Finely Disciplined Thoughts (12 page)

I swiped at my nose with one hand, afraid to let go the cover with the other because I knew if I did I would grab a handful of bottom and rub like crazy and that wouldn’t be a good idea.

I searched for the correct answer.

“I’m l-lucky you l-love me enough to d-do this,” I hiccupped, hoping those were the magic words.

Apparently they weren’t.

His hard hand, which I would have sworn was covered in sandpaper at that point, started in again and it seemed even harder than before. I was literally bouncing my upper body frantically on the bed to counteract in some way what was going on down below, which, of course, upset the DC can and made the candy wrappers slide around. Chandler didn’t take it well.

“Then lie still if you think you’re so lucky. Because what I’m seeing is a lot of clenching and wiggling and begging that tells me all you care about is stopping this spanking.”

Well, of course I wanted to stop the spanking. Even a hard-core masochist would have opted for relief in my situation. It finally got through to me that I had to at least try harder to stop fighting him, however. I willed myself to go limp over his lap and, at the same time, sort of lift my bottom toward his punishing hand.

“I’ll b-be g-good,” I whispered miserably. Pitifully.

He should have been moved by my subservience. He wasn’t. The only thing that changed was the speed of the spanks. That and the fact he dedicated himself to lecturing me now as he smacked.

“Don’t — you — even — think — about — drinking — another — sip — of — that — stuff — or — you’ll — end — up — right — back — over — my — lap — and — no — more — chocolate.”

I was nodding frantically into the covers that were balled up under my chin and kicking with complete ineffectiveness.

“K-kay.” I managed to gasp out. “Oh-ugh. It h-hurts.”

That changed things in a hurry. He was back to proving himself a speed demon, and this time he worked his way down to my upper thighs and back up again, over and over, until I thought surely I would just burst into flame. I had never imagined there were so many nerve endings available to be thoroughly set on fire.

And then, all of a sudden, it was just more than I could deal with. I couldn’t kick or clench or twist or talk. All I could do was cry in huge gulps and reach for him, for any part of him that would give me some human comfort to hold on to.

As soon as I found his left arm, it all stopped. The next thing I knew, he had freed my legs and was lying on the bed beside me, gathering me up in his arms and somehow moving me to be stretched out on top of him. He held me so close I could hardly breathe while I sobbed into his shirt and he made little soothing noises and rubbed my bottom, light as butterfly wings.

“It’s over, babe. It’s over,” he whispered, and I forgot for a moment there was much more ahead. I just wanted to lie there forever and let him make it all right again. He indulged me in that for a little while. I don’t know exactly how long, because I sort of drifted off. I could never remember being so tired.

I woke up to him smoothing my hair back out of my face.

“I wish I could stay here with you like this, but you know what has to come now,” he whispered. I wanted to beg him to forget the rest of it. I was fairly certain I would do just that before it was all over. But I found a little grit somewhere deep down and made myself scoot off him, moaning when my scalded flesh made even brief contact with the bed linens and experiencing something like deep muscle pain when I tried to scramble up on my knees and back off the bed.

Chandler stood quickly and helped me up. He even helped me — very carefully — put my panties back on, and he unpinned my nightshirt and let it fall back down mid-thigh. Then he picked up the tray with the contents linked so dramatically to my pain and shame.

I was conscious of an overwhelming hunger and thirst. I needed something to soothe me and sustain me. I glanced down at the littered tray he was placing in my hands to take to the next stage of this exercise in self-discipline and began breathing a little erratically. I wanted — merciful heavens, how I wanted —

My frantic thoughts were interrupted. “It’s going to be a long, hard weekend, sweetheart. We have some work to do,” Chandler reminded me in a voice as smooth and calming as the finest chocolate. He smiled gently as he kissed me softly and rested his fingers lightly where I hurt the most. The effect was as tingly, all over my body, as Diet Coke ever had been on my tongue.

And I finally knew exactly what I really, really wanted more than anything in the world.

