When is a sadist not a sadist?

He protects me.
That's not his goal, but he protects me.
When he needs to feast on pain, he goes elsewhere.

I struggle with that, even as I am grateful. I wish I could be everything to him. But I know I can't give him everything he needs, and that if he took it from me he would destroy me.

There has been a gentleness to him these last number of weeks. The beast has been sleeping. Then there were stresses in his life, and I wondered if his sadistic needs would take control again, and I have ways of finding out, and today I did find out that Thursday he went for what he needed. And the next day he came to me.

He was tender. He touched me in a way he never had before. He allowed me to give him pleasure in a way he had granted me only once before, at which time I didn't get it right but this time, this time I think it was better. He hasn't yet had time to fully comment, but he didn't seem totally displeased.

He gave me a very special gift.
It is a gift that comes in small portions,
one little box at a time,
wrapped in layers of pain and trust.
He gave me a piece of his vulnerability.

I'm never quite sure what is behind these offerings. I suspect his motives are mixed and not totally (if at all) pure. I do think they come partly as a demonstration of his trust, and perhaps because of a need to share his pain. But I also suspect, knowing what a manipulative bastard he is, that they are gifts meant to disarm me, meant to make me love him more, and thus meant to strengthen his power over me. That's okay, I don't mind. His power is so great by now that adding another winding or two of chain won't make that much difference.

He didn't hurt me very much. Lately he has been hurting me even less than usual. There were signs that the beast had risen, which didn't surprise me, but really, he didn't hurt me very much, and his goal was not to make me suffer.

I gave him an orgasm. With my hand and my words and my unguarded eyes and my moans and my cries I gave him an orgasm. He loves my sounds. He feasts on them. And I fed him.

He does not attend to my needs. Not in any ordinary way. In the early days, he used to order me to touch myself and cum for him, while he watched. He made me look at him, he made me look him in the eyes. At first he would be close by, sometimes on the bed next to me as I lay on my back rubbing my clitoris, writhing, rising, sending breathy sounds of pleasure into his collector's ears. Eventually he started standing over me, playing on a sense of objectification, watching me, observing me, with the only connection being the road between our eyes.

The only time he fucked me was with his hand encased in a surgical glove.

Even so, he said I was hot and tight.
Very hot and very tight.
And wet.

He takes his time.
He proceeds in measured steps.

This time, at one point, as I knelt naked before my Master as he sat naked in the Eames char that was the philosopher's chair but is now the sadist's chair, he reached down beneath me and ran his finger tips over the lips of my cunt, over my pleading clit, not for my pleasure per se but for the sounds he knew would be elicited by his actions. I rose up higher on my knees, hoping he would sink his fingers deep inside me, but that was not his goal.

I was grateful for whatever I got.
I am always grateful for whatever I get.

I have learned that he rarely makes mistakes, that he thinks through his plans - for each visit, for each lesson, for goals that hang far in the distance - and that I should not question. I also know that he treasures me enough to rework his plan if need be, adjust it to allow for an unexpected outcome.

There was one more odd moment to recount, before I tell you about the amazing end. He asked me for a glass of water, that sat in readiness on a nearby table - a table laden with mostly unused items. Still on my knees, I turned to reach for it, and felt his hand come down hard on my ass. My scream contained a note of outrage, as if he had taken unfair advantage of my position. I couldn't help being amused, and pointed out my curious reaction.

So.
Yes.
I gave him an orgasm.
I gave him an orgasm with my hand
kneeling naked before him,
filling his ears with the sounds that arouse him.

A very long time ago, when I was studying child development, I learned that a good way to interact with babies is to look them in the eyes and echo back the sounds they make. It is a technique that works beautifully. It holds their attention and stimulates them to keep "talking" until it truly feels like a conversation. It builds...

As my hand gave my Master's cock what it craves in the way he has instructed me, I could see from the look in his eyes and the flush on his face that I was pleasing him. His arousal was rising. And now he was the one letting out sounds...

I know my sounds excite him. They are the most precious offering I give him. So as his excitement grew, I responded to his sounds with my own, mirroring, echoing... but after maybe two little grunts, pitched higher than his and with a female lilt to them, I was no longer merely echoing. His arousal filled me, it flowed nakedly between our eyes, and I started to channel it. There is no other way to describe it. His arousal possessed me and took me along with it. My sounds were now an uncalculated expression of the pleasure that filled me. I didn't feel it in my cunt, it wasn't a localized stimulation, I wasn't being touched, I was completely focused on him, but I rode his wave almost as if we were holding hands and taking it together, or as if I were right behind him, following in his wake.

He came.
And so did I.

Not with shuddering, womb-filling convulsions. It was a different sort of possession, richer, more united. He came, and a moment later I collapsed against him, my head against his chest. There was nothing left.

And then I found myself crying, as if the orgasm had been my own.

He ordered me to kneel by the futon with my forearms and elbows on the mattress, while he went to clean up and change. I was happy, I was exhausted, and then I started crying and sobbing again, in a continuation of my post-orgasmic release. It went on for a very long time.

And for the rest of the day, I was deliciously tired. Not the kind of exhaustion that has been plaguing me for the last month. Rather, it was a cloud of lassitude that said yes, you came, and it would have been very nice to have taken a good long nap afterward.

He is out of town this weekend, and I expect to hear nothing until tomorrow night, if that. But I have no complaints. Unlike most weekends, I don't feel lonely. I have served him well and our intimacy grows. I have no illusions, he's not in love with me, but he fills me and teaches me and guides me to be what I was always meant to be.

And some day, he will get me to the point where I will be pleading with him to be taken to the upstairs storeroom of the biker/thug bar, I will be pleading with him to take me there and toss me to the people he is assembling as the participants in my degradation. He is working towards that, I know that this is my fate, he always gets what he wants.

He doesn't want to take.
He wants me to offer.

As for now, as our intimacy grows and he hardly hurts me and he hypnotizes me with his kisses, what is the answer to the title subject?

When is a sadist not a sadist?

Never.
He is always a sadist.
And perhaps, even his gentleness is sadistic in a way.
He disarms me.
He lulls me into a sense of security.
And eventually,
as with the surprise smack while I fetched his water,
he will strike.
And still
I will feel
secure.

It is not what he is.
It is what I am.
I am his.
The rest
is commentary.

[For those who don't recognize the reference in the last line, go to the comments for a discussion.]