Twenty-five Minutes

We will have thirty minutes, if he doesn’t mess my hair or make me cry. So twenty-five minutes would be safe.
 
Being a good girl scout with an eye on the clock, I choose an easy access dress. This is met with some internal debating, as the impractical part of me would prefer the slow motion wriggling out of skin-tight jeans.
 
To compensate, I add a garter and stockings.
 

I throw on a pair of heels, powder my face, dab lotion in my cleavage, and gloss my lips.
 
I’ll save the mascara for afterward.
 
To further expedite the affair of getting spanked, I lay out all of the implements on the bed (except for that one, which can die a horrible death by fire). Valuable seconds will not be lost in retrieval; another internal battle is waged over this sacrifice.
 
I enjoy walking around with my panties at half-mast as I fetch the paddle tawse.
 

No time for frivolity. This is serious business. We have twenty-five minutes, twenty-two if we talk first. We’re going to talk first.
 
We have twenty-two minutes.
 
But after dinner, we have all night.
 

The Weight

It starts at my shoulders, with tension. It grows, spreading its fingers up my neck and into my jaw, down my spine to sit at my lower back. It’s worry; it’s anger. It’s heavy and becoming harder to carry alone, yet impossible to let go.
 

I begin by whispering into the phone, “I have a confession.”
 
There is a pause, and he makes me fill it.
 
“I have not done anything,” I insist. “But…I need…”
 
Of all of the times I’ve wished for silence, this is not one of them. Yet, it persists. I feel the anger rise — I cannot play this game. He knows what I need, knows how hard it is for me to admit it when my jaw is locked this tightly.
 
“Forget it,” I hiss, feeling immediate regret. “Never mind,” I mumble, wishing I’d never picked up the phone. I stay on the line, hoping.
 
“I know what you need,” he finally admits. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
 

It is not so simple as a spanking. The mechanics of a spanking are not what will deliver relief. Anyone can lift his hand and let it drop on an upturned target. Just as I can bring myself pleasure, I could equally bring myself pain — alone, in my bedroom, with no one to witness it.
 
I do not want to be alone. I need someone to share in the weight of me. I need a witness, a confessor.
 
He does not come immediately. He cannot. But he comes for me, just as he said he would. His eyes are soft but his words bite. I am stung and ashamed and quiet and grateful.
 

This time he unbuttons my pants. He folds them down to my thighs before pulling me to him.
 
“Is this what you need?” He asks.
 
I grab his ankle and squeeze.
 
“Yes.”
 

While the Going is Good

We think we have all night, that there are limitless opportunities for us and what we do. Nights have a way of being interrupted. Plans forgotten, our other lives take precedent.
 
When I sit next to you, can you smell my desperation? It is all I can think of, how pitifully desperate I am, that I must reek of it. My knees bounce; my fingers twist; my stomach toils in frustration. I obsess on what we could be doing, but are not.
 
Don’t clear the dining table. Forget the dishes in the sink. They will still be there in the morning, after I’ve gone. You’ll see them and remember what we chose to do instead.
 

Touch me, spank me, hold me, inhale me while the going is good. I want to feel you now.
 
Now, now — as in, there is no better moment than now.
 
NOW, as in, my body can’t stop humming until you take me, now. I am panicking inside because we’re running out of time, now. Why are we pretending there is anything more important than us, now?
 
We are all that is important and the going gets no better than this.

Down They Go

I am a woman in control of her destiny. I am decisive. Like a chess player, I map out possible outcomes, anticipating others’ motives, and settle on the best plan of action.
 
It is a small thing, then, to be in charge of my pants.
 
They come down multiple times during the day, as needed, no planning required. I can even do it quickly, in the heat of the moment, with one hand on my button and another on his.
 
When I undress for lovemaking, my eyes are on him, provocatively, my own private strip-tease. Or it happens in a rush, my pants treated as obstacles to the end goal.
 

 
When I undress for a spanking, I hold my breath, stare at the floor, wish to cover every bit that is revealed. I must remind myself: first the button, then the zipper, push them down, breathe. My hands shake.
 
I want both — the lovemaking and the spanking — so why do I react so differently?
 
It is his focus. When I push my pants down at his command, I can feel his eyes plotting their strategy. Every inch of flesh is a potential Achilles Heel; where there is white, he imagines a striped blush.
 
It is in my own strategy, which is no strategy at all. I am present, but must only do what he says. Come here. Over my knee. Hands in front. Stop kicking.
 
I have no offense, no defense, no plan. There is no “if A, then B,” but only “A”. This is going to happen. I do not have the map; I cannot change the course although the outcome is certain.
 

Asking

It was his frightfully solicitous tone — for a man typically so blunt — that told me my doom was now rather than later.
 
