My Journey to Submission Pt. 11

Literotic asexstories – My Journey to Submission Pt. 11 by Antipater999,Antipater999
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is the last installment of this story for a while. I’ve written most of a first draft of another two installments, but I’m putting them on the back burner.

If you enjoy my writing, but would prefer a a depiction of a more human (and humane) relationship, I hope you’ll give “The Maid” a try. I’d love to get the same amount of reader engagement on that story as I have on this.

*********

As bad as my wife’s announcement that she intended to deprive me of my cock permanently (in spirit, if not in the flesh) was, it didn’t have much of an impact on my day-to-day life.

In a way, this made sense. After all, according to Ellen’s previous schedule, my current lockup was supposed to have lasted for nine weeks, and the one after that for ten. So out of the four-and-a-half months following my first pegging, her permanent lockup policy deprived me of precisely one scheduled release with an unruined orgasm — at most, an hour of lost playtime out of 3,192 total hours, or 0.03%.

Not really that big a deal in the grand scheme of things.

Of course, during the same period, she also would have teased me mercilessly with her vibrating wand once or twice a week. But her teasing sessions nearly always ended with denial just as I approached climax, and on the rare occasions when she kept the wand buzzing for a couple of seconds too long, she invariably ruined my orgasm and punished me for cumming without permission. So, with all due respect to the many men who live for T&D, I’m not convinced that the thrill of the teasing was worth the frustration of the denial. Net-net, I was just as happy to forego this particular form of play.

As she’d promised (or threatened), Ellen did initiate pegging sessions two or three times per week. She made me practice taking her dildo up my ass until I was able to relax and insert its full length without pain. The pegging, in fact, turned out to be much less unpleasant than I’d expected (or feared). My wife was surprisingly gentle, treating me much the way I used to treat a first-time submissive.

As she trained me to simulate fellatio and lube her strap-on long and sensually with my hand before penetration, her attitude was very encouraging, like that of a patient pre-school school teacher. “You’re doing so well,” she’d say. “You’re making my cock feel so nice. You’re my good little sissy faggot, aren’t you?” Somehow, she’d managed to turn “little sissy faggot” into a term of endearment, rather than an insult. Her praise made the humiliation of the homoerotic acts easier to take than they’d been during my initiation to anal sex.

When she took possession of my anus, she did so without insulting or mocking or beating me. I suppose that the act of pegging, in and of itself, sufficiently demonstrated her dominance over me, and anything else would have been superfluous.

She made a tremendous effort to give me anal orgasm. She watched YouTube instructional videos on massaging the prostate (or P-spot, as it’s known in the literature), and she even bought a shiny steel electrical-stimulation device designed specifically for the purpose. She carefully taught me to relax my core muscles in order to allow the climax to occur. Nothing worked. Without direct stimulation of my cock, I never leaked a single drop of cum or even pre-cum. However, she never blamed or punished me for this failure, but said simply, “We’ll try again next time.”

She most often pegged me on the carpeted floor upstairs. Ellen, of course, would never risk getting dribbles of shit or lube on her ultra-high-thread count bamboo sheets or duvet cover, so anal sex on the bed was out of the question. But still, doing it in the bedroom instead of the dungeon made me feel that her objective was, in fact, greater intimacy, not (or at least in addition to) greater domination.

On top of giving me more sexual attention, my wife seemed committed to improving our relationship outside of the bedroom and dungeon. She resumed discussing her life with me and asking for my advice about her problems, as she had at the beginning. She no longer went out of her way to humiliate me, and she found fewer reasons to punish me for breaking her myriad rules. She even became much more affectionate, giving me nearly as many pats on the head and strokes of my hair as she had when I’d first submitted to her.

All that said, Ellen wasn’t able to suppress her sadistic streak entirely. Two or three times a month, I’d find her wearing her spike-heeled boots when I went to her for my daily foot worship ritual, and when I did, I always knew that she intended to take me to the dungeon for some form of torment. But while I suffered at her hands, I was at least comforted by the knowledge that I’d done nothing wrong, and that my suffering was helping her deal with issues that she needed to work through.

Overall, though, I had to give credit where credit was due. I’d asked Ellen for more intimacy, and she’d gone way out of her way to provide it.

And the only thing she asked in return was my cock.

Ellen continued to assert that, in her phrasing, my penis was no longer a sex organ. Whenever I objected to this, she simply ignored me, and if I said anything remotely supporting her assertion, she took it as evidence of my full agreement. She appeared to believe that by showering me with affection, attention, and intimacy, including of the sexual (albeit with me on the receiving end) variety, she could bring me around to her position eventually. But, as pleased as I was with how much more invested in our marriage she seemed to be, I was simply unable to agree with her on this.

We thus found ourselves in a sort of uneasy truce. As long as I never insisted that my cock serve any function other than urination, then she would continue to treat me well in all other respects. And as long as she never required me to agree with her explicitly on this topic, then I was willing to forego any immediate hope of erection in exchange for her improved treatment. Our relationship was like that between China and Taiwan, or Israel and the Palestinians, where both sides pretend to believe the same thing, while actually believing very different things. As long as everyone plays along with the agreed fiction, the truce holds.

But I think we both knew that our truce was not sustainable. In fact, it held for exactly six months.

***********

I gave my wife’s foot a final, tender kiss, and I put her slipper back on. I lifted my head and tilted it to one side, so that she could put my collar around my neck. When she’d buckled it in place, I lay my head on her lap, and she stroked my hair. I purred in contentment.

