Old-Fashioned Values (4 page)

The chuckle puzzled Mark. “What do you mean?”

“Well, it depends on the couple, but you may find that there are times when spanking is a very good thing without it having anything to do with discipline. Just trust me on that for now.”

Looking down at Sally’s bottom, Mark thought about whether he would tell her about the conversation with John over coffee the week before. He didn’t want to have any secrets from her, but he also wasn’t completely sure how she would take the news that her boyfriend had asked his trusted macroeconomics instructor for extensive advice on how to spank her.

Part of him thought that Sally would find it reassuring that Mark wanted to go about it the right way, and had a resource for doing so like John Gammon. Another part of him thought that she might be highly offended. On the other hand, that in itself might be a very good practical exercise in maintaining the sort of leadership and guidance he wanted to exercise in their relationship.

In turn, he wondered whether in objecting to his talking to John about spanking her, Sally might actually earn another spanking. Trying to follow John’s advice, he allowed himself to take pleasure in the thought of spanking Sally again, noticing the way it made his cock give a little leap.

“I’m going to bare your bottom now, Sally,” he said.

“Be clear,” John had said. “Tell her exactly what you’re going to do, and why.”

“I want you to understand that from now on I’ll take your panties down to spank you whenever I think you need it. Girls who use naughty words need discipline, and I’m going to provide that discipline whether you like it or not.”

Mark reached down, took the hem of her skirt in his hands, and began to pull it up. Sally responded with a little whimper that made Mark’s cock jump again.

Now he began to uncover her polka-dot panties, looking adorable as they hugged Sally’s firm little cheeks. Sally Lanchester’s most spankable of bottoms lay there for him to spank.

“I’m going to pull down your panties now.” He put the fingertips of his left hand inside the elastic waistband of the stretch-cotton underwear. He felt Sally shudder at his touch there. He began to tug.

* * *

Mark was a virgin. He had had two girlfriends: one in high school, Jane, whom he had kissed, whose breasts he had fondled through her shirt once; she had broken up with him the next day saying that she thought ‘things’ were ‘moving too fast.’ The second, Alex, had been his girlfriend freshman year here at Mendon, and he had broken up with her after she had got shamefully drunk at a party and begged him to fuck her. Alex was a sophomore, and though Mark hadn’t taken the psychology course yet that would help him finally make sense of her behavior, he could tell that coming from a strict religious household had made dating very difficult for her. Mark could see that the drinking and the begging would keep happening, and eventually he would give in, and he didn’t want to lose his virginity that way, feeling guilty that she was drunk and wouldn’t let him fuck her when she was sober.

Not that he hadn’t wanted to fuck her sober, of course. It was those contrasting impulses, along with another impulse that he had then, his freshman year, only begun to realize made part of his own psychological makeup, that had rendered him so susceptible to John Gammon’s counsel about loving discipline. The other impulse he had felt the night a drunken Alex, on her knees in front of him, had started fumbling at his belt buckle and saying things like, “Gonna suck your big cock now, Marky,” was to punish her for the disgraceful display: to make her take her clothes off and then to whip her, or cane her—to inflict some humiliating pain upon her backside. And then to fuck her.

When Mark broke up with Alex, he told himself that it was because he didn’t want to take advantage of her. He told Alex that it was because he needed to concentrate on his courses. He knew deep down, though, that he was really breaking up with her because he thought he might try to spank her, and he knew spanking was wrong.

After that—after he had met John and Carol—he had dated one other girl, Pia, very briefly. He had mentioned spanking to her on their second date, and said that she should call him if she thought she wanted to try loving discipline. She hadn’t called. He hadn’t been devastated; they had known each other for a few weeks, and though Pia seemed nice, and compatible in that she studied hard the way she did and liked going to parties only in moderation, Mark hadn’t been falling in love or anything.

