Drenched

by Janine Ashbless

  Or so I thought. Until I’d swallowed every last morsel and all that was left was the blob of cream, sinking into the skin of my thigh and beginning to run down the side and drip on the grass.

  The cake was gone and I was done for. I put the paper plate aside and dipped a finger into the thinning cream. I couldn’t wait to find out what was going to happen to me and I kept looking up at the house, but there was no flicker of movement from its many arched windows.

  It seemed a bit pointless to put my hands back on my head, given the act of gross insubordination I’d just committed, but I did it anyway. A half-measure might be better than nothing.

  But what was he going to do to me?

  My eyes drifted over to the cool box, the pack of condoms—still unused—and the watering can. Also still unused. What was it all for?

  I was still theorizing when some sixth sense told me he was in the air. I looked sharply over to the French doors and saw him coming out, fully dressed again in a pale linen suit and blue chalk-stripe open-necked shirt, with a bag slung across his shoulder, some kind of satchel thing. What was in it?

  He had already seen that the cake was gone, and he increased his pace, striding quickly across the lawn with an expression that worked hard to try and disguise how secretly pleased he was about it.

  “You naiads have healthy appetites,” he hailed me, when he was close enough to be heard. “But I thought we had an agreement. Didn’t we?”

  I chewed my lip, words failing me.

  “Was it delicious?” he asked, kneeling beside me with a vulpine smile. “Oh, but you haven’t finished.”

  He dipped a finger in the runny cream, scooping it up my thigh, then placed it at my lips.

  “It was very delicious,” I said, licking the cream from his fingertip.

  “But you don’t like cream?”

  “I love cream.”

  His smile, if possible, widened even further. I could see every tooth in his head.

  “That’s lucky,” he said. He scooped up the rest and sucked it from his own finger. “Mm. Yes. But that’s where your luck runs out, my dear, because I think you must remember the conversation we had earlier? Hmm?”

  I nodded, my eyes sliding sideways.

  “Remind me,” he whispered. “What did I say?”

  “You said I had to stay in position and not eat the cake.”

  “Right. And what did I say would happen if you ate the cake?”

  I couldn’t get the words out.

  “Something bad,” I muttered.

  He tutted and tapped underneath my chin with one fingertip, forcing me to look him in the eyes.

  “I need you to be more specific, Schatzi.”

  The German term of endearment liquefied me. I was powerless to resist him.

  “You said you would …”

  “Go on.” He stroked the tender skin beneath my jawbone as if coaxing out the words.

  “Punish me.”

  The words sounded foreign, although I thought I would have found them easier to say in German. The Rammstein song Bestrafe Mich barged into my head, almost making me giggle.

  “Yes, I did. And what did you do?”

  “I … ate the cake.”

  “You ate the cake. So what happens now?”

  “I suppose … you’re going to punish me?”

  He smiled again, almost regretfully, and patted my cheek.

  “That’s right,” he said. “My naiad has to learn. Now, is your leg clean? Is it sticky? I’m thinking of my suit. I don’t want to ruin it.”

  He reached into his bag and took out a pack of wet wipes, dabbing at my thigh until all residual traces of my guilt were gone.

  “What are you going to do to me?” I asked. I was scared, I think, but it was such a heady, exhilarating kind of fear that I couldn’t really distinguish it from excitement.

  “What do you think I should do to you?”

  Oh, now, this wasn’t fair.

  I cocked my head to one side in an attempt at coquetry, though this wasn’t really my style as a rule.

  “Forgive me,” I suggested.

  He laughed.

  “Oh, I will forgive you. I never bear grudges. But you must be punished, and punished you will be. Come on.”

  He took my hand and pulled me to my feet.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, but I hadn’t even finished the sentence before we arrived at a wide tree stump a few yards behind the lime.

  He put down his bag, sat, and patted his thigh.

  I had seen this gesture often in my bedtime imaginings, but never thought I would see it in reality. I knew exactly what it meant, but I was still tempted to act the wide-eyed naïf.

  My hesitation earned me raised eyebrows and another pointed slap of his thigh. I couldn’t get away with pretending.

  “Do you mean …?” I stammered.

  “You know what to do, I am sure,” he said. “But just so there is no room for misinterpretation or accusations after the event, I’ll make it clear. I am going to spank you on your bottom until it is bright red. Is that clear enough or should I say more?”

  “I, um, that’s clear enough,” I said, in a fever of internal squirming.

  “If it is too much for you, you can stop me by saying … oh, I don’t know …”

  I’d heard of safe words. I thought I ought to come up with one of my own, in case he decided on one of those endless German portmanteau words. Geschwindingkeitsbeschränkung or Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften would not trip off the tongue in the midst of my travails.

  “Faust,” I said.

  He stared at me and then barked with laughter.

  “I like that. OK, I’m waiting.”

  He projected such an aura of calm authority that it seemed unthinkable to disobey now. I felt grateful for it as I draped myself across his lap—grateful that I did not have to giggle or make self-conscious jokey remarks or stiffen with discomfort at the situation. He made it easy for me to slip into that most dissonant of all mindsets—submissiveness.

