Allison In Trouble
by Jack LennoxThis is the second story in a series of two. Although not required reading, the story, Allison's Secret chronicles the beginning of the relationship between Allison and Eric.
* * * * * * *
Allison fumbled for car keys hiding somewhere in her purse and giggled. What was it about being with Fran that always seemed to get her in trouble? The wine was definitely making her a little giddy, but she was NOT drunk, she told herself. It was a little after ten on a Friday night, and the parking lot at The Wildfire Grill was still full. She managed to maneuver her car through the maze and turn right onto Wilshire Blvd. "See, no problemo," she congratulated herself, figuring she'd be home by...well actually, she wasn't sure what time it was, but she knew it wasn't late.
* * * * * * *
For the third time that evening, Allie's cell-phone service asked me to leave a message. It was 11:30 P.M., and I'd already left one two hours ago. My girlfriend has an annoying habit of not turning the thing on when she is out. I made a mental note to get Fran's cell number. Normally, Allie would have called letting me know she was on her way home or would be out late. I told myself to stop being the over-protective parent--she was, after all, an adult. Still, I had a sour feeling in my stomach. At least she should be with Fran... but too many bad possibilities in this world.
I had some work on the computer I wanted to get to... couldn't concentrate, so I decided to get some fresh air. Our little 3-bedroom ranch style house is set back about fifty feet from the road that leads further up into the mountains, and I walked quickly down flagstone steps to the curb. The late spring night was pleasant, the breeze a little gusty, licking the foothills with a warm capricious tongue. A cricket chirped from someplace close, and I became aware of the quiet that enveloped the reclusive neighborhood nestled at the southern edge of the San Fernando Valley. To the west, over coastal mountains, lay the Pacific Ocean. Living in one of the more affluent, crime free areas of Los Angeles County can give you a sense of complacency...until someone you love isn't where you expect them to be.
Beams of light preceded the sound of an approaching vehicle, their reflections crawling over the contours of my car parked in the driveway. Damn. The headlights were too far apart to be Allie's little Honda. A tank-sized SUV lumbered past. I recognized the pleasant accountant guy who lives three houses up. I'd only talked with him briefly a few times, but figured the closest he'd come to off-roading with his macho-mobile was cutting through on Mulholland Drive to avoid traffic on the Ventura Freeway. The quiet settled in again, but didn't make its way to my heart. There didn't seem to be much point in standing like a valet out at the curb. I went back inside to wait.
* * * * * * *
The evening had been a smash. Allie had not been out like this with her best friend, just the two of them chatting like schoolgirls, in over six years. The prospect of the reunion with Fran had excited her...and had made her a little apprehensive, wondering if their easy comradery could survive so much time and distance. They'd met at UCLA after Allie's art class and the old chemistry was there from the first warm hugs and conspirative smiles.
Needing a place to hang out, they had decided to check out the Westside Pavilion, an upscale mall in West Hollywood. Slowly making their way under cathedral-like glass ceilings, over German limestone tile flooring, exploring pretentious boutique to trendy shop, they'd managed to find a pair of shoes for Allie and a watch for Fran. The important discovery, however... it had been too long since Allie had enjoyed sharing time with another woman as both peer and friend. She sensed freedom and, at the ripe old age of 27, welcomed a youthful vitality not yet quite forgotten. The grandeur of their surroundings did little to compete with the attention they gave to their own spirited conversation. Afterwards, Allie had followed Fran in her car to a lively restaurant on Wilshire for dinner.
Fran picked up the carafe and refilled their glasses. Allison had sworn off heavy drinking years ago, but liked a little wine with her dinner. She brushed a dark lock of hair off her forehead, and the two friends smiled at each other. They were seventeen when she had noticed Fran Thompson hanging out with the recusant crowd that used to gather at Ventura Community Park. They immediately hit it off, two young women with wild streaks and uncertain futures.
"Oh, you'll never guess who I ran into," Fran exclaimed above the clamor around them. "Doug Kassovitz," she continued after dramatic pause.
"Doug? Really?" Allison hadn't thought of Doug in years. "I would've thought he'd still be hanging out in the park."
They laughed. Doug had certainly been the character of the group. "Get this...he's a computer programmer -- computer games, or something -- lives over in Venice Beach."
