by Maren Smith
“March, Ms. Waters,” he warned, when she was slow to obey. “And I suggest you pick very carefully. I expect you to bring me something equal to your misbehavior, or I’ll send you back a second time and you’ll be spanked with both. Either way, you are going to be one very sore and very sorry little girl before I’m done.”
A peculiar squirmy feeling wriggled into the pit of her stomach and tried to hide from him there. It was an odd sensation, being forced to walk half-naked across the room, to open up those plain cupboard doors and pick the implement that would then be used to spank her. A real spanking. For lying. Exactly what she had asked for, right? She squirmed again, wringing her fingers as she carefully looked over her choices.
If he didn’t have every form of implement known to Man, then Kaylee wasn’t experienced enough to know what was missing. There were paddles of varying shapes and thickness, ranging in size from no larger than the palm of her hand to a frat-style paddle as long as her arm. A supple razor strop hung alongside a single-tailed strap, which hung alongside the double- and triple-tailed, heavy Scottish tawses. He had a wicker carpet-beater and a lamp cord (on which both the lamp and plug had been removed). A pair of floggers hung on the back of the cupboard door. Several hairbrushes sat on the shelf directly in front of her nose, one plastic, the rest wood-backed, the handles all varying in lengths, while the business ends—much like the paddles—were all of different sizes and shapes. There was even a bamboo birch hanging on the back of the cupboard door, seven thin switches all tied together and spaced evenly apart into a very lethal looking fan.
Her hand trembled a little as she reached for one of the hairbrushes. Her fingers hesitated over the wood, her knees shook. At the last minute, she veered to select the plastic one with the large square head. Testing it once against her palm, she looked at it and then back at him.
He was waiting exactly where she’d left him, arms folded across his chest and his expression inscrutable. “I’m waiting, and you’re dawdling.”
Biting her bottom lip, she put the plastic hairbrush back. She picked up one of the wooden hairbrushes instead. The sting when she tested it against her palm was startling. She almost put it back, but when she looked at her array of choices, she couldn’t see anything else that she’d rather take to him in its place.
“Do I need to count to five?” Master Marshall asked.
“How am I supposed to pick? I don’t know what any of these feel like. What if it’s more than I can take?”
“I am going to spank you for deceit. I guarantee it’s going to be more than you can take. One…”
She looked at the hairbrush again, all those thin threads of trepidation pulling taut inside her as she swept her options one last time.
“Two…” he counted, calm and quiet.
At three, she brought him the hairbrush, but she did so on unsteady legs. “I don’t think I’m ready for this.”
“That is unfortunate, isn’t it?” He took the implement from her with one hand and firm hold of her arm with his other. Catching the back of the chair she had been sitting in, he pulled it a short distance from his desk, removing it out of kicking proximity to his desk, positioning it to become the center of its own small world in the middle of the area rug. Sitting and without any hesitation at all, he pulled her down across his thighs. She could have resisted, but at the moment, she was too stunned by how fast this was happening to think about it. Maybe she just didn’t want to. Which was insane, because he said he was going to take her beyond what she wanted. He said this was going to be real.
She’d said this was exactly what she wanted.
Braced against his thigh, her hands tightened into anxious fists. It was a very awkward feeling, being draped across his knees with the two halves of her hanging off into space. On the one side of him, she had a world-class view of the carpet. On the other, her feet were dangling, not quite able to touch the floor.
He tapped her right arm. “Give me your hand now. You won’t be able to keep from reaching back and I don’t want to accidentally catch your fingers.”
Dread crawled across the surface of her bottom. Quietly, she let him take her hand and pin it to the small of her back. The tail of her blouse wasn’t long enough to cover more than half her bottom and provided no protection at all, but he still took a moment to tuck that up under her wrist, baring her to the cool air of his office and granting the hairbrush unobstructed access to everything from the crack of her ass to the backs of her thighs.
His voice was calm, his tone one of complete authority when he said, “Tell me why you’re here.”
Kaylee hesitated, then twisted back her head to look at him. “Here as in at The Castle or here as in over your knee?”
