Nine

“Let’s go to Susan with the weather, Susan?”

“Thank you, Tomás, and good morning, everyone. Today we’re tracking a considerable storm moving down from Alaska into the Pacific Northwest and nearby Canadian towns. It’s expected to be slow-moving, bringing a long day of drizzle and rain showers along with a cold front. So grab your jackets and rain gear before heading out. Back to you in the studio, Tomás.”

There’s a buzz playing a rhythm against my thigh, where my phone rests. Looking down I turn it over to see his name on the screen, Sir.

“Hey, babygirl, I was just thinking about you, this storm got you huddled up with a good book?” He sounds cheerful.

“Sir?” I squeak, the moment he hears my voice, his tone changes.

“I’m here. What do you need?”

“I need my Edward Rochester.” My voice breaks, the words coming out strained, the pain too high to mask anymore. There’s a beat of silence.

“Okay, babygirl. I got you. I’m coming.”

Most people think of safewords as something reserved for the bedroom. Sir and I have always been a little different. We developed our own phrases for outside the scene, too—little pieces of language that tell him what I need without making me say it clinically.

I’ve lived as a patient long enough to hate speaking like one.

For as far back as my memory reaches, pain has been woven into my life as my most constant master. When the rain falls and autumn takes hold—when the chill of the months ahead pushes the days of heat and sun away—my body stirs to life in more ways than one. Not in the way it likely would for someone who hasn’t spent a lifetime learning this body. From the outside, what I feel might look like a nightmare. But I’ve spent a lifetime learning its vocabulary—the subtle dialects of pain, sensation, and everything that comes with them.

The realization always pokes at a thought about whether I truly belong in this world.

Maybe I’m meant for another.

After hanging up the phone, I carefully and slowly turn my shower on and bathe. Letting the steam and heat soothe my joints, my bones, and this emotion welling deep within. Tears slide down my cheeks of their own free will. Taking a deep breath, I reach up and simply wipe them away, smiling in understanding that my body is speaking to me.

I hear you, I feel it, and I’ve got you. Don’t worry, he’s coming. I think to myself.

Outside, the slap of thunder cracks, rumbling through the walls of my apartment. A reminder that what triggered this flare still commands the air around me. Drying off, I brush out my hair and tie it up, then I slip on a robe, my body too weak and sore to fumble with getting dressed. I make my way to my bedroom, where I remove that robe and climb into bed naked, waiting for him. He has a key, so I get cozy knowing he will let himself in.

Not fifteen minutes later, I hear the lock turn.

The door opens.

A moment later, he’s beside me, his beard grazing my tender skin as he leans down. A quiver runs through my thighs. Tonight, everything is tender. Every joint feels as though it wants to tear or explode from my body. It always does when storms roll through.

But pain isn’t the only thing that wakes up in a flare. Apparently, my body didn’t get the memo that pain was supposed to make me too fragile to still want what I want.

Glancing down past my bare breasts, I catch his eyes gleaming with delight as he devours me. With each stroke of his tongue across my clit, he presses down firmly. The mounting tension he stirs within me practically cries out for release, yet he keeps it at bay.

Metal rings against metal as my ankles strain against the cuffs, spread wide enough for his shoulders to fit between them. My wrists join in, tugging as I twist and squirm before him. He lets out a low hum, and the deep resonance of it raises goosebumps across my entire body. I’m on the edge, so very close.

“Please.” I gasp.

“What is it, babygirl? What do you need? Is it the pain?” He moves away from where I need him, lifting himself up to lean in close, his eyes penetrating me with a mix of desire and concern.

“I’m so close, it’s right there, please give it to me.” I’m not meeting his gaze; instead, my eyes are fixed on what I want most, his cock. I want him to slide that thing inside me, to fill me up, to distract my body from the pain it feels with the exquisite pleasure only he can give.

“You’re right there?”

“Yes!”

“You want my dick, babygirl?”

“Yes, Sir. Please!”

His fingers reach down and play with my swollen little clit, like a mini joystick on his game controller; he masters it with his thumb. Kissing along my jaw, he leans in and whispers,

“What’s your number?” He knows me well.

“Nine.” I gasp.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk. That’s high, my love. We need to work a little harder to meet it.”

