Chapter Five
Rey puttered at the dishes. The howl of the wind outside was continuous, interrupted only by occasional sudden gusts that were so strong the old house seemed to shudder and shake with them. Inside her mind, thoughts were raging a similar storm. Nervousness kept her from being able to concentrate on any one thing long enough to sort out her thoughts. She didn’t want to finish the dishes. At the same time anticipation was building and urging her on.
Alan already issued several warnings and threats that afternoon, and she’d gone past the last “final” warning he gave her about bringing her attitude in with her from the porch. His last words were too calm for her to read. Was he going to sit her down, and lecture her one last time about her attitude? Or was he going to tell her what he thought of it in the same way he told her what he thought of it the last time?
The traitor within waged a war with her better judgement, as she tried to concentrate on ways to avoid that second option if it got to that point.
“If he decides to do it, and you talk your way out of it, you’ll spend the next week wishing you hadn’t,” the traitor muttered.
“But it’s just so stupid. I can behave better without that!” she complained back. “Besides, he’s not going to do that anyway.”
“Want to bet? You can make him do it you know?”
“No!”
“Come on! You want it! Just tell him where to shove his opinions about your attitude, and by golly he’ll get right down to telling you where he thinks they’ll be best served,” the traitor was getting anxious. She wanted a spanking, and the thrill of the very real possibility of one so close at hand was causing Rey’s anxiety to escalate.
“Just Stop!” Rey’s thoughts escaped into the room riding her voice, and were answered from the living room.
“Stop all that chattering to yourself, finish up, and get out here!” the sound of Alan’s voice startled Rey.
“In a minute!” her answer was a reflex. One she had given to her uncle many times in response to almost the same command.
“You’ve had time to wash all the dishes used at a banquet for three hundred. You have five minutes.” The order and the tone it was delivered with offered little leeway.
Rey grimaced and sighed. All that remained to do was drain the sink, wipe it clean and put the dish rack away under the sink. She realized how long she’d been dawdling when her hand plunged into the once scalding dishwater and found it clammy cold.
“Ooooo Yuk!” she shivered, revolted by the sensation.
Something thumped against the wall under the window, and immediately after the house shook against the impact of a powerful wind gust. The lights flickered twice, and then went out. There was no way to know for certain if the power failure was local, if it was limited to Seal Cove or if the whole island was plunged into darkness.
To Rey and Alan, and all of the other residents, it made little difference. There was nothing to do now, until the storm blew itself out. Something the weather forecasters predicted would not happen for at least two and a half to three days.
Like many island homes, The Spray had a diesel generator down in the root cellar. To protect the old cast iron drains and copper water lines, Alan would power up the diesel monster as needed to run the furnace for brief periods if the temperature inside dropped to freezing. But the house had a large fireplace in the living room, as well as a wood stove that would have to be good enough to keep the people inside warm. Flashlights, Kerosene lanterns and candles would have to do for lighting.
Rey took a moment to accommodate her eyes to the darkness. In the dark, the cozy kitchen seemed cold and remote from the rest of the house. That helped her summon the resolve to finish the last wipes and steps of her chore quickly so she could join Alan in the living room.
Rey found Alan placing new logs on the fire and banking the coals under them.
“I figured that would bring you in here,” he spoke from his task without looking up. “Sit down over here.”
Rey followed the wave of his hand, and parked herself on the corner of the large plaid sofa closest to the fire. She watched Alan nervously as he tended to the fire. Would the loss of power change the agenda?
When he stood and stretched, and then turned to acknowledge her, Rey had her answer. Alan’s expression was stern and determined.
“Let’s get right to it then,” he sat on the foot stool a few feet in front of Rey, and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees with his hands crossed and dangling between them.
“What?” A twinge of raw anxiety buzzed through her skin.
Alan saw her blush crimson and shift nervously. He smiled to himself thinking, “So she knows she crossed the line does she?”
