On the Bare

by Fiona Locke

  ‘Always thought her songs were crap anyway.’

  ‘Not so glamorous now, is she?’

  Their approval almost makes me forget the pain. But Will lays it on smartly and I kick my feet in desperation, yelping pitifully as he paints my bottom with scorching handprints.

  I can’t disagree with a single word they’re saying and the humiliation is almost worse than the pain. I’m dying to tell them it’s not really me, that I’m not really her.

  Will has a heavy hand and normally I enjoy being over his knee. But today isn’t about pleasure; today is about payback. I’m willing to suffer any amount of shame or pain for my revenge.

  ‘Please – please – please,’ I babble, writhing under the merciless barrage of smacks. I can almost see my flesh turning from ivory to pink to bright red.

  ‘No,’ he says curtly, his fingers curling into the crease below my cheeks as he aims lower. ‘I’m not going to stop until you’re sorry for being such an insufferable little madam.’

  I squirm at his authoritarian tone, my sex moistening in spite of the pain.

  ‘OK, I’m sorry!’

  Will ignores my insincere apology, his palm striking me even harder and eliciting wilder cries and yelps. The other shoe goes flying. On my right I see a teenager filming us with his mobile phone. We’ll be on YouTube within the hour.

  I squeal in delirious pain and humiliation as Will spanks me for the delectation of the whole world. Literally. It’s agony – far beyond the naughty pleasure he usually gives me. But I’m doing my job and so is he. Repairing her image, just like we said. The tabloids will forgive her all her sins by the time Will’s finished with me. Though I have a hard time imagining she’ll be remotely grateful.

  It’s an eternity before I finally surrender and begin to cry. Now my pleas are genuine and no one could mistake the true contrition in my voice.

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ I blubber, ‘really – I mean it, I swear!’

  Will rests his hand on my flaming backside, giving each cheek a cruel squeeze. ‘Are you going to be a good girl?’

  ‘Yes,’ I sniffle.

  ‘Have you learnt your lesson?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Going to behave yourself from now on? No more tantrums? No more bad behaviour?’

  His words are making me melt and I hope my shameless arousal isn’t obvious to anyone else. ‘No,’ I promise meekly. ‘Please …’

  ‘The next time you act like a spoilt little girl, you’ll be treated like a spoilt little girl. I don’t care if we’re on stage performing for the Queen. I will turn you over my knee then and there and smack your naughty little bottom until you can’t sit down. Do you understand?’

  The colour of my face must match the colour of my bottom. ‘Yes,’ I moan.

  He lets me up and I throw my arms around him, my back hitching with huge dramatic sobs as I apologise for being such a bitch. I press myself against his erection, clutching my burning posterior as the crowd begins to shuffle away. The show’s over. For them anyway. Will and I are just getting started.

  Didn’t I say I had the coolest job in the world?

  Six of the Best

  ‘YES WHAT?’

  We all have our trigger words and hot buttons. Our little turn-ons. I think for me the seed was planted at the age of sixteen by Mr Sheridan, my eleventh grade English teacher. He was the only Brit in my Boston high school and he was accustomed to more discipline than American students are used to. He had the most exacting standards and was merciless with his grades. Everyone hated him.

  He was old-fashioned and out of place. But he was also young and devastatingly cute. It was his first year of teaching in the States. We all thought he’d have to learn to lighten up to survive, but he never showed any sign of wavering.

  He delighted in telling us about the superior disciplinary regime in English schools of the past. Uniforms and six of the best. A good dose of the cane, he claimed, would cure us all of our incorrigible behaviour. As if.

  They used the paddle in American schools, but Mr Sheridan would never have deigned to touch it. Instead he tortured us with diabolical assignments in detention, like copying out entire pages of the OED or writing interminable lines.

  I am the quintessential product of the American school system. I never had to wear a uniform. I had no clue how to tie a tie. With the exception of Mr Sheridan, I never called my teachers ‘sir’ or ‘miss’. The very idea would have been archaic and offensive. I wore whatever I wanted, usually something carefully devised to shock, alienate and offend parents and teachers alike. I was used to doing my own thing, making my own rules and pretty much running the show.

