Bad Girls (5 page)

‘Yes.'

‘He's going to make you take off your skirt and pull down your panties. Then he'll bend you over his lap and spank your bare bottom until your tears are all cried out. He knows you ran away because you were scared, that you couldn't take it. This time you'll want to run away, but you won't be able to. He'll show you that you can take so much more than you think. He'll make you take it, Sarah. No matter how many times you give up or beg or resist, he'll make you take it.'

‘But I'm sorry, Alex. I'm so, so sorry. It can't be that harsh. I won't make it. I won't be able to. It'll be like last year. I don't want to fail again. I don't want to disappoint you again. Please, don't make it so bad. I'm sorry. I won't do it again. I promise. I really do.'

‘Take off your skirt, Sarah, and pull down your panties. It's time for your spanking.'

‘But please, Alex. I was so happy to see you. Let's make it a happy day. Let's not ruin it.'

‘I'm not ruining it, Sarah. I'm saving it. I'm saving it from what you did last year.'

‘But why would I come back if it was going to hurt so much? I don't get it, Alex. Why?'

‘I don't know, Sarah. It's your character. You tell me.'

‘She wants to close that chapter. She wants to put the unfinished business behind her. But why does he need to beat her for it? Why can't he just understand how hard it is for her?'

‘I think she needs more than understanding. If understanding were all she needed, she wouldn't be here. You need to be more honest about these things, Sarah. Your case for leniency is unconvincing. In fact, I'm not sure you know your character at all.'

‘But I do. I know she doesn't want to get the spanking you described. It's more than anyone could want.'

‘That's bullshit, Sarah. She's fantasized about this spanking her whole life. You're just too scared to go that deep inside her. You're too cowardly to find out what it's like.'

His words stung. They hit home with Sarah – she had been called too scared before – and she did the only thing she knew to prove him wrong. She took off her skirt and lowered her panties so that the elastic waistband cut into her thighs. Cowardly? Go to hell.

‘I'm ready. Show me what it's like.'

The bravery was an act, a fuck-you to Alex's arrogant judgment. Who was he to tell her what her problem was? He didn't even know her.

But he did. He was right and she had wanted this her whole life and she had run away last year because she was scared to go this deep, and the only thing left for her to do was this.

Like fastening your seatbelt before the roller coaster ride, bending over Alex's lap was the last act Sarah would do of her own volition. It was an irreversible commitment. She had turned a corner. She felt him grip her firmly – having obviously learned his lesson last year – and she recognized that she had passed the point of no return.

The intellectual realization was one thing, but the physical sensation of Alex's hand landing on her bare flesh was another. The way that patch of pale, tender skin stung changed everything. It felt as if her ass, so long the object of fantasy spankings, had come to be the center of her being. Now all she felt was the agonizing fire that raged as the spanking continued. The pain quickly made her frantic. She squirmed, wriggled and kicked, anything to slow down the rain of slaps, anything to protect the raw skin where his last slap had just landed.

But even though she was struggling, she wasn't trying to run away. Something about this was right. This was where she was meant to be. She wanted desperately for the pain to stop, but there was something compelling about it. It focused her completely. It was clean, like sharp glass, and cut through all the confusion that clouded her head. She could forget about all the negotiations and compromises, all the speculation and guesswork that went into human relations. Typically, the complexity of it all burdened her and took her away from the here and now. Typically, the present only revealed past mistakes or informed future decisions, so that she was always straddling the present, thinking more about the should-have-done's and the must-do's than what she was actually doing. The spanking demanded she forget all that. The future and past collapsed into the stinging intensity of the present. Even her worries about how she would stand the rest of the spanking were beaten out of her, literally. She could only think of one thing: the pain. Everything else was so complicated. This was simple.

