by Vicki Blue
“Hold still!” His voice was commanding. She obeyed. “Good girl.” Now his tone was gentle and she was shaking, both from pain but from something else. Gigi felt something stirring in her, something she could not define. It wasn’t like anything she’d ever experienced and she realized then with some horror, that she was responding to Darby and his punishment in a way she’d never thought to expect. She felt a wave of shame and attempted to bolt from his lap, but he was ready for her. He caught her and pulled her up to sitting, cradling her firmly but gently. She was sobbing.
“What?? Why…” She couldn’t verbalize what she was feeling.
“There’s nothing to be ashamed of,” he said. “You needed this, Gigi. You may have even been asking for it. You’ve just never run across a man fit to give it to you.”
“Give me what?” she asked.
“Correction - not from any sense of insecurity on his part, but from a sense of caring. I see great potential in you. And I won’t lie. I find you incredibly attractive. You’re not the kind of female who passes through a man’s life very often. You’re intelligence and spirit and fire, but with an edge that needs some refinement.”
“You make me sound like a project,” she said, pushing away and standing. She was rubbing her bottom. “And besides. This is really inappropriate, OK?”
“It’s only inappropriate if you think it is,” he said. “I’m not suggesting we sleep together, not unless we eventually decide to. I’m just suggesting that you let me mentor you. I can teach you a lot…”
She looked at him. Malcolm Darby was as mover and a shaker in the show world she had abandoned. He was a good fifteen years her senior, but Gigi could not deny the deep attraction she felt for him, even in the wake of the spanking he’d just given her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just really confused.”
“It’s OK,” he said, standing. “I’m not expecting an answer right away. But I want you to think about it. You just made the right decision here - accepting physical correction instead of throwing away your future. Something tells me that you’ll make the right decision again, if for not other reason than your spirit will draw you to me.”
He kissed her on the forehead. “See you tomorrow.”
Gigi walked out of the room. She felt sore, but alive. On the way out of the barn, she passed Bart’s stall. He turned to her and stuck his head over the door, resting his nose in her hands. The air from his nostrils was soft, his deep brown eye knowing as he looked at her.
“You need him, too,” the expression said.
Gigi looked down the aisle way towards the office. “Oh no you don’t,” the rebel in her said.
“Shut up,” she replied, for she knew that the decision had already been made.
The Vacation
“Is that the last of them?” Ned Becker pushed the small suitcase in with the others and stepped back to look at the jam-packed space in the Subaru station wagon.
“Just one more!” His wife came running around the side of the car, holding one more bag. It was small and pink, but bigger than any space he could find.
“Come on, Quinn!” he said, exasperated. “We’re going away for the Memorial Day weekend, not for a month.”
“It’s my overnight bag!” she said defensively. “It’s got my makeup in it. And it’s your fault that I’m taking so much. Your brother’s got that cookout, and then there’s that party at Sarah’s…”
He sighed, and took the bag. It was a miracle that he was able to move another over to make a slot for it.
“No more,” he said. “I mean it.” He slammed the boot of the car.
“Sorry, baby,” she said. “But if I couldn’t have taken that bag then I would have had to have stayed here.”
“I don’t think so,” he said with a laugh. “I’d have spanked your ass and put you in the car if you’d given me any lip, and you know it.”
Quinn giggled, because she did know it. And Ned’s joking about spanking was fine with her. Real spankings were something else, and he was very strict. When they’d agreed to a domestic discipline lifestyle, Quinn had known it was the best route for a happy marriage. She was stubborn, and behind her blonde curls and innocent face lurked the temper of a hellion. As an only, indulged child of two doting older parents, she’d always gotten her way. But it had been to her detriment. Quinn was, for lack of a better term, spoiled. And that had cost her in terms of friends and job opportunities.
“This is the real world, sweetie,” Ned had told her after they started dating. At the time she was a receptionist working for his catering company. But that was about to change. Quinn had caught his eye. An old-fashioned guy, Ned knew that she was the woman for him. He was eager to marry her and turn her into a sweet little housewife. But he wanted her to have some work experience first and told her that he planned to be harder on her than on any of his other employees.
She’d laughed off his warning until one day when she’d dragged into work half an hour late.
“I had to get my nails done!” she offered by way of excuse, and he could see some of his other workers shooting disapproving glances. He knew that they all thought she was getting preferential treatment, and she did nothing to dispel that notion despite his frequent warnings. Quinn came in late, talked on the phone when she was supposed to be working and left early without permission. But she did not know that Ned was keeping a tally, and one night after work when they were alone in his office, he did what he’d jokingly threatened to do for months. He spanked her.
Quinn had thought it was a joke at first, being tossed over her boss boyfriend’s knee. But soon her giggles turned to cries and then all-out sobs as he spanked her first over her panties and then pulled them down and rained unrelenting spanks on her upturned bottom. Her cheeks reddened rapidly, and Quinn cried like a baby but did not react in anger. She seemed genuinely sad that she’d disappointed Ned to the point that he would carry through on his threat, and after the spanking she sat in his lap sobbing and promised never to be late or duck work or leave early again. And she was true to her word, and was such a model employee that some of the other workers joked that Ned had replaced her with an exact replica.