  But one day Mr Sheridan kept me after class, just the two of us, to accuse me of handing in work that was ‘beneath my abilities’. Beneath my priorities, maybe; I had more important things going on in my teenage life. I told him so.

  He shook his head and called me a spoiled ex-colonial. His favourite term. Well, I just couldn’t keep my big mouth shut. Americans hate formality. We hate titles and class consciousness and etiquette and all the pretension that has made English culture the butt of so many jokes. We don’t like being told what to do. Hence the American Revolution. I told him that too. Then I told him where he could stick his split infinitives.

  It was my first real act of teen rebellion and it felt so good I didn’t want the moment to end. I was terrified and I knew I’d regret it, but for those few exhilarating seconds I was the leader of my own little revolution. It felt so good.

  Mr Sheridan was unperturbed, and my elation didn’t last long. I remember the dressing-down that followed like it was yesterday.

  ‘You have a good deal to learn about respect, young lady,’ he said in his clipped British accent. ‘And your attitude needs smartening up.’

  I lifted my chin, trying not to let my fear show.

  He narrowed his eyes, meeting my stubborn glare. And when he spoke his voice was low and chillingly calm. ‘What you deserve, Jenny, is a caning. Six parallel lines. Right where you sit. It would be a lesson you’d never forget.’

  His words conjured up images in my mind, memories of films I’d seen and stories I’d read. Images of strict English schoolmasters brandishing swishy canes and terrified schoolboys touching their toes. Was that how it really was? Were English girls subjected to the same treatment?

  I just stood there, blinking. My courage had evaporated.

  He looked so serious, so resolute, that when he turned and opened his desk drawer I flinched, expecting him to take out the cane. No doubt that was exactly what he wanted me to think because the corners of his mouth turned up slightly.

  But all he took out was a form and he sat down at the desk to fill it out. Detention every afternoon for a week. I groaned.

  He handed me the slip of paper and his expression was unreadable. ‘I have high standards for you,’ he said. ‘And I expect you to live up to your potential.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ I mumbled, still a little startled. ‘I mean yes.’

  ‘Yes what?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  My first revolutionary act. And over so soon.

  I spent my week of detention writing lines: I will learn to apply myself and live up to my potential. I will not submit work that is beneath my abilities. Five hundred times. And each time I paused to shake the cramps out of my hand I stole a glance at Mr Sheridan. I couldn’t get his words out of my head. Six parallel lines. Right where you sit. And I couldn’t keep from wondering …

  Five years later, a strange twist of fate led me across the Atlantic, to take the third year of my literature degree at the University of Durham. It was like something straight out of the period novels I loved. The dark majestic cathedral was breathtaking. Ominously beautiful, with the kind of ancient formality you never find in the States. But the university had a musty intimidating air that made me feel like an impostor. A slacker among the scholars. I didn’t quite fit in.

  Oh, I was diligent at first, but it w
asn’t long before my old habits began to return. I was bored. Restless. Craving adventure. Besides, once the initial charm wore off, I was finding England cold and dismal. It got dark obscenely early and it never seemed to stop raining.

  My love life was just as dismal and after one particularly catastrophic date, I just couldn’t face doing any work. So I skipped my first tutorial in Victorian literature, only to discover afterwards that the tutor had assigned an essay. It was the next week before I found out about it. That meant I had to go see him with some excuse for not being there. I wasn’t looking forward to that, but I noted with a chuckle that his name was Sheridan as I read the timetable to find his office room number.

  It was early and the halls were deserted, making my footsteps echo unpleasantly. It was as though the university itself was scolding me for my indolence.

  When I reached his office I knocked and a voice told me to enter. After I closed the door behind me, I turned back to face him and froze. It was my old tormentor!

