“Hand only,” I said, having already thought about it. “And over the knee.” If I was going to let him spank me, I needed the physical intimacy contact would provide.
“No problem,” he said, marking through a lot of the page.
“Safeword?”
I said the first thing that came to my mind. “Raisin.”
“You got something against raisins?”
“They’re yucky.”
“They’re grapes,” he replied, writing the word down.
“Still yucky. And people even put them in cookies! Who would ruin a perfectly good cookie like that?”
“Condoms?”
“Ummm. I got tested after… I’m clean.”
“I am too, but I still need an answer. Condoms?”
I squirmed, imagining the heat of him coming inside of me. “No.”
And just like that, it was over.
“Done,” he said, then looked at me before he closed the pen. “Is there anything I’ve missed that you would like to add?”
I thought about it, but he had been very thorough, and I couldn’t think of anything, well, not anything that didn’t terrify me. “Nope, can I see?”
“Sure.”
Instead of taking the pages from him, I crawled across the blanket and leaned against his side. He’d made little notes beside each item and noted my limits with hard and soft. It was strange seeing myself and my desires written out on several sheets of paper.
I felt exposed.
“What about your list?” I asked, wanting to know how his compared to mine.
“This is my list,” he said, handing it to me. “I’ve removed my hard limits entirely, and my soft are in light gray. It’s why I asked if you wanted to add anything. If you had, they more than likely would have been on my hard limit list. The things I find necessary to my dominance are in pink, the things I like but aren’t a deal-breaker if you don’t are in green, and the ones I’m neutral toward are white.”
Seeing the list in a new light, I studied it as not just myself but our possible future.
I mentally rewrote my answers with his color-coding in mind. Our pinks matched up nicely with a few of his in my green and vice versa, which worked out perfectly for us. A few of my soft limits were in his green, and I could easily imagine him pushing against them, but I found I didn’t mind so much.
Just knowing what he was interested in and what things he would push removed some of the fear I’d felt about playing with him. It was evident from looking at the checklist that he was the more experienced and adventurous one between us, and for once, that knowledge didn’t scare me.
I felt my lip tremble even as I smiled. “I’d say we fit pretty well together.”
“I’d say so too,” he said, taking the checklist from me to look over it once more.
“Can I have a copy?”
“Of course, little darling,” he replied, carefully placing the stack of pages back into the basket. “You ready to get out of here?”
“But I’m not ready to go home yet.”
“Who said anything about taking you home?” he asked with a wicked smile. “Want to go swimming?”
With you? “Yes! Oh, but I didn’t bring a swimsuit.”
“Where we’re going you won’t need one.”
“What?” I squeaked as he stood and started taking the stakes out of the corners of the blanket. “We can’t go skinny dipping! We’ll get caught and then get in trouble.”
“Trust me?” he asked, not a hint of fear showing on his face.
I studied him, realizing that with the checklist sorted, there was no reason not to indulge in some playtime.
“Okay,” I answered, realizing we had to start somewhere.
I helped him pack up the rest of our picnic, leaving the area just as we’d found it. He took my hand as we walked toward the car. I looked down at our clasped hands, realizing I’d missed the simple intimacy of a partner.
It didn’t take long for me to figure out we were headed back to his place. “You have a pool?”
“You’ll see,” he replied mysteriously.
Starting to get excited, I couldn’t help wiggling in my seat. As soon as he parked, I climbed out of the car and waited for him by the door to get inside. With a laugh, he grabbed the basket from the back seat and joined me. Punching in the code before he could, I held the door open for him.
“Wait right here,” he said, bounding up the stairs to his apartment. “I’ll be right back.”
True to his word, he was coming back down the stairs within minutes sans basket. As he took my hand, I