Under Her Thumb

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Foreword

  Introduction

  QUIET

  LA SEXORCISTA

  BUSINESS MANAGING

  A LITTLE TICKLISH

  HOUND AND HARE

  UNCHARTED TERRITORY

  SUFFER

  SUBDAR

  GOOD FOR THE GOOSE

  ALL EYES ON HIM

  BLAME SPARTACUS

  THE DINNER PARTY

  FEAR NOT

  LAYOVER

  JUICY TIDBITS

  HER MAJESTY’S PLAYTHING

  BOTTLED AND BOUND

  RED DELICIOUS

  REPENT! OR, GOD NEVER SAW ME COMING

  BELOW STAIRS

  IN THE CHILL OF HER DISPLEASURE

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  ABOUT THE EDITOR

  Copyright Page

  FOREWORD

  Midori

  She is a towering idol and a derided caricature.

  Her presence is desired and denied.

  She is glorified and complicated beyond her reality and debased and reduced in spite of her truth.

  Her true form, however, stands quietly in the stillness, in the eye of the storm; a storm of opinion, fear, lust, anger, misogyny, feminism, sexism, power, media, myth, fantasy, religion, arousal, guilt, passion, mistrust, awe, anxiety and yearning.

  She is the dominant woman.

  Often she’s recognized only for, and reduced to, the superficial signifiers of costume and accessories: high heels, leather, corsets and whips of the “Dominatrix” fashion genre. While garments and accessories have their own potential for potent power and pleasure1, they are not what make the dominant woman. Sadly She has been substituted so often with these clichés that those craving to possess, or be possessed by Her power jump to the misguided conclusion that simply donning these garments will automatically bring forth power. Then they wonder, crestfallen at the underwhelming outcome, “Is that all there is?” Perhaps we’ve given too much totemic power to the objects at the cost of seeing the true source of Her power.2

  The energy source of the dominant femme is not the artifice of costumes. The truth of Her is the brutal honesty of, and to, her desires, deliberately shaped by equally fierce self-discipline. She must intentionally engage this self-discipline, as it’s necessary to resist capitulation to lifelong social conditioning and cultural pressures of constant self-effacing and denial of yearnings.

  It may seem contradictory that self-discipline would be necessary for the dominant woman to be satisfied. Doesn’t she just have to demand what she wants? First, this assumes that making a demand equates to authority. Any tantrum-throwing three-year-old can demand what she wants, but that’s not going to get results. The brat child has no authority. Pestering others until they give in is merely juvenile manipulation. Authority, however, comes with knowledge, a grasp of resources and limits, respect, and understanding of one’s scope of influence. Second, the statement assumes that the woman truly knows what she wants. So often we, men and women alike, accept what we are told we should want, never examining our true desires. Women, in particular, are often trained from childhood that stating our own wants is undesirable and wicked. Women are rewarded for sublimating primary wants into providing for others. Want to be adored? You’re adored only after you adore another. Want to enjoy power? You access power by enabling others to be powerful. Want an orgasm? You better know how to create a great orgasm in another. Her pleasures are then reduced to the currency of erotic bartering, or maybe just an afterthought, like a tip, for which she should be grateful. Her true hungers, if voiced or demanded, are scolded as selfish and cruel. A woman stating her want makes others intensely uncomfortable. We are taught to live a lie for the sake of others’ comfort. Being honest can be profoundly difficult for many women.

  There has to be another way, a way of honesty.

  So She must deeply and fully examine what she really wants. This, of course, isn’t easy when there are so many years and layers of social conditioning to dig through.

  So often I hear, from women who perform the actions of dominance, whip in hand and cruel words falling from their lips, that despite these actions, they feel lost and unfulfilled—they haven’t figured out what they really want, much less how to demand it. When the lover says, “But she’s a dominant woman, she should know what she wants,” he’s blithely blind to the hard work it takes for her to truly open her eyes and heart. Self-discipline is vital to the femme dom; she must abstain from merely aping dominance to please a partner or feed into his or her expectations. It is important to examine her deepest desires if she wants to make them a reality. Are wanton cruelty, anger and malice necessary in the dominant woman? No. Once Her desires are explored and expressed, how they are actualized will vary as wildly as the women themselves. Her dominance may range from sweet and quiet to severe and punishing. They are all valid as long as she is true to her self.