  The years had distinguished him. He sat behind the desk, a darkly handsome older man with a somewhat gloomy countenance, like Jeremy Irons. He was also wearing glasses, something I’ve always found appealing.

  I must have been gaping because he raised his eyebrows and asked me if something was wrong.

  ‘Oh,’ I began, not sure what to say. I stood there stupidly for a small eternity, but he made no attempt to help me. When the awkwardness became too much I finally blurted out, ‘Do you remember me?’

  He just peered at me over the rims of his glasses, inscrutable. ‘Should I?’

  I giggled like the nervous schoolgirl I’d reverted to. Of course he wouldn’t remember me. He had only aged a few years; I had grown up.

  ‘It’s Jenny,’ I said with a flirtatious smile.

  But whatever he’d been doing since I last saw him hadn’t shaken his imperturbable nature. I had thought to embarrass him and make him feel uncomfortable for forgetting someone he ought to know.

  My smile faded. ‘Jenny Adams?’

  Still no reaction.

  Then he glanced down at a sheet of paper on his vast expanse of a desk. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said at last, apparently finding my name there. ‘You were absent from your first tutorial.’

  He hadn’t placed me at all.

  ‘I assume you’ve come to ask me for an extension on the essay, but if you can’t be bothered to come to tutorials, I’m afraid I don’t grant extensions. Now, if you’ll excuse me …’

  I stood there, stunned. Here I was, taking the trouble to come to him so I could do what he’d told me I should do all those years ago – apply myself. Hell, he’d made me promise five hundred times that I would – in writing. I was offended.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  He looked up. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘No, I won’t excuse you.’ I crossed my arms over my chest, appalled at his arrogance. ‘I may be a spoiled ex-colonial, but I’m not the only one whose attitude needs “smartening up”.’

  There was a flicker of curiosity, then of recognition. He peered at me as though through a microscope. At last he smiled.

  ‘Little Jenny Adams,’ he said, leaning back in his chair. ‘Yes, I remember you now.’

  He laughed and got up, shaking off his Professor Snape persona. To my surprise, he hugged me instead of shaking my hand and a little thrill ran through my limbs as I recalled all the times I’d heard his voice inside my head and fantasised about even more intimate contact with him.

  The years had been kind to him and I instantly felt my body responding the way it always did to attractive guys. I wanted him: I was lonely, bored, depressed, frustrated and starved for attention. England wasn’t the paradise I’d envisioned. University was harder than I’d expected. And the solitude I thought would be freedom was merely isolation. Here was my fantasy come to life. It was not an opportunity I would let slip away.

  I held him as tightly as I dared, not wanting to be too subtle. The English boys I’d dated were so different from Americans. They were slow to warm up and I had been frustrated more than once by their inability to pick up my hints. Then again, maybe they were just being ‘gentlemanly’. Brits could be so charmingly clueless.

  But Mr Sheridan wasn’t clueless. He had no trouble reading my body language, as he returned my tighter embrace.

  I closed my eyes and pictured him pushing me down on his desk, reaching under my skirt and ripping my panties away. Pinning me down with one arm while he wrestled himself free of his trousers and penetrated me, rough and nasty, telling me what a dirty little girl I was. I melted under the image.

  I had never actually seduced a teacher before, though I’d certainly fantasised about it. Here was the classic scenario right in front of me. The cheesiest cliché. Please, Professor, I’ll do absolutely anything for that A! I giggled again, relishing my teen memories.

  ‘About this essay,’ I purred, classic coquette. I pressed my pelvis into his, rotating my hips ever so gently.

  He pushed me out at arm’s length. ‘You are incorrigible,’ he said, but he was laughing.

  ‘You had your chance to fix that,’ I reminded him. ‘Now it’s too late.’

  A serious look crossed his features. ‘Oh?’

  ‘Perhaps we can work something out,’ I said.

  There was a gleam in his eyes, sinister and sexy all at once. ‘Perhaps we can.’

  I was ready to strip off then and there. I had never wanted a man so much.