“Don’t what me. You know perfectly well what,” his eyes held hers, until she broke and looked away. Alan watched her seem to shrink under his gaze, and said nothing until he was sure she was sufficiently aware of his intent.
Waves of nervous energy mixed with arousal pulsed through Rey’s body. The look in Alan’s eyes and his intensely stern demeanor completely captured the traitor within her. Rey felt the yearning at the same time as she fought the urge to run.
“How many times did I have to warn you about your attitude and you bad language?”
Rey shrugged.
“That will be twenty extra at the end,” the cool matter-of-fact statement made Rey’s stomach lurch. There was no longer any doubt that he intended to spank her, and she realized instantly that she had known it from the moment he left her with the dishes.
“No way!” her mouth dropped open with reaction that made a fair imitation of shock and surprise, but was really Rey’s better judgment gasping as the traitor kicked it firmly in the stomach. Her groin began to throb, and it made her squirm in her seat.
“How many chances were you given? How many did you waste?” Alan repeated the question.
Rey shifted and grimaced. She couldn’t remember exactly, and she wasn’t sure how that would go over if she fessed up.
“I warn you if you shrug again, I’ll spank you twice.”
“I don’t know exactly! I wasn’t counting!” Rey’s jaw worked on an objection that her mind just could not frame.
“One too many, I think. Would you say that was a fair assessment?” Alan’s persistence was infuriating. At the same time it fueled the anxious duel between the traitor who wanted and craved the spanking, and the budding woman, who wanted Alan to see her as an adult and feel for her the things she was beginning to feel for him.
“No,” Rey could not bring herself to agree with him, nor could she find the words to mount any kind of creative disagreement.
“No? How many warnings do you think you need?” the question was loaded, and Rey knew it. By reflex she shrugged, and then instantly realized what she’d done. As she moved and tried to give a proper answer, Alan spoke.
“That’s forty extra licks at the end now. ANSWER THE QUESTION! You know how I feel about sullen adolescent arrogance!”
The words almost brought tears to Rey’s eyes. It was all she could do to contain them. The best she could do to fight them back was to react and fight on the defensive.
“I’m not a kid! And you’re a Goddamned bastard!”
“You’re right. You aren’t a kid. You should know better and have better control of yourself. All the more reason to make you accountable now isn’t it?” Alan’s response and reasoning, offered Rey a tiny glimmer of relief.
Rey almost shrugged again. This time she shifted uncomfortably under his gaze and grimaced with her answer. “No.”
“No?” Alan’s answer was a stern and exasperated sigh. “That’s it? You have nothing else to say for yourself?”
“What do you want me to say?! For Gods sakes! You’re going to do it! So do it!” The traitor took over, and made short work of getting into his face with her defiance.
“Alright, stand up and pull your pants down!” Alan shifted back on the stool, straightening his posture for the task at hand.
“No way!” Rey shrunk down and back into the sofa cushions under her.
“You said do it. I’d say I’m obliged to move forward. If you make me tell you again, the forty extra will be one hundred.”
“No!” Rey complained. When she saw the grim resolve cloud Alan’s expression, she immediately waffled. “OK! OK! Just a minute OK!?”
“No minutes, you asked for it, you get it. Up now. Pant’s down.”
Painful, unpleasant electricity buzzed through her hands and groin. Just as she needed her and was faced with giving in, the traitor deserted her. There was nothing for Rey to do but stand up and obey only now, she couldn’t summon the courage to do it.
“Please? Can I have another chance? Please? I won’t do it again!” I promise.” Without the traitor’s lust for the spanking to come, Rey was left with only the fear and shame she always felt when her uncle spanked her. Only now, added to that, was a stronger aversion borne of the emotions she felt for this man.
“Stop that!” Alan’s rebuff was hard, and firm. “Get up and get those pants down now!”
