by Thianna D
When Sarah had asked for an appointment in the evening to discuss a tutorial, he had triple-checked the code of conduct of Sandy Ridge before he let his mind run the slightest bit free, thinking about what might happen. The college wouldn’t dismiss him for having a sexual relationship with a student–that was clear. They could certainly dismiss him for various difficult situations that might arise from said sexual relationship, but he felt that he could navigate those if necessary.
The real trouble was in the ethics of the thing, and not in the legalities. He had fantasized many times about students in his courses, but that had been while he was married, and he had always supposed that stemmed from his sexual incompatibility with his wife, something he'd been aware of since around the fifth year of their marriage. He had never felt he’d been unfaithful to her. Fucking Joanna was playing BDSM, from his perspective, and did not break his marriage vow, and though he knew his wife would have disagreed he nevertheless acquitted himself on the grounds that the release he got from playing with Joanna had given him the strength to make it through the final days with his wife.
But here was a young, beautiful, perhaps submissive student in one of his courses. She obviously had a crush on him, and there was something about her–her seriousness, her clear intellectual excellence and vigor, something he felt in their conversation when she had requested the appointment–that made him wonder whether his own garden-variety infatuation with her (which had given him more than one high-quality masturbatory fantasy over the past two weeks) might actually have more to it. He had wondered what would become of them if something did happen, but he hadn't thought further. And then she had turned her face up to him, and parted her lips, and the world seemed to shift on its axis.
He had been preparing himself to have this conversation, and to present the document he was now thinking he might actually present to Sarah, for many years. He had begun to draft it, indeed, even before his wife had died, in fact. But though he believed he had done a very good job to this point of making it seem like he had had this sort of tutorial with some other hypothetical tutee at some point in the past, he had never actually had the conversation with anyone. Indeed, he never truly supposed he ever would have this conversation, though it had featured prominently in a great many fantasies he built up over the years.
When he had presented the domestic-discipline contract to Miriam, what seemed like a thousand years and a different life ago now, it had been "Here's a contract I thought might be fun to play with," and (from her) "Yeah, OK–this could be fun," and signing it. It hadn't been real, even though from a documentary point of view, that contract and this affidavit were directly related. The contract for Miriam had been a greatly shortened redaction of an earlier version of the document he was now, to his astonishment, about to give to Sarah Harshaw.
But he lived in Corbin's Bend now, and she was from Corbin's Bend, and everything was different here, at least for a man who had always longed to try the kind of lifestyle that had brought all the families of the community there to live. Certainly the first spanking he had witnessed in Colorado, that first Sunday at St. Michael's, had emboldened him.
Sitting in his office with Sarah, her hand still on his lap because she apparently hadn't thought to remove it, waiting for the correct moment to answer her question ("sir... what do you mean?") in the wake of the incredible surge of arousal he had felt when she had actually called him “sir”, he thought back to how excited he had been when the Rector of the little parish had said, "And, since you're a Head of Household, I'll need to familiarize you with our practice of penitential spanking. It usually makes sense for a new HoH to witness one of the single girls' sessions. Are you free after coffee-hour this Sunday?"
And then he had been hard all the way through Mass, looking about him and wondering whether any of the pretty young things there had confessed their sins to the Rector the day before.
One of them had, it turned out, and had been sentenced to the church strap for offenses known only to her confessor. During coffee-hour, he–Father Henry, a wonderful elderly British priest–had led Dunn and another member, Jake Tuttle, back to a room adjoining the Rector's study, where, to Dunn's astonishment, there was a sort of padded wooden bench, to which were attached at the base, leather straps, and fastened by them, around her tightly-closed knees, a young woman. Her skirt had been tucked up to reveal her panty-covered backside, but the rest of her was hidden from view behind a black curtain lowered from the ceiling and draped over her just above her waist, so that Dunn could see nothing but her shapely bottom and lovely, white-stocking-covered legs.