  I tried to analyze and capture how it felt, to be bent over this man’s knee for a spanking. It didn’t feel the way I’d imagined it might. I wasn’t crippled with shame and embarrassment for a start—they had been overlaid with curiosity and excitement and a mild hope that it wouldn’t be too painful. I wanted to see this through, to know where it would lead.

  “You have not behaved well,” he said sternly, and his voice brought that sense of shame that had been eluding me flooding in. “You were told not to touch the cake—and you ate it. So you know that you deserve this, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said meekly.

  “Yes,” he said, with a sudden and breathtaking smack on one of my bare bottom cheeks. “Sir.” Another. “Say it properly.”

  “Yes, sir,” I yelped out without hesitation.

  “Better. I wish I didn’t have to do this …” He left a pause long enough to insert my own mental accusation of fibbing. “But you must learn. You are in my care and you must stick to my rules. Now push that bottom up higher.”

  This entailed tensing my thighs to an uncomfortable degree, but I was keen to show my eagerness, so I did it.

  He delivered the spanking with such amazing skill that it never crossed the border into real pain, whilst still seeming like a punishment. I don’t know how he did it—perhaps it was the mild scolding that accompanied his rhythmic attack on my posterior. It was something to do with his voice, anyway, or perhaps the words he spoke, or the way he made the smacks ring out so that the ducks at the edge of the lake were ruffled and flew away, quacking their indignation.

  “You have to understand,” he said, his words oozing into my ears and mixing into the haze of lust that had taken me over, “that you cannot do just what you like here. It is my house, and you abide by m
y rules. Even if you think those rules are silly.” He reached into his bag at this point and took something out. I found out what it was when it made contact with my bottom—it was some kind of leather paddle. Perhaps his hand was sore, I thought. “Lots of my rules are silly, I admit that to you.”

  Ouch! The paddle hurt, but it also felt amazingly good while the leather was still cold on my heated skin. And I was beyond caring about nonsense like pain now. I was swimming in it, just as I would in the water. I was part of it now, and it was part of me.

  “For instance,” he continued in his soft yet unerringly firm tones, “it is not a very practical rule that you have to be naked all the time when I am in the house. You might say that was a silly rule. But I require you to keep it.”

  I sucked in a breath and began to waggle my feet, the burn of the paddle spreading down low into my deep tissues.

  “And I have a rule that you have to beg me for your orgasm. I will nearly always say yes. But you must beg me, very humbly, first.”

  I twisted my spine. It was a real effort now to take the continuing volley of hard strokes but I couldn’t bear to use my safe word. And I wanted to hear some more of these bizarre but arousing rules.

  “And I also have a rule,” he continued, the paddle falling very fast and very hard now, “that you use your safe word when you have to instead of trying to impress me.” He threw the paddle aside and pulled my hair hard until my head was angled back to meet his eyes. “Hmm?”

  Oh dear, I was so busted. How was I to know that he could read minds? Or bottoms?

  “I didn’t need to,” I said. “Honestly. But it was getting close.”

  “I know. But thank you.”

  He smiled, the crinkles around his eyes making them lighten somehow.

  “It is rather sweet,” he said, letting go of my hair and stroking it. “Very.”

  His other hand cupped my burning bottom and rubbed it. The effect was both soothing and inflaming. I could have lain there all day, just as long as he let his fingers wander lower …

  But instead he gave my bottom a final smack and said, “Now that is dealt with, I want you back under the tree on all fours. Now, please.”

  I arranged myself beside the watering can, still wondering what it was for.

  I soon found out.

  Eberhardt circled me for a while, looking at me from every angle, stopping every now and then to stroke his chin and stare as if making mental calculations. It was unnerving, but I was starting to relish the loss of nerve now. It always seemed to presage some experience of new and unimaginable pleasure. For reasons I couldn’t begin to explain, I trusted him.

  Eventually he came behind me and I saw his jacket tossed to the base of the tree, then I heard him unbuckle his belt. My pussy quivered and my pelvic floor contracted, knowing what was coming next.

  I wanted it so much, really wanted to have this man inside me, connected to me, joined with me. I wanted to be his. I wanted, in that moment, for the whole captive naiad thing to be really true and for me to be his treasured possession instead of his casual sex partner. I held the fantasy still in my head and refused to let it go, keeping it there during the snap of rubber and the clap of his hand on my shoulder, then another on my hip, then the nudge of his cock at my opening.

  I belong to you. You take me. I am yours.

  I was so deep in this fantasy that the first drop of warmish water between my shoulder blades took me by surprise. I nearly jolted him off, but he held me by my hip and continued to ease inside me, inch by inch, while a stream flowed down my spine and off my sides.

  “What …?” I breathed.

  “Don’t you understand?” he said, pushing himself in to the hilt and letting more water fall on my neck, then my still very warm bottom. “You need the water. You need to be wet.” He emptied the whole of the watering can over me, then cupped my breasts with wet hands, making sure I was completely drenched all over.

  Only then could he begin to thrust, slowly at first, kissing the knobs of my damp spine, kissing all the hollows where it had pooled, licking it up on the tip of his tongue while he fucked me with steadily gathering force. I was hot, cold, wet and utterly wild for him, pushing back on him, wanting him to do it harder, harder, harder.

