Page 83 of Ruined Vows

No matter how good I was at the rules everywhere else, I always failed with Carol. Once I reached for a second piece of fudge, and Carol cast her eyes disparagingly my way and said, “I’d rather be anorexic than fat.”

So I put the fudge back and had a mild ED for the rest of high school. Losing pounds as I disappeared. Barely there. So invisible no one ever saw me except Drew when he needed comfort.

“What are your hard and soft limits?” Isaak asks while securing my left—and last—wrist.

“Uh…” I cast my brain around quickly.

“Do you know what that means?”

“Of course I know what it means,” I snap. “I’m not an idiot. I’ve studied all about safewords and hard and soft limits.”

I guess he doesn’t know me well enough yet to realize that when I learned that BDSM was all about rules, I got excited and learned them all forward and backward. I love rules as much as my mind rebels against them and sends chaotic thoughts like bolts of lightning attacking me.

Jumping Isaak in the elevator was the first time I’ve given in to the chaos. I don’t know if I’m walking a path of destruction by stepping off the narrow path of the rules like my religion growing up always promised would happen. But no one else in this room is following those rules. My entire college degree has been about trying to deconstruct all that shit.

Because aren’t all those rules just the boundaries of the conditioning I learned? To change, I have to startbreakingrules. In spite of all I’ve learned, I’ve just kept coloring inside the lines. As if all I learned was only forotherpeople. Not forme.

“Great,” Isaak says with only the tiniest eye roll. “So what are yours?”

“Um.” I bite my bottom lip and Isaak frowns at me. Oh right, that’s my poker tell. I don’t want to confuse him. Well, only occasionally, on my terms. I refuse to be intimate with someone I can’t hide my feelings from.

Dr. Ezra says it’s not lying; it’s just massaging other people’s perceptions.

I’m just lucky no one insisted on seeing my cards during my last round of play. I only had a pair of kings high when I bet, but with the last card that came on the river, I got a flush. Flush beats a straight.

But I wanted to prove to myself that Idohave a poker face. So, by losing and not letting Isaak know I wasn’t bluffing, I really won and broke my first rule: I don’t always have to be honest.

Plus, the thoughts bombarding my brain said get naked and tempt him to stay and play. Reckless, maybe, but my therapist says as long as the intrusive thoughts aren’t self-destructive, I shouldn’t worry.

A.k.a., it’s okay to break the rules sometimes.

The question is: is having a wildly intense affair with Isaak right before my wedding self-destructive? I don’t know. It’s not cheating. It’s not as if me and my husband-to-be are even having sex.

And maybe some part of me thinks my pathetic life needs some fucking destroying.

Tear me apart, I want to beg.Rip my little fucking box to shreds.

Instead, I say calmly, “Hard limits are no pain beyond an eight on a scale of one to ten. No fisting, no gags, no gut punching, no trampling, no whipping, no electric shocks, no blood play, no water sports, no breath play.”

“Jesus,” Isaak says. “Gut punching? How the fuck do you have a list like that in your head to reel off? Most people check things off on a list at the front desk. I was about to go get one.”

I laugh with nervous excitement. “I may have studied up. Just in case one day.”

“Teacher’s pet,” he says, spanking my exposed ass.

I let out a noise at the contact, squirming where I’m cuffed in place. The chaotic thoughts in my head still for a moment. My butt cheek feels warm where he spanked it, and it’s almost like I can still feel the impact reverberating all throughout my body. And it’s not pain. Just sensation.

I want more. Please, God, could I just escape my brain for two seconds?

“I’m going to take your limits seriously. But everything else is on the table then?”

I nod quickly. “Yes. My safe word is red. Now do it again,” I breathe out. “Please.”

Because the thoughts are already racing back in. Should I have texted Drew details on when I can meet him tomorrow? It was probably cold of me to just cut him off like that and then turn off the phone. What if he kept texting me back or was having a really dark night? Yeah I might be going through my own shit, but his father is a legit monster.He’s your fiancé and you’re a selfish cunt.

But then Isaak spanks me again and my thoughts go blessedly blank. All guilt and shame I’m feeling about letting Drew down disappears like a storm cloud blown away with a fresh wind.

I breathe out with such peace.

---