The storm was as violent as the radar predicted, but for Cliff and Patty, a different storm was ending. The aftermath for them was actually soothed by the steady thrum of heavy rain on the metal roof of the shed. The canopy of trees took the brunt of the hail, and on the forest floor, the wind was almost non existent. Without radio contact, they were isolated. Inside the shed, trapped by the storm, they were alone within a cocoon.

“What do you mean?” Patty asked after she eased herself down to obey Cliff’s order to sit in the natural hollow made by his crossed legs. He had cleared a spot for them on the concrete floor under the workbench. Before he answered, Cliff wrapped them both in the tarp and a wool blanket.

“By what?” he asked, as if he had forgotten the words spoken only moments before.

Patty blushed, and seemed to shrink shyly in his arms. “When you said get me spanked the right way?” she whispered after a few seconds.

Cliff chuckled, and tucked the top of her head into his neck under his chin. He squeezed her torso tight against him. Patty closed her eyes, and felt herself floating into the comfort of his embrace. Soothing warmth seeped into her with the tired calm of the aftermath of tears. ‘I belong here,’ she thought.

“You like idea of discipline don’t you?” Cliff began. Patty stiffened just a little. The muddle of her thoughts and emotions over the past months was centered in that very simple statement. It wasn’t so simple! How could she answer it, when the answer was so confusing?

Patty shrugged, and seemed to become even smaller. Cliff let her think, until he felt her sigh, and shrug again. “Inside, when you think about being disciplined, it makes you feel something doesn’t it?” he coaxed.

Patty nodded.

“Tell me,” Cliff said softly into her hair.

“I don’t know how?” Patty answered. She felt so many things, and most of them were things she wasn’t sure she was ready to admit to. Even as she struggled with her anxiety, and tried to corral the feelings and thoughts whirling in her mind, a part of her found the presence of mind to detach and observe. ‘How completely right it was to be in this man’s arms? Even so soon after knowing him, and in spite of, or maybe even because of how they began? How incredibly fast things between them had become so intimate? And here, now, he would have her explore a part of herself that was so secret, that even she had not attended to it and given it language.’ It was thrilling and disquieting in its own way, and at the same time she was aware again of a sense of peace and comfort.

“Want me to help you?” Cliff’s voice, still soft, blended into the thrum of the rain, and was almost lost in the boom and rumble of thunder. Patty didn’t need to hear him though, she sensed him.

“Hmm,” Patty nodded, feeling relief that she could hide from the words in her mind. For a few seconds at least, she had that luxury. And then he spoke. When he did her nervousness returned with a vengeance.

“Inside, when you push my buttons and I warn you not to, you feel excited? A mix of sexy and nervous?” he suggested. The inflection in his words made them questions, but he was stating facts.

Patty cringed. How could he know that? Did he have ESP? She couldn’t answer. He was too close. Letting him help her say it was not a relief anymore. At least if she’d tried to find the words herself, she could have controlled their accuracy, and avoided the core of her secret.

Patty shrugged. Cliff felt her stiffen again, and knew he was getting close to something she wasn’t comfortable with.

“There’s no shame in it you know. When you act that way, I feel the same thing,” he gently rubbed her arms when he felt his words make her shiver, and then he pulled the blanket tighter around them.

“Sometimes I want to wring your neck, but deep down, I want to take you in my arms, kiss your contrary little face, and put you face down over my knee and spank your cute little bare butt until its red and hot.” When he said that, the fact that the thought was arousing for him was evident to Patty. The same arousal that made his sex stiffen and stir against her hip was matched between her legs.

“And that’s exactly what you want me to do too. Deep down inside you, that’s what you want,” he continued.

“How do you know?” Patty whispered. Her question expressed more astonishment than doubt.

“I guessed,” Cliff chuckled. “I had an idea that day last winter when you came for your evaluation. Your behavior these past two weeks was the clincher though.”

“I don’t really like it though Cliff,” Patty countered. “I mean, I do feel funny inside when I think about it, and when you act all strict and make threats. But I didn’t like it at all when you spanked me.”

“That’s because it’s the wrong kind of spanking,” Cliff chuckled some more. “You need that kind, that’s for sure, don’t get me wrong there. You’re one hell of an obstinate little brat sometimes. But there is another kind of spanking. One that you’ll like. One that will take care of all those funny feelings you have.”

“This is embarrassing you know?” Patty squirmed in Cliff’s embrace. The movement made her more aware of the effect their conversation was having on him.

“Might be,” he agreed. “But there’s no need for that with me. There’s not a thought on this subject that you could have, that you have any reason to feel shame about.”

“I do though,” Patty sighed. “I feel like something is wrong with me. Like I’m perverted for wanting to be spanked, and defective for wanting to be treated like a child, and wrong for wanting a man to be in control of me like that. It all feels wrong when I think about it. It makes me mad when I think about it sometimes. And then later when I’m alone, sometimes I can’t help myself. My mind just goes right back to it, and I’m turned on.”

