“No,” I whisper.
“You want me to teach you a lesson like the naughty girl you are?”
“Yes,” I say, even more quietly.
“I need to hear you, Briar…”
He’s going to make me ask for punishment. I can’t believe I’ve gotten to this point in my life. This is humiliating. But it’s also an opportunity to get what I need so badly. Maybe it’s okay to ask for it.
“Please,” I say. “Uhm, punish me.”
“Good girl,” he purrs.
He takes me by the hand and draws me over to the couch. Again I find myself over the back of it. This time he’s not going to fuck me. This time he’s going to punish me. Even the thought makes me blush as I squirm in place, naked and vulnerable.
“Let’s start with the getting fired from job after job because you don’t want to follow anyone’s rules,” he says, letting the belt drape over my bottom.
“Rules suck,” I pout.
Crack!
The belt meets my ass in a wicked snap. Heat and pain bloom on my skin. I gasp and reach back, but he pushes my hands up and holds them at the small of my back.
“You’ve just never been made to follow any,” he says. “You’re spoiled, and it’s not doing you any good. I’m as much to blame as anyone else. I let you get away with things over the years. I never pointed out when you were being a brat.”
“Because you were my friend!”
Crack!
“I’m not your friend anymore, Briarlee,” he growls down at me as I gasp for air. The way the belt lands against my tender skin hurts like hell. This isn’t hot. I am actually in trouble. I can hear it in his voice. This man who has known me all my life. This man who has fucked me in the back room of a club, and across this very couch. Daniel knows me. He knows me to my core. And that also means he knows what a bad girl I am.
“You’re not my friend?”
“I’m a lot more than that,” he rumbles. “You’re mine now. You’ve always been mine, but I was too nervous to claim you. I let you run around. I let you give this cunt to men who didn’t deserve it…” He runs the belt down between my legs. I feel the leather against my pussy, which is wet as hell. Do I like this? Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. I seem to like everything he does, no matter how sinful, humiliating, or painful it is supposed to be.
What he’s saying touches me somewhere deep. Somewhere I’ve never been touched before. It finds the little closed-off part of me that makes me think I have to do everything alone, and it opens that door.
The belt lands again, three swift cracks across the middle of my ass. He’s giving it to me hard. This isn’t a pretend punishment. He’s not playing. He is dominating me. He is showing me what he knows about me. He is making me understand in a physical way that things are different now.
“Owww! Danny! That hurts!”
Another three strokes land. They hurt. My ass is blazing. My legs are kicking. I want to buck up from the couch, but he keeps one hand on the small of my back and he makes me lie there and feel the pain he is inflicting.
“Breathe, Briarlee,” he says, his voice calm and resonant. “Deep breaths. Good girl.”
I gasp a breath.
“Why? This hurts!”
“You need it to hurt,” he says. “You need to know I mean this. You’ve been throwing your life away out of guilt. That stops today. You don’t have to feel bad for what you did as a drunk fifteen-year-old girl. You don’t have to feel sorry for me anymore.”
The belt lands again, a hot stroke that sets my ass on fire. I shriek, but he keeps holding me there.
“You needed a good spanking back then,” he says. “And you’re getting it now. So you can put that whole event behind you. Alright? You’ve been punished, and more important…”
He eases his grip and helps me stand up, turning me to face him. There are tears in my eyes as I look into his handsome, strong, kind face.
“Most important of all… you’ve been forgiven. For everything.”
I burst into tears against his chest. He drops the belt and holds me close, letting me wet his skin with the misery I have been holding onto all these years. I have never understood why it was him who got hurt, and not me. I have never comprehended why I always seemed to skate through, while Daniel took the brunt of the consequences.
My ass hurts, but my conscience does feel more clear. I feel physically lighter than I have in a long time. As silly as it might seem, having him whip my butt actually makes me feel better.