he dropped the belt again, I was straining and beginning to sweat, but a strange kind of exhilaration made me want more.
Instead, Dan pushed the first couple of inches inside me and held it there until I begged him to fuck me.
‘Do you think you deserve it?’ he said.
‘I deserve it. I’m a bad girl.’
‘Then that means you need more of my belt, doesn’t it?’
‘Ohhh.’ I was delighted, loving every thrust, every stern word that went with it, even though it was more of his cock I really craved.
Obligingly, he pushed further in, but still with a maddening slowness that made me jolt my hips backwards, trying to catch his full length.
Once he was all the way in, I sighed deeply, ready for pleasure. But he thrust three times, then withdrew, and I was still vocalising my outrage when the belt lashed down again.
‘Just to make sure the message is getting through,’ he said, putting his shoulder into six more strokes.
I was struggling now, and he seemed to know it. When he put the belt down, I was right on the verge of tears and pleas. I drew a huge breath of relief and spread my thighs in invitation.
But, once he was inside me, giving me the hard fucking I’d wanted all along, part of me wished he hadn’t stopped. Part of me wished he’d carried on whipping my bum until the tears came and the pleas rained down, and then he’d whipped right through them. Did that make me wrong in the head?
I imagined him doing this while he powered into me from behind, imagined my bottom even sorer, my submission absolute. In the end it was those thoughts, rather than his stout attentions to my pussy, that made me come.
‘I need this,’ I sighed, while he speeded up and got ready to fill me with his spunk. ‘I need it.’
He grabbed my shoulder so hard it nearly dislocated, his orgasm mightier than usual, then lay down beside me, beaded with sweat, his eyes wide with astonishment at what had just overtaken him.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I see. I know.’
It was a lovely afterglow and he seemed so happy to have found his kinky side and had some fun with it.
But I don’t think his reaction to the book will be good. I think that will change the game completely.
He waited until after dinner to bring the subject up. Of course, I couldn’t eat. I was too busy trying to second-guess his reaction, but he was playing things totally straight, being normal Dan, full of stories about his colleagues and complaints about form-filling.
I was washing up in the kitchen when he wandered in, picked up a tea towel as if preparing to dry, and flicked it at my bottom, making me jump and rub at it.
‘Oi!’ I said.
‘What? You like that, don’t you?’
‘Not always. Not when I’m not expecting it.’
‘Oh, so it’s you calling the shots, is it?’ He stood behind me and clasped his arms around me, holding me there with his chin on top of my head. ‘Funny, that.’
‘Why funny?’ I asked guardedly.
‘I thought you were into that whole submissive thing these days.’
I twisted my neck round to look at his eyes. His face was quite grave.
‘You saw that book,’ I said.
‘Yeah, I did. You can’t seriously tell me that, after everything you say and do at work, day after day, you believe all that guff about fixed gender roles and male and female energies?’
‘No, Jesus, no, I don’t!’
‘Well, thank fuck for that. I thought a tornado had taken our flat and transplanted it in Stepford.’
I shook my head. ‘I believe the same things I’ve always believed.’
‘That’s what I thought. You like a bit of kink in the bedroom but you’re still the same person … this book is a bit weird, though. I can’t figure it out.’
I took a deep breath.
‘Look, Dan. The thing is, I like kink. I like to be spanked for fun. But … I think I want something a bit more than that too.’ I put my hand in the washing-up water, which was far too hot, and withdrew it rapidly.
‘Put the Marigolds on,’ he said.
I made a face. I hated putting the Marigolds on. They made my hands smell fusty for hours afterwards.
‘I’ll be all right,’ I said, tipping a handful of cutlery into the bubbles.
‘You’ll scald yourself. Put them on.’
I ignored him, picked up the cloth, plunged my hands quickly into the water and gasped as I withdrew a fork.
‘Jesus, Pip, why? Your hand looks like it’s been skinned. I can’t watch.’
He let go of me and took a step back.
He was right. That water was boiling and my hand throbbed so much I could barely hold the fork. I put it under a stream of cold water, exhaling with sweet relief.
When the burning was soothed, I turned around and leant against the sink, facing him.
‘That sums it up,’ I said. ‘That’s what I mean.’
‘What?’
‘You’re so sensible, Dan, and so capable, and I’m not. I do things like that all the time, and I get frustrated with myself and then I get angry with myself and then … I don’t know. It just boils away in my brain, a great big swamp of self-loathing that keeps getting added to and added to. It’s not good for me.’
‘It’s no big deal, love. Just a silly mistake. Don’t be so hard on yourself.’
‘Exactly. I don’t want to be hard on myself. I want you to be hard on me.’
My heart pounded, and the palm that had been hot and itchy from the scalding water was now sweating.
‘Like the guys in your book, you mean? You want me to actually … discipline you?’
I nodded vigorously.
‘I want to be held to account. I want to be corrected.’
He laughed, a tad nervously, and looked up at the ceiling.
‘I’m sorry, Pip, I don’t mean to laugh at you. It’s just … uh … unusual. Isn’t it? I’ve spent my whole life trying to be respectful of women, you know …’
‘It’s not about you being a man and me being a woman. It’s nothing to do with that at all. It’s to do with me wanting to submit and having this need. Oh, I don’t know if I’m putting it very well.’
‘So if I wanted you to spank me, that would be fine?’
‘Well, I’d find it hard, because I don’t like dominating, but in principle, yes.’
‘Right. I don’t, by the way. Want you spank me, I mean. I’m not that way inclined.’
He tried a smile. I tried one back. It was encouraging, at least, that he hadn’t walked out of the door with words of a ‘no dice’ variety.
‘I’m not asking you to do anything you don’t want to,’ I said. ‘It’s just a thought. Just a thing I’ve been pondering. I wanted to find out a bit more about it so I got a book. I’m not demanding anything of you.’
‘You’re not?’
‘No.