The Price of POWER: Chapter 1

I was in my early twenties when I was inducted into the secrets of Dominance and Submission by a very special jounin. He was older than I by some ten years and being originally from far western Fire Country, more comfortable with his needs and desires.

However, he had one great flaw. He had no boundaries -- none at all.

My flaw was that I was a monster.

I had always known something wasn't quite right with me, that something bestial slept under my skin. It would open its eyes every now and again and peer out through mine. It was plainly obvious, even in my childhood that others noticed it. They would either be drawn to me -- or repelled by me, but always, always, always, they reacted to me.

Because of this, I learned early how to use my expressions and body language to manipulate the people around me with ridiculous ease. In fact, it was frighteningly easy to make someone think or believe anything I told them, true or false.

One would think it was praiseworthy talent, as ninja we are supposed to be in perfect control of our emotions and expressions. However, I was not completely comfortable with the fact that I could make people react any way I wished, and avoided using my skill -- except on missions. Manipulation is particularly useful for kunoichi, seduction work.

I met my jounin during a mission where he'd had a chance to witness my particular skills first hand. He told me that he admired the perfect control I had over my reactions, my feelings, and my responses in a given situation.

Though I considered my skills...a burden, I was flattered by his attentions. He was older, my superior, beautiful in form and face, and honestly impressed. How could I not be flattered?

For the two days and nights it took to return to the village, he told me the most horrifically wonderful stories I'd ever heard. He spoke of beautifully tied ropes and sweating flesh, singing whips, and the glorious dance only achieved through pain. He spoke of unlimited power.

A hunger I had always known, but never identified awakened within me. I fell head-over heels in love, or so I thought. It certainly felt like love, the overwhelming kind that sweeps one off their feet and makes the heart soar. The kind of love one reads about in the old epics.

After the mission's debriefing, we agreed to meet again.

At a quiet little tea house secluded from the world, we met and spoke at length. My interest had only increased over time -- and apparently, so had his. We parted without even the most casual brushing of each others fingers, but I was more convinced than ever that I was in love.

We continued to meet, at restaurants, tea houses, coffee shops, and the bath house. Eventually we began to meet at my place, then his. Although we shared no kisses, or even the most casual of embraces, I walked away from each meeting excited in a way that went far beyond sexual arousal.

However when I got home, his voice in my mind and the things that he told me had me masturbating almost violently in my shower until I came gasping and shaking.

Our meetings continued, and then came the lessons.

Under his guidance, I learned the art of tying ropes, among other methods of binding without cutting off the circulation. I also learned the proper application of the four-foot signal whip and the slender cane by applying them on grapefruits set on top of posts. Grapefruit are surprisingly similar to human skin. With steady practice, I learned to strike without cutting the fragile skin, leaving only welts behind.

My reward was my first kiss. I was so affected, my knees gave out, and I collapsed there on the floor.

He laughed.

I laughed with him.

Our meetings and my lessons continued, and always, always, always we spoke of unspeakable things -- things I wanted with every fiber of my being to commit.

One evening, he asked me to commit such an act -- a whipping, upon him.

Heady with the rush of trust and dizzy from the clenching around my heart I swore was love, I consented.

We agreed on a night -- a Friday night, so that we would have the rest of the weekend without interruption. We agreed on a place -- his ancestral mansion on the very edge of town.

More excited than I had ever been in my entire life, I arrived at the appointed time, exactly at sunset in simple jeans and a black silk shirt, my hair bound at the base of my neck.

He opened the sliding front door wearing only a black silk robe, his short-cropped hair glistening with damp. The muscles of his chest visible in the open vee of his robe were burnished gold in the lamp light. The scent of soap and warm excited male rolled off him.

My cock filled with dizzying speed, and yet I stepped inside with a polite bow and a smile. Then I noticed the leather shackles around his wrists.

