Ellen was a skilled dominant, and she guided my journey to submission brilliantly — gradually pushing my limits, expanding my horizons, deepening my adoration for her. For most of my first year, I never doubted our new dynamic was one that I would adjust to and even come to feel grateful for.

She was strict, but at all times fair. She simply held me to the same exacting standards to which she’d at all times held herself.

Usually, she corrected my mistakes with a sharp word and a swat or two with her crop, but there were times when she took me to the dungeon for harsher punishment. For these sessions, she gave me a safe word (pineapple), although I was too proud ever to use it. And she was very good about aftercare — comforting me, praising the way I’d endured my pain and degradation, helping me figure out and correct the behavior that had led to it.

There were many things about submission I found surprisingly pleasant. For example, when she had me sit on the floor next to her instead of on the furniture, it was often not to punish me, but to pat my head or stroke my hair while she praised me for some good behavior or other.

She continued to take me into her confidence, consulting me frequently about numerous questions or problems that she had. (I remained, let’s not forget, one of the most influential men in Washington, so I did know a few useful things, and she appreciated my ability — not just my willingness — to help her out on essential matters.)

I also greatly enjoyed our rituals, especially kneeling at her feet and polishing her boots on Sunday evenings, because it provided a welcome distraction from any worries that I might have about the upcoming week.

I was even beginning to discover that chastity had its upsides. Since I could no longer fuck, or even jerk off, whenever I wanted, I became sensitized to any sexual attention I did receive. Though she took off my cage most evenings, sometimes she she’d keep me locked up overnight for her own amusement. She’d tell me how attractive she found me in my cage, and she’d talk about keeping me locked up permanently, showing me photos from chastity forums of men who’d had their penises pierced to make their lockup more secure, or squashed into smaller and smaller cages, and so forth.

At the time, I found these images horrific. Little did I realize… But that’s a much later story.

Ellen turned into an incurable tease. When we were at cocktail parties or out shopping, she’d discover excuses to brush by me and give my cage a little tug, and my knees would buckle. When we were chatting with friends, she’d make double-entendres using words like “lock” and “key” and “freedom.” Later, she’d mock me for my embarrassment, often while edging me to the point of insanity.

For the most part, though, our lifestyle was very similar to that of most vanilla couples, just as it had been when I was dominant.

***********

Early on, Ellen gave me some advice, which turned out to be invaluable. She told me to channel the energy I no longer expended on sex into work. Following this advice, I put into action an extremely smart and profitable scheme, one I’d had in mind for a long time but could never muster the time and energy needed to execute.

I won’t bore you with a lot of technical details, but the short story is this:

Every year that a pharmaceutical business holds a patent on a drug, it can charge monopoly prices, often resulting in billions of dollars in excess profits. That’s why, for example, Pfizer took a giant hit to the bottom line when its patent on Viagra expired. But under U.S. law, the 17-year protection period starts when the patent is granted, which could be years before the drug is actually approved for sale by the FDA.

My scheme was simple: We’d get the FDA to change the rules for certain drugs so that the patent clock started ticking only when the drug came on the market. Which drugs? Well, whichever ones that an informal working group decided. Who was on the working group? Well, me, together with a few close friends from Congress, the White House, and industry.

If I pulled it off, I’d have the entire $300 billion American pharmaceutical industry by the balls.

Success required me to call in every favor owed me on Capitol Hill and in the Executive Branch, but I soon had pharma execs lined up outside my office waiting to write me retainer checks. My Ivy league-educated associates worked overtime to draft the required regulatory language. (Under U.S. law, a government regulation can not refer to a specific drug like “Viagra.” It has to say something vague, like “certain blue pills that make your dick hard.”)

The culmination of these efforts was a call out of the blue from Pharma Douche.

“Mister Pharma Douche,” I said, in a friendly and confident tone, when I saw the name on the screen of my iPhone. “What can I do for you?”

“I’ll cut to the chase,” he said. “I’ve heard about your scheme, and I want in.”

“Scheme? Sorry, you’ll have to be more specific,” I replied.

“Don’t fuck around. I have three products in Phase 3 testing, and I need their patents extended. They should qualify for your program.”

“Hmmm…” I said, feigning puzzlement. “I think you may have been misinformed. I’m not aware of any kind of program. I’ve been to a few meetings about patents, but…”

“‘Been to a few meetings’, my ass!” he shouted. “You’re organizing them. Everyone says so. You can’t freeze me out.”