For Alex, on the other hand, her spanking was an unexpectedly reflective time. He had questions about the spanking. Should he hit the same spot again and again or vary his target, working his way up and down each cheek from her thigh to the top of her crack? How many spanks should he deliver to one cheek before he switched to the other? How often should he take breaks? How much can she take? What's a fair punishment? Is he trying to make it hurt more or not hurt too much? Alex was making it up as he went along. In typical Alex fashion, he placed his faith in the golden mean and basically split the difference whenever possible.

There's no mistaking that he found aspects of the spanking arousing. Sarah's ass was spectacular, and the view of further treasures between her legs was even better. The shades of red and blotches of emerging bruises were as thrilling to watch as her gasps, moans and sighs were to hear. He liked the squealing, pleading and crying, but they diminished as the spanking progressed, and somehow he understood that Sarah was too deep inside herself to make a big display of her feelings, no matter how intense.

More than anything, though, how well the director character fitted struck Alex. It was a spur of the moment invention, and he had worried that it would feel too contrived. He worried, too, that it would be a cop out, a way to avoid owning up to his responsibility for this. But that's not how it felt at all. A good director breathes life into a scene and that was what Alex was doing. The role-playing had answered the question of how a bunch of scripted lines – ‘you've been a very naughty girl', ‘you need a spanking', ‘no, please don't spank me on the bare bottom', etc – could feel anything but hackneyed and cliché. It allowed him to deliver lines like these without feeling ridiculous, without feeling like a sleazy pervert or a Victorian headmaster wannabe.

Yes, it was a role, but the old acting adage felt true: sometimes you can only be yourself when you're on stage. This was where Sarah and Alex could be themselves. Alex was the man bringing his hand down hard on her exposed ass while Sarah, beyond herself with pain, felt as urgent a need for this to continue as she felt for it to end. When it ended, this part of themselves would be forced to recede into the deep place in their head where it lived, secretly, stowed away on their otherwise normal lives. Neither of them wanted to return to their normal lives. Not yet.

Impact is to spanking as friction is to sex. Anyone who thinks a hand spanking is the mild cousin of canes, paddles and belts has never felt the truly cruel sting that only skin on skin can deliver. It was a loud spanking. Alex resigned himself to the fact that those in the neighboring hotel rooms or passer-bys in the hallway outside would most definitely hear the cracking report of each spank. But this wasn't a time to worry about what other people thought. Nor was this a time to accommodate the needs of others. He did enough of that in his life. This was time for him to demand similar respect. How dare she? How dare she leave without a word? How dare she make him feel like she did, make him worry that he had done something horrible?

Sarah couldn't know what was going through his head, but every time she thought the spanking couldn't get any worse, it did. It was absolute murder. She didn't understand how she was still alive. She couldn't understand how one person could do this to another.

Was this a just punishment, the equivalent in physical pain of the emotional pain that her leaving had caused, or was this just the satisfaction of that desire that lay in wait, deep inside them, for as long as they could remember? What sort of calculus figured the amount of corporal punishment that equaled non-corporal pain? How big a debt had she incurred that she was now paying off in the currency of her own agony? Whatever it was, this wasn't what she had imagined. This was too much. This was too, too much.

She couldn't take it; she had to take it. These two feelings together had caused an initial panic but had subsequently settled into a feeling of deep resignation. She could rail against it in her head, but she did nothing about it. He spanked her again and again. It would go on forever and each time she felt the vicious impact – each one worse than the last – she just struggled to breathe and make it to the next one. And the next one and the next one.

She was surprised when he stopped without warning. Was he done? Had she made it? Was that all there was to it?

‘What's it like, Sarah?'

After remaining mostly dry-eyed through the vicious beating, Sarah heard the question and began to sob. Her tears came from a part of herself that she never let out. These were feelings – despair, weakness, hopelessness – that had to be kept inside or it would all fall apart. But the searing pain had defeated her, and she could hold it together no longer.

‘This is what it's like,' she managed from between her sobs. ‘This is what it's always like.'

