"Tony!" She almost looked surprised to see him.
"Where the hell have you been?"
In a split second it dawned on her the late hour, and the obvious effect it had on her husband's mood. Her mind was crazily working to formulate a suitable explanation; though her efforts were too late.
"Go up to the bedroom and bring down the leather spanker," he ordered her.
"Tony, let me explain," she urged him.
He backed off only briefly.
"Were you in an accident?" he interrogated her.
"No."
"Was there some emergency?" he probed further.
"No, but . . . ."
"Did you forget to call?"
"Yes, but . . . "
"No buts, get the paddle." His eyes were so dark, his demeanor so intense, she knew he wouldn't have listened to another word from her. In the old days, before spanking, he would have been in his office with the door slammed in her face. This should be an improvement, though not one she was looking forward to; not when Tony was so furious with her. She'd never seen him so enraged, and she shivered with the chilling thoughts that played terrible games through her head. This would hardly be a repeat of the lusty scenario the night before.
Melanie raced upstairs, her heart pounding hard and fast. Maybe this was a small price to pay for the great revelations she had had that day. Tony was angry, and would likely be even more angry when she made her announcement. Let him get this off his chest first. Her mind raced with the thought of the stunning decision she'd made, while in her gut, she knew she was doing the right thing—the only thing she could do.
Returning with Aunt Daisy's leather paddle, Melanie slipped into Tony's study seeing the light on. He was waiting for her there.
"Do you have any idea how worried I was?"
"I lost track of time," she admitted. She could have put up a better excuse, but she was a horrible liar, and was not too good at thinking on her feet.
"Dammit, Melanie, how could you be so thoughtless?" he exclaimed. He didn't seem so angry as he appeared hurt.
"I'm sorry."
His glare cut her to the bone.
"I suppose I should ask you, why?" he said, as the first wave of fury was beginning to pass.
"Maybe we'd both feel better if you went ahead and punished me," Melanie offered. She wasn't ready to tell him the news, not yet."
"You mean, I don't want to hear your explanation for your day?" he speculated correctly.
"Maybe not."
His look became even more dour. "Then bend over the desk, and drop your pants. And you'd better not be thinking about sex with this one," he warned.
From start to finish, it was clear, the punishment would be severe.
Once Melanie's fair cheeks were bared and prominently displayed, Tony let the heavy leather implement fly.
"There's no excuse for your thoughtless!" he said angrily, as he laid on the first blow. A dozen smacks followed before he said anything else.
"Oh! Please!" she wailed. From the very first, her bottom burned. It must be all the guilt making it worse.
The spanker came down hard with stroke after stroke, mainly in the very center of her bottom, though he managed a few sharp smacks lower, higher, and to the sides.
"I was worried sick, damn you! I can't believe you just didn't think to call!" The more Tony talked out his anger, the more it vented on her bright scarlet mounds.
"Ouch, no please!" she cried. She struggled a little to stay in one place, knowing attempts to get away would be pointless. Tony would make her endure more. Though she had to admit, this was one punishment she deserved.
The biting smacks peppered her aching rear, in what seemed to be a never ending cadence.
"Oh, gawd! I'm sorry, I really am!" she managed to put the words together for an apology.
"I'm sure you are," he replied. Though he didn't for a second decrease the vigor of the paddling. "If you don't sit down for a week, I'll be happy!" he told her.
"Please!" There were tears running down her cheeks. She was exhausted, from her adventure, from the spanking, and from the wild ride of emotions that had characterized this odd day. Anymore and she was afraid she might lose it all together.
Tony finally seeing her distress, slowed the pace, and laid several final strokes that signaled a welcome end. When he at last put the spanker down beside her on the desk, Melanie breathed a sigh of relief, though their confrontation was hardly over.
Pulling her up from her bent over position, he turned her around, picked her up, and then sat her down on the hard unyielding desk surface with a emphatic jolt.
"Ouch, that hurts!" she exclaimed.
"Good!" he said, obviously still angry.
"Now, before I turn you over my knee, and use the butter paddle on your bottom, suppose you tell me your story."
Melanie snuffed and wiped tears away with back of her hand.
"Good god, Melanie, just because you're acting so childishly doesn't mean you can't use a Kleenex," he said, handing her one.
She blew her nose, which gave her a few moments to think about how she would tell him. "Well," she sighed, and tried to smile. Tony was looking straight at her with the most god awful stern expression on his handsome face. This was even more difficult than she expected.
"Don't mince words, just give it to me straight," he warned her. "It's not the car is it? I didn't think of that one."
"No, no!" She was encouraged that was where his worries were. "It's not the car at all."
"Thank heaven for small favors, so what is it?" he prompted her.
"Well," she started again, "when you were gone this morning, I went to the attic and read the journal. The end of the journal. And then I read the letters that were with it . . . ." She paused for a second. "Tony," she took a deep breath. "I want to sell the house." She blurted the words out boldly, hoping he wouldn't faint with the announcement.
"What!"
"I don't want to live here anymore."
"What?" Tony was dumbfound. "Did you really say that?"
She nodded her head. There were more tears flowing again, and she could hardly speak.
