I felt my forehead crease and the heat in my cheeks grow. I pulled my hand away from my bottom and turned toward the window seat Rick still pointed to. Nearly overwhelmed by too many feelings to process, I hesitated.
“Go ahead and sit down, Dee,” Rick said, his voice firm. His hand returned to my bottom, and I had to bite my lip hard to keep from emitting a little cry of alarm and of… the other thing. My husband’s big hand held the seat of my jeans and propelled me forward, toward the plane window.
The burning pain in my butt-cheeks and upper thighs had faded to a lingering ache. That ebbing of the discomfort from my lesson in the private room almost made the problem worse, though. It focused my attention on the way the presence of Rick’s hand seemed to affect the entire region between my waist and my knees. It made me think of the thing I had almost done, in obedience to my husband’s command… the thing part of me had wanted to do, despite the shock and the embarrassment it caused in the rest of me.
I sat in the incredibly comfortable first class seat. My backside felt fine. I wondered, in a confused way and despite my attempts to stop the train of thought, how it would have felt if Ihadtaken down my jeans for a more thorough spanking. Would the soft cushion under my bottom have made even that terrible lesson no big deal?
I felt my eyes go wide as these wayward thoughts crowded into my head, and I tried to figure out where they had come from, and what they would say about me if I confessed them to Rick, or anyone else.
Anyone else… like the New Modesty counselor it seemed I would soon meet, because my husband had decided we should. I chewed on my lower lip as Rick finished stowing our bags and started to sit down next to me in his own super comfortable first class seat.
Wayward thoughts.Yes, speculating about how I might shrug off a degrading, tyrannical punishment as no big deal represented a wayward thought. But the notion had another component, one I didn’t want to admit but nevertheless couldn’t deny. I adjusted myself on the luxurious leather surface, trying to keep the movement invisible to Rick. The little squirm verified that I did feel comfortable—despite my first old-fashioned lesson over my husband’s knee. It probably would still have felt fine, I told myself, even if he had taken down my jeans and panties to punish me.
Bratty. I felt my eyes go wide at the realization. The girl who had saidForget itto her loving husband, twice now… who seemed ready to shrug off a spanking, even on the bare…
“Would you like some champagne, Mr. Williams?” the flight attendant asked from the aisle. I turned to see that she had addressed Rick alone.
“Yes, please,” he replied. “That would be lovely.”
“Certainly. Is Mrs. Williams allowed to drink?”
The warmth flooded into my cheeks anew. What the hell was going on? The pretty flight attendant had glanced my way as she asked Rick whether she might serve me, but returned her attention immediately to my husband. I, too, looked at him, desperate for some sign on his gorgeous face that he intended to treat me like an adult, and show the flight attendant he regarded me that way.
He looked over at me and smiled. He took my hand and squeezed it.
“She is,” he confirmed. “Would you like some champagne, Mrs. Williams?”
My lips parted. My mind whirled. He hadn’t told the flight attendant that of course I could drink and that she should ask me directly whether I wanted champagne. He had asked me himself, yes, but he had implicitly confirmed that the other woman’s flabbergastingly demeaning question had been perfectly acceptable.
I looked into his eyes, and for a moment I could feel—almost like a physical sensation—a wave of brattiness start to form inside me. I could nearly hear the words,What the fuck is going on, dude?come out of my mouth. I had the distinct feeling that in another situation, without the recent memory of what had happened in the New Modesty lounge’s private room, I might say something like that—maybe without thefuck.
Instead, feeling my forehead crease and my cheeks get even redder, I said, “Yes, please.”
The flight from that point on proceeded from one point of view like a completely normal, if very luxurious, trip from Philadelphia to Chicago. The plane took off, and we were quickly soaring above the clouds. I hadn’t flown often, because these days a journey on a plane represented a once-every-few-years luxury for most families, and I remembered those vacations vividly.
No, I told myself, this trip didn’t really feel different. Sure, I remembered how it felt to walk down the aisle, past the wealthy passengers already seated in their enormous seats, sipping their champagne. Yes, it had felt surreal at first to be one of those passengers and to sip my own champagne. As I watched exactly the same sitcom series I could have watched in cattle-car economy class, though, I told myself the novelty was wearing off quickly.
Rick reached out to push pause on my screen affixed to the seat in front of me. I frowned in annoyance, and looked over at him. He reached out and took my hand.
“The reason we’re in first class, Dee,” he told me, his voice soft as if to keep our conversation from the ears of the other passengers in the quiet first class cabin, “is that it turns out Rocky Falls has special resources—if we move there, this level of service wouldn’t be a one-time thing.”
I felt my frown change from irritation to skepticism. Down in my chest, I felt, to my confusion, that strange bratty part of me that had apparently decided to bloom at the worst possible time rising once again.
“What?” I asked. “They have million-dollar jobs for landscapers?”
Rick’s eyes narrowed. His hand tightened its grip around mine—not painfully, but very firmly—and he leaned close to speak right into my ear. My lips parted and my eyes went wide even before my husband’s words reached me, simply at the dominance of the gesture.
“Your attitude is becoming a problem, Dee, but it’s a problem I’m going to solve, even if I have to use the strap on your bare butt until you can’t sit down—not even in a first class airplane seat.”
My heart had started to pound in my chest, and my breath came in little pants between my parted lips. Rick kept his mouth close to my ear, and tightened his grasp of my hand a little.
“Do you understand, babe?” he asked. “Give me ayes, sirif you understand.”
I felt my forehead crease into a deep vee as my tummy seemed to flip all the way over. Worse—much worse—further down my body responded in that dismaying way I had, to my mortification, started to expect. I tried to keep from squirming as I became suddenly aware that not all the soreness from Rick’s firm right hand had vanished from my backside.
I didn’t have a choice, did I? I couldn’t very well jump out the plane window, or even try to escape in the Chicago airport: I had seen enough of this ‘program’ to know they would bring me back to my suddenly strange husband. And who knew what awaited us in Rocky Falls? The memory of the strap hanging on the wall in the private room, of Rick’s order to put the pillows on the bed and lie over them rose into my mind. I closed my mouth and chewed on the inside of my cheek as I tried to sort out fear from what I couldn’t deny represented a very different kind of arousal.
No. I don’t have any choice.