The First Spanking

Part 2

copyright 2003, by patty

“Gawd!” Cindy half sobbed half moaned as she gave up seeking cool spots on the sheets for her arms and legs. “Damned king size bed and still no place to get comfortable!”

“Oooooooo,” she whimpered when her restless movements brought her backside in contact with the mattress. It distracted her, but not for long. Only two hours had passed since she hung up the phone knowing Ethan was on his way. Since then, her thoughts and mind were as restless as her arms and legs were.

Worry, fear, shame, frustration, and anger whirled with elusive and seductive snippets of hope, anticipation and something she didn’t want to dwell on, but couldn’t elude. That it kept bringing her back through the loop of shame, fear, anger and worry did not reduce its seductive pull.

She was sexually aroused, and nervously avoiding it.

“He has my life in that purse!” Cindy almost screamed. Annoyance with her mind and its treachery tried hard to take control. That it used panic to do that, spoke only to how out of control every thing had become.

“What if he stalks me? What if he tells my boss what I did today? What if work calls my cell phone and he answers it? What if one of the kids do? Oh Christ! What if he tells Ethan! What if he insists I meet him again and take a harder spanking for running out on him!?” Cindy got up, and paced the room. She could not keep away from the worry for more than a minute or so.

The TV was only good for background noise. She couldn’t sleep, even though she desperately wanted to. She had no money to go out and have supper. She had no cell phone to call any one, never mind any ambition to find something distracting to talk about.

“Panic doesn’t do any good woman! Get a grip! Maybe he’ll just pack up and ship your purse to you? He can’t afford to be outed any more than you can after all can he? He’s not evil after all. You’ve been friends for a couple of months. He won’t do any thing to hurt you silly. Just watch. He’ll mail your stuff back to you right after he sends a stern lecture in e-mail.” Cindy took a deep breath and nodded her head. “That’s much better,” she thought. “Oh you stupid idiot! Why couldn’t you just take the last few licks? It would have ended and you would be on your way home.” Snippets of hope and rationalization surfaced and were lined up for comfort and examination. But the trail of positives dwindled and soon her mind detoured onto another path when images of her first spanking flashed into her mind.

“Oh God!” she moaned. “It was so wrong!” The whole thing was just so horribly wrong!” The experience of her first spanking, even without the fiasco of the ending, fell so far short of what she’d wanted it to be, that letting her mind go in that direction began to pull up tears. A sense of loss crept in; loss of the hope that she could have what so many couples and women she’d met and spoken to on line had, loss of her fantasy, loss of part of her soul.

“Please Ethan don’t hate me? I just wanted a spanking. I didn’t want to hurt you or any one else.” Cindy stood by the window and pulled the curtain aside. Ethan couldn’t possibly be there yet, but that did not stop the pulse of fear she felt when the headlights of an SUV came toward her, and the vehicle pulled into a spot near her Jetta.

“Maybe Ethan will laugh and think I got what I deserved? It’s possible he won’t think anything of it you know. Yeah right! Just like it’s possible he would be happy if you slept with the man! What in God’s name are you going to tell him?” Cindy pushed her hands into her face as if vigorously rubbing her flesh could wipe away what happened and what she’d done.

“Oh Gaawwwd!!!!!! Maybe that’s what I should tell him? That I slept with someone? Then he would just hate me for being unfaithful. I wasn’t though. I couldn’t! I would never!” Cindy’s heart knew the truth. She could struggle with herself and hide from it, but no matter what, the flashes of knowledge kept being there. Spanking was part of her sexuality. Even the desire and need for discipline and punishment were link to sex for her. “Sick, perverted, abnormal sex! And Ethan will never understand or be able to forgive me!”

Cindy felt like she would vomit. The feeling was so strong, she found herself bent over the toilet fighting the cold clammy dry heaves that come with anticipation of the worst thing possible.

“A shower, that’s what I need. I’ll take a shower.”

