work or to the store or something.

I asked her if she wanted me to keep a journal, because it was something I read about online that other Masters made their slaves do. I wanted a list of rules, of chores, of tasks to do for my Mistress.