The Guessing Game

The door closes behind me with a thud. Barely conscious of the interruption I do not turn. "Marie." One word. Something in the tone pierces my concentration and my fingers freeze on the keyboard. I turn and look.

My husband is standing there, behind me, in his typical Saturday work clothes: faded jeans and a flannel shirt. The sleeves of the shirt are rolled up, over his tanned, brawny forearms, to his elbow. There is grit on his clothes; he's been working outside, probably under the car. He has a peeled switch in his hand.

I freeze. A painful wave rocks through my stomach and down my arms. Involuntarily, my tongue comes out and licks lips that have suddenly gone dry. Watching his still face, I utter the words that every spanked wife has said at least once: "What did I do?" I wish I could keep the fear out of my voice, but I fail.

He takes two steps towards my desk and pulls the chair away from it. The little wheels squeak a protest but still slide all too easily. His hand closes around my upper arm and he drags me up out of the chair.

"Come on."

"Wait," I gasp, desperate.

"What?" The disgust is heavy in his voice and I know that whatever it is, he's very very mad.

"My... chapter. I have to save it."

He drops my arm. "Do it."

Command-Q to quit, save changes before quitting?, yes, the hard drive whirs, it's done. Within seconds, his hard fingers are again circling my shoulder. "Come on."

"Why? Where?" My voice cracks a little.

"You and I are going to have a little talk."

We're in the hall now, and he's pulling me up the stairs. "About what?" My mind has begun to spin frantically over the past week or so, trying to remember something both heinous enough to merit this that he also could have found out about. The middle of the day, a switch... He was not fooling around. Whatever I had done, it was bad. "What did I do?"

We're at the top of the stairs. "That, my girl, is for me to know...," he pushes open the door of our bedroom, "...and for you to find out." The door slams behind me.

I'm shaking now. I can't help it. Most serious spankings I have to wait for. The misbehavior is discovered, the spanking announced in a firm, but quiet voice, and I wait. Usually for hours, until the night is still and quiet and our children are asleep.

The waiting has a horror all of its own. You just can't help yourself: your hand goes back to your bottom every time you think of it, because you know that skin that is smooth and white and just a little cool to the touch, will soon be rough and red and very, very hot. Every time you look at your husband you remember that no matter how nice and cheerful he's being, he has decided, and nothing short of an earthquake will stop him from baring your bottom, turning you over his knee, and spanking you until you wail.

But the waiting also has an advantage. You can prepare, after a fashion, come to grips with what is going to happen. But this, what was happening to me right now, was worse in a way.

It's a beautiful day, sunny and warm. He'd brought me Saturday morning coffee in bed and taken the whole family out to brunch at our favorite restaurant. We have a dinner party to attend tonight and are responsible for bringing a dessert. We'd planned a special one together, and he'd even offered to help me make it. There is no room on this special day for a "real" spanking.

Of course, we have "quickie" spankings. A fresh comment, a swear word, no kids around, and the pants are down and I'm bent forward under his arm or over a table or sofa arm with my bare bottom high for eight or ten hard hand swats before I can even draw breath. But these "quickies" are so much a part of my life that I can't even count them. They are much different from what he's clearly got planned for me now.
"John, please." I try to hold my voice steady and calm, like the rational mature adult I am. "There's got to be some mistake."

He drops my arm and walks over to the wall. A straight-backed dining room chair sits there. Its upholstery doesn't match the other furniture in our bedroom and it doesn't match the dining room set downstairs. I've often wondered if anyone else has noticed it and found its presence odd. He pulls it away from the wall and sets it in the middle of the room. "There's no mistake." He laughs a short, hard cruel laugh. "None whatsoever. Get your ass over here."

"John...," I wail. My stomach is clenching so hard I feel as though I might be sick. I eye the door frantically. I've never run from a spanking before, but I am tempted. Although what the point could possibly be, I can't imagine. He would catch me, probably before I made it down the stairs, and he would just be all the more angry.

He sits himself squarely in the chair. He is tall, well over six feet, with long legs and broad, muscular thighs. I know what it feels like to be over those thighs. A lap is supposed to be a comforting place, but anyone who thinks that has never been spanked by my husband. To be thrown over those legs feels like lying on logs. "Get over here. I don't want to say it again."

