Spicing it Up

“If you beat spice it will smell the sweeter.” Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia, 1732. Honestly, I didn’t make it up. And this is definitely the Gnome’s fault. I don’t write smut. I don’t know how. I mean, what would I know about it? I told him I didn’t know how, and he said: just do it. Write something dirty. I don’t know if this is dirty, but it certainly involved a lot of clearing up.

“Trust me on this, my hart,” whispered Piet ominously in my ear. “As soon as my parents have gone home, you are going to get a spanking the like of which you have never even imagined.”

I giggled silently against his shoulder. “Why? I haven’t done anything to deserve one.”

“No? Apart from making eyes at my mother?”

“Your mother likes me,” I said, virtuously. It was true. She did. She had been deeply suspicious when she arrived, but now I could do no wrong in her eyes.

“Then I shall spank you hard because I need to re-establish myself as Alpha Top.”

“Oh, well, that’s different. Just plain cruelty, you mean? No actual reason for it at all?”

“No, just that I like doing it.”

“Fair enough. In that case I have two more days to make up to your mother.”

“What?”

“Well, if you’re going to spank me anyway. . .”

I was well in with Martje de Vries. I thought Hendrik liked me too, but that was more difficult to tell. They had come to stay: I had invited them in that fraught time when we knew at last that Piet was safe, but it had been several months before we had managed to sort out a visit. Piet went to collect them from the airport on his own; I didn’t offer to go. I did offer again to go and camp on Hansie and Tim’s floor while they were here, and Piet said no, I was to stay at home. I offered a third time, and Piet spanked me and said no, and given that I hadn’t been caned for months and didn’t want to be, I let the subject drop.

I would have known at once who Hendrik de Vries was. That is what Piet will be in thirty years – the same hawk features, the same amber eyes. A lot of the same mannerisms, too. He has Piet’s height, and powerful build, and the same tightness in the face, the same lack of expression, until suddenly he smiles. Martje is another thing entirely. She can’t top five feet by much, but she is bone thin too. That’s going to stand Piet in good stead, although it makes me jealous. Both my parents are running to fat, and I’m very conscious that once I stop full time play, I shall have to be careful that I don’t crack on the weight.

We stepped very cautiously around each other for that first day. Well, I did sympathise. How do you approach your son’s lover when your son has never said in so many words that he is gay? And when the point at which everybody had to stop pretending that it wasn’t so – me as well as them – was when we all thought he was dead. At that point all the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ and looking the other way seemed pointless. Still, that was why I had offered to go to Tim’s: there was no more denial possible, but I didn’t see that I had to rub their faces in it. If ours had been a larger house, I might have held out against Piet and moved out of the bedroom, but our third bedroom is completely given over to storage, so once we have visitors I can sleep with him, or on the sofa. Nonetheless, I cooled it a great deal. I didn’t touch him in their sight, I sat respectably in an armchair and not at his feet, and I was careful what I said.

They viewed me with some suspicion, like I said. The first night, I got up in the middle of the conversation and made some remark about getting a meal on, and I swear Martje flinched. She exchanged glances with Hendrik, and said tentatively, “Would you not like, Pieter, for us to go out to eat?”

“No need,” I said, brightly. “It’s mostly done. I did all the preparation when Piet went to the airport.”

She flinched again, and stood up. “Then may I help?”

I opened my mouth to refuse and suddenly realised that she must in the past have eaten something that Piet had cooked. It really wouldn’t be kind to leave her thinking that I was no more domestic than him. “If you would like to make a dressing for the salad while I grill the kebabs?”

She followed me into the kitchen and looked on while I produced ingredients. Her eyebrows went up when she saw what I had made. “Sosaties?”

“Yes. I did half of them with dried peaches and half with apricots. And we’re having yellow rice.”

Geelrys? Met rosyne? You never learned this from Pieter?”

“Umm. . . no. From Hansie. Hansie van den Broek. I don’t know if you know him?”

“Only from what Pieter has said on the telephone. Is there coconut in this?”

“And ginger and coriander and. . . I forget what else. I hope it’s all right.”

“Smells good. My mother-in-law used to put cumin in hers, but my recipe has. . . um. . . anyssaad.”