  The femme dom as filled with rage and hate, engaging in vulgarity and thoughtless violence, is a stereotype used to dismiss the complexity of women’s desires. It’s high time we leave that behind.

  Another truth, and challenge, of the dominant femme is finding a partner who willingly and joyously enters into a relationship with her. In the erotic dance of dominance and submission, there must be a worthy partner of quality and self-discipline equal to hers. An individual merely stating that he or she is a submissive isn’t going to attract a great dominant. A partner who inflames the passions and incites the deep dominant hungers in Her isn’t just anybody—he or she has to be somebody. True surrender and belonging comes from a place of self-knowledge, agency, choice and powerful devotion.

  The dominant woman: She is her own truth and her finest creation. To love and woo her is to enter into a realm, brilliantly real and tantalizingly raw, full of unexpected and vivid pleasures.

  INTRODUCTION

  I recently bought myself an expensive new toy: something I’ve been lusting after for several years, but never felt I could afford. When I found myself with a bit of extra cash, and saw the ET 312B offered at a really good price, I bit the bullet and decided to just go for it.

  I hadn’t managed to put it away by the time my former computer boy came over to help with a project. We haven’t had a dominant/submissive relationship in several years, but when we did, he worked in exchange for the privilege of being spanked.

  When we’d gotten as much work done as we could, we called it an evening and retired to the living room to chat and catch up on life (I hadn’t seen him in a long time). I noticed the unit sitting under the coffee table. Still very excited about my new purchase, I pointed to it and said, “Look what I got.” He knew I’d always wanted one.

  He smiled and blushed a little, fidgeted and mentioned that he’d already noticed it; in fact, it was the first thing to draw his attention when he sat down on the couch. He got a wistful look and licked his lips. I think we were both thinking, Yeah, well, that would have been fun… You see: we don’t have that kind of relationship anymore.

  So, why am I mentioning it?

  The bond of bottom and top; boy and ma’am; sub and domme, never really goes away. There’s something very profound—even spiritual—about a dominant/submissive relationship that sticks with you, whether it’s a fully committed, loving relationship or a casual, purely platonic one. Even if the sexual aspect ends, the bond remains.

  I think it may be even more so in the case of male submissives and female dominants. I think people who identify as male, regardless of gender, tend to feel things more deeply than what we are conditioned to believe is stereotypical. Men have been thrust into situations of strength and made to play the part, whether it’s natural or not. When those societal restraints
are released, a man can let out his buried feelings of submission and allow himself (or be forced to allow himself, if that makes it easier) to experience the things he craves in the darkest recesses of his mind. It’s that depth that I’ve found in these stories. Whether they’re about intense, mutually respectful relationships, like the one in Andrea Zanin’s “Quiet,” or more casual, although highly ritualistic forms of entertainment, like the scenes in Laura Antoniou’s “Blame Spartacus,” it’s clear there’s something important going on.

  A man’s worshipful description of the relationship he has with his dominant becomes all the more intimate when we find they have been married for many years in Lawrence Westerman’s “Her Majesty’s Plaything.” Though it can be just as compelling, sometimes even more so, when it isn’t coming from a lifetime commitment, but from a simple need to serve, to be humbled, to be humiliated and dominated, like in Lisabet Sarai’s “Layover.” And then there are the pros. Poor Nate is going crazy. He can’t get his mistress out of his head.

