By: Sophie Morgan

Paperback

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Sophie Morgan is a submissive.

In this candid account she explains exactly what that means and what exactly an independent, 21st century woman gets out of relinquishing her power and personal freedom to a dominant man for their mutual pleasure. In the wake of Fifty Shades of Grey comes a true life memoir that offers the real story...

From the endorphin rush of her first spanking right through to punishments the likes of which she couldn't begin to imagine, Sophie explains in frank and explicit fashion the road she travels as she reconciles her sexual needs with the rest of her life. She'd call it her journey if, in the current climate, that didn't make her sound like a reality TV reject.

Sophie's story follows her as she progresses from her early erotic experiences through to experimenting with her newfound, awakened sexuality. Yet it isn't until she meets James, a real life 'Christian Grey', that her boundaries are really pushed...

As her relationship with James travels into darker and darker places, the question becomes: where will it end? Can Sophie reconcile her sexuality with the rest of her life, and is it possible for the perfect man to be perfectly cruel?

Daring, controversial, but always fun, warm and astoundingly honest, this is a book no man or woman will be able to put down.

About the Author

Sophie Morgan is in her early 30s. She is working hard at a career she loves, surrounded by friends, amused and exasperated by her family in about equal measure. Loves animals and Marmite, hates people who stop abruptly when walking down the street so you walk into them, and spends too much money on books, DVDs and handbags, mostly in that order. The one thing missing in her life is someone to share it . . . and the fact she wants that someone to dominate her sexually, as well as helping sort the recycling.

1

The first thing to say is that I am not a pervert. Well, no more than anyone else. If you came to my flat you would be more struck by the piles of washing up in the sink than my dungeon – not least because the cost of living in the city is such that I'm lucky to have been able to find somewhere with a living room which I could rent alone within my budget. Let's just say a dungeon wasn't really an option.

So, to address some of those pesky stereotypes, I am neither a doormat nor a simpleton. I don't yearn to spend my day baking while someone hunts and gathers for me and I keep the home fires burning, which is just as well as apart from a decent Sunday roast I'm a bit of a crap cook. I also don't look like Maggie Gyllenhaal in Secretary. Alas.

I just happen to be, at points when the urge takes me and I have someone I trust to play with, a submissive. Not that you'd know that if you met me. It's just one facet of my personality, one of the plethora of character elements that make me, well, me – coexisting with my love of strawberries, compulsion to continue arguing stubbornly even when I know I'm wrong and tendency to heap scorn on 99 per cent of television programmes and yet become obsessive about the other 1 per cent to a level that frightens even me.

I work as a journalist on a regional newspaper. I love my job, and – not that it should really need to be said – being submissive doesn't impact on my work. Frankly, if it did I'd get lumbered with tea making and picture stories about infant school book weeks, which really is a fate worse than death. Also, newsrooms are bantery places. It's a dog-eat-dog world and you need to give as good as you get. I do.

I consider myself a feminist. I'm certainly independent. Capable. In control. To some that might seem incongruous with the choices I make sexually, the things that get me off. For a while it seemed jarring to me. In fact, sometimes it still does, but I've come to the conclusion that there are more important things to worry about. I'm a grown woman of usually sound mind. If I want to relinquish my personal control to someone I trust so that they can lead us somewhere which proves thrilling and hot for both of us, then as long as I'm not doing it somewhere where I'm frightening small children or animals I think that's my right. I take responsibility for my actions and choices.

It has taken a while for me to get to this stage though.

I would, if the word hadn't been appropriated by reality television and turned into something that sounds both nausea-inducing and in need of a soft-rock video montage, go so far as to say it's been a bit of a journey, which is really how this book came about. This isn't a manifesto or a 'how-to' book, although I like to think if you're into this kind of thing and wanting to explore you might get some ideas. It's just what happened to me, how I discovered and explored this side of myself, my experiences, my thoughts.

Ask another sub their thoughts and what being submissive means to them and you'll get a whole other different book.

Looking back on it now my submissive tendencies started young, although I wouldn't have called them that then. I just knew there were certain things that made me tingle, that I would find myself thinking about wistfully without ever really being able to put my finger on why.

Of course I was oblivious to all of that as a kid – mostly I was just going about my business growing up in a nice middle class home in the Home Counties. I hate to bust myths here, but there's no deep-seated trauma in my past or anything missing in my formative years that has exacerbated my love of filth now. I have no daddy issues, there was no angst in my home life, and my childhood was – happily for me but probably not that exciting for book writing purposes – a happy, loving and simple one. I was, and remain, very lucky indeed with my family – we are all quite different to each other, but the bond of love and a shared sense of the absurd sticks us together through thick and thin, and I feel genuinely blessed to have them all.



