Last summer, my mother-in-law decided to sell her house and move to Florida. So she asked her adult kids — including my wife, Michele — to pick through their old things and trash whatever they no longer wanted. The remnants of Michele’s past apparently fit in a single large cardboard box with “MISCHA” scribbled on the top in black marker.

“What is all this stuff?” I asked, opening the box. Inside, there was mostly old CDs, videotapes and paperbacks. But there was also a black leather jacket that looked to be at least two sizes too large for Michele’s slender frame. The name “MISCHA” reappeared on the back of the jacket, in awkwardly placed rhinestones. The sexy scent of leather rose up and intoxicated me. I had to fight the urge to bury my face in the worn garment and inhale.

“Who’s Mischa?” I asked.

“Who do you think?” Michele replied with a laugh. She took the jacket from me and caressed it lovingly. “God, this is from my first year in college. I was a different girl back then.” She slipped the jacket on, and suddenly, it didn’t look big at all. In fact, it was a perfect fit. Michele strutted around the room and struck a provocative pose.

“I had no idea my wife was a punk princess,” I teasingly confessed.

“You thought I always wanted to be an accountant? Nope. Back in the ’80s, I was a bad girl. Partying. Going to clubs every night.”

“What kind of clubs? Punk clubs?”

“Some,” she said. A gleam came into her blue eyes. “Not all, though. Some were S&M places,” she added suddenly, blurting out the words as if she were afraid of losing her nerve. “Those were pretty wild.”

Something in her voice excited me. More than it did usually, that is. Our sex life had always been pretty good, but I’d never experienced S&M. However, I’d long fantasized about it. Dreams of being some leather goddess’s slaveboy were right up there with fantasies of fucking and blowjobs. But I’d never shared those thoughts with Michele. Not out of shame, but because those fantasies always seemed like part of an unattainable world, totally removed from our day-to-day life. Michele’s an accountant, and I teach English at a community college. We have a tidy townhouse near a shopping center. Bondage and chains and sweet-smelling leather seemed to have no place in our straitlaced existence.

“Did you ever…do anything with anybody?”

“Once,” she said hesitantly. She looked toward the room’s single window with a faraway look in her eyes. “There was this guy. He told me he’d be my slave if I wanted. I didn’t know what to say, but he was good-looking and seemed so cool. I thought about, you know. Dominating him. It got me really hot. No kidding, my pussy was wet. And he was horny. I could see his cock swelling in his jeans. So, I said OK. I didn’t know what to do at first. But I figured it out pretty quick.”

“Did you tie him up?” I asked, moving closer to her. As I said, our sex life is pretty good, but it had been a while since I’d heard Michele talk anything like dirty.

“No. I sat down and let him kneel on the floor at my feet. I ran my fingers through his hair, like digging my fingers into his scalp and his shoulders. He kind of pushed his body against my legs, the way a dog would. But he seemed to worship me like I was a queen.”

“No spankings? No cat-o’-nine tails?”

“No, but it all really got to me. I’d never before been so turned on without making out or even really touching another person. And I’d never felt so powerful. But after a while…I guess I started thinking too much. I got kind of freaked out.”

“Did you ever see the guy again? Did you do anything else with him?”

“I didn’t see him after that night,” she said. “Never went back to that club. When the internet came out, I did some messing around in S&M chat rooms and things, but not for very long. Writing emails and messages about it wasn’t the same as what I’d experienced. I always felt like if I’d been a little more confident that night, it would have been like entering a whole new world.”

“Feel like giving it another try with somebody else?” I asked. My voice was coy, but my intent was obvious.

“Seriously?” she asked with a smile creeping over her pretty face.

“Dead serious.”

We trashed the other junk in the box, but we took the leather jacket home. We spent a long time talking through our individual fantasies, finding areas where they seemed to meet. We decided to act on our dirty dreams at a future date.

After we’d chatted, I noticed a change in Michele. She became very confident, no longer stressing about little things. She strutted around our home like the punk princess she’d once been. She’d flip her hair now and then, and gave me saucy winks. She didn’t wear the jacket very often, but when she did, the changes in her personality were even more apparent.

My wife also decided she preferred to be called Mischa. Not all the time, but definitely when we fucked, which we did with increasing frequency. It was without question the best sex I’d ever had up to that point, and I couldn’t wait to see what our S&M date would entail.

