Chapter Thirty-Seven
Mari
Roos is a queen. A queen of the night. A queen of the flogger she has in her hands.
And a queen of my heart. It doesn’t come without discomfort, that I feel myself falling harder and faster for Roos while she stands behind me, spanking my backside and upper thighs with a leather paddle, but it’s the truth.
Yes, I love the Roos that needs hugs and care and carefulness. But this Roos, this Roos that is unyielding and demanding and so very much in control.
This woman could ruin my life, and I would thank her for it.
God, I’ve missed this. I had no idea how much I needed this until Roos forced me on my hands and knees and made me stare out into the shadows of the audience in front of us.
And fuck me if I don’t also love the fact that I’m not here alone.
That Lex is next to me, also on all fours, and gasping, groaning, moaning with each stroke Roos delivers.
If you had asked me this morning how I thought tonight would go, I imagined Lex taking charge.
That’s all I know about xem and sex because that’s all it was like when it was xem and me.
Of course, if I had given it more thought, maybe I would have considered xir preferences, xir desires could have changed, just like mine have over the last ten years.
But I never could have envisaged this. This version of Lex, who has tears running down xir cheeks but a smile on their lips.
This Lex, who shudders with each strike Roos delivers, even when it’s against my backside, and the depth of xir eye contact when we look at each other.
I never ever would have imagined seeing Lex like this, and I never ever would have imagined feeling so much for xem.
Because I’ve never experienced this before, submitting with someone else.
Sharing a dominant partner. Knowing exactly what another person is feeling because I am feeling it too.
The humiliation of being on our hands and knees in just our underwear.
The burning sting of each hit. The heat from the stage lights and the occasional chill from the aircon when it reaches us.
When my arms start to tremble from the exertion of staying in this position, I look over at Lex and see xir arms are also shaking.
When I feel my knees start to ache from being on the stage’s wooden floor, I know Lex’s are likely hurting too.
We haven’t shared a word since Roos ordered us to strip and get in position, but I feel like Lex and I haven’t stopped communicating, with our shared moans, our moments of eye contact, and with the way neither of us can catch our breath.
“Ten more,” Roos says from behind us, and I glance over my shoulder.
It’s a mistake.
“Face the front, you disobedient little slut!” Roos orders, and I’m punished with an extra hard strike against my right butt cheek.
“Rookie mistake,” I hear Lex mumble, and I wish I had enough air in my lungs to tell xem to shut the fuck up, but that hit was really fucking hard.
“And you.” Roos hits Lex with the same force. “Quiet!”
Lex curses and screws up xir face in pain. I watch as xir muscles gradually relax. We make eye contact, and xe gives me a helpless little smile. Xe really does enjoy this – submitting.
I add it to the mental list of things I am learning about Lex.
The way xe enjoys cooking and is good at it.
The fact that xe wakes early and always has tea or coffee brewed for us when we wake.
How xe does a lot more cleaning than Roos and I do, but xe hates laundry and will go weeks without doing a load, unless Roos or I take pity on xem and do it first. The way xir artwork is always tucked out of the way and how we never discussed that painting xe did of me, which has been a source of both relief and frustration.
When Lex showed up on Roos’ doorstep last autumn, I really did think I knew everything there was to know. I really did think, ten years ago, that Lex was such a big personality, so solid a character, that xe was fully formed, unchangeable, unmalleable. But I now know that was wrong.
And I know there’s more to it. There’s more to Lex. There’s something xe is holding back. Maybe Lex doesn’t even know what it is. Maybe this is part of it. Maybe submitting is what xe needs to find that part of xemself.
I know that submitting does that for me.
It helps me find the deepest parts of myself and brings them to the surface.
It cracks me open and makes me realise the most complicated parts of my soul are actually the most beautiful and the most fragile.
They’re the parts of me I’m right to protect, but that shouldn’t mean they’re neglected.
It also helps me find a home in my body when my relationship to my physical form is an ever-changing thing.
So few people understand the fluidity of my gender.