He hadn’t been devastated the way he would be if Sally broke up with him. Sally Lanchester had hit Mark Weaver’s heart like a ton of bricks: all the impulses, above all the one to take care of her—to protect her modesty and virtue in some almost medieval way—seemed to sing in his heart together, day and night. Siren-like, they drew him from thoughts of his senior thesis, of graduate school applications, of hanging out with friends he knew he had this one final year to do silly stuff with. Tonight, for example, he was here spanking Sally instead of going to see the
a cappella
concert all his friends had gone to see.

And Mark didn’t mind one bit, despite being the kind of guy who believed strongly in putting equal time into friendships as into romantic relationships. Balance: Mark had decided that a balanced life represented the only life for him.

But he was falling in love with Sally, and in just a week (date one on Saturday, date two, tonight, the following Friday), balance had gone out the window. He wanted to hold her, and he wanted—and this he felt he needed to express clearly to himself—to have her. To fuck her. He never said the word himself, but it dwelt in his brain. Mark recognized that he had a very strong sex drive, and one of the things of which John and Carol had convinced him when he had dinner with them in the spring of his sophomore year—the dinner that Mark now firmly believed had changed his life—was that that was a good thing. And to think about sex the way sex really was best for him, and not the way the mainstream said it was supposed to be.

“Listen to me, Mark,” Carol had said, looking across the table at him, over the two low candlesticks that she always brought out for every dinner. Mark had eaten dinner with them five times that spring, and every time he seemed to notice the candles more, and to grow more conscious of the way he had grown up without any candles on the table. He couldn’t blame his mom—or his dad—for that. What meaning would candles have had for them? But now candles meant Carol and John, and the new sort of life they had opened before him.

Mark had looked intently back at Carol, listening. “A lady doesn’t say the word for what John does to me, in bed, and what I want him to do to me there, but it isn’t making love.”

Mark felt his face grow hot.

“I have a feeling that you’re a man who understands that pretty deeply, but I also have a feeling that you’re not sure that a gentleman does that kind of thing.”

“Not that we don’t make love, sometimes,” John put in, throwing an arm around Carol’s shoulders and kissing her temple.

Carol laughed and shot him a wry, sidelong glance. “More than I’d like, sir.”

That was the first time Mark had heard Carol call John ‘sir.’ The feelings that rose in him at the mere sound of the word seemed to rob him of his reason for a long moment. His mouth dropped slightly open, but then he managed to shut it, hopefully before Carol noticed. More than anything else, at those dinners, Mark wanted to seem like he understood what John and Carol were telling him. Not just about loving discipline, but about economic life, political life, psychological life. Mark had learned more at John and Carol’s dinner table than in all of the classrooms of Mendon College put together.

But erotic life above all. Without using the slightest obscenity, John and especially Carol had taught him that he should take charge of his erotic life, instead of pretending it didn’t exist.

So when he had been near panic, thinking about his second date with Sally, wondering whether he could mention loving discipline, he had called John. He hadn’t seen John since the previous spring, when they had had dinner at the Mexican restaurant in Mendon—John’s treat. He and Carol had finally broken up in January, because the long-distance thing was just too hard. John couldn’t leave the east coast because he made his real living from consulting in New York, and Carol’s job in California had worked out very well. John said both of them had cried when he flew out to LA for a final fling, and he had spanked her for crying, while crying himself. He was still very sad, but, he said, improving.

Now, six months later, he sounded much better, and also really pleased to hear from Mark—and even more pleased to hear what Mark had called him about.

“Coffee in town Thursday?” John asked.

“Thanks so much, John; that would be fantastic.”

* * *

Now, pulling down Sally’s polka-dot cotton panties, blue and pink and yellow dots all bunching together as Mark took them down over the adorable, milk-white ovals of her bottom-cheeks, he remembered the piece of advice John had given him that seemed like it might be the very most important thing he had said.

“Don’t pretend you don’t want to fuck your beautiful freshman girlfriend. Don’t pretend you don’t want to deflower her, even.”