“Aniseed? This?”

She sniffed at the jar. “Ja. I cannot believe this. Pieter living in a house which has a spice rack. With jars in it which have labels on.”

“My mother is a domestic economy teacher. Mysterious jars with suspicious contents and no labels were a hanging offence when I was growing up.”

“You want more cinnamon in your geelrys.”

Spot your chances as they come, advises Piet, and take them. He means on the rugby pitch, but it’s not bad advice, and I took it. “How much turmeric do I need for four of us? Hansie didn’t say.” Which was a lie. Hansie, bless him, had given me very clear and precise instructions.

“A little more than that. Ja, that is good. I shall set the table, now?”

Thank you and goodnight. Martje de Vries had decided that I might be a grade A shirtlifter but I could cook and therefore I wasn’t dangerous or frightening. I began to think that all might be well at breakfast the next morning when she scolded both Piet and Hendrik for conversing in Afrikaans. “It is not polite to leave Phil out of the conversation so, Hendrik.” And in the afternoon, they went to do the tourist thing and I went, first to the gym, and then for a run. Naturally, it was at the furthest point from home that it began to rain, and by the time I came in I was wet through. I could hear them all in the living room, and I pushed my head around the door to say hello. Piet smiled at me. “There is still coffee in the pot, Phil, if you want some. And have you done your cool down and your stretches?”

“Both. Oh yes, coffee. Have you had a nice afternoon?”

It seemed they had, and I went back to the kitchen and poured myself some coffee. I could hear Martje speaking sharply in Afrikaans, and a moment later Piet appeared in the doorway. “I am in trouble, Phil. Apparently I should at once have chased you to the bathroom to get those wet things off before you catch your death.”

“Just let me drink my coffee, and then I’ll go for a shower. And then I’ll start the dinner.”

“Take your coffee with you.”

“Give me a minute.”

There was a call from the living room. “Now, Phil. It is not good for you to stand about in wet clothes.”

Piet rolled his eyes. “Just do it, Phil. Mamma has spoken.”

I didn’t catch the next sentence, except for the word parmantig. I know that one. Piet has used it about both me and Hansie often enough. I leaned round the door again. “Who’s cheeky?”

“Pieter has always been cheeky, and I fear he is teaching you bad habits. Go and change your clothes this minute!”

I fled for the stairs. Parmantig I might be but stupid I was not.

I rather enjoyed their visit, and I think Piet did too, although his mother did tend to fuss at him. A left-over from the gut-wrenching fear we had all felt, I think. She wanted to have her baby back, and Piet let her. He rolled his eyes a bit, but nothing worse. The bit he didn’t like was the sex. Well, the lack of it.

He’s got a very high drive, Piet. He knows what he likes and quantity is at least as important to him as quality. Sure, he’ll happily spend a whole evening reducing me to incoherence, but you’ll never find him refusing a flier in the morning either. I’m not so keen on that, (after lunch is another thing entirely) but I’ve learned the knack of providing him with a five minute wonder to start his day. He wouldn’t ask me to – he knows that first thing I’m not looking for reciprocation, and I think he thinks it not fair, or not polite to put me under pressure. But every couple of days I’ll follow him into the shower and provide a knee trembler, and I don’t ask what he does on the days in between. That was one problem – I was definitely not getting in the shower with him with his parents in the house. The other was that it cannot be denied that the presence of the parents of one party on the other side of a not very substantial bedroom wall has an extremely inhibiting effect. There had been a certain amount of action, but it was of a strictly limited type, and involved a great deal of ‘shhhhhh’ing. And Piet was going to explode soon. Two more days. They were leaving on Thursday morning, and I had carefully cleared my diary for Thursday afternoon and most of Friday. I rather thought I would be spending them on my back.

But on Monday, I phoned Tim. “Are you guys busy tonight? Can I come over?”

“Nothing happening here. How’s the great visit going?”

“Very successfully, but I think they would probably like an evening of just family. So if you would give me coffee. . .”

“Sure, come whenever you like. We want to hear all about it.”

They did, too. What was Hendrik de Vries like? And Martje?