I was just getting comfortable, when she jumped up, startling me. “Oh, my,” she said. “I almost forgot. I have a surprise for you.” She looked down and smiled at me, as though to reassure me that “surprise” meant something pleasant. “Wait here a second,” she ordered.

She went into the kitchen, and when she came back and sat back down, I saw a leather blindfold in her hand. With another smile, she put it over my eyes and snapped its strap around my head. I felt her slip her fingers through the ring of my collar, and she lifted me to my feet. A few moments later, she helped me take a seat at the kitchen table.

She removed my blindfold, and on the table, I saw a chocolate cake, on which six birthday candles burned brightly.

“I baked this for you,” she said proudly. “From scratch, not even from a box! Isn’t it wonderful?”

“Of course, Mistress,” I replied. The sag of one corner and the unevenness of the icing left no doubt that she was telling the truth about the cake’s origins. “It’s really beautiful, thank you so much. But, um… Why?”

“Well,” she replied, “today is the last day of your sixth month in chastity. A whole half a year! I’ve been very pleased with the way you’ve been behaving — no whining and complaining about your penis all the time. I’m so proud of you that I wanted to do something nice for you.”

“Thank you, Mistress,” I said. “It is very nice.”

“You know, I really took to heart all the things you said when I locked you up the last time,” she said. “And I’ve really been trying to make our marriage a lot more intimate and pleasant for you. I hope you see that.”

“Of course, I see it, Mistress,” I said. “And I really appreciate it; I do. I’m sorry if I haven’t shown you.” Of course, I didn’t bring up the impossibility of what she demanded in return, i.e., the permanent loss of my penis as a sex organ, as she put it.

“Your chastity has been hard for me too, you know,” she said. “Sometimes, I really miss sex the way it used to be. Don’t get me wrong, you’re very good at oral, but sometimes it’s just not enough. Do you remember when you used to fuck me so hard that all I could do afterwards was curl up into a little ball on the bed?”

“Yes, Mistress,” I answered. How could I ever forget?

“Sometimes I really want a penis inside me again,” she said. “A man top of me. Do you understand?”

Wait, what? Is my wife actually telling me that she wants to start having sex with me again?

“Yes, Mistress,” I said again, trying to keep my voice even. Perhaps I was an idiot, but I allowed myself a glimmer of hope. Involuntarily, my cock began to stir in its cage.

“So, you wouldn’t mind if I indulged my own needs from time to time?” she asked. “To tell you the truth, I’ve been nervous about bringing it up.” As though to emphasize her nervousness, she looked down shyly and put a bite of cake on her fork.

I paused for few seconds. If I were going to persuade Ellen to allow me to fuck her, I had to phrase my response perfectly. She’d have to see that she could have her cake (i.e., get her cunt fucked until all she could do was curl up into a little ball) and eat it too (i.e., maintain her unquestioned dominant role in our marriage). Fortunately, my clients paid me a thousand dollars an hour precisely because I was extremely good at coming up with perfect phrasing on the fly.

Ellen held her fork in front of her mouth and looked in my eyes, awaiting my response.

“I understand, Mistress, and I’d be very happy to serve you that way,” I said carefully. “I’m sure if I used my cock only as a tool to please you, then it wouldn’t get in the way of me being your submissive. Your slave, I mean,” I hastily corrected my mistake. As I always did when trying to get someone to do something, I used her own phrasing.

It didn’t work.

Her eyes went wide, as though she couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. “Oh, dear,” she said, setting her fork with the bite of cake back onto her plate. She sounded disappointed, as though she felt bad for causing me confusion. “You didn’t really think I meant… I mean, were you actually hoping that I’d… Aww, that’s so sweet of you. But no. Definitely not. I could never unlock you after all the progress you’ve made. Things are going so well for us right now; let’s not spoil it. No, I’ve decided to take a lover. Isn’t that a good idea?”

Had Ellen given me a choice between hearing those words and taking her hardest possible kick to the groin (or five kicks, or ten), I would willingly have sacrificed my balls in a heartbeat. But she didn’t give me that choice.

Now, anyone who’s spent time on male chastity forums might have predicted that Ellen and I would reach this point eventually. Cuckolding is practiced in a seemingly large fraction of FLRs, with, as far as I can tell, the enthusiastic consent of the men involved (indeed, often at their instigation). But no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t wrap my head around the idea. Whenever I’d read journal entries or advice threads on cuckold sites, images of Ellen fucking another man would flood my mind, and the emotional stress would be enough to nauseate me physically to the point of throwing up.

I’d never had the heart to consider what I would do if (or when) Ellen proposed to make me her cuckold. Confronted with the reality of it now, I saw no good options: If I agreed, I’d keep my wife, but lose my lover; if I didn’t, I’d lose both. My heart sank.

“Isn’t that a good idea?” Ellen repeated.

I couldn’t meet her eyes. I stared at the cake, where the birthday candles were burning down to little nubs atop puddles of melted wax. “Mistress,” I answered, miserably. “If that’s what you want, I guess I have to accept it.”

“Accept it?” she repeated. “I thought you’d be happy for me.”

“How can I be happy about you giving yourself to some other guy?” I asked. “I don’t want to lose you.”

“But you wouldn’t lose me” she said. “We’d be closer than ever. The only reason I can even think about this because I trust you so completely. You’ll always be the most important person in my life.”

