I watched the snowfall outside, coating the trees in the wood behind my home, making it look like one of those surrealistic paintings by the guy that hides the Indians and wolves in his drawings. I couldn’t recall the artist, but had at all times loved his work.

The Weather Channel played in the background, talking about the winter storm and warning people to stay indoors and off the roads and how the storm had caused a multitude of traffic accidents and fatalities already. My house was far enough out in the country and off the road that I barely heard the traffic in even the best weather.

I waited, staring off into the snow, waiting for Master Tom to call, waiting for him to instruct me as he had in the past. Informing me how to dress for him, to put on my webcam so that he could see me as I obediently performed his commands, then logging off the cam and typing me a brisk message stating when he’d arrive here. It had been a mere seven days since our last time together, but in my mind, it was far too long.

“Carla, be ready for me tomorrow at 10!” is what he’d put in the IM just before I went to bed last night. I’d been ready and I still had marks from our last session, but I needed him again, I needed the pain, the release.

I remembered our last session, and every session before it, as if they had happened yesterday. Yet, it seemed so long ago. I brushed the waterfall cascade of dark hair from my shoulder, stared out my window at the snow and imagined his touch on my skin. He loved watching these seasonal scenes with me, and I loved the feel of his strength as he would stand behind me, wrapping his arms around me, his breath on my shoulder sending signals to my pussy as he’d plant gentle kisses there.

Some mornings, we’d stand here dressed in nothing but blankets or robes – depending on the season – as we gazed out at the view, a live painting for us both to admire outside my kitchen window. I’d feel his touch against my cheek, then his fingers gently caressing my hair until they would slide into the edge of the blanket, or the collar of my robe, and ease it from my shoulders to “kissing each freckle” as he liked to say when he trailed little pecks, bites and sucklings down my neck and back.

I loved being naked for this man. He was so unlike those gruff and demanding lovers of my past who expected me to be their personal play-toy, at their beck-and-call for a fuck, a flogging or a quick blow-job. Tom was different because he cared. He understood when I had deadlines to meet for work — though he’d make me suffer for it later on! He was compassionate and generous, both with his love and with his money. He didn’t have a lot, but he did what he could to spread it among his lovers.

Yes, his lovers. Master Tom was poly. Not only that, but he was married — and happily so to one of the most understanding, kind and gentle women I’d ever met.

I’d been introduced to his wife, Julie, a few months back and she was a gorgeous woman in her own way, substantially taller and larger than I, but still gorgeous. She had an aura about her that made you feel immediately comfortable — a true earth-mother type. She knew about me, about what Tom and I did, and approved. She didn’t offer any advice that wasn’t solicited and didn’t ask about our affairs, but simply thanked me for taking care of part of Tom that she couldn’t.

I think we loved each other as sisters and she probably would have welcomed me to their bed. But that wasn’t an aspect of the relationship that Master Tom wished, nor was it one of mine, though I’d have done it for him if asked. I just wasn’t into women. Julie sensed this, though and never asked it of either of us. Like I said, she wasn’t the least bit selfish and knew that Tom loved her, just as much as he loved me — just in a different way.

But what I adored about him was how he could stand there with me and just “be.” I loved the way he alternately worshiped and used my body for his pleasure, making sure I came as well — unless I deserved some kind of punishment, in which case he might delay it until the end of the weekend, just before he’d leave. I’d cum and cum, but would be so worked up that I’d be needy and want more; getting frustrated when he wouldn’t be able to provide it.

At other times, he’d bind me, sometimes in simple knots, sometimes in a complicated macramé of rope that enveloped my body so that he could suspend me for punishment, ravishment or for simple experimentation.

The phone rang, jarring me from my thoughts. I walked over and looked at the caller ID, but it wasn’t him. I recognized the number, but I didn’t answer. I didn’t care to talk to anyone but him. Tom was one of the few that understood how I got at this time of the year, how the lack of sunlight affected me. We were gonna celebrate Candlemas together, building a bonfire out back and dancing around it naked, but he hadn’t called to let me know when he’d be in.