Swallowing hard, I move towards him. I'm short; as I reach the chair, with him seated, I am still barely above his eye level. I try one more time. "What did I do?"

"You are going to tell me."

"What?" I realize I am sounding a little shrill, but I can't help it.

His hands reach for me. "Just what I said. You're going to tell me what you did."

I feel real panic now. "But I don't know..." He's pulling down my cotton shorts. Underneath the shorts, my bottom is bare. These loose shorts, easy to remove, are a concession to my husband's disciplinary preferences. Years ago he had decided that he disliked having to get tight jeans out of the way when I needed a spanking, particularly for the "quickies." An "at-home" uniform was decreed. In the winter, cotton sweatpants with an elastic waist, in the summer, cotton shorts, again with an elastic waist, or a sun dress. Never, under any circumstances, at home, are panties permitted. Every day, as the soft, loose cotton brushes my bare skin when I dress or undress, the "uniform" reminds me that a spanking could happen.

His big hands tug. The wide elastic band in the shorts pulls over my round bottom with ease. The smooth fabric brushes my skin. Within seconds, I am standing in front of him with my backside bare, with the shorts bunching around my knees. He can see my pussy. He's been my husband for fifteen years, I've given birth to four of his children, yet I am so ashamed that I want to put my hand down to cover myself.

I have learned through the years to lie over his lap and accept my "regular" spankings. He is very strict, and I get a regular spanking once a week, at least, for outright defiance, a bad attitude, or not doing something I promised him I would do. Oh, these spankings hurt, no doubt about it. His hand, or a ruler, or an oven shovel cracks into my bottom with a steady vigor I detest. But I've learned mostly to accept it, to keep my hands out of the way as much as possible, to relax my bottom against the sting.

But every couple of months, something serious enough to require a greater response occurs, and so we also have "punishment" spankings. Spankings hard enough to make me fight, to make me scream, to make me sob. While during regular spankings a combination of misbehaviors might be "discussed," punishment spankings will inevitably focus on one specific, serious episode of disobedience. This was going to be a punishment spanking. There had been no doubt of that from the moment I saw that he had cut a switch from our hickory tree, and peeled it carefully...

"Please tell me." I feel the tears begin to well in my eyes. "This is so cruel."

"Bend over."

"John..."

"I swear to God, Marie..." His huge hand reaches up and grabs the back of my neck. Within seconds, I am forced across his slightly spread thighs, into the position he wants me in, face practically on the floor, bottom so high, legs waving off into space.

"What about the kids?" I ask the floor, now desperate for any delay.

"I gave `em each two dollars and sent them to the store. I told them to pick out some candy," he pauses diabolically, "and a video."

My heart sinks. A video. The last nail in the coffin has just been driven. All hope of reprieve is gone. We live in the country, but it's only a half mile walk through a pasture to a small country store. Trips to the store are a forbidden treat, as we feared an unlimited supply of candy would soon cause our dental bills to skyrocket. Two dollars each, times four children, was the whopping sum of eight dollars. That would buy a lot of candy and the promised video, and, knowing my children, finding a video that all four would agree on would be a time-consuming task. They could easily be gone, I calculate quickly, forty-five minutes to an hour.

"So," he leans his forearm into my back to hold me still, "are you ready to play a little guessing game?"

"Please, John, please, John, please, John..." I know it's coming, and it does: the first, sharp flick full against the crown of one cheek. I jump and squeal as a line of fire burns. I know that most people don't think you can use a switch effectively when the victim is over your knee, but somehow John manages just fine.

"Any ideas?" Another snapping slice falls, a mate to the first, crowning the top of the other cheek.
I'm gasping already. The sting of this smooth little switch is unbelievable and he really knows how to use it. A line of fire burns, then recedes, then burns up to a streak of pure pain. He's timing the blows perfectly. Suddenly, I realize what it has to be: the speeding ticket. Somehow he's found out about the speeding ticket. How, I can't imagine, but...

Another vicious slice falls, this time against my right thigh. "OK, OK," I screech. "The ticket, it's got to be the ticket. I'm sorry, so sorry. I should have told you..."