“Except that you’d apparently rather fuck someone else instead of me,” I said, bitterly.

“Why do you have to drag your penis into every conversation?” she asked. “Sometimes, I really wish we could just cut it off. You and I share so much in so many ways. Everything that really matters. This is just one teeny-tiny thing that I want to share with someone else. Why can’t you let it go?”

“Because it’s not right!” I said, letting a note of anger creep into my voice. “Look, I get that a lot of submissive guys have a cuckold fantasy. But I don’t. I don’t want you to do this.”

“Why are you making this all about you?” she said in an exasperated voice. “Don’t you care about what I want?”

“Of course, I care about what you want. But this isn’t right,” I repeated.

“Well, I think you’re being selfish,” she said. “And I can’t believe I even have to bring this up, but if you remember, you didn’t have any problem bringing outsiders into our marriage when the shoe was on the other foot. How many women did you fuck after we got together? Double standards much?”

“I don’t care if it’s selfish,” I said. “And I admit that it’s a double standard. But I didn’t make it up. It’s just biology: Women have a few eggs and a womb, and men have unlimited sperm.”

“What are you talking about? How does that justify you taking lovers but getting jealous if I do?”

“It doesn’t justify it, but it explains why I care. A man can’t be sure who a baby’s father is, so he has to be careful not to waste resources raising someone else’s. A woman’s the opposite. She knows the baby’s hers, so she has to be careful that she keeps the man around to help raise it. That’s why when a guy catches a woman cheating, his first question is, ‘Did you let him fuck you?’ And a woman’s first question is, ‘Are you in love with her?’ The genes of every man who didn’t get jealous died out on the plains of Africa a million years ago.”

“Well, that’s all very interesting,” she said drily. “But were not on the plains of Africa a million years ago. We’re in Washington, D.C. today.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” I said.

“I was hoping you’d say that my happiness meant more to you than some biology nonsense. But I guess that was too much to expect from you. Even after everything I’ve done for you.”

No, sorry, you’re not going to guilt-trip me into supporting you on this.

“Look, you asked me how I felt, and I told you,” I said. I realized that I was looking into her eyes without permission, and that I’d been doing so for some time. But I held my gaze. “If you’re going to insist that I that I always tell you the truth, then you shouldn’t get mad when I do.”

“Don’t you dare tell me how I should feel,” she said sharply.

I had the distinct feeling that the newer, nicer Ellen — the Ellen that stroked my hair, fucked me gently in the ass, overlooked minor infractions, and all the rest — that Ellen was about to be put on the shelf. And I didn’t have the heart to argue with the previous, angrier Ellen. I gave in, as I knew from the beginning that I would eventually.

“Look, you’re my Mistress,” I said in a flat voice. “You can do whatever you want, and you don’t need my permission.”

“At least you understand that much,” she said.

“But you also can’t stop me from feeling what I feel,” I continued. “I’m not ready for this, and I don’t think I ever will be. But it’s up to you.”

“Well, I’d say you’ve made your position clear. I’ll take what you say into consideration,” she said. “But you’re exactly right. It’s up to me.”

With that, she stood and walked out. On her plate remained her uneaten piece of chocolate cake, one corner detached and impaled on her fork.

***********

Two hours later, I was in my office vainly attempting to look through material in preparation for a series of important meetings the next day. I had no ability to focus. No matter what was on the screen of my laptop, the image dissolved into one of Ellen fucking another man. Then the real-life Ellen appeared in the doorway and entered my office.

Wordlessly, she took me by the collar and dragged me to my feet. Then she went to one knee and put her little key into the padlock of my chastity cage. Almost angrily, she worked to free my shaft from its little cage, although she left the ring around the base of my scrotum. She stood up and looked into my eyes.

“Fuck me,” she said.

“Mistress?” I asked, confused.

“You heard me,” she said sharply. “You want me for yourself, so go ahead. Here I am. Fuck me.” She reached down, grabbed my shaft, and started massaging me. Not slowly and sensually, but roughly and rapidly, as she did in the seconds leading to orgasm.

What the hell do I do now?

In retrospect, it’s obvious what I should have done. I should have fucked her. I should have grabbed her by the hair, bent her over my desk, yanked her pantyhose down from under her skirt, and rode her until she screamed for mercy. Doing so would have changed our sexual dynamic completely. I doubt she would have ceded her dominant role completely, but it certainly would have put us on a more even footing, where she acknowledged her need for me as a man. At a minimum, it would have put to bed the idea that my cock was no longer a sexual organ and that she therefore needed to have sex with other men.

That’s what I should have done. In the event, I froze. Why?

I’ve thought about that moment a lot in the years since, but I’ve never come up with a good reason. Or rather, I’ve come up with a few good reasons, and I suspect that the truth is a mix of all of them.

One reason was pure stubbornness. Ellen had ordered me to fuck her, so I petulantly needed to assert my independence by not fucking her. Insane, yes, but that’s the way my mind works sometimes.

Another reason was that my time in submission had changed me. Or maybe it hadn’t change me, but rather allowed me to be who I really was. I don’t know, and I suppose it doesn’t really matter. But the truth is, I didn’t want to yank Ellen’s pantyhose down and fuck her. I wanted to make love to her. I wanted us to lie naked on our bed together, holding and caressing and kissing each other until finally desire overcame us and I entered her.