In my back yard, I’d stacked all the branches and scrap wood I could discover into a big pile. A friend of mine had donated several railroad ties that formed it’s base and outer workings. He and his wife would be over as well to distribute in the celebration. They liked Tom and what he did for me. They said they’d bring a few other pagan couples over as well and we’d all celebrate sky-clad. Hell, even Julie was gonna join us that day! I just needed to let my friends know when Master would be here.

I sighed softly as I stared at the two-hundred year old oak tree out back with the one thick branch that jutted out from the trunk at an almost 90 degree angle about fifteen feet off the ground. How many times in the past had he put a collar and leash around my neck and led her out there, naked (or semi-so), then throw a thick, heavy rope over the slick plastic sleeve protecting the bark on the branch and haul me up until I dangled, then flog me, whip me and punish me until I begged to cum, allowing me to orgasm myself into a stupor so that he could lower me to the turf and have his way with me?

Last New Years, he’d done that. Oh, that memory! I smiled to myself as I reveled in it, touching my nipples as I did so and feeling them grow hard and sensitive!

It was much as it was now, several feet of snow on the ground. He let me wear knee-high boots, but nothing else other than the silk rope harness that he’d spent the last hour tying me into a complicated weave of ropes, using different colors. Master Tom at all times did this in front of a mirror so that I could watch the process. Seeing him tie the knots seemed to make me almost as horny as the suspension.

Once tied, he’d led me out there, walking down a path he’d dug for himself earlier, but making me walk in the foot-deep snow next to the path he’d made, forcing me to lift my leg high while wearing my thigh-high, stiletto boots so that I could plunge my foot down. He would laugh at the seriousness of expression on my face when I’d not lift my leg high enough over a drift or would step on a rock, stumble and struggle to regain my footing — not easy to do in these shoes when your arms are bound — and he’d wait until I stood straight again before giving the leash a tug, telling me to move forward.

Master had spent three months teaching me how to walk properly in these heels, making me balance a book upon my head until I could walk in them in a way that was “floating not waddling”. I got so many compliments after that when I’d show up at publication events. I’d had more than one younger girl ask what finishing college I’d gone to and how I’d learned to walk like that. They confessed to being sore and stumbling around in these kinds of shoes, whenever they wore them, while it looked as if I were born into them.

“Quit wearing flats and walking shoes,” I’d tell them, then explain how I’d practiced for weeks and months with the book atop my head, how to place one foot in front of the other and how not to come down on the heel, but the toe and ball of the foot. What I didn’t tell them was that I did this naked and that Master monitored the process. He would use a crop on my naked ass and thighs if I didn’t do it right. But it paid off when I heard comments about my ass being “poetry in motion” whenever I appeared at a gathering wearing heels.

But, back then, right after Master had said he ‘approved’ of my skill, I was walking in the deep snow with my favorite boots on.

It’s odd. When we would first step out the door, I would feel the initial chill, that bite of the cold and wind, but after walking just a few yards, I would focus more on the ropes, how and where they wrapped around me, digging into areas of the skin and especially the placement of the knots between my legs (one on my clit, one pressing up into my pussy and another wiggling into my back pucker).

I’d concentrate on the feeling of the silken strands wrapped around me, between my legs, binding my breasts, catching my nipples between two tight strands and I’d get lost in the feeling so that the ropes would morph from a restrictive restraint, binding me and preventing movement, until it became a cocoon of sensual release. While it held my body, it allowed the rest of my senses a freedom they wouldn’t normally enjoy.

My sense of sight became more acute. My world would suddenly have sharp contrast and focus. Minutiae would become fascinating until I’d slip and be jolted back to the mundane. My aural sense would become so attenuated that I could almost hear each snowflake falling.

And, it’s that moment after a heavy snowfall that is probably my favorite time. The world becomes muffled and still within its winter blanket. New sounds emerge. You hear the crunch of your own step, the ice crystals forming from your mouth as you breathe out, the pop of the icicles hanging from the soffits as differing temperatures cause them to crack, the groan of the rope as you walk, the sound of the wind caressing through the trees and the gentle moan of Brigid, mother earth, as she snuggles with her lover, Cernunos, under the blanket of white.

