On the Bare (28 page)

Finally the flow began to lessen and Julie sighed at the near-orgasmic relief of being empty again. But her relief was short-lived.

‘Take your jeans off.’

Julie hesitated, weighing the humiliation of baring herself (again) against the shame of keeping the pee-stained things on. She kicked off her heels and peeled the wet denim down her legs with a disgusted wince. The air was cool against her damp legs and bottom and she dropped the jeans in the dust at the policeman’s feet, moving her hands to cover her wet panties.

He lifted her chin and made her look at him. ‘A naughty little girl who wets her knickers deserves a good sound smacking – over my knee.’

She didn’t think it was possible to blush any more, but her face blazed again as he led her to the rear of the car and seated himself on the bumper. He pulled her gently across his lap. Julie squeezed her eyes shut tightly as he adjusted her position and placed his hand in the small of her back.

Without further discussion he brought his hand down on her right cheek with a resounding slap, reawakening the sting in her bottom. She bit back a little cry, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of seeing her disgraced any further.

She couldn’t restrain a whimper as he struck the left cheek even harder. The thin wet fabric clung to her bottom and she knew it would only enhance the image of her punished cheeks, glowing bright red through the soaked cotton. Julie kicked and struggled, but he held her firmly in place as he peppered her bottom with sharp swats that rang out like pistol shots in the crisp air. However, the pain was nothing compared to the sheer humiliation of being upended over a man’s knee and spanked like a child.

He delivered a fast volley of smacks and Julie thrust both hands behind, fingers splayed across her punished cheeks in an effort to shield her burning skin.

The policeman merely tutted and pinned her wrists against her back before continuing with a series of even
harder
slaps. Utterly helpless, Julie had no choice but to accept her punishment.

Now that she was no longer distracted by her desperate need to pee, she could focus on what she’d done. She’d been very reckless, it was true. And if she was honest with herself, she shouldn’t have been driving at all. She deserved this and she was very lucky to be given this childish punishment as an alternative to jail.

Sensing her submission, the policeman slowed his cadence.

‘Six more,’ he pronounced. ‘Just to remind you.’

Julie braced herself, determined to take it with dignity. If there was any traffic, she didn’t notice. But nor would she have cared.

His heavy hand cupped her right cheek before lifting and returning to deliver an astonishing blow. Julie gasped, but did not cry out.

‘One,’ he counted.

The second stroke covered her left cheek with equal fire and this time she whimpered a little.

‘Two.’

Though she tried to be brave, the next one made her cry out, kicking her legs frantically. She slipped off his lap and crouched beside the tyre, clutching her bottom and gasping at the pain.

‘Three,’ he said. ‘Get up, Miss Pembroke. You’ve three more to go.’

Meekly, she got to her feet and stretched across his lap again, offering her bottom for another smack.

‘Four.’

His relentless counting made it seem like a judicial sentence being carried out. He paused between swats, just long enough to allow the initial burn of the previous one to fade before laying on the next. Julie was crying by the time he gave her the fifth stroke and she moaned, telling herself it was almost over.

‘Five.’

The last swat was the hardest of all, but Julie was so lost to the world of tears that she didn’t even hear him count.
Her
bottom throbbed with pain and yet she felt calm. Purged. In more ways than one. She clung to the policeman, soaking his trousers with her tears. Even though he was the one who had inflicted the punishment, it was his comfort she needed.

It was some time before she was able to get up again. She stood shakily, rubbing her sore bottom and looking at the ground. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured at last.

He nodded curtly as he slipped his belt back through the loops. ‘I trust you’ll remember this next time you’re in a hurry,’ he said with impeccable professionalism, as though he’d merely issued her a ticket.

‘I will, officer.’

‘Now come along. I’ll drive you home.’

She trudged back to her car to retrieve her things and he put her suitcase in the boot underneath where she’d just been spanked and strapped. She threw her wet jeans in beside it, preferring not to put them back on. Wincing with pain, she lowered herself gingerly into the back seat. And she tried hard not to imagine the sight she’d present to nosy Mr Beddowes when she was brought home in a police car, wearing only her wet knickers and sporting a very red bottom.

