I was happy, there was no doubt about that, and so was Jack. In general we were both happy, jointly and severally. But this particular week, I wasn’t and therefore neither was he. It was nothing to do with our relationship – it was the surgery: I had a particular set of returns to do, and they give me the horrors. They always have done, even when I had to do them at Tom’s surgery. I love being a doctor, and I’m good at it, but I hate the paperwork and I hadn’t realised how much of it Tom did until I was the senior doctor in a practice myself. But there was no help for it, they had to be done. Meera Patel and I did them together, and it took us the whole week, but I had to sign them, and it would be me who came unstuck if they were wrong. I worked a week of eighteen-hour days, and then on Wednesday night, I was woken an hour after I went to bed because Mrs Harding had gone into labour and she was having a home confinement, and the midwife said she thought it was going to be quick. She was right, it did look that way, but then the baby turned and although there was nothing dangerous about it, it was dawn before Baby Harding condescended to put in an appearance. So I was very short on sleep and I was in a truly vile temper, as I had been since Tuesday. I had tried not to vent my temper on Jack, but I didn’t altogether manage it. I was horrible to him, spiteful and snippy, and I knew that and I was ashamed of it, but I was too stressed to stop. But by Friday night, at least the forms were filled in and posted, and I went up to the flat and threw myself on the bed and grabbed the phone.
“Jack? Can I come round? Shall I bring a takeaway?”
“Yes, and yes. Are you doing a Saturday surgery?”
“No, Meera’s doing the emergency calls tomorrow, and there’s a locum on Sunday and Monday. I’m not in until Tuesday.”
“And are you going in to do paperwork?”
“No. It’s done. Three real days off. What shall we do?”
I heard him chuckle. “Leave that to me. I have plans. Bring food. And your toothbrush. And get a couple of bottles of wine too. Let’s barricade ourselves in and behave badly.”
Sounded promising. . . Although what I really wanted, I had to admit, was to go to bed and sleep. And sleep. And then sleep some more. I took food and wine, and my toothbrush (I really should get one to leave at Jack’s) and a change of clothes, and went. Jack was pleased to see me, but I still felt a bit bad about the way I had been behaving, and while he was finding plates and glasses, I said so.
“I’ve not been nice to know this week. I’ll make it up to you.”
“Yes,” he agreed, soberly. “You will. Not tonight. I may not be a doctor, but I know the look of a man who needs to be tucked up quietly in bed. But tomorrow, I’m going to spank you very, very hard for the way you’ve been behaving.”
It’s very disconcerting when it’s said like that, you know. Conversationally. And as if there is absolutely no question about it; it’s just a fact. Tomorrow is Saturday and Jack is going to spank Matt. This is the way things are going to be. He knows the effect it has on me when he does that. Of course he knows; that’s why he does it. He likes to see me squirm. I like to think I could refuse, but really I know that I couldn’t. If we go head to head, I will lose, every time. He tells me the way it’s going to be, and I may twist and argue, but he will insist, and I will capitulate. And when Jack says “very, very hard”, he means it. I think there has only been once – the very first time – that I haven’t ended up begging him to stop. But he pays no attention to that; he stops when he’s had enough, not when I have. I usually think I’ve had enough quite some time earlier, and I express that view, with conviction, but my opinion doesn’t count for much. Well, it doesn’t count for anything. Once I’m bared for him, presented to him, he decides when to stop.
We ate in a fairly companionable silence, although I shifted occasionally as I sat. I find the threat of a spanking makes me almost as fidgety as the real thing. Afterwards, we opened a bottle of wine, and watched something on TV. Well, Jack watched it. I was half asleep almost at once, and it wasn’t very long before he heaved me onto my feet and sent me towards the bedroom with a whack on my rump. “Bed. Go on, while you’re still wide enough awake to wash your face.”
I woke enough to turn over when he came to bed and to snuggle up to him. When I knew him first, I wondered if he were feverish: his body runs about half a degree too high, so he always feels warm to the touch, warmer than me, I mean, but it seems to be just the way he is. It’s nice in bed – well, it’s nice for me, although he says sleeping with me is like sleeping with a reptile, because I absorb all his body heat rather than producing any of my own. Not my problem. If he wants me to have body heat, he tends to arrange it. And then some.