I grew up in a nice house with my mum, my dad and my sister.

My mum, an accountant before she had me, devoted her life to bringing up my sister and me, and is very much the heart of our family. She spent a lot of time with us, nurturing us into little people whether that involved helping us with homework or flinging herself around the garden with us. She didn't believe in sitting on the sidelines; if we were going roller skating she was going roller skating with us. Her other passion was doing DIY in every room of the house in rotational turn, the home improvement equivalent of repainting the Forth Bridge, albeit with Laura Ashley wallpaper.

My dad runs his own business and is the most hardworking man I know, a provider through and through who ensured our childhoods were filled with whatever new bike or gadget we wanted (thankfully mum was around to ensure such goodies were bestowed in sensible fashion lest we get too unbearable), opportunities for travel and a wonderful home life. Funny and clever, he has a sense of adventure that I think I inherited, along with an independence of spirit and unapologetic sense of 'this is who I am' that he encouraged in his children, having occasionally clashed with his own parents' views of what he should do in life, as opposed to what he wanted to do.

My sister is in lots of ways the polar opposite to me. Where I am generally fairly quiet and more comfortable around a few close friends, she is the life and soul of the party, the one whose energy lifts up the room, who gets things done. Despite our differences she is the person I would call first at 3 am if I was in trouble, not least because she is practically nocturnal. I feel incredibly lucky that this woman, who is likely to be alongside me in life for longer than anyone else, is someone so amazing – although, hilariously and despite this ringing endorsement, give us three days together in the family homestead over a Christmas holiday and we will have reverted to our teenage selves, bickering over who's spending too long in the bathroom (usually her).

Our comfortable semi was also shared with a menagerie of animals, ranging from Goldie the Goldfish – don't judge, I was three when I named him – to Cheesy the hamster and Barry the dog – named during my 'why shouldn't dogs have human names' phase (a question answered fairly quickly when my poor dad was running round the park bellowing 'Barry!' in a way that undoubtedly perturbed other dog walkers). I've always loved animals and one of my strongest childhood memories is of burying a dead bird I found in the garden expressly against the wishes of my mum who, understandably, was concerned about hygiene issues. When she discovered I had not only gone against her wishes by picking up said bird to move it to its final resting place but was presiding over a burial service attended by my sister and our next door neighbours' children – in for a penny in for a pound – I was sent to my room in disgrace. Usually for me such a punishment, despite being my parents' main tactic for misbehaviour – no corporal punishment in our house – was no punishment at all. My room was one of my favourite places to be as it was filled with the books I spent all my pocket money on and I spent happy hours sat on the window ledge reading and watching the world go by. But in this instance I felt the injustice was too much to bear. I wrote an outraged letter to David Bellamy telling him about the oppressive anti-conservationist regime I was forced to live under, where dead birds were cast aside by uncaring adults. He never replied, which is probably for the best because I fear if he had he might have told me to listen to my mum, which would only have made me more irate. The fact that this is the closest I can think of to a clash with my mother while growing up is testament to the fact I was never a natural rebel. I went quietly about doing my thing, but I wasn't busy testing boundaries, mostly because I was allowed to do pretty much everything I wanted to do, and otherwise wasn't bothered about arguing in principle. That, admittedly, did change as I got older.

My interest in writing started young – I remember writing and illustrating stories in little A 5 booklets tied with treasury tags. My stories were usually based around children's TV shows, books and films I enjoyed. The standard of my writing was considerably better than my drawing although at that point that really wasn't saying much. I dabbled in art at an early age, having seen something on the news about some precocious child somewhere whose art was selling for thousands. Sadly, when I knocked up a couple of coloured pencil and felt tip mixed-media works my mum was pleased to accept the first picture I gave her, and even stooped to giving me 50p for a second original. But when I upped my price to a tenner – I felt this was reasonable under the circumstances – she gave me a firm but kind 'no', scuppering any further plans for a life in the arts and returning me to producing my mini books and comics. Given half a chance I would pull myself, my friends and family into the worlds of Narnia, Middle Earth or, slightly closer to home but somewhat more obscurely, having discovered it via cable TV , the city of Newcastle as depicted in Jossy's Giants , a TV show about a school football team.

