I hope you have been enjoying Rika’s Lair, my monthly column dedicated to thoughts and experiences regarding power dynamics in Service-Oriented D/s relationships. Look up “Ms. Rika” in the search box for links to all of my articles in KinkWeekly!
This week, I’m not going to write an article. Rather, I’m going to share a poignant piece of introspection I received from a submissive who was working through some internal conflicts. I found that it gave a very honest and raw look into the mind of a submissive that proved to be enlightening. I hope you find it so, as well. I hope you read it and share your comments, particularly if you relate to the emotion.
Reproduced anonymously, with permission:
She left her boots out.
The blanket chest at the foot of the master bed serves many purposes: Storage, a place to stack folded clothing, and occasionally, a place to put little notes to remind her of things she wants to remember to do. Some days, it’s completely clear, usually on days when I’m due to dust, but this day, the lid showed signs of activity.
Somewhere between the folded tops, jeans, and workout clothing, she casually left her pair of black Frye riding boots. They stood tall on top of the chest; toes carefully aligned; pointing in parallel to the middle of the room. Their inseam zippers were pulled almost all the way to the top, causing them to sag open, just slightly; low enough to reveal their light brown, worn, leather linings, but high enough to keep the boots erect under their natural weight.
During the fall, she wears those boots religiously. They look great with her jeans tucked into them and even better over any of her pairs of leather pants. They are the most comfortable pair of boots she’s ever owned. She wears them almost daily, weather permitting.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve knelt in front her, pulling those boots from her feet and stacking them neatly on the floor in the closet. From time to time, she’d allow me to bury my face into the top of them to breathe in their aroma: Leather and sweet sweat; an intoxicating bouquet that’s a generous gift to anyone like me; a gift for which I’m careful to show my gratitude.
She left her boots out.
The boots are never kept out of the closet…and yet, there they were; at waist level; demanding that my eyes lock onto them.
I felt stirring between my legs and weakness in my knees. My ears got warm and my cheeks flushed. The room faded away as my vision tunneled to the boots. It was a visceral reaction; immediate and completely involuntary. I’ve read that subconscious reaction to visual stimuli is a phenomenon that men experience more than women. It’s something of which I’ve been keenly aware since I was a boy. The fact that anything related to a woman’s sexuality causes my body to involuntarily react in a way that weakens me, only serves to attribute even more power to women, and re-affirms my acknowledgement of submissiveness.
I gathered my wits about me and overcame my initial excitement. Regaining my composure allowed questions to wash over me: Why did she leave the boots out? Surely, she knew I was going to see them and knew I was going to wonder why she left them there. Did she expect me to do something with them? My mind began to work through the possibilities.
Perhaps she wanted me to put them away. That idea excited me, since if that was the rationale behind leaving them there, she was doling out a menial task that she easily could have done for herself. How awesome would it be if, instead of just putting them down in the closet, she set them on the cabinet for me find and put away – to “let her slave do that”. She would be demonstrating how completely in tuned and in control of my mind she is, since, not only would she be delegating a menial task, but she’d be forcing me to handle objects that she knows triggers my submissive buttons. She’d be making me handle her footwear…and she knows what that does to me.
Maybe she just wanted me to kneel before them and kiss them. We don’t have a standing rule where I am to worship her footwear when I see them, but oh, how cool would that be? Perhaps, I should inhale them, as she had let me do in the past.
Could she just have wanted to tease me…to just leave them there as a means to drive me nuts? Maybe she was aware of how excited the situation would make me and was using this as a means to stoke my libido in preparation for a Tease and Denial session she was planning for later. How mind-blowing would it be if she were playing a long-term game, getting me hot and bothered with different such scenarios throughout the week, until I’d be a begging mass of desperation whenever she chose to give me relief. Maybe those boots would be back in play at that point!
Or, maybe she wanted me to polish them before I put them away. Oh my, that would add another layer of service-driven excitement to the situation: Not only permitting me to serve her by doing the menial task of storing her boots, but also the demeaning task of cleaning and polishing them!
Why stop there? Did she want me to lick them clean before polishing them? I’ve done that before. She knows the excitement that the leather soles on those particular boots bring me – and how turned on I get when the leather turns from light to dark brown as my tongue slathers over them. She knows how much I love to tend to the disgusting task of cleaning them. Could she have been expecting me to do that as well?
She left her boots out.
I didn’t have any directions, but I had the option of doing ALL of this. Then I found myself wondering if doing any of this would be what she really wanted, or just be fulfilling my own desires.
It took all of about 10 seconds for these thoughts to rip through my mind. In the end, I decided that any assumption made regarding what she intended, would have been presumptuous and self-serving. None of it would be enjoyable, unless I knew she wanted it.
I left the boots where they sat. I didn’t touch them, or even smell them. They sat on the cabinet lid for four days until she wore them again. We didn’t discuss it. I’ll never know if I failed a test or if I’m living alone with this fantasy in my head. I’m not sure which is worse…the latter being such a lonely possibility.
Ms. Rika is a lifestyle dominant, educator, and author; living in the suburbs of NYC with her husband/slave. She has written several popular books on her approach to adding Dominant-Centric, Service-Oriented D/s to relationships. You can find her books (in both print and eBook formats) at Lulu.com (http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/msrika), or at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, the iStore, Books-A- Million, Kobo.com, or anywhere books are sold. Search for “Ms. Rika”. Write to me at Ms_Rika@hotmail.com
Pete says
I have a slightly different opinion than my previous two commentators…to me, this is a REALLY sad story! I think it demonstrates the problems subs create for themselves when they let themselves spin on fantasy without open communications. And there is a severe lack of communication here. If he doesn’t know what she intends, he needs to open up and ask…and she needs to give him the space to do that. The result of his failure to do so is obvious in the last thing he writes – and it really speaks volumes to me: The fear that he is completely alone in his fantasy – that it only lives in his head – is something I’ve had to deal with many times in my relationships. It’s his own fault! He needs to share what’s in his head and make certain he understands her buy in (or not)!
Asher says
Love it. Boots are so awesome, this sounds just like me!
LatexChastity says
Ms. Rika,
Thank you for writing these columns. I have greatly enjoyed reading them as they build upon and feel like updates to what you’ve written in your books.
Two paragraphs really struck a chord with me – the one discussing the dominant leaving the boots out for the submissive to put away, and the similar one about cleaning them before putting them away. These paragraphs dealt with service, while many of the other possibilities that ran through the subs mind seemed like gifts. I feel good when my dominant leaves things for me to do because they fit her definition of service and submission. For example, she more often than not leaves the bed for me to make, or she’ll leave her dishes when she walks away from the table. Just some simple examples. I wish she would always do these things, but habits are hard to break! When she does, I feel like she is acknowledging our dynamic – she is present. So simple, but so powerful.