Chapter 4

“Come here”, I said to my wife. There was nothing but love in those eyes, so I kissed her, taking my time as customers walked around us and didn’t seem to care. Despite the lingering warmth, her face was slowly returning to a healthier shade of red.

“Listen, there are many gardens here with the signs ‘Impact play’, ‘gags’ and such above it. I will go check out the other floors and make a selection of what we might want to buy later. You can look at all things you want to buy, but don’t go overboard. Be ready at 13:00 hours so we can have lunch. I have seen a sign Restaurant zweiter stock somewhere. Here is your phone. When in doubt, send me a picture, but don’t do that with every item. I trust you will buy what we need.”

“Thank you, Master. I will call you at 13:00 so we can meet somewhere.” Whenever she was excited about something, her enthusiasm was impossible to resist. Still smiling, I walked to the stairs. On the first floor, I found mainly clothes, books, and DVDs. I skipped that and took the stairs to the second floor. They cleverly divided the space, with one portion serving as a restaurant and the other portion being occupied by an extensive collection of BDSM equipment.

Eye-catcher was an enormous fourposter bed with a real cage - metal bars and all - underneath it. Did I see something was moving in it? Curious, I walked closer to investigate. Indeed, there was a guy in there, probably a salesperson according to his clothes, walking on hands and knees in the cage. He spoke German to the gathered crowd around the bed, and from what I understood, he explained that there was no way out of there, except for the door in front of the cage that someone could only open from the outside.

It was quite a gimmick, but not for me. I don’t enjoy sleeping alone, even if the whole idea behind it was kinky enough. I walked on. Mounted against the wall were three St. Andrew’s crosses. All in black. One St. Andrew’s cross was made from wood, while the other was covered with black leather. The final one was crafted from a lighter type of wood and had metal studs on its surface. I looked carefully at the construction of the wood cross. There was no reason I couldn’t make it myself instead of buying it here for a ridiculously high price.

The next thing was a large metal cage I quite liked. High enough for Sylvia to sit in without having to bend her head. Big enough to move around and maybe even to lie down in it, if not stretched out, but at least in a fetal position. I made a mental note to show it to Sylvia.

A low cupboard at coffee table height with large metal rings on the sides also caught my attention. Finished with soft red leather and available in several colours, said the card in multiple languages. And also the price. This was not so hard to make myself, either. The presence of hooks and rings on the small furniture made it possible to sell it as BDSM equipment. Add a few rings, double or triple the price, and it’s a kinky attribute. Many of these items had an inflated price, and some of them even lacked quality. Some things I couldn’t appreciate at all, like a wooden horse made of untreated wood and rough, with sharp splinters still protruding from its surface. No way I would lower Sylvia’s pussy on that.

The pillory in the corner I rather liked. Adjusting the holes for the head and hands would make it fit Sylvia’s slim wrists. The cheaper ones had holes she could easily slip out. Maybe not her head, but her hands for sure. Downstairs were a lot of salespeople available, here only one guy seemed to manage the entire floor, and he was busy showing off the four-poster bed.

Sylvia hit me up and said she had seen so many things we just had to buy. I just replied with a thumbs up and went to the restaurant. It was rather busy, but I found an empty table. I ordered a half litre of some German brand beer and relaxed. A half hour to kill before Sylvia was ready. I looked at the billboards on the wall. They were all ads from BDSM-clubs. I did not know if they were all still in business, but most of them looked quite modern. Quite a few featured a Domina all in a leather corset with a ton of make-up and looking as strict as they possibly could. Alas, I wasn’t very impressed. I nursed my beer and spent my time people watching. The distinction between the people who embraced the lifestyle and the curious onlookers was easily recognisable. It wasn’t only the outfits that gave the tourists away. The assortment of kinky products they stumbled upon clearly caught them off guard, and they openly and boisterously marvelled at the bold fashion sense of the outspoken practitioners in our society.

How quickly things can change. If you had told me a month ago that I would sit here as a representative of the BDSM lifestyle, I would have found it laughable. And yet I was here in a gangsta paradise. Coming here made me realise we have played a very simple version of dominance and submission in the past. Not less intense, I dare say. If Sylvia had broken a rule we had previously agreed upon, she would hold her hands before her with the palm up. I had picked some sturdy reed sticks at our waterside and made a bundle from it. I would hit those sensitive hands varying from hand to hand, from hard to soft hitting, from slow to fast. If she couldn’t take it any longer, she would retreat her hands. And I would wait until she gathered enough courage to offer me her hands again. I would hit her again and again. She would have the chance to retreat and stop the punishment, but as long as she kept offering her hands to me, I would hit them. Until she could bear no more and stopped presenting them. Sylvia has an incredible pain threshold. But enough for her was enough for me as well. We would forgive ourselves and the matter was over and done with.

I absolutely get it if you think that hitting a woman on her hands is a sick idea of loving someone. I do not claim to understand why it turns me on. But I got a hard on in the restaurant so many years later just thinking about it. To ease my conscience, I compared my deviation to that of two men who love each other. When asked why they like men more than women, most gay people will answer with “I don’t know, it’s just the way it is.” I can relate to that, as it was the case with me too. Deeply hidden, of course. No doubt out of shame. It is not something to be proud of hitting your wife’s hands so hard that she can hardly use them for days. But it is in me to find that satisfying, and it has been there since I was a teenager.
The reason Sylvia is my soulmate is that she is on the other side of the same coin as I am. And I’m not referring to power exchange alone, but it manifests itself on many levels. I am the practical man. She is the theoretician. I look at all the risks, she is the intuitive decision maker. I am cautious. She is reckless. Fearless. What are the chances of you meet the better half of yourself in your partner? It’s amazing how lucky I am; I have a hard time believing that I deserve any of it.

The phone rang and brought me back to present times. Sylvia called me and I told her to come to the restaurant. She arrived with a huge smile on her face and gave me a big kiss. Yes, our love life - that wasn’t bad before either - had transformed from a pilot light to a burning fire.

“I can’t remember to see so much amazing things down there. When we were young, we had so little money and lots of that stuff down there wasn’t even available back then. So we had to improvise with clothespin instead of nipple clamps, we had regular candle wax, now they have soy candles, black light paraffin wax, wax in penis shapes, wax in a jar so you can easily pour it over me ... OMG,” She fanned herself.