  Kendall was the mistress of his dreams. He knew he was lucky to have her. She was remote, ice blonde and elegant: Grace Kelly with a whip. She never had sex with him, because she had no interest in his cock. He’d been her sub for seven months and he’d still never seen her naked. He dreamed of that and dreamed of fucking her too. He rationalized that his enforced chastity was for the best, that sex with her would take him from obsession to full madness. He would want her all the time then, he would weep and howl and beg for more until she cut him off.

  But one night she cut him off anyhow, and all his worst predictions came true.

  Kendall’s cutting Nate off made him unable to function. He needs to exorcise her from his head. His best friend suggests a pro but Nate doesn’t think of them as true mistresses. The simple act of “paying for it,” according to Nate, makes him the top—not at all what he wants to be. He’s in for an education when he meets Valerie Alexander’s “La Sexorcista.”

  And, by the way, not all the submissives in this book are male. Women dominating women can make me just as weak in the knees as women dominating men. I’m pretty sure you’ll feel the same when you read Evan Mora’s “Uncharted Territory” or Anne Grip’s “The Dinner Party.”

  When I put an anthology together, I only include stories that grab me, or make me want to put them down and do something other than read. The stories in Under Her Thumb are special. These are stories I can relate to in a personal way. They make me yearn; they make me laugh; they make me dream. They combine with my own psyche, my experience and my fantasies.

  If the thought of a powerful woman makes you weak with want, or the idea of a boy kept under tight control reminds you of the very power you crave, then I hope you will find this book as personally appealing as I do.

  D. L. King

  New York City

  QUIET

  Andrea Zanin

  It is dark. Quiet. She can hear his breathing, close, as she keeps one hand on his chest so that his naked back, bruised from the beating she gave him a mere half hour earlier at the club, is pressed against the coolness of the bedroom wall. She bats his tentative hand away, not wanting to be touched tonight.

  Tonight, she has been on display. This was not her intention. It doesn’t matter that she dressed up for her own pleasure; it doesn’t matter that she dressed him for her pleasure as well. The deliciousness of her curves encased in a boned corset made her feel austere, strict. The formfitting leather pencil skirt was elegant. His presence at her side, at her feet, was the correct order of things. But the public clubs are full of people who do not know what they are looking at. They are populated by men who see only their fantasies come to life, not the flesh-and-blood women in front of them. These men do not notice his devotion, or his beauty. They see only her, and only her contours, at that. A convenient body upon which to build a scenario of shrill domination, one that just happens to cater to the whims of those who think they wish to obey. She has spent too much time as a projection screen with an hourglass figure. She is angry.

  And she is also aroused. He has been attentive all evening. His softness makes her harder, sharper. His obedience touches some wire inside her, one that runs from her mind directly to her sex, and sets it humming as though electrified. His acquiescence never fails to awaken her hunger. His simple wordless presence reminds her that men are not all blind. Tonight, he took the pain she bestowed upon him, the sweetest of gifts, knowing that it had an edge that was not about him at all. He absorbed her slow, simmering rage and turned it into a tool of pleasure, his and hers—the transformative magic of the masochist. This, he offered willingly, and she accepted, funneling her frustration into the skilled wielding of her favorite implements, painting the colors of her desire on his flesh, soft and strong.

  Now, she gestures at him not to move. Unhooks the restrictive corset, peels off the sweat-sticky leather skirt. Free of her self-imposed bondage, she is not exposed, but all the more powerful. Her knee-high boots, gleaming dully in the faint white of the streetlamp outside, keep her almost as tall as his six feet.

  She slowly strokes the shaved slickness of his chest, the motion almost creates a purr. She plays her fingertips and soft scratches of her nails against his sensitive nipples, hears his breath go deeper as she draws them toward her, twists her knuckles around them, pulls and kneads until she’s stretching his skin into painful points of burning, hurting pleasure. Even in the dark, she can see his achingly erect cock making a distorted shape underneath the knee-length black skirt he donned for the evening.

  She slides her fingernails up the back of his warm neck to grip his scalp—his heavy, soft, long hair like velvet against her forearm—and guides him to the bed, motions for him to slip off the skirt and lie down. He hangs it tidily from the footboard before stretching out like a cat exposing its belly.