In Line for Trouble

I thought, I really thought, it could not get worse.

I was wrong.

It was going to.

There is a website popular in my town. Established for the purpose of allowing residents to promote the area from a very personal perspective and to shine a light on its many fine features and possibilities, The Line veered off-course and off-purpose somewhere along the way.

I imagine things began to go wrong when it became clear comments could truly be made anonymously. There is something about the ability to express one’s self in secret to a large and encouraging audience that releases the dormant teen-age brat in too many people, myself included, apparently.

I stared down my saintly nose at The Line for months, holding up the intellectual level of participants for public ridicule every time the subject was mentioned. Each time gossip — ridiculous even in comparison to televised wrestling — surfaced about some resident of our fair city; every time a reputation met the chopping block, courtesy of Internet-hooded executioners; any time private disagreements played out in all-too-public cat-fight fashion — I was the first to criticize this cowardly approach to unfriendly social interaction.

It was particularly galling to me that so much of it was carried on in a manner that debased the Queen’s English and ignored all the grammar rules drilled into me by my sixth-grade Language Arts teacher. The ruptured syntax, bruised subject-predicate agreement, assaulted spelling, and crippled use of apostrophes (to mention just a few of the battered victims of spleen expressed publicly in print) offended me at a primal level and served to convince me, once again, of my own superiority and my naturally flowing and highly elevated morality.

The Line, in my unhumble opinion, was the preserve of the unlettered, crude and rude. I resolved to ignore it and concentrate on worthier matters … right up until my name was mentioned, in less than friendly fashion and in utter realms of falsehood, by a faceless poster.

It doesn’t matter how I got dragged into the fray. Suffice it to say that I am a semi-public figure in our community, and my opinion on a matter of official policy had become well known and not altogether popular. Rather than debate me on the issue or seek to win me to the opposing viewpoint in private and with good manners, some lowlife witch with an obvious intellectual death wish made unflattering statements about my appearance and proclivities. The prior point was exaggerated and the latter was entirely imagined by a vicious and small mind.

I tried to put it aside for days. The masked mugger, unchallenged, stepped up the attacks.

I responded.

And that is why I am standing here, my nose pressed firmly into the intersection of two walls and my quite bare behind necessarily angled outward toward the center of our living room, while the garments that covered the lower half of my body just a few minutes ago lie in a pathetic heap on the floor beside my toes.

Hale says I was more than willing to show my rear end in public for several days, so it should be a small matter to display it to him in relative privacy for a few minutes. He says more than that, actually — some of it in words, some of it in action. None of it is pleasant.

And that is why there is an imprint of my upper teeth on my lower lip and a teary tracking of chocolate mascara down my face. So much for waterproof eye makeup.

Hale doesn’t read The Line, so I have no idea how he learned I had finally — yielding only after unprecedented enticement to do so -- expressed myself in less than charming fashion there.

He says it doesn’t matter how he found out; it matters quite a bit, however, that there was something to be found out.

He says I should be ashamed. And I am. Oh, I am. At least, I’m trying to be.

He says I should think about what I deserve. I would not. I could not. Except that I know he will ask me to share my thoughts very soon now, and there will be Hale to pay if I display a lack of commitment to his commands.

His commands are attention-getters. I’ll give him that. For the first time in days, my thoughts are focused not so much on what has been so despicably noised abroad about me as on the price I will pay for having showed I cared in such despicable fashion.

Such thoughts bring me, quite naturally, back to less than positive feelings for the loathsome toad who started all this. I still have no authorship to attach to the scurrilous attacks, but I have considered a half dozen possible miscreants, and all I can think of at the moment is each one of their malicious faces. I hope, I can only hope, that there is a Hale in each of the harpies’ lives and he is prepared to make her pay the price for her sins. How I would love to witness that shame and discomfort!

“On a scale of one to ten, just how bad a girl have you been?” my Hale asks, almost pleasantly, from a few feet behind me and in interruption of my bitter reverie.

