There’s a room on the third floor of the host’s house (the host being my uncle, too, though not many people know this) that is different than the others. Just about every other place in the house is used for some sort of sex or another, from the library, which has thick couches to bend a sub over (though we don’t call them subs; we call them guests), a large desk whose surface is ideal to lay a sub down upon, and various chairs and ottomans to and over which our ‘guests’ are tied and enjoyed. Of course there is a dungeon, fully equipped, with the requisite St. Andrew’s cross, benches, manacles suspended from the ceiling, and so forth. And there are bedrooms, and the old carriage house out back gets its share of use--it’s one of my favorite places, in fact. There’s no place off limits except for the host’s bedroom, which is always locked and, I think, padded or insulated, since you never hear anything from inside, except the occasional faint cry as my uncle gets to work on whoever has caught his eye that day.

The room on the third floor is different, though. It has no furniture but large pillows, and a thick, expensive rug across the wooden floor. It’s an opium den, or the host’s approximation of one, and I brought Isabella there a few days ago (I keep forgetting she’s supposed to be called Vanessa, but then it’s tough to keep the distinction, especially when I’m one of her students, even when I remember, sitting in the seminar room--where she‘s known as Dr. Riordan--that only night before she was laid over my knee, the skirt of her cotton shift rucked up around her waist, moaning while I gave her a spanking--and I try not to smile when I see her bite her lip as she sits in the chair at the head of the table).

I brought Isabella/Dr. Riordan/Vanessa up to the den on the third floor. She has learned a lot in the weeks since coming to the house, and she immediately dropped to her knees and placed her hands at the back of her neck, waiting for me to initiate the proceedings. I untied the strings at the front of her shift and let it fall open. I like to look at her breasts. I like to look at all of her, but her breasts have a special place in my heart. What with her Cuban and Irish blood, her body takes on all sorts of different shades, depending on the situation, and so do her nipples, which have large areola and are normally pale. But with the right stimulation, and there are all sorts of right stimulations (you can use your imagination here, and if you’ve conjured fingers and clamps and maybe the occasional wooden ruler, you’ll have made a good start) the blood flows to them. The nipples stiffen and their halos change color, to a dusty crimson, and the flesh becomes thicker and more sensitive…

To one side there was a tall pipe with hoses and brass stems, and a small wooden table with a plate with a finely-ground brown powder, opium the host had procured from God-knows-where. I took the tie from my robe and bound Vanessa’s wrists in front of her, and in a few words instructed her what to do with the powder and the pipe, not omitting mention of the consequences of spilling the powder, at which she suppressed a smile, knowing by now that any punishments I decide to mete