“I can see how that might be an honest question born of confusion rather than smart-aleck intent. The latter.”
Trembling, she faced the carpet. “I lied on my application.”
“And when I offered you the chance to correct that mistake, what did you do?”
“I lied again.” The knots inside her were tightening; the crawling in her bottom, intensifying. She clutched first at his thigh with her free hand, and then grabbed onto the leg of the chair. She didn’t like being scolded. She did not like being scolded at all.
“Are you prone to lying, Ms. Waters? Is this something you do often?”
“No.”
“No, what?”
She barely had to think about it. “No, sir.”
“Do you have anything else you’d like to say before we begin?”
Her chest tightened and tears stung her eyes. “I’m very sorry, sir.”
“I believe you are,” he said after a moment. That hard edge melted a little out of his tone. “Unfortunately, it’s only half as sorry as you’re about to be.”
He gave no warm up or lighter than normal beginning pats; Master Marshall simply spanked her. He didn’t use the full strength of his arm; Kaylee knew that because she could feel the force—or to be perfectly honest, the complete lack of force—behind each downward swing. With quick, wristy strokes, he peppered brisk snaps of that hairbrush all over her naked bottom and it didn’t just sting—it hurt!
It was unbelievable how much it hurt. Kaylee sucked a hard gasp at the second swat, only to let it out again as a shrieking yelp at the third. Her feet snapped up to cover herself, winning only the briefest reprieve that lasted the length of time it took for him to shove them back down and scissor her legs between his thighs to prevent her from doing that again. Then he raised the hairbrush and continued to spank.
Her shrieking yelps became just plain shrieking, frantic and high-pitched. Her captured hand alternately clawed and fisted at empty air. Her free hand let go of the chair leg, shoving back at his side. She wormed it down between them, coming desperately to the defense of her smarting bottom. Palm up, fingers spread wide to shield as much aching flesh as she could, she tried to ward him off.
“Move your hand,” he told her.
“No!” She shook her head, gasping and writhing, helpless to hold still but held too tightly to scramble up off his knee.
“I was only going to give you twenty swats. Now not only are we going to start over from the beginning, but you’re going to get thirty. Move your hand.”
The sting was morphing into heat, but that was no easier to bear than the actual spanking had been. Kaylee wailed, “I can’t do this!”
“One,” he said, his tone low in warning. “Two.”
“I’ve changed my mind!” Kaylee began to cry. She hadn’t meant to. It mortified her.
“Three.”
“Please!” she sobbed. “Don’t make me do this!”
“Four.”
She moved her hand. She had no idea how high he intended to count or what would happen once he got there. Would he spank her longer, harder? Would he put her on the first bus back home? Which of those was she scared of the most? She didn’t even know. All she could do was buck and howl as, without another word, he set her botto
m on fire.
In a matter of a few sharp slaps, he took her well beyond her ability to hold still. She snapped her hand back between them again; this time, he caught it, pinned it wrist-to-wrist with her other hand and then continued on. She bucked and thrashed, twisting wildly to break away, but he held her no matter how she moved. Perhaps not easily, but he did hold her, and those sharp, staccato slaps never slowed, never wavered, and never missed. She shouted. She shrieked. She burst into tears and then she just sobbed; he wasn’t even scolding her anymore. The hairbrush did all the talking he needed to, and it had her absolute attention.
For years she had fantasized about this and, on the surface, this was exactly what she thought she’d always wanted. Strong, authoritative man, check. Real life spanking instead of some bullshit game of pat-a-cake, check. Lots of kicking, fussing and crying while the hairbrush continued to rain its biting fire all over her squirming bottom, double check. Triple, quadruple check even, with lots of pain-filled stars to emphasis the hurt that was ravaging her from behind.
This was everything she’d ever imagined and yet nothing like she thought it was supposed to be. It didn’t feel good. It burned like a bonfire. It stung, every fresh, crisp smack of that awful, awful brush suffusing her bottom with swarm after swarm of angry, relentless bees. This wasn’t thirty spanks. There was no way it could only be thirty. Thirty was laughable. Thirty was child’s play. In the spanking videos, it was never just thirty, it was always hundreds. She knew; she’d counted.