I didn’t want to turn the tables on my Mistress. Despite her growing sadism and the increasingly disturbing way she’d been treating me, I adored Ellen more deeply than I can ever express. I just wanted to feel that she still loved me and that she needed me sexually. I was happy to be her submissive, or even her slave. But I also needed to be her man. Her only man.

But the main reason I didn’t fuck my wife that evening — the most practical reason, the reason I’m loathe to admit to and shudder even to remember — is this: I couldn’t get it up.

Ellen’s hand felt cold on my cock. Her vigorous massage seemed designed to irritate, rather than arouse me. But it shouldn’t have mattered. Never, ever, ever had my cock not responded immediately to stimulation of any kind. Ever. In most cases, even the expectation of stimulation was enough to make my shaft hard, throbbing, and ready for action. Not this time.

“What’s the matter with you?” my wife asked.

Her tone was surprised and annoyed, not mocking and insulting, and it sent me into what I’d later call the death spiral of impotence: A slight feeling of flaccidity would lead to nervousness, which would distract me from the task at hand, which lead to further flaccidity, which would lead to panic, which would lead to catastrophe. Once caught in the death spiral of impotence, I found myself almost never able to escape and achieve a satisfactory erection.

“It’s just so hard when you’re angry like this,” I said.

“It wouldn’t be if you were still a man,” she said. “You’d just get it up and fuck me. But you’re not a man anymore. You’re a sissy faggot who only wants it up the ass.”

“Stop,” I said. “Why are you doing this to me?”

“Doing what to you?” she asked, mocking me. “I’m

I turned away, breaking contact with her.

“You’re pathetic,” she said, and she walked away.

***********

I don’t remember how I got to bed. But I vividly remember waking up in the middle of the night to find Ellen fondling my cock, this time with affection, even passion. I grew very hard. She mounted me, not in reverse cowgirl or Amazon, but facing me. Leaning down and burying her face in my neck.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” She was sobbing. I turned her onto her back, and I made love to her — not as her slave, not as her dominant. As the man who loved her. I came into her vagina for the first time since I entered submission.

***********

I walked on eggshells for the rest of the week. Throughout my time in submission, Ellen had always been, if nothing else, supremely rational. Of course, by this time she’d already made peace with her blossoming sadism, and when her urges got the better of her, she could be very cruel and, well, sadistic. But for the most part, I could predict how she would react to nearly any circumstance, and I was usually well-prepared.

That week, however, she seemed to have become a completely different person. She’d fly off the handle for no apparent reason. Then half an hour later, equally inexplicably, she’d order me to kneel at her feet so that she could caress and coo at me. Something was definitely wrong. But what?

On Friday afternoon, I received a text from Ellen ordering me to arrive home no later than 8:00.

The order forced me to cancel a client dinner, one which I’d arranged in a last-ditch effort to finalize a lucrative lobbying contract. My cancellation risked allowing a competing firm to swoop in and swipe the client out from under my nose, which would cost me a hefty chunk of change. But given how volatile my wife had been all week, I considered it worth the risk in order to avoid whatever unpleasantness that might have arisen from failing to obey her.

I sat at my desk and pushed through until 7:30. I switched off my computer, grabbed a couple of sandwiches from the office kitchen, and headed down to the garage. I ate in the car on my way home, knowing that it was even odds on whether I’d get the chance to eat at home.

I cut it close. There was more traffic than usual on Connecticut Avenue, and at 7:45 I was still navigating around Dupont Circle. But when I finally turned onto my street, I got lucky, and I found a parking spot just a couple of doors down from ours. I opened the front door just at 8:00 and raced upstairs to strip off my clothes and splash the sweat from my body.

Ellen was downstairs in the kitchen making herself a cup of tea. I entered and stood nearby with my head bowed, awaiting her attention.

One thing I noticed right away was that she was wearing her house slippers, not her spike-heeled boots, which meant that she probably wasn’t in a particularly sadistic mood. With luck, I’d be able to enjoy an evening sipping beer and watching a baseball game, while catching up on email, instead of doing chores or enduring a lengthy punishment session. I breathed a silent sigh of relief.

Another thing I noticed was that she was dressed to the nines. Her cherry-red cocktail dress was strapless and extended barely to the middle of her thigh, and it accomplished the seemingly impossible task of making my wife’s perfect body appear even more perfect. She looked incredibly sexy, of course. But Ellen being Ellen, she managed to look sophisticated at the same time. A three-hundred-dollar trip to the hair salon, a pair of black silk stockings, and a few very pricey items of jewelry no doubt contributed to the effect.

Certainly, I had questions. But just as certainly, I was forbidden to ask them.

My wife ignored me as she efficiently poured her tea and stirred in her preferred two teaspoons of sugar. She picked up her cup and saucer and went to the family room, snapping her fingers for me to follow.

She sat in her chair and drank her tea, while I knelt down, reverently removed one slipper, and began to kiss her foot. I say “drank” rather than the more elegant “sipped” because she consumed the tea in largish gulps, so much so that I worried that she might burn her throat. She seemed impatient to get through the ritual, bored by my pathetic attempt to please her.

Normally during foot worship, she either contentedly lapped up my adoration (if she was pleased with me, which was most of the time), or she rubbed her feet in my face and insulted me, mocking me as her worthless slave and sissy faggot (if she wasn’t), or she tormented me physically with her stiletto heels (if she was feeling sadistic, regardless of her attitude towards me). But this time she did none of those things. instead, she acted as though I weren’t even in the room.

