Sarah and Stephen’s story began here
Sarah swirled the wine around in her glass thoughtfully as she recovered her senses. The wine itself was a comfort, not for the alcohol or simple pleasure of drinking, but simply that he had brought it as he had promised. She had stocked up as well, a frantic last-minute trip to the off-license just before he arrived. She smiled at the memory. How was it that she trusted this man enough to spank her, but had doubted his promise that he would bring a bottle of wine for the vanilla portion of the evening? Whatever the reason, her suspicion was unfounded and Stephen had proven himself quite capable in both respects.
“You’re just coming down now, aren’t you?” he marveled.
Sarah smiled and nodded, even as her soul still buzzed with the intensity of the earlier scene.
“Remarkable,” he commented. “You said you dropped heavily, but I didn’t know if that was just something you’d read. I knew you were inexperienced, and didn’t expect that you’d react this strongly.”
Sarah bowed her head, not sure how to respond to his statement. He lifted her chin up again, looking her in the eyes. “Do you know how beautiful you are?” he asked.
Sarah smiled shyly and couldn’t keep herself from curling against him at the praise. He held her softly as she continued to recover, aided by idle chatter and the smooth wine.
“Did you want to try the second scene?” he asked her.
Sarah nodded, eager despite the tender ache in her bottom.
“I think we’ll use the bedroom this time,” he said with a smile as he led her off, picking up a long suede flogger on the way.
He closed the door firmly, the crunch of the frame as the door closed for the first time in months a cracking reminder of the newness of this situation.
He turned to face her, a glint in his eyes.
“Kneel.” Sarah obeyed, lowering her gaze and opening her knees as she had seen those other women do.
He towered over her, his tone and posture changing, becoming more than just dominant, becoming her Master. He began scolding, berating perhaps, enforcing her position. Sarah kept herself still and calm, letting the words flow over her. She wanted to let him do this, to rejoice in adopting this role to play with him, knowing it was just a temporary thing. She struggled. The words were powerful, as words always were, and she knew she couldn’t keep them at bay for long.
She raised her eyes to His, frustration and longing on her face. “I don’t think this is working,” she said simply, ashamed of her inability to be what he wanted. Ashamed to need to end it so quickly.
“It’s alright,” he assured her, dropping the persona immediately, helping her up into a lingering hug before sitting her close to him on the bed. “It’s alright, we can try something else.”
“Thank you Sir,” Sarah breathed in relief. It truly was alright, he wasn’t disappointed or angry.
“OK, new scene. I am your disciplinarian, hired by your parents, who after hearing what happened at school have decided that you need regular discipline. This will be discipline, not punishment, so we’ll have a bit more flexibility. Does that work?”
“Yes, Sir,” Sarah replied, nodding eagerly.
“Wait outside the door for me then,” he instructed. “I’ll call you in when I’m ready to deal with you.”
Sarah smiled at the implication and bounced up, happy to begin again and anxious to see what he had in mind.
She closed the door behind her, waited a slow count of ten, and knocked.
“Enter.” Even muffled by the door, his command sounded excitingly menacing. She obeyed, and found herself before a stern man. She gazed at her shoes, hardly needing to feign the posture of contrition.
“You know why you are here?” he asked.
“To be disciplined.”
“To be disciplined, Sir,” he corrected.
“To be disciplined, Sir,” she hastily amended, fidgeting slightly with a delicious anxiety as he let the silence stretch.
“What’s going to happen to me?” she timidly asked, bracing for a rebuke for speaking out of turn.
“What do you think will happen?” Stephen asked her, his voice even and giving nothing away.
“I will be spanked,” Sarah replied, stating the obvious.
“Oh yes you will. That and much more. You parents are very dissatisfied with your behaviour. They’ve asked me to ensure that it improves, and I take my job very seriously. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Sir,” Sarah replied quietly.
“Very well. Lay on the edge of the bed. Face down.”
