by Emily Tilton
The severity of his tone took away at least a little of her assurance. He watched her eyes grow anxious.
The doorbell rang.
“Go up to your room, Emily,” Jason said. “Quint will join you there.”
Her face reddened noticeably at this command.
He spoke in answer to the question in her eyes. “What happens in there will be between the two of you.”
Emily turned without another word and took to her heels, up the stairs. As she passed the front door, up half a flight from the level of Jason’s study, he saw her give the glossy black surface of the entrance an unreadable look.
After she had vanished above, Jason opened the door and greeted Quint, shaking his hand warmly and then leading him downward. Before the brandy was poured, they spoke only of the Red Sox. After they had settled down into the two ancient leather-covered armchairs to either side of the tray that bore the bottle, though, Jason started right into the matter at hand.
“We need to talk about disciplining Emily,” he said, being sure that Quint wasn’t sipping his brandy at that moment. The precaution proved sensible, because the younger man’s reaction of almost bug-eyed surprise surely would have produced a spit-take or worse if Quint had been in the midst of enjoying a mouthful of the precious amber liquor.
“I’m not sure I understand you,” Quint said, recovering his composure quite rapidly. “I mean, I agree that she and I should probably talk about her behavior…” he gave a shrug, “…though I’m not sure how much good it will do.”
“Why aren’t you sure?” Jason asked, fairly certain he knew how Quint would reply but wanting to make a point.
“Well, isn’t this what brides are supposed to be like?” Quint sipped his brandy. The slightly troubled look on his face indicated that he saw the flaw in the logic—or, rather, the complete absence of it.
“That depends on what you mean by supposed,” Jason said, trying to ease into a persuasive approach, rather than confronting the subject head-on. “Lots of them do behave this way, certainly.” He went for the crux of the argument, then, leaning forward a little and looking straight into Quint’s eyes. “Do you want Emily to behave this way?”
“No, of course not,” Quint said, and now Jason could see him rising to the challenge. He had suspected Quint had a dominant hidden under his easygoing exterior, and now the spark in the younger man’s eyes told him how right he had been. The tone in which Quint spoke his next words, of resolve rather than of resignation, told Jason he could trust Emily’s fiancé to take care of her. “But what am I supposed to do about it?”
“I’m going to say something that you’re probably going to find outlandish, Quint, but I hope you’ll hear me out because I’ve earned your respect, and because I’m still financially responsible for Emily, as well as answerable—in my heart—to her mother. Okay?”
Quint nodded, his brows knit in mystification. “Okay.”
“I think you should go upstairs and give Emily a spanking.”
The bridegroom’s eyes went wide, and his whole upper body seemed to start forward a bit, a little like a sloop straining against its hawsers in a strong tide.
“That’s…” He swallowed, and his eyes narrowed, became guarded. “That’s interesting, Jason. Could you say a little more, please?”
“Of course. The first thing I want to make clear is that I believe that for the right couples, family discipline of this old-fashioned kind can produce great benefits—above all in the area of communication. When you give your wife a spanking, you have made it absolutely clear to her where the line between acceptable and unacceptable can be found.”
Quint’s eyebrows went up. “Did you…” He seemed embarrassed by the question, but Jason waited patiently for him to finish it, to help him get used to discussing matters that he had never spoken about out loud, though it seemed clear now to the older man that Quint’s imagination was far from unversed in the idea. “Did you spank Mrs. Garrons?”
Jason nodded, and Quint’s chin went up to have the thought, which must have seemed strange when he had formed the question, confirmed. “Not the girls, though. Until a few weeks ago, when I had to spank Georgia for the first time, over matters related to the wedding—and I spanked her again tonight, because of what happened this afternoon.”
Quint drew his lips into a tight line, then spoke again. “And Emily?”
“Emily’s never been spanked, but I’ve made it clear to her that unless we can find another way to keep her in control—and tonight I’m handing over that duty to you, as the proper person for the job—she’s going to have to expect to have her backside punished regularly. If I hadn’t asked you over, I would have spanked her myself tonight.”
Silence reigned for a moment, and then Quint took a deep breath through his nose, clearly coming to some conclusion.
“Alright. If I admitted that I think it could be a good idea, how would I go about it?”
Jason smiled. “This is the second thing I want to talk about. You should start by making it clear to Emily that you’ve decided that traditional family discipline is going to be part of her life.”
“But…” The distress on the younger man’s face touched Jason’s heart. Quint loved Emily—no doubt could exist on that score—but Jason knew that love wasn’t enough to make a marriage work.
“Don’t worry,” Jason said. “I have no doubt at all that she will agree. From there it’s your decision as to how to proceed.”
Chapter Nine
Emily heard the stairs creak. She had sat motionless on her bed with the pink comforter, in her room with the posters from the Museum of Fine Arts and the symphony that she had put up her senior year in high school when she had decided to become sophisticated. Her teddy bear Reginald, in the classic, brown-furred style that she had always thought must have been what the original Winnie the Pooh had looked like, had been looking down from his usual place since she had been ten, on the shelf over her desk, but now, at the creak of the stairs, she darted from her bed and got him. She sat back down on the bed, clutching the bear, not sure whether she needed the comfort of his soft body, so unlike Quint’s sea-hardened one, or whether she wanted to look pathetic for her fiancé, or even whether she wanted some defense, however flimsy, between them when he entered.