He rests the switch squarely over the crack, low down on my bottom. It feels so thin and light I can barely sense that it is there. Who would ever think it could inflict such pain? Finally, his voice comes, a soft purr. "Ticket, huh? What kind of ticket?"

Fuck. It's the only word that comes to mind. It wasn't the ticket. For one second, the sick sensation in my stomach surpasses the rising and receding sting from my bottom. He didn't know. And now he does.
The switch hisses and catches the undercurve of my right cheek, right where my bottom meets my thigh. I scream. "What kind of ticket?"

"Speeding, speeding," I howl.

"How," another solid cut, "fast?" Yet another causes me to buck against his thighs.

"Sixty," I gasp out.

He pauses, clearly trying to figure the implications. "Surely not sixty over." He punctuates the question with a sharp flick for each of the four words. He has accelerated now, so that I am still in the throes of the previous lick when the next one falls.

"No, no, God no..." I wail. "Fifteen over. It was a forty-five zone. Only fifteen. Please, it was only fifteen."
He rests the switch against my burning cheeks. I would like to wriggle away from it but I know better. "So fifteen over was how much of a fine?"

Forty dollars."

"Plus court costs?" Now he's rubbing my burning cheeks with his hand.

"No, no court costs. I just paid it."

"OK." He pauses, considering. "That's going to be quite a paddling." His voice is nauseatingly matter-of-fact.

"Going to be? Going to be?" It's too much to comprehend.

My voice is getting a little hysterical. "Settle down." He makes the request with a really hard slice that falls squarely over the crest of my bottom. I jump, but with great effort, keep my mouth shut. "Yes, going to be. You know the rule: one smack for every dollar... and since the insurance will go up, well, we'll just have to see. But I can't do it now, because my pet," I can feel him shift, getting a better grip on my waist, and then, abruptly, the switch whistles and falls in a fiery flurry, again one for each word of the sentence, "this spanking is about something totally different."

"What?" I gasp out. Reality is sinking in. Everything that I am getting now is just some sort of "warm-up." The "real" punishment for whatever it is I'd done won't even begin until I guess correctly. "John, please," I beg, "I truly don't know."

"Well," he shifts again, and I wobble around on his knees, my face still inches from the oriental carpet, "you're just going to have to remember. I wonder," he continues in a conversational tone, "if increasing the blood supply to the bottom decreases the blood supply to the brain." He starts switching me again. "Sure hope not."

His muscular arm rises and falls steadily. I screech through a few more biting snaps of that wretched switch. Half of my mind is saying desperate prayers that it will break, for then I will get a respite, but I know that if it does break, I will be out in the yard, bare-bottomed, cutting another one, so... Hardly much of a choice

Through the searing pain, I frantically try to keep my mind running on what could possibly have caused... Then I remember: the bounced checks. Could it be...? One of John's cardinal rules of financial management is that bounced checks are an absolute no-no. And I'd entered a deposit twice a couple of weeks back and bounced three checks. But how could he have found out? It wasn't a joint account, I'd destroyed all the notices that had come... There is no way...

My experience with the ticket makes me wary, and I press my mouth tight to keep myself from blurting out yet another secret that all my instincts tell me he doesn't know, but it has to be something and... The hissing switch continues slicing into my bottom and thighs with a slow, steady cadence that is keeping me howling and squirming even while my mind is scrambling. Trying to consider the angles is impossible. I give up. "The checks," I wail out, now frantic to have the pain stop, if even for a few seconds. The sting, cold and hot at once, is elevating to a near excruciating level. "I'm sorry. I really am."
He pauses for a few seconds. "So the truth comes out," he mutters quietly.

"That was it?" I gasp out desperately.

"No." The switch finds my thigh. "But tell me about it anyway. How many checks?"

Fuck!" I screech, out loud this time, furious in spite of the pain. I start fighting for real, now, pushing back against his legs. "You bastard, you prick..."

He lifts his arm high and flicks the switch into my bottom very hard. "And bad language on top of it. What a naughty little girl you've become, Marie. Have I been neglecting you?"

"No, no," I howl, immediately regretting my lapse into obscenity. Only an idiot would make him madder, considering my current position. "I'm sorry, sir."

