Teach Me

Did you say I’ve got a lot to learn?
Well babe, don’t think I’m trying not to learn
Since this is the perfect spot to learn
Go on, teach me tonight.

She needed to return to that space that set her flying. She was close, on the periphery of the haze and electrical numbness, was almost there. She felt herself slipping, her arms spreading wider and looser as if to embrace it.
 
He brought her back. He wanted to show her things that she would remember, and in that euphoria, only wisps of memory would remain.
 
So he changed the rhythm, made her stand, made her undeniably here instead of where she wanted to be. He asked questions that needed answers, told her to count the strokes of fire.

Starting with the ABC of it
Right down to the XYZ of it
Help me solve the mystery of it
Go on, teach me tonight.

“Does this,” he began, lightly flicking the cane against her upper thighs, “hurt more than this?” He asked, as he punted her cheeks with a half-swing.
 
“Yes,” she hissed. “The thighs are worse. Much worse.”
 
“Good. Stay with me,” he whispered as the cane met those thighs again, eliciting another deep breathed reaction.
 
“Stay with me.”

One thing isn’t very clear, my love
Should the teacher stand so near, my love?
Graduation’s almost here, my love
Teach me tonight.

She stayed for as long as she could, his hand covering the recent welts with an all-over burn. She was pushed to the left, to the right, forward. Her breasts battled against her arms; her hair stuck to her tears; her toes clung to the carpet.
 
He taught her how far she could go before she left.
 
Everything loosened. Her hands released the footboard. She drooped forward but never felt the mattress beneath her. Embraced by the float, his voice came to her as the ocean comes through a seashell — a soft rush, a gentle pressure.
 
He taught her what came before. She wrote what came after.

Song “Teach me tonight” written by Sammy Cahn.

D is for Discipline

 
Criss-crosses mark the fleshiest spots of my cheeks; in surprise, the lines turn from white to red.
 
I’m not crying because it hurts.
 
I stretch my arms in front of me and hold them there. I glare at my elbows and command them to stay strong, stay locked, as I await the next stroke. Each moment I wait is an opportunity to rebel; each moment I submit is a victory.
 
Within those moments, my mind travels to my past, present and future. I regret. I rejoice. I see my potential and I weep.
 
Pain is the easy way out. A tangible trigger, the release it brings is safer than weeping without cause. Each stroke of the cane touches deeper than the skin, ushering me through my mind’s corridor of guilt, memories and secrets.
 
Pain is a lie. I do not cry because of it.
 
I cry because he sees me, because I allow him to. Together we navigate the maze of static, disciplining the unruly self who otherwise denies the existence of darkness to arrive at the center.
 
There is light there.
 

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.”
 

Two Walls

The ticking of a clock. Footsteps on the carpet, barely distinguishable over my body’s survival hum. A bead of sweat from my forehead finds its way beneath the blindfold. I’m standing where he put me.
 
At the end of two walls there is a beginning.
 
A whispered command and I place my hands on the cool plaster. A swat lands on my inner thighs; I spread my legs. He tells me to breathe; I breathe. He tells me to stand still; I stop breathing. If he told me to cease being, would I? I think I might.
 
I brace myself against the walls. My toes grab the floor in preparation. I hardly register the first stroke of the paddle before there is a second, a third, a fourth, too many now to count.
 
The paddle drops to the carpet, a soft thud rather than the loud splat. He spins me around and holds me where I throb.
 
My hands are placed on his belt. His hands resume their territorial massage.
 
“Take it off,” he says in a growl thick with emotion. “Now,” he says, as I fumble. Working quickly, I convince my curious fingers to stay on task, no loitering.
 
Shh, shh, shh, the belt hushes me as it passes through the loops while his brother buckle laughs his tinny tune. I am shaking. I am shivering as I blindly hand the duo over.
 
He tells me to turn; I turn. I cannot see, but I can feel where the two walls meet and join at their edges. I feel that edge with my fingers as the belt drives me forward. I feel it between us — two walls merging into one.

Strangers with Candy

There was a knock on my door last night, around 9:00. I wasn’t expecting anyone, but was happy to see him standing there, a wide smile on his face. He held a brown paper bag and slung over his shoulder was his black duffel that I have grown to simultaneously love and dread.
 
He said he brought dessert, indicating the unmarked, paper bag.
 
Of course I let him in and greeted him in my usual way, on my knees, my lips placed reverently against his hand. He asked for a paring knife and said he had to prepare the dessert. By now I suspected what he had in mind. I’d been craving this dessert lately, and haven’t made any secret about it.
 
He told me to go to my room, strip, and wait for him.
 

I did as instructed and left him in the kitchen with the mysterious bag. As I waited with my hips over the pillows, I could hear him running water and whistling. I was there for a long time – 10 minutes or so, feeling exposed and apprehensive. The water would turn off, and I’d shudder in anticipation, only to be met with the sound of more running water and more of the same, happy tune pushed from his unworried lips. The man is meticulous, particularly when he knows that I’m waiting.
 
Finally, he entered the room.
 
He commended me on my positioning even as he began spanking my bottom, gently at first and then quite firmly. He asked if I knew what was for dessert. My shoulders indicated “maybe”. I could not say it out loud. From the bag, he confirmed my guess: peeled ginger, shaped like a crooked finger with a wide base.
 

Photo from Ms. Margaret Davis.

He asked if I was ready.
 
I was not.
 
My heart was racing and I had been enjoying the hand spanking. I said, “Yes, Sir”, anyway. He retrieved the soft restraints from under my bed and tethered my wrists to the head-board. He spread my cheeks and probed with his fingers first, which made me push back, eager for more.
 
