CHAPTER 10
Nate
It was nine o’clock, past my usual time to leave campus. But I had kept an eye on Mara’s office, and since she was still there, I stayed. I didn’t announce my presence to her, I didn’t need to. I was available if she needed me. But nine o’clock was pushing it. I had a long commute home, one that was worth it for the view of Lake Mead. And at this time, the traffic would be minimal.
A knock sounded on the doorframe. Mara let herself in, her shoulder bag slung by her side, clutching a handful of papers. “I’ve got the first draft,” she said.
I motioned for her to give me the essay. She did, then took a seat in front of my desk. I scanned it; she was arguing that a submissive was truly powerful in the acts of sacrifice and endurance, and that ultimately, this made the submissive powerful, even when kneeling before authority. I glanced over the top of the paper—Mara’s legs were crossed, the tight pants on her thighs, her soft hips poking over the waistband, her rosy cheeks, her open, wet mouth. To read about submission and look at Mara was torture. But I couldn’t do anything with her.
We were teacher and student. Her essay’s argument had nothing to do with us.
I handed the papers back to her. “That’s one way to interpret it.”
“Seriously?” She raised an eyebrow. “You’re still going to go with that?”
I had been working on my counter-argument essay, as I always did when working one-on-one with graduate students. It wasn’t so much as for my own publications (though if I found a good home for the essay, I did not hesitate to publish it), as it was to prepare them for the flaws in their own arguments. But with Mara, what would that counter-argument be? That submission was an act of weakness? Arguing that would go against everything I believed in outside of the classroom, when it came to BDSM, when it came to my own desires. It was an honor to receive someone’s submission, to watch them surrender completely to a dominant. It was not an act that was donetothe submissive. It was an act the submissive controlled; submission was anaction.
Despite my better judgment, I had worked on the counter-argument essay anyway, though I had little drive to finish it.
“Think critically,” I said, forcing myself into my usual teaching habits. “One may argue that submission is a sign of weakness. That a submissive is made to surrender, to sacrifice, to deny themselves.” It was wrong, but I had to say it. I had to push her.
“But when the submissiveacceptstheir position, isn’t that different? There’s a transcendence. Our essay,” she paused over the word ‘our’, reiterating to me that it was an agreement we had madetogether, “isn’t about weakness. What we’re writing isn’t about forcing anyone—”
“But forcing submission does exist, Mara. You need to account for that.”
She sighed and uncrossed her legs.
“Imagine someone powerful,” I said, “an authority figure. Someone in charge with the power to give and take anything, that power riding on his decisions.” Most of the time, I used gender-neutral wording, likethey, but this time, I wanted Mara to see how we fit into this frame. “Perhaps age has something to do with it. Perhaps he’s older. Perhaps he has the power to make or break someone’s entire outlook, to destroy their career. In this scenario, perhaps he has enough motivation, enough at stake, to force this person to submit.” We were no longer talking about Florence Berkley’s theories. That was certain. Still, I pretended that we were… The third person, not us, butthem. Mara needed to see what we were from the outside. “In all other angles, from other perspectives, regardless of any circumstances,he is using the submissive, even if that is not the intention. In the eyes of all else, she will have been coerced into their agreement. She will have been made to submit.”
“I disagree,” Mara said. She sat up. “That scenario doesn’t change the fact that if the submissive accepts the agreement for what it is, that there is inherent power in her surrender.”
Her eyes were fierce, the kind of stare that made my mind wander. Fantasy images of Mara bent over a bench, furious that I was spanking her, even more upset that she liked it. But I couldn’t let myself go there. We were discussing a paper.
Correction: we were pretending to discuss a paper.
“If it’s two consenting adults, does it really matter what other people think?” she asked. Her tone was bold. A dare. Beckoning me. Calling me out.
But so many students were given to doing what they thought was expected of them. And under our circumstances, Mara could have been doing the same.
“Sometimes,” I said. It was all I could say.
But her lips, the round face and succulent mouth, made me want to do things to her that I couldn’t do with a student.
“There’s something else I wanted to ask you about,” she said. She took out a copy ofThe Death of Powerfrom her bag and flipped to a page. “We talked about this passage in class and I keep coming back to it. Berkley mentions ‘crawling’ and ‘gagging.’” My mind instantly envisioned Mara on all fours, a ball gag strapped into her mouth, a stream of drool dangling from her lips to the ground, completely humiliated. Rendered useless of speech, but still able to think about how degrading it was. And in my eyes, fucking hot as hell. “Crawling. Gagging. Those are both such physical verbs,” she said. She paused, her lips pursed. “Do you think Berkley could be writing about BDSM?”
I sucked in a breath. Mara would go straight there, wouldn’t she? “Florence Berkley has hinted in interviews that her tastes diverge from the sexual mainstream.”
“Meaning it’s entirely possible.”
I nodded. “‘Gagging’ as a means to stop language and communication. ‘Crawling’ meaning without the full use of the body, degraded to the state of an infant, or, more likely, to the state of an animal.” I let those ideas hang in the air. If she wanted to go there, then we would. I waited to see if Mara understood what I was referring to.
“Like an animal,” she said quietly. She caught the reference. “Like a pet.”
I couldn’t pretend to be discussing theoretics anymore. I was teaching her about other groups of people. My people. “In BDSM communities, the ‘pet’ is a submissive role, in which the confines of expectations are given certain limitations.” Mara straightened in her seat, leaning forward, and I turned and focused on the bookshelf—in order to give my attention to the content, and not her. To convince myself that it was simply a conversation about a community. It had nothing to do with me, or her, or us. But that was a lie. “A ‘pet’ dynamic doesn’t necessarily mean animal role play. It can mean a submissive who is treasured, despite the role as the submissive. The supposed powerless, when they are anything but. Not all dominants are cruel. And some dominants are cruel as a way to teach.”
I hadn’t meant to use that verb…Teach.But perhaps it was what needed to be said. What we both needed to hear.
“A teacher’s pet,” Mara said.
