“What a good, eager little learner we are...” he whispered and it hit me that this was exactly what I craved, ever since I could remember. He just had to say it, gently and condescending, and I moaned and then licked harder just to hear it again.
“Good puppy, that’s enough, thank you.” He smiled, touched my still lips and brought a finger to his mouth for a taste. I only realized now that his hand was still firmly placed on my rear where I couldn’t feel the sting anymore. The warmth his hand projected seemed to radiate all the way through skin and tissue instead. But again, all I could think about was the next moment and the next—aching for more.
“You liked that,” he said quietly. It wasn’t a question, but I nodded anyway. “And you did so well.” Already his fingers were sneaking under my skirt again but this time, without any hesitation, he hooked them into the elastic of my panties and tights and pulled them down. There was no question in whether he had a right to do so, no careful testing or shy probing. He just took what he wanted and told me to lift my ass so that he could bring them down to my knees but no further.
“My, my... someone wet their panties good, didn’t they?”
VII
Where I had expected to feel shame or humiliation, the only sensation comparable to those was the dizzying heat in my face. And that, I hardly noticed at all against the overwhelming pumping in my clit and the shower of tingling need he had sent all over my body. I whimpered and stared at the silver tape recorder that soaked up each sound like a sponge does water. Traitorous, evil, beautiful little device.
“What was that?” Paul asked fingers running slowly between the elastic of my panties and the sensitive back of my knees.
“Yes...” I breathed on the exhale of another moan. My fingers curled against the carpet. Everything smelled like him—rugged and sea-worthy and I felt like I was drowning, deliciously, sweetly drowning. “Yes, Sir!”
The tape proved it, he didn’t even have to tell me. I seemed so eager to be his, to shout it out with each sound he drew from me. From that moment on, he was Sir and I had sunk one rung deeper into a game, into a body, into a life I had hardly dared to dream of.
“That’s my girl,” he answered, then pulled at my underwear to untangle my tights and panties from my legs. But still he didn’t touch me even as I was all but wriggling my wanton arse at him. Instead, he leaned to his side again, petting my hair. I could smell myself on his wrist, and before I could think about that, he held my panties in front of my face. The soaked panel hung there, right in front of me, then flapped against my nose and my lips. I closed my eyes and all I saw was red heat.
It was in that moment that he decided to touch me again; easily reaching between my legs, he held my sex in his hand—thumb in the crack of my arse and the rest of his palm and fingers pressing against my labia. I wanted to cry, I was so aroused all I could utter were desperate whines and whimpers.
“Will you look at these panties?” He let them swing against my face again. They were so drenched, I could feel all the places where they left juices on my nose, my lips and my chin. I can’t lie. I adored that sharp smell then. It, too, was salty and overwhelming, and it went so perfectly with the way his middle finger was stirring against my painfully swollen clit.
“Yes, Sir.” I inhaled deeply through my nose, all of that cunt filtered air.
“Did you make them so terribly wet?”
I nodded first, torn between shame and pride as he forced my nose to rub against the moist panel.
“Yes, Sir.”
“Explain yourself.” As he said so, another finger slipped between my labia and he trapped my sopping clit between the two, squeezing and rubbing until I had curled my fists against the carpet, wriggling like a fish on his lap. And suddenly his fingers stilled. “Answer me, Iris.”
“I made them wet because... because I’m so... I need…”
My voice petered out into silence and hung heavy for several seconds until I tried again. “It got wet because I want you so much, Sir.”
He hummed in agreement and his fingers moved again, stirring just a little against my nerve endings.
“And... do you think that deserves punishment or reward?”
I could tell from the sound of his voice that he was smiling but that helped little in finding an answer. Bent over like that, my hamstrings were pulled tight and each time I lost control, each time I moaned, my toes rose from the ground, swaying in the air. He didn’t push them back down, but I had a feeling he stopped touching as long as they weren’t settled on the ground.
“I don’t know...” I finally admitted when I realized I couldn’t even attempt to concentrate on the question. Again, he seemed to know and squeezed my clit so hard I yelped out loud. And yet, I wanted to thank him, wanted him to do it again and again.
