The Edge

The first time he gives me control of his orgasm, I am afraid of breaking him. I give it back in 22 minutes—I know this precise number because I go back and read the texts. There’s just a few back and forths, begging and teasing. He must have put the phone down after I said yes because he’s quiet for several minutes. I have to imagine what he looks like, falling over the edge, flying, his face contorted as though in pain but internally floating lazily like a feather.

I am so curious why he likes being told not to cum, even as I am delighted to play the game with him. Separated by time zones, a pandemic, and the last shreds of our professional ethics, virtual sex games like this one are a revelation. Is it just because he likes to give up control? When I deny him, he says he’s in agony—why ask for agony? At first I feel a little bad, guilty, but he reassures me several times that he wants this, could go multiple days, even.

My relationship to my own orgasm is very different. It doesn't feel like something I can control. I can be touching myself for hours and feel no closer to cumming, running through my rolodex of fantasies, running down my vibrator battery, and then something will click and I'll be over the edge in 10 seconds. There is certainly something appealing to the idea of getting to know and love the edge. It also re-frames all that masturbation time—I'm not "failing to cum," I'm edging. I'm tending to my erotic flame so that it doesn't go out, but doesn't explode either.

The next time we have a dirty Zoom date, I don’t dress up in a cute bra and panties to give him a nice visual show like the last few times. Instead, I come in red faced and sweaty from having just worked out, hoping he can feel my "I don't give a fuck" energy over the video. 

“What do you want?” he asks. 

We both know that there is very little he would say no to, but it still feels strange (and thrilling and transgressive) to ask my former boss to show me his cock. “Show me your cock,” I say, half borrowed bravado from the role I’m playing, half real hunger to take him apart. “I’m not sure I believe you about how much I turn you on. I need to see it,” I say. 

I am surprised at his expression of relief and gratitude as he stands up and shows me the pre-cum staining his pants and the outline of his erection. There's something about seeing arousal in pixelated form—it takes me a second to believe it's real. I'm not watching porn, there is a real human being who is aroused because of me and I'm doing things to them in real time. I'm usually a touch-oriented person so it doesn't always feel the most natural to put sexy things into words or visuals. But I believe the need in his voice if nothing else. 

“Bring it closer to the camera,” I command. He struggles to comply—learning the right angles for Zoom sex is an ongoing challenge. But I’ve seen enough videos of him submitting to his ex to know that awkwardness is, in this case, a feature rather than a bug. 

“Stroke it for me. Slower...slower than that.” Zoom doesn’t have enough frames per second for a horny man. It is not an HD, well lit, artistically composed porn experience. It’s a Tuesday after work in his basement and my bedroom. I have to pick whether I see his cock or his face. But he follows my directions to the letter, even as he grunts and sweats and swears at me. 

“How much do you want to cum?” I ask. It is both fun to tease him with these rhetorical questions, and gratifying to my ego that I turn him on this much. 

“Ugh, so much,” he replies. 

“But that’s really up to me, isn’t it? And I don’t think you’ve earned it yet.” 

Zoom fatigue is real even for hot sex, and he begs off to go make dinner. But our date isn’t over. I still haven’t given him permission to cum. He sends me videos and texts throughout the course of the evening. My favorite is filmed in the bathroom mirror, where finally I can see his face and his hand working his cock at the same time. He stops, abruptly, and pulls his hand out of his pants to show me that he is still following the rules, even as he grimaces in pain. 

And then real life, and our real life partners get in the way and suddenly it’s bedtime and I still haven’t let him cum. Incidentally, I haven’t either, and don’t really want to. I love the sense of erotic control; I don’t want to get less horny and less invested in our scene. I need a certain amount of mental absence to reach orgasm and I don’t want to miss a minute of this. And anyone who would start a sexual connection with someone that they won’t be able to see in real life for months has a high tolerance for delayed gratification. 

Of course I dream about him, my brain awash in hormones and trying to process the experience I am still inside of. We are in the same room, and we can touch each other, but touch is one of those senses that is hard to access in dreams. It still feels like I am running my fingers down the screen, not his body, grasping air not his salt and pepper curls. He is speaking but I can’t hear him. I can feel my own body, though—aching and out of control, unable to find my own release. 

In dream-logic, we can only communicate with each other through Reddit posts. It actually makes perfect sense, he is the one who got me into Reddit...that bottomless pit of horny internet strangers.

I wake up with an idea.

Good morning, I text. How's your cock?

In agony, he replies quickly, with a photo—his bedroom, filled with sunlight, his cock just peeking out of striped sheets. I don't know what those sheets feel like on my skin, but I want to.

Post on Reddit about what a needy little bitch you are. If it's pathetic enough, I might let you cum. Bossing him around thrills me every time. He was the best boss I ever had—honest, empathetic, politically astute, an engaging public speaker. When I laid my cards on the table about being attracted to him, I thought that we could have some fun with "what ifs" about our time working together—I didn't know that he would be equally interested in having power flow in the other direction. 

I pour granola on my yogurt, then sit down to read his public pleading post. How do practiced dommes decide when to end someone's torture? How do I decide what is "enough," when he might enjoy it more if I keep going?

Luckily, his post sucks and I’m not at all tempted to release him.

I pictured it with a lot more whining and begging, I text. You still seem pretty in control. I know we are cutting it close to the start of a hellish day of meetings for him, but making him suffer through one meeting seems reasonable. 