He smiled and held them up for me to see. They were four inches long and made from many layers of heavy bull leather in blue and black. The three buckles holding each cuff tightly in place were solid silver, but the large ring and the band that anchored it within the layers of leather was solid steel. They'd been made especially for him in Western Fire Country by an old saddle maker, a gift from his first Dom.

The scent was delicious. They were exquisite, they suited him perfectly, and I told him so. It was then that I noticed that his shackles were also engraved with a chakra binding invocation. I brushed my finger over the engravings and felt the tingle of power. They were active.

He told me that the binding was to keep from accidentally harming his Dom.

I couldn't help but ask, "What if you really need to escape?"

He smiled and handed me his contract.

Successfully distracted, I sat on his leather couch to read.

A contract lists over five-hundred acts one can like, dislike, agree to despite not liking it, or refuse. It consists of simple things, such as cuddling and tickling, and more complicated things, such as intricate rope-bondage, whipping, and various forms of sex. Humiliation techniques such as watersports and enemas are also on a contract's list, and dangerous things like cutting, blood-play, and asphyxiation -- death-play.

For the first time since meeting him, a trickle of ice spilled into my heart. Not one thing on that list had a refusal -- not one.

Troubled, though not sure why, I accompanied him to the archway that separated the main house from his private dojo.

He dropped his robe. Completely nude and already half hard, he reached up to grasp the two hooks that had been driven into either side of the doorway.

I put my arms around his waist and raised him.

He slipped the rings over the hooks.

Keeping my hands strictly impersonal, I set him down.

His toes barely brushed the carpet. The strain in his arms, his shoulders, and the tension in his buttocks and legs was shockingly lovely.

He told me to pick up the whip.

I did so, and while staring at his sculpted nude form knowing what that whip would do to his beautiful skin; I felt the first real surge of power bloom in my hand. Slowly it moved up through each muscle, to the shoulder and then across my chest to settle in my heart. My beast fully awoke -- and howled.

I struck him across the ass cheeks, hard and fast, too fast for my eye to follow.

The dark red mark that bloomed across his buttocks seemed to appear all by itself, as though I'd had nothing to do with it.

He gasped and writhed, his head thrown back, his neck arching, his muscles straining in the sensual dance that I had been starving to see. His cock hardened and arched upward toward his navel. "Again."

I struck him again, and this time I saw the leather hit, bury itself, then spring back, recoiling from the force.

Another mark.

Another dance, this one accompanied by deep guttural groans.

My cock pulsed behind the zipper in my jeans. I struck again, and again, and with each slash, my arm grew in strength until it seemed three times its normal size. My nostrils flared with my breaths, and I smelled it -- I smelled him.

His excitement was a rich and heady perfume in the air. Precum dripped from the crown of his violently hard cock to trickle down the inside of his thighs. "Again!"

I whipped him, from the shoulders down to the backs of his thighs and back up again, marking every inch of his tender sweating skin.

Suddenly, he gasped, then threw back his head and cried out in a guttural shout that branded itself on my brain. Cum spattered the carpet before him. He moaned and collapsed to hang like a rag doll in his cuffs, tears streaking down his cheeks, sobs shaking his chest.

That was when the realization came to me. This was how he found release. Although he would allow me to love him through the night, as per our agreement, his true pleasure came from the whip.

I dropped the whip to grab him and hoisted him free. I carried him like a child to his bed and laid him face down. I rushed to the bathroom to fetch a basin of warm water, a clean cloth, and antiseptics. On my knees beside his futon, I tended to his welted skin with gentle hands, my fingers lingering on each mark that I'd made, both appalled and overjoyed.

An hour later, he was still weeping and shaking. The sheets were wet with his tears, his sweat, and the pearls of his cum, his arousal.

I licked each stripe, kissed it, and wished for them to go away.

It was he who comforted me, who caressed my face, who encouraged me to undress and come into the bed.

With extreme gentleness, I slid my fingers within him using copious amounts of oil to prepare him.

He raised himself upon his elbows and knees. "Take me, you've earned the right, you deserve the pleasure."