My love of Jossy's Giants and football in general came very much from a tomboyish streak a mile wide. I was – and still am – quite a way from the girlie stereotype. I have a pathological dislike of pink and never developed a love for make up, expensive clothes or fashionable shoes – to this day put me in a pair of heels and I walk not unlike Bambi trying to get across the ice, although what I don't spend on shoes I more than make up for with nail varnish and handbags. Growing up I definitely didn't have much interest in worrying about boys, a fact which, ironically, meant I had lots of male friends at school as I'd quite happily play football with them in the lunch hour and didn't bother with anything much like small talk. If you asked me my favourite things when I was 10 , I'd have said reading, roller skating, riding my bike and climbing the tree at the end of our garden, which gave me a view of the nearby allotments – a source of endless fascination for reasons that seemed very important at the time. The tree was my private place – my sister had no interest in the inevitable scrapes and dirt borne of making the initial jump up, even with my cunningly engineered skipping rope pulley system, which provided a boost to the first climbable branch. I was quite a solitary child in lots of ways, very comfortable on my own, reading or daydreaming, which is probably a bit unsurprising bearing in mind the picture I've just painted of myself as a bit of an antisocial bint.

Of course no woman is an island – even if they do spend time hiding up a cherry tree given half a chance. My sister was a constant companion and co-conspirator at home, while at school – a mixed primary school until I was 11 and then a girls' grammar after that – I had a mixed circle of friends, many of whom I'm still close to. While I wasn't one of the popular group – I tended to veer towards the geeks, of music, drama, technology – I for the most part got on with everybody, using humour to smooth over any problems when they did occur. I was, by the time I'd settled into secondary life, very much a mid-range student. It took a while to find my feet as I'd gone from being one of the cleverest of my primary school class to midclass at most subjects in secondary, which suddenly meant things weren't coming so easily and took effort. It was a culture shock in lots of ways, but probably not a bad thing in that it burst any precociousness that might have seeped in from having the kind of supportive home life where everyone thought I was some kind of genius because I liked reading. I wasn't the prettiest or the brightest in the class, although I soon realised this worked in my favour because it seemed to me that the smartest and prettiest girls were the people who attracted the most bitchiness. Instead I was conscientious and worked hard, a by-product of an inherent need to please. Despite occasional worries at letting either my teachers or parents down, I for the most part really enjoyed school. I know, it's sickening.

Somewhat ironically, I was a bit of a late bloomer on the romance front. I had my first kiss when I was twelve or thirteen with a boy I knew through one of my friends and, if I'm honest, I wasn't that impressed by it. There was no thunderclaps, no roll of romantic music, and a feeling of anticlimax – no pun intended – afterwards. I think one of us actually said, 'Well then.' Suffice to say no one's world was set alight.

That said, I read Just Seventeen and Minx magazine and I knew the mechanics of sex, although I had no interest in trying it at that point. I had however learned that when I couldn't sleep rubbing my hand between my legs would bring a pleasure that made me doze off and when my mind wandered as I brought about this kind of pleasure it did always return to similar topics.

I've always been into myths and legends, and growing up Robin Hood was a favourite. I watched the films, the TV show – we'll overlook the most recent incarnations before I start gnashing my teeth – and read all the books I could lay my hands on, fictional and historical. But through every medium I had a difficult time with Maid Marian. I hated that she was continually getting into peril for stupid reasons and then having to be rescued. That she didn't fight, wasn't even given the relative dignity of being a bona fide sidekick and seemed to spend most of her time patching up the wounds of the Merry Men and looking pensively into the middle distance as they disappeared off for adventure.

Despite that, my favourite parts of those stories involved her in the very peril I scorned her for. When she had been captured – as the inevitable bait in a trap to catch Robin Hood, seemingly her major purpose in life – her defiance of Guy of Gisborne and the Sheriff of Nottingham captured my imagination. She would be held in some dank dungeony place, with the pictures often showing her tied or in chains. Powerless. But she would be unbowed, dignified in her indignity, and somehow that struck a chord with me, made my heart race. You know how when you were a kid and something you read or watched caught your imagination so deeply that you were transported into it, it was you in that moment, living it, feeling it? (Actually, I say 'when you were a kid', but I still feel that now when I read or watch something amazing, it just happens less often). Well, all the scenes I replayed in my mind with me in the lead role were the scenes of Maid Marian, even if she was a bit rubbish and I tended to gloss over the dull stuff after Robin saved her and she had to go back to the camp and resume tending the fire. Those were the stories I used to think about lying in bed at night.

Well at least until I discovered porn.