But it’s not just one meeting. Work eats up his day, adding real frustration to our game of faux frustration. I enjoy teasing him about being cockblocked by work almost more than I enjoy controlling his orgasm directly. Relieved of Responsibility For His Orgasm, I get silly. I send him songs with lyrics about not touching, GIFs of champagne bottles popping their tops. I send him upskirt photos from my desk and other texts that remind him of our shared office kink. His Reddit post attracts quite the peanut gallery, some urging me to let him cum, some suggesting outlandish things he could do to win my pity. I spend quite a while talking to a British gentleman who has become invested in the outcome of the game, or at least in seeing my tits. 

He finally gets to cum after 24 hours of, from my perspective, delightful hijinx. And I can’t wait to try edging myself. 

There’s still the problem that I relate to my orgasm like I do to my easily frightened house cat—she might come snuggle if I stay still in bed, but will run away if I go looking for her. Theoretically, I know exactly what to do: touch myself until I feel the beginnings of an orgasm, then stop touching myself. Supposedly the feeling will linger, both torture and ecstasy. I’m skeptical. When turned on enough, I’ve been known to cum just from squeezing my thighs together. How will I know when to stop?

As a sex nerd, more research is in order. There are a surprising number of Cosmo articles about how to edge someone you’re in the room with, but not much about how to do it to yourself or to someone halfway across the country. Reddit is better, but I am intimidated by the people who brag about their 100 day streaks or about how they never want to cum again. I am, however, captivated by their descriptions of being totally overwhelmed by their own horniness. There is both intense self love and intense self loathing. Their activities are solitary yet deeply, intimately seen by the people they give control away to. 

I realized I am doing everything except just trying it. I have been approaching this new sexual challenge the way I approached homework back as an Honors student—I had to get every concept immediately and quickly become the very best, and anything that didn’t come easily (pun intended) would be buried deep and never attempted again. But nobody is grading me here. Nobody is even watching me. I can lie without consequences, but faking non-orgasms feels just as weird as faking orgasms for someone who prides herself on sex positivity. And, in this kind of game, losing is just as fun as winning—you get the orgasm AND the sexy punishment. 

Rather than try to match my lover's skill at edging, I decide to bring back the silly, bratty feeling from topping him. If it feels too good in the moment, I give myself permission to break the rules and prioritize my own pleasure. This is just for fun; if I send him pictures from my knees with sad puppy eye emojis, he will forgive me. I experiment extensively. I pull my hand away dutifully, but half the time I leave it too late and the other half of the time I “leave it too late.” 

The first time I edge successfully, it’s completely by accident. I have bratted my way into being given the task of edging five times today; I’ve “failed” (cum) four times and told him about two of them. We are sexting furiously, my cunt filled to bursting with my favorite dildo. I am keeping half an ear out for my husband. He doesn’t mind at all the way my long distance lover winds me up for me to later fuck his brains out, but I want to make sure I balance being present for my real life with the hot fantasies that live in my phone. I hear him go out to get the mail, and then I hear an immediate, LOUD knock on the door—he must have locked himself out, in the 20 degree night. I feel myself beginning to cum, but I squash it down hard, get up out of bed, somehow put my arms in the sleeves of a robe, and go to let him in. 

In my exhilarated frustration at the loss of that orgasm, I suddenly get why my lover likes this so much. I feel hornier than I ever have before. Agony is an excellent word for how it feels, and at the same time I can’t wait to chase it again. I stumble drunkenly through the rest of the evening. I pin my husband to the bed and drain his cum into my pussy as raw material for later. Using cum as lube is my new favorite thing. He is skeptical that I don’t want him to reciprocate but accepts that this is yet another one of my weird sex things that get him hotter, more frequent sex with very little work on his part. Then, half falling asleep, I go back to methodically stroking my dripping pussy. Now that I know what it feels like I can find my way back there. Now that I know what it feels like, cumming doesn’t feel like the automatic choice. 

I tell my lover I want to try it on purpose. Now he is the one to tease about not believing me, since I have such a poor track record. I tell him about the realization that my edging doesn’t have to look like his. He wants to offer up his agony on his goddess’s altar as tribute and be told how unworthy and insignificant he is. I do it to worship myself, and need not a master but a guide. Neither is better or worse; knowing ourselves and each other is the important thing. 

He goes easy on me that first time—just edge twice! He also sweetens the deal with a prize—an old video of his own denial. Orgasm denial is a different thing when witnessed. This time, knowing I have his full attention, I want to show him, as much as I can from hundreds of miles away, what is going on in my head and my cunt. 

I lay on the couch, sunlight streaming through the living room windows. I snap a picture of my hand slipping into my slick folds and send it to him. He remarks that the curtains are open, and I decide not to close them, to enhance the feeling that someone might see me. The sensations build deliciously. And then, knowing that my lover is metaphorically right there expecting me to stop… I stop. It fucking hurts; I curl in on myself as though I have been punched in the stomach. If we weren’t actively chatting, I probably would have chased down my orgasm all the way through. But finally, there is something at stake that I want. 

The second edge is both easier and harder than the first. Easier because I want that goddamn video and I want to be good for him and I want to be good at this weird, frustrating, intoxicating thing. Harder because I am more turned on and thinking less clearly, and it would be so easy to leave it a moment too late, if I wasn’t sure when things passed over from just feeling good to orgasm. It may not be the closest I ever get to the edge, but it still leaves me red faced and panting and dizzy and triumphant.

Photo by Carlos Batista