Sarah made her shaking limbs do as he asked, lowering herself tentatively into the requested position. She felt his hands on the backs of her thighs almost immediately, raising her skirt out of the way. Sarah couldn’t help but squirm a bit as she felt him lower her panties. He kept going and going, slowly sliding them off. She kicked her feet a bit, as if in doubt as to the absence of the garment. He secured her ankles in strong hands, twisting her to lay more fully along the bed and spreading her legs further apart than sense or modesty allowed. Sarah gasped, but kept her feet where he had left them. She grabbed a pillow tightly, knowing she would need the support.
She gasped at the first lash of the flogger. It was a truly unique sensation, one that took a long time to deliver and much longer to process. In her nervous state, she could almost feel the individual tails slapping into her, each a fraction of a second after the last. Each little swat built into a remarkable sting after only one stroke, which left her feeling a bit silly for underestimating the implement. It had seemed so harmless, soft and flexible, but the appearance had proven to be entirely deceiving after only one close encounter.
Sarah sucked in her breath as she waited for the next stroke, which wasn’t long in arriving. He started in at a brisk pace that left her no more time to catch her breath or thoughts until he finally paused several strokes later. Sarah used the break to bury her fingers deeper in her pillows, holding on as if she might be whisked away by the experience.
The flogger returned, but in a new way, a light dancing sensation as he stroked the tails down her legs. She’d heard these implements were often used in this way, something about mixing pleasure and pain. It was supposed to be erotic, enticing. She just felt uncomfortable. She tensed her legs against the ticking sensation, waiting for the harsher lashes to return.
She had been correct in that much at least, and was assured as such by another prolonged slapping sound followed immediately by renewed pain. The pain was easier to take than the ticking, though not by much. On top of the strapping she’d received earlier, she was reaching the end of her endurance. She felt herself starting to struggle, wriggling involuntarily even as she tried to lay still for him. She began to cry out with the strokes, adding her own voice to that of the flogger.
He stopped again, resuming the tickling that drove her mad in all the wrong ways. It was a mercifully short break though, and the harsher strokes began again perhaps before she wished they would. The pain built quickly now, but she did not feel herself losing touch, giving over to it as she had done before.
“Banana!” she squeezed out, and almost immediately regretted it. The use of a the safeword brought with it a wave of shame that she had to do so that bit more harshly than the lash ever could. This was closely followed by more shame at her own feelings, she was supposed to see this as a positive thing, a measure of self-knowledge of her own limits, not berate herself for not being able to take what he could dish out. All of this was mercifully squashed quite literally when he laid himself on top of her, his steady weight smoothing out her trembling
“It’s ok, it’s over,” he assured her over and over until she calmed. When she stopped shaking he rolled off of her, turning her to face him as he brushed the tears from her eyes, tears that she could not remember shedding. “It’s over,” he told her again, “it was too much for tonight, wasn’t it?”
Sarah nodded, finding her voice before replying. “I think so. I didn’t want it to be, I wanted to keep going. I think I asked for too much before, I didn’t have much left for the second go.” She apologised.
“It’s alright,” he assured her yet again. “Besides, it’s late. We should get some sleep. I can leave you in peace now,” he smiled at her.
She hugged him more tightly. “You don’t have to,” she began tentatively. “You can sleep here if you like. Only if you want to.”
She felt him kiss the top of her head. “Nothing would please me more,” he replied before quickly shucking his clothing, stripping back the blankets, turning out the light and climbing into the bed beside her. He held her close as they calmed, getting used to the other’s presence in the intimate space with soft caresses.
He kissed her in the darkness, soft and sweet. Sarah returned it, trying to see what it was that people saw in this sort of thing, trying not to feel awkward. His kisses became more insistent, his tongue probing at her lips and his breathing hastening.
“Banana,” she said as she pushed him gently away, breaking the kiss but still holding him in a hug.
He broke the kiss and returned the hug, stroking her cheek gently for a moment before kissing her again. As before, it began chastely, manageably. Sarah tried again to enjoy the experience, but felt other feelings churning within her, feelings completely unwarranted by the loving gesture. She just about managed to reign in the odd emotions when his tongue began probing gently again.