He’d been up for hours when I eventually surfaced and staggered to the kitchen. He said he’d had the shop open and had sold some stuff, and that he would close up at lunchtime. I grunted. I don’t do mornings well. I had some coffee and a bath and began to think that I might live, and actually by then it was lunchtime. I was definitely apprehensive, and didn’t Jack know it! He didn’t say anything, or do anything, but he smiled to himself, and I fidgeted some more.
“Come down to the workshop,” he invited. “I’ve got a new line to show you. You can give me your opinion.”
Like I know much about furniture. Still, it’s a social thing, isn’t it, asking for someone else’s opinion? And as it happened, he didn’t mean furniture. We went through to the back workshop, and he showed me what he had been working on all week while I had been engaged in battle with the National Health.
“I was having a clear out, and I found all the offcuts of wood. All different sorts. Look, this is cherry, and that’s elm, and the long one is mahogany, and that’s alder.”
He had made a catering pack of paddles. All different sizes, all slightly different shapes, and all different woods. “We can try them, one after the other, and you can tell me if the wood type makes any difference. I wonder if I could get hold of some lignum vitae?”
I made a small panicky noise and glanced over my shoulder with the air of one about to bolt. He laughed. “Oh, not all at once, Matt. Separate occasions. I think these might sell, but I’ll have to try them first. Come on, let’s go out. I don’t think you’ve had any fresh air all week, and it shows.”
Um. Now there’s something that I can never quite decide. When you know there’s a spanking coming, is it better to have it at once, or to have long enough to reconcile yourself to it? I rather thought I would prefer to have it over at once, but there was no point in saying so. Not my decision to make. That’s been made clear to me several times. We went out. We walked along the road to the bridle path and up the hill to the copse; it’s about a mile and there’s a great view down over the village. There wasn’t another soul up there, and we walked through the trees and came out overlooking the sweep down to the reservoir. I leaned on the stile, enjoying the sight, and Jack moved away from me, reaching into his pocket. I looked back over my shoulder, and watched, uncomprehending, as he searched the hedgerow for something. I heard his grunt of satisfaction as he found it, and then to my dismay, he took his penknife and cut a slender and obviously limber switch. I couldn’t take my eyes off it as he came back to me. He stood close behind me, and wrapped his arms around my body, and nuzzled into my neck, and I leaned back against the solidity of him, and tried not to think about what he had in one hand. He put it down on the stile, and kissed my neck again, and began to explore my body with those big, strong hands. I wriggled.
“Jack, for goodness sake! What if somebody comes?”
“There’s nobody within miles. There was nobody behind us when we came up, and there’s nobody here. There isn’t even a road or a building this way. Stand still.”
And he turned me to face him, trapped my arms inside one of his, pulled me more tightly against him, and slid a hand over my bottom. I half expected him to move on and bring the hand in front of me, but he didn’t. All that interested him, it seemed, was my bum, but that was fascinating. He touched me as I had seen him touch a piece of timber: what can I do with this? How shall I make it do what I want? I pushed against him, and got a slap, and was released.
“Bend over, Matt, forearms on the step of the stile.”
I whined an objection, but I was bending as I did.
“Come on, legs straight. You know better than that. Feet together. Head down. Bottom up. Back flat. Better.”
I felt his hands again, smoothing the fabric of my trousers until it was taut across my cheeks. The switch was directly under my nose and I looked at it while his hands arranged my clothing to his satisfaction. Then the switch was withdrawn from view and I shut my eyes and held my breath. Two layers of fabric between flesh and wood. Should be O.K.
The switch hummed and the breath whooshed out of me. One. Sore, but bearable. Hum. Whack. Two. I spared a corner of my mind to be glad that he hadn’t taken anything down – through trousers, the switch bit, but I rather thought that on bare skin, it would be something I would think of as cuts, not strokes. Three. I yelped. His hands explored again, down the curve, between my thighs, stroking. I pushed back to that: it was exciting. The fourth swish of switch on bottom caught me by surprise and I whimpered, and then he put two hard ones low down, and I flinched and writhed. He pulled me upright, and back against him, and again I felt the exploratory hand, only now when he touched my bottom I jumped. He liked that, I could tell.
“That should be enough to start you off. Kiss the rod, Matt.”
