had a day that made you feel as if you were traveling through The Twilight Zone? You were late – then early – even got the actual day wrong. Misunderstandings at every turn. You lost your keys, then found them exactly where you looked a few minutes earlier. So frustrating and exasperating you just want someone to pull the plug and let you swirl down the rabbit hole.

You tell yourself to count to ten (that’s what my mother always used to say). Take a deep breath, keep things in perspective. By the time the day is drawing to a close all you want is a hot bath, a glass of wine, and —!

To heck with the hot bath and glass of wine. Isn’t a Dominant waiting at home all you want?

It’s all this sub needs. Being engulfed in the big, reassuring bear hug is certainly welcome. Seeing him potter around the kitchen, making the obligatory cup of tea as he orders me to stay on the couch and catch my breath, is endearing.

But it’s all a strange kind of foreplay.

What I am waiting for, counting on, that for which I breathlessly ache, is what comes next. We both know it, and in that tepid ten minutes we contemplate what will follow. When it starts, when the blindfold slips across my eyes and I feel the fluttering wings of the first butterfly, when I surrender to the sensations of heavenly helplessness as the silk cord tightens around my wrists, the day I left behind evaporates.

It’s just the blackness, the anticipation, the sound of his footfalls as he walks to the locked closet that contains his array of precious implements. The squeak of the hinges, the rustling around as he determines what will be best for this particular night.

All my senses, every fabric and fibre are tuned to him. He is back. His breath is on my neck. Time to exorcise the demons of the day he whispers.

His voice is water in the middle of a parched desert, a warm coat on a snowy day, it is the comfort that soothes my suffering soul.

Thank you, Sir.