Rey shook her head no, and shrunk even deeper back into the sofa under her. “I can’t,” the anxiety and arousal she felt was overwhelming. If the whole business was not over soon, she was sure her heart would explode.
Mercifully, Alan took the choice and will to act away from her. His right hand shot forward, caught her wrist and pulled her up off the couch. Her jeans were undone and her finger nails scrapped to prevent their descent. Her jeans and under pants came down together in one pull.
“Bend over!” Alan pulled her toward his lap.
“Oh God no! Please!” Rey pulled and fought against the pull.
“Bend over now!” Alan’s grip on her wrist tightened, and in a second, Rey found herself falling across his lap. Her stomach impacted his legs in the same instant his hand impacted her right cheek.
With the pain and burn of that impact, every sexy spanking thought she’d ever had flew away, and Rey cried out.
“Owe! Don’t!”
Alan ignored her, and spanked with purpose.
For a minute or so, Rey was bewildered by the disparity between the fantasy of a spanking and the reality of what she was experiencing in that moment. The gap did not just come from the fact that it hurt so much. It felt different emotionally.
In her fantasies she was spanked because she deserved it, but there was no beginning or end. The real shame and the real regret that came with the honest to god why of a real spanking just didn’t figure in the fantasy. Almost as bad, was the fact that the real pain created by the real hand of a really frustrated and aggravated man was not part of the fantasy. Yes the fantasy presumed all of these things, but it left out the details. The shame and regret were intense, and the pane was awful.
Soon Rey was desperate to get away, and make it stop.
Alan was just getting started though, in his mind, as long as Rey fought him and struggled against the consequence, they were insufficient. He spanked harder without let up. If she could have seen inside his mind, Rey would have instantly stilled and given in to the spanking. But, she couldn’t. All she knew was the desperation she felt. It gave her a raw energy that fueled her struggles.
“Let me go! Fuck you! Let me go!”
Alan answered with harder, more determined spanks that only increased Rey’s determination to get away.
A litany of curses followed. They only escalated the severity of the spanking.
After what seemed like an eternity, but was now a painful fact in her mind, Rey accepted that the spanking was not going to stop until Alan decided it would. Her bottom hurt badly, but even deeper, her heart began to let go of her defiance. Her struggles diminished, and in spite of her pride, Rey began to cry.
“Please stop! You’re hurting me!” she sobbed.
“Are you going to think twice next time you feel the need to sass?” Alan laid very hard spanks down to emphasize each word of his question.
“Yes! I will! I will! Please stop.”
Alan seemed to ignore the plea. Instead he seemed to concentrate on intensifying the punishment. This pulled all of Rey to the surface, and in moments she was sobbing uncontrollably.
“Please stop! I can’t any more! Please! No more!”
“You should have thought about that before you issued that last retort in the kitchen and then all this cursing now. You won’t make that mistakes again will you?”
“No I won’t, I promise I’ll try!”
Alan stopped spanking.
Rey pushed up to get off his lap. Alan responded with five hard spanks.
“Stay put until I say you can get up,” he growled as he pushed her torso back to position.
“No more,” Rey sobbed.
“Yes more, you have forty more to go for your sullen arrogance earlier.”
At first Rey responded to that reminder and the urge to get away with a small half hearted struggle. She knew it was useless, but it felt like something she needed to do. Alan responded with ten more hard smacks.
“Stop it and pay attention, or we’ll start over, and you’ll still have forty more after that.”
Rey realized that she’d had several multiples of forty spanks already. The number was more daunting than the reality would be. Still, her backside was a raw burning surface of skin, and the prospect of willingly taking even five more licks was more than she could absorb. Her response was to just collapse and wordlessly shake her head no over and over again. The only part of her that retained muscle tone was her fists. They balled up so that her finger nails created pain that might pre-empt what was to come.
“Tomorrow after breakfast you’ll sit at the table in the kitchen and write an essay about how cursing is the tool of a weak mind. Is that clear?”
