She had asked me to break her.

I knew the last few months had been difficult. I could see the increasing weariness on her face during our weekly Skype calls. She had talked about feeling detached. About being numb. About not being able to connect with her life. I had gently suggested therapy and I could tell it was helping, but I knew even the therapy was hard for her sometimes. So in some ways I wasn’t surprised by her request.

What surprised me was the intensity of it. Our play had a strong D/s element but she had never been interested in more traditional elements of kink. We had always had strict limits around things like bondage, pain, degradation, and fear. She was a cautious subject. We had initially strictly negotiated even very vanilla-seeming play and only gradually expanded those boundaries with time and lots of communication.

But now, she said, she was open to those things. She had no limits. She was ok if I hurt her. She was ok if I embarrassed her. She was ok if I scared her. She knew I understood what I was doing, she said. She trusted me. I could do my worst. She needed my help.

And so we started negotiating. We decided this scene would be best done in person so we planned it for an upcoming con. Other than this, she didn’t want to know details. She didn’t want expectations. I had blanket consent. When I asked her for a list of people that she would feel comfortable possibly being involved, she provided me with the names of trusted friends without comment. When I tried to talk more about how she might react to some of the more extreme items on the list, she would only repeat that she trusted me. I could do what I needed to do.

On the day we had planned, I found myself constantly aware of her as she walked around the convention. I made sure that she ate and drank water. I checked in throughout the day on how she was feeling. Did she still want to do the scene? Did she understand that she could back out or ask me to de-intensify things?

Later, snuggled together in bed, I reaffirmed her safety suggestions both consciously and in trance. I reminded her that she could safeword and that she would always have the ability to speak up if something felt wrong. It was ok to stop a scene at any point for whatever reason. I could tell she was nervous even though she was being so brave in the face of the unknown.

She must have seen my concern reflected in my face. “Are you ok?” she asked. “You can back out of this too, you know.”

“I know,” I said. We shared a smile. “I can’t stop thinking about it though. I want to see how you’ll be. Who you’ll be after. I want to be the one who breaks you.”

And there, as I said it, was my headspace. I had been chasing it all day, nerves blocking that sense of competence in my head. Now my own voice filled me with a quiet surety. I had a plan. I could do this.

She must have seen me change as I felt it. She nodded in response and took a deep breath. Then she looked back over at me. “I’m ready ma'am.”

I threw a pillow on the floor and nodded wordlessly.

We started out slowly. She knelt comfortably, already glassy eyed. I began to whisper the words and mantras we had built over time to reinforce her submission. Her compliance. Her helpless enthrallment. Reminding her how deep and obedient she always fell for me.

She sank quickly and utterly, eyes rolling back as she succumbed to the pull of my voice.

Then we worked on her resistance. I woke her up and had her try in vain to resist going back into trance for me, each time noting as her struggles got shorter and more halfhearted. I encouraged her to struggle more, and reminded her that I loved to see her exhaust herself for me. I had her look in my eyes and told her she couldn’t look away, even as I increased her natural shyness and embarrassment exponentially with each snap of my fingers. I watched her struggle and flail and be unable to look down or around or anywhere else but right where I commanded. I saw the part of her that fights slowly fade away, defeated and quieted and tired.

With each step I repeated ideas and anchored touches to remind her that she was open. She was vulnerable. She was focused. She was helpless.

Gradually as she weakened, I switched my language to reminding her how suggestible she was. I started with tricks we had played with before, things like taking her name and freezing her thoughts. We moved onto stronger and more complete suggestions, making her forget herself, distrust her memories, doubt her perceptions- only to shift her reality back and around at my whim. We played with states where she knew I was lying to her but couldn’t help but believe every word I said. Then there were times when I had her believe everything was normal even as she obeyed each suggestion automatically. She was so focused and responsive that she remembered not to notice the people who started to quietly file into the room. She was mine too completely. She only thought what I wanted her to think- she only knew what I told her she could know. She was open. She was focused. She was vulnerable. She was helpless.

She was ready. I reminded her of how well she had learned to look in my eyes when I spoke to her earlier- and that now her obedient eyes could use that lesson to look at everyone’s face as they spoke to her in turn, even if she wanted to look away. I took her voice, telling her she was unable to speak except to address her safety. I motioned to her friend to stand in front of her as I lightly touched the back of her neck, using the pre-arranged signal to let her mind finally be aware of other people. As she saw him and followed the compulsion to look at his eyes, he softly began to tell the story of how they met. How he was so scared and nervous at the time. How she had helped him. How they had both grown over their friendship.

Remarkably, I could see a bit of fight coming back into her eyes- a part of her that I had quieted and subdued what seemed like hours before. I firmly but gently ran my fingers up from the nape of her neck and grabbed a handful of the back of her hair, slightly repositioning the angle of her head. Her attention refocused, I reminded her that she was open, she was focused, she was vulnerable, she was helpless. I used  anchored touches to reinforce these ideas as she quietly continued to listen to her friend. The tears began to well up in her eyes.

I was there when she broke.

She broke over and over again, in different ways with different people. Just like she had wanted to. Just like she needed.

I held her body up and held her mind down. Focused. Where she could hear it.

And, later, we were all there to help put her back together again.

Notes:

If you'd like to hear an audio version of this story, check out this episode of Zany Danger's Fingering a Page podcast. As always, comments and feedback are very much appreciated. :)