The knock came.
“Come in,” Emily said, hearing her voice quaver even on the two syllables.
The door started to open.
He wouldn’t. He just wouldn’t. Jason might believe in this silly idea about old-fashioned family discipline, but Quint was only three years older than Emily. How could there be the slightest chance he would go along with her stepfather’s ideas where it came to keeping her ‘under control’?
The strange feeling she had had while listening to Georgia’s spanking came back, a kind of fascination Emily didn’t understand, that made her face hot and her tummy flutter. The idea that the man entering her bedroom was her future husband—who had in fact only been in her childhood bedroom once before—seemed to make that feeling even stronger.
The moment he and Jason had walked into the shower that afternoon flashed back into her mind and made her cheeks blaze still hotter. He couldn’t have heard what Heather had said, could he? She tried to persuade herself that if he had, he would have felt certain the thing about the finger in Emily’s anus was a stupid joke. But had he seen the… the toy?
It sat now in the corner of the room, in the bag in which Georgia had concealed it at the shower. Emily hadn’t been able to keep herself from thinking about it, even though she had managed to stop herself from taking it out to look at its menacing purple length. Above all, to her distress, she found herself picturing the three shameful, unequal prongs that left little doubt as to how a girl should use it, when she couldn’t hold herself back from temptation any longer.
Would she have to show Quint the toy? He would laugh, of course. He wasn’t prudish at all, even though they didn’t really do anything kinky in bed. Emily had l
aid down the law about that the previous year: she would be on top, sometimes, if he wanted it, but her helpless response to the guy who had put his finger up her ass without permission had made her wary. It had felt good, but it had also felt like a part of her was coming out that would be better kept hidden, if she were to maintain her ideal of sophistication.
The door was still opening, but Emily’s thoughts flashed through her head faster and faster now, uncontrollably. What if Quint didn’t laugh at the toy? What if he said it was naughty, and she must be punished for even keeping it in her room, for even thinking about how a girl could use it?
What if he said that that kind of toy was for husbands to keep, and to use on their wives when they decided the time had come to teach a very special lesson about their bodies?
Where had that thought come from?! Emily didn’t even have time to consider before Albright Allerton V stood inside her room, quietly closing the door behind his 6′2″ frame. He seemed much too big for the room, though she didn’t remember thinking so the only other time he had been admitted to this inner sanctum, the previous Christmas, for some hurried, fumbling holiday sex.
She bit her lip as she watched him slowly turn to face her, so incredibly handsome in his wrinkled blue Oxford and simple, well-worn khakis. Some guys like Albright wore their sailing so literally on their sleeves that their belts had anchors on them; Emily’s future husband’s belt, she noticed with a little gulp she couldn’t suppress, was of thick brown leather, fastened with a big brass buckle.
She looked up into his blue eyes, which gazed down at her with more quiet seriousness than Emily thought she had ever seen there. He looks like Jason, she suddenly thought, though of course in physical appearance the two men could not have been more different—except in the height department, she supposed.
“Emily,” he said. “I’d like you to call me Quint from now on.”
She felt her eyes go wide. Why had he started in this way? What did it have to do with anything?
“Oh, but…”
Then she understood, because she saw the way his face reacted to her protestation, the way his jaw set, and the way his chest heaved up slightly with a breath that she felt sure must hide frustration and even anger. He said nothing, and waited for her to continue.
“Alright,” she whispered, looking down at her hands. “Quint.”
“Tonight, though,” he said in a deeper, though softer tone, “you’re going to learn to call me something else, too.”
She looked up, and she gave a little gasp, though she felt sure she had no idea what he could possibly mean—she told herself so, anyway. The heat that had faded from her face at his entrance and his strange way of beginning the conversation returned full force.
“What?” Emily could barely hear her own voice.
“You’re going to call me sir tonight, Emily.”
She wanted to say something: something about how he could just walk right on back down Commonwealth Avenue to his own house and forget about ever seeing her again. Her lips parted, but no sound came out.
The thing that kept her from protesting was the look in Quint’s eyes. She could tell he meant it, but not in the terrible, medieval way it might have sounded to another girl. She could tell that, between holding her teddy bear and finally giving up her foolish quest to make him drop his nickname and to let her call him by his ridiculous actual first name, he could sense something in her that she couldn’t yet admit to herself.
But that realization in turn, and quite abruptly, gave her the ability to do something else, and to act another way, because of an instinct that told her how important it would be to have things made clear.
She snorted very theatrically. “You can forget about that, mister. I don’t know what you think you heard from Jason, but—”
“Emily, stand up.” His voice cut through her words though he had not raised it. Stunned at the steel that seemed to gleam through his ordinarily relaxed features, she obeyed, putting Reginald the bear down on the comforter. To her surprise, Quint moved past her to sit on the bed nearly in the same spot in which she had been. Even more to her surprise, he then simply reached out and took her around the waist. He had started to pull her down across his lap before she even realized his intention.
