Authors: Maren Smith
“The first two are not crimes. The last is merely an annoyance.”
“That’s subjective.”
“No, what’s subjective is your definition of hard, or of what will leave you unable to sit and of where exactly within you lies that very thin, subtle line that separates a well-deserved punishment from abuse.”
“I don’t have that line.”
“Everyone has that line, and that is exactly what I’m talking about, right there. What one submissive might consider foreplay, another could interpret as misuse. You don’t know what hard is
for you.
You don’t know where your limits are or where your comfort zone is because you haven’t explored them. There’s nothing wrong with being a novice or in not knowing what you want; this is a learning process. It’s long, it’s involved, it requires constant communication. We are all driven to start this journey by desires we barely understand, but there is a big difference between fantasy and real life. Almost everyone who comes here is grownup enough to admit they have questions. You, on the other hand, stood in my office, looked me right in the eye and lied, and I have to confess, little girl, the urge to take you in hand and personally introduce you to your inner line where more-than-you-can-handle meets way-too-God -damned-much is just incredibly strong right now.”
Unbidden, her eyes flicked past his shoulder to the cane hanging on the wall.
His hawk eyes didn’t miss a thing. “I am not going to use that,” he said, his tone dark and low. “I don’t
need
to use that.” Letting go of her chin, he stood up and yet somehow still held her no less pinned than before. “Sheer curiosity on my part, let me ask you a question.”
Humiliation nettled her. She hated being scolded like this. Slapping away another tear, she nodded. “Sure.”
“On a scale from one to ten, with one being very soft, ten being the height of all severity and five being the ideal balance, Goldilocks-version of a just-right spanking, how would you rate the one I gave you this morning?”
There was no stopping the involuntary squirm that shifted her in her seat. “The whole thing or…”
“The whole thing.”
She thought about it, her fingers picking constantly at one another. “Five, I guess.”
“That was my idea of a three, with that handful of swats I laid across the backs of your thighs being the only reason I’m not labeling it a two.” He gestured between them. “Two different people; two distinct definitions of hard.”
“Oh,” she said, because he seemed to be expecting some kind of response. “I see.”
“Not yet you don’t, but you will because I intend to bring our differing definitions into very sharp alignment right now.” He jerked his thumb at her. “Stand up. Remove your uniform.”
The spasm that shivered her was a mingling of both electrified arousal and no small amount of panic. It tightened in her chest, crawling up her legs and across the backs of her thighs, making her skin prickle. She couldn’t make her legs move right away, and for a few seconds, only sat there staring up at him with hugely rounded eyes. “O-off?”
“You don’t think you’re in enough trouble? You’re seriously going to make me repeat myself?” He still didn’t look angry, but his irritation seemed to kick up a notch. “Skirt and panties, right now. Take. Them. Off.”
Kaylee stood up, her hands trembling as she fumbled with the clasp at the back of her skirt. Unzipping herself, she pushed it down her legs and stepped out of the plaid puddle. She touched the elastic of her underwear, but couldn’t quite bring herself to push them down. And that was silly, really. A flush of heat stole up from her belly, burning outward through all the rest of her. Having already spanked her once, Master Marshall was well introduced not just with her bare bottom, but her widely-splayed legs and every feminine secret she held between them. He’d touched her there, stroked her, slipped his fingers up inside her and fondled her into fierce orgasm. So why was she suddenly so shy? Why was she trying to tug at the hem of her too-short white blouse as if she could pull it down far enough to shield her sex from his hard gaze?
“Off,” he told her, pitiless. “And kindly remember, my office is not your bedroom floor.”
Kaylee scooped up her discarded skirt and folded it neatly with shaking hands. When he held out his hand, not knowing what else to do, she passed it to him. When he continued to keep his hand held out, she lowered her hands to her panties and reluctantly took them off. When she laid them, a meekly-folded square of white cotton, on top of the skirt, he tossed both onto the edge of his desk and pointed to the armoire-style cupboard set against the wall between the fireplace and the door. “Go, open it. I want you to be honest with me and with yourself. You’re to select whichever implement you think is best suited for the punishing of liars and bring it to me. You want to feel your bottom burn, fine. I’m going to teach you the wisdom behind that old adage: Be careful what you wish for.”