"He had a thing for you big time," Allie reminded her. She also remembered Doug was the first to refer to Fran as the 'Ice Goddess'.
Fran had come from Houston, moving with her recently divorced mother to a little bungalow across the street from the park. Soon, everyone knew the two of them as Fran and Allie. Blonde and brunette, they made an arresting pair, but Fran mesmerized most of the guys with her soft southern accent, tall skinny frame, and wickedly pretty face. Fran really didn't have a mean bone in her body; she was just one of those girls who didn't seem to need a guy. Allie had wondered many times if maybe Fran was gay, but had never seen any evidence of it. She didn't think it would be kept a secret if she was.
The restaurant was raucous. Another designer had followed the trend using hard surfaces--plenty of wood, glass, and marble to reflect the sound of primarily young diners out as much for socializing as for eating, each private party contributing to the communal din. A waitperson stopped by to check on them and Fran ordered more wine. From across the table, Allie studied the girl who was the closest thing she'd ever had to a sister. She couldn't believe how much her friend had changed. The lithe young thing that had turned heads wherever she went had become a woman. The long golden tresses of the Ice Goddess had been cut severely short and died platinum. The bright blue eyes were still as penetrating, the beguiling mouth still as impudent, but the face was now rounder and fuller. In fact, all of Fran was rounder and fuller, and she smiled when she thought about how she used to tease her friend that she had no breasts. Allie figured she hadn't changed herself that much in six years, but wondered how different she might have looked to Fran.
"Doug liked all the girls, babe, including you. By the way, what ever happened to Mr. Rock God?" Fran inquired, referring to the singer Allie had been crazy about when they'd spoken on the phone well over a year ago, before the bizarre episode in New Mexico that led to her meeting Eric.
"Kurt?" Allie recognized immediately that there was now no pain in saying his name.
"Yeah, remember all the heavy breathing?" Fran laughed. "I thought I was getting an obscene phone call. You always were a sucker for musicians."
"He was nice," Allie feigned nonchalance, then smiled and fanned herself as if overheated. She still remembered the feel of his smooth hard muscular upper torso, his cocky attitude about his power over her, and how he would force her to do things she'd only dreamed about in her most perverse fantasies.
"So...what happened?" Fran pressed.
"It was nice for about a year. Kurt did have his charms," Allie tilted her head and leaned in conspiratorially. Fran recognized one of her friend's charming affectations.
Allison's life had changed dramatically after she had moved in with Eric last October. It marked the end of a phase; she considered her life to be a series of stages, of which Kurt proved to be a short one. She met him when he was struggling locally, but when his band started seeing some success, she quit her job and joined him on the road. The realization hit her hard when she discovered she wasn't his only intimate traveling companion. "Groupies hung around him like flies," Allie continued in a sudden sober tone. She was feeling a little light-headed from the wine. "We were in Illinois... Springfield. During one of the band's breaks, I went out to the bus. He was getting some roadside assistance, if you know what I mean."
"Oh...I'm sorry," Fran put her hand over Allie's.
"I'm fine, Franny. Things did work out. I wouldn't have met Eric," Allie beamed.
"He treats you good?"
"I couldn't ask for better."
Fran smiled at her friend's satisfied grin and poured more wine. She changed the subject, asking Allie about her mother.
"You know Dad's passing was tough on her for a few years, but she's doing okay now."
"I know it was tough on you, too," Fran replied. "I wished every day that I could be there for you."
"I know, Franny," her friend reassured her. "I think it was a time both of us grew up."
"We did have some good times, though," Fran remembered wistfully.
"...and lived to tell about it," Allie finished for her.
The two looked at each other solemnly, then burst out laughing. The restaurant seemed a bit too fuzzy and bright, but Allie's long term memory was still sharp enough. Her graduation from high school had marked the beginning of her bohemian phase. She remembered having no direction she wanted to devote herself to and not much caring. Somehow ends had been met with short-lived minimum-wage jobs, the charity of friends, and the adoption of a mostly spartan lifestyle. She and Fran had done more than their share of clubbing and flirting with trouble. Allie went through several mostly forgettable boyfriends, each lasting about as long as the menial jobs she reluctantly adopted. Still, it was a happy time of her life. She had truly enjoyed the camaraderie of her free-spirited friends and waking up each morning with the youthful exuberance born from the idea that anything was possible. They'd finished the wine and decided more wouldn't be such a good idea. Allie tried to remember what she'd eaten. It was the chopped salad, but it seemed that was hours ago. The two women managed to split the check, left a phenomenally generous tip, and then made their way out to the parking lot.
