Page 35 of Shamefully Trained

But I knew very well that he had not told me to dress. And the humiliating truth was that by then I understood enough of myself to know I wanted him to see that I had obeyed exactly.

So I walked out naked.

The penthouse was even more magnificent when I wasn’t running past it in a panic. Walnut paneling. Long stretches of glass with the city beyond. Paintings in heavy frames. Leather. Mahogany.

And through all of it I walked with my bare feet silent on wood floorboards and gorgeous rugs, my arms held stiffly at my sides because if I covered myself I would probably get whipped, and I couldn’t bear to be whipped.

When I reached what had to be his office, I saw him from behind. He sat at a desk near the windows. The sight of him there—broad shoulders in the dark suit, one hand resting near a sheaf of papers, typing on a keyboard as if nothing in the world were unusual—almost broke whatever remained of my courage.

I stopped dead, just inside the doorway.

I could still run, some fragment of me thought.

Then he seemed to sense me. He rose, turned the chair, and sat down in it facing me. He did it deliberately and calmly, as if he had expected this exact moment and was prepared to enjoy it properly.

Then he extended one hand toward me.

The gesture seemed almost formal. Courtly, if courtliness could contain this much domination. There was no mistaking what it meant.

My pulse hammered so hard that I felt it in my throat.

I hesitated.

His eyes stayed on mine. “Would you rather be caned?”

The answer came through me in a hot sick wave before my pride could intervene. No. God, no. I wasn’t brave enough to choose the spanking, but by then the pattern had become familiar in a way that humiliated me even more than the nudity. I have no choice, I thought, with that same miserable inward collapse I had felt in the bathroom and on the street and in the café. The sentence had already begun to fit itself around him.

Of course I had a choice. I knew that. I pushed the idea away, however, because I was so aroused, so frightened, and so bound up in anticipation that resistance felt almost theoretical.

I crossed the room.

When I reached him, he took my wrist and drew me close with no more force than necessary, then guided me down over his left knee as if placing me in a position long prepared for me. One arm came around my waist at once, secure and final. The other hand took hold of my right bottom cheek. His right leg clamped down over the backs of my knees.

I said softly, “Oh,” because I apparently hadn’t thought of that: how a man like this one could secure me so thoroughly, render me so helpless to resist the discipline he decided I had earned.

I lay there trembling, my hair falling toward the floor, my breasts pressed awkwardly against the line of his leg, my ass bared helplessly to the room. The position was instantly more exposing than standing naked had been. I could feel the heat of my own skin, the vulnerability of my spread body, the hard steadiness of him beneath me.

He rested his palm on my bottom for a few seconds, not striking yet, simply feeling the flesh that was his to punish.

“You made me repeat myself in the café,” he said. “You talked back in the bathroom. And you nearly sat on that toilet after I told you not to.”

I shut my eyes. “Yes, sir.”

“I am going to spank you until I am satisfied with the state of your bottom, and you will thank me when I’m done.”

I made a tiny sound then, because the thought of gratitude in this position was almost too much.

His hand moved, smoothing once over my left cheek, then the right. A measuring touch. I tried not to tense.

The first smack landed hard and clean.

I cried out and jerked despite myself, the pain bright enough to wipe the air from my lungs. His arm tightened at my waist immediately, holding me where I belonged. The next one came after just enough time for me to understand that the first had not been a warning.

A second crack, on the other cheek this time, then a third, then another, each one placed with hateful precision, not rushed, not playful, not testing. His hand was large and hard and appallingly effective. I tried to lie still for them. I truly did. My pride fastened instantly on that tiny goal, as if I could salvage something by taking the spanking ‘well,’ whatever that meant.

My resolve lasted perhaps six swats.

By then my bottom had begun to burn, and every fresh smack seemed to strike not just skin but the growing heat beneath it. Hearing each swat as well as feeling it made it seem much too real: the sharp report in the room, my own little involuntary cries, his breathing unchanged.