“It’s not a difficult question; just tell me what you think.”
“I...” Shaking my head like a wet dog’s, I tried to swallow against the lump in my throat, tried to clear the fog in my head.
“I don’t think it’s a bad thing...” I finally whispered, twisting my head to look up at him. My hair fell over the tape recorder and I realized I didn’t want a reward. I wanted to stay over his knees, I wanted him to do to me what a man like him did to a woman like me when she was laid out over his knees, arse high in the air.
I frowned, fingers curling against the carpet.
“But...” I whispered and then stopped. I couldn’t think of any good reason, nor did I have the words for anything else. His eyes met mine and I could feel him drawing lazy circles around my clit while he watched my face for what felt like a long time. Finally, he dragged his hand out from between my legs, wiped it on my panties and let his palm rest on my rear.
“I agree. It’s a very good thing. No need for the double negative at all.” He paused and I held my breath. “You are doing it again, aren’t you? Trying to figure out what you can say to get me to do what you want?”
There was no threat in his voice—I don’t think there ever was. He sounded tenderly amused if anything, but I colored crimson anyway.
“I...” Shaking my head, I could feel my arms shake a little from the effort of holding me up. “I don’t even know what I want...” I whispered and he petted my hair, gently curled it against his fingers until I sighed and visibly calmed.
“Try...” he finally reminded me. “Try to purge it from your mind. Try not to worry. You don’t have to figure it out right now. That’s the beauty of it. Just... relax. Here, start in your feet and your thighs, you can let go, I’m strong enough.”
I swallowed hard but there was nothing in his face that I mistrusted and the way I held myself and twisted my neck felt harsh and wrong. His instructions reminded me of a yoga class, but they were easy enough to follow. As I relaxed them, my feet and calves lifted off the ground and Paul petted my toes.
“There you go.” His voice was calming and almost instinctively, I drew a deeper breath. “Now your head and your arms, just let them hang. Here... put that under your forehead.”
He handed me my bunched up and smelly panties, but when they rested under my face, they softened the ground. All I could smell was my cunt and my world went dark and warm. I hung there, crimson-faced and waiting—trying not to wait.
“Now round your back. That’s it, good girl. And your ass... just let go, soft and relaxed.”
There was something wonderful in getting instructions. I’ve had a lot of time to come up with a reason why, but in the end, I think everybody knows the answer. For once, I didn’t have to worry whether I was doing something right or what my choices, be they ever so small, would lead to. I didn’t have to think all the time—I could just
be
. His hands were brushing over my ass and it felt good without all that tension.
“You really are such a beautifully fast learner, my dear,” he said after I had hung there for a while, breathing calmed and not reverting to fear or thought. My cunt contracted with those words and I sighed out my next breath.
I don’t know how successful I was in truly banishing any expectation, any guessing from my mind but I had to have managed it for a little while at least.
When the first smack hit my arse, I yelped in surprise, kicking into the open air. It went through my entire body, and before I could even attempt to reach a calm equilibrium, he hit me again in the same spot.
I yowled, coughed out a moan and I had to have tried to scurry off his lap at least while my body acted on autopilot. I can hardly remember that moment when fire exploded on my arse for the third time. The first had been shock, the second a sense of helplessness. The third had been real pain that made me tense up every single muscle fibre in my body so hard he had to hold me against his stomach to keep me from falling. Even as I was still trying to catch my breath, though, his hand brushed over the tender spot and he rubbed and kneaded it, spread the heat out in waves of something that I couldn’t rightly call pain anymore.
It was something else, something like fire. Like swallowing tequila without the orange juice, like the raw feeling of straining muscles against an exercise machine, harsh but oddly pleasant in its sting.
“Shhhh,” he whispered and I realized that I had been exhaling a keening moan for what felt like minutes. I had to breathe. And he kept massaging the fire away. “It’s okay. You’re good. How do you feel?”
