The Knot – Part 2: Release

She tied him slowly and carefully, one limb at a time, and checked every knot twice. A wrist. An arm. The simple harness she had learned, across his chest, a clean line of red against his skin. Each time she finished a tie she slid two fingers under the rope, looked at his face and asked, "How is that?" Each time he answered honestly, and twice he said "a little tight on the left," and she undid it and began again, without sighing, without a flicker of impatience, because that was what the whole thing was for.

It was the most careful thing he had ever experienced. It was also, somehow, the most absolute. He sat on the bed, bound, held by a pattern of soft cord, with her cool voice moving round him, telling him what she saw. Look at me. Breathe. Good. She stroked his hair. She stood behind him, one hand flat between his shoulder blades. She did not hurry. When he trembled, she waited. When he drifted, she brought him back with a murmur. The shears gleamed on the table within easy reach, and the sight of them was a comfort rather than a fear.

Every ten minutes: "Hands. Feet. Colour. How are you?" and he answered, and she nodded.

They stayed that way for an hour, a long, slow, rope-scented hour in a quiet room, and when she finally said, "I am going to release you now," he felt a sharp, unexpected grief.

"I know," said Genevieve, gently, already unpicking the first knot. "That is normal. It's the best part of the whole thing, in a way. Hold still."

She unwound each tie in reverse order, one at a time, rubbing his wrists and shoulders with her palms as each came free, checking the skin, warming the blood back. She laid the rope in a neat red coil on the towel. She had not used the shears.

"Release," she said, softly. "Just so you know it's over."

He turned and put his arms round her, still shaking a little, and held her very tight.

"How are you?"

"Soft," said Daniel, into her hair. "And weirdly proud of both of us."

"As you should be." She drew a blanket round them and pulled him down onto the bed. "You were extraordinary. You trusted every single knot."

"You made every single knot."

"I did." She kissed his wrist, where the faintest pink line was already fading. "And we'll talk about it again in the morning."

They lay in the lamplight with the orange shears on the table and the rope in its coil, and slept.

More consensual femdom stories: Velvet Contract · Silk and Steel · Gentle Hands, Gentle Femdom