said yes?”
“I’m still thinking it over. I still have one wild oat left to sow and I think I’d rather do that before than after I’m married.”
“Really!” Michael leaned back against the counter behind him and folded his arms. The former detective immediately realized that hunger for something other than a fancy baguette sandwich had brought Laura to The Dutch that day. “And might this particular oat be the lawful wedded possession of your best friend?”
“I don’t think Marguerite would mind. Especially since she’s out of town anyway. She was Hugo’s plaything for years. Why shouldn’t I be yours for one hour?”
“That’s all I get, one hour?”
“Maybe two?” Laura grinned.
“Is Hugo going to hear about this?”
“No. He’d find it disagreeable.”
“In that case, Marguerite shouldn’t hear about it either.”
“Agreed.”
“We don’t want to risk her blurting it out to Hugo.”
“Right.”
“Well? Where should we do this thing?”
“The house in the woods, I think,” said Laura, referring to Michael’s residence, a handsomely fitted out cottage which together with Marguerite’s white Cape Cod house in the village afforded the newlyweds just the right amount of living space. It was the place where he and Marguerite went to make love and play in complete privacy, a luxury worth an extra mortgage payment.
Laura bit delicately into the sandwich and drank some wine. Then she laughed.
“What?” Michael was looking at her, trying to figure out why it had taken her six years to ask him to play. He had always coveted the dark-eyed brunette, from the first day he met her, in Marguerite Alexander’s shop.
“Hugo thinks I’m hesitating because I’m still brooding about that stupid caning he gave me years ago.”
“Well, you didn’t talk to him for two years,” Michael pointed out.
“I know. It was the only way I could make sure he realized I don’t like that kind of thing.”
“I think you made your point.”
“So, you’ll never believe this, but guess who walked into the shop yesterday...”
Hugo and Amanda had spent the afternoon biking around Random Point, eating a picnic lunch on the beach and getting stoned in the woods.
He’d brought a blanket in his knapsack and they lay on their backs, looking up at the cottony clouds scudding across the deepest of blue skies through the latticed umbrella of turning leaves.
“This IS the best day of my life,” she confided. “Everything is just so engaging.”
“What I can’t understand is,” he leaned up on an elbow to look down at her, “why you didn’t get in touch with me until now. I mean, I can understand you letting your thirteenth, maybe even fourteenth birthday go by, but you’ve known about this for how long, six years? Why didn’t you at least write to me?”
“Mother convinced me to keep the secret.”
“Well, I think it’s the worst thing she’s ever done in her otherwise morally spotless life,” Hugo said with feeling.
“She didn’t want you to regard me as a responsibility to contend with. And my stepfather thought you’d spoil me and distract me from my studies, like candy. Since I don’t mind putting off treats, I didn’t press to meet you.”
“I suppose it’s for the best,” Hugo reflected, dropping back down to gaze up at the sky. “Your step dad sounds properly strict, not someone you can get around, like me.”
Amanda rolled over on her stomach and leaned up on her elbows.
“I think it would have broken his heart if I’d defected to you any earlier,” she admitted. “And, as you say, he did a lot for me.”
“I just hope this isn’t about her being afraid I’d actually spank a child.”
“Oh no. Of course not. Everyone knows that spanking people don’t do that sort of thing with their own children.”
“So you got your first spanking from a boyfriend?”
“Who said that? My stepfather spanked me many times.”
“Really?”
“Between three and five I would throw tantrums to get attention. My stepfather has a low tolerance for misbehavior and he’s half Chinese. Corporal punishment is big in their culture. So I got spanked.”
“Well, I don’t suppose it did you any harm,” said Hugo, lazily admiring his surprising progeny. That afternoon she looked the picture of autumn, in brown tweed leggings, brown knee boots, a white shirt and gold merino wool cardigan, her fair hair a mixture of natural pale shades, appearing even lighter in the dappled sunlight filtering down through the russet canopy above them.
“Can’t we pick up where we left off yesterday in the studio?” she asked.
“You mean, me spank you again?” he stared at her in disbelief.
“Yes, you stopped just as I was getting into it.”
“But... to what end?” he appeared genuinely puzzled, unable to comprehend her motivation.
“It will give me something to write in my diary.”
“No,” he pillowed his head on his hands, “it’s too perverse, even for me.”
“Why?”
“I’m sorry, honey, but to me this is too sexy a thing to do with my own daughter.”
“Gee, it’s not like I’m innocent,” she protested. “I’ve already had six lovers.”
“No kidding,” he smiled. “I thought you were into postponing pleasure.”
“Every kind but that. That I go for.”
“Know what, Amanda? There are a half dozen decent, gentlemanly players right here in Random Point. Any one of them would be happy to furnish you with diary entries on a moment’s notice. In fact, I’ll take you to meet the hottest one of them on our way home. He wound up marrying one of my favorite submissives, but I happen to know that she’s out of town.”
“I think you’re being very conventional,” Amanda declared. “And anyway, I’m not trying to seduce you. I just want to play. It’s so ridiculously innocent that I can’t see what you’re hesitating about.”
“I see that you’re determined to get your own way,” Hugo observed, his concern about breaking taboos beginning to ebb. What harm could it really do if this was what she wanted? “Maybe I’ll have to teach you a lesson about playing with fire.”
This declaration, though mildly couched, caused an instant blush to mantle her cheeks. Hugo sat up with a sigh, saying, “Remember, you asked for this!” The next moment he had pulled the lithe girl across his lap.
A spanking over street clothes, with its spontaneity and insulated warmth, is a type of spanking relentlessly sought by romantics and purists alike. Amanda was thrilled to receive it and expressed her approbation by making practically no sound beyond the occasional gasp, pant or yip as Hugo’s palm descended on her upturned seat. What followed was a series of rhythmic, medium hard smacks, administered briskly while continuously alternating cheeks, straight across the jutting centermost portion of her slim but well formed bottom. Then he spanked the upper middle portion of her bottom just as thoroughly, then the lower. Then he spanked her upper thighs and even bestowed a few smacks on her shapely calves through the backs of her leather boot shafts, which made her catch her breath and emit the faintest