Safe Word

A vanilla husband wants to please his kinky wife. Can Mistress Ava help?

- R O Kwon

After some discussion, they decided they’d both benefit from professional guidance. It was like doing yoga, they figured. Hazardous, at first, to go through the poses without an instructor’s help. The woman who opened the door was shorter than her pictures had suggested she’d be. But on her website she’d been dressed in black pours of single-piece latex; now, in a buttoned white shirt with rolled sleeves, a simple black skirt and calf-high boots so shiny Ken could see his blurred reflection, she looked less like a Mistress Ava Adamson than she did like a normal person, almost.

“Hello, Ken”, she said. She took his hand in a predictably strong grip. Dark hair cupped her jaw, the tips curving under her chin like a gladiatorial helmet. She was roughly their age: still young, as opposed to young, period. “And you”, she said, turning to Jenny, who was standing half a step behind him, her hand in his. “I’m so glad to see you. Come along.”

She turned and left them. Still holding hands, they followed the dominatrix. Down the long hall, then they were in a dim room flashing mirrors and — contraptions. Everything was an elaborate variation on something else, something he understood. A black padded massage table, but sturdier, buckle restraints hanging from its corners. A cross, but X-shaped, also dangling restraints. At the end of the room, something like a throne, highbacked, theatrical, gilded, the centre of its seat cut away. Then what looked like a cat’s scratching post, except that it was humansized and, again, equipped with restraints. A mess of whips and crops, canes and paddles lined the walls. Jenny’s grip on his hand had gone loose.

“May I take your coats?” the dominatrix said, smiling. Tattoos shimmered through the thin fabric of her shirt.