This was her prerogative, of course, but it was certainly unusual. I thought that whatever issues had been causing her strange behavior all week must have been coming to a head.

She took a final gulp of tea and set the cup in its saucer. Without waiting for me even to start on her second foot, she pulled me up by my hair and attached my collar perfunctorily. She stood and snapped her fingers, and without waiting for me to get up, she headed toward the stairs leading to the basement. I hurried after her, fearing that my hopes for an evening’s relaxation were about to be dashed.

***********

When I’d planned the dungeon long before, I’d included a small jail cell in the design. It was simple, consisting only of a row of floor-to-ceiling iron bars, spaced six inches apart and set diagonally across one corner of the room, with a hinged gate in an iron frame. The row of vertical bars was seven feet long, and the two side walls were five feet, creating a triangular space where a person could stand or sit unimpeded and, if necessary, lie down to sleep, although not comfortably.

As simple as the jail cell was, it was very secure. I’d made certain that once a woman was locked inside, she had hope of freeing herself.

When I was a dominant, I rarely used the space, primarily because I liked to have my partners where I could easily get my hands on them. Once in a while, however, I’d meet a woman with an abandonment fetish, who would look longingly at the cell and beg me to lock her up leave her alone in the dark. One submissive in particular — a sexy, nineteen-year-old exchange student with perky breasts and deep-seated daddy issues — let out an audible whimper when she saw the arrangement for the first time, and then a deep moan when she heard the iron gate creak open in front of her. A quick check between her legs as she stepped into the cell confirmed that the anticipation of abandonment literally made her pussy drip.

For me, the primary benefit of the cell was that it provided a place where I could keep a woman out of harm’s way in the event that I had matters to attend to elsewhere, and I’d never have to worry that she might hurt herself or wander about unsupervised.

***********

Ellen clicked shut the large padlock on the iron gate, imprisoning me inside the cell, then went to find a pair of wrist cuffs. “Give me your hands,” she said when she returned, and she hooked my wrists together around two of the iron bars.

I was not prepared for her next move.

She unclasped the bracelet that held the little key to my chastity cage. She fit the key into the brass padlock, and in a few moments, she’d worked the steel bars off of my shaft. My cock was free for the first time in over three months. More interestingly, it was situated so that I could easily position it between the iron bars and grasp it in my hands.

“Mistress?” I asked. “Why…” I didn’t finish the question; I didn’t need to.

“I’ve decided to give you a little test,” she explained. “I’m going out for a bit, and when I come back, I will check to see whether or not you masturbated while I was away. I’m quite sure I made the right decision when I locked up your penis, but I don’t want your cage to become a crutch. The whole point of putting you in chastity is for you to develop self-control, and I want to see if you’ve managed to do so at all over the past eighteen months.”

“Yes, Mistress. I’m sure I have,” I said. In fact, with longer and longer lockups, I’d been getting used to having no access to my cock, and I didn’t obsess about it nearly as often as I did before chastity. I was confident that I could pass her little test easily.

“More importantly,” she continued, “I want to see if you’re coming to accept the loss of your penis as a sex organ, as we discussed. In an ideal world, you would feel precisely the same down there as you would if I had the whole apparatus surgically removed. Touching yourself shouldn’t interest you in the slightest. I want to see how much progress we’re making on that front.”

Whoa, Nellie. I never actually agreed to that, if you will recall.

But I didn’t see the point in arguing that I had not — and almost certainly never would — accept the loss of my penis as a sex organ. For that to happen, she really would have to have it cut off, which thankfully didn’t seem like a realistic possibility. So, I simply answered, “I understand, Mistress,” which didn’t commit me to anything.

“I’m not making this a game,” Ellen continued. “There will be no reward for keeping your hands to yourself, other than the satisfaction of knowing that you’ve pleased me. And no punishment for masturbating, other than your own shame at knowing that you’re not the man I need you to be.”

“I understand, Mistress,” I said again.

“Now, I don’t want you panicking while I’m gone,” she said. She gestured around the cell. “There’s some water for when you get thirsty, and a bucket in case you need to pee. I’ve checked to make sure that the microphones are working, and I’ll leave my phone on. So, you can call me if you really need to. But I’m counting on you to wait patiently and not bother me. Do you understand?”

This all seemed like Standard Operating Procedure, so I was a little confused about why she felt the need to go over it, but the only answer I gave her was, “Yes, Mistress.”

Then, without a word of farewell, she walked away.

Due to the seriousness with which my wife took her responsibility as my dominant, she rarely left me alone in the dungeon for more than twenty minutes at a stretch, and even then, only if she were absolutely certain that there was no risk of injury. But putting two and two together (the cocktail dress, the jail cell, the bucket, the little speech about how safe I was), I understood that she’d made plans for the entire evening. For the next several hours at least, she would be out enjoying drinks, dinner, dancing, and who knows what else, while I would be confined to the small, silent, dimly-lit jail cell.

So much for my hope of having some beers and watching the Dodgers game.

I quickly understood that my main enemy was going to be boredom. By this time in my submission, Ellen had grown very fond of putting me in what is called “predicament bondage,” wherein shifting my body to reduce one type of stress or pain or humiliation inevitably led to an increase in a different type of stress or pain or humiliation. Given the deviousness with which my wife created predicaments for me, boredom was never on my list of things to worry about when she left me alone.