"After all this trouble, all the wars, and the shit, are you losing your mind?"
Melanie struggled with a smile, trying to get him to lighten, even just a little. "Actually, I think I've come to my senses."
"This is going to require one damn good explanation," Tony advised her.
"I think you'll be pleased!" she said.
He eyed her with the most puzzled expression, wondering what could possibly explain this abrupt change of heart. "Well, if you can explain this one, you've got a lot of talking to do. And while you're at it, you'd better not forget to cover why you were so late tonight."
Tony pulled his wife off the desk, and set her down in a chair. He sat on the other side of the desk from her, as if she was a student or employee that he was in the process of dressing down. The placement kept him from simply taking her in his arms again and paddling her behind once more, a desire that was prevailing on him with tremendous fervor.
"So start," he said when he was ready to listen.
"Well, it's all because of Aunt Daisy. Everything. Her life was so romantic, the story of Joseph and all. I was really swept up in it, as if somehow I could live her life for her again. I know this sounds really stupid."
"Stupid maybe, but I can see why you're saying it," Tony agreed with her.
"Joseph was killed in the war. Their honeymoon was the only time they made love, and the last time he spanked her. I was balling when I read about it; but then I read the other letters."
"And . . . ?" Tony asked.
She was having difficulty speaking, in tears again, her lip was quivering so, he almost felt sorry for her.
"They were love letters to my uncle. Eighteen months after Joseph was killed, she met my Uncle John. She fell in love again with another man. It wasn't like she had forgotten Joseph, but she was ready to move on with her life, move o
n to something else. It wasn't easy for her, but she put aside it all to be happy again.
"The story is lovely, but what does this have to do with you?" Tony asked.
"I can't live in the past, any more than Aunt Daisy could. I'm mean this house is a wonderful place, but it's all the past. I've been looking for it to satisfy me. I've been living in Aunt Daisy's world, not my own. Reading her own words about putting the past aside, well . . . this started to feel really silly."
Tony chuckled. Never in a million years had he thought he'd hear her say these things. "So where were you all day?"
"I drove out to the grave. I put flowers on it, and said goodbye. I guess that's the incurable romantic in me, but I needed to really bury her, and the past."
"You drove all the way to Springfield?" Tony looked at her astonished, knowing now why she had been so late coming home. Three hundred miles round trip, and all this grand self revelation, her day had been full.
"And when I did that, said goodbye . . ." Melanie's eyes were dancing brightly, "something happened. On the drive home, I realized that we need to sell this house, and put this aside. I've invested too much time in the wrong things, in this romantic past we can never really have. Aunt Daisy knew she couldn't stay stuck in that romantic world. Neither can I. In fact, I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I've been wasting my time mooning over it all this these past months."
Tony was speechless.
"We need to make our life together, not one that has Daisy Markham blazoned across it," Melanie added.
Tony stared at his wife for some time. Like a fresh breeze of spring, Melanie appeared more tranquil than he'd seen her in months, maybe ever. There was a rosy soft glow on her cheeks, her brunette hair, while now a loose pile of curls descending from the top of her head, was sensuous and seductive. She was breathtaking in a way. And her clarity of mind. That impressed him most. The constant agitation that had plagued him for so long was disappearing. He was feeling more himself than he had in a while.
Maybe he too had been swept up in creating this piece of Melanie's history. Was it possible that the exhausting effort was now over?
"You've buried Aunt Daisy?" Tony said, repeating his wife's words.
"I have," she confirmed.
"Then we'll sell the house," he agreed.
Months of tension vanished so quickly, Tony and Melanie thought they were floating on air. It was astounding to them both that they could so easily have a change of heart. Now was the time to follow Melanie's prescription for happiness, follow their own path, not some antiquated rehash of the past.
Chapter Thirteen
Melanie moved about the bright shiny kitchen with its large gas stove and the extra large refrigerator, thinking she'd died and gone to heaven. It was perfect, simple, functional, and free of all the sticky pangs of anguish that used to prevail on her every time she walked through her Aunt's rambling old house. This apartment was modern, with expansive windows looking out on the city, and furniture that she and Tony picked out because it was warm and inviting, while it was still modern in style. She loved the airy rooms with views to the city below, the feeling of expanding her mind, not cramping it down in tight corners.
She kept few things from the old house. Just Aunt Daisy's old chair that had been in the attic. That she'd completely re-upholstered so it would go with her new apartment; it sat in one corner of the large living room, her reading corner, she called it. That was all the remembrance of Aunt Daisy she really wanted to keep. There were a few other things, but most were packed away in boxes in their store room. A young couple with three small children were now living in the old house, and she wished them well. She didn't even care that she couldn't make love in the creaky gazebo, when she had the balcony just outside her door, and an exciting city beyond.
She considered her new life perfect.
Rummaging around the kitchen, she opened the pantry and was shocked to see the unexpected sight of Aunt Daisy's spanking paddle hanging on the door. She hadn't seen it since they'd moved, two months before.
"What is this?" she asked Tony, who was reading in the living room just over the counter from her.
"You can't tell?" Tony replied.