“Piet’s the image of his dad. I can’t really say I know much about him even now, because he doesn’t speak much; I get the impression he’s fairly buttoned up. He’s not enthusiastic about Piet living with me, but he isn’t saying so, and. . . actually, I think he’s working on it. He’s decided that he has to get over it and he’s trying really hard. He’s got very definite ideas about right and wrong, I think, and he’s. . . I wouldn’t like to cross him.”

“Sounds a bit heavy going,” commented Tim. I made a face. “No, not that. He’s got a very dry sense of humour. He’s clever, too, he’s got brains. That where Piet gets them, I reckon. But knowing how to push the buttons? That’s not him, that’s Martje.”

Hansie passed me the milk. “And how has she taken to you? Are you leading her darling astray?”

“Far from it. I’m an innocent abroad and Piet doesn’t take proper care of me. Although if I leave one more bagful of dirty kit on the kitchen floor, I’m boerewors.”

Tim grinned. “Mary always had strong opinions on the subject of Jim doing that, too: ‘it doesn’t walk all the way to the laundry basket on its own, you know’. What do you mean, though, she’s the one for pushing buttons?”

“You know how Piet always knows just how to make us all do what he wants? He’s learned it from her. Not from his dad. His dad is intelligent but it’s his mum who has all the smarts.”

“Tell!” coaxed Hansie, bright-eyed with fascination.

“Piet doesn’t smoke.”

“We knew that,” objected Tim. “He’s quite strongly anti.”

Hansie wriggled and we both gazed at him. He made a face. “Ja, you can guess, hey? Four of us behind the pavilion. Piet caught us at it and said that it would spoil our wind. Then he made us run laps of the pitch until we were breathless, and then Jan and I got six each.”

“Why just you two? Why not all four of you?”

“The cigarettes were Jan’s and the lighter was mine. What about it, Phil?”

I grinned. Piet was going to hear all about this from Hansie later, if I was any judge. “When he was fifteen, Martje caught Piet smoking behind the house, and came up with a most innovative method of stopping him. Apparently, she sat him down on the stoep, and told him that if he was so keen to smoke, he could smoke.”

Hansie frowned. “But?”

“There were fifteen cigarettes left in the packet and she made him smoke all fifteen, one after the other. Fast, and right down to the stubs. She said she had never realised that anybody could be so sick, so often, and for so long. Then she made him clear up, and apparently after that he took to his bed for twenty-four hours. But she said he never showed signs of smoking again, and I have to say, even the story made him go green.”

Hansie was giggling frantically. “And you have been hearing all the dreadful stories of his youth?”

“Every last one. I know that when he was nine, he was in love with the little girl next door. I know how he broke his wrist, and I get the distinct impression that he would have preferred me not to hear that story. I know about him rescuing the kittens when somebody tried to drown them and getting up every two hours to feed them from a syringe, and crying when one of them died. That was when he was twelve and he was all but hiding under the table when Martje told me. I wonder if I should get him a cat? I know about why he got a red card in a school rugby match, and what Hendrik had to say about that, which apparently is why he never got another one.

“And when he was nineteen, Martje caught him on the garage roof at two in the morning, trying to get in through the bathroom window. He said he had been to a party. So the next morning, she sent him outside with instructions to cut himself a switch, and then she had his jeans down and put him over the kitchen table, in front of his sister, who was sixteen or seventeen.”

Tim winced. “Effective, I should think.”

“Oh, that’s not the half of it. She told me this, and Piet had his face in his hands and plainly didn’t know whether to laugh or hide, and then she said: ‘Of course, it wasn’t Pieter at all, I knew that. It was Riana who had been out, and Pieter was protecting her.’ I thought Piet was going to have a fit.”

Hansie was laughing so much that he spilled his coffee, and there was a brief hiatus while we mopped it up. “She had known that all along? And he did not know she knew?”

“She said she was woken up when the bathroom window slid up, and then she heard whispering, and she got out of bed. But she bumped something, and they heard her, and by the time she got to the bathroom, Piet was outside on the roof. But she had heard Riana bolt to her bedroom, and Riana had been forbidden to go to the party. So she knew. But she said: ‘Riana would have taken a whipping herself and done the same next time, but I knew she would be dreadfully upset at having got Pieter one. And Pieter deserved it for trying to deceive me.’” I stopped to drink some more coffee. “And frankly, once they go, I think all three of us should be very, very careful for some time to come, because Piet is going to be looking to recover his dignity and it may be at the expense of ours.”

