Out of the Shadows. Senta Holland

his beating.

      I was witness to his need.

      Then he gave me my first hard slap, across both cheeks with his open palm. It pushed a little shout out of my throat. He gave me the next one deep on my sitting bone and I yelped, and then I laughed and we were no longer afraid.

      It turned into a long-drawn-out, hard, wild, fast, and increasingly painful spanking. My Nai spanked me harder with his hand than many other men with implements. And, even that first time, he was so tuned in to my body, my voice, the slightest changes in my being and responded to them easily and fiercely.

      But all that time while he gave me his hand, hard on my ass and my ass turning hot and sore under his strokes, he placed the belt so that we could both see it, in front of my eyes on a white pillow.

      When I shouted out loudly, when I struggled and jerked with the impact of his open palm, he pushed me down on the bed and held me there and said, just said in his dark slow voice, a voice that had emerged only with his first blow: ‘Look at the belt.’

       Colonial moments

      ‘I wish I had met you a long long time ago,’ he said.

      We were lying on the colonial bed and smiling.

      It was really the only thing we could do.

      Smiling and smiling again.

      I was lying on my front. He had just broken the second bamboo stick on my back.

      We were quiet now.

      At some point, amongst our laughs and screams, I had heard the voice of an irate Indian business man, giving a long angry speech on the phone. He must have been staying in the next room and I think he was trying to get the management to silence us.

      His voice rose a few times, in futile attempts against our celebration of homecoming. Then it disappeared.

      I believe, in the Thai way, he must have just been moved to another room while nobody ever bothered us.

      More room for us to smile.

      ‘I wish, I wish,’ he said. ‘I wish I had met you a long time ago. But – but –’

      I knew then that there was much more to this than smile.

      And there were always so many, so many buts.

      And no amount of smiles can bridge the abyss between our souls.

      I shivered under the aircon. Maybe I should prepare to go. Should I pick up my underwear?

      Then, turning round to me, he said: ‘I love your body.’

      He walked me back to my own hotel in the early morning. I learned that there were always people in the street. Before we parted he kissed my hand and bought me a small paper fan from a hopeful all-night stall.

      It’s very thin cheap paper and meant to last a night. I still have it today.

       In the tower

      Darkness had fallen utterly, above the city of ancient kings.

      High up in the tower, my Nai was waiting for me.

      He had insisted on that journey, on taking me from Bangkok, the city of the present, further up the slow night river to this other, older, more mysterious place, entangled in time and passionate longing for a life of promise after death.

      So I came out in my little dress and my steel-heeled shoes and I stood and was looked at.

      Was looked at for a long time, while his body changed and his look changed and he started to smile like the snake king.

      ‘You look like a wicked slut,’ he said.

      I smiled. My body shivered.

      He rushed towards me and lifted me up, I was carried high in his arms and he threw me on the bed. I thought just for a moment but I’m too heavy for him, but he will drop me, I will crash through his arms. I will sink down and down through the pillows through the bed through the floorboards through the concrete in the basement into the earth itself. But not.

      With one hand he held me down, the other he pushed under my dress until he found the top of my knickers. ‘Ah,’ he said with satisfaction, ‘here they are.’

      He held me even more firmly and then he pulled my knickers down over my bottom. They knotted in front and got entangled with my pubic hairs so I tried to push myself up again but he forced me down until my head was almost smothered by the pillows. He ripped the knickers along my legs until they hung halfway between my ass and my knees and then he gave me a good slap. Hard slap. Right in the middle of my ass. The upturned face, the top of the hill, the smooth curve just as big as the imprint of his hand.

      You really get to know a Dom by the way he beats you. Beating styles are just as individual as fucking or kissing or as a unique accent when you speak.

      I love love love love to feel his hand on the crest of my ass. Just resting there. His fingers, his palm, his thumb. I could draw an outline for the blind school. I lie on my face, on my stomach, naked, vulnerable, turned towards him, so tender, so white, so smooth. He holds me down and I can feel his power. The tiny hairs on my back and thighs stand up in slow shared electricity. I know he is going to spank me.

      Suddenly I get nervous. I slurp the air in little puppy breaths. I want to run away in my sheets and knickers.

      People say you can’t feel what your senses don’t tell you, so if you can’t see or hear or taste or smell there is no way of getting information, but I don’t know. I felt his hand hovering above my ass. I could feel how he was thinking, waiting, watching me. I waited, too. I waited and the waiting filled the space between us.

      His delight and excitement was all his own, just like his voice that changed and sunk down almost an octave deeper into his chest when he got to this point in the session. It was as if he became part of something greater than himself, but still uniquely him. He had a very special way of responding to my responses, with sometimes a little time delay as he adjusted to an unexpected reaction. He loved those moments.

      He later said that Doms were the ‘uber subs’, watching and listening for the submissives’ signals all the time, the moans the shouts the little squeaks of delight, the big screams of pain and ecstasy, the faintest echo of terror so they can stop if we need it before we even know.

      How the colour of her skin changes. How she is warm or cold.

      How she breathes.

      Right now I breathe hardly at all. I don’t want to disturb the connection. I don’t want to change the dynamics between us through the competing dynamics of my breathing. I don’t want to take the tiniest sliver of my senses away from sensing him.

      My body is soft and white and there for him.

      He is there for me.

      I expand like some animal deep inside the sea. I get wide and wide and wide to receive him. I know it will come. I know I will feel it. The more sensitive I make myself to him the stronger the impact will be. But I don’t know when. I don’t know exactly where he will strike, and exactly when and exactly how hard.

      I can’t see him, I can’t hear him, I can’t feel his touch, but my whole being is tuned into him. Sometimes I wish this part would last forever. Sometimes I dream of lying there, suspended, for a very long time, not knowing what will come. Knowing what will come.

      The next slap is much harder, and a lot more painful. It is aimed at my hip bone, where I don’t have a lot of tissue. I give a yelp and I get another one, right next to it, it hurts even more, and another one and another one and another one, each one hard as can be. There is a force field of stung nerve ends around my right hip. And then he starts in earnest, all along my right thigh and up again almost to my waist.

      He hits and hits and hits, very fast, I’ve never been spanked like this, so fast, so fast so hard, I’m used to slow strokes, with time in between, time to absorb and time to prepare. Time to enjoy? Time for