Bill Tope

Safe Word

“Let me tie you up,” he coaxed eagerly, and brandished a length of soft rope for her inspection.

Where did that come from? she wondered. She peered at the rope and then at him. “You’re into bondage?” she asked him. “I…”

“I’m a part of the BDSM community, Claire,” he told her. “We use the ‘B,’ the bondage, to impose restraints on our partners in order to enhance the sensual experience.”

Claire had heard of bondage, of course, from books and films and dirty magazines; she just never expected the handsome man she knew a little from the bar and from school, to be into…

“I thought we were just gonna fuck,” she said bluntly. This man she had not chosen at random. She’d picked him up at the college tavern just down the street, and hoped to persuade him to give her a passing grade in the class he taught. Professor Ames had a reputation for being randy, but she’d never…

“I won’t do anything you don’t want me to, Claire,” the Professor went on. “It’s always mutually consensual, at least with me. And together, we set the boundaries.”

Claire peered up into his pale blue eyes, saw nothing but benevolence, and asked herself if she might actually go through with it. She bit her lip.

“You can trust me, Claire,” he said. “In the community we practice what’s known as Safe, Sane and Consensual (SSC) and Risk-Aware Consensual Kink (RACK) relations. Your safety and pleasure are my top priorities,” he assured her glibly.

Wow, thought Claire. This guy is like a used car salesman; he has an answer for everything. I wonder if next he’ll offer to check my oil? A spontaneous giggle leaked out. He didn’t seem to notice.

“Do you have any questions?” he asked, as though he were lecturing in his classroom.

Questions? she thought wildly. You bet!

“Exactly what is involved?” she asked naively. Claire had never participated in anything this…erotic, before.

“Good question,” he said approvingly. “My plan is this: we’ll disrobe and then I’ll tie your wrists together behind your back with this rope. Then I’ll put you face down on the bed, spread your legs and tie them to the bedposts.”

Claire gulped.

“Next,” he went on, “comes the flagellation.”

Claire furrowed her brow. “Huh?”

“I’ll spank your backside with my belt,” he explained, pulling the wide leather strap from the loops in his pants. “Don’t worry, I won’t do it hard, just enough to make your butt red and more sensitive.”

“Then what?” asked Claire. She wished now she hadn’t drunk so many beers at the tavern.

“Then we’ll role play,” he said. “I might be a policeman who has caught a burglar or a prostitute or a fireman who has just saved your life. Or a teacher who has caught you cheating on an exam.” And here he smiled at his own little joke. “It can take any form. It’ll be spontaneous, impromptu, unscripted.”

She peered curiously at him. He smiled reassuringly.

“Where does the sex come in?” she wanted to know. “I just wanted to, you know, have sex.”

He nodded. “At some point in our little drama, I’ll mount you from the rear,” he said. 

“I can’t climax when I’m taken from behind,” she pointed out. “No clitoral shimulation,” she said drunkenly. Was she missing the point of tonight? she asked herself. Claire, at 19, had had only 3 lovers in her lifetime, and she felt woefully ill-equipped to…

He nodded again. “That’s the beauty of the dominant-submissive dynamic,” he explained. “While you won’t come, you will be highly stimulated, from the ass-beating and from the vaginal stimulation and from the helplessness you feel. You’ll feel like your head is going to explode,” he promised.

“Won’t I ever get off?” she asked.

“I’m usually good for three orgasms per evening,” he boasted. “The first time I’ll come in your puss; the second time in your ass; and…”

“My ass?” she yelped in alarm.

“It won’t hurt unduly, I promise,” he swore. “Sodomy is the lodestone of good BDSM sex,” he assured her. “Besides,” he went on, “I’m not heavily endowed and I think you’ll like it.”

Claire made a face. “I don’t…think I want that,” she said.

“Alright,” he said easily. “No sodomy.”

Claire exhaled.

“What happens next?” she prompted.

“I’ll unbind your wrists, turn you over on your back and then fuck the shit out of you!” the Professor promised roughly. The whites of his eyes glinted eerily.

“What if you can’t get it up again?” she asked practically. He had had lots of beers too.

He was growing a little impatient. “Then I’ll eat you out,” he said shortly. “There’s one more thing,” he said at the last moment.

More? Claire thought. What more could there possibly be? Getting a passing grade — even a B — in his class was beginning to seem like an imprudent rate of exchange.

“What’s that?” she asked suspiciously.

“Your Safe Word,” he replied.

Claire shook her head uncertainly. “What’s that?” she asked again.