  She lifts her leg and places one spike heel on the mattress, dangerously close to his swollen crotch, the tip of her toe just brushing his hairless inner thigh, and relishes the sight of his vulnerability straining against the black fishnets.

  He’s a quiet one. A trace of lipstick remains on his parted lips as he inhales, exhales, acknowledging that he’s now the one who is on display. This audience is the only one that matters. Her gaze is the one through which he wants to be seen. His chest leaps shallowly in the faint shadows. She watches, calculating. He watches her watch him, questions in his mouth not released.

  Were it not for her tiny thong, her wetness would be leaving clear, glistening trails on her thighs. Impatient with her own body, she abruptly moves her foot away. She reaches down brusquely, inserts a fingernail into a hole in his nylons and neatly rips one leg from crotch to toe in a swift motion. She sends his back into an arch when she leans over and sinks her teeth into the flesh of his big toe—he almost whimpers, but catches himself. His cock throbs visibly. She lacerates the other leg of the fishnets, the sound tearing the night. She rewards him for his delightful shiver by sliding her hand up between his legs for a firm squeeze. In turn he rises to her touch, his hardness so full she can feel every contour of the head, the warm shaft, the small pouchy frenulum, even through the lace of his panties.

  This is not humiliation. There is nothing humiliating about being beautiful or about being feminine. She, herself, is both of those things, and many more. She cannot fathom how encouraging these qualities in others could possibly be shameful or worthy of mockery. There is also nothing humiliating about submission. It is a gift and all the finer when given selectively. She relishes these aspects of him, both of them, separate and entwined, and has taught him to be proud of them. When he at first thought he needed to play a silly role, to be a sissy or to giggle like a schoolgirl, she corrected him firmly. There would be no need for such undignified behavior. He would be graceful and humble in his pride. He would see himself through her eyes as a refined creature, a valuable specimen, a work of art. A treasured piece of property to be polished, cared for and thoroughly used to the best of her capaci
ty.

  The men at the clubs do not see him. Sometimes they don’t notice him at all, too focused on her to bother registering the presence of a partner. Sometimes, when they do notice him, they assume that his demurely feminine attire is a punishment, or a fetish, or an attempt on her part to make him into something less than he is. This offends her. It is quite the contrary. She is simply enhancing what he already is and very much wants to be. She knows he is beautiful. He knows she is right.

  She motions for him to sit upright, arranges the pillows against the headboard and slides onto the bed behind him, one leg on each side of his body. She pulls him back so his narrow hips settle close to her and his tender back rests against her breasts. Quite deliberately, she raises her feet, one at a time, and presses each boot heel into the delicate, now-bare white flesh of his lean thighs.

  She winds up a fistful of his luscious hair and raises his ear to her mouth. She speaks two words in low tones, and he hesitates a moment before reaching his long fingers into the panties. He draws them down to expose his near-purple length and begins to stroke himself. The too-small lace still cups his testicles, and she growls low in her throat at the sight.

  He writhes as her fingertips catch again at his sore nipples, but his stroking speeds up as she works her fingernails into the silky areolae and draws up to flick the tiny hard points over and over. His body tenses and his hand moves more quickly still as his back becomes rigid, pressing his welted skin into her softness. He is marked, claimed, the blossoming red and purple flowers under his skin an elegant reminder of her ownership of that flesh.

  She wonders if perhaps she should stop attending the club events. They are painful. He might be sad, as there are few places he can go wearing the clothes that are most becoming to him, showing his face at its most lovely. But his loveliness is wasted on those who do not know what they are seeing. He deserves better. She deserves better as well. And yet, the spaces in which they can be themselves are rare, and precious, even if flawed. To what extent should one settle for less than what one wants, when what one wants may not exist? To what extent should one allow one’s property to be exposed to the harsh elements, when that exposure also offers the rare opportunity for nourishment? She is not accustomed to settling.