The hot water soothed her. Inside the tub, the shower curtain and the sheets of hot water streaming over her scalp acted like a cocoon keeping out all but tiny glimpses of the whirling disaster waiting for her. If only she could stay there until it all washed away. She was grateful for the industrial sized motel water heater, and the fact that it was off season, because she was able to stay in the shower for close to forty minutes. The drumming and pulse of the showerhead on the massage setting, and the steam and heat that accumulated in the small bathroom, worked wonders to help her find calm.

When she toweled off, and stepped out into the room, resolve and determination to face all of the mess she’d made as honestly as she could, had replaced the confused swirl of remorse, fear and panic she’d been struggling with.

Ethan would be there by 10PM if all went well. It was creeping up on 8:30.

Cindy put one of the tea bags in the coffee maker and poured water in the reservoir. The complimentary mint stix would do for her supper.

While the tea brewed, Cindy stretched out on the bed, leaning her back onto stacked pillows and the head board, and wincing a little with the twinge of pain that came when her bottom settled fully on the mattress. She closed her eyes on the raw experience of the sensation. “So this is what it’s like to sit on a spanked bottom.” If she could not have the reality of a life with spanking in it, she would at least take what she could of her one and only spanking experience and rescue what was worth saving for her memories and future fantasies. The warm mildly painful ache was worth saving.

Now with her eyes closed, the feel of her pulse through the flesh of her sore bottom, the gurgle of the coffee maker, drone of the TV and the residual cocoon of shower warmth worked together to help her hold onto calm.

The next hours passed quickly with barely a few brief surges of nervous anticipation managing to make themselves felt.

“Hi?” Cindy greeted her husband when she answered his knock on her door.

“Hi yourself,” Ethan greeted her with a peck on the cheek. “What’s this all about?”

“Have you had supper? We could go and get something first if you want?” Cindy fought the ‘I wish you hadn’t had to go to all this trouble,’ demons first. They were easier to cope with.

“I’m fine, I had a hamburger and a shake on the way here,” Ethan dropped his jacket on the bed, and turned to examine his wife. “What are you doing all the way out here Cindy? I thought you were in Raleigh.”

“I know, I just don’t even know where to start,” she sat on the desk chair, and dropped her face into her hands.

“You lost your purse, and you have no car keys, let’s start there,” Ethan coaxed. He was an almost infinitely patient man, until he had a reason to want answers immediately. Cindy swallowed the disappointment that came with knowing that in a few moments he would have a reason, and all of the trust he ever had in her, the trust that enabled his patience.

“I came here to meet someone, and he took my purse with him.” There was no right place to start, so she answered both questions with one.

“I’m listening,” there was an edge of concern on Ethan’s tone of voice. Hearing it mad Cindy want to run.

“I came here to meet a man. Things went wrong. I ran out of his room, and when I was gone, he packed up and left, and took my stuff with him,” she spoke through her hands, to the spot on the green flecked burgundy carpet between her feet.

“Why were you here to meet a man Cindy?” the words were spoken with cool precision.

“I don’t want to tell you. It wasn’t what you think I swear!” Her whine sounded hollow, manipulative and pathetic even to her.

“What do I think Cindy? Tell me? What am I thinking?”

“Please Ethan don’t! I didn’t have sex with him OK! That isn’t what I came here for.”

“What then Cindy?” Ethan’s patience began to thin. “And look at me when I talk to you!”

Cindy jumped and cringed with the clear snap in his voice.

“You won’t understand, and I’m afraid,” the same hollow whine was all she could muster.

“I already don’t understand, so you won’t be any further behind. Out with it!”

“I can’t Ethan, please. Will you please just trust me that it wasn’t what you think, and I love you, and I wouldn’t hurt you?”

“No. I want you to tell me. Show me you trust me, and I have no reason not to trust you by telling me what it is you’re so afraid of.”

Cindy felt as trapped by his logic as she was. If she could be trusted, she wouldn’t need to ask to be trusted. Tears that belonged with the absolute betrayal she was guilty of welled up and spilled from her eyes.

“I can’t tell you Ethan. I love you with all my heart, but I’m afraid to tell you this.”