I poured fresh beer and returned to the kitchen where I loudly dropped the bottle opener in the drawer, which I then promptly slammed. When he appeared at my side and asked if there was anything he could do to help, I knew what was really being offered. It didn’t have anything to do with preparing dinner, a task I resentfully completed after rudely refusing his assistance.
 
The only help I needed was a spanking, but I wasn’t ready to admit it yet.
 
In truth, everything I did that day was tinged with resentment. Hating my tone, my body language, I couldn’t stop them. I was possessed by anger. I blamed it on hormones, stress, anything to shift the accountability.
 
With resignation, I cleaned up the dinner plates, rejoined him in the living room and asked him to please pause the movie — forcing myself to finally be polite. I took his hand and asked him to join me in the bedroom, closing the door behind us.

 
“I have been rude and grumpy,” I acknowledged in a stammer. “Could you please…spank me?”
 
“Oh, absolutely,” he said, his demeanor instantly shifting from the solicitous stranger to the Dom I knew. This was familiar ground, a certainty that soothed my resentment.
 
“Pants off and over the end of the bed,” he ordered as he placed pillows over the foot board. “Your behavior this weekend has been…well, it’s been pretty awful, hasn’t it?”
 
“Yes, Sir. I’m sorry,” I answered, already hearing the tears in my voice. I bent over the pillows with my hands clasped before me, as if in prayer.
 
With the removal of his belt, instincts told me that there would be little benefit of a warm-up. My instincts rarely fail me.

 
I may have asked for this, but what happened after was completely up to him. I accepted his hand, briefly, and then his belt. I accepted the strap. Finally, yes, I accepted the cane. It was hard and fast, punishing and cleansing. Despite my difficulty in maintaining position, it was all that we needed it to be.
 
My regret deepened with the color of my bottom. Every horrid comment, petulant shrug of my shoulders, stomp and huff were accounted for; each thwap and groan echoed in the room like forgiveness until there were no hard feelings left, no anger.
 
It was just us — the way we are, the way we should be.

He Was Missing

“The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”
 
-Jalal ad-Din Rumi
 
Your hands did not hold my hair as I heaved my heartbroken vodka into the bushes; your words were not whispered into my ear as I wilted on my wet pillow. It was not your departure that sedated me; nor was it your steady beat against my cheeks that reawakened me.
 
You were not there for my graduation or my wedding. Your name was not on my lips at passion’s first dawning. Someone else’s hips introduced me to the rhythm of thrusting.
 
I did not know your name, but I knew you.
 
You were the man I folded into when my dreams enveloped me. Feeling the impostor’s thighs against me, they were your thighs. His arms were your arms; his lips pressed against my neck were your lips.
 
When I asked for my first spanking, I thought of you and how you would do it. When I coached him to spank me harder and longer, I knew you would already understand it.
 
A year ago you came to me, wearing the lips I knew — but didn’t — and the thighs I recognized — but couldn’t. You finally kissed me and it was real. You finally spanked me and I was changed.
 
It was you, all along. It is you.
 
Happy Birthday, baby.

The Good Doctor

He tipped the Nyquil down my throat, tucked me in and left me with a sweet lullaby.
 
“Rest. When I get back, I will be paddling you,” he said, pressing his lips to my clammy forehead.
 
“Mmmm,” I murmured, still sleepy from the sickness that had overtaken me for the past few weeks. “Yes, I think I need that.”

“This isn’t about what you need. This is about me. And I need to paddle your butt ’til it’s glowing. Understood?”
 
“Yes, Sir. See you when you get back,” I whispered, smiling as I snuggled into his comforter.
 
I woke to the dim light settling in the bedroom, heard the garage door closing, and counted the beats it would take him to come to the room. Fifteen. Fifteen seconds and he was standing over me, his lips quirking at the corners as he surveyed my tangle of limbs and wild hair.

I think I wanted him to spank me.
 
Then there were the butterflies — those old, familiar friends that never fly far from us. My tummy curled into knots as I remembered his promise, given hours ago.
 
Instead of steering me over his lap, he slipped into the master bath and reappeared, discussing the steaks he was going to grill for dinner.
 
“You need some good protein,” he said.

Uncharacteristically shy, I sat up in bed, twisting my lips, contemplating what would come next.
 
“Um…but what do you need?” I asked, my voice sounding youthful and foreign, uncertain.
 
He paused on the threshold of the bedroom and turned, all business. “I need to start the grill…
 
“And when I get back, I need your pants to be off. You’re going to be spanked.”

Moments later I was over his lap, proving that even girls with Pneumonia have loud voices. And the steaks? We both take ours medium rare, bright pink in the center.