The phone rang again, pulling me back from my memories. Glancing once more, I see that it is still not him and I am impatient, frowning a bit and wondering why he doesn’t call. It goes to voice mail and I ignore it, choosing to stare out the window once more. My hands are caressing my breasts through the silk of the robe I’m wearing and I can feel them stiffen, sending messages to my clit and pussy, causing the first to harden in sympathy and the long, hanging lips of my pussy to engorge and spread. I can almost see how they glisten with my need, but I keep my hands on my breasts for now as I fall back into the memory of last winter celebration.

I stared out the window, remembering how he took me to that tree and made me stand there and kissed my lips passionately as I shivered, but not allowing our bodies to touch. Snow had found it’s way into the tops of my boots and I could feel the coldness of the melting flakes as they slowly slid down my thighs like a lovers touch.

Oh, how I wanted him to touch me there like that, to throw me down in the snow and just take me, plunging his fat cock deep into my holes, grunting as he rutted, making the harsh crystals of snow scrape across my stiff nipples and sending tingles of pain and pleasure up and down my spine! He’d do that eventually, but not just yet. No, that day he kissed me and then reached into his big grey canvas bag that was dirty, worn and greasy on the outside, but lined with leather inside.

Master pulled out a length of thick manila rope, folded it in half and tossed the bend over the arm of the branch before tugging on my leash once more so that I stood in front of him.

I felt him slipping the rope through his weaving, sometimes tying things off, sometimes undoing it because he wasn’t satisfied, cursing to himself as he did so.

“Too tight?” he’d ask occasionally, or “If I pull like this, does that feel like it’s binding up anywhere?” Yes, he was concerned and not a sadist in the sense that he didn’t care… He was careful and compassionate but oh, that sadism came out once he got you the way he liked!

I stood in the cold, watching the foggy exhale of my breath and it began to snow. I raised my head to catch a snowflake on the tip of my tongue and found I’d made a gigantic mistake! Master was at all times prepared, it seemed.

I had closed my eyes because the flakes were falling into my lashes. I felt something clasp around the piercing on the end of my tongue and then pull! He’d begun to chuckle as he clamped it and pulled a length of twine through the eye at the end of the clamp. He took the two bitter-ends and made loops, then put them around the bars that pierced my nipples, which had the effect of pulling my head forward and down. I could pull my tongue back into my mouth, but it would tug at my nipples, which were now raw and near-frozen.

I groaned, wanting to tell him how cruel this was as I drooled on my breasts, the hot saliva mixing with the falling flakes and chilling my skin even more. My tongue fought with unconscious muscles to pull the metal clamp into my mouth, then tried to expel it, causing constant stimulation which made my pussy leak profusely, wet tendrils dripping slowly down my inner thighs.

Master Tom reached down between my legs, but didn’t touch between my legs. Instead, he gathered the liquid drips onto his digit and chuckled once again as he brought up a thick, syrupy strand of my own sexual excretion, watching as the viscous liquid hung and then slowly dripped from his finger like a drop of molasses. It fell slowly, holding on by a thin, frozen thread for several inches until it disappeared at our feet.

“Lovely,” he told me, then went back to work, moving behind me and adjusting more knots.

I wondered he would raise me at this point but, instead, he bundled my thick, raven-black curls and pulled them behind my head, weaving a strand of leather lacing among it. I could feel the tips gently flogging the skin of my shoulder blades as he worked, their slight touch now significant in the cold and my exposed state.

Oh, I suppose the neighbors could see us out here, if they looked hard. I sincerely doubted they could or would. My nearest neighbor lived across the street and drove a semi across country. I’d watched as his rig left yesterday, so he wouldn’t be home.

My two other neighbors had trees blocking much of their view, though at this distance, it would be difficult to tell what we were doing anyway. It was a part of why Master Tom and I had chosen this house for me. It was out in the middle of nowhere, but since I worked from home, it didn’t matter, as long as I had good internet, I could work from anywhere.

I remembered how a simple tug at my hair would bring me out of my reverie. Tom would tug again and pull my head back, my tongue now sticking out of my mouth obscenely and my nipples pulled up sharply each time I tried, and failed, to swallow my own spit. The pain of each tug sent an explosion of white behind my eyelids, making me groan with need.