“I’m sure the FDA would dispute that I’m organizing anything,” I said. “But I do know about a meeting tomorrow. I’ll text you the details, and you’ll have the same chance to comment as everyone else. I’ll even forward a draft of the rules under discussion.”

“A draft? How many pages?”

“Dunno. Six, seven hundred maybe.”

“Bullshit. I can’t have my lawyers read seven hundred pages of government gobbledygook by tomorrow. I’ll send you the details, and you can work my products in.”

“I’d love to help,” I said sincerely. “But it would be highly improper, since you and I don’t have a business relationship. If you named us as your Washington reps, we could maybe work something out.”

“You son-of-a-bitch, you set this up. OK, fine. I’ll hire you, but you’ll have to prove yourself. You deliver on this, then we can talk about a representation deal.”

“Wow,” I replied, in a shocked voice. “I’m not sure how to respond to that. As I understand it, you’ve already incurred an awful lot of legal exposure. Are you sure you want to propose a highly illegal success fee contract?”

I smiled, as I heard him seethe on the other end of the line. “What would it take to make it legal?” he finally asked.

“Well, we work on a strict billing basis. So I’d imagine a retainer up front. Maybe two thousand hours at eight hundred an hour, half up front… Obviously, we’ll provide full transparency over hours and expenses, and we’ll…”

“Fuck you,” he interrupted. “You’ll have a check for eight hundred thousand at close of business. So get to goddamned work, and don’t even think about telling me you need to wait for the check to clear.”

“Of course not. I’m quite sure you value PharmaCo’s reputation much too highly for that.” I was perfectly happy to allow him this shred of dignity. After all, Pharma Douche was now my most lucrative client.

***********

As you can imagine, I was feeling pretty jaunty when I arrived home that evening, despite the late hour. I walked through the front door and went upstairs to take off my clothes, and a few minutes later I found Ellen in the family room, engrossed in a movie on the TV. I waited with my head bowed, and after a moment, she hit “pause” and snapped her fingers.

By this time, I’d come to adore kneeling at her feet, and the snap of her fingers ordering me to do so was one of the most welcome sounds I knew. She stroked my head for a minute before putting my collar around my neck, and I positively purred with contentment.

“You seem quite peppy,” she noticed. “If I didn’t know better, I’d worry that some new woman at the office has caught your eye. Some dewy-eyed young research associate, perhaps?”

I was taken aback, since our new lifestyle had, in fact, had the desired effect of driving even the slightest wondered of other women from my mind. “Of course not, Mistress,” I answered, looking up into her eyes unbidden. “You know I’m happy to have you holding my key.”

She smiled at me. “I’m just kidding,” she said, gently nudging my head back down into its proper position. So tell me why you’re so happy? I mean, other than having the perfect Mistress to serve?”

“Pharma Douche called out of the blue today,” I answered. “He got wind of my deal, and he tried to weasel his way in. I let him squirm for a while, and then I made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. And he didn’t. The check’s in the mail, and we should be able to bill him for close to a million over the next six months.”

“Wow, that’s fantastic. Congratulations.” She looked at her watch. “It’s already ten o’clock, but if you’d like, I’ll allow you to take me to Fiola Mare tomorrow to celebrate. How about that?”

“I’d like that very much,” I answered, and she gave my hair a couple more affectionate strokes. “May I go wash up, Mistress?”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” she asked.

Wow.

Between my elation at my victory over Pharma Douche, and my contentment at kneeling before my perfect wife, I’d somehow forgotten about my chastity cage. “Would you please unlock me, Mistress?” She smiled, then took the brass key from her bracelet and slid it into my padlock.

Click. I was free until the next morning. “Thank you, Mistress,” I said.

“I’m very proud of you. Now, you go may relax a bit before bed. You’ve earned it.” She gave me final pat on the head, and my heart soared with her approval and affection.

As I stood up and walked to the stairs, I heard her movie resume on the TV.

***********

It only took me a few minutes to wash up, but when I was done, I stood in the shower for a while, letting the hot water massage the day’s stress from my neck and shoulders. Bliss. I closed my eyes, and without thinking, I put a squirt of shower gel onto my hand and worked up a lather in my pubes. After a moment, my hand moved involuntarily to my cock, and I began to squeeze gently and rhythmically.