That spasm hit her again, tightening the knots inside her so violently that it felt almost painful.
“March, Ms. Waters,” he warned, when she was slow to obey. “And I suggest you pick very carefully. I expect you to bring me something equal to your misbehavior, or I’ll send you back a second time and you’ll be spanked with both. Either way, you are going to be one very sore and very sorry little girl before I’m done.”
A peculiar squirmy feeling wriggled into the pit of her stomach and tried to hide from him there. It was an odd sensation, being forced to walk half-naked across the room, to open up those plain cupboard doors and pick the implement that would then be used to spank her. A real spanking. For lying. Exactly what she had asked for, right? She squirmed again, wringing her fingers as she carefully looked over her choices.
If he didn’t have every form of implement known to Man, then Kaylee wasn’t experienced enough to know what was missing. There were paddles of varying shapes and thickness, ranging in size from no larger than the palm of her hand to a frat-style paddle as long as her arm. A supple razor strop hung alongside a single-tailed strap, which hung alongside the double- and triple-tailed, heavy Scottish tawses. He had a wicker carpet-beater and a lamp cord (on which both the lamp and plug had been removed). A pair of floggers hung on the back of the cupboard door. Several hairbrushes sat on the shelf directly in front of her nose, one plastic, the rest wood-backed, the handles all varying in lengths, while the business ends—much like the paddles—were all of different sizes and shapes. There was even a bamboo birch hanging on the back of the cupboard door, seven thin switches all tied together and spaced evenly apart into a very lethal looking fan.
Her hand trembled a little as she reached for one of the hairbrushes. Her fingers hesitated over the wood, her knees shook. At the last minute, she veered to select the plastic one with the large square head. Testing it once against her palm, she looked at it and then back at him.
He was waiting exactly where she’d left him, arms folded across his chest and his expression inscrutable. “I’m waiting, and you’re dawdling.”
Biting her bottom lip, she put the plastic hairbrush back. She picked up one of the wooden hairbrushes instead. The sting when she tested it against her palm was startling. She almost put it back, but when she looked at her array of choices, she couldn’t see anything else that she’d rather take to him in its place.
“Do I need to count to five?” Master Marshall asked.
“How am I supposed to pick? I don’t know what any of these feel like. What if it’s more than I can take?”
“I am going to spank you for deceit. I guarantee it’s going to be more than you can take. One…”
She looked at the hairbrush again, all those thin threads of trepidation pulling taut inside her as she swept her options one last time.
“Two…” he counted, calm and quiet.
At three, she brought him the hairbrush, but she did so on unsteady legs. “I don’t think I’m ready for this.”
“That is unfortunate, isn’t it?” He took the implement from her with one hand and firm hold of her arm with his other. Catching the back of the chair she had been sitting in, he pulled it a short distance from his desk, removing it out of kicking proximity to his desk, positioning it to become the center of its own small world in the middle of the area rug. Sitting and without any hesitation at all, he pulled her down across his thighs. She could have resisted, but at the moment, she was too stunned by how fast this was happening to think about it. Maybe she just didn’t want to. Which was insane, because he said he was going to take her beyond what she wanted. He said this was going to be real.
She’d said this was exactly what she wanted.
Braced against his thigh, her hands tightened into anxious fists. It was a very awkward feeling, being draped across his knees with the two halves of her hanging off into space. On the one side of him, she had a world-class view of the carpet. On the other, her feet were dangling, not quite able to touch the floor.
He tapped her right arm. “Give me your hand now. You won’t be able to keep from reaching back and I don’t want to accidentally catch your fingers.”
Dread crawled across the surface of her bottom. Quietly, she let him take her hand and pin it to the small of her back. The tail of her blouse wasn’t long enough to cover more than half her bottom and provided no protection at all, but he still took a moment to tuck that up under her wrist, baring her to the cool air of his office and granting the hairbrush unobstructed access to everything from the crack of her ass to the backs of her thighs.
His voice was calm, his tone one of complete authority when he said, “Tell me why you’re here.”
Kaylee hesitated, then twisted back her head to look at him. “Here as in at The Castle or here as in over your knee?”