Alex was moved by the effort it took to say it twice, and knew it was the first time she'd been able to tell anyone the truth in a long time. He helped her off his lap and she curled up on the hotel bed without pulling up her panties. He lay next to her and held her as she cried.

After a while she faded into a deep fatigue, lying still, unconcerned about her state of undress or where she was or whom she was with. This was unusual for Sarah, who typically worried about everything, and it came as a welcomed relief. She would sleep well tonight, even without the pills. First, though, she had one question for Alex.

‘Did I get the role?'

‘Of course, my dear. Of course.'

When they busted me for shoplifting cheese from the gourmet shop with a fancy non-sense French name like Aubergine or Nicoise, I expected some trouble – a fine or something – but I had no idea it would lead to this. In spite of an on-again, off-again case of kleptomania, I had never been arrested before. I got caught occasionally, but I had always gotten off. The important thing is not to let getting caught rattle you. At the moment they touch you, turning you away from the exit and patting you down to reveal the product under your clothes, you take an inventory of your chances. You assess the things you have going for you – charm, flirtation, apology, tears, pathos, sex – and the things you have going against you – the guard's righteous attitude, the fat security lady's jealousy of the size four you lifted, the store owner's
Schadenfreude
. Anyway, play it right and unless you're famous and there's fifteen minutes of fame for busting you, you'll usually get away with a warning. Prosecuting a shoplifting case tends to be more hassle than it's worth. Dye your hair and change your strategy and you can go back to the same store a week later.

But I guess my arrogance was bound to get the best of me, and the cheese under my sweatshirt was just lazy. It was the end of a long day and I was hungry and I could have just walked another block and gone to a normal grocery. There I wouldn't have faced the nosey French lady. She was the one who kept a constant eye on her husband so he wouldn't let me off in exchange for a little action in the back office. She called the cops and they came in spite of her ridiculous accent and histrionics. You would have thought they were getting robbed at gunpoint. ‘Hand over the Camembert, lady, or Pierre here gets one right between the eyes.' Give me a break.

I tried working the cop too, but he had a female partner and soon I was in cuffs in the back of the car. The holding cell was a true cross-section of whoredom, ranging from crack to Mayflower. I realized how many times a night these cops must be offered freebies in exchange for a blind eye. I could see why I hadn't stood a chance. Making my way through the system was a slow and cumbersome process. I didn't immediately call anyone for bail or demand to see counsel (like public defenders come at their client's convenience anyway). The truth was, I had nothing pressing and the most painless way to get through this seemed to be not giving a shit and not hurrying things in vain. It didn't take long before we were sorted into the winners – those who had swift action taken on their behalf and were processed and released with efficiency – and the rest of us, who would be dealt with when it was convenient. After reconciling myself to the indignity of calling the 1-800-GET-BAIL guy, I gave him my one credit card that wasn't maxed out and walked out of the police station, hungry, tired and only slightly more hopeless than I had been the day before.

I went to the chain grocery store and stole breakfast. I had cereal and milk at home, but at least walking out into the dawn with their most expensive proscuitto in my jeans made me feel alive.

Eating it all in one sitting, though, made me want to vomit. I'd put my bingeing and purging days behind me, so I popped a couple of Ritalin and swore I wouldn't eat for the rest of the day. I couldn't sleep (duh), and with a renewed sense of purpose I went to a bookstore and stole a bunch of books on representing yourself in court. As I flipped through them to find the little security tags (they're called RF tags – the RF stands for radio frequency), I began to regret dropping out of law school. To get the bad feeling out of my head I slipped the RF tags into the bags of the customers at the coffee shop who were too busy listening to their Ipods and typing on their laptops to notice.