"Are you sure you can drive, Allie?" Fran asked her, laughing. She felt a little light-headed herself.
"I'm fine," Allie waved her off. "Just a few glasses of wine." They shared another laugh, hugged affectionately, and headed off to their respective cars.
Fran turned and shouted back at her friend, "Call me tomorrow!" Allie waved and began searching for her keys.
* * * * * * *
I heard Allie's car pull up, and a weight lifted from me. I went to get the front door for her.
"I'm sorry, baby," she told me listlessly as we hugged at the door. "I just lost track of the time."
I watched a disheveled young woman stagger over to the couch and sit down without removing her jacket. She let her purse drop with a thud to the floor at her feet and gave a sigh. She looked blindly ahead of her with watery eyes. I don't get angry easily, but my blood began to heat under a rising flame of indignation.
"Have you been drinking?" I asked evenly.
She didn't answer immediately but could only study my face with eyes gone wide. I could distinguish the very moment she recognized that she was in trouble.
"A little," she said meekly. "Just a few glasses of wine, that's all."
"Where have you been all night?"
"With Fran," she replied cautiously.
"I figured that. Where were the two of you?" I pressed her. "You don't seem to be a very good influence on each other."
"We had a late dinner."
"It's after midnight."
"So? Certainly you're not telling me I can't stay out as late as I like?" Allie seemed to have sobered up quickly and adopted a defiant tone. "Don't treat me like that, Eric."
"You know that's not the issue, Allie."
"Okay," she relented a bit and thought for a few moments. "On the way home, I felt a little dizzy, so I pulled off to the side of the road for awhile." She attempted a prosaic explanation.
It sounded a bit contrived to me. "Why didn't you call?"
"My cell phone's not working...?" It sounded more like a question than a statement.
"You're lying to me...?" It was more a statement than a question.
Her face screwed up in a grimace as she decided to tell me the truth. "Okay, honey, listen, I'm sorry," Her tone had changed dramatically. "I think I must have sorta... blacked-out or something. When I woke up, the car was sitting off the side of the road. I don't remember getting there."
I stood there, stunned, trying to imagine... trying not to imagine.
"The car has a little scratch. But I'm fine," she smiled at me hopefully.
"Yes, Allison, you're fine. We have that to be very thankful for." I didn't want to deal with it right then; I was too angry. "Go to bed, Allison. I have work to do." I left the room.
* * * * * * *
I was up early the next morning--wasn't sleeping very well, anyway. I left Allison in her familiar position of slumber, curled up like a fetus, this morning particularly dead-to-the-world. Brooding, I sipped on a small glass of grapefruit juice while gazing out the kitchen window. I thought about all that could have gone so terribly wrong the previous night because she had acted like a damned unthinking teenager. What if she had hurt someone? She would have been devastated. What if she had been hurt? I didn't even want to think about it. I knew what I was going to have to do, but at that point I couldn't really determine how I felt about it.
I had to work that day; Allie would spend the day at home. My girlfriend was between jobs. Her father had taken out a rather hefty life insurance policy and she had enough money in the bank to get by for several years if she needed. I was happy to see her in a position where she had time to devote to, and develop, her passions. She had taken up painting again; her watercolors have been described as fresh, whimsical, and charming. She really is very skilled, using a variety of techniques from tissue blotting, salt textures, lifting with plastic wrap, stamping, and added materials to imbue her scenes of people, animals, land and seascapes with added energy. She was looking towards renting a small studio she had found in Woodland Hills and would sell her first paintings that year.
Eventually, I wandered out to the shed in back; the structure is practically the size of a small house and holds a large selection of the tools, parts, and materials associated with the business I share with my brother, Joe. We buy, renovate, and resell homes. I puttered around, straightening up a bit as I looked for something suitable. There was an adult woman asleep in my bed for whom I have enormous respect, and it was disconcerting to be carrying out the deliberate plan I had made to address her adolescent behavior. A long strip of 2-inch flat trim molding caught my eye, and I placed it on the bandsaw. After cutting off a 12-inch long piece, I sanded the ends smooth. I held the thin hard piece of board in my hand and wondered if I would be able to find the resolve to use it as I intended.