"Noted," he licks me again, "but not forgotten." Another whistling slice. "Now let's talk about these checks. How," SNAP! "many?" SNAP!

"Three," I sob out, feeling the tears begin to well out of my eyes. The pain is now so bad, so throbbing that I feel like I'm going to die. Although most of the whippy little cuts had fallen across my bottom, he'd directed enough smacks to my thighs that he had been working with a large spanking area. I'm one ball of searing pain from the top of my cheeks to the middle of my thighs...

"At fifteen a shot?"

"Yes," I shriek, devastated. This is deteriorating from unbelievably awful to the single most terrible experience of my life. The pain in my butt is beyond words. I've now confessed two added misbehaviors, both of which, I know perfectly well, will be earning me additional, or as he always liked to term them, "follow-up" spankings, and I still haven't figured out what he was so angry about in the first place. What had happened to my beautiful Saturday afternoon?

He sighs heavily. "You are one bad girl, Marie. I think we should have these confession sessions more often. Christ only knows what I'll find out about."

I am now sobbing desperately, my shoulders heaving, and even though I can't see him, I can sense a change in his attitude. He sighs again and, incredibly, the pressure on my back releases as he lifts his arm. He rolls me onto his lap, and I moan as my bottom which feels raw, rubs against the denim of his jeans. "Are we done?" I plead.

He pets my hair. "No." Although his action is tender, his voice is flat. "But we're going to take a little break." He pushes me off his lap gently. "Come on. Into the corner with you." He encourages me with a flicking little swat against my burning skin, his big warm palm just cupping my round searing cheek.

I dance away, awkwardly clutching my loose shorts with one hand, rubbing frantically with the other.
"Come on, Marie. You know the rules. In the corner, and get your hand off that ass."

Sniffing pathetically, I stand in my corner, my head leaning down. I do know the routine: I drop the shorts completely and hold my T-shirt up, submissively exposing my bottom. The shorts puddle untidily around my ankles and bare feet. I know what a sight I must make, my bottom and thighs striped scarlet, a startling contrast to the white of my back and legs, my T-shirt held high, but at this moment, I cannot care. Although the pain is a throbbing sting that intensifies with every beat of my heart, it's much better than having it still stoked by the relentless bite of the switch.

"So let's talk." His voice comes inches from my ear.

I jump. Somehow, over the sound of my own sniffles, I had not heard him rise. He's now standing behind me, his arms above my head, and on either side. I am a prisoner of his body and two walls.

"About what?" My voice is very sad, very meek.

He snorts. "Where do we start?"
In spite of my pain, a few sassy answers come to mind. I am intelligent enough to say none of them, and recognizing his comment as rhetorical, I say nothing.

He walks away. I can sense his restlessness without seeing him, and his emotional state has me worried. Most of my spankings are delivered in a very matter-of-fact way, but I realize suddenly that he seems different today. He's feeling anger, certainly, but something deeper: real frustration, almost as if I'd done something so bad he almost doesn't know how to handle it. I am quickly becoming more frightened than ever. "What do you think I was doing outside?"

Remembering the dust on this clothes, I answer, "Fixing the car?"

"I was changing your oil, actually." He's gone to the window. Through the corner of my eye I can see him raking back his hair in frustration. "While it was draining, I took a look in your car." He exhales. "It was a little messy, a few Taco Bell wrappers, a Pepsi can... I though about coming in and giving you a few swats for that, but I decided, no, she's been really busy, I'll let it slide this time, I'll just clean it up for her." He walked back over to me, turned my face up to his with one lean finger under my chin. His eyes were blazing. "You want to take a stab at what I found in your car?"

"No." I know my voice sounds sullen, but I haven't a clue and can't think of anything else to say.

"OK." He nods. "I guess you truly do not know. Which," his voice drops to a mutter, "may be the scariest thing about all of this." He exhales sharply and his voice rises suddenly. "So let's start talking about this extreme bullshit." He reaches behind him into the back pocket of his jeans and brings forward a small pile of envelopes, neatly-stamped, neatly-addressed in his precise script. "Look familiar, Marie?"

I cannot breathe. I cannot think. My shock is so great that my vision actually dims. How could I have...?