Ethan saw her tears, and could not help but soften to them. “Cindy, I love you too, and there is nothing you can say to me here that will change that. Just tell me!” he moved to her and crouched so she could not avoid his face or his eyes. What she saw there wrenched at her heart. This man loved her, and she betrayed him. She took something that belonged to him, her intimate secret self, and gave it to a stranger without even giving him an inkling it was there.

“Oh Ethan please!” she pleaded, afraid of what would become of his love in the next few minutes. “Promise me you’ll try to understand? Promise you won’t judge me and hate me?” She held his gaze, and was transfixed by the confusion she saw in his expression.

“I promise?” The question she could hear in what he said and in his eyes seemed childlike. He couldn’t know that what she was going to say would test that promise. Cindy knew she couldn’t hold him to a promise made blind like that; at the same time she was terrified he would break it.

“I came here to meet a man so he would spank me,” the words, now spoken, hung in the air.

Ethan had no perceptible reaction for over a minute. Only a minute; but for Cindy it was a heart pounding eternity. When he looked away from her, shifted his weight and stood without saying a word, Cindy felt a wave of sadness sweep through her body. It made all of her limbs feel heavy, and her chest feel hollow. Ethan walked to the bathroom where earlier, Cindy found some calm, went inside, and closed the door.

The silence in the small motel room became an oppressive weight. So oppressive, Cindy thought she might implode. There was nothing to do now but wait for Ethan to be ready to make the next step. No more worrying about what to tell him, because the core of it was out. If he gave her the chance, she would try to make him understand. If he didn’t, she would do what her instincts told her to do, and in that moment she could not begin to fathom what that would be. “Die maybe,” she sobbed, when the thought surfaced and made itself known over the whirl of confusion and fear that owned her mind.

Water ran, and then no sound. Many minutes passed. The toilet flushed, and then water ran. Silence returned. The whir of the space heater under the window, and the random shuffles and groans made by buildings were the only distractions Cindy had for almost an hour. Every sound from the bathroom set her heart pounding, and made her stiffen in useless anticipation of Ethan’s return. When he did finally come out, there was no sound at all. He was just there.

“Did you take your clothes off with him?” the question felt like an accusation, and Cindy knew that whatever his thoughts had been, Ethan had formed some concrete ideas of his own about what she had done and why.

“No.”

“He spanked you on your clothes?” his skepticism all but called her a liar.

“My bottom was bare, but that’s all,” Cindy dropped her face to her hands, and twisted her fingers into her hair.

“Jesus Christ Cindy!” Ethan sighed and turned away. She could feel his confusion and something else, but she didn’t know if it was anger, pain or disgust. It was probably all of those things randomly surfacing in his heart much like they were in hers. “Did he touch you?”

Cindy looked up to see the challenge in his expression.

“No! Not that way! He just spanked me, nothing else! I promise you Ethan! It wasn’t about sex!” Cindy fought the urge to cry. She needed to keep her mind clear.

“It was!” Ethan raised his voice for the first time. “Don’t lie to me Cindy! I’m not stupid!”

“No!” Cindy wanted to drop to her knees. “It wasn’t!” Her mind began to spin. It aroused her to think about being spanked. It was a sexy thing for her, but with this man and this time, it was just for the spanking. How could she make him understand? “Just tell him you stupid witch!”

“Ethan, please, will you let me try and explain?” she stood and moved toward him. “Please,” she whispered, when he backed away.

After a minute or so of silence, he shifted and sat down on the bed. “OK, explain,” he waved her back to the desk chair, signaling that he was ready to listen.

“I just wanted to feel what it was like to have a spanking Ethan. I didn’t want it to be sexy. I just wanted to know what it was like. I mean, YES, I have fantasies about it, and it turns me on, but I just wanted to know what it was like, and I was afraid to tell you. I thought it would disgust you. It wasn’t sex Ethan! It wasn’t sex!”

“You were afraid to tell me, but you could tell a stranger?” Ethan was hurt, and Cindy could feel that he was as close to tears as she was.