  But instead he calmly looked at his watch. ‘Come back tonight,’ he said, shocking me into silence. ‘At seven.’

  I must have looked stung or spurned because he gave me a reassuring pat on the backside.

  ‘Now, now, none of that, my girl.’ His tone was affectionately patronising. ‘You suggested “working something out” and that’s exactly what we’re going to do. But you’re not going to get out of doing your assignment, you know.’

  I closed my eyes and his words took me right back. It was the old Mr Sheridan speaking to me now, the English disciplinarian who had so terrorised us at school. I felt my crotch begin to pulse, practically screaming for him to touch me.

  ‘Do you remember what my detentions were like?’

  Did I ever. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes what?’

  I thought I would wet my panties. It had been five years since I last said that word and this was the man I last said it to. It came back to me like a forgotten foreign tongue, making my legs feel like rubber. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I told you once that you were squandering your potential, that an English school would get more effort from you than you gave in America.’

  I remembered that tone well. I used to imagine him kidnapping me and spiriting me away to England, imprisoning me in some gloomy manor and giving me private lessons like Eliza Doolittle.

  ‘I still think you would benefit from some traditional English discipline. If you accept it, you will be allowed to submit your essay. But you’re free to decline. The choice is yours.’

  My face was scarlet and I couldn’t look him in the eye. I stared at the floor, squeezing my legs together. I could never resist a challenge, but this was beyond any I’d ever been given. He was going to cane me. I knew it. After all the years of wondering and fantasising, it was actually going to happen. And my pride wouldn’t let me back out. I’d show this Brit what American girls were made of.

  I raised my head and it took everything I had to keep my voice steady. ‘I’ll be here.’

  The smile that spread across his face was slow and deliberate. Like the almost sensual way a snake has of coiling around its prey. ‘Good. Then let me tell you what will happen. We will structure this as the punishment detention you deserved all those years ago. I’m sure you can find something suitable to wear as a school uniform. And I think the orthodox “six of the best” should make a salutary impression on you.’

  This wasn’t going to be easy. I’d thought all I had to do was come on to him and he’d fall prey to my fe
minine charms. He’d screw me and I’d get my way. But no, this promised to transcend my adolescent fantasies. I dropped my gaze to the floor, but he wasn’t finished.

  ‘Then you will have one hour to write your essay. You will remember that work produced in detention periods is judged by much higher standards than ordinary homework, and it will not be easy to satisfy me.’

  How many times had he spoken to me like that in the past? In high school it seemed fitting; now it was surreal. It was also presumptuous, inappropriate and unbearably erotic. I silently prayed he would just throw me down on the desk and ravish me.

  He was looking at me expectantly and I managed to squeak out another ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Good. I shall see you at seven, then.’

  It took me an hour to decide what to wear, but I was happy with the final product. It was the closest thing I could find to a school uniform – short green tartan skirt and white midriff blouse. The blouse had a wide splayed collar and those sassy French-style cuffs that turn back. I unbuttoned it enough to show a hint of cleavage. I winked at the saucy tart in the mirror and set off.

  Of course I had no problem getting a taxi, but the traffic wasn’t so obliging. I was fifteen minutes late and it wasn’t my fault, but I knew that would make no difference to the implacable Mr Sheridan.

  The cathedral bells were ringing out a peal as I raced through the cobblestone streets to Hallgarth House. They seemed to be delighting in my lateness. I could easily think the change-ringers were in on the game with Mr Sheridan – wanting to see me dig myself an even deeper hole. But that was silly. Paranoid. I had no one to blame but myself. After all, he’d said it himself; this was a pattern with me.

  I knocked and he made me wait, then looked up as I came in. ‘Ah. Adams,’ he said with a thin smile. ‘Nice of you to turn up.’

  I was startled to be addressed by my last name. Was that what they called you at school in this country? I offered him a sheepish apology, surprised by the teenage tremble in my voice.

  ‘Your tardiness will be addressed in due course,’ he said, looking me up and down. ‘After you dress.’