‘There’s this thing I do. It’s ... a part of my life. It doesn’t come as an optional extra. And it’s not something you’d be at all happy with.’

‘What?’ For the first time doubt seeps in. ‘This is a sex thing, is it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Oh god. Is it something illegal?’

He shakes his head. ‘No – Consenting human adults only. I promise.’

‘But you think I’ll freak out?’

‘It’s ... difficult to understand.’

‘So you’re kinky.’ I swallow, trying to be blasé. ‘I can handle that. I’m not a prude.’

He pulls a face: disbelief.

‘What is it? You like to wear women’s underwear? Lick feet? Ah – it’s not nappies is it?’

He laughs, and then shakes his head.

‘Then what? What’s so bad I won’t even be able to work with you?’

‘Can’t we just leave it?’

‘Too late for that.’

He shuts his eyes for a moment. I feel something in the twitch of his muscles. I recognise it: the moment you decide to jump.

Plot: Non-supernatural. Izzy is an acrobatic performer in an art installation at the Edinburgh Festival. She works with the co-creator and tech guy, Blayne, with whom she has fallen wildly in love. They flirt, and he seems to be attracted to her, but  he always pulls away.  One night Izzy confronts Blayne about his feelings and it turns out that he is scared to start a relationship with her because he has a secret sexual kink that he does not dare tell her. When he finally confesses what it is, Izzy's first reaction is terror...

Sexual Themes: BDSM, romance

Notes: In her foreword to this anthology, editor Violet Blue writes: "Renowned and compelling author Janine Ashbless takes us backstage in a daredevil act where the layered characters draw us in and make us hold our breaths, as we anticipate what will happen if they 'Jump or Fall.' "

This was actually a story I subbed for Best Women's Erotica 2010. It was one of three stories that got bumped out of the final cut due to space considerations, as I understand it, but Violet asked if she could instead use it in her Sweet Love anthology, which was not subject to an open call but made up of  preferred authors.  The theme of the anthology is loving couples exploring their shared fantasies.

Writing this story scared the hell out of me. I wasn't sure I was qualified to write it, for a start - I am not part of the BDSM scene - and I didn't want to get it wrong. But even more than that, I was confronting an issue that genuinely disturbed me, and I was using the story to work out my own feelings.

If you read quality mainstream erotica like the stuff published by Cleis, Black Lace etc, you will find story after story about characters (usually women) coming face to face with their kink for being spanked or dominated or put through pain and fear. You almost never read anything about, or from the point of view of, a (male) character who wants to do the spanking, the dominating or the whipping. It's like we're comfortable with the idea of submissives and (mild) masochists. We get that it's just a sexual fetish, it doesn't mean that they are deranged or damaged human beings.  Their kinky pleasure has been defined as harmless. Yet for everyone who enjoys a good thrashing, surely there has to be someone who doles it out. How do we feel about those people? Are we just as comfortable with someone confessing that they get sexual pleasure out of inflicting pain on other human beings? Can a sadist be an ethical person? Can their sexual preferences be seperated from the way they behave in the rest of their lives? Really - if you were a woman, would you be able to trust a man who admitted he wanted to hurt you?

And in this story there is more than sex: this is love too.  So I wrote about Blayne, who is certainly conflicted by his desires:

I’ve got enough sense left to realise that he’s talking about more than a bit of playful ass-slapping. ‘Woah. You get off on hurting people?’

‘Women. Yes. ’ He watches me wince.

‘Don’t you ...’ I struggle to frame the question without sounding like a Daily Mail editorial. ‘Doesn’t that worry you?’

‘Worry me? Yes: all the time. I’m not a psycho, Izzy, or a wife-beater. I’m well aware of the responsibility.’

For a long moment there’s silence, while I stare at him and try to understand. Because it’s still Blayne holding my hands there. He hasn’t turned into some weird stranger. It’s still Blayne with the anguished eyes and the twisted, rueful mouth, looking so good I want to eat him up. He doesn’t have a moustache to twirl and or mirror shades or a bloodstained hockey mask. He’s the most grounded guy I’ve met. He doesn’t lose his temper when frustrated or throw arty strops, even under provocation. He’s the pin-up boy for self-control.

Oh. Maybe that does make sense, in a way.


It was important to me to make Blayne desirable and self-aware and a decent human being. I didn't write the story from his point of view, but from Izzy's as she tries to get her head round what he is.  This is a mindset she has never encountered before. Her instinctive reaction is fear - quite naturally - but with sex things are not necessarily as simple as they look at first glance.  BDSM, as I read on someone else's website, "is not what it looks like it is."

Did I succeed in what I was setting out to do? Well, it worked for me. I can believe in someone like Blayne.  I do, in fact, know people with quite threatening fantasies, and they are people I can and do trust.  And Violet Blue (who certainly knows more about the scene than I do) "really, really loved it." Which I guess means I got it right somehow.

Oh ... Izzy's quote about what it was like to get a tattoo: "it was horrible for the first five minutes. I had to force myself to stay put. And then this endorphin rush kicked in I guess – and forty minutes later it was still hurting but I just wanted it never to stop. Pain’s ... a weird thing" ? That is all me.