To his momentary, reflexive embarrassment, Dunn realized he was disappointed her modest pink panties hadn't been pulled down–so that Dunn had no chance to get a peek at the secrets between her thighs. He was surprised, though, a moment later, to realize that being in Corbin's Bend, and in a church in Corbin's Bend where clearly the strapping of young women was a regular practice, had caused his embarrassment to pass away. He felt a need to think further through this emotional turnabout, but at that instant he felt he had become more himself than he had been in years–or, perhaps, ever. He was a man who strapped the panty-covered bottoms of young women, when called upon to do so. In the process of administering punishment, he looked upon those bottoms. As a man still in his sexual prime, how could he not want to see more of this young woman's charms?
"St. Michael's," said Father Henry, "is a very special parish, because we have, as a parish, decided that corporal punishment is a way of discipline acceptable to the Lord, and to us. We maintain consistency thus with the culture of Corbin's Bend, and we provide to our female parishioners the chastisement they need. The way of domestic discipline, as we teach it here at St. Michael's, demands that when a married woman confesses to sins that I feel should be punished corporally, I sentence her to a certain number of lashes, and bid her tell her husband to administer them. When a single girl of eighteen years or older requires chastisement, however, the question is more difficult. Rather than let in any accusation of impropriety, I delegate my authority in the matter to the Heads of Household of the parish, like Jake here."
He handed an old, wicked looking strap to Jake. "She is to receive thirty-six lashes upon her bottom, Jake. Do you accept this charge?"
Jake said, "I do, Father." Father Henry said some words under his breath and made the sign of the cross over the strap in Jake's hand.
"You may begin the punishment when you are ready," said Father Henry.
Jake lifted the strap, and lashed the end of it with a hard flick of his wrist, upon the panty-covered bottom before him. The unseen girl rewarded him with a yelp, and then "One!" in a penitent soprano. Dunn looked at Father Henry, who smiled kindly at him, nodding to tell him that all was as it should be.
By twenty-four, the poor sobbing girl gasped, "Please, Father, no more!" And Jake looked at Father Henry to see if he should stop. The pretty bottom was streaked around the modest pink briefs with scarlet across both its cheeks and down its flanks. The young woman strained against the leather straps, and her bottom squirmed uncontrollably.
Father Henry said (Dunn thought the priest's voice sounded a little thick), "Think of your misdeeds, young lady! This is where they have brought you!" Again he nodded at Jake to continue. Jake needed no further impetus; part of Dunn was distressed by how aroused the young woman's cries and sobs made him, but another part understood that this was the way of life of Corbin's Bend, and he thanked God he had found a home at last.
When all the lashes had been bestowed, Father Henry led Dunn out of the discipline-room so the young woman could rise and depart through a special exit to the outside. Dunn wondered whether he would ever know whose bottom he had just watched Jake discipline. The Rector invited Dunn to sit in a comfortable chair in the study, and sat down himself, behind his cluttered little desk.
"I imagine," said the Rector, "that you're wondering about the discipline of men?" He chuckled. "Perhaps even worrying that so
me other member of the parish might take the strap to your behind, if you confess to, hmm, some lustful thoughts?"
Dunn laughed himself, taken aback. He actually had not wondered–but he did now.
"In keeping with our church's teachings about gender and orientation," continued Father Henry, "the roles of the taken-in-hand members of our parish and the Head-of-Household members of our parish are not viewed along strictly gendered lines. We don't currently have any male taken-in-hands or female Heads-of-Household, but we have had a few over the years, and we have welcomed them into the parish. All of that is just to say that the discipline of those taken-in-hand differs from that of Heads-of-Household. We are all, to be sure, equal before God, but corporal punishment is a practice that we believe God gives to those called to be Heads-of-Household to bestow on those called to be taken-in-hand."
Dunn had often–always questing to know more-wondered about how those who practiced domestic discipline in a community handled such matters. Father Henry's approach seemed sensible to him, but he could not deny that one thing still troubled him.
