She is teaching me to take more pain. It will take time, she says. Gradually we shall work on my levels of endurance until I am ready for the extremes that she wants to give me. But already I am making progress. Things that a few weeks ago I would have considered unbearable, like a clothes peg on my tongue, I can now accept. It hurts like hell, but I want to do it for her.

Fundamentally it’s about having the right attitude. She doesn’t hurt me because I am a needy, greedy little pain slut (though I am). She does it because she derives intense sexual pleasure from causing me pain, and since she owns me she may do as she pleases with me. The more pain I take the more she likes it. I am trying to treat the pain not as something she imposes on me, but as something she gives me, so that I can give it back to her, as an offering. I need to think of pain as a gift, so that I can honour her by returning it. I need to get into a frame of mind where the level of pain is dictated not by what I can take, but by what she wants to give me, and what I can then render back.

It is a privilege for me to be hurt by her. I revere her, I adore her, I worship her. She is my goddess. A cruel, smiling goddess.