Mariela Chose Me as Her Submissive on a Book App

I had just turned eighteen when I discovered Athenea, a small app where people posted stories chapter by chapter. I didn’t use it to read. I used it to kill time between classes, while I waited for a guy I called my “almost something” to bother replying to my messages.

That guy was named Tomás. When he was in a good mood, he treated me like I was the only woman in the world. When he wasn’t, he could go three days in silence or show up drunk and aggressive.

The on-and-off thing we had taught me two things: that I didn’t want to keep waiting for him, and that I needed to learn how to desire myself on my own, without asking permission.

Then the post showed up.

“Looking for a baby girl. Over 18. Absolute discretion. Clear rules. Only write if you know what ddlg is.”

It was signed by a user who called herself @ama_mariela. Her profile picture was a close-up of lips painted dark red. Nothing else.

I knew exactly what it was. I’d been reading forums in secret for months, watching videos, fantasizing about having someone tell me when to sleep, when to eat, when to come. The difference between knowing it and daring to do it was a screen and two minutes of courage.

I replied to her story.

—Hi, I saw your post. I’m interested.

It took her an hour to answer. I know because I counted every minute.

—Age? —she wrote.

—Eighteen.

—Any prior experience?

—Nothing real. Just what I’ve read.

—I like that. The ones who come trained bring habits that aren’t mine.

That night I didn’t sleep.

***

Mariela was twenty-six, lived in another city, and worked giving private English lessons. I found that out after a whole week of messages in which she asked more than she answered.

What my favorite color was. What time I woke up. What I did when I was alone in my room. If I masturbated thinking about men or women.

I told her the truth: women. For years I’d been telling myself it was a phase, and that night, in front of a stranger who didn’t even know my real name, I admitted it without hesitation.

—Good —she replied—. That simplifies everything.

A few days later she sent me a document with the rules. There were twenty-three. Some seemed exaggerated to me. Others were frankly exciting. We agreed to modify four. I virtually signed the rest, writing my full name at the end of the document as if it were a real contract.

The rules I remember most were simple and absolute.

“My girl doesn’t touch herself without permission.”

“My girl replies within five minutes when I call.”

“My girl uses the safe word without shame.”

“My girl calls me mommy when we’re in session.”

That was the first step. Calling her mommy by message. Then by audio. Then by video call. Each step was calculated by her, not me.

***

Our first full session was on a Friday at eleven at night. My mother was sleeping in the next room and I had hung a towel in the crack under the door so the phone light wouldn’t leak out.

—I want to see you —Mariela wrote.

—My mom’s sleeping.

—Exactly. You’ll have to be even quieter.

I accepted the video call with my heart pounding in my throat. Her face appeared on the screen for the first time. Brunette, shoulder-length hair, dark eyes, the same red lips from the profile picture. She was sitting in a black chair, wearing a white shirt open to the third button.

—Hi, mommy —I whispered.

—Hi, sweetheart. Take off your T-shirt.

I didn’t argue. I took it off.

—The bra too.

I did it.

—Hands at your sides. Don’t move.

I stayed like that, sitting on my bed with my back against the wall, exposed in front of a woman I had never touched. She said nothing. She just looked at me. The camera caught my ragged breathing and my nipples hardening from the cold and from her silence.

—You’re beautiful —she said after a very long minute—. And you’re mine.

That word, “mine,” hit me harder than any direct command.

—Do you have something to cover your mouth with? —she asked.

I took the scarf I used for my hair and showed it to her.

—Bite on it. I don’t want your mom hearing you.

I bit down on it.

—Now open your legs. Slowly. I want to see everything.

I obeyed. Cold air brushed my thighs as I settled over the sheets. Mariela didn’t look away for a single second.

—More —she said—. Open them wide. I want to see that pussy getting wet for me.

I felt my face burn. I spread my knees a little more, leaving the fabric of my panties pressed against my center.

—Take them off.

I pulled my panties down slowly, first one hip, then the other, until they were bunched around my ankles. The hand not holding the phone was shaking. She inhaled deeply when she saw me, as if she had been waiting for exactly that image.

—There you are —she murmured—. Look at yourself. Show me how you touch yourself.

I slid two fingers between my wet lips and parted them just enough to let the camera see the shine. I was already swollen, hot, sensitive from embarrassment and from her voice.

—Don’t hide. Touch your clit. I want to see you lose yourself.

The first stroke made me arch my back. The second was firmer. Mariela started talking to me in that calm voice of hers that made me stupid.

—That’s it. Rub slowly at first. Don’t come yet. I want you to hold it. Put a finger in, sweetheart. That same one. Inside.

I moaned around the scarf between my teeth when my finger went into me, slick, tight, and I felt the rim of my muscles close around it. She asked me to pull it out and push it back in, to open my lips wider, to show the movement of my hand clearly. I obeyed everything, my breathing broken and the camera catching my trembling hips.

—Do you like the way I watch you?

I nodded.

—Tell me.

—Yes, mommy.

—Clearer.

—I like the way you watch me.

—And what else do you like?

—When you tell me what to do.

—Then do it better. Put two fingers in. And don’t stop until I tell you to.