This time was different. I had absolutely nothing on which to focus my mind, nothing to do but stare through the iron bars of the cell.

I tried to think of ways to distract myself. I decided that exercising would be a positive first step. I did some squats, with the metal rings of my wrist cuffs scraping noisily against the gate as I went up and down. I was out of breath after two dozen or so, and I stopped, vowing to do more later. Then, I tried to do some pull-ups by gripping the tops of the iron bars, but my hands weren’t strong enough to keep me from slipping down as soon as my feet left the floor. I couldn’t figure out a way to position myself to do push-ups. So much for physical fitness.

I remembered reading somewhere that prisoners in solitary confinement or explorers alone at the north pole would employ various mental exercises to keep from going stir-crazy — reciting Shakespeare from memory or playing imaginary games of chess in their heads, things like that. But unfortunately, “To be or not to be” was about the extent of my Shakespeare, and I’d lost interest in chess when I graduated from high school. Mental fitness was also not a solution.

About an hour into my confinement, my legs grew stiff, so I did a few more squats to keep the blood flowing. I needed an alternative to my standing position, but with my wrists cuffed around the bars, my options were limited. I tried sitting on my knees Samurai-style, but my legs fell asleep after a few minutes, and standing up again was pure agony. I finally determined that my best bet was to sit on my ass sideways to the gate with my knees bent, leaning against the bars. But even that grew uncomfortable after thirty minutes or so.

After about two hours, I had to pee, which turned out to be tricky. I maneuvered the bucket into position with my foot and turned to face it. But after curling my wrists around the bars, my fingertips barely reached my cock, making it difficult to point my shaft accurately. And good aim was important, since there would most likely be unpleasant consequences if I missed the bucket. Whenever Ellen had commanded me to, I’d lapped up her refined, feminine urine from the floor or toilet without hesitation. But my own? Ugh.

Once I’d peed and slaked my thirst from the water bottle, there was nothing left to distract me from the excruciating boredom.

Well, almost nothing.

There was the possibility of masturbating. My sudden realization that my cock was within reach and that there was absolutely nothing to stop me from having my first orgasm in over three months — or two, or three orgasms, depending on how long Ellen was gone — was mind-blowing. Almost without thinking, I pressed my body against the bars, and my hand went to my cock. But it didn’t respond. Even after massaging my shaft for a few minutes, while recalling my most reliable sexual fantasies, I had at best a semi-erection.

Hmmm… Is it possible to forget how to jerk off? No, don’t be ridiculous. Just keep going, and it’ll be back to normal in a minute. My hand resumed stimulating my shaft. Then I stopped myself mid-pull. Is this really such a good idea?

Ellen had said that there would be no punishment for doing the deed. Truth be told, I didn’t entirely trust her (Ellen never lied, but I’d learned to parse her words very carefully to avoid unpleasant misunderstandings), but nevertheless she had said it. On the other hand, whether she punished me or not, there was no doubt whatsoever that she would be disgusted with me if I did it. And, as she pointed out, I would also have to deal with my own feelings of shame and self-loathing.

On the other hand… Three months had been a pretty damned long time to go without an orgasm. And as for Ellen… Well, frankly, fuck Ellen. She’d left me stuck in a jail cell, while she went galivanting around town, so there was no reason for me to get worked up about what she might think. This was entirely my decision, and I would whack off or not as I pleased, Mistress or no Mistress.

This internal debate went on for quite some time, providing a distraction of sorts. To jerk or not to jerk, that is the question. I laughed at bitterly at myself and at my pathetic situation.

In the end, I didn’t do it. Not out of fear of Ellen’s punishment or of her disgust or of my own shame and self-loathing. Instead, I decided that it just wasn’t worth it. Masturbation would provide at most ten or fifteen minutes of distraction, followed by a few seconds of orgasm. And where would I be once it was over? In the same jail cell, facing the same, seemingly endless boredom. But now with the inevitable feeling of achy emptiness in my groin.

Finally, having exhausted all possible alternatives, my thoughts turned inward. Naturally, my mind took advantage of the opportunity to torment me by replaying all the cringiest episodes of my life and filling me with feelings of shame and regret over things I had said or done — both trivial and life-changing. Foremost among the latter, of course, was the way I’d treated Ellen in the first years of our marriage, and my mind confronted me with the inevitable conclusion that Ellen’s treatment of me was exactly what I deserved.

But even this gut-wrenching self-reflection was insufficient to drive away the intense, unrelenting boredom for very long. I gripped the iron bars tightly and stared across the dimly-lit dungeon. I felt myself giving way to despair.

Then, I heard something. At least, I thought I heard something.

When I built the dungeon, I’d had it soundproofed in order to avoid the possibility that one of my submissive’s screams (of ecstasy or otherwise) might arouse the curiosity of my neighbors. So, I knew that any sound coming from upstairs would be extremely faint. Even so, I’d definitely heard something.

Hadn’t I?

I tried to bring the sound back into my mind — could it have been the front door? I listened intently, but there was only silence.

Then I thought I heard another sound, perhaps a shuffling or scraping. Then more silence. And then, a sound that very definitely just might have been the sound of footsteps. Perhaps of Ellen walking from the living room to the kitchen?

“Mistress?” I called out, hoping the microphones would pick up the sound. “Are you there?”

For crying out loud, don’t be an idiot.