"Shall we go through them one by one, Marie?" His voice is low but razor sharp as his fingers began rifling through the stack. "The mortgage payment, the VISA payment, the car payment, the Am-Ex payment, my student loan payment, my father's birthday card...all stored neatly under the driver's seat in your car." He pauses. "Would you like to tell me what the date is today?" His voice is polite.

Uhhh, May 12th?" What the fuck does it matter? Unless he wants to put it on my tombstone.

His hand sings out, catches my still-throbbing bottom flat and hard. "Wrong. Try again."

"May 13th?" I mumble into the wall.

"Jesus God, I'm married to a bimbo. It's the fifteenth, Marie. Every one of these is now late. The charge on the mortgage alone is forty. And even the ones that don't have a late charge still put a slow payment on the credit history. How could this have happened?"

What can I say? I remember everything now, his handing them to me the night before an out-of-town business trip, reminding me to mail them the next day. I also remember that he had asked me the next evening, as he called from the hotel, if they'd been mailed, and I had lied. Did I have a snowball's chance that he had forgotten about the lie? Is the Pope...?

"And then you lied to me... Marie, sometimes I just haven't a clue as to how you think... what you think about."

"John," I mumble, "I just forget things sometimes. I didn't do it intentionally."

"Maybe forgetting to mail them was unintentional. Stupid, but unintentional. But you also lied, and there was nothing unintentional about that. You want to tell me why?"

I sniff. Why hide the truth now? "Because I knew you'd spank me for forgetting for even one day," I whisper into the corner.

He is still pacing the room behind me. "Yes, I would have spanked you. Probably fifty hand swats. You go over my knee, I turn your bottom just a little warm and rosy, we discuss it, a few more swats, and before you know it, it's over. How does that compare to a switching?"

"A little warm and rosy" is his opinion; John is a serious spanker, and fifty swats from his hard hand is quite a punishment, but obviously, that's still no comparison to the switching that I have already gotten, and, horribly, I know there is more to come.

"It doesn't compare, sir." I decide a little bit of respect is really in order. I am in more trouble than I'd been in years, probably the most ever. There is a long silence. Finally, I can stand it no longer. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm deciding."

Shit. Would I ever sit again? Hell, would I ever walk again? And, I have a sudden sobering thought, what about the dinner party? We couldn't skip it... it was an important party for some international clients of the consulting firm that John works for. In less than four hours, I would be expected to sit through a two- to three-hour dinner. What possible explanation would I be able to give the hostess, who was the wife of my husband's boss, if I asked to stand? The image is so ludicrous that I almost snort out a laugh in spite of the pain. None, obviously, and my husband knows it. Forcing me to sit on a tender, just-spanked bottom is often part of my punishments, and I know that the thought is in his mind now. But at home, in a movie theater, even at a private table in a restaurant, I could squirm to my heart's content. At the Marshall's house...? This was getting worse and worse.

The pain from the switching is still acute, throbbing through my bottom with each pound of my heart. He's looking out the window again and I risk putting my hand back for a quick rub. "Marie..." his voice snaps, warningly, and I put my hand back on my T-shirt even as I wonder at his sixth sense. Even without touching the skin, I know, if I were to look at it in the full-length mirror inside my closet door, that it is rough and red-looking, crisscrossed with lines and dots. A switch, even a carefully peeled one, still always has rough spots.

Suddenly, I hear him move to rummage through one of the dresser drawers. That drawer opens often; I know the sound well. In it is stored a variety of implements, an oven shovel, a leather strap, a no-nonsense wooden spoon, a sturdy, fifteen inch ruler, a special hair-brush, and...

"Come on back here, Marie." His voice is low and resigned.

I turn. He is sitting on the chair again. He has a paddle in his hand. Hot tears well in my eyes.

I hate that paddle. He'd ordered it from a mail-order place about two years back, when he had decided that a special implement that made an unmistakable statement was necessary for certain rare occasions. Much to my humiliation, he had corresponded quite matter-of-factly with the man who made the paddle, discussing recommendations and requirements, dimensions and thicknesses, techniques and red-hot bottoms. The man had even asked for a tracing of my husband's hand, so that the handle of the paddle could be cut to the exact requirements of his large hand, of his long fingers.