Tears escaped from Patty’s eyes, as a huge bubble of confused feelings pushed its way up into her throat. Cliff shifted her to the side, so he could look into her eyes. He saw, and kissed away her tears. “What if you found a man who knew how to treat you like an adult who needs a sound spanking now and then? Who wants to help you be in control of yourself, and will spank when you aren’t? What if you found a man who wants to spank you just the way you want to be spanked, who understands and shares that with you?”

Patty looked into his eyes, and saw the questions and insight there. He did understand. He understood all of it. When she realized that, her tears began to well up and pour.

“What’s wrong now?” Cliff said as he smiled, and lifted his hand to wipe her face.

“How can you be so perfect?” she answered through a sob.

“I’m not perfect, I’m just the man for you,” Cliff laughed. “Now! You stop this crying or I’ll give you something to cry about.”

It was Patty’s turn to laugh. Hers was nervous though. “You already did.”

“Yes I did, didn’t I,” Cliff grinned. “You had it coming. But right now little brat, you asked me about the right way to get you spanked,” he added that with a mock stern tone in his voice, and then he tickled her and squeezed her tight against him. Patty giggled and squirmed.

“Tell me about the right way,” she asked after a few seconds.

“The right way to deal with a rotten daughter of Satan?” Cliff asked adding an evil tease to his voice.

“Who me?” Patty objected with a coy lilt in her voice.

“You better believe you,” Cliff tickled her again.

Outside the severe weather continued to batter the mountains and the forests. Hail alternated with sheets of heavy rain. The bare crests and cliff sides did not hold the moisture and it came down so quickly, that much of the moisture was washing away and down the hillsides. If they could have looked beyond the window, Cliff and Patty would have seen the inches deep wash of run off that surrounded them on its rush to the lake. In the backs of the minds of all the foresters and firefighters was the knowledge that they would be very lucky if this storm passed with out ignition somewhere. There was nothing to be done until it passed. Most of them occupied themselves as best they could to keep from dwelling on what might follow, and to keep from being taken over by the impotent helplessness that threatened them.

Inside the shed, Cliff and Patty gave all of their attention to each other, and the deepening bonds between them.

Cliff began to teach Patty how the secret little thrills she felt could be awakened in ways that would not lead to conflict and animosity.

“Young lady, you have been going about things all wrong!” Cliff spoke with a tone of voice that was suddenly stern, and he shifted his torso suddenly so that when he took hold of her arms and tightened his grip on her, he took her by surprise. For a split second, until she could see the wicked gleam in his eyes, Patty felt a surge of fear and apprehension. When she saw the expression on his face, that familiar electric pulse that buzzed through her skin, settled into her groin, and came alive with anticipation.

He was going to show her.

“I didn’t mean too,” Patty smiled with mock innocence.

“Lying will get you spanked young lady. You’ve been trouncing around this camp for two weeks acting like a bad girl, just to get my attention. Now you have it,” Cliff expression did not change, but the tone of his voice took on an even stricter note. Patty felt a clenching in the pit of her stomach, and a renewal of the electric energy that tingled through her fingers. Deep within her groin, she felt a pleasant tension building.

“I’m sorry, honestly I am. You’ve already spanked me for it. I’ll do better next time. I promise,” Patty responded, unsure of what he would do next.

“You were spanked for lying to your friend and disobeying my orders this morning. You still have to answer for all of your bratty manipulating,” Cliff spoke with an inflection so stern that if Patty had not seen his face, it would have induced fear. With the evil grin he wore, it served to excite her. She felt the thrill of anticipation mixed with nervous insecurity and raw sexual energy. Patty swallowed against a dry throat, and watched Cliff’s expression for a signal about what she should do. When he saw her uncertainty his expression broke, and he smiled gently.

“Trust me OK?” he whispered. When she nodded, he went back to his guise of disciplinarian. “Up you get!” he said, as he nudged her forward off his lap to her knees.

Patty had little choice, as Cliff lifted her into position on her knees beside him.

“Pull down your pants,” he ordered.

“But you just spanked me?” Patty felt momentary panic. The welts that only a few minutes earlier stung and burned so badly now tingled with an oddly pleasant feeling.

“You should think about that next time you compound your crimes so gleefully young lady. Now DO AS I SAY!” Cliff’s response was firm, but the twinkle in his eye was reassuring.

Patty’s hands trembled on the snap and zipper of her jeans for the second time inside of an hour. This time when she pushed them down off her bottom, she willingly let her panties go with them. With her bottom bare, and her pants bunched at her knees, Patty posed beside Cliff with her eyes on his hands. The cool damp air made her shiver, and a simultaneous flash of lightning and crack-boom of thunder made her twitch and startle.