And that’s what this felt like. It felt like hundreds of unending spanks. It felt like forever with unyielding wood burning, snapping and biting into her. It felt so broadly and so deeply and so dreadfully. It consumed every inch of her not just physically, but emotionally and mentally, and in every way she wasn’t prepared for and didn’t know how to endure. There was no holding still and yet, for all her writhing, kicking, flailing and sobbing, the only thing she managed to gain by the time he was done, was a level of unbelievable exhaustion to couple with the pain.
Master Marshall set the hairbrush aside, but he did not let her rise. Kaylee lay limp across his knee, crying so hard that she couldn’t catch her breath, and only in some very distant part of her mind was she aware of his hand, caressing away the hurt.
“You’re all right,” he murmured. “You’re a good girl, Kaylee. Shh, you’re okay.”
But she didn’t feel okay, and she certainly didn’t feel all right. Her bottom was a symphony of agony and fire. She couldn’t think; she couldn’t move. She tried to sit up, but he held her in position and from here, with her nose mere centimeters from the tear-stained carpet and her blazing bottom propped well-up over his knee, all she could do was feel—the burning, the throbbing, the pain as it seemed to swell, only growing hotter and hotter now that the spanking was done.
“It’s all right, pet,” he told her, stroking her bottom around and around, gentle, endless figure eights. “You’re okay.”
Kaylee shook her head, falling limp under a fresh gush of hopeless tears. “No…”
“Yes, you are.”
“I can’t do this!” She wept, her shoulders jerking and shaking.
“Yes, you can.”
“I’m all wrong!”
Releasing her arm and her legs, he pulled her up to sit on his knee. “No. You’re not.”
He caressed her hair, coaxing her head down onto his shoulder while she cupped her bottom in both hands, gasping each breath in hiccupy hitches and keening them out again through tightly clenched teeth. “That really h-hurt!”
“I know.” He rocked her gently back and forth. “Real spankings do hurt. They wouldn’t be much of a deterrent if they didn’t.”
“I can’t do this.”
“Yes, you can. I know you can.” He pressed a kiss on her brow. “Do you know how I know?”
Kaylee shook her head.
“Because, baby.” He kissed the top of her head again, his hands stroking her hair and gently rubbing the small of her back. “At any moment, you could have used your safeword and you didn’t. You accepted your punishment the way good girls should. I’m very proud of you.”
Reaching back, Kaylee touched her bottom, holding it in her tender hands. She groaned and pressed her forehead to his shoulder, lost in the burning surge her own soft touch created. She had forgotten all about her safeword.
No, that wasn’t quite true. She hadn’t forgotten it. She just hadn’t thought to use it.
Why hadn’t she used it?
She sniffled, rubbing her bottom, then sniffled again. “May I please have a tissue?”
He patted her hip and, reluctantly, Kaylee made herself get up off his lap. She stumbled and Master Marshall quickly caught her arm. Her knees wobbled. Her legs felt boneless and just the act of standing made the heat and hurt spread outward. It flowed from her bottom up into her back and down into her thighs. As far from sexy as her spanking had been, for some reason, there was a low throb moving through her womb, growing there now too until she could feel the pulse echoing between her legs.
“Are you all right?” Master Marshall asked, brushing her hair back so he could better see her face.
Kaylee nodded, so exhausted now that it was the only answer she could give.
Holding her arm, he led her first to his desk, where he collected a modest handful of tissues which he gave her, and then to the Victorian settee. He took the pillows off the back, dropping all but one on the floor. The last, he placed at one end and patted. “Lie down, baby.”
“I’m not a baby.” She stared at the couch.
“Lie down anyway. Head on the pillow. Facing right here.” He tapped the back of the couch with two fingers. “Nose to the fabric. This is your corner, and if you come out before I say, I’m going to put you back over my knee. Is that clear?”