How it’s about more than clothes and how I do my hair.
It’s about my sense of myself and the world.
Like sometimes I’m looking at my surroundings with one pair of glasses, and other times it’s a very different pair.
And on occasion, I’m wearing both pairs or none at all.
People don’t understand that these changes aren’t always a day-by-day or week-by-week thing. That sometimes I can wake feeling completely one thing, but by the time my first cup of tea is brewed, I’ve shifted into something else.
Most people’s eyes glaze over when I talk about masculine and feminine energy and how some of the most masculine people I’ve met – and yes, fucked – were women, and how some of the most feminine people I’ve known – and yes, again, fucked – were men.
I haven’t talked much to Roos about my own personal experience of genderfluidity but what I have shared, she has listened to attentively and passionately validated my experience.
I know if I told her more she would do the same again.
And Lex, whether I like it or not, I know xe gets it.
I know xe completely understands, always has, and that is more grounding than I’ll ever likely admit.
When Roos asked if she could be the Dominant tonight, I had wanted to offer that to her; my whole self, complicati0ns and contradictions and all.
I wanted Roos to know all of me. It was symbolic after everything we’ve been through the last few months.
I never imagined that Lex would be next to me, sweating and crying and sighing and gasping.
And I never imagined I would love every single second of it.
“I need you to count,” Roos says. “Loudly and clearly, my little sluts.”
Lex makes a soft humming noise. Xe likes that too. Xe likes being Roos’ little slut.
Thwack. I’m hit.
“One,” I grit out.
Thwack. It’s Lex’s turn.
“One,” xe says, xir voice just as strained.
The next four strikes burn the tops of my thighs, but my body is flooded with endorphins, so each hit comes with warmth and a light-headedness that forces me to really concentrate on each number, repeating it over and over in my mind until the next impact.
Next to me, Lex’s voice gets tighter, and I can see xir jaw is so tense there is a new definition there. Xe squeezes xir eyes closed. Xir brow is deeply furrowed.
“Five,” I gasp, my voice almost singing the word.
I hear the flogger as it hits Lex’s backside, but xe doesn’t say anything. Xir whole face is screwed up in pain, and xir shoulder muscles are taut and tense.
“I don’t hear you,” Roos says warningly.
I slide my hand over and touch the tips of my fingers to Lex’s. Immediately, xir eyes jump open and xe stares at me.
“You’re okay,” I say, not knowing what else to say, but suddenly the threat feels real.
I can’t say if it’s the flogger in Roos’ hand or if it’s something else, something bigger, something I can’t see, something I’ll never understand, but I don’t want Lex to punish xemself.
I don’t want xem to feel the wrong kind of pain anymore.
I’m realising that it never served me for xem to suffer.
It will never serve me if xe keeps on suffering.
If anything, maybe it would set us both free. “It’s okay. I’m here.”
My words make Lex’s features soften, so much xir jaw goes slack and xir eyes grow wide, pupils dilating.
“Five!” Lex yells out, but xe keeps xir eyes on mine. And xe keeps my gaze as Roos hits me again, and I call out, “Six!”
We stay like that, fingertips touching and eyes holding one another through the remaining strikes, and Roos really does make them count.
Sitting down will be murder tomorrow, but I don’t care.
I hope she leaves welts so deep they scar because I want to remember this night forever.
The night my queen found her crown again, and the night I found my long-lost best friend.
“Very good,” Roos says, and I hear a soft thud as I assume she drops the evil, evil flogger.
A beat later, and I feel one of her hands on my butt, stroking the curve of my hip and lightly caressing all the places she was brutally unforgiving with.
When Lex’s eyes close, I know she’s doing the same for xem.
I watch as Lex arches xir back and pushes back into Roos’ touch.
It’s graceful and cat-like, and I can’t fucking deny how sexy xe looks.
How sexy xe always looks. I may have made it my full-time job to ignore it the last six months, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t noticed it or felt it.