I was sitting at the kitchen table reading the paper when Allison came in rubbing sleep out of her eyes. She had on her long robe, fuzzy slippers, and her shortish dark hair was in complete disarray. She looked adorable, and I once again had disturbing visions of nightmares made real. She came directly to me and put her arms around my neck waiting for my usual morning smile. I didn't have one for her.
"You're not still mad, are you?" she asked hopefully.
"I'm not real happy," I answered coolly.
She squeezed herself between me and the table to sit on my lap. "What if I said I'm really sorry and will never do it again?" She smiled at me cutely and wiggled a little in my lap like a playful child.
Then I was angry. I, at least, expected that she would take her foolish, completely irresponsible behavior seriously. She sensed my displeasure and got off my lap. Standing before me, she adopted a much more sober tone.
"Please, baby, I don't want you to be mad at me," she implored. "I'd rather you just punished me now and got it over with."
"I'm not in the right frame of mind right now."
Allie sighed resignedly and padded over to the counter to get herself some coffee. "What's this?" She picked up the stick I'd fashioned earlier.
I looked at her sternly. "It's something you're going to remember every time you even think of driving when you've been drinking."
* * * * * * *
Allie lay alone on the king-sized bed feeling more naked than naked. Covers thrown back, her body seemed aglow from the early afternoon light that illuminated their bedroom. Eric had left several hours ago and wouldn't be back until evening, leaving her with an entire day to agonize over what might happen to her that night.
Her troubled spirits were a discordant tone against the quiet elegance of the afternoon around her. The street on which they lived rose twisting into the foothills above the bustling congestion of the valley, removed from the blare where millions lived and worked each day. Their home rested snug, embraced by earth, trees and thick foliage grown to maturity, and in a neighborhood where houses were close but still isolated from one another. The sound of leaves ruffled by gentle breezes, the buzz of a bee, the distant drone of a gardener's mower wafted in through a curtained window and caressed her where she fretted.
The rest of the house was spotless. She'd cleaned for hours just to keep busy. She'd tried to watch TV, but quickly lost interest in stories that seemed too insignificant compared to her own angst. She tried to paint but just wasn't inspired. Whenever her thoughts drifted back to her predicament she felt an anxious fluttering in her stomach. She'd felt plenty of stirrings of a different kind south of there, as well, and had decided she needed to take care of it.
Her silken nakedness against satiny sheets heightened her arousal and she began to masturbate. Allie never spent much time thinking of her own body, but at times like this, she became aware of her femininity and its seductive power. She wished Eric were there, for no one made her feel more beautiful. Her pulse quickened further as her expert fingers touched where and how she needed. For what seemed the thousandth time that day, her thoughts came back to her lover and that thing he had left on the kitchen counter.
Since that first spanking she'd gotten from Eric last October, there had been many others. Whenever she began to feel that strange desperation that gnawed at her, a little affected brattiness was all that was needed to prompt her boyfriend to fashion her deliciously humbling downfall. Those spankings had been a significant part of the best sex she'd ever had in her life. What she was feeling the day after her wonderful reunion with Fran, though, was very different. She was experiencing what was more at the core of her fascination for spanking -- she had earned a real punishment. She knew she was in for something she was not going to like, and the anticipation was playing havoc with what seemed like every nerve in her body. That wooden thing was damned hard, and she tried to imagine what it would feel like applied on her very bare bottom. It might be bitter medicine to take, but his anger and disappointment was a painful affliction that she hoped would be healed.
After a quick shower, she slipped back into her robe, figuring she wasn't even going to bother getting dressed today. She felt a little more relaxed after a powerful orgasm. She grabbed a book off the nightstand she'd just started -- "The Interpreter", by a new writer, Suki Kim. She'd only made it through a few pages of the grim little story when the phone rang. The caller burst in before Allie had a chance to speak.
"Allie, is it you?" Fran asked with urgency.
"Yes, Fran?" Allie returned, feeling a twinge of alarm. "Are you okay?"
"That's what I called to ask you," Fran replied, sounding calmer. "I just woke up and remembered last night. I take it you got home okay."
Allie related her unsettling experience. Fran verbally flagellated herself for letting Allie drive. She didn't know what she would do if something had happened to her.