“What are you doing?” Emily hissed. “Stop it!”
But Quint had her over his lap fully now despite her beginning to struggle, and his left arm held her securely around her waist no matter how she writhed and kicked. Quint spread his legs and maneuvered her between them to stop the kicking with his right thigh, then, and Emily, with her torso and face prostrate on her pink comforter and her bottom raised over her bridegroom’s knee, felt completely controlled.
She still struggled, though, not as much against the prospect of the spanking but because the strange feeling seemed to grow unbearably as the man she loved held her in that humiliating position. He didn’t do anything else for the moment, but he let her feel that he would be in charge, and that she would call him sir or she would feel the consequences. That feeling, which Emily could no longer deny made her feel warm and even wet down between her thighs, and made her think of the finger up her bottom, seemed like something she had to struggle against, even though struggling seemed to make it worse, and better.
“Let me up! Quint, what the fuck?”
“You know what I’m doing, Em,” he said quietly. “You’re going to get spanked until you call me sir, and then you’re going to get spanked for what happened at the shower today.”
“What?”
Then her fiancé started to spank her, over her jeans, raising his arm so high that it took a long moment for each dull smack to fall across the denim, and when it did the pain built and built until the next spank fell.
“Please…” Emily wailed. “Quint, it hurts!”
It seemed the most obvious thing to say—almost a thing required by the ancient ritual of family punishment—but Emily said it anyway.
And Quint responded in the proper way, too. “Of course it hurts, Emily.”
He spanked over and over, so hard that even through her yelps Emily wondered if his hand had started to hurt.
“Oh, please… sir, please,” she gasped, hardly realizing that she had said sir—that she had obeyed him. When she heard her mouth say the word, though, her arousal, despite the pain of the spanking or perhaps, she suddenly wondered, because of it, seemed to explode in the whole region he had immobilized for discipline over his knee.
The spanking stopped. “Thank you, sweetheart,” Quint said.
Emily’s bottom burned in her jeans. Emotion and sensation seemed so mingled now that she couldn’t have said what she wanted, or feared. “Do you really have to spank me even more?” she said to the comforter, not even knowing what she wanted the answer to be.
“Yes, Emily. You made a serious mistake with that champagne, and with your behavior. I want you to pull your jeans and panties down to your knees.”
“Oh, please. No. Qu—I mean, sir—please.”
“You know I’m not going to see anything I haven’t seen, Em. And it’s important to me for you to understand that when you need discipline I’ll be the one who’s in charge of that part of your body.”
Emily swallowed hard. That didn’t seem like the most straightforward or traditional thing he could have said, and it made her think again of the purple toy lurking in its bag in the corner. She thought also of Jason, and of what Georgia had said about their mother getting spanked—the smile on her face.
She bit her lip, her brow furrowing. Part of her wanted to obey Quint, but another part forbid it somehow, as if she needed something more.
She got it. Her future husband’s voice, low and sounding just as firm as his hand had felt. “Do it, Emily. Jeans and panties down.”
Face hot, she reached down and under to find the button, as Quint lifted his right leg a little to let her move. Her muscles ached from the struggle, and her bottom ached from the spanking, and she realized she ha
d suddenly gotten wetter in her panties than she had ever been before, finger up her anus or no finger up her anus. She felt grateful for the pink comforter in which to hide her face; would Quint notice how hot he had gotten her? The wetness she had experienced that afternoon when she had whispered in his ear, seemed like nothing compared to what the spanking had brought on down there.
Quint helped her pull her pants down, with her panties inside them. Emily tried to keep her knees tightly closed, but the bulky fabric separated them a little. She didn’t know why she should feel embarrassed, but something about being held down over her fiancé’s knee seemed to make the thought of him seeing her pussy shameful in a way it wasn’t, even the few times he had gone down on her—something she didn’t really like very much.
He repositioned her, and the feeling of being moved that way, into the posture he desired, reawakened her arousal. When he started to spank her bare bottom, to her surprise, he didn’t spank as hard as he had over her jeans. She whimpered half in discomfort and half in arousal, wondering what he meant her to think, or feel.
He started to speak, while he was still spanking, and surprised her still more. “Is that vibrator here, Emily? The one Heather gave you?”
Chapter Ten
Quint could hardly believe he had Emily with her pants down over his lap, but he didn’t intend to back down from any of his intentions, either disciplinary or erotic. From the moment he had overheard Heather Davidson say the thing about Emily being a freak, then about the still unknown thing his apparently straitlaced fiancée had said about the guy who put his finger up her butt, Quint had felt a shift in the ground underneath him—the ground to which he had resigned himself.
He had had no idea what Jason wanted to talk about; he had figured it must have something to do with communicating effectively. Jason Garrons, after all, was known as one of the most honest, direct, and down-to-earth public figures in Boston. If he thought a project should be funded, he funded it, no matter from whom the idea came, or whom they knew or didn’t know. Quint aspired to that kind of reputation; he had no desire to follow either in his father’s leisurely footsteps or his mother’s aristocratic ones.