Fifty Shades of Submission (4 page)

“Men
, especially, confuse lust and sex with love,” she continued. “You may think you’re in love with me, Julian, but perhaps you are only in ‘lust’ with me.  A young man of your age has a huge physical appetite. No doubt you are sexually attracted to me. This physical attraction can easily be misconstrued as love. That’s why I am sure that abstinence from sex, at least for the present, will give us both clarity and direction. So, do you agree to my proposal?”

"I suppose
I'll have to."

"You don't
have
to anything."

"Well then, I want to—"

"Very well. Then we will give this ‘relationship’ of ours a try and see where it leads us."

For ten days
now I have been with her every hour of every day, except at night. She lets me hold her hand and allows me to embrace her. We go for long walks, holding hands and talking about books we’ve both read and places we have been or still wish to see.

At night I go back to my room alone, get undressed, and lie in the dark
thinking of her. It seems to me I can still smell her perfume on my skin. I no longer think of Venus when I masturbate. I now have my very own red-haired goddess of love. I can only imagine how it feels to make love to that beautiful, perfect naked body. The thought of it arouses me and gives me an instant erection. My hand goes to my distended penis and I begin the slow and sensuous strokes which begin the journey to sexual gratification.

If only she knows what an effect she is having on me.

Each day I grow more in love with her. My love for her is becoming like a bottomless abyss into which I am sinking deeper and deeper. There is nothing now that can save me or make me turn back.

My body is on fire with desire for her. Every
fibre of my being yearns for her touch. I am masturbating more and more to relieve the physical tension, but it does not appease the desperate emotional longing and the overwhelming desire to possess her body and soul.

“Saskia,” I murmur as I fall asleep.

This afternoon we took a blanket into the garden and picnicked near the Venus statue. I picked wild flowers and tossed them into her lap and she weaved them into a crown and placed them on my head. “Now you truly look like a Greek god descended from the heavens to corrupt women, she said, touching my cheek. “You remind me of a youthful Adonis, god of beauty and love, and perhaps the most complex of the gods.”

Suddenly
she looked at me so strangely that my senses heightened and passion swept over me like a blazing fire. For a moment I lost control of myself and I threw my arms around her and kissed her passionately on the mouth for the first time and she drew me close to her heaving breasts.

We
lay there panting, I smothered her body with mine on the blanket, hardly daring to breathe for fear that she would push me away. I was sure that she could feel my erection against her thigh. Finally she moved and cradled me in her arms and drew my head down onto her breast.

"Are you angry?" I asked
, not daring to look at her.

"I am never an
gry at anything that is natural," she replied. "Are you really suffering?"

"Yes. I love you, Saskia. With all my heart
." My lips moved against the fabric of her dress that concealed her breasts. I longed to rip that fabric away and take her breasts in my hands and drown myself in them…

"Poor boy
!" she brushed my hair tenderly back from my forehead. "Are you finding it difficult to cope with your promise of abstinence?”"

"
Yes,” I replied, my voice muffled against her breast. “My love for you is becoming a sort of madness. The thought that I might lose you has begun to torment me every moment of the day and night."

"But
you don’t possess me, Julian," she chided, “at least, not yet. So there is nothing to lose. Except, perhaps, a good friend.” She looked at me with a deep, consuming expression that overwhelmed my senses. Then she pushed me away and sat up, dusting bits of grass off her dress.

I
sat up and put my arm around her.

"I can’t live without you a moment longer
," I said wretchedly. "I feel as though I am drowning, as though I know in my innermost soul that my future is in your hands, that my life must be inseparably intertwined with yours. If you leave me, I shall go to pieces."

She took hold of my chin.
"Oh you foolish boy! You foolish, romantic, beautiful boy! I warn you - don’t abandon yourself too absolutely to me, I may just become conceited and begin to take advantage of it and treat you badly."

"
I don’t care!” I said, swept along on the tide of overwhelming emotion. “I don’t care if you are conceited or arrogant, or harsh with me. Only be
mine
– forever!" My voice quivered and I could feel my eyes well up with tears.

"Things will end badly
for you, my young friend," she warned softly, without moving away from me.

"
I don’t want it to end!" I said violently. "If you won’t be mine,
all
mine for always, then let me be
yours
. Let me serve you. Let me be your slave and serve you and suffer everything from you - just to be near you!"

"Calm yourself,
Julian" she said soothingly. She laid her hands on my shoulders and gently pushed me back onto the blanket. Then she bent down over me and tenderly kissed my forehead, "I am really very fond of you, sweet boy, but this is not the way to win my heart and hold onto me."

"I
will do anything and absolutely
everything
that you want from me! Just don’t send me away," I said feverishly, “I cannot bear the thought of losing you."

"Do
sit up," she said, and moved away from me. "You’re such a strange young man. First you want to marry me, now you want to serve me. What am I to make of all this?”

“I’ll be anything you want me to be,” I said dully. “Just don’t leave me.”

She regarded me with curiosity. "So you wish to possess me - at any price?"

"At any price,
" I agreed, dry-mouthed.