The paddle is a dark wood, beautifully made. The surface almost glows with a finish that can only be hand-rubbed. When you look at it, the word "craftsmanship" inevitably springs to mind. It's actually fairly small. In fact, in the catalog, this model had been listed as "the brush paddle" because it was designed to imitate the back of a no-nonsense hairbrush, leaving off, of course, all those extraneous bristles. But in spite of its small size, the sting it leaves after just one sharp whack is amazing. The sensation after fifty-or-so whacks is indescribable.

He crooks his finger.

"John, my bottom already hurts so much..."

"I'm sure it does." There is not a trace of sympathy in his voice. "And it's going to hurt a lot more by the time I'm finished with you. You are never going to do anything like this again. Never!"

"The dinner party..." I wail, dragging my feet. I've moved forward about one inch.

"Oh, so you remember about the dinner party. Something does go on in that brain besides fiction writing."

I ignore the sarcastic comment. "But I won't be able to sit."

"You'll sit. And you'll sit still. Now get over here."

I start crying even as I walk towards him. The worst part of this is that I have no psychological strength to fight it because I know I deserve this very hard punishment. I resent many of his spankings, feeling that adults should be able to swear if they want, that whether my kitchen is clean is my own business. But this, this forgetting and then lying about it and then, incredibly, spacing out about mailing the payments again, after I'd lied... I know even through my fear that this has been brought on by my pure stupidity and defiance. I reach his side.

He says nothing as he draws me between his hard thighs. My stomach clenches even harder. I know what this means. He intends to spank me over one thigh only while he pins the back of my knees with the other leg. He does this when he knows he will spank me hard enough to make me unable not to fight it. He pushes me down, forcing me to support myself with my hands, and my toes are on the floor on the other side. I am so short they barely reach.

feel, when I am in this position, that I am nothing but a bottom, high and exposed. He puts his finger between my legs. "We need to shave you again," he mutters coldly. He likes to shave my plump lips, to keep me totally smooth. I know that he is making a sexual comment in this context just because he wants to humiliate me, to remind me how completely open I am to him. In this position, I cannot close my legs any more or any tighter. He sees every bit of my private anatomy while he is spanking me and he wants me to know it.

"Maybe we should do it now," I suggest, desperate.

He barks out a short harsh laugh as he wraps his arm over my back. "I don't think so." He shifts me a little, and I flop about helplessly, loose, like a rag doll. I wish I could die. "How many should I give you, Marie?"

Does he really expect me to answer? "Four?" I suggest hopefully."

He smacks me with the paddle, right over my pussy. "Try again."

"I don't know," I wail. "Please, John, please..."

He can sense, I guess, the desperation in my voice. "OK. Here's what you're getting, Marie. Twenty for your stupidity and thirty for lying. You're going to count each one, then you're going to thank me for it and ask me for the next one."

My heart sinks even more. As hard as it is to lie there and take the spanking, having to participate in each whack is unbelievable stressful. "But I'm already so sore... Please, John, couldn't we wait?" I beg.

"Actually, what I'm seeing right now," he rubs the paddle over my lower bottom and thighs, "isn't all the sore." I realize, horrified, that he's probably right. Because I was over both his knees during the first part of this punishment, most of the switching had fallen full against my round cheeks, higher up on my bottom. What he is seeing now are the very tender lower cheeks, their crease opened completely. In my current position, bent so far forward, this line is easy to get at. John calls it "the sweet spot," and he loves to spank me here, knowing that I'll feel it when I sit for hours if not days. He spanks practically down to my knees if he is mad enough. He is mad enough.

"Anyway," he continues conversationally, "we can't put it off. You've already earned a spanking on each of the next two days. Have you forgotten?"

The bounced checks and the speeding ticket. Of course, I had not forgotten, but on some level I hoped he had.

"Have you?" The question, it seems, is not rhetorical.

"No." My voice is small and sad.

"So we're not going to wait. You're going to sit tonight on the sorest little rump I've ever given you. Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir." I am terrified.

With no more warning, he brings the paddle down full against the bottom of my right cheek. The crack seems to echo off the walls. "Count it, Marie."

Gasping against the sting, I groan out, "One." Then, pressing my mouth tight, I say, "Thank you sir, may I please have another?" I know that later in the spanking I will be nearly unable to say the required formula. Best to do what is required correctly as long as possible.