“Banana on the tongue,” Sarah stated again firmly as she pulled away, unable to resist the revulsion that welled up inexplicably inside her.
“What does that mean?” he murmured back at her as he leaned over her again.
“Banana. . . banana, banana, banana!” Sarah cried over and over until it turned into a panicked wailing sob.
“It’s alright,” she heard him assure her yet again, his voice calm and steady but with a twinge of alarm. “Nothing is happening, you’re alright.”
“Banana, banana, banana,” Sarah wailed on as she twisted out of his embrace to flick on the light, cowering in the far corner of the bed. He sat up to face her, and for a moment neither said anything as fear and confusion reigned.
“What was that about?” he asked.
“I used the safeword,” Sarah’s voice trembled with the rest of her as she spoke. “I used the safeword and you didn’t stop.
“I would never do that,” he insisted. “It must have been a dream.”
Sarah gaped at him. After all they had been through that night, after all his warmth and tenderness and understanding, how could he suddenly sink to such levels of manipulation? She knew it had happened, could still taste him on her lips, feel the tiny scratches on her cheeks. It had happened and it hadn’t stopped. Her gape became a glare, a confrontation, a dare to admit the truth or to leave.
His expression remained as confused and concerned as always. She had been warned of this, Murphy had warned her only last month. The manipulation, the harassment, the assault that was ugliest when it was made to seem that it was her fault, or that it was nothing at all.
She tried to see the evil in him as she had been told to do in such instances. She narrowed her eyes and searched his, but could only see care and concern. She tried to think back over the evening, over the last week, looking desperately for signs that he wasn’t what he had seemed, that there was something sinister in him.
“Will you come back to bed,” he suggested, softly as though in fear she may flit away.
Sarah considered doing so. Leaving. There were the guards just a quick jog away. There was a hotel down the road where she had friends. Friends who wouldn’t ask questions.
There was a man in her bed who gave every appearance of caring, and had done nothing more sinister than kiss her.
“Come back to bed,” he offered again, “It’s alright.”
She stared at him again, struggling to reconcile what had happened with what she knew of him- so little, but yet so much as well. Try as she might, she could not find reason to flee, she could not see him as evil. Perhaps it was merely the hour, or the wine, or everything else that had come before. Perhaps he truly was right and she had imagined it. She laid down cautiously, tensely, ready to jump up and run at the slightest provocation.
He gave her none. He laid beside her, barely touching, as she tried to relax. She wished for sleep to come, but was kept awake by the nagging feeling that she was either losing her mind or perhaps her life, her soul, to the stranger next to her.
And still he gave her no further cause for alarm. She felt his breath, soft, warm, and steady in her ear. Perhaps she was truly being silly. She turned away from him but snuggled closer as she yielded to sleep.
***
Morning came early. The sun rose much earlier than Sarah was used to, having spent most of her life at lower latitudes. The sun streaming in the eastern window over the bed.
“Good morning,” she heard his voice from behind her. She rolled over to see him smiling warmly, and tried to banish the horrors of their last moments the previous night.
“Are you alright?” he asked again.
Sarah nodded, uncertain at first, but as she could still not find any trace of manipulation in his expression in the morning light, her nod became less tentative.
“What happened last night? What made you so afraid?”
Sarah bristled at the insistence that it was something she had done. Was this the sign she was looking for?
“You were kissing me. I was uncomfortable. I used the safeword and you didn’t stop.” She spoke the words emotionlessly, flatly, testing the waters and sticking to facts.
“It was the kissing?” He propped himself up on his elbow to examine her squarely. “That was why you safeworded?”
Sarah had never felt such a powerful mixture of relief and embarrassment as she did at his look of sudden apprehension.
Murphy’s other warning echoed unbidden through her mind, “Mixed signals. . . you embody them.”
“Yes,” Sarah replied, feeling ashamed of her earlier panic. “I’ve never liked kissing. A bit now and then is fine, but sometimes it gets to be too much.”