Just Another Story

IF THERE’S ONE
hard and fast rule of writing, it’s
Write what you know
.

But Josephine had been writing what she
didn’t
know all her life. What was the point of writing something if you already knew it? That was the beauty of fiction. It was all about fantasy. Escapism.

On the page she could be anything or anyone. She could live anywhere, in any time, experience anything, everything. She had total control over her characters and could give herself all the best lines. The men she lusted after in reality were hers to manipulate in fantasy. They became strict disciplinarians who would punish her thinly veiled protagonists for any infraction. All her dirtiest dreams came true on the page. Reality was a pale substitute.

‘Yes, but how do you know you’re getting it right if you’ve never actually experienced it?’

It was an editor’s job to ask such questions, but Josephine sensed there was more to it than that. Clive had a natural insouciance that made him impossible to read. Was that little half-smile meant to be cynical? Or suggestive?

‘That’s just rhetoric,’ she said with a dismissive wave. ‘It’s something pretentious writers say. As though being able to tell stories is some sacred calling and you profane it unless you spend hours plodding through tedious facts.’

Clive leaned back in his chair, his blue eyes glittering. ‘Who says field research has to be boring?’

She blushed, gazing into the depths of her gin and tonic as though reading tea leaves. It was always slightly strange, chatting casually over drinks with this man who read all her naughty fantasies with a purely critical eye. He would suggest having a character slippered instead of caned, or advise that she’d overused the phrase ‘good sound spanking’. All with the same professional detachment he used to point out an awkward piece of syntax. And all without the slightest hint of embarrassment.

His voice flawlessly navigated the special language of her desires, giving real authority to words that made her squirm. He always seemed to home in on choice phrases when he reviewed her stories with her. Naughty girl. Smack your bottom. Over my knee, young lady. And she always thought she sensed an emphasis on the word ‘corrections’.

‘I’d like to discuss some corrections with you, Josephine,’ he’d say in that low silky voice. There were a hundred expressions that took on new meaning when you had one thing dominating your thoughts. Was his schoolmasterly tone deliberate?

‘Field research,’ she mused, teasing the slice of lime with her fingertip. ‘Hey, Google’s your friend when it comes to details. I only have to type “Victorian parlour maid” and
voila
– a thousand websites offer to help.’

His slightly amused expression deepened into slyness. ‘Yes, it’s easy enough to describe the cut of the gentleman’s suit as he puts a careless maid across his knee to warm her bottom.’

Her stockings hissed as she crossed her legs under the table.

‘And you picture it very well indeed. But I can’t help but wonder whether the actual experience might enhance your imagination.’ As he finished his drink and set the glass down, his hand strayed to the stack of books beside him. Author copies of her latest novel,
Knickers Down
. He slipped his thumb between the pages of the top copy and the paper purred and fluttered as he drew his thumb up the book’s edge, stroking it like a pet. Then he turned his piercing eyes back to her. ‘It couldn’t hurt, could it?’

There was no mistaking his innuendo now. Their business lunch had taken a decidedly non-business turn. Or
all
business, depending on how you looked at it.

‘Oh, I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt at all,’ she said, meeting his eyes with a challenge of her own. ‘But it’s not a requirement of writing. Should crime writers commit murder for the sake of authenticity? Besides, everyone knows that the best authors are the ones who break the rules.’ She stopped playing with her slice of lime and sucked its juice off her finger. ‘Some might even say it’s a crucial part of the creative process. Breaking the rules.’

Breaking the Rules
was her first novel and it had been very popular. Only the day before, Josephine had made a list of all the books she had sold, all the stories she had published. The bibliography on her website read like an enumeration of her sins. The sheer volume was startling. How many millions of words was that? If she did a search on the number of times the word ‘spank’ appeared in her writing … well, the maths was beyond her.

That wasn’t even counting the works in progress on her hard drive. The ones targeted at specific markets and the ones she’d written just for herself, the self-indulgent little treats she allowed herself occasionally and which no one else ever got to see.