I slid them in with more difficulty, already opened by the first, and the wet sound embarrassed me. I cared more about seeing her swallow on the other side than anything else. Her eyes were fixed on my hand, on the slow movement of my fingers burying themselves in my cunt while I came undone.

—That’s it. Push. Touch your clit with the heel of your hand. Now faster. No, don’t come yet. You still have to hold on.

Her voice climbed from my pelvis to my throat. Every time she denied me release, the pressure grew unbearably. My center throbbed, clenched once, twice, and I had to stop myself for a second so I wouldn’t blow too soon.

—Keep going —she ordered.

I plunged back into myself. My fingers were drenched now, the scarf had slipped down to my neck, and the sound of my breathing filled the room. Mariela wasn’t smiling; she was holding me with her gaze, steady, clean, cruel in a way that made me burn even more.

—Tell me you want to come.

—I want to come, mommy.

—Whose orgasm is that?

—Yours.

—I can’t hear you.

—Yours, mommy.

—Then earn it.

I picked up the pace, rubbing my clit with the base of my palm and going in and out with my fingers until I felt the spasm rise like a thick, inevitable wave. My thighs started to tremble for real. She kept watching me, motionless, as if she were burning my shame into me.

—Now. Come for me.

I came with a muffled cry into the scarf, arching on the bed, soaking my fingers all the way to the palm. The orgasm left me empty, vibrating, mouth open, eyes fixed on her face. Mariela smiled faintly, satisfied, like someone who had just won something that had already been hers.

—Good —she said—. I like seeing you like that.

***

The following weeks became a strange routine. Monday through Thursday I lived my normal life: classes, lunches with my friends, endless calls with Tomás that I barely cared about anymore.

At eleven sharp on Fridays, without her having to remind me, I was ready. Bathed, shaved, room dark, phone charged, towel under the door.

Mariela gradually raised the intensity of the sessions. At first just video calls and orders. Then she asked me to buy things: a cloth blindfold, a pair of thigh-high socks, a candle that wasn’t scented.

I spent the money I saved giving math lessons to kids in the neighborhood and lied at home, saying I was buying clothes.

One night she ordered me to tie my wrists to the headboard with the stockings.

—See if you can get free —she said.

I tried. I couldn’t.

—Good. Now you’re only mine.

That night she turned off her camera. I only heard her voice for forty minutes, giving me instructions I could only obey with my hips and my breathing, because my hands were useless.

She told me when to speed up, when to slow down, when to stop at the edge and wait. She made me wait five times. The fifth time I cried from frustration, my pussy throbbing, wet, desperate, and my whole body taut from not being able to touch myself the way I wanted.

—That’s what I wanted —she said then—. Now yes. Finish.

I came crying, squeezing my legs together and pushing against nothing, the orgasm hitting me hard while I was still tied up. When we hung up, I sent her a message I didn’t know how to write: “thank you, mommy.” I couldn’t explain to myself why I was thanking her. I only felt like I had done something right for the first time in a long time.

***

I fell in love, of course. It would have been naive to think it wouldn’t happen.

I fell in love the way baby girls fall in love with their owners in most of the stories I later read: alone, without the other person ever fully knowing, filling in the gaps with fantasies she had never promised.

I’d send her messages at two in the afternoon telling her I missed her. She’d answer with an emoji and little else. I’d suggest doing an extra session outside Friday. She’d say no, rules were rules.

I asked her if she thought about me when we weren’t in session. She answered: “I think about my girl when it’s useful to think about her.”

I copied that sentence into a notebook.

Sometimes I hated her. Sometimes I thought I’d be able to change her, pull her out of her role, turn it into something like a real relationship between two women who liked each other. It was ridiculous. She had never promised me anything that wasn’t signed in the document.

And still, Thursday after Thursday, Friday after Friday, I kept waiting for eleven.

***

The last session was almost a year after the first. I didn’t know it would be the last until weeks later, when she stopped answering my messages and I understood that the contract had ended without ceremony.

That night she asked for something different. She wanted me to record myself alone, with her not on the call, doing everything she had taught me in twelve months. Then send her the video.

—And if you keep it? —I asked.

—I’m going to keep it.

—For what?

—For me. To remember the little girl I trained.

I made the video. It took me almost two hours to record it. I repeated every gesture, every word, every pose she had taught me, speaking to the camera as if it were her.

“Yes, mommy.”

“Whatever you want, mommy.”

“Thank you, mommy.”

When I sent it, she replied with a twelve-second audio clip.

—My girl learned everything —she said—. I’m proud.

That was the last I heard of her voice.

***

Then came the silence. A week. Two. A month. I wrote asking if she was okay. I wrote telling her I missed her. I wrote telling her it hurt.

I blocked her number, unblocked it, blocked it again. Until one day I accepted that this hadn’t been a love story, not even a sex story. It had been a class. Long, patient, brutal. The class I needed to understand what it was I actually liked.

Today, seven years later, I still prefer women. I still prefer to obey in bed, though now I choose better who I do it with.

When people ask me to tell them what my first real time was, I don’t mention the boy from high school. I mention a stranger who called herself Mariela, who lived in another city, and who one Friday at eleven at night taught me, in a white shirt and with a soft order, that I was hers before I even knew it.