He moves away, and I whimper, but I don’t say anything because I know he’s right. I know my body; I’ve spent decades decoding its every kind of pain. I know that, to make it more manageable, I need more pressure built. That way, the release actually tames some of the discomfort I feel. And I know that everything about the build-up and release will tire me out, allowing me to sleep through the rest of it. We’ve been doing this a long time. If anyone knows how to move with my body through a flare, it’s him. He learned me—how to touch me, when to ask, when to change course. That’s why he’s my Dominant. Not because he knows how to give me pleasure, but because he earned my trust and knows how to lead in the specific way I need him to.

People love numbers. They make pain tidy. Nine means this. Five means that. Seven means you shouldn’t be doing this.

But I’ve lived inside my body for forty-three years. My pain doesn’t come with a rulebook. It comes with a vocabulary, and I’m the one who learned how to speak it.

He steps back over to me, still bound on the bed, a small bowl, a lit candle, and a stick of body-safe wax in his hands.

“Let’s increase the pressure before we release it, shall we?” he taunts as he kneels beside me.

He sets down the candle and adjusts the bowl to one hand and the wax stick to the other. Hovering the stick over the candle, he melts it a bit. Then, he holds it out over my breasts.

Drip, drip, drip.

He slowly moves his hand that’s holding the stick in a circle to drop the melted wax onto the flesh around my nipples. I suck in a breath at the feel of it. The heat, the near burn doing things to me, making me so wet. I bite my lip and watch every drop closely, mentally willing it to drip onto my beaded bud directly. I want to feel that sizzle so bad it’s all I can do to keep my body from maneuvering itself in order to make it happen.

If I weren’t in a flare, I’d just do it, manipulate my position to get exactly what I want, earning myself a nice little punishment against my ass, but today I hold back. I let him lead.

Today, the brat in me is happy to sit back and submit.

Sir pulls the stick back, remelting it and dragging it through the air to drop wax down my sternum, around my stomach, and onto the dips of my hips. My legs shift, making the metal of the cuffs click some more as the pleasure of that hot, thick liquid dripping onto the lips around my pussy stirs the desire writhing inside me even more. My patience is a tenuous clock, ticking, tocking—until time runs out.

“You’re such a good girl; look how beautiful you are covered in wax,” he grins, and the awe shining in his eyes floods me with overwhelming love. He places the stick in the bowl and sets both aside as he leans in and begins to trace the path he drew in wax with his lips. Kissing, licking, and nipping as he moves over me. His hands joining in. They splay wide as he seizes my body with a firm, deep grip, gliding across me like a massage, as though through his hands alone he could cure my weak joints, while also making fervent love to my flesh.

When he grabs my waist, he pulls, slowly, carefully—helping me arch and flex my spine. He does the same thing at my neck, my pelvis, and my midsection. All while moving cautiously, methodically, and allowing things to crack, to flex, and to realign. Then he dives in, sucking my nipple into his mouth and tweaking it with the tip of his tongue. His hand grabs and gropes my other one, before pinching and flicking that nipple to match what his tongue and teeth do to the one still in his mouth.

Leaning in, he whispers again,

“Where do you need me most?” He asks.

“Let me taste you, please, Sir.”

The little puddle that I am.

He moves further up me, being considerate not to shift me too roughly as he presses his cock to my waiting lips. He knows what I like most when he plays with my mouth, rubbing his head over my lips and then sliding himself along the seam so I can feel his veins. Bound at the ankles and wrists, I can’t do anything on my own, and in this position it’s a challenge to let another have full control. But with him, it’s the purest of pleasures I feel.

“Open those pretty lips, babygirl.”

I do as he commands, every level of submission I offer further building the pressure inside along with the pleasure he creates with his touch.

He slides in, this time staying just shallow of my gag. This session is about being my medicine, not serving his desires. But once this flare is over, it will be nothing but serving him, deeply.

His hand wrapped around his base, he slowly slides in and out, rubbing his head and shaft over my tongue, watching so intensely at how I take him.

“Fuck you have such a sexy mouth. I love how your tongue makes my cock feel. Keep that mouth open, that’s a good girl. Let Sir use your face while you relax.” His other hand reaches back as he thrusts into me, tweaking the nipple that’s most sensitive and earning a moan from me.

After a few more thrusts, he adjusts again. “How are you, babygirl?” he asks as he returns his fingers to my slit and slides in two to flick at my internal button.

“I need you.”

“Yeah? Are you ready?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Confirm with me, babygirl. I need the words we practiced.”

“Come home, Rochester.”

“Good girl.” He unbuckles both my ankles and wrists, then lines himself up and gently pushes in. He watches every reaction I give as he sinks deeper until fully seated, then waits. I reach up and grip hold of him; that is when he begins.