Taking the place of his finger, I felt the cool ginger press against me. It was still wet from when he’d washed it. He slowly eased it in. I blinked…nothing. It didn’t burn at all. He wiggled it around while I took deep breaths, expecting to feel the infamous burn.
 
Then his hand, which can be just as painful as a paddle, went to work again, and I found myself involuntarily clenching against the root. It started to burn then. Slowly at first, but the burn gained momentum. By the time he pulled the cane out of his duffel bag, I was writhing against the pillows, wanting the root out but at the same time craving it deeper.
 

Photo from Figging.com.

Clenching is irresistible after each cane stroke. But each time I did, each time I moved at all, the burn was intense. I willed myself to relax around the root, but even then I couldn’t forget that it was there. By the 20th stroke, I was crying but begging him to fuck me.
 
I was desperation defined.
 
By the time he gingerly removed it, it had stopped its intense burn. Finally, we both took what we needed, he from behind and me still restrained over the disheveled pillows.
 

Sub, Conscious

I was surprised to find my panties damp at the end of this workday. No — more than damp — they were drenched. Am I so charged, always, that I must carry an extra pair of panties wherever I go?
 
Apparently my thoughts turn to the erotic so often, and with so little persuasion, that I hardly notice when they do.
 
Dangerous daydreams, and, at 5:05, my body is primed for action. I recalled the day’s activities, what was said, who did what, the looks that were exchanged.
 

Perhaps, when I called the CEO “Sir”, it triggered a memory of begging my own Sir during my most recent spanking. Please stop; don’t stop; I can’t take it; give me all you can, Sir.
 
I suppose it could have been the “Sir”, that small word of great significance in my life, that cranked my juices into overdrive.
 

Or, more than likely, it was the VP’s commanding tone on his conference call as he admonished an underling — calm, calculated, clipped, in control. His precise wording left no question who was bossing whom. I, an eavesdropper, paid attention from my own desk, feeling my back grow rigid as my fingers fumbled a pen over my forgotten task and a blush began at the base of my neck.
 
It was probably the VP who made my panties wet.
 

But then, I bent in the copy room to reach for a ream of paper. Bend…ream…my thoughts followed: me bent over the wooden horse, reaching toward the floor to anchor myself as he assaulted me from behind. Spank, thrust, spank, he pushed me until my hands were filled with carpet and my body filled with him.
 
I blame my soaked panties on copy paper.

How He Holds Me

 
He holds me with his arm wrapped around my back, his hand lightly gripping my waist as I cry.
 
“I can’t take it,” I manage between spanks and hiccups.
 
“You will,” he commands.
 
I do because there is magic in the way he holds me.
 

Even when I’m bound, I’m there willingly. I slip my hands through the ties, spread my legs and offer my ankles. I pull against my restraints, more from instinct than desire, feeling the futility of fighting in the bite against my skin. I crave that futility.
 
Resistance is a friction that lubricates my legs. Helplessness is a freedom that releases my strength.
 
It isn’t submission that holds me there. It is he who holds me — our bond, impenetrable; our rope, invisible.
 
Both arms cradle me. Our legs form a knot. Lub dub, his heart says to me. Thank you, I breathe back.
 

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.
 

Tears Into Moans

It happens between a trembled inhale and a gasped exhale. That quickly, I’ve changed my mind:
 
I want this.
 
No longer wishing to escape the bite of the cane, I begin to move with the rhythm of my sobs, trying to catch and hold the growing heat. My pillow grows wetter with tears; my thighs grow damper with need.
 

 
I rise onto my toes, getting closer. To the cane? To him? They are a pair. Like the sweet agony of a loose tooth, I wriggle and writhe with the pain, pushing harder against it.
 
I cannot stop these compulsive undulations, so I ride them.
 
I’d fuse my bottom to his hips now, if I could. The aching to become relief, the tears to become moans — I’d float with him as my anchor.

Up the Ladder

He paused with the paddle to thread his fingers in my hair and pull my head back.
 
“Do you remember your safe word?” He asked, his breath cool against my tears, his eyes evaluating my distress.
 
“Yes, Sir,” I answered. I wasn’t ready to break this spell. Despite teetering on the edge of my limits, I wanted him to push me further than he’d pushed before. “Please don’t make me say it.”
 
“I want to know that you can if you need to,” he whispered as he nipped my earlobe and pinched my nipple painfully. “I don’t want to take you that far, but this is new. I need to know that you can say it.”
 
His hand smacked my punished bottom before piling pillows onto the middle of the bed. I understood his intentions but waited for the command.
 
“Up.”
 
I knew what to do. I knew how he wanted me, but relished his authority as he guided me over the pillows and spread my thighs into the perfect position. He fixed my arms above my head with velcro restraints attached to the headboard.

“I want you to say your safe word. This is just practice,” he said.
 
I paused.
 
“Now,” he commanded, punctuating the order with a swing of the paddle.
 
“It’s ‘ladder’,” I mumbled into the bed sheets, wincing more from the shame of saying that word than from the paddle’s impact. It felt foolish speaking it out loud — a word chosen to signal the need for safety.
 
Surrender felt weak.
 
“Louder, so I can hear you. Try.”
 
“Ladder!” I nearly shouted it this time, out of frustration, the first time the word existed loudly between us.
 
It had all been theory before this.
 
“Good girl,” he said as he pet my back and assessed my burning cheeks. “We can continue.”