Rey felt an argument move from her gut to her throat, but waited just a few seconds too long to veto it. Alan spanked her hard for several seconds.
“OK! OK! I’ll do it! I promise!”
“Then you’ll get back to work on the wallpaper. If the bathroom and the essay are not finished by 6PM tomorrow, you’ll be spanked again. Is that clear?”
Rey sobbed, but this time she beat the invisible buzzer in Alan’s mind.
“Yes,” the word could have been a hiccup.
“Good. Now get up and go over there by the fire place and stand with your nose in the corner.”
Quickly, Rey pushed up off his lap and stood up. Her first instinct was to pull her pants back up.
“Leave those alone. Bare butt. In the corner where I can see it. Now!” The severity in Alan’s voice was exaggerated, but Rey didn’t dare challenge it. The same electric energy that pulsed through her with each intimation that she would be spanked came with Alan’s order for her to leave her pants down. Arousal seemed to capture the heat the spanking created in her bottom, and pull it deeper between her legs.
The shuffle into the corner took some doing. Furniture and wood blocked her path, and the hobble her jeans made around her knees threatened to trip her if she tried to make the trek too quickly.
The time passed slowly. At first Rey stood straight and still, and then after four or five minutes her knees kinked, then her ankles and hips and lower back did. Before long she was fidgeting to loosen her joints. Boredom was the real reason, but joints and discomfort made a more plausible excuse.
“Stand up straight, and stand still,” Alan warned when Rey’s shifting had her right hip lean on the stone edge of the fire box.
“My legs are sore!” Rey complained.
“Not as sore as they will be if I have to tell you again.” The answer pulled the traitor back from her retreat. Her host had gotten a spanking, and there was more to come. In the meantime the ritual in the corner was waking her deepest sexual needs again; the needs the traitor owned tended and nurtured.
Rey closed her eyes and willed herself to some level of calm and sanity. The sexy unnerving throb between her legs threatened to make them tremble out from under her. The insane voice inside her was pushing her to issue retorts and argue with the man who had just spanked her so hard she’d been reduced to a crying blubbering wimp.
“Please stop,” she whispered to the confusion of her thoughts.
“What’s that?” Alan heard the whisper.
“Nothing,” Rey startled.
“It’s not nothing if it makes you jump like that. What did you say?” The warming in his voice could not be ignored.
“I was talking to myself OK? I do that sometimes!” Rey hissed. She did not want to be forced to get anywhere close to explaining what was really coursing through her mind, but she gambled that a snide response would distract him. She was right.
“See that ruler over there beside the computer?” The question was a directive to look.
Rey did, and when she saw the heavy fifteen inch wooden stick, she drew in a breath, and nodded.
“Do you want sixty instead of forty with it?” Alan slapped his hands on his thighs when she answered him again with a wordless reply.
Rey cringed, and could not help herself. She shook her head no, and closed her eyes.
Alan could not see her expression he only read her body language. This time it sent the wrong message.
“Sixty it is. Go get it and bring it here.”
Rey shook her head no, but she didn’t argue. Her legs obeyed, and she shuffled to the desk to retrieve the ruler. Tears escaped her eyes and trickled down her cheeks. Before she turned to go to him, Rey stopped to swallow the sobs that threatened to start again, and wipe away the tears that were the tell tale signal that her traitor had once again abandoned her.
“I’m crazy as a loon!” she told herself as she battled the excitement her traitor left behind, her reluctant obedience and an almost overpowering urge to run.
Alan took the ruler from the subdued girl in front of him.
She was beautiful and innocent and had absolutely no idea of her power. That sudden awareness washed over him like a tidal wave. It completely washed away her crimes, and left behind a desire that Alan could not respond to.
Without warning what was a session with a purely disciplinary motive shifted. Alan knew if he proceeded with the spanking now that he would corrupt his relationship with Rey irrevocably. He could not do that. What remained was for him to find a graceful and appropriately stern way out.