Because Ellen let me out of my cage nearly every night, I had some limited freedom to jerk off, which I took advantage of once a week or so. Had she been stricter with the key, I would have had to ask her permission for these extracurricular orgasms, and I wouldn’t have had the nerve to do it. But as it was, she had no reason to think that my daily request to be unlocked signalled an intention to sneak off and rub one out, because it usually didn’t.

A kaleidoscope of female flesh danced across my closed eyelids — nothing specific, just random images of women’s asses and breasts and legs and cunts. But as I became erect, these random images slowly morphed into images of Ellen. Ellen’s ass. Ellen’s breasts. Ellen’s legs. Ellen’s cunt. My lathered hand moved up and down my shaft and squeezed tighter. My thumb worked the nerve underneath leading to my cock-head.

I saw Ellen wanting me. Ellen needing me. Ellen submitting to me. Somewhere down in my groin, an orgasm began to build. My hand accelerated, and I could feel Ellen’s warm flesh against my body, as real as if she were in the shower with me. Her mouth and cunt and ass all embraced my cock in turn. She moved her body with desperate passion against mine, and she begged for me to cum inside her. I was breathing heavily, and I was so near the edge, that I could almost count the number of strokes I’d need to climax — seven, six, five, four…

“What on earth are you doing?” My bliss was shattered by a harsh, schoolmarmish voice.

I opened my eyes to see standing before me, fully clothed and with riding crop in hand, the very woman who two seconds earlier had been naked and submissive in my fantasies. She reached in and turned off the water.

“I asked what you were doing,” she repeated.

“Taking a shower? What does it look like?” I said sarcastically. The shock of her appearance had shaken me from my submissive mind-set. I gathered myself. “I’m very sorry, Mistress. You startled me. I was taking a shower.”

She wagged a finger in my face. “Don’t lie to me. Answer my question.”

“I was taking a… I’m sorry, Mistress.” I interrupted myself when I peeked up her face grow stormy. Shame overcame me, and my next words came with difficulty. “I was masturbating.”

“You were masturbating,” she repeated. “Touching yourself like a filthy little boy. Is that it?” I nodded guiltily. “How often do you masturbate?”

I choked on my embarrassment, but she gave me an impatient look, and I had no choice but to answer. “I don’t know. Once a week. Twice maybe. I don’t know.”

There, I answered. Now, please, for the love of God, stop asking questions about this.

“And how long has this been going on?” she demanded. “Did it just begin, or have you been playing with your penis the whole time you’ve been in submission?”

I realized that it was pointless to obfuscate. Defeated, I answered miserably, “The whole time, Mistress.”

She gave an exasperated sigh. “I don’t figure out you, I really don’t. I gave you a little freedom, so that you’d begin to see the advantages of chastity and grow to want it on your own. And how do you reward me? By sneaking off to pleasure yourself. By thinking dirty, nasty thoughts and touching yourself like a naughty little boy. You sicken me.”

Let me at this point offer a piece of advice to any reader who is considering a female-led relationship: If you don’t want your soul ripped from your body, thrown onto the ground, and stomped into the mud by your wife’s stiletto-heeled boots, you should avoid telling her about any childhood trauma you might have experienced.

If, for example, your brilliant but psychologically-abusive, ultra-conservative Catholic mother heaped shame on you throughout puberty with each new manifestation of your budding sexuality. Or, if the clique of popular girls in your Catholic middle-school (which included the girl you secretly adored) made you the particular target of their relentless ridicule and cruel pranks for several years running. (To this day, catching even a brief glimpse of a girl in a white blouse, plaid skirt, and white knee socks can dampen my mood for several hours.)

Of course, I’d made my admissions to Ellen when I was in the relative security of my position as her dominant, but it just goes to show that you can’t rely on things not to change.

“I just didn’t think it was a big deal,” I protested. “You never told me not to.”

“You don’t get to decide what’s a big deal,” she answered. “Do I have to list out every little thing you’re not allowed to do?” She continued in a mocking voice, “‘I’ll unlock you, but don’t run off to play with yourself.’ Don’t be childish.” She shook her head and paused for a second, then she conceded in a tired, resigned voice, “Alright, you’re a man, so I guess so you can not help yourself sometimes. I can see how once in a while, you might need release. But why didn’t you just ask my permission?”