“Too much?” he asked, looking for the safe sign. I shook my head negatively and he kissed my cheek, then patted it.

“Good girl. Ready?”

I was.

He put the blindfold over my eyes and I heard him grunt as he would wrap the rope around one hand and pull on the rope, gradually lifting me. There is that moment of painful exhilaration, that moment of blissful release, when you feel yourself being hauled up and then your full weight being taken up by the ropes as your feet leave the ground — not that I’m that heavy to start with, but at 5′ 5″ and weighing in around 130, I could feel the rope digging into my skin! I don’t care how soft the rope might be, when it presses against flesh, there is that moment of tension and discomfort that precedes the moment when you suddenly let go. It was a moment I feared, loathed and loved.

Master Tom walked around me, making adjustments. I could hear his breathing and knew that he’d raised me only a few inches off the ground while he checked and rechecked his knots.

Master gave a satisfied grunt and I heard him digging in his bag. Something — probably another coiled length of rope — batted against my leg and inner thighs, knocking the snow off my boots. I wanted to call out to him to spank me, but my tongue was now pulled, stretched to it’s limit outside my mouth. Master grabbed at the leather that bound my hair, pulling my head back so that my face was arched toward the sky, feeling the flakes land on my cheeks, but my eyes still closed as I savored the feeling. He’d tied the ends of the leather laces to my thumbs, making it all that much more deliciously cruel. If I tried to put my head down, it would tug painfully on my thumbs.

The slapping of the rope ends stopped, indicating Master had picked up the bitter ends and I felt his hands on my legs, caressing the leather of the boots. I shuddered at his touch. The one thing I utterly loved about him was that he was as much a sensualist as I. He would touch and caress me for… well, it felt like hours some days, but may have only been minutes. I wiggled when I felt his hands on the bare skin of my inner thigh. He “rewarded” me by removing his hand. I groaned again, wanting his touch even more.

The zipper at the back of my boots slowly began to be pulled down until he could remove it from my foot. The cold hit me there as if I were being touched by a frigid metal blade and I cried out. He said nothing, but I felt rope being wound around my ankle and knee. He worked a little more quickly now, knowing that my exposure time was growing more and more limited.

My ankle was pulled upwards so that I hung in a graceful dancers pose, as if I were skating on the air above the snow. I heard his camera and knew he was taking pictures — probably videos as well. He would share them with me later when we drank brandied hot chocolate in front of the fire and made love. For now, he was capturing the moment in photographs, copies of which sat in a dresser drawer, covered by silk and lacy lingerie.

The other boot was gently removed and a rope tied about the ankle, but it remained pointing downwards. Master Tom hauled at the rope again and I felt the tension. He’d placed some sort of weight there or tied it off to a stake he’d put in the ground earlier. Either way, it pulled that leg down and I was now stretched totally.

“Comfortable?” he asked, an evil humor in his tone.

He snipped the twine that was attached to my nipples and removed the clamp from my tongue, then pressed a bottle of water to my lips. My tongue didn’t want to work at first, but I gradually swallowed some liquid, if only to prevent the freezing splashes on my breasts and belly.

Master took the two strands of twine wound around the bars on my nipples and attached weights to them, making me groan and earning me a gag for my effort.

He let me sway there in the wind for a bit. I could hear the wind through the branches, an occasional bird chirping shrilly about his hunger and the scurry of squirrels through the trees as they ventured out to their stash of acorns before retreating back into the warmth of their nests. Off in the distance, a semi’s exhaust sounded on one of the highways and a church bell rang out in town. I began to feel myself become free.

Worry, aches, stress, anger, doubt, fear, cares and depression began to dissipate like the fog from my breath. My body relaxed and I felt each twist, each knot, each binding as individuals and as a part of the whole. My being focused on the bindings and that was what set me free.

Hell, I’m a writer and I still don’t quite know how to express the totality of my feelings at that moment in words, nor did I believe it the first time another woman tried to describe it to me. I say “woman” because she was neither a submissive nor a dominant and bristled at the word “switch.” She simply enjoyed being bound.