“I’m not tired,” Kaylee mumbled, crawling onto the sofa. “Why do I have to lie down in the corner?”
“Because I said so. Tummy down.”
“This is ridiculous.” She rolled from her side onto her stomach and hugged the pillow.
“Nose to the fabric.”
She cozied up to the back of the couch. “I don’t need a nap. I couldn’t sleep if I tried. My bottom hurts too much.”
“Eyes closed,” he replied with a smile and pulled a woven lap-blanket off the back of the settee to spread over her.
“But I’m not tired,” she whined, obediently closing her eyes.
Master Marshall ruffled her hair before he walked away, and just that fast, Kaylee was asleep.
CHAPTER SIX
A gentle hand caressed up and down Kaylee’s arm, coaxing her back to wakefulness. As she stirred, Master Marshall’s low voice joined it, soft and amused as he murmured, “Rise and shine.”
Ugh. Did she have to? Grumbling, she lifted her head to look at him, blinking repeatedly and trying to make sense first of where she was and then of why it was so dark. The sun had gone down. She was still in his office, but the window curtains were drawn and the only light came from the dying fire in the hearth and a portable lamp on the table at the foot of the settee.
Kaylee blinked again. “I fell asleep?”
“Baby,” he smiled and softly stroked her hair. “You slept the hell out of this couch. You also snore.”
Her surprise snapped instantly into disgruntlement. “I do not.”
“Don’t be offended. I thought it was cute. I had to cane a guest about an hour ago. I told her if she woke you, her six of the best was going to double. She took it like a trooper, barely made a sound and you never stirred.”
“An hour a…what time is it? How long have I been—” Rubbing her eyes, Kaylee pushed the lap blanket back to roll upright, but stopped with a gasp when her bottom met the settee cushion. “Oh!”
Master Marshall chuckled, his smile turning distinctly smug. “Are we a little tender?”
Grabbing the back of the couch, Kaylee crawled up on her knees. “Ow…oh wow!”
She touched he
r bottom, feeling out the sore spots. Only the faintest warmth separated the tender summits from less tender places, like the backs of her thighs. She started to rub again before suddenly realizing not only was she half-naked, but Master Marshall was watching her. The darkness of the room shadowed his features, but not so much that she couldn’t recognize hungry appreciation as his gaze followed her hands.
Her nipples tightened. Warmth, previously felt only in her tender bottom, shifted and pooled low down in her belly. She felt his wandering eyes like a physical caress and, suddenly self-conscious, tugged at her too-short school blouse in an attempt to pull it down far enough to cover her mons. It wasn’t long enough. Blushing furiously, she wrapped a corner of the blanket back across her lap.
Amusement curled his mouth. Funny, how that smile had a way of hypnotizing her. She almost didn’t realize he’d taken hold of the blanket. She caught at the folds of slipping cloth just before he pulled it away, and a glimmer of challenge mingled with his amusement. He said nothing, simply tipped his head to one side and stared at her. By gradual degrees, he increased his pull on the blanket until her hand began to tremble and her breath to catch in the back of her throat. She let go first and the blanket fell away, leaving her bare.
“Stand.” He climbed to his feet as well.
Picking at her fingers, not at all sure what to expect, Kaylee rose from the couch. She stood nervously, trying to hide behind her hands while he paced a slow circle around her. One pass was all he made, then he stopped and pointedly dropped his gaze to her hands. He never said a word; he just looked at her. But oh, what that look did to her insides. The peaks of her nipples began to throb, a pulse echoed as the flow of heat and blood centered between her legs and her clit began to swell. Her heart fluttered behind her ribs and she trembled. Her hands finally just…drifted apart, dropping down to hang limp at her sides while he looked his fill.
He rewarded her with another of those knee-buckling smiles. “Good girl. I have something for you.”
Walking back to his desk, he returned with a beautiful brocade gown. It was full-length, Victorian in style, the fabric so dark and red that it seemed almost black in the dim lamp light. Gold threads cut the darkness with elegant scrolling patterns.