“I’m so sorry Ethan. I was just so ashamed of myself, and I thought I would ruin us, and I just … I couldn’t … I didn’t know how to tell you!”

Ethan said nothing, and his expression gave away no thoughts. Cindy pressed on.

“On the Internet it’s just so easy! Nobody can see you, they don’t know who you are. You could be the lady next door, and they wouldn’t know. There are so many people like this Ethan. I wanted to tell you. I tried to find the nerve to tell you, I swear I did! I wanted you to be the one who spanked me, but I was too afraid and ashamed of this thing to tell you about it.”

“You should have told me Cindy.” Everything he felt was wrapped up in those words, along with everything she had done. “What does this say about us Cindy; about me? You were too afraid to tell me, something so basic and simple as a sex fantasy. You don’t trust me enough for that! And now you go and do this and show me I can’t trust you either! What does this say about us!?”

‘Basic and simple?’ Cindy’s eyes opened and her jaw dropped as her mind captured what Ethan said. “Basic and simple? Is that all you think this is?”

“Well it’s not something you need to hide from me! How could you be so …. so … damn! I don’t know, Cindy! How the hell could you be so stupid to think I wouldn’t at least try to understand that? Lots of people like spanking! I’m not an idiot! I know these things too.”

She didn’t know what to say. Suddenly all of the secrecy and shame of the past year flashed in front of her. It was all wasted. So much energy and worry; all of it wasted.

“You should have told me,” Ethan slapped the mattress, to bring Cindy out of her thoughts and back to their conversation.

“I know that now,” the words tripped over the growing lump of emotion in her throat.

“Now you know it? Now could be too late Cindy,” Ethan’s words were pointed, and filled with warning. Cindy couldn’t bring herself to look up and see if there was more revealed on his face.

“I’m sorry.” Her voice was a whisper, but it screamed with resignation and acceptance.

“Stand up.” Ethan stood and walked toward her.

“What? Why?” Cindy didn’t move, but just looked up as her husband came and stood over her.

“Do what I said, stand up and turn around to face the desk.” He reached over to turn the lamp on behind her, at the same time taking her arm and pulling her to stand and obey him.

“Ethan?” Cindy objected and tried to pull away.

“Just do it Cindy. Get up here, bend over the desk and pull your pants down,” he pulled and pushed her to force compliance.

“No! Ethan don’t!” Cindy wasn’t prepared for this. Her heart pounded. She felt an urgent need to run coupled with the useless urge to pee.

“Bend over and pull your pants down Cindy! I mean it. I want to see what he did to you.”

Cindy cringed and sobbed. Humiliation bubbled up inside her. She did what he told her to do; closing her eyes on the coldness of the exposure and examination.

“Jesus Cindy!” the welts and bruises he saw across her backside took him by surprise. “You wanted that?”

“No, not exactly. Things went too far,” the answer was a sob.

“You’re lucky he didn’t do worse!” The reality of everything else his wife had gotten herself into, apart from betrayal and infidelity suddenly became real for Ethan. “What did you know about the man?”

Cindy tried to stand up and right her clothes, but Ethan pushed her back down. “Stay put and answer me!”

“I can’t think like this Ethan! Please!”

“You can and you will, or so help me ….” Ethan stopped himself when he realized how that threat was going to come out. He wasn't going to spank her.

Cindy answered him. Slowly, over the course of the next forty minutes, she filled Ethan in on her web surfing. The man she arranged to meet and all of their chats and IM discussions. What she wanted from the encounter. What it became. How wrong it turned out. Everything including her sorrow at having ruined her own dreams and hopes that it could ever be real.

Ethan sat on the chair beside her, and listened. A few times when she stopped to search for words, he prompted her to continue with questions. A few times he made comments that came out of disbelief or surprise.

By the time she reached the end, the position she was in meant nothing. Cindy was exhausted, and found herself relaxing into the freedom of complete honesty. She was reassured that Ethan was listening, and let herself hope it would all work out for the best.