He lifted the switch to my face and obediently I touched my lips to it. Then he drew me back among the trees.
“Show me.”
I glanced around, nervously, and he made a sound of amused exasperation, and caught me round the waist again, and unfastened my trousers himself, pulling them, and my underwear, clear for him to inspect my bottom. I twisted to have a look. Six stinging red stripes stood out on my skin, and Jack nodded with satisfaction, before buttoning me up again. “Don’t touch. Come on, we’ll go down towards the water and then round by Barnett’s Farm.”
“You really are a sod, aren’t you?”
“If you’re going to be rude about it, I could sit on that stile and take you over my knee. Want that? To be bared and spanked here?”
Well, yes, actually, or possibly no. No. Most decidedly not. I wanted not to be here, but to be at home, if he intended saying that sort of thing. I love the threats, the words. Jack likes the touching, but I like the words. I like to hear him tell me what he’s going to do, to describe in extreme detail just how sore I’m going to be, what I’m going to look like, how I’m going to move and wriggle, how he intends to place me, move me, punish me. Sure, I like the physical reality of it all, specially of Jack himself, but he can do things to my head that leave me helpless.
We walked on. You don’t normally think about how your clothes feel on your skin unless it’s something uncomfortable, and it was. I could feel the cotton against those welts, and the heavier fabric outside moving against the finer within. Every so often, Jack would reach for me and pass his palm over my behind, and I would hop, or wince, or squeak.
We walked on, and he flicked the dried heads off the cow parsley with the switch, and the path dropped into a little hollow. Jack fell behind me and suddenly said, “Stop.” I stopped and glanced enquiringly at him.
“Touch your toes.”
“Here?”
“Where else?”
One more with the switch. Walk on. We arrived at a stone wall, and I bent over it. One more. Walk on. There was a fallen tree, and I lay across it. Two with the switch. Walk on. Jack strolled as if he had no cares; I tried to walk as if my backside didn’t smart and sting. At the water’s edge there was a bench, and I went over the back of it for one more, and just before the farm we stepped behind the wall and I touched my toes again. One more. Then Jack snapped the switch in two and dropped the pieces, and we turned for home.
Then he began to talk, quite quietly.
“That was a good start, but it isn’t anything like enough. Nothing like it. I’m going to have you over my knee, for one thing. I like that. Shall I bare you, or shall I make you do it yourself? I’ll have to think about that. And I’m going to make sure that every inch of your bottom is red before I’m finished. You’ll wriggle all right, you always do, don’t you? I like to see that, too. And I like to hear you. So I’m going to spank you until you squeal and squirm.”
I was half way there already. My breath came a little too fast and unevenly, and I kept picking up the pace to get home fast. Jack caught me at it, and slapped me sharply, and told me to settle down, we didn’t have to rush home. It was pleasant out among the trees, didn’t I think so? I couldn’t think at all, not about anything apart from how sore he was going to make my bottom. And how long he intended to take about it. And how he meant to do it. And how little I would like it while it was happening. And how irrelevant that was, because I was Jack’s to punish if he wanted to, and he wanted to. My knees felt as if they belonged to somebody else, my legs weren’t a good fit and I wanted to GO HOME NOW!
My watch said we had been out for an hour and a half, but my body reckoned it was about three days before Jack opened the door and I followed him into the barn. He locked the door behind us, and I had one foot on the stairs when he stopped me. “This way. Into the workshop.”
We went through the main workshop to the back room. “Choose a paddle, Matt. Whichever one you like.”
I didn’t like any of them! I had reached the point, as usual, at which I was thinking “I don’t want to do this! I don’t like this! Why do I agree to this?”
Because Jack says to bend over, and I do. Because I’m his, and whatever he wants to do is what I want to do, and he wants to spank me so I’m going to be spanked. Next question. “That one.” Like it makes any difference. Whichever paddle I pick will be applied to my bottom until I am so sore that I beg.
“Chestnut. It’s pretty, isn’t it?”
