The air is split by another crack and the sting makes him cry out. She pushes him further each time by the tiniest of degrees. Her skill is sublime and he loves her for it. He aches for the next burning cut of the lash, but she makes him wait, keeps him tensed, drawing out his pain.

Crack!

‘Ooooohh!’

‘Silence! I demand silence! You will do as I say. Your whining disappoints me, humiliates me. Silence!’

The whip speaks again and he bites his lip to mask the greater pain. Sobs shake his body but his cries are swallowed. Tears fall to the floor and he tastes blood in his mouth but he maintains his dignity, proves his love. He releases the muscles that had knotted in agony and stands tall. Devotion bears him up and he regains strength knowing he has pleased her. She looks at him and nods her head in approval.

‘Well done… well done… well done.’ Her voice is softer on the last repeat and he recognises the tone, knows it is over. She reaches to loosen the ropes that burn his wrists.

‘Have I pleased you, Mistress?’

Her face changes in seconds from a mellow satisfaction to a red roaring rage.

Crack, crack, crack! The whip sears three times across his back and again he cries out.

‘You have much to learn. Much to learn! I am not pleased. Not pleased at all! How dare you presume? I stop when I am satisfied. It ends when I decide!’

Again the whip tears his flesh. He feels faint from the pain, feels the room start to spin and his legs begin to crumble. The ropes on his wrists hold him upright and he maintains his balance. He screams inside, ‘Please let this end’.

She has guided him skilfully, patiently through many levels, past landmarks he never imagined he would reach. His Mistress had asked much of him but he had nearly always surpassed her expectations. And though he does have much to learn, he knows about trust and he trusts her implicitly. The ‘safeword’ is on the tip of his tongue. He only has to utter it and she will stop, let him down and tend to him. Trust is paramount and he knows he only has to speak it, but he now knows he must not make a sound. Oh, how he has let her down! Shame and disappointment eat at him in equal measure. Now he will do anything to prove his love. If he fails in this how else can he show it?

‘Push me further, further than any other human could bear and I will take it, for you, my Mistress.’ His thoughts are clear, but his body and mind are nearing their limits.

Another lash, like an electric shock across his buttocks… more silent sobs. Please let that be the last one. His lip swells as he bites again and once more he tastes his own blood. The ‘safeword’ once again springs into his throat, fights for release, but he swallows and grits his teeth, barring its exit. He tenses himself and feels the bite of yet another lash. He has taken all he can.

‘I…’ There is no sound, just the letter burning in his mind.

‘Love…’ a word he didn’t choose lightly, never used lightly, a word to end all suffering, trapped on his tongue.

‘You…’ The object of his devotion, the epicentre of his need to submit stands expectantly before him. Saying it in his mind makes up his mind: not yet, I have more to give… Bile rises in his throat, he sees bright yellow spots amid the darkness before his eyes, hears a roaring in his ears and then there is total blackness…

‘Look, I’m not fucking stupid! You fucked him didn’t you? Didn’t you?’ Her back is to the door and my finger is in her face. Please don’t say yes. Please don’t…

‘Yes, I fucked him! Are you happy now? Are you fucking happy now…’ and she breaks down, sobbing, crying her heart out. Three months of lies and now we have it. The truth. Just as I feared, just like I knew. There would be nothing explicit in their emails, not an errant word in their text messages, but the fact that they existed at all was proof enough. My wife, four months pregnant, was having an affair. My wife! The woman I love. The woman I married and promised to take care of, to cherish and love forever… and she made those promises to me too. Empty fucking promises. The lying, scheming bitch… fucking, like two wild dogs… and carrying our baby, my baby…

Our two year-old son sits in his high chair in the other room and cries at the noise. He has never heard raised voices before… well not with this tone. Ok, I nearly scared him to death when Michael Owen scored that goal against Argentina and I leapt screaming from my chair… and he wept and wept… and we laughed and hugged him and said everything was ok, but that was nothing like this.

Today is different. This is new for him and new for me. I have no experience, know no rules, can see no way forward. I suddenly feel sick. Dizzy and sick. I push her aside, open the door and stumble blindly up the stairs, doubling up, clutching my stomach. Throwing open the bathroom door, my legs suddenly give way and I fall to the floor. I have a hole where my stomach used to be, a gaping void, and I curl up like a baby and howl. Darkness sweeps over me, my body tightens into a ball and I howl again. Let the world swallow me up now. The pain, the humiliation, the loss are all too much. She is standing over me, now holding me, rocking me to and fro.

‘Oh, baby… baby… I’m sorry.’ Her tears fall onto my face. ‘Forgive me. Forgive me… please? Oh God, I’m so sorry.’

My sobbing suddenly stops. I still struggle to get my breath but the blind panic is gone. Words form in my head and my tongue and lips rehearse their dance. My clenched jaw eases and I suck in air with deep, free and measured gasps. I feel the ground again, a foundation, and begin, incredibly, to rebuild what seemed like a hopeless ruin only seconds before. Miraculous words that make the pain stop and give me back a degree of control escape and reverberate into the world.

‘I love you.’

‘I love you too.’

Trust is the most fragile thing and once it’s broken it can’t be properly mended. You can look for all the bits and patch it up, build it back up into something like you remember… but there are always some parts, smashed into atoms, that are simply no longer there. It may look like the real thing from a distance, but examine it closely and you will see the hairline cracks; one more tap and the whole structure will crumble like sand.

But I learnt something very important: love is a very good glaze and can hide most flaws if two people believe in it strongly enough. And so we carried on.