“Good...” As I said it, I took stock of my body, confirmed my answer as my cunt contracted greedily against thin air.
“I know.” His hand finally stilled, just warming the spot while I regained my breath. “I told you it was a good thing. And good things deserve to be rewarded. And now you’re even wetter. How perfect you are, little Iris.”
A heartbeat later, he was slapping my other cheek: three, four, five times, I don’t know. This time, my eyes were watering by the time he stopped and I was further soaking my panties when he rubbed the sore spot. And yet, it was the strangest feeling—I couldn’t get enough. I was crying, sobbing sometimes, but everything felt glorious, stark and perfect and I was floating in a world of heat and sting and safety, in a world in which pain was not scary but invited, in which it didn’t come with resentment or shock but with tender feeling. It was a world upside down where it seemed perfectly normal that I spluttered begging for more pain when he asked if I could take another round.
VIII
Even Paul’s bathroom smelled of wood polish. There were a few tiles around a bathtub, complete with a simple shower curtain, but all other surfaces were treated wood, shiny and glossy to stop it from absorbing too much water. It was a small and simple place—a sink with a single toothbrush in a glass and a bar of unscented soap. Above it hung a mirrored cabinet. A washing machine further narrowed the already cramped space and—unsurprisingly—was covered in an array of newspapers and books, some of them crisp and new, others showing clear signs of water damage.
I looked around curiously, blinking to make the image less blurry as he ushered me inside, a hand on the small of my back. Still light-headed, puffy and aching, each careful step made me more aware of my body, of the bones and joints, the stiff muscles and flaming skin. It was my ass of course that radiated most of the pain and heat. Each step pushed my thighs against its bottom, stirring the red skin and flesh underneath. I imagined black and blue at this point, but on our way to the bathroom, Paul had led me along the hallway mirror, had turned me around and showed me the almost clean and symmetrical red ovals that covered the cheeks of my ass as though in intense embarrassment. They, too, radiated heat, but no blush had ever stung this hard; no blush had ever made me quite so wet.
“You look beautiful,” Paul said, so quietly that it didn’t echo in the small room and he turned me around towards the mirror over the sink. At first, I blanched. I looked disheveled and puffy. My eyes were red-rimmed and streaked with black mascara. I don’t use much make-up, but all of it was smeared over my cheeks and my lips looked like I’d bitten them for hours. I thought I even recognized a hint of carpet burn on my chin. My displeasure had to have to shown on my face because Paul clicked his tongue and, standing behind me, placed his hands along my jaw, making me look. It took a while for me to see what he saw, but I wasn’t ashamed.
He picked up a towel and wet it with warm water, then brushed it over the bar of soap and started to wash my face. The towel’s structure was jarring and harsh on my skin, raw from tears and blushing but at the same time, the water provided a sense of relief. I found myself exhaling the tension from my body, leaning back against his chest watching him in the mirror. It occurred to me too late that I was supposed to worry he might get soap in my eyes, but I didn’t—I simply closed my eyes when it was necessary and within all too short a time, none of the used-up and dirty quality remained. Now, I just looked exhausted, open and red. Red all over.
He picked up a hairbrush next, still without saying a word. He stepped back a pace and pulled my head into the back of my neck before he ran it through my hair. It didn’t take long; the morning’s conditioner was still doing its job. With every second, I became more presentable and by the same token, I looked less and less devoured, as though the brick stones of my defenses were gently put back in place.
“How are you feeling?” he finally asked, rasping against my ear when the last few strokes of the brush were accompanied with a soft electric crackle.
“Mmmmm,” I exhaled, wondering at my languorous wordlessness. I smiled back at him in the mirror. What else was there to say? I felt light, as though he had pumped me full of helium and I was all but floating next to him, with just the most tentative grasp on the ground.
“Good, how is your ass?” The word sounded oddly crude, as though I had forgotten he was American, or that he had used similar and worse words when I’d been bent over his lap. I could feel my cheeks redden without reason but when I checked in the mirror I didn’t see a change at all—they were still bright red from crying anyway.