“I’m sorry,” He replied, touching her gently. “I had no idea.”
“Not your fault,” Sarah assured him, still feeling silly. “I should have said something.”
“Yes, you should,” he agreed. It could have been a scolding, Sarah realised, but he was gracious enough to not take her to task over the misunderstanding. He was being gentle with her, satisfied that she had suffered enough. She had learned what she needed from the incident and the lesson did not require reinforcement. She hugged into him, grateful for his acceptance of the mistake and his willingness to move on. And more grateful than anything that her late-night fears as to his nature were unfounded.
“Would you like to be spanked this morning?” he asked her.
Sarah felt the “yes” bubble up in her chest, but bit down on it. She glanced at the clock and back at Him, wishing they had more time. “I don’t think so,” she said with regret. Turning down a spanking felt very wrong after going so long without. Still, she knew it was the right decision, last night had been more than enough for now. “I don’t think I’d recover in time for work.”
“That’s all right,” he said softly, running his fingers over her shoulders and kissing her chastely on the forehead. “Would you care for coffee instead?”
Sarah nodded eagerly and moved to get up, but he pushed her back into the bed firmly. “I’ll get it, wait here.”
Sarah smiled and complied. It was truly luxurious to be served like this, though she couldn’t help but worry about whether he could find what he needed as she listened to the clanging and clattering coming from her kitchen.
He must have managed, as he returned shortly with two steaming mugs. Sarah grinned broadly and propped herself up to receive the mug, scalding her tongue as she took an eager sip. She grimaced against the pain and her own stupidity that had caused it; she knew she had no tolerance for heat, she knew he was something of a sadist, and Irish on top of that. She should have known better than to try to gulp down any hot beverage he gave her.
She set the mug on the windowsill to cool and snuggled in next to him as he joined her with his own cup. He draped an arm around her, welcoming her presence into his morning as they slowly awoke.
“I would like to choose your clothing today,” he asked her. “If you would be ok with that.”
Sarah took a calming breath, trying not to panic at the request. It was a very intimate thing, and her first thoughts were of walking to her desk in something entirely inappropriate or out of character. She wanted to let him, but couldn’t shake the nagging fear that his choice would somehow be wrong for her.
“You can select the options,” he assured her, sensing her hesitation.
“Yes,” Sarah agreed tentatively, then making her mind up to the proposal, “yes, that will work.” She relaxed into him again, relieved anew that he was willing to adapt, to be gentle and slow with her.
She would have loved to stay there with him, allowing the morning to gently unfold as they rested together until they needed to get dressed to face the day. She shifted slightly, scissoring her chilled feet to gather the blankets and warm them.
With a clatter-splash and burning sensation, her coffee toppled from its perch, warming her feet far more quickly than she would have liked and sending the two of them into cleanup mode as towels were located and sodden bedding removed.
When the last of the spillage was mopped up, Sarah glanced ruefully at the clock which confirmed her suspicions; it was too late to try to recapture the peace of the morning if she were to get to the office on time.
And so the flurry of hurried morning routines began, with the both of them rounding up belongings, scrubbing themselves clean, and assembling outfits for the day. Sarah didn’t have time to think much on it this morning, but it later occurred to her how remarkable it was that she felt comfortable enough around him that her typical morning ritual hadn’t changed much. The semi-nude scamper between the bedroom and bathroom felt no more exposed than it did when she was on her own. In ways it was almost easier. She had shown him the drawers and shelves on which she kept her work clothes, and an outfit was waiting on the bed when she had finished brushing her teeth.
“These will be your panties for today,” he proclaimed in the middle of the chaos, holding aloft a strikingly purple garment before adding it to the pile of clothing with a flourish.
Sarah smiled shyly and put them on, thinking it something of a silly request but something she could easily indulge; on one level it was no different than her typical hurried and blind grab in the drawer. Little did she know that as the day went on, the garment would become something of a talisman to remind her of Him and to keep the loneliness at bay.
To be continued
Acknowledging Imperfection 