“I can see how that might be an honest question born of confusion rather than smart-aleck intent. The latter.”
Trembling, she faced the carpet. “I lied on my application.”
“And when I offered you the chance to correct that mistake, what did you do?”
“I lied again.” The knots inside her were tightening; the crawling in her bottom, intensifying. She clutched first at his thigh with her free hand, and then grabbed onto the leg of the chair. She didn’t like being scolded. She did not like being scolded at all.
“Are you prone to lying, Ms. Waters? Is this something you do often?”
“No.”
“No, what?”
She barely had to think about it. “No, sir.”
“Do you have anything else you’d like to say before we begin?”
Her chest tightened and tears stung her eyes. “I’m very sorry, sir.”
“I believe you are,” he said after a moment. That hard edge melted a little out of his tone. “Unfortunately, it’s only half as sorry as you’re about to be.”
He gave no warm up or lighter than normal beginning pats; Master Marshall simply spanked her. He didn’t use the full strength of his arm; Kaylee knew that because she could feel the force—or to be perfectly honest, the complete lack of force—behind each downward swing. With quick, wristy strokes, he peppered brisk snaps of that hairbrush all over her naked bottom and it didn’t just sting—it hurt!
It was unbelievable how much it hurt. Kaylee sucked a hard gasp at the second swat, only to let it out again as a shrieking yelp at the third. Her feet snapped up to cover herself, winning only the briefest reprieve that lasted the length of time it took for him to shove them back down and scissor her legs between his thighs to prevent her from doing that again. Then he raised the hairbrush and continued to spank.
Her shrieking yelps became just plain shrieking, frantic and high-pitched. Her captured hand alternately clawed and fisted at empty air. Her free hand let go of the chair leg, shoving back at his side. She wormed it down between them, coming desperately to the defense of her smarting bottom. Palm up, fingers spread wide to shield as much aching flesh as she could, she tried to ward him off.
“Move your hand,” he told her.
“No!” She shook her head, gasping and writhing, helpless to hold still but held too tightly to scramble up off his knee.
“I was only going to give you twenty swats. Now not only are we going to start over from the beginning, but you’re going to get thirty. Move your hand.”
The sting was morphing into heat, but that was no easier to bear than the actual spanking had been. Kaylee wailed, “I can’t do this!”
“One,” he said, his tone low in warning. “Two.”
“I’ve changed my mind!” Kaylee began to cry. She hadn’t meant to. It mortified her.
“Three.”
“Please!” she sobbed. “Don’t make me do this!”
“Four.”
She moved her hand. She had no idea how high he intended to count or what would happen once he got there. Would he spank her longer, harder? Would he put her on the first bus back home? Which of those was she scared of the most? She didn’t even know. All she could do was buck and howl as, without another word, he set her bottom on fire.
In a matter of a few sharp slaps, he took her well beyond her ability to hold still. She snapped her hand back between them again; this time, he caught it, pinned it wrist-to-wrist with her other hand and then continued on. She bucked and thrashed, twisting wildly to break away, but he held her no matter how she moved. Perhaps not easily, but he did hold her, and those sharp, staccato slaps never slowed, never wavered, and never missed. She shouted. She shrieked. She burst into tears and then she just sobbed; he wasn’t even scolding her anymore. The hairbrush did all the talking he needed to, and it had her absolute attention.
For years she had fantasized about this and, on the surface, this was exactly what she thought she’d always wanted. Strong, authoritative man, check. Real life spanking instead of some bullshit game of pat-a-cake, check. Lots of kicking, fussing and crying while the hairbrush continued to rain its biting fire all over her squirming bottom, double check. Triple, quadruple check even, with lots of pain-filled stars to emphasis the hurt that was ravaging her from behind.
This was everything she’d ever imagined and yet nothing like she thought it was supposed to be. It didn’t feel good. It burned like a bonfire. It stung, every fresh, crisp smack of that awful, awful brush suffusing her bottom with swarm after swarm of angry, relentless bees. This wasn’t thirty spanks. There was no way it could only be thirty. Thirty was laughable. Thirty was child’s play. In the spanking videos, it was never just thirty, it was always hundreds. She knew; she’d counted.