She wouldn’t hear me, because she always set the system to translate any voice signals it received from the basement into an SMS sent to her iPhone, rather than broadcast audibly. So, she’d receive my pathetic question the next time she checked her messages. And even if she did hear, she’d probably punish my lack of patience by ignoring me.

More silence.

Then I heard the absolutely unmistakable sound of water rushing through pipes. Ellen had just flushed the toilet. I let out an audible sigh of relief. Just knowing that she was home and would soon come to release me eased the pain of boredom. In my mind, I imagined the sound of her footsteps padding down the stairs, then across the brick floor. Then the creak of the gate as it opened, releasing me after God-knows-how many hours of torment.

But she didn’t come. My breaths grew short and my heartbeat fast as I my anticipation increased. I forced myself to relax and focus on listening, but I heard nothing more.

OK, she’s wants to tease me. She’ll take her own sweet time. Maybe she’ll shower and put on her negligee before she comes downstairs. Fine, I can wait. Just as long as she comes. Eventually.

Then, over the dungeon’s speakers, I heard a voice. A male voice. My chest constricted.

I realized that Ellen had connected her iPhone to the dungeon’s speakers, a capability that I’d built into the system long before. The way I’d used this feature was to tie my submissive to the wooden post, tear off her clothes, and leave her alone. After a while, her nudity and bondage would create a sense of vulnerability, which I would amplify by speaking into my smartphone (which also allowed me to watch her through the room’s cameras) and asking her embarrassing questions — Describe in detail the loss of your virginity. When and how did you last masturbate? Tell me your dirtiest fantasy. That kind of thing.

In the cold light of day, of course, this sounds a little silly. But as I’ve said, sex plays tricks on the mind. And for a young, inexperienced woman, the realization that she’d been under observation without her knowledge, combined with having to answer deeply personal questions from a mysterious, disembodied voice was usually quite a mind-fuck.

Ellen was clearly aiming to have the same effect on me. Whatever was going on upstairs, she definitely intended for me to hear it. She’d probably invited some random guy over for drinks, and she wanted me to stew in my jealousy for a while before she came downstairs to release me.

But that was as far as it would go. Right? We’d discussed at length the possibility of her having sex with someone else, and I’d told her very clearly how much it would hurt me. So, there was no way that she would actually cuckold me. Right?

If Ellen’s intention was to fuck with my mind, she was most definitely succeeding.

I strained to listen, trying to pick up any clues that I could about what was happening above my head. There was silence, then some kind of movement. Then more silence. Then I’d catch snatches of words or phrases, occasionally punctuated by Ellen’s laughter. Then the male voice again. Whoever this guy was, he was definitely still in the house.

What I assumed was Ellen’s teasing continued for maybe an hour.

Then I heard a sound. And all of the beatings and torments and insults and degradations that Ellen had inflicted on me over the past two years faded into utter triviality. I would gladly have endured all of them together — five times over! — if by doing so I could unhear that sound.

The sound was a kind of high-pitched, whimpering moan that Ellen — my submissive Ellen, my loving wife Ellen — had always made when she was fully aroused and desperate to have my cock inside her. I’d never been able to induce the sound from cunnilingus, no matter how many hours I tried to do so. She almost certainly didn’t know that she made the sound, which meant that there was no chance that she was faking it now for my benefit. In an instant, dozens of images of Ellen bleating out her whimpering moan — with her legs spread, her pussy soaking wet, her eyes pleading for me to enter her — flashed through my mind.

My wife was upstairs fucking another man.

Everything I knew — or thought I knew — about my life, my world, my marriage, and my future was obliterated forever. And by “forever” I mean exactly that — forever. No matter what happened next, no matter what she said or didn’t say, no matter what I did or didn’t do, my life as I’d always known it was shattered beyond repair.

Once Ellen had fucked another man, she could never unfuck him. I was no longer a real man. I was a cuckold.

I jerked my arms against my restraints, and I slammed my body uselessly against the iron bars. I inadvertently kicked over the bucket, spilling my urine onto the floor of my cell. I let out a long, loud screech, giving voice to the jealousy, rage, frustration and grief that overwhelmed me.

As desperate as I was to block the sounds of sexual intercourse from my ears, I was even more desperate to hear every minute detail. I listened intently as her moans grow louder and more frequent. Yes, she had wanted me to hear this, but what I was hearing was no performance — I’d known her too intimately for too long not to be morally certain of that. She was giving herself passionately to whoever was in (my!) bed with her at that moment.

As I focused on Ellen’s moaning with growing horror, I pictured vividly what he must be seeing and feeling at that very moment. I realized that my cock was hard and throbbing, and when I looked down, I saw the reason: I was masturbating. With a shriek, I jerked my hand away. But my erection — supported by an incredibly powerful, toxic emotional cocktail — would not abate. I’d long known that there was such as thing as “hate fucking” or “rage fucking,” but until that moment, I’d never understood it.

I couldn’t keep my hand from my shaft, and soon I found myself jerking off to the rhythm of Ellen’s moaning. When I finally heard her cry out in orgasm, my sperm pumped out of my cock in angry bursts and splatted on the floor. Somehow, in this demented, horrifying version of the universe, my wife and I climaxed simultaneously for the first time in over two years.

Then the sound system went quiet. Whether Ellen was lying quietly and contentedly in my unknown rival’s arms, or whether she thought that I wouldn’t benefit from listening to another bout of her passionate coitus, I never learned. All I knew was that I was all alone with my shame and self-loathing. I sank onto the floor and began to cry.

