So we continued the run-through. There actually wasn’t much for me to do; I guess this movie was a star vehicle, and Mike was the star. After she supposedly slapped me, she pulled my arms behind my back and pushed me up against a wall, telling my character what an ungrateful cunt she was. “I think you’d better show me some gratitude,” she said. “I don’t think I’m going to give you a choice about it.” Then Mike got to show off how quickly she could get me gagged and bound in a bunch of devices. Still holding my arms behind me, she snapped cuffs around my wrists, tied my arms together near the elbow with some ropes, gagged me with a scarf, and put a chain around my waist that she connected to the cuffs at my wrists.

I kept telling myself we were all professionals while Mike read her lines and ran through simulated sex movements. At least I still had clothes on.

“Who’s the pig now?” she asked, while she stood a couple of inches in front of me and pretended to grind her hips into me. She looked really convincing, her body strong, her movements lustful, her voice charged and powerful. I even felt myself getting caught up in the scene, wondering how I looked.

“Are you my little heifer?” she grunted, and kept up her air-grinding. “Are you my little sow?” She whirled me around and pushed my hands onto the sofa. Now I could see myself in the mirror. I looked like a cross between a prisoner and a trussed-up farm animal. A twinge between my legs took me by surprise, but before I could focus on it, a stronger sensation took over. Mike had taken some kind of whip out of her bag and was whacking the seat of my pants. It stung like hell.

Luckily, Jane intervened. “Whoa, Mike, hey, it’s just a rehearsal.”

Mike stopped. Thank God.

“Sorry, Jane,” she said. “Got a little too into the scene.”

Sorry, Jane? I thought. I’m the one getting my ass whacked.

“Why don’t we just skip ahead to page forty-five,” said Jane.

“Where I take the gag off and force her to go down on me?” Mike asked.

“Right,” said Jane.

If you’d asked me twenty minutes before whether I’d even read that scene, never mind act it out, I would have said no. But I’d crossed a line. Maybe it happened when I saw myself in the mirror; I was excited now.

“Have you learned your lesson, you little bitch?” Mike barked. “You ready to show a little gratitude?”

“Yes,” I read. “Let me show you. I’ll do whatever you say.”