The Mistress pressed down against the layers of tissue at the opening of Chris’s vagina. Breaking that killer hymen would take more than just a couple minutes with a vibrator.

“I don’t blame you. In my world there’s good pain and bad pain. Getting your vagina ripped is of the ‘bad pain’ variety. Are you sure you want to do this? Sober, I mean? I can get some booze or drugs. God only knows what’s in King’s medicine cabinet right now.”

“King gave me a Vicodin to take after if I needed it. I better not take anything else.”

“You sure about doing this?”

“I’m sure. I need to do it.”

The Mistress heard a note of sadness in her voice.

“Need to?”

Chris nodded. “Need. My girlfriend...ex-girlfriend now...she accused me of being stone-cold.”

The Mistress looked up over the sheet at Chris.

“You’re going to have to explain that one to me. I can barely keep up with all the different permutations of kinky people. I’ll need the Cliff’s Notes on the lesbians.” The Mistress moved her finger gently in and out of Chris simply to get her accustomed to being touched so intimately.

“Stone-cold? It’s um...” Chris paused to think. “There are some of us who are really masculine. Almost borderline transgender. So a stone-cold lesbian, she doesn’t want her body treated like, you know, a man would treat a woman.”

“So no penetration?”

“Right. Exactly.”

“And your ex-girlfriend called you stone-cold because you don’t like being penetrated?”

“It was more than that. I never even let her try. Being twenty-three and sexually active and having the hymen of a ten-year-old girl is humiliating. I didn’t want to deal with her having to deal with me. More than one finger hurts so what’s the point? Anyway, Theresa said she couldn’t be with someone so closed-off. We started fighting a lot. I thought everything was great between us...except in bed. Apparently sex mattered more than everything else to her.”

“Sex does matter in a relationship. Anyone who says differently is fooling themselves because they’ve never had good sex.”

“I know it does matter. But I didn’t think it was the be-all end-all of our relationship.”

“Chris...listen to me.” The Mistress pulled her hand out and held up two fingers. Chris nodded her agreement and The Mistress pushed into her again gently. Chris winced only once. “Sex in a relationship is a partnership. One person can’t do all the work. And you’re being fingered by a woman who used to submit to the Dominant of all Dominant men. He’s not an alpha male. He’s the alpha and omega male. He met the president once and the president called him ‘Sir.’ Even in that relationship with Captain Über-Dom, we both did the work in the bedroom. Or the kitchen. Or the living room. Or the dungeon. Or under the piano...”

“Under?”

“He wouldn’t do me on top of the piano. He didn’t want me scratching the finish.”

“Makes sense.”

“The point is...I told him things I enjoyed, and we did them. He told me things he wanted to try and we did them. I loved his body so he let me touch him any way I wanted. He loved mine and no part of me was off-limits to him. I’m sure Theresa wanted to give you the sort of pleasure you gave her. One partner doing all the work while the other one lays there is nice for a night or two. After that, it gets old. And you start to feel like, ‘What’s wrong with me? Why doesn’t he/she/it want me to touch her?’ Any chance Theresa felt like you didn’t want her touching you?”