Twice more - no, three times - over the next few years, I pointed the finger and yelled my accusations. And three times, after lengthy denials, sneers at my sanity and mentions of paranoia and psychiatrists, we finally reached the truth. We held each other again, rocked away the trauma, and cried… and she said she was sorry, oh God she was sorry. And three times afterwards, stripped naked in bed, I held her and she lay beneath me. I parted her legs, kissed and touched her there… and rehearsed the words that would make us safe, would take away the pain and allow us to somehow start again. I whispered as I slid gently into her:

‘I love you.’

‘I love you too.’

‘I don’t want you to go.’

‘I… I have to now… there’s no way I can get out of it.’

‘But he’ll be there, won’t he. Come on. Don’t deny it. I know he’ll be there. Two years. Two fucking years this bloke’s been around. Every trip, every fucking conference you go to and I’ve tried to cope, tried to turn a blind eye.’

Two years ago I decided I’d rather not know. It’s a different way to cope. It’s a better way to cope than the first time she did this - going over all the details, filling in all the gaps till my mind stopped accelerating into oblivion and I could finally reach what everyone these days calls ‘closure’.

‘That… that first time was so painful… so fucking painful… that was eight years ago; just think about it… eight fucking years of my life. Oh, God…’

‘You never forgave me for that, not properly.’ She hurls this like a dagger. The accusation that I somehow chose to not forgive her pierces me and pins me to the frame of the door. Can she blame me for keeping a piece of me safe from her, for having this one place inside me that would always be my sanctuary?

‘Never forgave you? I tried to forgive you, but you never gave me a chance. I tried and fucking tried, but every time I’m just getting back on my feet you’re at it again. Forgive you? God almighty, who do you think I am? Jesus fucking Christ?’ and again I crumple, like I once did on the bathroom floor, but only internally now. I am hardened to it, prepared for the beating her words will give me and I stand straight, impassive. Breathing deep and low I feel the earth, firm beneath my feet. I can take this. The words are safe in here, and I rub my chest with the flat of my hand. I won’t need them tonight. Over the years my limits have been pushed and pushed and I can cope with anything she can throw at me. Outside I appear cold, detached, analytical, and this is how I cope. I eschew all detail, all knowledge that will make it more real and thus more painful in my head. I simply rely on gut feeling. I know he’ll be there. I can even tell she doesn’t love him… not this one. She has loved all the others to some degree, but this one is just a fuck… just someone to fuck. It’s entertainment. She has hardened too…

Still, I step close and hold her and she holds me, but this is not how it usually is. It’s half-hearted and we stand for an age, neither wanting to be the one to have to look in the other’s eyes. So, now I know what her answer will be. Finally she breaks away.

‘I have to go. It’s only two nights. I’ll be home Friday night. I’ll ring you…’

‘Please don’t ring. No more lies. I can’t stand it - Just having an early night, I’m so tired, I’ll turn my phone off, blah, blah fucking blah. Don’t fucking bother. Just go and fuck him and come back when you’ve done!’

Inside I break. She doesn’t know, she’ll never know. To survive the nuclear winter of her discontent I have metamorphosed into a kind of insect… a cockroach. Outside is a shell, a solid bony shell and inside is the soft, sensitive tissue. Her cold silence is the unexpected switch that sets my insides whirling like the contents of a blender; they are mashed, thrashed, trashed and splashed around. My liquidised innards finally stop spinning and drain into my feet. My stomach, chest and head are empty, a ringing, hollow space.

I am at my limit, beyond any limit I ever imagined. And it’s suddenly a surprise to me, a shock. I thought I could take it all and yet here I am, standing like a stupid, vacant scarecrow while my absent brain is a sobbing, gibbering wreck. Tears sting my eyes and blur her impassive face. Shallow breath saws the buzzing cords in my throat and escapes as a whisper past the inert tongue, teeth and lips. The three words slip out, unnoticed:

‘I… love… you.’

Her eyes are full of emotion, but love is not one of them. I feel the barbs of scorn and pity, the lashes of regret and contempt, but the salve of love is absent. I try the words again, thinking I had not said them, that I had just imagined them. My ‘safe words’, the words that make her stop, that make everything right again:

‘I love you.’

She shakes her head sadly, brushes past me and goes upstairs to pack.

Light waves break through his eyelids, wash away the visions that play inside his head. Reality stands before him as consciousness returns. Her index finger lifts his chin. Smiling widely, she closes her eyes with introspective satisfaction and nods her head in appreciation of what she has witnessed. She kisses him full on the lips and fixes his eyes with hers.

‘Oh my. Oh my! How well you did! I am pleased. Very pleased!’

She raises a finger to her lips and another smile, this time of pride, of love, parades across her face. She unties him, supports him, and gently leads him to the hot bath she has prepared for him. The water stings at first, takes his breath, but the perfume and heat soon envelope him and soothe away the pain. She gently, lovingly sponges him down and then strips and joins him in the soapy, unctuous depths, immediately taking his member in her hands. At this art she is sublime too and her hands, lips, teeth and tongue soon lead him to the limits of pleasure. She holds him there with gentle licks and nibbles and tiny feather-like movements of her fingers. Again and again she takes him to the very edge and then leaves him hanging, untouched, longing. When finally he can take no more he utters the words that he knows will bring him release from this delicious torture:

‘I love you!’

She pushes down and sucks him hard, taking all his cum into her mouth, swallowing and sucking till she has drained him dry. He cries out, amazed and numbed by the strength and length of his orgasm and again tears flow down his face. He sobs and she kisses him on the lips once more, his cum mingling with the saliva as their tongues play together. Cupping his face in her hands she pulls away and finally says the words he longs to hear:

‘I love you too.’