“Are you going to answer me when I ask you questions in the future?”
“Yes!” Rey nodded, sensing something had changed, and reprieve might be within reach.
“I’m serious about this Rey. No more sullen teenager silent answers, is that clear?” For the first time in an hour Alan’s tone of voice softened. Rey felt compelled to honor that with every ounce of compliance she could muster.
“I’ll try, I promise,” as she sobbed the answer, her body seemed to emphasize the dot on the bottom of an exclamation point, and then stand at attention to emulate the arrow to it.
“It will go hard if you break that promise, you understand that right?” he reinforced a deferred stern warning that Rey instinctively knew would not be relaxed again.
“Yes, please! I promise I’ll try!” her knees almost buckled with the promise of reprieve that was dangling in front of her.
“Pull up your pants and settle over there.”
When he said that, Rey looked up into Alan’s face. The flickering light from the fire cast shadows, but they only enhanced the inherently gentle aura of the man who had just spanked her.
Why didn’t she feel the same resentment she felt toward her uncle after he spanked her? Why did just the idea of this man spanking her ignite a fire that her traitor fanned with such enthusiasm? The mixed up feelings churned and bubbled up inside, until they felt like they would choke her.
Sitting back down on the sofa didn’t hurt as much as Rey thought it would. She drew a sharp breath in by way of anticipating contact, but when her bottom found the cushions, the discomfort was momentary, and then the cushion enveloped her bottom in a warm comforting envelope.
Almost instantly the spanking and everything that led up to it was over. Rey marveled at the completeness of the cleansing as the remainder of the night progressed.
Marshmallows were dug out, and thoughts were shared. The bulk of the evening was filled with two people who had a lot more in common than they knew sharing what was necessary to make hat fact clear to both of them.
They’d have four more evenings like it before Ray could go home.
“We’ll have to sleep down here I think,” Alan signaled that the evening had to end. “Do you think you can find the closet where you found the linen for your bed?”
Rey said she could.
“Good, go on up with a flash light and pull down sheets and quilts for two beds. Bring a pile of four or six blankets while you’re at it.”
Rey watched as Alan stood and moved toward the kitchen and the porch where her wood supply was handy. Silently she thanked the assignment Gods for hers this time. Beds were better than wood piles and fire any day.
Alan had two aero mattresses laid out and fully inflated when Rey returned with the linen. The bed making chore was shared, and then Alan gave the directive that it was time to call it a night.
The morning would come early for both of them.
Alan got up a number of times to check the thermostat nearest the outer pipes. He had to take the hour and a half necessary to run the generator twice. Rey slept blissfully through the worst of the night’s storm, and was oblivious to the details Alan stayed on top of while she slept.
Rey’s dreams let her rest that night. For the first time in a long time, she did not dream about being spanked. Instead she dreamed about kissing the spanker who used to occupy only her spanking dreams. The gentle expression that Alan’s eyes betrayed earlier that evening kept surfacing.
In her dreams he embraced her, and she embraced him back. In her dreams he didn’t give her reprieved when she gave him the ruler, he gave her what for, and then he took her in passionate lovemaking.
When Rey woke up at dawn she hadn’t been spanked in dreams, she had been loved. Loved by Alan.
The sexual content of her dreams and everything she felt from the day before kept invading her thoughts as she tried to compose her essay the next day. For most of the morning, though, Alan stayed busy taking care of wiring and woodwork inside. He didn’t even seem to care that Rey had kept herself to her assignment and was working on her essay about cursing and the relative strengths of the minds that would choose to use it.
Alan censured every thing sexual that surfaced when it came to his girl Rey. She was a brat, but there were plenty of outlets for him to catch her with it, than selecting topics based on the possibility that love, honor or obey would end up censured by the prude who shared his person.
“Winter was going to be hell!” Alan exclaimed when after three days, Rey answered a direct if this time amiable question with a shrug. |