It falls, a twin to the first. Again, I cry out the formula. The third, the fourth, and the fifth fall. Even through the incredible sting, through the enormous effort I must put out to utter the response, I am conscious that he is not smacking me nearly as hard as he could. He does not want me to numb up. He wants to keep me hot and stinging as long as possible. It is clear that while he wants me very sore, he does not want to kill me.

After the first ten, we stop. He rubs me for awhile, scolding me about my absent-mindedness. I am happy for the break, but find that the dread builds all the more as we fall out of the rhythm. Have I ever had a longer, more dreadful spanking? No.

The second ten begin. He's hitting me everywhere he can reach, firmly, methodically, full stinging whacks that use the surface of the paddle to the fullest. I manage to count each one and thank him, even though I am almost choking. After every smack, he takes a pause, and his voice never stops reminding me, scolding me, discussing my disobedience. I know the long break is designed to maximize the burn. My fingers clutch into the pile of the rug spasmodically.

When we reach twenty four, I begin to lose it. Huge tears start to fall from my eyes and I struggle. Involuntarily, my hand leaves the floor in a desperate attempt to shelter my scalding cheeks. He flicks my fingers with the paddle so hard they numb immediately. "Move it, Marie." He snaps. "Once more, and I'll tie your wrists."

He'll do it, too. In a way, I almost wish he would. Desperately, I clutch for his ankle, wanting something solid to hold onto. The paddle cracks down again, and again, and again. We make it, somehow, to number forty. I know it is because he really is not spanking me all that hard. Oh, the whacks sting and burn my now-writhing cheeks like the devil, but on some level I am conscious that he too is thinking about the dinner party. He'd rather have me there, and squirming, than so tender I would not be able to go.

At forty he stops, and loosens the leg-lock. Is it done? Did I misunderstand? I thought he'd said fifty... My answer comes quickly. "Spread your legs."

"No...," I wail.

"Marie...," his voice is threatening, and he brings the paddle down. "Forty one," I screech.

"Fat chance. Now spread `em."

I'm too scared to do it and too scared not to. I know what this means. Feeling like he'd run out of effective spank area on my bottom, he intends to give me the last ten on the insides of my thighs and maybe a few on the tender skin of the crack of my bottom that has been protected up until now. "How can you be so cruel?" I wail.

"How can you be so bad?" he responds. "Spread your legs. I want to see everything."

He already can see everything, but I'm too frightened to point out flippantly this obvious fact. I do what he requests, all the while pleading, "Please not so hard, please not so hard, please not so hard." Without the pressure of the leg-lock, I am horribly off balance. My legs flail clumsily. I support myself with my hands fully on the floor. Even though the pressure of his arm is holding me, I still feel as if I could tumble onto my nose at any moment.

The first stinging blow falls. He's angled the paddle, so the end of it catches the inside of my bottom cheek. It's not a particularly forceful whack, but he's using a lot of wrist. It bites incredibly. "Count it."

"Forty-one," I screech. "Thank," I gasp, "thank..." I am unable to continue.

Thank you sir, may I please have another?" he murmurs quietly, and gives me one, this time high on the inside of my thigh.
Through the pain, all I can think about is the mental image of myself, totally spread open to his eyes. I find this humiliating exposure, this mockery of sex, devastating from a psychological standpoint. He would never actually strike my private anatomy, but he will come as close as possible. We both know it. "Forty two," I choke out.

Again, he helps me with a soft, "Thank you sir, may I please have another?" Hearing the request come from him is almost more devastating than having to utter it myself.

More blows fall to my thighs and my bottom crack. Each time I count, each time he quietly supplies the rest of the formula. I know he is not hitting me hard at all, at this point. The blows sting wickedly, because the skin is very soft, but the point has become, so plainly, humiliation, not pain. I writhe.

I am sobbing now, fully, openly. I know that I lied, I know that I disappointed him. I cannot imagine what possessed me. This man who is now spanking me is my husband who loves me and cares for me. How could I have been so stupid? I am tempted to close my legs, but I don't even try it. I have reached the point where submission to his discipline is the most important thing in the world.

