“It’s not a difficult question; just tell me what you think.”
“I...” Shaking my head like a wet dog’s, I tried to swallow against the lump in my throat, tried to clear the fog in my head.
“I don’t think it’s a bad thing...” I finally whispered, twisting my head to look up at him. My hair fell over the tape recorder and I realized I didn’t want a reward. I wanted to stay over his knees, I wanted him to do to me what a man like him did to a woman like me when she was laid out over his knees, arse high in the air.
I frowned, fingers curling against the carpet.
“But...” I whispered and then stopped. I couldn’t think of any good reason, nor did I have the words for anything else. His eyes met mine and I could feel him drawing lazy circles around my clit while he watched my face for what felt like a long time. Finally, he dragged his hand out from between my legs, wiped it on my panties and let his palm rest on my rear.
“I agree. It’s a very good thing. No need for the double negative at all.” He paused and I held my breath. “You are doing it again, aren’t you? Trying to figure out what you can say to get me to do what you want?”
There was no threat in his voice—I don’t think there ever was. He sounded tenderly amused if anything, but I colored crimson anyway.
“I...” Shaking my head, I could feel my arms shake a little from the effort of holding me up. “I don’t even know what I want...” I whispered and he petted my hair, gently curled it against his fingers until I sighed and visibly calmed.
“Try...” he finally reminded me. “Try to purge it from your mind. Try not to worry. You don’t have to figure it out right now. That’s the beauty of it. Just... relax. Here, start in your feet and your thighs, you can let go, I’m strong enough.”
I swallowed hard but there was nothing in his face that I mistrusted and the way I held myself and twisted my neck felt harsh and wrong. His instructions reminded me of a yoga class, but they were easy enough to follow. As I relaxed them, my feet and calves lifted off the ground and Paul petted my toes.
“There you go.” His voice was calming and almost instinctively, I drew a deeper breath. “Now your head and your arms, just let them hang. Here... put that under your forehead.”
He handed me my bunched up and smelly panties, but when they rested under my face, they softened the ground. All I could smell was my cunt and my world went dark and warm. I hung there, crimson-faced and waiting—trying not to wait.
“Now round your back. That’s it, good girl. And your ass... just let go, soft and relaxed.”
There was something wonderful in getting instructions. I’ve had a lot of time to come up with a reason why, but in the end, I think everybody knows the answer. For once, I didn’t have to worry whether I was doing something right or what my choices, be they ever so small, would lead to. I didn’t have to think all the time—I could just be. His hands were brushing over my ass and it felt good without all that tension.
“You really are such a beautifully fast learner, my dear,” he said after I had hung there for a while, breathing calmed and not reverting to fear or thought. My cunt contracted with those words and I sighed out my next breath.
I don’t know how successful I was in truly banishing any expectation, any guessing from my mind but I had to have managed it for a little while at least.
When the first smack hit my arse, I yelped in surprise, kicking into the open air. It went through my entire body, and before I could even attempt to reach a calm equilibrium, he hit me again in the same spot.
I yowled, coughed out a moan and I had to have tried to scurry off his lap at least while my body acted on autopilot. I can hardly remember that moment when fire exploded on my arse for the third time. The first had been shock, the second a sense of helplessness. The third had been real pain that made me tense up every single muscle fibre in my body so hard he had to hold me against his stomach to keep me from falling. Even as I was still trying to catch my breath, though, his hand brushed over the tender spot and he rubbed and kneaded it, spread the heat out in waves of something that I couldn’t rightly call pain anymore.
It was something else, something like fire. Like swallowing tequila without the orange juice, like the raw feeling of straining muscles against an exercise machine, harsh but oddly pleasant in its sting.
“Shhhh,” he whispered and I realized that I had been exhaling a keening moan for what felt like minutes. I had to breathe. And he kept massaging the fire away. “It’s okay. You’re good. How do you feel?”