It was almost 2AM when they stopped talking, and climbed into bed.

In the morning they had breakfast, and Ethan gave Cindy the extra set of keys to the car, kissed her and left her to follow him home.

Driving home in separate cars, both of them had time; to think about the night before, what it meant, and what would be next. The first order of business would be getting her purse and privacy back. Ethan had already told her that she would show him all of the web sites she visited, and the chat rooms she frequented where she met the spanker. Cindy agreed, knowing that having Ethan be the one to contact him would be best on several levels.

In the world of spankophiles, dominants responded better to other dominants when it came to ‘tidying up’ the messes made by their submissives. Having Ethan involved and aware, also took some of the power away from any potential blackmail approach the spanker might consider.

The light of day did clear away many of the shadows that had been so frightening the night before. The one large one that remained, rebuilding trust with her husband, still loomed dark and frightening, but it seemed easier to face with the others cleared away.

**************

Cleaning up the mess took four days. In that time, Cindy’s purse was returned. Her cell phone and bank accounts were changed. All of her credit cards were re-issued The old accounts were closed and balances transferred. Even her social security number was changed.

After that was done, Ethan seemed to pull away. Diner table conversations were perfunctory. They slept in the same bed, and he kissed her goodbye every morning, but there was no other contact, and very little connection. Cindy knew things couldn’t be expected to return to the way they were only a few days, but when several weeks passed and Ethan was remained distant, she began to feel herself fall into depression. At first she just let herself go with it, but in time as she mourned everything she thought she had ruined, she found herself becoming angry. Angry with herself, and angry with Ethan.

Finally, when Ethan got up to leave the house to go to his office on the fourth Saturday morning in a row, after Cindy tried to involve him in family activity, Cindy turned away from his kiss good bye and threw her half full coffee cup at the wall.

“How dare you not care enough to even fight about this!”

“What in the hell are you talking about! Why the hell did you do that?”

“You know damned well what I’m talking about!” Cindy advanced on him, and pushed him hard against the counter, and then stormed past him to the sink.

“No I don’t! Why don’t you tell me.” Ethan leaned on the counter, and put his brief case on the floor. He knew if Cindy was itching for a fight, he wasn’t going to the office until she said what she had to say.

“God Damn you! Don’t play that game with me! You haven’t talked to me or touched me in well over a month! Not since …” Ethan put his hand up, to signal her to stop.

“No! Not now Cindy. I don’t want to talk about this now.”

“You have to! We both have to!” she slapped the wet dishrag she was rinsing on the side of sink. The hollow bang echoed and surprised them both with its volume.

“The boys do not need to hear this Cindy.” The tone of Ethan’s voice was cold.

“They’re out! It’s Saturday! You know damned well they have soccer now!”

Ethan bent down to retrieve his brief case.

“Talk to me!” Anger blended with the edges of desperation.

“What do you want me to say? That I forgive you?” Ethan sighed.

“Well? Will you?” Tears welled up and threatened to escape.

“I’m working on it, among other things.”

“Other things?” the answer made no sense to Cindy. “What other things?”

“That’s my business for now. You just keep thinking about what you did and how destructive it could have been. Count your blessings I didn’t send you off to live with that prick you went to.”

“Count my blessings? Goddamn you son of a bitch! I can’t live like this! I won’t live like this! I don’t care how rotten what I did was, this cold war and silence is worse than loosing you!”

“Don’t you dare curse me again! You made this bed, and you’ll lie in it and wait until I am ready to help unmake it. That’s going to be on my timeline too young lady. You will not dictate to me how long I need to get past this.”

“And if I can’t wait?” Cindy seethed with anger now.

“That will be your choice. If I were you I’d think long and hard about that. We’re here now because you didn’t trust me to work things out with you.”

“Did you ever think that I was afraid to trust you? Because you do things like this to me? Punish me by leaving me in limbo for weeks.”

