We recommend, the New Modesty website had told me,that you take your wife in hand as decisively as possible, on your first night in the inquirers’ program. Follow your instincts and leave her in no doubt that you have what it takes to keep her in line, most important when it comes to asserting your rights over her needy body.
My eyes went downward to the hand covering her adorable, tightly clad little bottom. I saw her move her fingers convulsively there, clutching at the tight denim. Raising my eyes to my beautiful wife’s face, I noted that her brow had creased very deeply, as if the stimulation she had just given herself, with that fearful little motion of her hand, had evoked very mixed feelings.
“Do I need to keep spanking you?” I asked. “Or are you going to do as you’re told?”
The words of protest came flooding out of her as she turned around to face me, hands in front of her now, ready to push me away.
“But Ricky, you didn’t say you were going towatchand I can’t take my clothes off with youwatching!”
“You can,” I repeated, “and you will. I can spank you until you do, and then your whipping is going to make you very uncomfortable at the country club tomorrow. Or you can start learning how to be a good girl.”
I could see in Mandy’s eyes all the conflict that the phrasegood girlraised in her. I felt as if I could even read her mind: she had begun to realize today that she was still a brat—but she also wanted to be my good girl, and she didn’t know how to reconcile the two sides of her nature. Above all, my sweet, complicated wife didn’t know how to deal with the dark desires that the struggle—and my old-fashioned way of guiding her through it—brought out.
I narrowed my eyes. I could see in Mandy’s answering expression of alarm that I had started to get the hang of that look—the one that tells a wife she’ll regret defying her husband.
Instinct—a loving but dominant urge—told me I could help her a little more without backing down in any way.
“Start with your top,” I told her. “Take it off and show me your bra.”
* * *
Mandy
I felt my whole face pucker into a frown. Rick’s instruction seemed to change something about the idea of taking off my clothes, though I had no real idea why. I knew he wouldn’t stop telling me to strip for him after I had obeyed this first command, and yet the notion of doing that one thing—a simple thing, even if it meant he would see my bra—seemed much more possible.
Not just possible, but…
I bit my lower lip, feeling my forehead crease even harder. I looked into my husband’s dark eyes, and I could see there somehow that he knew about the mortifying conflict inside me. Rick’s gaze seemed to say,you know you want to.
I closed my eyes and choked back a little sob. I didn’t want to think anymore suddenly. My hands went to the hem of my pink t-shirt and pulled it up, telling myself that above all I really had to cover my face so that Rick couldn’t see just how deeply I had blushed.
You know you want to.I held the fabric of the shirt over my face. I knew I would have to keep taking it off, but I desperately needed to stay hidden for a second.
In the darkness, I heard my husband say, “Oh, I like that, Dee.”
My heart flipped over, it felt like, in my chest, as I thought of the slightly lacy pink bra I had on and of Rick looking at it. Not just looking at my bra, either, but looking at my little breasts inside it. He had touched them, yes, but I had let him do that in the dark. He had neverseenme in my underwear, let alone naked.
I wanted to tear the shirt off over my head so I could confront him with an angry glare at the liberty he had just taken, in saying that he liked seeing my bra. I wanted to keep the shirt there so I wouldn’t have to see my husband’s face as he contemplated my unclothed body.
The wild idea came into my mind, that if I were blindfolded, I wouldn’t have to look at Rick, and I to my dismay I pictured it: my husband taking my top, rolling it up, covering my eyes with it and tying it behind my head. So that he could see, but I couldn’t—so that he could look at my lingerie, at my breasts, even at the embarrassing place between my thighs, without me having any idea what he had decided to examine… to inspect… to… topossess… with his roaming eyes.
I let out a sob of helpless need at Rick’s appreciative words, at the thought of the blindfold, at my own helplessness to push back my shameful reaction to this whole terrible scene. I ripped my top off and tried to look my husband in the face, but I found I couldn’t raise my eyes above his belt buckle. The sight of that silver fastening, with its stark contrast against the black leather of his jeans belt, made me whimper again, and I held the pink shirt in a crumpled ball in front of my chest, trying to ward off Rick’s lustful gaze as much as the whipping he had promised.
“Drop the shirt and take off your jeans, now,” Rick said.
I managed to raise my eyes at last, and I looked into his face. The expression there made me swallow very hard. For the first time I saw my husband’s sexual hunger unleashed. I saw the resolution in his dark eyes, to take this terrible step, using his firm hand to bring his wayward bride into line. His absolute confidence in his decision to discipline me the old-fashioned way showed so clearly in that look that my fingers let go of the top in sheer panic. My belly seemed to fill with fear of what my husband would do to my backside if I failed any further to obey him.
As the shirt fell to the soft piled carpet of the bedroom, I kept looking at Rick, with my hands still in front of me. To my astonishment and dismay, I felt the resistance—the brattiness—rise in me again. Despite all my fear, I couldn’t obey Rick. I couldn’t start pulling down my pants as he had commanded without something more. For reasons that I could never have described in any coherent way, it seemed I needed to know, over and over, that my husband intended to make me comply with his instructions. Even the awful soreness he had already created in my backside and the thought of the additional lesson he meant to teach me couldn’t stop that impulse to test him, to push the limits.
Shockingly, I saw Rick smile. A confusion of thoughts, emotions, and sensations seemed to tear through my whole body. That smile, not a broad grin or even a patronizing smile of satisfaction as much as an almost conspiratorial smile of fellowship… it said that he and I were in this together. It made love well up in me, and—both worse and better—gratitude, too.
I had no intention of ever showing him, let alone telling him, about that shameful gratitude. It made the logical part of my mind seethe that he could smile that way, as if a king and his concubine could somehow live on an equal footing of power… or as if an old-fashioned, dominant husband and his old-fashioned, submissive bride could be in their marriage together when he expected to put her over his knee for correction whenever he decided she needed it.
I almost said something… something like anotherForget itor even something likeWhen this week is over, I never want to see you again.Deep down, though—because of everything that had happened to us in the past twenty-four hours, everything I had done and every step Rick had taken to try to keep us together—I could recognize that bratty voice. More, I felt myself starting to trust that my husband knew how to take care of me.
As if to give me the ultimate confirmation of that trust, in the form of a terrible paradox, I watched Rick’s hands drop to his belt buckle and start to unfasten it.
“Oh, no!” I cried, the words emerging from my mouth without any thought preceding them. “Please… sir. Not… not yet?”