When Roos’ hand dips between my legs, I groan so deeply and loudly that it vibrates through my chest. There are murmurings from the audience in the silence that follows, and it reminds me that we are not alone.
That there are others watching this. That we are all on show. I had truly almost forgotten.
I know my boxers are soaking; I can feel Roos playing with the wet patch there. I wonder if Lex is, too. I certainly know xe is enjoying Roos’ touch just as much as I am. Xir eyes are still closed and xe has started rocking back and forth slightly, chasing more rhythm, more friction, more Roos.
“You’re both so wet,” Roos says. “You’re both so desperate for this.”
I really am, which is why it’s a relief when Roos slides her hand inside my boxers and finds my clit with two fingers.
With Lex on my right, I know I’ve drawn the short straw, and it’s Roos’ left hand working away, but I’m so turned on, it’s arguably a good thing.
If I had Roos’ dominant hand on me right now, I think I would have already come. Twice.
As it is, Roos strokes me closer and closer to a climax that I know is going to take over my whole body while I watch Lex actively chase xirs, like xe is a wild horse that’s been set free.
Xe is bucking and bolting, pushing back against Roos’ hand, and I wish I could look back.
I wish I could see Roos’ face as she fucks us both, but I daren’t break Roos rhythm, ruin Lex’s climax, or risk another strike to my stinging flanks.
Instead, I rock gently against Roos’ fingers while watching Lex moan xir way to an orgasm I can almost feel in my own body.
Maybe that’s why I’m smiling, because I feel xir pleasure viscerally, but I almost wish I wasn’t when Lex finally opens xir eyes as xir mouth also falls open. Xe stares right at me, into me, as xe comes, a strangled moan announcing the fact as xe starts to shake in earnest.
Xe stays like that, slack-jawed and looking right at me, as tears squeeze out of the corner of xir eyes. For many long seconds, Lex trembles and twitches and groans and moans, before finally, xe collapses onto xir forearms, xir head against the stage floor.
I want to scoop xem up. I want to cradle xem in my arms. I want to kiss away those tears. I don’t care about my orgasm. I don’t care about the audience. For a heartbreaking second, I don’t even care about Roos. I just care for Lex.
Lex, Lex, Lex.
But something holds me back, and I don’t move.
I stay where I am rocking against Roos’ hand until, that is, she slides two fingers inside me.
It takes me a heady second to realise it’s her other hand, the one that fucked Lex, and fuck, if that doesn’t make my cunt instantly swell.
I want to swallow those fingers that fucked Lex.
I want Lex’s arousal to mix with mine. I want it to stay there so later I can dip my fingers into myself and taste us both blended together.
And that does it. That takes me over the edge. I writhe into Roos’ hand, and I throw my head back. My cunt starts to spasm, and it feels like the contractions spread up into my body and down my legs. I feel like I am my orgasm, wild, free, strong, powerful and uncontrollable.
I’m only vaguely aware of Roos’ hands leaving my cunt and then of her touch on my backside again, stroking and soothing the pain that has already faded into an almost comforting, dull ache.
Suddenly, I know why Lex just collapsed because my arms too can no longer hold my body up.
As the last tremors of my orgasm fade away, I fall to the stage and roll onto my side, facing Lex, who has turned xir head to look at me.
We share more eye contact – just as intense, but now more knowing, more aware than before – and I smile at them.
When xe smiles back, it feels like we have said a million things to each other.
“You did so well,” Roos says, and she has moved to kneel in between us. She strokes my hair away from my face, and I see her glide the back of her hand against Lex’s cheek.
Xir eyelids flutter, but xe keeps looking at me, xir smile loose and relaxed.
“I’m so proud of you both.” Roos adds.
And with xir eyes on me, I find Roos’ right hand, and I bring it to my mouth.
I suck on her fingers, sticking my tongue between each one, tasting us, xem and me, and Lex watches so absorbedly xe forgets to blink.
When xe finally closes xir eyes, I’m shocked to see another tear escaping.
I’m even more shocked when I drop Roos’ hand, push up, and lean over so I can kiss it away.