Page 52 of Disciplining Dana

“So… who’s your friend?” Luna glanced between Jenna and Drake.

“This is Mr. Ellery. He’s here doing some work with Mr. Hawkins.”

Luna’s eyes flashed for a second, then a tight smile drew across her face. “Oh, Mr. Ellery.” She thrust out her hand. “Hi, I’m Luna.”

Erika. Drake had mentioned earlier that Luna was doing “work stuff” with Erika.

She knows who you are.

“Please, call me Kurt,” he replied as he shook her hand.

“It’s nice to meet you,” she responded politely before quickly pulling her hand back.

Yeah, she definitely knows who you are.

“Kurt and I were just talking about relationships and what helps strengthen them,” Drake said, indicating Kurt.

“Oh, that’s easy,” Luna replied. “Communication.”

“Communication,” Kurt repeated her answer thoughtfully.

“Yep.” She nodded. “Oldest answer in the lifestyle book. Communication is the foundation to everything. I mean, there’s consent, and respect, and a lot of other things, too, sure. Communication, though; that’s what everything else is built on.”

He didn’t know what Erika might’ve told her, but she didn’t seem unwilling to talk to him, at least for the moment, so he took that as a good sign.

“You seem very confident in that answer.”

“Because I am,” she said boldly, “and I’m right.”

Kurt chuckled. “Okay, fair enough.” He swirled the last of his drink in his glass. “So, assuming you’re communicating with your partner, what do you do if said partner is still doing something harmful to themselves?”

Luna tilted her head. “Self-harm, or just in terms of the relationship overall?”

“A little of both.”

“Well, the self-harm part should be taken care of immediately with a professional. That’s not something I’d personally be comfortable trying to resolve on my own. Beyond that, if the relationship is going to continue in any sort of healthy, meaningful way, you and your partner need to communicate your needs with each other and be willing to meet halfway. Compromise.”

“And if you think they need some discipline as part of achieving that compromise?”

“Wellll, are we talking about discipline in terms of behavior modification, or… in terms of a sexual kink?”

Kurt furrowed his brow. “I wasn’t thinking of it as a kink, to be honest. Is that a thing?”

“For some people, yes,” Luna replied with a nod. “However, just because it can be a kink, it doesn’t mean it has to be rooted in sex.”

“Aren’t kinks by their very nature sexually based?”

“As a matter of fact…” Luna moved to take a stool next to Drake. “While discipline can have a sexual component to it, like a lot of kinks that doesn’t mean it has to. Sometimes, the draw of a kink isn’t so much how it impacts someone as a part of their sex life, but how it does outside of it. Meaning, you may be drawn to something that most vanilla people would consider outside the norm because it elicits a strong emotional response in you—and, yes, that response could be arousal, sure. However, what they might look at from an outsiders POV and call kinky doesn’t necessarily mean it would have to end in or involve sex for you.”

“That’s not a perspective I’m familiar with. I’ve always thought of kink as being… kinky.”

“Meaning it ends with the sexy-sexy times.”

“Honestly, yes.”

“And that’s not uncommon. Even within the community, when people talk about kink, it’s very often in terms of the sexual component associated with it. For a great number of people, kink and sex are intertwined. Probably the one community who understands non-sexually based kink best are Aces.”

“Asexual people?”

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