There was
a lurking, strange expression in her eyes—"What if I did not love you? What if I loved another? Would you still want to be with me at any price?"

A shudder ran through me.
The thought of her being with another man repulsed and frightened me.

I looked at her
. There was a cold gleam in her eyes. But in an instant a beautiful smile suddenly illuminated her face. "You see, the very thought of it frightens you."

"Yes, it fills me with horror to think that you could give yourself to someone else
,” I said slowly, painfully. “But do I have a choice? I have fallen in love with you, Saskia. I will continue to love you - even if it drives me to madness. If you cannot or will not love me in return, then I would rather subjugate myself to you
- even if you treat me badly and without pity. If I can’t enjoy the happiness of your love, fully and wholly, then I would rather live with pain and torment
with
you, than live without you. I don’t care if you maltreat or betray me – as long as you don’t send me away."

"
Have you lost your mind?" she said, clearly taken aback.

"I
have come to love you with all my soul, Saskia. With all my senses and with my whole being. I can’t go back to the way I was before I met you. Do with me what you will, make me your husband or your lover or your slave. I offer myself to you completely!"

"Very well," she said at last
, thoughtfully, "it might be rather entertaining to have a young man who interests me and loves me, completely in my power. You say you will be subservient to me? Humiliate yourself for me? Very well then, you shall be my slave. I shall make you my plaything!"

I shuddered -
enraptured and comforted, yet strangely frightened. I had planted an idea in her head and it had taken hold in her.

“
I suppose love is part hate and part fear,” she said
thoughtfully. “No relationship is ever completely equal. In every relationship one is the hammer and the other the anvil.

“
I will be your anvil and I will adore you.”

“Even if I am cruel towards you?”

I nodded. “Even if you treat me unkindly."

"But,
Julian," she replied almost angrily, "do you honestly think I am capable of abusing a man who says he loves me as much as you do?"

"Why not? Love me and I will adore
and worship you. Abuse me and I will still love and worship you. Nothing you can do to me will drive me away from you.”

"
It’s almost as if you
want
me to treat you badly,” she said. “It looks as though you are excited by the idea of being maltreated by me. Does the thought excite you?”

My mouth was suddenly dry. "Yes,” I said softly.
“It may sound strange to you, but the thought of suffering at your hands arouses and excites me immeasurably.”

"Perhaps not so strange. Don’t
sexual love and cruelty go hand in hand?"

"
Yes,” I replied softly. “I feel that most keenly.”

"
Are you submissive by nature?"

"
I appreciate martyrdom,” I said slowly. My voice sounded strange to my ears. “Throughout history, weren’t martyrs gentle and sensual by nature?"

She frowned.
"Martyrs?"

"
Martyrs are sensual men by nature, they find enjoyment in suffering. Throughout history martyrs have sought out the most horrific tortures, even death itself, just as others would seek out joy and pleasure. There is a deep and profound sexual pleasure in pain."

“It sounds as if you have experienced it.”

I nodded. “Yes, I have.”

"
So you want to become a martyr to love? To submit yourself to a cruel and heartless woman?"

“Yes,
” I said softy. “That is my fantasy.”

"
I want to put myself absolutely at your mercy for good or evil without any condition, without any limit to your power
."- Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

We walked back to the hotel in silence. As we walked, she took my hand but did not speak. She seemed deep in thought.

When we got back we went up to her room and then out onto her
balcony. The evening was fragrant and surprisingly warm and we sat in silence, listening to the crickets and an owl hooting in the forest in the distance. The sky was clear as the last daylight faded away and the vaulted heavens above became sown with innumerable stars.

“Tell me about yourself
,” she said suddenly, her voice as soft and as mellow as the cool evening. Who was the first woman you ever loved?”

I laughed. “The first woman I
ever loved was a stone statue.
As a boy I was very shy around women. I think I was afraid of them. My father had a full-sized marble statue of Venus in his study and I used to sneak in there late at night and kneel before her as though she were a goddess.”

“Ah,” she said, nodding. “That explains your preoccupation with Venus.”

"Yes. She was my goddess and my friend. Sometimes I would leave my bed and visit her in the dark. Moonlight through the open window would bathe the goddess in a pale-blue cold light and I would kneel before her and kiss her cold feet and say my prayers. As I grew older an irresistible yearning began to take hold of me. After kneeling at her feet I would get up and embrace the beautiful cold body and kiss the stony unyielding lips. And I would go back to my bed, overwhelmed with longing.”
And masturbate
, I thought, but did not say it aloud.

“Poor lonely boy,” she murmured and took my hand.
“How did it end?”

“My stepmother didn’t like the statue
. When she married my father it was one of the first things she got rid of.”

“So you lost your first love.”

“Yes, I lost her.

“Tell me about your stepmother.
Tell me about your childhood.”

I hesitated, then said carefully,
"My mother died when I was young. My father was always away on business, so I was alone most of the time. My father remarried when I was nine, to a woman younger than himself.”

“Was she nice, your stepmother?”

“She was a bitch from hell,” I said softly. “After his marriage, I was left in the care of my stepmother
most of the time. I grew to despise and fear her.