To make a long story short, I spent the time before my court date studying the law, falling another month behind on my rent, and maxing out my last credit card on an outfit for court. The judge, unfortunately, wasn't interested in my newfound enthusiasm for litigation and slapped me with a fine I couldn't pay. Unsatisfied by my day in court, I decided it was a good time to file for bankruptcy. I studied even harder for the court date, this time at the law school library (it turns out legal books are hard to steal). I even economized and wore the same outfit that I'd worn before (bankruptcy court was blocks away from criminal court so no one could have seen me in it). I thought all this would help, but then the judge started asking for old tax returns I didn't have (because I'd never filed them) and treating me just like the other bottom-feeders in the courtroom. I was told to set up a binding debt repayment schedule with a credit counselor, and then we were all dressed down by the bankruptcy drill sergeant who told us that we had reneged on the social contract, that we had stolen from those good enough to give us credit, and that our mothers probably didn't love us anymore. I was sitting on a bench in the hall crying when I met Pete, and the trouble really started.

He was next to be called into court for a case he was prosecuting, and he had just sat down next to me on the bench to wait. My files had fallen out of my briefcase and were strewn along half the length of the bench. The tissues I was using to dry my tears and blow my nose were piling up at my side. I've since learned how Pete can't block out distractions and it must have driven him crazy to have me in hysterics next to him, but he claims that I was just too cute for him to ignore. Pete grabbed the wastepaper basket from his side of the bench and held it in front where my used tissues lay. There was no way he would touch them, but he waited patiently for me to see him, realize what he was doing, and brush the tissues off the bench and into the waiting wastepaper basket.

‘When's the execution?' he asked.

It took me a minute to get that he was joking (Pete isn't really the funniest guy, but he was trying).

‘It's not that,' I said, sniffling and straightening my hair. I tried to laugh, but it came out as a half-cry, half-laugh.

‘I know. I was watching you. You're not bad, but the mock trials in the first year of law school aren't going to help you defend yourself in bankruptcy court.'

‘I know. I guess I should have seen it coming.'

‘A week after your shoplifting conviction? What were you thinking?'

‘How did you know?'

‘I work in the prosecutor's office. A friend of mine told me about the cute law school drop-out who nearly got away with it.'

‘I nearly got away with it?'

‘Yeah, he said you were great. But don't let it slip that I told you. It's our policy not to encourage criminals.'

I felt him go stiff when I pulled him into my sloppy embrace.

‘That's the nicest thing anyone's said to me since… well, I don't know when.'

‘How about you give me another chance to say nice things to you over dinner tonight?'

I knew I wasn't supposed to give in to last minute requests – I was supposed to pretend that I lived a constantly stimulating life and that my oh-so-valuable time had to be requested a week in advance, but who was I trying to fool? He already knew I was a broke kleptomaniac; I didn't have to hide the fact that there weren't men lining up at my door. ‘Sure.'

‘Stay here. I'll be done in an hour.'

I got fidgety and wanted to get up, go get coffee or at least go to the bathroom to fix my make-up, but something about the way he said ‘stay here' made me sit tight. It was like there was some relief in being told what to do. Otherwise I would be pacing, checking myself in the mirror over and over again, obsessing over whether he was a serial killer or Prince Charming, and otherwise driving myself crazy. But told in no uncertain terms to ‘stay here', I did. Freed from worrying about things beyond my control, I actually relaxed. Exactly an hour later he emerged.

‘How'd you do that?' I asked.

‘What?'

‘Be exactly an hour. I thought court always ran behind and took longer than expected.'

‘It does, but I'm always on time.'

‘Okay,' I said, mystified.

‘Did you drive?'

‘No.' I didn't tell him that I didn't even have a car.

‘I'll drive. Is Italian okay?'

‘You mean a Ferrari or a Maserati?'

‘No, I mean spaghetti or linguini.'

‘Oh. Okay.'