I’m not sure quite how far behind. And that concerns me. Far enough to reach my vulnerable parts with his open palm? With the wooden spoon that no longer serves as an implement for blending my famous spaghetti sauce? With the belt I have not yet heard slither from its loops, but might still make note of in the next instant, since he has several times proven himself quite adept and speedy at unbuckling, freeing and doubling its biting, leathery length?

I swallow. At least I try to. I hug myself in an effort to avoid doing what I really want to do, which is to protect that portion of my anatomy protruding most obscenely into the room.

“Not so very bad,” I say, then I rush on, “because it wasn’t my fault to begin with.”

“I understand,” he says. I begin to hope for reprieve. “But attach a number to it, sweetheart, just to show me you’ve really considered the situation.”

“Three?” I wince when I realize my response lacks the assertiveness complete innocence would have permitted me.

“Three.” He repeats it. Then he sighs. “I think not. Not quite. Rather than drag this out, though, let’s agree to begin with double that number and go on from there.”

I hear a moan. It is mine. It is pitiful.

It should be.

He has stripped away every false hope I entertained as to mercy. I should have known better. Hale values good manners and a respectable and respected public voice even more than I do. But it was not his name dragged through the muck and the mire, I think petulantly.

“Six and a half, then,” I all but snarl into the corner, thinking he should have defended me with his high-toned words and I would not have had to engage in tongue-to-tongue online combat. Except, if I am honest, I know I probably would have gotten involved anyway. Just not quite so much. Not quite so -- well -- nastily.

The prior mystery as to his proximity is cleared up immediately following my answer, and I do not appreciate the revelation. The smack of what I recognize all too well as his oval-backed ash wood hairbrush catches me with two stings -- for two cheeks -- that build, and I pull my guilty bottom as far into the corner as I can get it. It isn’t far enough. He issues four more, perfectly on target, while he warns me that I have made my first mistake.

“I! Don’t! Need! Cute!”

“All right. All right,” I gasp, hands fluttering toward my throbbing parts now. “Eight.” It is a random number. I pray he doesn’t ask me to explain my reasoning, which is grounded in and founded on sheer desperation.

“At least,” he says. “Now, think about what eight might get you, young lady.” And he walks away. I can hear his footsteps. I’m just not sure where they are taking him, or how long he will be gone, or what his mission is.

I try to concentrate with regard to the subject matter he wants me focused on, but all I can think about is how I’m going to find a way to even the score with my mysterious assailant at some point. I will find out who publicly blackened my name, and I will find out who should be getting a red bottom instead of me, and I will be far more careful when I devise a suitable retribution.

The intensity of my anger is such that I don’t hear Hale’s return, and I am startled when he touches my shoulder and moves me to face him. I don’t want to look at him, so I duck my head, knowing he reads me far too well. But he is having none of that.

“Emma? Emma!” He stretches his fingers beneath my chin and raises my face until I have no choice but to look at him. “What does a girl guilty of an eight, at least, deserve, do you think?”

I know I will pay the price for not looking him in the eye, but I cannot say the word without closing my own. “A hard sp-spanking,” I whisper.

“Indeed. And it will be. Trust me. Brush or belt?”

I feel my whole body draw in defensively and cast about frantically for which implement might prove the more merciful, but before I can respond, he adds, “First.”

And I raise stiff fingers to press against my lips while I shake my head frantically.

Not both. Surely not both.

The next thing I know, he has grasped my left arm, wheeled me around so that I present a perfect target, and begun peppering my bottom with smacks from his hard hand that have me dancing in place. I shimmy and twist and buck, but none of it stops the assault; nor do my pleas. He spanks so hard and fast it takes my breath, and what I am trying to say comes out in gasps and bits and pieces, while my free hand tries frantically to provide protection that is wholly inadequate.

“N-no! Please! S-sor-ry!”

He stops at last, with an authority-filled shake to my arm, and points toward the stairs. I am torn between wanting to put as much distance between us as quickly as possible and wanting to avoid our bedroom, at the top of the steps, for as long as possible.