"Fran, I let you drive, too...remember?" Allie tried to assuage. "We were both idiots." For the first time it really dawned on her.
Yes, she certainly had screwed up.
"What did Eric say?" Fran asked.
"He's pretty angry with me right now." Allie wasn't going to tell her friend that whole story. When they used to tear up the town together, they had shared everything with each other...well, almost everything. At that point in her life, Allie had never shared her shameful secret desire with anyone.
"He's probably not too happy with me right now, either," Fran posited.
"He hasn't said anything about it," Allie assured her, but an unsettling thought, something Eric had said, crossed her mind like a dark cloud threatens a storm.
After they had said their goodbyes and promised to see each other soon, Allie started to chew on her new fear--something that troubled her more than any spanking could. Two months before her father passed away, she had suffered another great loss. When Fran was compelled to move back to Houston with her mother, Allie had been devastated. They had kept in touch over the phone, but the calls gradually became less frequent as time and distance eroded their need for each other's company. After their time together last night, Allie knew again how much Fran meant to her. What if Eric tried to break up their friendship? She told herself that the man she loved could never do that to her, but then again, until last night he'd never been angry with her. He'd never been cold to her. He'd never threatened her with serious punishment. How far did he think he had the right to go when it came to "protecting" her? She saw a potential crisis in their relationship and it dragged on her heart like an anchor.
* * * * * * *
Something wasn't right. Allie and I sat across from each other picking at our pasta. The drama that had begun the previous evening was all too real. I was not at all happy with her irresponsibility; she had to know that she was in trouble. The way the drama would be played out was a facet of our relationship, something we had talked about at great length. This evening we should be characters exploring roles become of a consequence of the wheels that had been set in motion. Allie wasn't playing her part.
Joe and I had put in a new sprinkler system that day. We had almost completely restored a Spanish Revival home that had been built in 1938. Complete with parapets, carved doors and stonework, and a palm-lined tiled courtyard, it would be an easy resell. It's a good thing that it's brainless work because my mind was on Allie. If I was a surgeon, somebody might have ended up with a third kidney or something. I wondered if she was as nervous about her impending punishment as I was. I wanted to call her and talk. What anger remained for me had shifted completely away from Allie and was totally focused on what she had done…if that makes sense. I didn't call.
We, normally, could enjoy our quiet times together, but the silence at the dinner table was awkward. When it came to our sexual relationship, I'd never had trouble reading Allie. It was like living with two different people, both incredibly exciting to me. When her mind was on spanking, I could expect to see an edgy, impetuous, sarcastic adolescent or sweetly exasperating tease. On any typical day, and to the outside world, she could still be funny and playful but was coolly centered, thoughtful, studious. I considered how I should expect her to act as her punishment approached. Obviously, I didn't expect playful. But I did expect her to act as if she knew it was going to happen. Instead, she seemed to be avoiding any acknowledgement of it and was oddly distracted.
I sensed she needed to say something. We had discussed how spanking was to be used for real discipline, mostly as amorous talk fueled by our lovemaking, but also in the cold light of day. I knew about her past experiences in New Mexico and wondered if she was concerned about how it might impact our relationship. Maybe now that she was faced with the actuality, she was having doubts about going through with it, after all. I was going to have to punish her whether she wanted it or not.
"Fran called today," she told me, breaking the silence.
I looked at her. Her head had been down, but she raised it to meet my gaze. "She okay?" I asked.
"Yes...she wanted to apologize for last night."
"I guess you both had apologizing to do," I replied. "I'm still trying to figure how two grown women could both be so irresponsible at the same time."
"I know, Eric," Allie responded thoughtfully. "I realized today what I'd done. I know I tried to minimize it."
"I'm glad." I couldn't help but soften my look a little.
"I need to ask you something." She started, then paused.
"Yes." I waited.
"What do you think about me and Fran? ...our friendship?"
"What about it?"
"Sometimes we can get a bit...," she paused trying to find words. "We like to let loose and have some fun... Can you live with that?" Her look told me the answer was important.
It took me several moments, but I realized she had posed a tough question that raised several more. What if I thought someone she associated with was truly a danger to her? What if Allie didn't want to listen to reason? Could I just ignore it? How would it affect our relationship as man and woman...or as the roles we assumed as disciplinarian and charge? I wasn't sure, but there really was only one answer that made sense for us.