I pushed within. His skin was hot under mine, his body tight and alluring, but he was also wounded -- by my hand. It was difficult to hold back the violence I wanted to do to him, to restrain myself from giving in to my base hunger.

He growled. "Fuck me, damn it! Fuck me like you mean it!"

I let go and fucked him, violently, cruelly, and without reservation. I came inside him, howling my release.

However, his moan of release was soft, nothing like the guttural cry he'd uttered under the whip. Clearly, the possession of his body was for my sake, my pleasure, a reward for bringing him his pleasure -- under the whip.

The next night we repeated the same thing once again.

We parted with a sweet kiss.

I returned the following weekend, and the weekend after that. It continued until every weekend that didn't involve a mission, I was at his house, whipping him to a frenzy and then fucking him to the point of exhaustion.

I grew accustomed to my new role and to sweet taste of total, absolute power until I craved it, lusting after it as much, if not more than I lusted after my lover's body.

Over time, he began to take me to places that catered specifically to our tastes where I got to see other dances, and learned new techniques. New toys entered our play, clamps, weights, harnesses, and ropes.

He took me to distant towns and some of the darker places he had discovered. He cultivated and fed my desire for sexual violence -- all to satisfy his own.

I was ignorant, and stupid, and thoughtless, but power corrupts in such an absolute way. However, when it is mixed with the arrogance of youth, a monster stalks the earth.

One night he took me to an old warehouse where I witnessed something truly heinous -- and merely watched. When the exhibition was over, we walked right past someone who would never move again.

Outside under the stars, I suddenly realized just how much of a monster I had become.

On the way home, I remained perfectly still and perfectly calm, but I would not stay the night at my lover's house. Instead, I went back to my apartment and wept as though my heart were breaking -- while masturbating myself raw.

The following day, I couldn't stand my face in the mirror. The following weekend, I did not go to my lover's house.

An hour after the designated time, my lover came to my apartment and knocked on my door.

I didn't answer. I knew that I could not hide my presence from him, he was a jounin and I was not, but I didn't actually want to hide. I simply did not wish to see him, or speak to him. I figured my presence, and silence would convey that.

His knocks became frantic and he began pleading for me to open the door, begging me to tell him what was wrong.

I stood there with my back to the door, listening and silently weeping. I couldn't say anything because the only words on my tongue were accusations. Not against him -- against myself. Yes, he had encouraged me, but I didn't blame him. He was merely trying to satisfy his needs. It wasn't his fault that I craved violence, he'd merely uncovered what was there within me all along.

I was not ashamed of him; I was ashamed of myself, and utterly terrified of one day finding him on the floor never to move again -- by my hand.

Eventually he left.

The following day, I went to the tower. Shaking and sweating, I asked my Hokage for a long term assignment in another village.

His gaze on mine was tired and heavy, but he granted my request without question.

Two weeks later, I left the village, that life and my lover, far behind.

A year later, I received a letter from him. He had gone back to western Fire Country. I wept, soaking the scroll in my tears, from heartache and relief.

A week later, I was reassigned back to my village.

I was glad to return to my home, and my friends. My original apartment was long since rented out, but I didn't mind. A new place, a place where he had never been, was just what I needed. I was also given a long term assignment within the village, as a teacher, which meant my missions would be few and far between. I accepted the assignment with joy.

My old lover and I began exchanging letters. He still thought of me fondly, but he had a new life, a new love. He said he was happy.

Then one day the letters stopped coming -- and then my letter came back unopened. In that moment, I knew that in his dark need he had chosen a partner unwisely.

I didn't ask what became of him, and no one volunteered to tell me. If he had died in the field, or in battle, there would have been a public memorial. The silence that shrouded his disappearance told me everything I needed to know about his fate. He had found the monster he'd searched for, and been consumed.

I destroyed all of his letters and smothered the hunger and heartache that raged within me under the mindless comfort of work. I denied that part of me. I rejected it, repressed it, and did my best to assume a "normal" life with "normal" relationships.

