In the beginning of April, I did a scene with one of my play partners. We have played before several times, mostly him co-topping with others, but recently he has been trying to improve his topping by playing with me one-on-one. I don't necessarily like to plan out full details of a scene ahead of time, basically I reinforce my hard/soft limits, make sure we both remember the safe words (yellow & red), and if there's something I am really craving I will bring it up. Other than that, I basically allow the Top to mostly control what will be going on. He had alluded to some knife play this evening.

I really enjoy knife play and have done it with him as well as many other play partners in the past. I have been cut before during knife play, not intentionally, and was fine with it, that is a risk that can happen during knife play. Usually, he just drags it across my body. But, unknown to me at first, he decided to cut me with his knife. He was running the knife down the outer part of my left thigh, making a crisscross pattern. I didn't know he was breaking my skin at this point. I thought he was just dragging the knife. After a few minutes, he said, oh, you're bleeding. (Seeing my blood, I have learned, gets me really deep into subspace and gives me a huge rush of endorphins, whether it be from needles, impact, etc.) and he showed me the blood. I started giggling and was completely gone at that point, so I still didn't realize he had intentionally cut this into my body.

I didn't safeword because I didn't want it to stop, I was so high with endorphins, and probably at that point I just thought he had accidentally broke skin. He moved to my other leg and continued to drag the knife. He ended up cutting a design in that leg too, and gave me a little break before he said he was going to finish the picture. Sometimes I do get non verbal when I am in a scene, and I did not really register what was going on, so I didn't tell him to stop at that point either. It has now been about three weeks since this incident, and the marks are still there. One of my (closer to soft than hard) limits is permanent marks. If I am going to have something permanently placed on my body, I think there needs to be some discussion involved. And I was not given discussion or negotiation on this at all, and was not even aware of it until I was already in subspace.

I have told him that I am very upset about this and have asked for him to give me space and time to process this. I have told a few people about this situation and they said it sounds like a consent violation, but is that what this is? And if so, how should I handle it?

tl;dr play partner cut designs with a knife into me without prior discussion of doing it and did not make me aware of what he was doing. How should I handle this?