"You care a lot about each other," I stated and looked for confirmation.
"Yes."
"Your happiness is always what is important to me. I trust you to be an adult, Allison. I trust you to make your own responsible choices. I can live with that," I assured her.
"Yes, sir."
The two small words, and the relieved look that went with them, seemed to signal that intermission was over…I imagined stage lights going up, the buzz of an audience quickly fading to hushed anticipation for the final act to begin.
* * * * * * *
I heard the sound of the bathroom door and expected that Allison was heading towards the third bedroom. I'd instructed her to draw herself a hot bath and soak for awhile before the "discussion" we were going to have about her last evening's recklessness. I was at the computer replying to an email from a real estate agent after incongruously changing from jeans and t-shirt into pressed slacks and white dress shirt. After finishing I went to the kitchen and picked up the little paddle I had fashioned for Allie's discipline. She had already suffered enough waiting. It was time to get the tough part of this over with.
My girl was lying face-down on the bed, arms folded back around her head as if to block out a world she did not want to face. Her nude body remained perfectly still as I entered the room where Allie often gets the spankings she needs. This spanking was different. I felt restless, a disquiet born of conflicting thoughts and feelings. Standing by her pretty feet protruding over the edge, I noticed the narrow band around her left ankle -- the black aztec-pattern tattoo, that for some odd reason, I find so sexy. My gaze followed up her slender legs, where two spare pale hillocks mounded behind her, exposed for a fashion of discipline outmoded. I was certain they were as exposed in her mind as they were to my eye.
"Get up, young lady," I instructed gravely.
She obeyed without a sound and stood to look at me with large frightened eyes, one partially obscured by hair hanging a bit stiffly over her forehead and down her cheek. She trembled and hugged herself as if a chill breeze had licked over her in the raw. I didn't want her to be afraid, but there was no yielding in my demeanor when I grasped her firmly by the upper left arm and propelled her to an armless straight-backed chair that had been placed by the window facing inward. I sat down and pulled her across my knee. I shifted her into a precise position so that all five-foot seven-inches, and all of her weight, were balanced and supported over my lap with her bottom offered at the ideal angle to be spanked.
"I'm sorry I have to do this, Allison." I was not telling her a lie. "I need to know that you'll never endanger yourself like that again."
"I won't," she twisted to look up at me. Her eyes told me she meant it.
"This spanking is going to make us both more certain of it."
I pulled the simply-fashioned paddle from my pocket and rested its hard flat surface on her soft round curves. The stick was not quite long enough to span her width and too narrow to cover the lower half of her fanny where I was about to make her burn. Her breathing was heavier as she twisted nervously left-to-right and back again; her legs flexed at the knee and then straightened. Allison, recognizing that her punishment was imminent, braced herself by again crossing her arms at the back of her neck. She whimpered softly.
The object extending out from my grasp had a small amount of weight to it and, at that moment, my Allie seemed too fragile, too delicate, to be subjected to its harsh inflexibility. Part of me was unaccountably turned on by her vulnerability, but I was experiencing all the doubt that I had anticipated. I'd never been in favor of spanking children, but I knew I must be feeling what loving parents feel. I didn't know what level of severity I was capable of inflicting in order to teach a vitally important lesson she would never forget or, at least, impressing upon her that I would not tolerate what she had done. Both of us braced for her paddling.
I raised and brought the flat of it down hard across both cheeks just above the top of her thighs. Hard is a relative term. It was harder than I wanted, but not harder than she needed. She yelped, but I didn't stop. I brought the stick down twice more with similar intensity, first on her right cheek, then the left. Each was accompanied by a sharp cry, and red imprints of the rectangular implement surfaced on her southern hemispheres to show where it had been. I had to stop for a moment to again gather my resolve. When I rested the board where I had spanked her, she groaned and squirmed...both reactions that seemed to indicate something between pain and pleasure. When I raised the paddle again, it was to erase that ambiguity. Focusing only on her most safely padded areas, I administered her punishment, and as she began to voice her pain, as her body contorted, as her feet began to kick, my heart grew heavier. Even though I was spanking mostly from the wrist--using my full arm strength would have been a beating--I knew I was hurting her.