Later that night, I masturbated again, hoping desperately the endorphins from orgasm would send me to sleep, allowing me to escape my pain. Thankfully, they did, and I drifted off sometime in the early morning.

I woke up a few hours later, when I felt Ellen’s foot prodding me through the bars.

“Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey,” she said in a mocking singsong, looking down at me. “I got up expecting you to have already made coffee, but when I came downstairs, you were nowhere to be found. I very nearly got angry with you, before I realized that it wasn’t your fault at all, because you were still locked up down here. Was it terribly thoughtless of me not to let you out when I got home?”

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Is it really possible for person to be, or even pretend to be, that cold? All of my loneliness, hopelessness, frustration, anger, sadness, anguish and despair came out together in a single cry. “Why?”

“Why what?” she said, challenging me to confront her.

“You know goddamned well why what!” I shouted. Punishment be damned, I could no longer control my anger and frustration.

“Because I wanted to have sex,” she said. “Real sex, with a real penis. Something that you’re no longer allowed.”

“Because you won’t allow it!” My frustration was getting the better of me. “You didn’t need to do this!”

She didn’t answer me for a while. We looked at each other through the bars of the cage. I kept my eyes raised, not caring what punishment she might later mete out for my lack of respect. Finally, she broke the silence.

“I need to tell you something, and I need you to listen to me very carefully,” she said. Since it’s a fairly well-known fact that no pleasant conversation ever starts with the phrase, “I need to tell you something,” I prepared for the worst. Had she been having an affair with the guy? Was she planning to leave me for him?

She continued, “I love you, and I respect you. Very much, in fact. I suppose I don’t tell you that often enough.” Well, that was a twist. In point of fact, I can’t recall that she’d ever said it. “Despite your efforts to hide it sometimes, you’re the best person I know. And my debt of gratitude for everything you’ve given me in my life is one that I can never repay. You hold my heart in a way that no one else ever could. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Mistress,” I answered, as evenly as I could. I was trying desperately to keep ahold of myself, but the sound of her whimpering moan kept running through my head. Then the other shoe dropped.

“But there’s something else that you must understand,” she said. “You no longer have any claim whatsoever on my body. When I have sex, with whom I have sex, where, how — none of these questions are your concern anymore.”

“Of course, they’re my concern!” I said, unable to control my anger. “You’re my wife, for fuck’s sake!”

“I know that you’re upset,” she said, her voice growing sharper. “But I won’t tolerate you speaking to me in that tone of voice. Legally, you are my husband, of course. But that’s just a story we tell people. In reality, you’re my slave. That’s all. We decided this long ago, and to be honest, I’m starting to become frustrated by your refusal to accept what that means.”

“I’m sorry, Mistress,” I said. Actually, I didn’t feel apologetic in the least, but the apology came automatically. Ellen’s consistent, firm training over the past two years had been effective. Then I again heard her whimpering moan sound in my mind, and I lost it. “No! Fuck that, I’m not sorry. You’ve gone too goddamned far. I told you I wouldn’t accept you fucking someone else.”

“You also told me it was my decision,” she replied. “And I decided. Now you get to decide. You can either accept our relationship as it really is, or you can end it.”

So, that was it.

There would be no compromise. No stepping back from the precipice. It would be “My way or the highway” and “Damn the torpedoes; full speed ahead.” Ellen was prepared to sacrifice me on the altar of her vision of femdom. And I wasn’t prepared to sacrifice her for whatever vision I still held for myself. As a result, I had no choice but to accept her new reality. She would fuck other men. She would keep me in permanent lock-up. Intimacy would mean licking her pussy and taking her strap-on in my anus, and nothing more. Ever.

We both knew these things to be true. But while accepting them to myself, I tried to salvage a shred of dignity. “I’ll think about it,” I said sullenly.

“You do that,” she said in a clipped voice. She wasn’t buying my bullshit for an instant. “I’d hate for you to make a rash decision when you’re upset. But remember, you can only end things, not change them. If you stay, you will continue to be my slave. You will have to learn self-control, and you will have to accept that your penis is no longer a sex organ.” She gestured to the faint spots of dried sperm on the floor. “I see that we still have a way to go on that.”

I didn’t answer, and there was another uncomfortable silence.

“Alright, I see that you’re not ready to talk about this rationally,” she said. “So, I’m going upstairs. Now, I have a lot of chores for you to do today. And if you don’t want me to put you in your shackles while you do them, then I’d suggest you put this behind you and get ready for the day.”

“Is he gone?” I asked.

She looked at me, disappointed. “Yes, he’s gone,” she answered. “I never told him about you, so your little secret’s safe for now. But in an ideal world, you wouldn’t ask that. You’d be proud to be my slave, and it wouldn’t matter to you who knows.” I was beginning to understand that the phrase “in an ideal world” meant approximately, “what you may expect me next.”

She put the key in the jail cell’s padlock, clicked it open, and walked away. She stopped and turned back around after a few steps. If I’d hoped for a final, comforting word, I was disappointed. “And lick up your mess before you leave, she said,” her voice dripping with disgust. “I don’t care if it’s already dried. Don’t forget your urine. It smells filthy in here.”

So, there was one final humiliation to endure before I could begin trying to put the horror of the previous night behind me. There was no way to avoid it, since Ellen had a dozen ways to check up on me.

I got on my hands and knees and put my mouth to the floor.