“Count for me, please.” He picked up the paddle. “Oh, if Joshua wakes, we postpone.”
The paddle came down with a hard thud. The pain shot through her buttocks and she juddered underneath his arm and leg. It was apparent he didn’t think she deserved a warm-up as a precursor to her punishment. Toasted on a high setting, her poor bum didn’t have a chance to relax.
“One, Sir. Thank you, Sir,” she blurted, then took a sharp intake of breath.
The rest followed relentlessly. Unfortunately, Joshua didn’t wake up throughout her punishment, and Jason offered her no respite, until he reached forty. She had used all her mental distraction techniques: poems, pictures, and song recitals to help her cope. The paddle, one of those with holes drilled into it, might as well have been a cricket bat swinging to hit a six. The noise it made shocked her. A truly awful thwack, and she wondered if Brooks, in his apartment above, could hear it. The bones in her pelvis jarred; she wished she had more fleshy padding. The occasional rub down of her inflamed cheeks hardly made an impression.
Hot tears streamed down her cheeks. She cried because it alleviated the fiery pain raging in her bottom. Counting took effort. She didn’t want to lose count, fearful he would repeat the numbers she’d missed. Numbers. She focused on them, the way they floated before her eyes and took shape. Each one brightly coloured. It helped. Somehow, numbers always did.
“Yellow, thank you, Sir,” she muttered with a sniff.
Jason stopped. He rested the paddle on her bottom. “Gem?”
“Sir?”
“You said yellow, what’s going on?”
Her mercy word. Why had she said it? He didn’t forbid safe-words during punishments, how could he? He’d sworn to protect her, and that included painful memories. Far more painful than his paddling. But that hadn’t been why she used the word. She recalled her thoughts, moments before saying it. She sniggered.
“Babe?” His voice had a touch of edginess about it.
“Sorry. I saw a three. Forty-three. Three always makes me think of yellow.”
“Jeez, you and your bloody numbers.” He lifted the paddle and thumped it down on her bottom.
“Ow. Forty-four, thank you, Sir,” she howled.
Then the burning reached the threshold where her brain switched into a level of acceptance. A flood of endorphin had arrived.
The fifty came, and the spanking ended. She writhed on his lap, sobbing and wondering if he would apply some soothing lotion. However, he merely heaved her off and deposited her back in the corner, although he did untie her bindings and made no mention of noses and walls. Standing there, she tried to assimilate the pain. The red-hot fire emanating from her backside. She’d had worse, much worse, but during a scene, after a suitable warm-up and accompanied by slutty words of desire or probing fingers between her legs. Punishments were nothing like sexy spankings.
He’d returned to his laptop. The telltale tapping filled the air between them. Ten minutes later, he joined his conference call with her still facing the corner.
Tiredness took its toll and, while Jason finished off his call to his number two in the States, with him proudly talking about his son, Gemma nodded off on her feet.
“Which corner?” His voice made her jump.
“Sir?”
“The desk. Show me.”
Gemma went and stood by the offending corner.
“Take off your top.” She slid out of her T-shirt, tossing it over her shoulder with a flick of the wrist. He touched the small of her back and pushed her over the desk. As she bent over, he spoke, and she noted his tone had lightened.
“Seriously, Gem, my desk! Well, now, you can enjoy the opportunity to test your favourite corner out. My turn for a fuck.”
The mood slowly changed. Jason always moved on swiftly after a punishment, no lingering animosity or hard feelings. She might have a sore bottom, but another sensation started to take precedence. Her clitoris sprang to life. A bolt of electricity emanated out of it, igniting the rest of her body into a flurry of nervous anticipation.
Bending low, he kissed between the shoulder blades, pecking on each exposed vertebrae one at a time, slowly descending. She lay still, heart thumping against the wood. It was going to be a hard fuck. He would want her ready and able. She exhaled hot breath on to the table, watching it mist up the smooth surface before vaporising.
“Oh hell,” she murmured.
> Each indulgent kiss of his moist lips sent her one step closer to losing herself. Do it! She chanted in her head.
He sniffed, pausing between kisses. “You’re oily,” his palm slid down her back and over her raw bottom. He gave it a squeeze. She gasped, toes curling inward and knees close to buckling. He bent over her, cocooning her underneath him, and put his lips to her ear. “You smell divine. Have you had a massage today?”
A cooling rush of blood shot across her blazing skin. “Yes. I had to move my appointment.” She normally went on a Thursday, not Wednesday. Was she in trouble? The tension held as his weight flattened her. Trapped, she grappled with breathing.