I was home by eleven, and I looked into the living room to see who was still about. There was only Piet, long legs stretched into the centre of the room as he sat with his book. He put a finger to his lips and got up, turning off the light and leading me into the kitchen, which was dark. And that was when he backed me against the door, and threatened me with the spanking to end all spankings. My protestations that I had done nothing to deserve it served no useful purpose, although they might have been more impressive if I hadn’t been giggling so hard.

 “And if I have no other reason to spank you, I will spank you for what you did at the dinner table tonight. That was deliberate provocation.”

Of course it had been but I wasn’t going to admit it. There had been chocolate cake, and it was very sticky. And Piet goes all anyhow when I lick my fingers, nearly as far upstate as when I lick his. So I had very carefully removed every trace of sugar and chocolate from my fingertips, and Piet had all but drooled at me over the table. His mother had had to speak to him three times to get his attention.

“Hush, now. Have you not realised that my mother can hear someone doing what they should not over a distance of a quarter of a mile? They have gone to bed, and my father will have taken out his hearing aid, but she can still hear a fish breathe.”

Yeah, right, but it wasn’t me doing something I shouldn’t, honestly, Mrs de Vries, it wasn’t. Your son Pieter had me pinned against the door and his tongue halfway down my throat. Then I felt the knee push against me and he worked his thigh between mine and pulled back to kiss my ears and neck. And as for the hands! How many hands had he got? Every time I caught one and stopped him doing what he was doing, two more seemed to turn up somewhere else. Easier just to give in. Let the hand start unbuttoning my shirt. Stop objecting to the mouth. And then he took hold of my hips and began to rock me against his thigh, and there really was the danger of me being heard. He muffled my mouth with his, and one arm went around my waist, rocking, rocking, and the other hand searched up my chest, just the lightest touch of fingernails across my flesh. Everything was the smallest imaginable movement, and it made me tip my head back and shudder. The only light in the kitchen was from next door’s security light, but it was enough for me to see Piet grin as one hand slid down over the front of my jeans and the other clamped on my backside to keep me rocking.

“Piet?” I gasped, and heard a questioning grunt. “I want to get another day from these jeans and if you keep doing that. . .”

He grunted again and the thigh eased away. I didn’t know if I was relieved or disappointed, as the hand came round from behind me, but he kissed me deeply again and I was almost distracted enough to miss the metallic whisper of my zip coming down.

“No!” I whispered, halfway to giggles again. “Your mother’s directly overhead!”

“Then you will have to be very, very quiet, koekie, will you not?” he breathed into my mouth, before his tongue found that spot under my chin and began a wet and slightly ticklish journey down over my chest. When had he unfastened all the buttons of my shirt? I remembered one coming undone, and I thought I remembered a second, but now there was nothing between that hot mouth and the waistband of my briefs, as my jeans gave in to the inexorability of gravity and folded untidily round my shins. And a moment later the briefs were yanked down too and Piet was on his knees.

We don’t do that often. Not standing up. Oh yes, the act itself – we both like it, but I prefer to be lying flat when it happens, and Piet likes it if he’s sitting on the edge of the bed and I get between his knees. Standing is more difficult (I was going to say harder but given what he was doing I didn’t think I could get any harder). I reached for his head – I don’t know, is that automatic? To want to be in control? Does it come with the threat of teeth? – and he growled softly, which had a most remarkable effect, and took my wrists in his hands and pinned them back against the door. I was swearing, in a whisper which went higher and higher, and he backed off a little, slowed down, nipped me very, very gently. He isn’t the best I’ve ever known at it: that would be Hansie, who can make his partners sob when he goes down on them, but this, standing up in the dark with my hands trapped, feeling him, hearing him, was something else. And there is, of course, the factor that everybody knows the best blowjob in the world to be the one you are getting right this instant. My knees were shaking and I was babbling, in a whisper, “oh Piet, oh fuck, oh Piet, oh fuck”, or something equally articulate. And he stopped and rose gracefully (and we’ll all pretend we didn’t hear his knees click) and hissed “Don’t move.” Like I could have done. I heard something grate on the worktop, and then he was back and I thrust forward into his mouth, and he leaned away for a moment and said, “Hush. No noise. None at all.”