Cliff gave himself a few seconds to appreciate the image she made for him. Sweet, and apprehensive, and as sexy as anything he’d ever seen in his life. He was in awe of what was about to happen. In many ways they were both virgins now. Cliff had never allowed himself to share this part of himself with a woman before, and he knew that the woman in front of him had never been with a man until a few weeks ago. He fully recognized the gift he’d been given, and made a silent promise to himself not to take it for granted.

“What happens to bad girls who misbehave on purpose?” he asked Patty, as he lifted her chin to make her look at him.

Patty shrugged, and she felt her face flush as another surge of electric arousal surged through her. The tension deep in her groin was now almost pain, and she could feel her rapid heart beat pulsing in the swelling lips of her sex. The cool air that caressed her there felt colder because of the slick moist dew that her body was making in anticipation of what was to come. Reflexively, Patty’s hands moved to cover herself from Cliff’s gaze.

“Tell me!” Cliff commanded.

“They get spanked?” Patty’s voice was an almost inaudible squeak under the thrum of rain and rumble of thunder.

“That’s right. They get what they deserve. A sound spanking on their bare bottom,” Cliff agreed with a teasing edge in his voice. “Do you deserve to be spanked?”

Patty’s face flushed again. Every sensation she had ever felt in the past weeks when a spanking was imminent, was duplicated for her, only instead of fear, anger and dread, she now felt excitement. She looked down again at Cliff’s hands, trying to control her nervousness.

“Answer me now young lady!” Cliff growled.

“Yes,” Patty whispered.

“Tell me why,” he demanded firmly. Patty’s breath caught, and she lifted her eyes to his again. She saw resolve and encouragement in them, but she couldn’t help feeling a niggling humiliation. Cliff saw the doubt surface, and reached his hand out and took hers in it. “Tell me why you deserve to be spanked,” he repeated, and his voice became soft.

Patty swallowed again, and began to tremble. “Because I made you mad on purpose?”

“Is that what you did?” Cliff asked her. The answer she gave him was not quite what he wanted her to say.

“Yes?” Patty’s eyes told him she didn’t know what he wanted.

“You behaved badly on purpose so you could get a spanking, didn’t you?” Cliff made her look at her motives. It wasn’t cruel or accusative the way it might have been if he had not understood her secret. But he was making her face the thing that was now opening up between them.

“Yes,” she whispered. Her heart pounded in her chest, and arousal buzzed through her skin and groin.

“Bend over then,” Cliff tugged her hand, and helped her down across his lap. Cliff was careful to tuck the blanket that wrapped them earlier underneath her chest and face, and then he shifted her on his lap so that his hand rested easily on her bottom.

His right hand smoothed her cheeks, as his left kneaded her shoulders and her neck and the base of her skull. Patty sighed and trembled. He traced the welts on the back of her thighs, letting his fingers stray between them as he did.

“You deserved these didn’t you young lady?” he asked. Patty nodded. SMACK! Cliff surprised her with a crisp stinging spank to her right cheek. “Answer me!” he warned.

“Yes!” Patty gasped. Cliff massaged the place he’d just stung, and then spanked her equally hard on the other cheek.

“You’ll behave better in the future won’t you?” he crooned, as he spanked her twice on each cheek, and then massaged the sting.

“Yes,” Patty whispered. The alternating sting and caress of his hand was incredible. The stern timber of his voice, and the reality of her position combined to make her feel more aroused than she had ever been made by any fantasy she had ever created for herself.

Cliff set up a rhythm of spanking and massage. His constant gentle lecturing kept her mind with what was happening. His spanks became faster, and harder, and soon Patty found herself lifting her hips to meet them. The massage made the sting tingle on her skin, and spread the heat deep between her legs. Now and then, Cliff would let his hand stray between the cheeks of her bottom, deep enough to spread, and then stroke between the lips of her sex. When he did that, Patty whimpered, the sensations were maddening and wonderful. When he stopped spanking to caress her, she craved the sting of the spanks. When he spanked her, she needed the caress of his fingers. But she never lacked for the sound of her voice.

This is what he meant by spanked the right way, and she never wanted it to end.

Soon though, she couldn’t help herself, a sense of urgency took her. Her body was building to a crisis, and it was taking on a life all its own. The movements of Patty’s pelvis became rhythmic, and Cliff matched it with spanks. As her rhythm became faster, so did his, and the spanks became harder. As hard as they would be if she were across his knee to be soundly punished, but Patty felt only delicious heat. Patty’s breath began to come in gasps. Sensing the urgency, Cliff finally gave her two very hard spanks, and then stopped to gently caress her now flaming red bottom. Patty whimpered again, this time objecting to the interruption in her rapture.

“You will be spanked severely if you ever behave like that again. Is that clear?” he spoke softly.

Tears came to Patty’s eyes, as she nodded, and turned her face to look at him.