  He did as well, mounting to a pace that made me gasp and grunt and feel his pelvis smacking my sore bottom all over again, reawakening that precious sting. Water lay in beads on my tight, hot skin. I imagined it melting into steam, rising off me, forming a fog that would be visible from the lake.

  He put one finger on my clit and worked at it. I felt my eyes rolling, my sense uncoupling from my senses. The steam was thickening. My pussy was wetter than it had ever been, and it was nothing to do with the water. I could hear how slick I was, his cock stretching me, making a sucking noise with every thrust. I was getting close. I was drowning in the steam. I was stretched and held and fucked and owned and …

  A memory. Something he said.

  “Please,” I gasped. “Oh please, let me …”

  “Are you going to come?”

  His lips were at my ear, his voice a gentle wave, lapping over my head.

  “Mm, yes, please, yes.”

  “You may.” His cheek was against mine as I wriggled and squirmed and sighed into orgasm. He fucked me through it, his mouth at my ear, whispering things in German that I was too far gone to translate. The last one was harsh and sudden and he pressed his fingertips hard into me while he said it. He held himself still, then loosened, exhaling a long tickling breath on to my neck.

  We rolled over on to our backs and lay like that, in each other’s arms, until we dried off and the sun passed high over us and began to lower.

  “You know, I really would like to keep you,” he said, startling me out of sleep.

  “What?”

  “I would like a captive naiad. To keep,” he clarified. “But you will go home and pick up your real life and this will all be a strange thing that happened on a hot day when you were younger. A dream.”

  “I’m not really a naiad,” I said. “But if you want to keep me, you can. I mean, not forever. But for a bit longer. Until we’ve had enough, maybe.”

  He turned his head, his lips twitching towards a smile.

  “Until we’ve had enough,” he repeated. “OK. Why not? Why don’t you start by telling me your name.”

  Hard to Swallow

  ♦♦♦♦

  By Lisette Ashton

  “Ten points to me,” called Tony.

  Addison sat behind the reception desk. She was striving to ignore his exclamation whilst she attempted to look like a model of efficiency. Wearing a short dark skirt and a blouse the same liquid blue as the radio station’s corporate logo, she knew she fitted in with the über-sleek stylings of her glamorous glass-and-steel surroundings. But this was still her first day, and Addison worried that everyone passing by the desk would see she was merely a wannabe presenter. She worried that everyone would know she had only assumed the thinly-veiled pretense of being a receptionist so she could be on hand should an emergency-presenter-vacancy arise in one of the station’s many studios.

  It was a long-shot, she supposed.

  But Addison was nothing if not optimistic.

  She knew the odds of winning the lottery were millions-to-one against, but she had seen enough lottery winners on the news to know they existed. Consequently, whilst she knew the chances of her being called from the reception desk to a recording studio were incredibly thin, she also realized that just being in the building meant that a chance for such an opportunity did exist.

  It was a hopeful thought that always made her smile. More importantly, it distracted her from the monotony of working alongside Tony.

  Tony was supposedly showing her how to work on the reception desk.

  He was five years her senior and since Stern, the station ma
nager, had assigned him the role of showing Addison how to fulfill her duties, he hadn’t stopped trying to entertain her with inane chatter, engage her with ‘interesting’ facts or amuse her with senseless diversions.

  It had been a long day.

  She suspected Tony was trying to hit on her. As much as she appreciated his efforts to help fight the boredom, Addison had already come to the conclusion that a terminal dose of ennui would be preferable to Tony’s desperate attempts at workplace fun.

  Tony pointed at a presenter walking through the reception’s main doors.

  She was a tall, elegant brunette with a cell phone pressed against one ear. She wore cranberry chinos beneath a white blouse under a vintage little black Chanel jacket. There was a dark green bottle of mineral water in her left hand. The label on the bottle read: Eau Naturelle.

  “Ten points to me,” Tony repeated.

  The game—although Addison suspected that ‘game’ was too generous a term for this diversion—was a simple tally. If someone walked through reception carrying a bottle of mineral water, ten points were awarded. If the bottle of mineral water was clear, Addison received the ten points. If the bottle was green the ten points went to Tony. The points were tallied at the end of the day. The winner, Addison surmised, would either be the person with the most points or the one who hadn’t died from boredom during the preceding hours.

  This was a green bottle. The ten points went to Tony.

  If there was one marginally interesting detail to be gleaned from the diversion, Addison thought it was the revelation that so many of the station’s staff, particularly the female staff, walked around carrying bottles of mineral water.

  If not for Tony’s game, it was a detail she knew she would not have noticed.

  She had asked him if there was a reason and he had shrugged.

  “Eau Naturelle are the station’s chief sponsors,” Tony told her. “So that could be a factor. Plus, I guess it helps with on-air nerves. I tried sitting in a studio once and I got the worst case of dry-mouth I’ve ever had. I could barely speak. A bottle of water would probably have helped there. I found it really hard to swallow.” He had grinned slyly then and asked, “Do you ever find it hard to swallow?”