“Because it’s embarrassing. I didn’t want to.”

“Because it’s embarrassing? Or because you think that I’m such a bitch that I’ll deny you just out of spite?”

“Of course not. I didn’t know what to think. I guess I just didn’t think.” When she put it like this, it seemed completely obvious what I should have done. But still, how could she not see how mortifying that would be for me? My gut started to feel queasy, and I was afraid that if the conversation continued any longer, my head would explode from a volatile combination of confusion, shame, regret and guilt. “Look, I’m sorry, alright?” I said, emotion rising in my voice. “Just let it go. Jesus Christ.”

Ellen snapped her wrist and furiously struck my crotch with the riding crop. Thankfully, my balls were mostly stuffed between my thighs, but the blow to my shaft was still very painful. I winced.

“Don’t you dare take that tone with me,” she warned. “And don’t you dare tell me to let it go. I decide when to let it go. Now, tell me about your fantasies.”

Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me.

“Fantasies?” I cringed. Obviously, I knew what she meant, but I couldn’t believe that she’d ask me something that private.

“Your fantasies,” she repeated. “Tell me what you think about when you touch yourself. Do you picture yourself with other women?”

“No, Mistress, just you, I swear.” This was the one truth that I was not ashamed to reveal. It’s not that I was turned off by the idea of fucking a woman other than my wife. It’s more that since I’d been in submission, the idea just never occurred to me.

Ellen lifted up my head and looked into my eyes, and she apparently saw that I wasn’t lying. “Well, that’s something, I guess,” she said pursing her lips. “But even so. In your fantasies, do you respect my body? Or do you use me like a whore?”

“I don’t know. It’s complicated. Images come and go. It’s like…”

She gave me another stinging swat on my shaft. “Tell me the truth. Do you picture yourself fucking me?”

Well, if she put it like that, I could only answer, “Yes, Mistress.”

“Where do you fuck me?” she demanded.

I was confused. “What? I don’t know. Nowhere in particular. The bedroom. The dungeon. What difference does it make?”

I again felt the painful sting of the riding crop on my shaft. “You know what I meant,” she barked. “In what part of my body do you insert your penis?”

Oh, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“In your vagina, Mistress,” I answered, desperately hoping that she’d drop this line of inquiry.

“Only in my vagina?” she demanded. I hesitated, and she smacked my cock again. “Only in my vagina?” she repeated.

“No, Mistress.”

“Where else? And don’t you dare make me repeat the question.”

“In your mouth, Mistress. And…” I stopped, and in the few seconds it took me to overcome my shame sufficiently to say the rest, the crop again snapped down. “And in your anus.”

“In my anus,” she repeated in her clipped voice. “I see. So, it turns out that after I showed you a little kindness, you immediately rushed up here and started fantasizing about fucking me in the ass. Is that right? And what else went through your filthy little mind? Did you picture me tied up? Were you whipping me? Was I begging you? Did you picture your nasty sperm dripping from me when you were finished using me?”

What the fuck? Were my brainwaves being broadcast over wifi as I jerked off?

Later, of course, I realized that she’d simply participated in enough of my fantasies as my submissive to know what turned me on. But in any case, I had no choice but to confess, “Yes, Mistress.”

“Which part of it? And don’t you dare leave anything out.”

“All of it,” I said, utterly broken down and miserable. I felt tears of shame well up in my eyes. “I’m so sorry, Mistress. I just want you so much…”

She smacked my cock again. “Shut up. You sicken me.” The bathroom was silent for a few moments. Then Ellen said in a curious voice, “So, you just want me so much. Well, let’s see about that.”

She reached out, took a squirt of gel into her hand and started massaging my cock. I didn’t expect this gesture, and I squirmed a little out of surprise and nervousness.

“Shhhh… It’s OK,” she said. “You can relax. I’m here with you.”

As I mentioned before, her movements when giving me a handjob had usually been cold and clinical, designed to bring me release quickly. But this was nothing like that. She was warm and sensual, and after just a few seconds, my desire began to displace my guilt and shame. I moaned slightly.

“Mmmmm, do you like that?” Ellen asked seductively.

“Yes, Mistress.” My cock started to grow hard.

“I know you do. It’s OK to like it.” Her voice softened to a whisper as she continued to massage me. She formed her fingers into a faux vagina and worked it up and down my shaft, until my hips started to move against her hand.