“The Safe Word,” said the Professor, “is what you’ll say if you suddenly — and for any reason — want the sex play to end and to be released.”

They settled on their Safe Word and then the play began. Claire discovered that, to her surprise, she was soon invested in the sexual dynamic. Always a leader, at school and work and amongst friends — she was in the Student Government at university, and a shift leader at the pizza joint where she worked — it felt good to step back and relax and take a submissive role. And the Professor, despite his feigned assertiveness, was in fact quite gentle. When he beat her ass with the belt, she felt, as he’d predicted, as if her head would explode, she was so turned on. 

Just before Ames went down on her, she asked him, “Have you ever been in love?”

“No, never,” he said.

When the sex play was over and her lover had departed, Claire sat cross-legged on her bed and reviewed the evening’s events. The Professor had not mustered the stamina he’d promised, getting hard only twice and then for only short periods. She had almost laughed at his frustration, but she felt pity more than scorn. She’d never had occasion to utter the vaunted Safe Word. After he’d released her and kissed her goodnight, he had told her that “Next time, my love, you can be the dominant one.” She thought about that for a long time.

In class on the following Monday, Ames seemed impassive, neither making eye contact nor paying her any mind. She felt a bit miffed at first, but then recognized that anonymity was probably the best policy. She looked around the room, at the other nubile coeds, and wondered which of them he had been “tied up with.” Again, a giggle  escaped her lips. But when Professor Ames passed back the previous week’s essay, Claire was happy to see a “B+” etched in purple ink across the top of the paper. This was two full grades higher than her previous score.

Two weekends later, Claire found herself back at the college tavern where she’d picked up the Professor. The previous weekend, she’d had to work at her job as assistant manager at Pizza Hut and so seducing her teacher then had been impossible. He’d called her nearly every day. Claire was intrigued by the promised role reversal; it was her turn to be dominant. At the bar, Claire spotted her erstwhile lover, talking to another teacher who was the Professor’s age, or 20 years older than Claire. When he spotted her, he forsook the other woman at once.

“Catch you later, Maeve,” he said, turning away. Maeve, a hot-looking brunette, shot hateful daggers at Claire as the Professor edged his way through the tightly packed tavern. He stood before Claire, smiling warmly. Their date for after the close of the pub was unspoken, but understood. Precisely at 2 a.m., following Last Call, the two of them walked the four blocks to Claire’s small house.

Sequestered once more in Claire’s bedroom, they again discussed boundaries and limits and what the other would and would not countenance. The Professor, as it happened, was amenable to more radical treatment than Claire had been willing to endure. “Really give me a workout,” he said huskily. At this, Claire’s eyes opened wide. Finally, they settled on the Prof’s Safe Word; for simplicity’s sake, he selected the very word that Claire had herself chosen weeks before.

In order to prep for the experience, Claire had used some of her tip money from Pizza Hut to order a couple of  risque videos from Amazon. After Ames had been stripped and bound, she worked him over. Rather  than use the Prof’s leather belt, however, she turned up her Pickle Ball racket and beat him relentlessly until a tiny drop of blood surfaced on his cheek. She kissed it away.

“God, Claire,” gasped Ames, only half in jest, “I think I’m in love!”

Claire had read in a book, “The Joy of BDSM Sex,” that this was not unusual for the recipients of flagellation. Twisting her lips thoughtfully, she pulled out a prodigious dildo, which she cinched around her narrow waist. She allowed Ames to see what she was doing.

“My God,” he said, panting excitedly, “it’s so freaking big!”

Claire plied the instrument of love for all she was worth, until at length Professor Ames gasped, “God, Claire, I AM in love!”

Claire smirked and felt that an A was well within her grasp. Their relationship, such as it was, continued apace, until it didn’t. Several weeks later, the Professor and Claire made a date to meet for lunch at a high-end restaurant on the top floor of the college’s Student Union. Claire had never eaten there before; it was beyond her means. The maitre de acknowledged her reservation and escorted her to a table. Minutes later, Ames joined her. Smiling, he took a seat. Claire had something important to discuss with the Professor, and Ames had suggested the restaurant.

“Have you ordered yet?” he asked.

She shook her head no. As if by magic, a waitress appeared at their table and they placed their order. They engaged in small talk, and when the food had been served, Ames turned to Claire and asked, “What is it you wanted to talk about?”

“My grade on my last essay,” she replied. At his inquisitive look, she continued, “I got a C-, Jeffrey,” she complained.

Ames took a drink of water and nodded. “That’s the grade you deserved,” he told her.

