Page 72 of Jinxes and Drumsticks

The question isn’t weighted. There are no suggestions for how he wants me to answer that question. It’s offered to me the same way one might offer any other morally neutral choice. Creamer in your coffee? Milk or dark chocolate? Sparkling or flat?

Do you want me to stop dominating you after inadvertently hurting you?

I shake my head.

“Words, Lillith,” he commands, though his tone is still kind—almost indulgent.

“No,” I sniff. “I don’t want to stop.”

He nods. “Lillith, I am playing fast and loose with you here, but you always have the power, even when I hold onto the control. Do you understand that?”

I nod before correcting the habit. “I understand.”

His smile reaches his eyes. Finally, he says, “Very good. You are such a fast learner.”

My lashes flutter with the euphoria that comes along with pleasing him—with being good.

“What do you know about safe words?” he asks.

“That they’re used to slow down or stop a scene,” I say, and I realize that’s what we’re doing together. We’re enacting a scene.

“I usually like to use some more traditional ones—specifically the ones coded for traffic lights. They’re easier to remember in a pinch. But do you have any you like to use instead?”

“I’ve never...done this for real,” I say.

He nods. “Alright. We can talk more about this in detail later, but if you want me to slow down and check in with you, I want you to say the word ‘Yellow’. Repeat it.”

“Y-yellow,” I say.

“Good. And if you are in the kind of distress that you don’t like, then I want you to use the word ‘Red.’ If you say ‘Red’, I’ll immediately stop whatever I’m doing. I’ll check in on your immediate needs, and then we’ll go right into aftercare. I will never be angry or disappointed with you for using your safe words. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“Repeat it back to me.”

“You will never be angry or disappointed with me for using my safe words,” I say.

He nods and I watch with awe as he slips back into the persona he inhabited before the misstep with our little episode of trial and error. It doesn’t feel forced. It feels like he took a moment to handle an important tangent, but now we are back to the original agenda.

He goes back to holding my wrists against my sides as he settles in a little more comfortably between my legs, sitting on the floor and looking up at me. “Lillith. I have a few different proclivities when it comes to being a Dominant. I consider myself a sadist, but I also think of myself as a pleasure Dom and a bit of a primal Dom. Do you know what that means?”

I shake my head before his brow arches, and I correct myself again. “No.”

“I’ll go into more detail with you about this later, but suffice to say, I enjoy turning you into a little whimpering puddle, even when I’m punishing you,” he says. “And you are being punished today. You’re clear on that, correct?”

I frown and nod. “Yes.”

“Good,” he says. “Do you see where your hands are right now?”

I look down at them, pinned to my sides. “Yes?”

He releases my wrists. “You’re to keep your hands right there. If I was more prepared, I would have brought my own bindings, but since I’m not, you’re going to be a good girl and stay exactly where I put you. Understood?”

“Yes,” I say.

“And I’m going to need you to pay me a little more respect, Lillith. Yes, what?”

I fumble a little on the uptake before clumsily mumbling out, “Yes, Sir?”