It was a brittle, emphatic sound of hard wood on bare skin that punctuated her lesson; outside that room, only an empty house to act as silent witness, vacant, lacking the compassion to feel sympathy for the one whose bottom was being tended to... inside, the two of us alone...together...sharing her pain. At one point, Allie reached back to protect herself, forcing me to stop, but she followed my instructions, and I had her hands secured above the small of her back. I resumed the spanking that she would later describe to me as a stinging more intense than anything she had ever felt. She would admit that she preferred the feeling to what she had experienced last year with the hairbrush, but that her limits could easily be exceeded with the little board. It is still kept in the house; we both know where it is. It represents the discipline to which she knows she is subject. I intended to make her punishment short and to the point. I didn't know exactly how short.
"Daddy! Please!" Allie shouted the words. I stopped immediately... relieved to be finished. The spanking was over. I knew then that what needed to be done had been done... and she then knew my serious and uncompromising position on the matter at hand.
Her words echoed in my mind. She had called me many endearing things, but never that. Her sentiment touched my heart in a way I had not anticipated. We were sharing the sweetest intimacy. At that moment, she was my little girl -- not a child -- certainly, not a daughter -- but that entity does dwell within her, and spanking her as discipline is another expression of my love...the pure love that transcends sexuality. We had passed an unpleasant experience together, but we still look back on it with fondness and a passion for what it means to our relationship.
I guided her off my lap; she stood grasping her bottom with both hands, her face wet with tears. Her expression was the expression of a girl who felt truly punished--a set to her mouth that told me she wasn't going to want this repeated any time soon. I plucked a tissue off the dresser and wiped her lovely face, wanting desperately to kiss her with all the passion she inspires in me.
There is an open area in one quadrant of the spare bedroom, and I took my little girl to its corner. I made sure her toes were touching the baseboard and that she was standing straight with her hands at her sides before I left the room. It represented to me a kind of bondage... she would not move from that spot. I imagined she would be feeling a little ashamed of herself for the next ten minutes and thought it appropriate.
* * * * * * *
I stood at the doorway looking in on Allele, her pale form gracing the corner as I had left her. The tension I had been under all that day had not dissipated and would remain until I was sure that she was all right. What I saw was a confirmation that I had really punished her. It wasn't the first time I'd seen her with a red bottom, but she wore crimson that night. I knew I had done right by her, but it still evoked a certain amount of guilt. My pretty girl doing her penance reminded me again of an evening a few months back. We were in my office checking out spanking websites on the Internet. She was sitting on my lap and we were both excited watching a video. After a girl was spanked, she was given something called "corner time". I whispered in Allie's ear, asking if she thought bad girls should have to stand in the corner. Her answer was to turn to face me with an abashed but lustful smile. Impaling herself on my enthusiasm, she rode me like the mechanical bull at Gilley's. I took that for a yes.
I crossed the room to Allie. Without speaking, I turned her around, folded my arms around her and hugged her tight. I held her there for a long time, her head under my chin, my heart feeling too big for my chest ...the only sound a sniffling as she let go the emotions of her trying day.
"You okay, sweetie?" I asked when the quiet sobbing had stopped.
She looked up at me with a face wet again and nodded. "Still a little fiery but not too bad." She managed a rueful smile, and the acceptance in her eyes was a reassurance I needed. I was finally able to relax.
I gently cupped in my palms the lower cheeks behind her, feeling the warmth they radiated. She uttered a sigh and stood on tiptoe to kiss me on the mouth. I returned the kiss, then reached down behind her knees and picked her up. I carried her like a bride through the threshold, out the door of the spare room, across the hall, and through the door to the master bedroom. I placed her carefully on the bed and knelt beside her.
"I love you, Princess," I whispered after kissing her on the forehead.
"I love you, too," her voice rough and still choked with emotion.
Allie had taught me just how deeply I could desire another human being, and at that moment, the desire had never been greater. I needed to make love to her; I knew she needed me. But something that precluded that was needed a little bit more. This memorable event needed to be a punishment. I grasped the covers at her feet and pulled them up below her chin.
"Rest for awhile, my love," I placed my palm against her cheek. "No touching. Do you understand?"
She looked at me with wide eyes, but nodded that she understood. I walked stiffly to the door, switched off the light, and left the room thinking that when I came to bed later that night Allison would, again, be in trouble.
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