Not the word I would have chosen, Jack, no. But he held out a hand, and I went to him, to be kissed, and caressed – that hand again, over my behind, which still smarted and burned. He unfastened my trousers again, and this time tugged them right off my hips so that they slithered to the floor, and my pants followed, and he turned me to look. I was still striped and flushed pink, and he seemed to approve, because he stroked across the marks, and I wriggled a little under his hand. He reached behind him and pulled over a chair – his own work, like everything else there. Oddly, for a man who makes bondage equipment, he has never even suggested using it. He’s just not interested; he prefers to improvise with whatever seems good to him in the bedroom or the house. He’s not a dungeon man at all.
So he sat on his chair, and pulled and I fell, not just physically but by the subjugation of my will to his. And I lay across his lap, bare and trembling, head to the floor and bottom up for his attention. His undivided attention. No point in fighting, he’s stronger than me, both in his body and in his intention. His hands were very slow to slide my shirt clear of my bottom. He doesn’t often strip me completely; he likes to have something to remove, or peel down, or turn up. Cold in the workshop, and draughty on the rear. And. . . aaah! Not the paddle, just his hand, but hard. It flattened me against his thighs, and I felt the shift of his muscles as my weight rolled against him, and the spare hand slid around my waist to keep me still. It’s a helpless position, and a humiliating one, across his knee, kept there by superior strength, while slap after slap landed on my already smarting backside. He wanted me to squirm, and he got his desire almost at once, as I gasped, wriggled, objected. Twelve hard spanks, and then a pause while he trailed his fingers across my flesh, and I whined his name, and then twelve more.
“Does that hurt, Matt?”
“Yes! Please, Jack, stop!”
“No, I don’t think so. I don’t want to. Not yet.”
And the strong fingers exploring again, wherever he wanted, so that I gasped again, and didn’t know whether to push against his hands or pull away from them. And another twelve, with yips from me, cries of “please, Jack, not so hard!”, ignored completely. Not cold any more, not by any means.
“What next, Matt? I know, try this.” And he set me on my feet (my knees wobbled) and turned the chair round. “Kneel down. Through the back of the chair. That’s right. A little low, but promising.”
Imaginative, that’s Jack. I was bent onto the seat of the chair, with my upper body through the back, so that the bar rested just above my pelvis, and I couldn’t get my hands round to protect my bum. Then he used the paddle. He wanted me to squeal? I obliged him.
“Do you know, this really is too low. I’ll need to think of something else. It makes my back hurt.”
It makes my bum hurt, Jack, quite a lot. That was fifteen, thank you, I was counting.
“How do you find the chestnut?”
I just kneel here and it comes to me. . . Hard. I don’t think I can offer an opinion. I have no control sample with which to compare it, although frankly I don’t doubt that others will be provided in due course. In tests, one out of one consumer said Ouch.
“Please, Jack, that’s enough, no more!”
“Of course it’s not enough. Don’t be silly.” He sounded amused, almost. “We haven’t been upstairs yet. Let’s do that. Come on, get up.”
Easier to say than to do. An undignified wriggle to get free of the chair, hampered by the bind of trousers and pants at my ankles. He let me dress myself, although I had the definite feeling that it would all come off again almost at once. And I was right. We went to the bedroom, and I stood under his gaze, removing it all again. This time he did want everything off, and he turned me to show me my own flesh, reflected in the big mirror. I was crimson behind, throbbing. He drew me into his arms and I leaned on his chest and listened to his heartbeat while his big hard hands rested on the furnace of my flesh. There’s something very. . . I don’t know the right word. Very intimate? About being completely naked while he is completely clothed.
“What shall I do with you now?”
“Take me to bed?” Hopefully. But not very.
“In a manner of speaking. Here” (pulling the covers away to one end), “kneel here. Wait.” And he folded and rolled the covers into a solid cylinder, placed it carefully in the centre of the bed. “Now, lie down.” That left me humped over the cotton, arse provocatively raised. Well, he said I was provoking him, and provocation had to be punished. He used his belt, and I made enough noise that I should have thought even Jack would have been satisfied, and my hands scrabbled on the bed with the effort of not covering my bum, and then he caught my legs and swung me round, so that my upper body tipped off the edge of the bed, which caught me just at my hips, and I put my hands on the floor and thought, “what’s this?”, as my head dropped to the carpet. What this was, was Jack’s belt again, but at ninety degrees, top to bottom instead of side to side, and just flicking the inside of my thighs. God, it hurt!
“Please, Jack, no, please, no, I don’t want to, I can’t stand it! No more! Stop it!”