It’s as well I was warned, because the cold slippery touch might well have got a squeak from me otherwise. As it was I kept it to a high-pitched whisper. “Piet! What’s that?”

“Olive oil,” he murmured, and deep-throated me again, withdrawing enough to add helpfully, “Extra virgin.” Then he swallowed and my brain disengaged and somebody unstrung my knees, and there was nothing stopping me from hitting the floor except a hot mouth in front and two cold and slippery fingers behind. I think I must have been babbling again, because he backed off and whispered, in arrant amusement, “Shut up, will you? If my mother hears your language, you will be in all sorts of trouble.” I did shut up for a moment, before a slow thought crossed what was left of my mind that if his mother found out what we were doing, it wouldn’t be Philip Anthony Cartwright who would be in trouble.

Only then my mind emptied completely. I think there was probably no blood making it up the slope to my brain, because it was all pooling in my groin. The only thought happening at all was. . .

“Piet! I’m. . .”

“No. Not yet.”

Bloody viper! No, not yet, not with the grip he’d got on all I held dear. The cliff edge receded slightly and everything came back into focus. I could hear my own breathing, ragged and desperate. It’s hard to whine in a whisper.

“Piiiiiiiiiiiiiiet!”

He turned his wrist and withdrew the hand that had been holding me up. I leaned on his shoulders, almost sobbing. I took back what I had been saying (mentally only – I hope my manners are better than to have said it out loud) about Hansie doing a better blowjob. And I will say, just in case I haven’t said it before, that there were three serious relationships before Piet: my very first, who was gentle and careful with a novice, and then Tim, who taught me a lot and I’m not asking where he learned it, and then someone for whom I was the first, and in between there was the occasional one night wonder, and since then there has been Hansie and Tim and you know all about that. And. . . I’ve lost my train of thought. Oh yes – Hansie does the amazing blowjob. Tim’s hands are something else. But in terms of the whole package, Piet just blows my mind. The way he touches, the way he talks, the way he kisses, everything. He’s just really, really good.

“Here.”

What, walk? Not a hope. One, my legs didn’t work. Two, my jeans were hobbling me. Three, I couldn’t remember how it was done. Four, I couldn’t think of a four. Piet hauled me across the floor to the table and pushed. I fell on it.

“Hush,” growled a voice in my ear, and there was another cold trickle of olive oil. I bit back a squeak, and wondered vaguely if it was worth telling him that the marks would never come out if it got on our clothes. I got my mouth open and suddenly it didn’t seem to matter any more, and I pushed back against him. His hands came down onto the table to brace and I heard something skitter away from us and overturn, and a slow patter of contents trickling to the floor.

“What was that?”

“Sugar bowl,” he grunted. Bloody hell, Piet, olive oil and sugar? On the tablecloth? On the floor? What sort of mess was this going to be? Only don’t stop, don’t stop, don’tstopdon’tstopdon’tstop.

“If you will not be quiet,” a deep voice rumbled in my ear, “I shall take steps to silence you.” And I felt something soft against my cheek, and as I turned my head, the scent of leather filled my nostrils. Piet’s glove, and when I gasped, the edge was tucked neatly between my teeth, not enough to be threatening, but essence of Piet in my mouth, against my skin. I didn’t think it was my silence that was the problem, though, because Piet was beginning to gasp, and then he eased a hand under me, and at the same time he shifted his angle slightly and suddenly I didn’t care whether his mother heard us or not, provided he didn’t stop doing that, right there. I bit down on his glove, rubbed my face in spilled sugar and tried not to scream. His teeth closed on my shoulder and as I slid forwards into a rumple of tablecloth and sugar, something else tipped over, dropped its lid, and deposited its contents against my face. It was the pepper pot.