The date was amazing. Sometimes a man can take you away from everything; he can make you forget your nerves, your insecurities, your worries and your failures. Pete made me feel beautiful and smart. For the first time in a long time I felt loveable. For a while it even seemed like he was the insecure one. He warned me that he was the weirdo, the one who counted everything and repeated numbers obsessively in his head. He told me he was scared of germs, that he hated bathroom doorknobs more than almost anything in the world, and that it took him an hour and twenty minutes to get ready for work every morning. He confessed to checking the oven four times to make sure he'd turned it off, even though he rarely used it, and to having twelve anti-bacterial wipes in his pocket before he left the house every day. He said he had an affection for multiples of four, and he showed me the eight eyelets on his shoes. He couldn't buy shoes if the number of eyelets wasn't divisible by four. While I suppose I should have been able to foresee the downside of all this, I just found it totally charming. Not only was he funny about it, mocking his own craziness, but the order also offered a welcomed contrast to the chaos of my own life.

Finally he looked me in the eye, reached across the table to clasp my hand and asked if I could find it in my heart to accept him the way he was. He tried to make it a joke, but it really wasn't.

‘Of course, Pete. Like I'm one to judge.'

‘Thank you, Nicole. It's such a relief to hear you say that.'

‘Can you accept me the way I am, Pete?' I asked, more out of a sense of parallelism than anything else. I figured it would be nice to be reassured, especially after I had gotten myself into so much trouble.

‘Not a chance.'

‘What?'

‘I warned you that I'm rigid and need things a certain way.'

‘But I can accept that.'

‘Good. Then I need you to stop stealing and get out of debt.'

‘But what if I need you to accept me the way I am?'

‘Nicole, sweetheart, you don't even accept yourself the way you are.'

Touché
.

‘But…'

‘Look, you're beautiful, smart, sweet and sexy. You have a good heart and you mean well. But you're screwing up. You're stuck in your bad habits and it's only going to get worse.'

‘And you propose to fix me?'

‘Come back to my place and I'll tell you what I propose.'

I could have been offended, or gotten scared, or mistrusted his motives, but instead I just let him pay the check, got in the passenger seat of his car, and went wherever he took me. Pete made me very obedient.

His place was even neater than I had imagined it, totally modernist, black and white, and minimal. Everything had a place. Where it was possible things were set at right angles from each other, symmetry was maintained and multiples were arranged in sets of four. I expected the glass of wine and the awkward sitting next to each other on the couch and the fumbling first kiss, but instead we had hardly gotten in the door when Pete turned to me, looked me in the eye, and gave me the first of many thousands of direct orders.

‘Take a shower. There's a clean robe hanging on a hook on the door that you can put on afterwards.'

I looked at him. Was he serious? Did he think I was dirty? Was this his way of bypassing the fumbling scene on the couch? Was he taking me for granted?

‘Nicole, I'll never tell you to do something if I think you might regret it. You can always do whatever you want, but I think we'll be happiest if you do what I say.'

He sounded both kind and menacing. I liked kind, but menacing felt electric. I turned and headed toward the shower, swaying my hips to whet his appetite.

The rest of the night went better than I dared imagine. I got pretty hot with anticipation while in the shower. I emerged, still wet, in his robe and we began kissing. I wasn't even dry when he made me come for the first time, licking my clit right through my first orgasm and clear through my second. I had to pull him by the hair to make him stop and kiss me. He put on a condom without asking me any questions. He fucked me frontways and backways and a few ways in between, finally coming missionary style and collapsing on me for a well-earned break. If you pay attention to how he fucks, you can tell whether a guy likes you or just likes fucking. Pete liked me. I had no doubt.

After we'd rested for a few minutes I went to the bathroom, peed, and wet a washcloth to wipe the spermicide off his cock so I could suck it.

When he got hard again in my mouth I rolled a condom down his cock and straddled him. The second time he lasted longer and really had to fuck me hard to come at all. I don't come from fucking very often, but he gave me plenty of time to come twice. He was behind me and I touched myself while he was doing it. Afterwards he cuddled until our sweaty bodies got chilly, and then we pulled up the covers and went to sleep.