Cliff smiled, and lifted her up so he could kiss her, and then he turned her to lay her down on the blanket.

Slowly, he unbuttoned her shirt, all the while kissing her. She helped him tug it off of her shoulders. When he released the clasp on her bra, his mouth moved down to suckle as his hands kneaded her breasts. Patty shuddered and trembled as electricity shot through her, and she squirmed with the delicious pull of a thread that seemed to connect her nipples to her vulva. Cliff suckled each nipple deeply into his mouth, trapping and teasing the nubs on the roof of his mouth, until Patty moaned with the exquisite pain of it. Patty felt sure she would come if he kept it up, and her hips rocked in a rhythm all of their own, as if to invite that outcome.

“Oh please, fuck me?” she gasped.

Cliff chuckled. “Only bad girls cuss like that young lady. Do you need another spanking?” As he said that, he lifted up, and moved down to her legs. He took off her boots, and eased her jeans and panties off the rest of the way, so that she lay there on the blanket, naked and ready for him. He looked at her for a long minute, and then he began to remove his own clothes.

“Do you?” he repeated the question when she didn’t answer or speak.

“Yes sir,” Patty giggled, but she was pre-occupied by the sight of him.

Cliff gave her a wicked smile, and reached down to lift and spread her legs. He moved between them, and bent down to kiss her stomach, and then the soft curls that covered her pubis. As he did that, he pulled her legs up higher, and then with both hands, he spanked the tops of her thighs where they joined her buttocks. Patty squealed, and the crooned. Cliff then spread her legs more so that her lips opened.

Her natural lubricant glistened in a flash of lightning before Cliff dipped his fingers into it and used it to make his stroking silky and sensual. Cliff spread her with his fingers, and stroked her inner lips to the hood of her clitoris. He could feel her rapid pulse in the engorged and erect tissue. Her musk smell was sweet, and it invited him to taste. His tongue repeated the stroking his fingers had just done, and then it plunged into her. Patty gasped, and lifted her hips.

“Please!” she whispered.

“Please what little girl?” Cliff crooned.

“Please make love to me,” Patty answered. She wanted him inside her, but she did not want to repeat the curse word.

“I am making love to you,” Cliff chuckled.

“Inside me! I want you there!” Patty complained.

Cliff smiled, and obliged her. Moving up, he placed himself at her opening. Kissing her deeply, he slid into her in a long, slow and hard thrust. The sensations made both of them gasp. Cliff’s hips pumped gently at first, in slow deep thrusts, but soon his rhythm picked up with his urgency.

“Faster!” Patty pleaded, taken by the urgency of her own crisis. It was buildingry rapidly for her, so that her breath was coming in short gasps.

“Hold on baby, wait for me,” Cliff encouraged.

“Oh! I can’t,” Patty cried out, and as she did, the first violent spasms took her. Cliff watched her face contort in the bliss of her orgasm, and then had to close his eyes, as the rhythmic milking of her spasms brought him closer to his own. Involuntarily the rhythm of his thrusts picked up with the rhythm of Patty’s spasms. The combination pushed him over the edge. He came with several violent thrusts, and then they both collapsed, still joined and rocking gently together as the last contractions of pleasure eased and ended.

The storm outside was easing also, although the lightning and thunder could still be seen and heard.

“So that’s the right kind of spanking,” Patty hummed almost to herself.

“Yes ma’am, that’s the RIGHT kind of spanking,” Cliff agreed.

“Can we do it again that way sometime?” Patty grinned as she looked into his eyes. “I mean without that part with the stick.”

Cliff grinned back. “Any time we can manage it baby. Anytime.”

“Hmm,” Patty hummed again, as she snuggled up close to him; a shiver pulsed through her as she felt the cool damp air again. Cliff lifted the blanket around them. They lay there on the floor of the shed cuddling and listening to the waning storm. Soon they would have to get up and get to work assessing the damage, and if necessary work damage control.

“If you misbehave again like that Patty, I mean it, you will get a very serious and sound spanking,” Cliff said after several minutes of comfortable silence.

“OK,” Patty responded. “I won’t do that to you again.”

“You better hope not,” Cliff warned, and he tucked his hand down under her chin to make her look at him.

She saw that he was serious. This time though, it simply made her feel safe. She smiled and nodded, and pulled her chin back down so she could snuggle again. The next hour passed too quickly. Their solitude was ended abruptly with the crackle of the radio.

“Cliff?” Paul’s voice broke the relative silence in the shed. “Do you read?”

Cliff reached for the radio, and answered. “Cliff here.”

“We have smoke in the north west quadrant,” Paul announced. “The first crew is packing up to respond. Over.”

“That’s a roger, make sure central knows, and continue the scan, we’ll be in within 20. Over,” Cliff answered. Both of them were ready and on their way within three minutes.