“But Matt, I haven’t finished. I never leave a job unfinished, you know that. Back up. The way you were. Bottom up. Lovely. What happens if you spread your legs? Oh yes, I like that.”
He knelt between my open legs, and touched me, gently, running slow fingers over my welts. Actually, I liked that too, the gentleness on the blaze of heated flesh. Blaise’s blaze. I could feel a touch of fire everywhere his hands went – and his hands went everywhere. Every sensitive place, the sore ones and the rest, was touched, stroked, tapped, and I began to writhe against the mound of crumpled bedding, and to gasp with pleasure as well as with pain.
“Shall I go on?”
Well, now, depends what you want to go on doing. If you keep teasing like that I won’t be responsible for the consequences. A slap.
“Answer me.”
“I can’t. . .”
“Try. Shall I punish you some more?”
“No. . . please, no. . . That’s enough. . . I don’t want any more.”
“But I want to do it some more.”
Oh, God. When he’s doing that, which is not quite enough, I can’t think straight. He added gel, which made me jump, and explored again, a little more forcefully, and I groaned. His hand stopped, and I pushed back to find that pleasure again, but he moved with me, and it wasn’t there.
“I want to do it some more.”
I pushed back again, and again there wasn’t enough.
“What do you want, Matt? Do you want me to do this? And this?”
“Oh, yes. . .” so low in my throat that he can hardly have heard it.
“And what about” (SMACK) “this? Do you want” (SMACK) “this?”
“If you want to.”
“I want to. Shut your eyes. Keep them shut. Arms over your head. Hold onto the headboard, there and there. I really did make this bed for you, didn’t I? Now, keep your eyes shut until I tell you that you can open them.”
Why? This was new. I turned my face into the crook of my elbow, eyes shut. What was he going to do? I heard the wardrobe open. Hell, that meant the cane. He’d finished me off before with the cane, and it nearly did finish me off, too. It whirred and whacked, and I bucked, and made an odd noise of dismay, but I kept my grip on the headboard and my eyes shut. Please, please, let it not be more than six. Please, let it be fewer. But in fact the next one was his belt, and the surprise of a different pain made me buck again and cry out. I had expected the rattan bite, been prepared for it, not for the nip of strap. The third was his leather paddle, and I squealed again, not so much from the pain as from the surprise. This was why I had to keep my eyes shut, then, so that I would have no clues except the sound, and the sound has to be identified, classified, assigned to its cause, and there isn’t quite time to do that before the effect of it is felt across the buttocks. He gave me three each with cane, belt, paddle and palm, in no particular order, no pattern, and I cried out every time, and sobbed dryly, and heard the bed creak as he knelt again between my legs. He kissed the hottest points on my skin, tasted them, and I lay still and let him. He overlay me, kissing my neck, his clothed weight reassuring down my back, sore on my behind.
“Enough.”
Yes.
“Open your eyes. Kiss me.” His skin was warm and rough; he needs to shave again by mid afternoon, and there was a faint air of soap, and as always the wholesome smell of sawn timber about him. I released my painful grip on the headboard to reach for him. My shoulders ached with the effort, and when he stroked my back I flexed stiff muscles. He saw it, and worked at them until I sighed and relaxed, and then he rolled away from me, got up, came back armed with a cold wet flannel to ease my burning flesh.
Hastily he stripped off his clothes and came to lie beside me. “Now,” he said, gently, and began to touch me, watching carefully for signs of my pleasure. Always after pain, my pleasure sooner than his own. As always, I tried to respond, to reciprocate, but that isn’t what he wants. Not yet. And as always, I gave way to him, accepting my due of desire and delight as I had accepted my due of hurt. He gave me, as always, everything I needed, everything I wanted. All the promises his hands had made while I lay submissive beneath him were fulfilled. It was me, eventually, who reached for gel and who turned, ready for him.
“Are you sure? If it hurts too much. . .” As if I hadn’t been saying for an hour that it hurt too much. But we both know what he means. He won’t – ever - do this to hurt me.
“If it hurts too much, I’ll say. This is what I want.”
And anything I want, I may have. Anything at all. But this time, I wasn’t the only one, nor the loudest, to cry out. Nor the most absolute in surrender.
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©
,
2005