Finally, the fiftieth whack falls, a final "biter" high on my thigh. I wail out the number, then collapse limply. "The next time I ask you to do something, what are you going to do?"

"I'll do it, sir," I sob.

"And if you forget?"

"I'll tell the truth."

"And take your spanking?"

"And take my spanking."

There is a pause. "All right, Marie." His hands reach for my shoulders, and he turns me, pulls me onto his lap. My excoriated bottom rubs the denim of his jeans. I can still feel some of the individual switch cuts against the overall burn of the paddle. My thighs throb, the tender skin on the inside of my crack throbs, my neck and arms ache from keeping them tensed... How could I hurt so much? I rest my head limply against his chest, and we sit for several minutes while I squirm and sob.

He pets my hair back. "Why don't you rest for a while? We don't need to start the dessert for a couple of hours yet. I'll tell the kids you needed a nap." He finds my mouth and gives me a soft full kiss. "You know I love you."

I nod dejectedly, still wriggling. I know he loves me. Loves me enough to punish me. He's said those words to me more times than I could count in the last fifteen years.

In spite of the fact that I can sense sadness in him, his next words are still stern. "I want you ready to go to the Marshall's at 7 PM sharp. Is your black silk dress clean?" I nod. "Good. I want you in the black silk, garter belt, and hose. No panties. A bra, I guess. You can't sit on the bare at the Marshall's, but you're going to be sitting with one layer of silk between you and the chair. And I'm telling you now, I'm warming you up with twenty with the oven shovel before we get in the car, where you will sit on a bare bottom, and twenty more once we get to the Marshall's."

"Why?" I wail, stunned that I'm still to be punished. "I've had enough. Please John." My stomach churns at the thought
"Because I said so. Because I decide when you've had enough. And because in spite of everything, I really didn't spank you that hard. Most of the whacks with the paddle were really pretty wimpy."

Wimpy? Not a word I would have chosen. Yet, in my heart I know he is right. Although the switching had seemed cruel and the paddle had hurt incredibly, I could be a lot more sore. John would rather burn my butt with several lighter spankings that would keep me stinging for hours than spank me once, hard, and leave bruises.

He continues, "I want you stinging all night and a few more with the oven shovel is the best way to ensure that. And I'm taking it along to the Marshall's in your purse. If we get a private moment, you're getting it again."

I put my head down dejectedly. I'd thought my ordeal was over, but now it seems as if it had hardly begun...

Five hours later, I sit at the Marshall's elegant dining room table. I have in fact received twenty cracking swats with the oven shovel in our bedroom, bent forward over the bed, obediently holding up my silk dress, while the thin wood bit into my still rosy bottom, before we went down to the car. Then he'd stopped the car at the end of the Marshall's long country driveway, and I'd gotten twenty more bent forward under his arm.

I had been warned not to squirm, but my bottom stings and burns. I am trying my best to obey, really I am, but I feel like I am failing. My husband's hard gaze is fixing on me throughout the dinner, eyebrow high, and I know just what he is thinking. He has already warned me, with a harsh whisper in my ear, that Mr. Marshall's den, fairly isolated from the rest of the house, is a perfect site for additional warm-ups. I can tell by his gaze that he thinks I am wiggling too much, and a trip to the den is only as far away as the end of dessert. My dessert, by the way.

I look up at my husband, trying to keep the tears from welling in my eyes. I know what he is trying to do, and he has succeeded. Violent, brutal spankings would only make me, or any woman, hateful or resentful. But the way he spanks, hard, certainly, but in such a way that the discipline is more important than the pain, in fact teaches a lesson much more effectively.

I give him a little smile. Suddenly, as I look into his loving eyes, it is all so clear. I understand everything he is trying to teach me, and at least for a couple of weeks, I will remember. I squirm, just a little, thinking about that trip to the den, thinking about my spankings still coming tomorrow and the next day for the speeding ticket and the bounced checks.

In a way, I almost can't wait to be taken to the den, can't wait until tomorrow. Suddenly, nothing seems as important, as real, as necessary as being turned over his knee yet again. At least this time, I reflect, as I remember how my afternoon had begun, I wouldn't have to guess. I would know...

John nodded and gave me a rueful smile in return. Everything would be all right.

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