“Punish you? You think I’m punishing you? Some times your selfishness just blows me away Cindy. You rip my guts out going to another man with your intimate sexual secrets, because you couldn’t trust me. Me! The man who loves you and has slept with you, touched and tasted every inch of you for twelve years. And you think you are the one being punished?” Ethan stepped around the counter and towered over her with just an edge of menace. “You haven’t been punished yet Cindy. But you will be.”

With that he leaned down and planted a kiss on her cheek, and turned and walked out of the house. Cindy was left with her thoughts and demons, and they quickly brought her to tears.

Ethan was doing more than working out his anger and hurt over Cindy’s betrayal. He was learning what he could about the lifestyle sites she had been frequenting. Knowing her screen name, he watched her posts as she still participated every day. He’d also read all the way back through her first posts. All of the questions she’d asked, the needs and desires she shared. The answers and advice she gave others was revealing too.

Slowly he was beginning to understand that there was more than just a sexy fantasy going on behind what she did. She wanted more than just a spanking. She wanted the reality of discipline and consequences. On some levels she admitted it had a sexy thrill for her, but on others, she posted that she thought regular disciplinary spanking would fill in a missing piece in her life. As he followed the discussions and learned more about lifestyles that included spanking, Ethan’s pain and anger gave way to firm resolve.

When he arrived at his office, he logged on, and tracked Cindy’s steps from the day before. In minutes he found something she’d written in the very early morning hours of this morning, while he slept.

The question read:

Why does a disciplinary spanking appeal to you?

Cindy’s answer read:

“I don’t think this will ever happen for me. Not the way I envision it anyway. But here goes………..

I know now that I don’t just want a discipline spanking for the sake of the spanking. I want it from my husband, because he’s the only man whose opinions about something I’ve done matter to me. I want it to be for things that really and truly matter.

I love my husband, and I know he loves me, but there are times when I wish he was more invested in me and us. I do things sometimes that are just so destructive and disrespectful to our relationship, that it makes my own blood boil. I know he doesn’t like it. I see that it makes him angry. He even tells me he doesn’t like it, but then he walks away from it. Like it doesn’t matter at all to him that it’s not resolved. He just expects it to be over and done with. As an adult I know, that’s how it’s supposed to be. Make mistakes, learn and move on. And inside me, deep down, I feel like it could be over if I could just let it go. But I feel like something’s missing, like I need something to mark that it’s over. A consequence that says don’t do that to us again! I need him to care enough about the damage done by the hurt that he steps in and says ‘look what you did, look long and hard at it. This is what it could do to us if you don’t stop. This is how you make me feel when you do that.’ Then I want him to bring the point home with a punishment that draws the line and says it’s over, done with and forgiven. I think he should be able to take any aggravation I made him feel, and turn it into a punishment for me. Unload the whole thing on my bare bottom so-to-speak. I feel like, if he would do that, it would mark the moment of closure firmly for both of us.

I know it sounds weird, but I feel badly too when I do things that are destructive or counter productive, and I hate that the guilt lingers. It’s an acute pain that takes so long to dwindle through a long slow ache before it goes away. And sometimes I feel like some of it never really goes away. Like we’re accumulating small wedges of accumulated left over hurt and guilt, and some day the pile is just going to be so large, and so jumbled up and confused with the pieces of old issues, that it’s going to split us down the middle.

I just feel like, if he would just spank the living daylights out of me every time I hurt him and us, we could both exchange all the destructive pain I caused for the momentary pain of the spanking.

But, I don’t know how I can explain this to him. I can’t even get him to look at me and talk when he’s mad at me.”

“So, baby girl! That’s what was on your mind this morning. I’d say you made it pretty clear.” Ethan smiled while her post made the electronic journey through the circuits and cables to the printer.

A phone call to his parents concocted a bogus excuse and an invitation that would get the boys out of the house until Sunday night. His mother was always happy to conspire to give him quiet time with his bride. She could be trusted to do it as invisibly as possible too. Cindy would have no idea that her empty house was her husband’s ploy.

“But,” he reasoned to the silent office walls, “Cindy has a lot to learn about underestimating her husband!”