Claire only stared at him. “But, I thought that we…”

He shook his head. “There is no ‘we’ with respect to your identity as a student, Claire. Our relationship in class is that of instructor to student. You didn’t expect me to amplify your scores based on our sleeping together, did you?” he whispered. “That,” he said primly, would not be ethical.”

As Claire sat looking at the Professor, the wheels were going round inside her head. “You  mean ethical,” she began, “as in the ethics of your having sex with a student in your class?”

Now it was his turn to stare at her. Suddenly there was a bead of sweat on his upper lip. “Claire,” he said, “do you think that you’re the first student to try to extort a higher grade out of a teacher? What problems do you think you can possibly create for me? I’m a tenured professor.” He chuckled softly.

Claire had never before noticed just how beady Jeffrey Ames’s eyes were. She stared back frankly at him.

“Everything, Jeffrey,” she told him, “is political.” He raised his brows in exaggerated fashion. 

“Meaning?” he asked, dabbing delicately at his soft lips with a napkin.

Claire shrugged. “I don’t know; do you feel that your academic reputation might suffer if your colleagues knew you’d been butt-fucked by a 19-year-old student of yours? Could be unseemly at student conferences and faculty soires, what have you,” she suggested. When he said nothing, she picked her large purse off the floor and grasped the huge dildo with which she had sodomized him on many occasions. She pulled the head out several inches.

“It’s your word against mine,” he said, glancing nervously at the phallus.

“Jeffrey,” she asked, “how do you know that I didn’t video our…encounters?” Claire pulled the fake penis several inches more from the purse.

“Put that damn thing away!” he hissed, gazing furtively at the other tables. Rather than comply with that request, she slapped it down hard on the table top, rattling the silverware. 

“I’ll just leave this with you,” she said serenely and, closing her purse, took up her wrap and walked out of the restaurant. She didn’t look back.

At the tavern some weeks later, Claire was drinking pitchers of beer with friends when she spotted Professor Ames across the bar, eyeing her. She paid him no mind. At length, while Claire’s friends were dancing, Ames approached and stood before her, swaying on his feet. Finally, Claire looked up.

“Professor,” she said neutrally.

“Claire,” he said, then burped. “Alright if I sit?”

She nodded.

He stumbled into a chair. He was really drunk, thought Claire, but she had little sympathy for him. She was a little intoxicated herself. It had been some weeks since they had been bedmates. Claire’s grades had plummeted too. More than that, she had experienced an unexpected sense of loss.

“I want us to get back together, Claire,” he slurred. “I miss you.”

She stared at  him impassively. “What’s in it for me?” she asked.

“Transactional, eh?” he asked.

“You bet.”

“What do you want?” he asked, pouring a beer from her pitcher and spilling it across the tabletop.

“An A for the course,” she said crisply.

He nodded his head ponderously. “Done!” he agreed. “Let’s go to your place.”

“After grades come out,” she said. “The semester ends in two weeks. I see an A on my report card, and I’ll take you home with me.”

He stared at her.

She stared back.

Finally, Ames nodded. “I’ll see you on the 19th.” That was the day that grades came out. He stumbled to his feet and left the bar.

On the 19th, grades were posted to her email account and Claire was beside herself with joy. She had aced “Literary Masterpieces of Antiquity,” the required backbreaking course taught by Professor Jeffrey Ames. Ames had called her earlier, telling her he was coming over to collect. She considered blowing him off, but fair was fair. Besides, she’d never been so turned on as when she was in the throes of BDSM. Her relationship with Jeffrey was complicated. So she told him to come on by. Still, he was full of himself and a bit creepy; besides, with the skills she’d learned, she could find other like-minded partners. Partners with more stamina. Still, she’d felt safe with Jeffrey.

After Professor Ames arrived, Claire offered him a drink, but he demured. He was sober for once, she noted. They swiftly disrobed and climbed into bed. “What’ll it be tonight, Jeffrey?” asked Claire. “Do you want to be dominant, or shall I?” She licked her lips in anticipation.

“I just want to hold you,” he said unexpectedly, and they extinguished the light and drew a sheet over themselves and lay in one another’s arms.

Claire didn’t know what to think. Was Jeffrey ill? She pulled him close and lay with her cheek against his chest. She was surprised when, hours later, she awoke to find out she’d slept the night away. Jeffrey was awake and looking at her.

“What…what time is it?” she asked. He told her. “What happened last night?” she asked next.

“I had an epiphany,” he admitted.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m in love with you, Claire,” he said softly.

“Love?” she repeated, suddenly overwhelmed with emotion.

“Yes,” he said. “Love.”

Love had been their Safe Word.