When I was about fourteen there was a brouhaha about a magazine that gave away an erotic book aimed at women with their issue one month. I didn't have the internet in my room and, frankly, while I knew if you wanted erotic inspiration that was the place to go I had no interest in pictures of boobs because I had my own and didn't think they were that epic. This book though, this was different. Lots of talk of moral decay and the like meant that I spent most of the month desperate to get hold of a copy, in part because I'd started to suspect I was dirtier than my school friends, or at least dirtier than they dared to admit aloud. Even aside from getting to see exactly how scandalous this stuff was, it could, I reasoned to myself, act as a kind of smut barometer.

Except there was a problem.

My next door neighbour worked in the only newsagent big enough to sell the magazine in our small town, and not only would she not let me buy it as she knew I was a long way under 18 but she'd also be bound to tell my mum, which would leave me open to one of those conversations so hideous you want to pull off your own ears just to make it stop. Definitely a no go. So one afternoon I took a different bus home, one that took me to the nearest big town, and bought the magazine there, hands clammy, still wearing my school uniform, terrified at any moment that the disinterested woman behind the counter would realise I was underage and shamelessly buying what the Daily Mail had described as utter filth and demand I give it back before I ended up inadvertently corrupted forever. She didn't. I stuff ed it in my rucksack and, my heart still pounding, walked the two miles home to explain to my Mum that I was late because of hockey practice.

Looking back at that book, which I can't bear to chuck away though it's now so well thumbed that the pages have started to fall out, the scandal and outrage at the time seems laughable. But reading it then was a revelation. My favourite chapters still have the tops of the pages folded over for ease of finding. One particular section involved a feisty yet vulnerable woman having a row with a man who she clearly fancied but also found herself continually clashing with. She ended up tied to a tree with ivy (I know, it's a bit lame, but go with it – it was special Greek ivy, which may have heretofore unknown bondage qualities) while he did whatever he wanted to her – running his hands over her body, viciously kissing her, verbally abusing her. She stood there, aroused in spite of herself and he made her come, all without her able to do anything but rest her head against the tree and moan out her pleasure.

It sounds quite cheesy indeed now, almost Mills and Boon-esque, but at the time it struck a chord with me. Suddenly that was what I was replaying in my head as I lay in bed at night, now accompanied by a hand between my legs rubbing myself to bring about blissful sleep.

Of course, there comes a time in every girl's life where actual boys overtake both books and the Guys of Gisborne of our imaginations (I was never really the Robin sort). My first serious boyfriend, older but not wiser, initially seemed somehow to pick up on signals I didn't even know I was giving out. Unlike other boys I'd kissed, he'd hold my head firmly in place, my ponytail twisted around his hand as we kissed goodnight, and I loved it. I loved feeling under his power, immobile as our tongues duelled.

I used to daydream about the possibilities of those kisses, what they could be a prelude to, the hint they gave of a different side to him, a side the world didn't see but which I could feel, as if that side of him was calling to a complementary side of me. And then one night he bit my lower lip, so hard I whimpered into his mouth in a kind of surprised pleasure. Instantly he broke away, nearly taking a clump of my hair with him in his haste, and apologised for hurting me. It felt awkward to explain that actually I'd liked it, so I accepted his apology, said it didn't matter, and went indoors disappointed, with my nipples erect and my knickers moist.

I still didn't really know the significance of that kiss exciting me. All I knew was that nice girls didn't get off on such things, or if they did they certainly didn't talk about it. So I didn't. I went about my life, going through all the usual milestones. Eventually my first beau and I, taking advantage of his mum having to go into work to cover a poorly colleague's shift as a doctor's receptionist, did lose our virginity together, but the mixture of neither of us having done it before, feeling a bit self-conscious and keeping an ear out in case his mum returned home unexpectedly meant it was perfunctory and, while perfectly pleasant, didn't rock my world. Afterwards I reflected that it didn't feel as pleasing as lying in bed touching myself – although at the time I didn't connect that with the fact that I hadn't orgasmed. Looking back on how naive and tentative our fumblings were, it seems a miracle we managed to have any kind of sex that first time at all. However, we found that practice made, if not perfect, then certainly 'good enough that we'd both grin giddily at each other for a long while after', although the lack of privacy meant we were constantly in fear of being discovered in flagrante delicto, and developed skills for a quick change that Clark Kent would be proud of, although possibly also slightly disturbed by.

ISBN: 9781405910637
ISBN-10: 1405910631
Audience: General
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Number Of Pages: 320
Published: 30th August 2012
Dimensions (cm): 19.8 x 12.9  x 2.3
Weight (kg): 0.289