That night came quickly. We’d drawn the shades in our room and lit candles. I changed into black jeans and a T-shirt. Nothing terribly impressive, but sexy in its simplicity, or so Mischa had said. I sat on the edge of our bed, my pulse pounding in my throat. I was as excited as a teenager who’d just landed a date with his crush.

When Mischa opened the bedroom door and slipped inside, she took my breath away. Her long blonde hair was gleaming in the dim light. Beneath her jacket, she wore a thin T-shirt that clung to her round breasts. The tee rode up occasionally to offer me a glimpse of her bare belly. She wore black motorcycle boots, too. I caught a whiff of her jacket’s fragrant leather as she approached me. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

“Put these on,” she said, tossing something onto the bed next to me. It was a pair of metal handcuffs. I guessed she’d ordered them online; we certainly never owned a pair before. They were part of my fantasies, and seeing them, I felt a weird thrill mixed with apprehension. I managed to lock them around my wrists, and hearing them snap shut sent a little jolt to my balls and stiffened my dick.

That was it. No going back, at least not without Michele’s — excuse me, Mischa’s — consent and help. She knew it, too. She pointed to the floor at her feet.

“Here,” she said. A simple order. I carefully knelt before her, the way I imagined that guy did in the club all those years ago. She moved behind me and sat down on the bed, stretching her legs out on either side of me and pressing me between them.

“Who do you belong to?”

My throat felt dry, but I managed to utter, “You, Mischa. Only you.”

“Yeah,” Mischa said as a sigh. I felt her long nails scraping against my scalp as they moved gently downward. The scratching — teasingly painful, but so delicious — continued for a while. Finally she said, “Stand up, and stay facing away from me,” punctuating the command by jerking up a fistful of my hair.

I got up and kept my back to her. Looking down, I watched her hands reach around and unfasten my belt and unzip my jeans, which she pulled down suddenly and roughly. I was still wearing my briefs, and she slapped my cotton-covered ass. I inhaled sharply, shocked by the sudden burst of pleasurable pain, and I felt my hardened dick jerk. It felt strange to get an erection when I was so helpless.

“You’re so little,” she said. “Aren’t you?”

That, apparently, was always one of her fantasies. To tower over a man. I wasn’t that much shorter than Mischa, but she was still the taller of us. I think she liked it that way. I think when she imagined S&M play that was part of it: the idea of a submissive as a person physically smaller than herself. Someone she could play with like a toy.

She yanked off my briefs and struck my ass again. It was a delicious spark of pain. If I’d dared, I would have taken my cock in hand and squeezed it, maybe pulled it a little to relieve my fierce hunger. But Mischa demanded all of my attention.

“Are you my little man?”

“Yes,” I said. “So little.”

Something hard and metallic touched my back. I heard cloth being parted under the blades of shears right before my T-shirt fell away. She must have had the shears hidden somewhere, and probably put them right back in their hiding spot because when she grabbed my hips and turned me to face her, I didn’t see them.

Her fingers climbed up my chest and pinched my nipples. My nips have always been sensitive; the sensations were wonderful twin shots of pain that further stiffened my aching cock.

“What’ll I do with you?” she murmured. I gazed at her. In the dim light, she looked so strangely young. “Should I bite your nipples and make you scream? Or squeeze your balls? Maybe tie you facedown on the bed and spank your cute ass. Oh, but you’d like that too much. Your cock would be buried in the sheets, and when I’d beat your ass you’d rub against the bed until you came. I can’t have that. Not if I don’t come, too.

“Maybe I should tie you faceup, so I can ride your cock. Is that what you want?”

Yes, that’s what I wanted. So badly. But I didn’t nod. She was the one in charge. She was the one who would make the decision. A long silence stretched between us.

Fortunately for me, she placed me on my back on the bed and stripped off her clothes — but slipped the leather jacket back on. She didn’t bother tying me down. My hands were still cuffed, which kept me from freely running my hands over her perfect body. I laid still, according to her orders, as she impaled her wet pussy on my rod. My imperious beauty rode me leisurely. She ground her hips to give her clit the maximum friction and didn’t allow me to get off until she’d triggered her own orgasm. But once her slick, spasming snatch exploded in climactic bliss, she told me, “Now, you can come. Let me feel your cream filling my cunt!”

She bucked frantically on my cock until I had no choice. I cried out to the ceiling and let loose, shooting my load into my regal, dominant Mischa.