But the fact was that she had written all those stories about naughty schoolgirls, careless secretaries and bratty cheerleaders without ever having been spanked.

Oh, she claimed she had been. An obsessive poster on Internet forums, Josephine described the marks from her most recent spanking and reminisced about the punishments she’d received at boarding school. She’d emulated Roald Dahl and invented a sadistic prefect who’d bullied her and spanked her with a hairbrush at every opportunity. But the life she described online was as fabricated as the fantasies she penned.

Her stories were read by hundreds of people who did know what it was like, but no one ever wrote to accuse her of masquerading, of
lying
. Surely it only validated her talent as a writer if her stories were that convincing?

‘Haven’t you ever been curious?’

‘It’s a
fantasy
,’ she said simply.

‘Yes. And?’

‘So what if it’s not as good as I imagine it?’

‘How will you ever know unless you try?’

‘Are you offering?’

‘Are you interested?’

She hesitated. ‘What if I say no?’

There was a hint of danger in his smile now. ‘What if you don’t have a choice?’

She felt her face grow hot and she looked down at the table, where she’d been obsessively folding and re-folding her napkin.

The waiter appeared with the bill and Josephine had a few moments to regain her composure while Clive paid it. When they were alone again she said flirtatiously, ‘Very well. You’ve read all my stories. What game shall we play?’

His dark little laugh made her cross her legs again. ‘My dear girl, I’m not suggesting a
game
. What I have in mind is right and proper punishment.’

Heat flared in her face and her voice was a hoarse croak as she dared to ask, ‘For what?’

‘Dishonesty,’ he said coolly. ‘Deceit. You see, there’s this writer who’s got the whole world fooled into thinking she’s a woman with real experience. Now, all fiction is fabrication, it’s true. But it’s gone a bit beyond the books and the stories, hasn’t it?’

She looked down and he gently placed his hand on top of hers to stop her fussing with her napkin.

‘Josephine, I asked you a question.’

Her heart began to beat a little faster at the authority in his voice, the electricity in his touch. He knew all her secrets. Not just the superficial fantasies she wrote from behind the safety of her pen name, but the deeper ones she revealed online when she wasn’t being paid by the word.

She nodded helplessly.

‘Sorry. I didn’t hear that.’ He cupped his hand to his ear in a theatrical gesture that made her feel like a child.

‘Yes,’ she whispered at last.

And then he said it. ‘Yes what?’

Flustered, Josephine slid down in her seat, wishing she could crawl under the table and hide. This was it. Once she called him ‘sir’ she would be committed. It would forever alter their working relationship. The prospect was terrifying. Thrilling.

‘Yes, sir.’

The cab ride only took ten minutes, but it seemed an eternity in the foreboding silence. Josephine could think of nothing to say.

Clive’s flat was eclectic but elegant. The furniture looked like family antiques, bequeathed by ancestors with very different tastes. A mahogany drinks cabinet stood in the corner of the room and he went to it. An ice bucket held a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and beside it were two glasses and a bowl of darkly red fruit.

Josephine smiled with relief. Yes, a glass or three of champagne would make this much easier. Then she realised that he was only adjusting the lights on the wall behind the teasing offering. She wilted.

When he turned back to her he wore a look of stern disapproval. Gone was the playful half-smile. He slowly removed his jacket and hung it on the coat stand. He held out his hand and Josephine slipped out of her coat, passing it to him with trembling fingers. She suddenly regretted the flirty little black dress she’d worn. Her bare shoulders prickled with gooseflesh, though it was warm in the flat.

‘Right, young lady,’ he said. ‘Shall we begin?’

How was she supposed to answer that? A wretched whimper was the best she could offer.

Two chairs faced each other across a low table. One was plush and French. The other was plain and straight-backed. Josephine’s eyes were drawn immediately to the straight-backed one.

Clive eased himself into the hard wooden chair and pointed at the spot on the floor directly in front of him. She moved forward slowly, clasping her hands round her upper body as though she were naked and freezing.