Unfortunately, normal relationships didn't work. In each one, some critical part was missing, some part of me remained...unsatisfied. Most days I could ignore it. My partners had no clue that their lover was in fact a monster. But I knew. It was still there, right under the surface, clawing for recognition.

After a certain amount of time spent with any lover, always my beast would rise unbidden to peek out from its cage and I would feel the same wild rush, the illicit thrill, and the bone-deep terror of what could happen. Always it would come, and always I would leave that lover behind -- for their own safety.

Desperate for some way to deal with my unsavory appetites, I withdrew from relationships and tried to find the truth of who, and what, I was.

A year passed, but I was no closer to a solution.

Then one fine spring day, I while was walking though the tower, I passed a certain jounin in the hall. I knew him, everyone knew him. I thought nothing of it.

Then his gaze met mine -- and it was in his eyes. He was a monster just like me, but different. He was in perfect control of his beast where mine was a ravenous thing, barely contained.

Too desperate to worry about my personal safety, I stepped into his path and looked up at him with my hungry, angry beast burning in my eyes. "Please, how do I...stop this?"

He smiled, a frightening expression on his scarred face, yet strangely comforting too. "You don't. You accept it. It's merely another part of you, like your brown hair and brown eyes, like the scar on your face." He turned away. "And when you do, come back to me and we'll talk." With that, he walked away.

I was desperate, I admit. So desperate I tried his advice.

That night after my shower, I looked in the mirror. I stared hard into my eyes and sought the beast within.

It looked back at me, hungry, miserable, and very, very lonely.

It came as a shock that my beast was just as miserable and lonely as I was. My breath stilled in revelation. Its feelings were my feelings. My beast was...me. Those appetites were mine. I was a monster, a miserable and lonely monster with appetites that needed to be fed just as the rest of me needed to eat and drink to survive.

However, I didn't have to hunt and kill to eat, there were grocery stores for that. I scowled at my reflection. How the hell was I supposed to feed such an appetite as that?

Shock slammed into my heart. "Oh gods, how simple..." I burst out of the bathroom laughing and crying at the same time. I had accepted...myself! I was...free. I wanted to dance. I wanted to scream!

The very next afternoon, I made an appointment for a meeting with the jounin.

He accepted with a smile.

Sitting across from his desk at that very first meeting, he taught me three simple words under which all things might be addressed: Safe, Sane, and Consensual.

Perhaps this code seems binding, but to me it was freedom. They were limits, they were boundaries, but within them, I could be what I truly was -- myself.

Several appointments later, I discovered, that there were far more monsters living in the village than I had ever realized -- and that they had all known about me. They had merely been waiting for me to accept my true nature.

Surrounded and encouraged by comrades I never known I’d had, I once again began learning to commit the violence I loved -- though with far more care. I also began applying what I learned on those who loved to receive it.

Shortly thereafter, I discovered that it was not so much the power itself that fascinated me, but the harnessing of that power, and the controlled application of it that gave me the rush -- and my new partner his satisfaction.

Control became my new addiction.

As the layers of doubt, fear, and uncertainty fell away, my walk changed. I took longer and more comfortable strides. I stood straighter, yet I felt more relaxed than ever. No longer did I hunch my shoulders. No longer did I fear looking anyone in the eye.

My close friends noticed the changes in me. When they asked, I told them. For the most part, they accepted what I was. Others were uncomfortable with it until they found I would not force my ways and views upon them. I could not and would not because that would contradict the code I have come to believe in -- Safe, Sane, and Consensual.

With the hunger in my soul satisfied, joy returned to my life, and so did love, but that is another story.

There are those who operate outside the code of Safe, Sane, and Consensual. While I respect their choice, I shudder at the stories I know I will eventually hear, and fear for those involved.

At the same time, I also wonder how many more monsters lurk in the shadows -- undiscovered.

~ * ~