He drives inward, then withdraws, enters once more but deeper this time, then retreats again. He pushes in again now with more force, reaching even deeper, and slips out just as before, until at last he is slamming into me at a relentless rhythm. My joints feel strained; pain fills, but so does a warmth, and a numbness soon coats most of the areas alight with discomfort. The closer he brings me to the edge, the less I feel the cracking, the pain, the stiffness.

Clawing at his shoulders, I beg him to take me harder, to fuck me deeper, faster.

“Make me cream all over your cock!”

His hips have lost their gentleness now, his grip turning rougher with every grab, and like a battering ram his cock drives into me without pause. Pound. Pound. POUND. I can sense the hardness of him, each thrust turning him more rigid, like steel. And I moan, whimper, and scream as my pussy clenches tight around his cock while I cum. The fluttering he feels from my lips tightened around his shaft makes him tense up, his cheeks flushing pink, until at last, with a roar and a hand clamped around my throat, he cums with me. Ropes of seed splash against my womb.

It’s such a beautiful sight to behold. A man losing all composure, all masks, and letting me see the passion he feels.

He keeps himself deep inside me, unmoving as we both come down from our orgasms. Then, he gently pulls himself back from my body, moving off to the bathroom to run the water in the sink. When he returns, he’s holding a warm, wet washcloth that he then uses to clean me. Once he finishes, he lies down next to me and pulls me into his embrace.

“Do you think I’m a masochist?” I ask.

“What?! What makes you ask that?”

“Because my pain flares tend to always leave me incredibly turned on, so much so that I can’t help the need riding me to orgasm. You know that ignoring it only makes the pain worse. I figure that makes me something of a masochist.” I share with him.

“Perhaps you are—masochism is a spectrum, after all. Everyone savors it in their own way. Some are into cuts, welts, and bruising, others crave light spankings and choking, and a few go for flesh suspension… in your case, you get off on arthritic pressure along with some spanking and choking too; no matter what all of it is about getting off on pain.”

“It’s just that my brand of masochism isn’t seen as very cool.”

“It is to us. You like what you like, I like what you like—isn’t that enough? There’s no reason to fret over what others think; they barely know enough to form a real opinion anyway.”

“You’re right.”

“Worrying how others see it isn’t like you. What is this really about?”

“Sometimes I feel like I wasn’t meant for this world or for this body, and thoughts about how I differ fill my mind.”

“What do you mean by not being meant for this world?”

“I mean… what if I belonged to some other realm—like, what if our world has layers, and I was accidentally born into the wrong one? Maybe I was made for a layer closer to something like a supernatural one. Maybe I was meant to live as a succubus, but ended up here instead; maybe that CERN experiment did something to fuck up the trajectory of my birth, and that’s why this realm doesn’t sit well with me, and I’m in so much pain.”

“Well, first I’d say you read too much, but I love that about you. And second, I’d say I’d be scared,” he scoffs.

“Scared of me?”

“No—of whoever runs into you in your next life, once you return to the realm you actually belong to, because you’re right. You’re definitely a succubus. Your hunger and desires require a powerful being to keep pace.”

I give his chest a playful slap, but he twists away and winds up tickling me instead. Still gasping for air, we settle back down once more, the ache in me kept distant by that fresh, sweet release.

“Make the most of feeling sex-numb, babygirl, and catch some sleep. I’ll be right here when you open your eyes.”

He presses a kiss to my forehead as my eyelids lock shut.

A Note From The Author:

This narrative delves into one woman’s deeply personal relationship with chronic pain, sexuality, and kink, but her journey isn’t intended to speak for everyone who lives with chronic pain. Every person experiences their pain, their pleasure, and what they need when things flare uniquely. Please hold space for those differences, regardless of whether you personally share their experience.

In her world, searing pain and overwhelming pleasure can genuinely exist side by side. Having inhabited her body for decades, she has come to understand intimately that pain and pleasure can sometimes braid together, and that closeness with another body, the movements they share, pressure, and arousal can offer distraction from—or a subjective easing of—her pain.

This isn’t a tale about grit or how much suffering a person can withstand for the sake of sex. It’s about questioning the belief that someone living with chronic pain is automatically excluded from kink, intimacy, or pleasure and instead labeled “fragile as glass.” A pain rating doesn’t dictate what a person can do, what they long for, or how they choose to inhabit their own body. We are people first, and pain is only one part of us. Pain doesn’t own us; it becomes something we learn to understand, navigate, and wield.

This story is based on a real person’s experience with chronic pain and the ways they have learned to cope with and understand their body.