"You mentioned lustful thoughts a moment ago, Father," he said.
"I did." The priest looked at him with what seemed a slight twinkle in his eye.
"I don't know how to... put this." He looked to his new Rector for help.
"You were aroused when Jake was punishing that young woman, weren't you?"
Dunn nodded, helplessly, then hung his head.
"Why else would anyone move to Corbin's Bend, John?" Father Henry asked. "Surely you could smell in the air how aroused the penitent was?"
Frankly, Dunn realized, he had been much too distracted by the noise, and how hard it had made him, even to notice what he smelled.
"And, not to shock your sensibilities, let me confess that I was extremely aroused myself." For a moment, Dunn's sensibilities were indeed shocked. Was this kindly old British priest actually saying that he had been hard while Jake punished that lovely little bottom? But, wasn't that to be expected here?
"Let me be direct, John," Father Henry continued. "I suspect you are not a stranger to the world of Dominance and submission. Am I right?"
Dunn nodded, speechless. This was just about the last sort of conversation he had thought he might ever have with a man of the cloth.
"Well, neither am I. We can leave it at that, but I'm happy to say that being aroused by punishing a lovely feminine posterior is no sin, according to my interpretation of scripture and tradition."
"What?" asked Dunn, surprised.
The priest shook his head. "No."
"But," retorted Dunn, "surely I had lustful thoughts!" It seemed very odd, but at the same time entirely correct, that he should protest the sinfulness of his mind to a priest who seemed intent on denying it.
"Did you make a plan to violate that young lady?"
That brought Dunn up short. "No," he finally said, slowly and thoughtfully.
"Well," said Father Henry. "Think about that, and see whether in the end you might agree with me." Dunn nodded in agreement that he would think upon it. "John," the priest continued, smiling broadly. "We're all spankos here. The Lord made us this way. Some of us want to spank, others want to be spanked. There's no use denying that it's an erotic thing for most of us. I'm not sure why anyone would move to Corbin's Bend if it weren't that way for him or her, since you can't move here without realizing that a great many of your neighbors are spanking one another in an erotic way, and not–or I suppose, not only–in what you might call a traditional disciplinary way."
That made Dunn laugh, picturing a traditional Head-of-Household type standing on his front porch, listening to the unmistakable sounds of erotic spankings going on in all his neighbors' homes. The frown deepened on the imagined HoH's face. Perhaps eventually he began to doubt whether, really, he didn't find himself getting a little more aroused than appropriate when administering just chastisement to his wife.
That church was also the one Sarah Harshaw's parents attended, and though Sarah had not grown up in Corbin's Bend, it seemed she must have grown up in a similar environment. But she was his student.
The conversation with Father Henry had given him a great deal to think about, and the memory served now, it seemed to him, to anchor him and to galvanize his resolve to see this through, but it couldn't tell him what he really needed to know–no conversation could, he supposed, because what he really needed to know was whether it was wrong to follow his growing desire to try to take Sarah Harshaw in hand. Unfortunately, he already knew the answer, and knowing the answer didn’t make any difference at all. It was wrong, but... but she had, after all, just called him “sir”.
Chapter 4
What do I mean by what, Sarah?” Professor Dunn asked.
Sarah considered what had just happened, stunned to silence for a long moment. "sir." She had said it: Professor Dunn had told her to call him “sir”, and she had obeyed.
She could not believe she had said it... and she could not believe how much her body’s erogenous zones had stiffened with excitement at having said it. Her nipples felt taut inside the lacy bra she had chosen to arouse him. Her Sarah-ness moistened in her white lace thong—just at the one word.
“sir... mmm...” This was awful. Instead of a word, she had actually emitted a little whimpering sound... why? Apparently because her professor had made her call him “sir”.
With a kind, experienced look on his face, he took pity on her, and helped her faltering words. “Do you mean what rights will I ask you to forfeit?”
Sarah could only nod.
