The snap of her fingers ordering me to follow her downstairs to the basement was superfluous. At that moment, I would have followed her unbidden through all nine circles of Dante’s Inferno. When we entered the dungeon, she snapped her fingers again and pointed to the spot beneath the steel suspension cable. I stood there as ordered, while she cuffed my wrists, hooked them to the device, and pushed the button on the winch’s remote control. The electric motor whirred to life, and in a moment, I was completely at her mercy, my hands raised above my head. She took a moment to cuff my ankles together, then pushed the button again, lifting my wrists until my arms and shoulders bore all my weight. Painfully. Another push of the button lowered the cable a couple of inches, just allowing me to relieve the tension by standing on my toes. But after thirty seconds or so in that position, my calf muscles started to give out, and I was forced once again to accept the pain in my arms and shoulders. I squirmed, shifting the stress from one set of limbs to the other. My wife left me alone to enjoy my predicament for several minutes, while she unhurriedly adjusted the dungeon’s atmosphere to her satisfaction. She selected a playlist of Bach fugues on her iPhone and tuned the room’s sound system to a volume that was noticeable, but not intrusive. She dimmed the track lighting on the ceiling and positioned lit scented candles around the room. She spent a long time examining the array of instruments on the large table, as though trying to make up her mind about which forms of bondage and torture best suited her current mood. Oh, boy. What am I in for this time? When she finally turned her attention back to me, it seemed that what I was in for might turn out to be surprisingly pleasurable. The electric winch whirred for a couple of seconds, lowering me enough so that I could put my heels on the floor and relieve the pain in my limbs, although I remained helpless and immobilized. Ellen stood in front of me, so close that I could smell her myriad feminine scents, and she gave my cheek a soft caress with the back of her gloved hand. “Tell me what you’re feeling,” she said. These were the first words she’d spoken since I arrived home that evening. I took a short breath. I’d learned from (literally) painful experience that this type of wide-open question, without any context, was potentially very dangerous. I might unwittingly admit to an insufficiently servile attitude, giving her displeasure and therefore cause to punish me severely. Given her present sadistic mood, severe punishment seemed inevitable, but I was anyway anxious not to displease her, if I could avoid it. I stalled for time by focusing on the banal. “My shoulders are sore, Mistress,” I answered. “And it’s hard to stand on…” “Don’t be clever,” she interrupted sharply. “I’m not trying to trick you. Just tell me what you’re feeling.” Despite her assurance that she wasn’t trying to trick me, I still wasn’t convinced that it was safe. “Love, Mistress,” I answered. “I adore you. I worship you. You know that I do.” It was hard to go wrong with this answer, and it had the additional benefit of being truthful. She shook her head and clucked her tongue disapprovingly. “No, no, no. That’s still too safe. I need you to be honest with me. Tell me what you’re feeling right now,” she insisted for the third time. “Don’t lie to me, and don’t try to hide anything from me.” I continued to hesitate. She arched her eyebrows, signaling that her next insistence would likely be accompanied by a sharp blow of the cane, or worse. “Desire, Mistress,” I finally confessed. “You’re so beautiful.” Then I broke down and spilled all the beans. “I want you, Mistress. I want you so much. I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help it. Not to fuck you like before, I promise. But just to be with you, to be inside you, to feel you close to me.” I knew that I sounded pitiful, but I didn’t care. She smiled at me. “That’s a good boy. Now you’re telling me the truth. I know you want me, and that’s alright” she reassured me, her voice gentle and encouraging. “It makes me happy when you’re open with me about your feelings. Do you really want to be closer to me? Physically and emotionally?” “Yes, Mistress. You know that I do.” “And would you like us to be sexually intimate more than we have been?” she asked. I hesitated, but she reassured me, “It’s alright. You can tell me.” “Yes, Mistress, more than anything,” I answered. “If it’s what you want,” I added, to be safe. “I understand. Would you like me to come closer right now? To touch you?” she asked. Of course, I wanted her to touch me. But I was afraid and confused, because all her actions up to that point had prepared me to expect pain, not pleasure. And certainly not intimacy. I found myself unable to answer her with words. In response to my vague sigh of yearning, she began to run her gloved fingers slowly up and down my back, and then over my ass and down the backs of my thighs. My skin tingled beneath her butterfly caresses. I could feel her breath on my neck. She wrapped her fingers around my buttocks and pulled herself into me. Her hands went up to my shoulder blades, and she took me in a tight embrace. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt the pressure of her soft breasts against my chest. She burrowed her face into my neck and began nuzzling and kissing me. There was no mockery, no taunting. Just the pressure of my wife’s hands on my back and the warmth of her body next to mine. The pleasure wasn’t sexual, but it was as intense as any orgasm I’d ever experienced. I struggled involuntarily against my wrist cuffs, desperate to free my arms and wrap them around the woman I adored. Had I been able to do so, I would have been content to hold her there for all eternity. She embraced me for a while longer, then unwound her arms took a step back. She smiled at me, removed her gloves, and started stroking me again, her skin now touching mine. Without breaking contact, she slowly walked around behind me and stood close. She ran her fingers lightly over my chest and stomach, flicking my nipples and sending shivers through my entire body. She cooed affectionately into my ear as she stroked me, and I began to open myself up to pleasure, dropping my defenses and inhibitions. Her sensual touch continued. I closed my eyes and moaned. I belonged to her completely. She took my pelvis her hands and pulled my body into hers, grinding her crotch against my ass. Her fingers pressed into the nerves leading to my groin, and my cock began to stir in its cage. I looked down and miraculously saw her fingers inserting her key into the brass padlock. A moment later, she had deftly removed my shaft from its steel basket, giving my burgeoning erection room to grow. Now, I was really disoriented. After more than a year in chastity, the schedule of my lockups had become nearly the central fact of my existence. When I woke up each morning, I didn’t think, for example, “Today is Thursday, March 6th,” but rather, “There are five days left until my next release.” And my last thought before falling asleep each night was always, “When I wake up tomorrow, there will be only four days left.” And so on. Ellen never unlocked me early, except as reward for some extraordinary behavior, and she always announced her rewards with a lot of fanfare. In the present moment, I could think of nothing that I’d done to warrant early release, and my current lockup wasn’t scheduled to end for another week (actually, six days, but who was counting?). My body suddenly grew tense. “Mistress?” I asked. “But I thought…” “Shhh…” she interrupted. “You know you’re not allowed to question me.” “I’m sorry, Mistress,” I said. But I remained alert and wary. “It’s alright,” she said. “Just relax.” I took a deep breath. She wrapped her fingers around my shaft and massaged it expertly, and in a few seconds, I was fully erect and throbbing with desire. “Mmmm… You like that, don’t you,” she said in response to my quiet moaning. She cupped her soft, feminine hand around my cock, inviting me to fuck it, and I began to move my hips back and forth as she squeezed and released me in a gentle rhythm. I felt an orgasm start to rumble deep within my loins, and she reduced the stimulation to prolong my pleasure. I continued to fuck her hand for a long while. Finally, she brought her thumb around my shaft to rub it rapidly along the nerve leading to my glans, and I was soon aching for release. “Mistress, may I please cum?” I asked. She ignored me and continued to massage my shaft, bringing me to the very brink of climax. “Mistress, may I please cum?” I repeated, now desperate. I was one second from losing control. Instead of answering, Ellen withdrew her hand and stepped away from me. The sudden frustration overwhelmed me, and my sphincters continued to pulsate, ready to pump my semen in the event of even the slightest stimulation of my cock. But there was none. She paid no attention my groaning, not even to mock my disappointment, as she usually did. She wordlessly picked up the winch’s remote control and pressed the button to lower my arms. I rotated my shoulders to get the blood circulating, as she unhooked me from the suspension cable. My sphincters began to relax, but my loins continued to ache from the need for orgasm. Ellen took a step behind me, and reconnected my wrist cuffs behind my back. Then, wrapping two fingers around my collar, she shoved her boot hard into the back of my legs, forcing me to my knees. I gasped, taken aback by her sudden roughness. She pulled me down further by the collar, until I was nearly sitting on my heels, and she secured me in place by connecting my wrists to my ankles with a short chain. She walked over to the table, where she remained out of view for a few moments. When she came back, I saw that she’d donned a black leather crotch harness, to which she’d affixed a thick, eleven-inch, flesh-colored dildo. She stood before me, positioning the end of the strap-on just an inch or two from my lips. “Now, suck my cock, you faggot,” Ellen commanded coldly.