"I thought we left all that in the past," she said.
He looked up at her, over the top of his reading glasses. "I'm serving notice," he said.
"What's that suppose to mean?" she asked suspiciously.
"We've been having a second honeymoon. These changes have done both of us a world of good. But, the little squabble we had last night, I think we need to recall this one piece of the past."
Melanie remembered the squabble, as a quick bitter war of words that was soon forgotten, at least as far as she was concerned. "Well, I don't think we need this," she said, suddenly angry.
They'd put spanking in the category of the past, with all the other things that Aunt Daisy meant; though Melanie wondered all along if this one thing might not just pop up unexpectedly sometime. For the time being, spanking was really not on their minds, simply because they were getting along so well. Why would they bother to think of it?
And yet, even now in their new home, there were times when she remembered their spanking sessions so vividly, she wondered if she really wanted to make it happen just as she had in their last months in her Aunt's house.
This time however, she clamped her mouth shut, as a sudden vicious verbal attack was about to blurt from her lips, and she squelched it, in favor of caution. She was determined that Tony would NOT be spanking her this night, no matter what she sometimes fantasized. How dare he not consult with her before he hung the paddle in plain sight. In her kitchen no less.
Unfortunately, the abrupt appearance of the spanker right in the midst of her pantry seemed to be a constant reminder to Melanie of those times over Tony's lap, and it did nothing but nag at her peace of mind.
She managed for two weeks to resist the temptation to do something about her spanking feelings; but couldn't help herself when Tony was gone on a business trip one weekend. Seeing the paddle for the hundredth time that day, she took it off its hanger, and sat down with it in the living room. Her mind was suddenly so aroused she couldn't stop the fantasies that poured into her brain. Not only did she orgasm to the thought of being paddled, but she rummaged around through an old box of stuff, and found a spanking magazine that the two had stumbled on months before. She found one of the personal ads especially arousing, striking at the heart of her fascination for this curious fetish.
***
A week after Tony returned from his trip, Melanie was working in the kitchen on an intricate concoction she was trying out for her cookbook. When Tony stormed in the door, she was shocked to see his face flushed with anger, his eyes shooting darts right toward her.
"What are you doing home?" Melanie asked.
"Needing to talk to you!" he said.
"I can't now. I'll ruin the sauce," she told him.
"Too bad," he replied. He pulled her by the arm, while Melanie frantically reached for a towel to wipe her sticky hands.
"Tony, what's going on?" she cried in the midst of her bewilderment.
"You're coming with me," he roared. He was as furious as she'd ever seen him.
"What have I done?" she demanded to know.
"You know, Melanie, for an intelligent woman, you're not very smart."
"What are you talking about?" He was leading her into the living room, not letting go of her arm, despite her efforts to shake him off. Letting go of her for just an instant, Tony pulled a letter from his coat pocket that Melanie recognized with shocked horror.
"No wonder you always want to go to the P.O. Box to get the mail," he charged. The look in his eyes was alarming.
"Where did you get that?" she asked.
"I told you, you aren't very smart. I drove your car today, so I could have the oil changed, and I found this with some other mail loose on the floor."
Melanie's face drained white.
"Please. It
's not what it seems. It's totally innocent."
"Things deliberately hidden from me are not innocent. Your shame is written all over your face."
It was. Melanie was blushing, her ears bursting, the blood pounding through her head made her hot.
"Go get the paddle, we'll settle first things first," he announced. "We'll do what you've obviously been dying for, then we'll talk about it."
"But . . ."
"You know where it's hanging."
Melanie retreated back to her kitchen where she smelled the overdone sauce; though by then her heart was sinking so fast she couldn't hope to rescue anything, except perhaps her marriage.
Retrieving the spanker from its place in the pantry, she returned to Tony. Briskly pulling the implement from her hand, he sat down in his chair, and pulled her over his lap. The leather was hot across her bottom in seconds, and once the first flurry of smacks was over, Tony pulled down her stretch pants and the real journey began.
"Oh! Please!" she wailed. He was striking her so hard she was instantly in agony.
"I can't believe you'd be so dishonest with me!" The spanker came down fast, Tony finding great satisfaction in seeing his wife burning bottom turn a rich scarlet.
He went on for what seemed forever, until Melanie was kicking and screaming for all she was worth. Then, to her astonishment he shoved her from his lap. Melanie landed on the floor looking up at him dazed, while Tony still held the spanker in his hand, he wasn't finished.
"Suppose you tell me who Glen is?" he said.
She was still red faced and looking guilty.
"Please. . ."
"I'll start all over, if you balk again," he warned, as he waved the leather in her face.
She took a deep breath, and tried holding back tears she knew Tony would not appreciate. "Remember the spanking personals you brought home several months ago?"
"Yeah."
"Well, I wrote this guy that advertised in the magazine, and he wrote me back."
"And you were planning to meet him?" Tony was livid.
"NO," she said emphatically. "It hadn't gone that far, I just did get his letter."
"But he's obviously eager to make a date with you." Tony practically threw the crumpled letter in her face.
Aunt Daisy's Secret Page 11