It was far too late for both of us, even as I spat out the glove and tried to stand up. Piet ground his face into my back and my body tried to reconcile unbelievable pleasure with an uncontrollable fit of sneezing. Trust me on this, when you sneeze, muscles clench in all sorts of unusual places. Piet gave three squeaks at a pitch I’ve never heard from him before, and then I think my head exploded. I came to, still face down on the table with a distinct doubt in my mind whether I had just been fucked silly or run over by a dumper truck. Everything below my waist was screaming with delight and wondering about the possibilities of doing it again some time. Everything above the waist hurt. My eyes hurt, my nose hurt, my chest hurt, and when I took a breath I thought I was going to sneeze again. The inward wheeze alerted Piet who was dragging himself off me with panicky whispers of “Don’t sneeze! Don’t sneeze yet!”

I fought it down, staggered across to the worktop and yanked a length of kitchen roll away from the holder. Then, clamping it to my nose, I gave myself up to the pleasure of a complete sneezing fit. In the silence that followed, I reached slowly for the light switch.

Obviously it had been the dumper truck, and it had done a fair amount of damage. We looked round at the wreckage, and Piet began to giggle. I hushed him, hastily.

“O.K., koekie, I am calm now,” he reassured me. “We need to tidy up a bit here, I think.”

“Tidy up? We need one of those room makeover teams. Eight people and a camera crew. Dear heavens, look at it.”

“Ah, koekie? You do not think that perhaps you should put your trousers on properly? With the light on, you can be seen from the street.”

Shit, so I could. I hastily turned the light off again and reached for the kitchen roll. “Piet, get the olive oil off. It’ll stain.”

“No, it will wash out, no problem.”

“Trust me on this. Your trousers are going to have to be dry cleaned. I’m not even going to attempt to wash them. And you can take them yourself, and explain it to the people yourself too. I’m going to bin these briefs. Get as much of it off as you can. Now, try not to walk on the sugar.”

“I will sweep up the sugar, if you refill the bowl for the morning.”

“It won’t be enough to sweep it. We’ll have to wash the floor before we go to bed. The tablecloth is. . . let’s just get it into the machine now without looking too closely, shall we? And I think I want to wash the table top. And refill the pepper pot.”

It took hours to get the kitchen straight, complicated by the need for silence, and by the fact that we kept collapsing in giggles again, and that there was so much pepper in the atmosphere that my nose ran constantly. By the time we tiptoed up the stairs, I had sneezed so much and laughed so much that my whole chest hurt.

Koekie? You will have to wash your hair in the morning. It is full of sugar and pepper.”

“Mm. Piet? Where did you leave the olive oil?”

He needed to think about that, and then turned to me a look half way between horror and hysteria. “I have no idea. No idea at all. And I am not going down there again to look, not at this time of night.”

He had to gag me with the duvet in the end.

His parents went home on Thursday morning. Hendrik shook my hand carefully and patted my shoulder, and assured me that when next the team went to South Africa, he would come and see me play. Martje kissed me and told me to take care of myself. And when Piet came back from the airport, I did get the spanking the like of which I had never even imagined. It wasn’t the hardest spanking I’ve ever had, not by any standards, but it was certainly the longest lasting. I got it all afternoon, in stages. Some of it in the sitting room. Part of it in the hall, tucked under Piet’s arm. There was quite a lengthy section delivered in the bathroom. Piet likes to spank me in his study so he did that for some considerable time while I squeaked and wriggled. And later, he came up behind me in the kitchen, wrapped his arms round me, and growled, “Well, koekie? Shall I spank you here too? Just for the sake of completeness?”

“I’ve got a pepper pot and I’m not afraid to use it!”

“Ah. A dangerous man armed with a pepper pot. This will need trained negotiators. Armed police. The SAS. They will have to coax you out and persuade you to surrender your pepper pot. How will they do this?”

“What inducements are on offer? It’s a fully loaded pepper pot and I’ve got a backup refill pack and some celery salt.”

He sighed. “I could take you upstairs, spank you until you renounce the use of dangerous spices, and then make love to you until your eyes cross.”

I considered for a moment. It seemed unlikely that I would get a better offer, today at least. “Do I have to have sugar in my hair?”

“No sugar, and no olive oil. I have bought some more of that gel that does wash out, and we have a bottle of wine in the fridge which we could take with us.”

Lead me to it.

Idris the Dragon

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