I have to confess: I can no longer look at my grandmother's scarf as a family heirloom. Grandma, if you're reading this from up there, forgive me. It's your own fault for buying one that long.

My girlfriend took it off the hook while I was undressing and said "give me your hands" in the same tone she usually asks to pass the salt. I held them out, because I was raised right. She wound it around my wrists twice and tied them to the headboard. The knot was, let's be honest, amateur work. I could've gotten free in two seconds. We both knew it. And that, as it turned out, was the whole point.

She climbed on top of me and did nothing. Just looked. Ran a finger over my chest, my stomach, stopping an inch short of exactly where I wanted her finger most, then pulling back. I'd strain toward her, and the scarf, soft, grandmotherly, would pull me back.

"You like not being able to?" she asked. I said no. She laughed, because the evidence to the contrary was, to put it mildly, obvious.

After that she did everything herself, at her own pace, and her pace was merciless. She pulled off her own t-shirt, and tied up like that, all I could do was watch her run her palms over her own chest, slow, with absolutely no mercy. Then she lowered herself onto me — inch by inch, looking me in the eye like she was testing how much I could take. I could take, let's be honest, not much.

When I tried to push up to meet her, she'd put a palm flat on my chest and say "no," and I, a grown man with a university degree, obeyed. She'd rise almost all the way up, hold still, then sink back down, and I was pulling on that scarf so hard the knot seemed to be coming undone on its own. She leaned down so her hair fell across my face, and whispered what she'd do if I was good. I was very good. She came first, arching and grabbing onto my shoulders, and only then did she let me finish. I don't think I've ever been that good in my entire life.