Unexpectedly, he stood up, walked to the door, and locked it. It was late, and they were unlikely to be disturbed whether he locked the door or not–which was why Sarah had been so bold in embarking on his seduction –but that locking of the door made her heart quail for a moment.
Professor Dunn stood at the door and again gazed at her. Sarah tried to meet his eyes, but finally had to look down at her hands, lying in her lap. From his look, she knew with a great certainty that if she refused his demands and asked him to unlock the door, he would do so without hesitation or delay. Sarah knew also that by locking the door he had intended to indicate that these demands would be of such a nature that she—not Dunn—would not want to be discovered acceding to them.
Professor Dunn, she began to think, knew a great deal about… Shame? Modesty? Innocence? Specifically, he seemed to know a great deal about Sarah's modesty, and the way a professor could make a girl feel by locking his door.
All this Sarah considered in a flash, not with mental cognition, but in a sort of emotional epiphany, as she innocently contemplated her white hands in the lap of her modest blue pleated skirt.
“Well, to begin with,” he began. “The right to decide when you shall remain clothed, and when you shall be naked—as well as what you shall wear when you are permitted to wear clothes.”
Sarah drew a sharp breath and looked up quickly, and then cast her eyes all around the room. The blood rushed to her face, and to parts much lower–her pudenda: her parts to be ashamed of (Sarah had taken four years of Latin in high school).
“Show me now, Sarah, that you relinquish that right. Remove all your clothes save your bra and panties.”
“sir... N—no... Please...” She found it hard to believe she had been the one who had thought to seduce him. What was happening? A professor had just commanded her to strip in his office, and she had not run for the door, or screamed for the police. Instead, to her horror, her “crush” (what a stupid word for the way her untried loins cried out to have terrible things done to them!) on him began to grow to unbearable proportions, and her whole body now tingled with it.
It was more than that, though. She found herself unable to deny that her innocent vulva suddenly flowed not at the idea that she was going to give a professor a blow job, or even at the thought that she might end up losing her virginity to him, but at the idea that she might find an answer to the enormous, disturbing questions pose
d to her by her troubled fantasies of–it suddenly seemed like it wasn't worth denying it anymore–submission.
“This is the sort of nonsense I’m talking about,” Professor Dunn said calmly, crossing to his black oak desk chair, with the seal of the college on its back, and sitting down in it. Sarah could see only his brown loafers and the cuffs of his black wool pants, since she lacked the will to raise her eyes.
He continued, “A girl comes to my office, seeking, she says, an adviser for her senior thesis and a recommendation for graduate school. I tell the girl I am very busy, and am afraid I probably cannot help her. The girl asks me at least to help her construe a passage of Livy, and invites me to sit beside her on the couch. The girl, a fetching little blonde with a shoulder-length ponytail, who has, to be sure, caught my eye at lecture, is dressed in a short blue skirt and a crisp white t-shirt that is just thin enough so I can see the lovely lace barely covering her perfectly rounded little breasts. The girl’s nipples, I can see, are resolutely erect. She tilts her face up to mine. I give her the kiss she requests, and she brazenly puts her hand where, on a professor, a college girl should know her hand should not be put."
The freedom of his words had an extraordinary effect on Sarah. Hearing her breasts referred to so, as if they were already his to hold, to caress as he liked, to... enjoy, seemed terribly degrading, and a part of her still resisted the idea that being degraded that way held the attraction for her that it so clearly held–at least if the state of her panties were anything to go by. But by now the vast majority of Sarah Harshaw, she could no longer help acknowledging, wanted to hear more, wanted to be degraded further, wanted to say, "sir, please do as you will with me."
Professor Dunn continued, “And am I to allow her to suck me off just a bit, the way she does with her panting boyfriend, and let her finish me with her hand, being careful not to get any semen on her own skin, and then gratefully sign her thesis proposal? And am I to allow her to hold this incident over me forever, so that even should she prove to be an abominable scholar she may always count on me for a sterling recommendation?”