“John, come on!” It was the most direct thing John had ever said to him about sex. Mark looked down at his coffee yet again.

“Listen to me—this is what Carol was trying to tell you a year and a half ago, but I’m not sure how well it sank in. There are guys and gals who say that loving discipline doesn’t have anything to do with sex for them. I can’t imagine thinking that way, but to each his or her own. But I don’t think, from what I know of you, from our conversations, that you can imagine it either. If you do spank Sally, keep a careful watch on your cock.”

Mark gave a snort, in order not to give a nervous giggle, which he realized was his only other alternative.

“I’m telling you, you’re going to be in more danger of screwing it up after you spank her the first time than you’ll probably realize for a very long time. It’s going to be much too easy to give in and try to push it—and Sally probably won’t resist. It’s also going to be much too easy just to push her away and not give her the aftercare she deserves especially after a first spanking. All I’m saying is be careful—and keep it in your pants if you want a future with her.”

Mark looked up from his coffee at the urgency of John’s tone as the older man uttered the final sentence. He took a deep breath. “I think I understand,” he said.

Chapter Five

Sally felt her panties coming down, and wondered how the thing could actually be happening to her. Loving discipline: did that mean that Mark Weaver loved her? A warmth seemed to spread through her body at the thought. Mark was pulling down her panties because he loved her.

What a strange way for a girl to have her panties taken down by a man for the first time. Sally supposed she had imagined, very vaguely, what this kind of thing meant: nudity, and body parts, and feelings that friends said they liked, and her mom told her regularly and embarrassingly were completely natural.

Her mom told her that without, as far as Sally could tell, the slightest provocation. Sally would mention that she had seen this or that boy at the grocery store at home, and her mother would say, “You know it’s perfectly okay to want to have sex with him. Our sexual scripts don’t have to be from the 1900s, let alone the 1800s. Girls have exactly the same needs as boys. Just make sure you always use protection.”

What century was the loving discipline script from, then? The 1st century BC? And was it even a sexual script at all?

Oh, God. Mark could see her bare bottom. The back of her cute polka-dot panties was down at the top of her thighs. Thank God he hadn’t pulled down the front, too, though the thought, Sally had to admit, did have its attraction. But not to punish her!

The smell of his comforter, though, seemed to go together with the shamefully pleasant feeling that the boy who slept there had just pulled her panties down; that he was looking at her bottom, in the tautness of which Sally had to say she took some pride.

“Sally, why have I taken your underwear down?”

What? Why was he asking her? But… he had said that his teacher John had asked questions—and now Sally realized that to make her answer would definitely be effective in getting her not to use bad language again. She didn’t know how bad the spanking would be, but it couldn’t be much worse than having to answer this question.

“Because I said a bad word,” she mumbled into his comforter.

“What happens to girls who say bad words?”

“They get spanked.” That mumble was even softer.

“I can’t quite hear you, Sally.”

“They get spanked.” Sally lifted her head, but she closed her eyes, and then she buried her face back in the covers.

Sally felt Mark’s left hand press down slightly on her waist, and then, after a tiny puff of air, she felt his hand come down on her bottom, right in the middle, where her cheeks came together.

She could tell that he was worried about using too much force, because really the first spank didn’t hurt at all, and then she understood in a flash what he meant about wanting him to spank her harder, though for a moment she thought she had lost her mind.

But then he
did
spank her harder, and it
did
hurt. For the first time, she said, “Ow! Mark… I’m sorry!”

And Mark said, as if the words came from a place so deep inside him that even he didn’t know they were there, “Not as sorry as you’re going to be. You were a bad girl, and I have to teach you a lesson.” And he kept spanking her. Sally thought at first that she could bear it without struggling, as Mark began to move his spanks around her bottom to turn the whole, poor thing into a glowing place of pain, but then he returned to the middle, and she had to throw her right hand back to try to stop the punishment just for a moment.