After six months, Ned took Quinn out for dinner and proposed. She cried through her acceptance of the ring and his offer and instantly began planning their wedding. When it became evident that she would become Bridezilla, Ned quietly ordered a paddle from a custom implement company and debuted it one afternoon after he heard her yelling at the florist.
“Pink and white roses, you simpleton! Do I have to do everything?”
He’d upended her in the living room, pulling up the frilly skirt she’d been wearing and giving her two swats with his hand before reaching in the side table drawer to surreptitiously remove the paddle. She screamed as it fell and looked back in surprise; Ned had always used his hand and this was something new and terrible.
“Stop! Don’t!” she cried when she saw the paddle, but he held her and gave her ten good, solid licks before letting her up.
Quinn was in tears. She stood before him sobbing.
“I-I-m sorry!” she cried. “I only wanted the perfect wedding!”
“I’m more concerned about the perfect marriage,” he said. “Which is why you should know that if you marry me, this paddle is going to be a fixture. I’m not going to be married to a brat, or at least not to a brat who thinks she can get away with it. Understand?”
Quinn had rubbed her bottom and sobbed. “You mean you’re going to spank me after we’re married?”
“Damn right, Skippy, if you deserve it.”
“W-with that?” She pointed at the paddle as if it were a live rattlesnake clutched in her fiance’s hand.
He held it up and turned it from side to side. “It’s a remarkable implement,” he said. “And especially made as an early wedding present - to myself.” He stood and walked over to his sniffling lover, tilting her chin up until she was looking him in the eye.
“
You need limits, Quinn, and I’m old-fashioned enough to have no qualms about enforcing those limits over my knee. And something tells me you know that as well as I do.”
She nodded dejectedly. “I know,” she said softly. “But does it have to be with that?” She nodded towards the paddle.
“Only when I think you need it.” He smiled. “Now call that florist back and apologize.”
Quinn had done her best to avoid the paddle since that day. She tried to be industrious and to keep her temper in check, and most of the time she was successful. But she did have bad days and when she did, Ned and the paddle were there to make her remember his requirements for her behavior.
But before this vacation, Quinn decided that the implement would not be welcome to come with them. She knew Ned would take it; he’d taken it when they’d gone together on a business trip to a caterer’s convention three months earlier. She’d seen it in his suitcase at the hotel and when she’d asked him about it he said, “Traveling makes people cranky. I thought I might need it.”
And now, as she was about to spend a long Memorial Day weekend with his family, she knew traveling would make her cranky. And so that morning, just when Ned was about to start packing the car, she’d quickly gone through his suitcase and removed the paddle, which she slid between the mattress and box springs of their bed.
She felt a little worried of what he might say when he discovered it missing, but hoped his excitement over seeing his brothers would make him forget its absence.
The drive was long, the roads to the Eastern Shore of Maryland congested. Quinn as fidgety but amused herself by playing drawing games on her iPad and listening to music. She’d have rather talked to Ned, but he hated chatting when driving, especially when it was stop and go like this and people were honking and yelling.
“I need to pee,” she finally said after an hour of feeling the car lurch.
“Not yet,” he said. “We’re still on the bridge.”
“How much longer?”
“Don’t whine, Quinn. It’s going to take as long as it takes.”
“We shouldn’t have come.” The battery had run out on her iPad and she realized that she’d packed it in her overnight bag instead of her purse.
“Yeah, we shouldn’t have come,” Ned said irritably. “We should have stayed home and missed the chance to see my brother on his first trip back to the states since deployment.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” she said. “I just think we should have done it on a weekend when the traffic’s not so terrible.”
“There’s nothing we can do about the traffic,” he said.
She was quiet for a moment.
“My iPad’s dead,” she said. “The charger’s in the back in my overnight bag. I’m going to try and get it.”
“No,” he said. “Leave your seatbelt on and stay put, Quinn. We’ll be off the bridge in about three minutes and the rest stop is about two miles past that. There are cops everywhere. And besides, that bag is not where you can reach it from the back seat. So be patient.”
But Quinn was anything but patient. After the traffic stopped again right at the foot of the bridge, she decided she’d had enough of waiting. Unclipping her belt, she turned and went between the seats, ignoring Ned’s orders to come back up front.
“Come on!” he said. “The traffic is moving again.”
“I’ll be just a minute!” she said, trying to worm her hands towards the front of the overnight case. If she could just get her fingers on the clasp, Quinn thought, she could pop the lid and get her fingers inside to grab the charger, which she’d placed on top.
“Quinn! I’m not kidding. One..two…”
She smiled to herself. He could count all he wanted. The paddle was at home, and by the time he got to “five,” which was the cut-off he gave her for obeying him without consequences, she’d have her charger. The car was speeding up now.
“Three…’
But before he got to four they were off the bridge and Quinn looked up as the “whoop-whoop” sound of a siren reached her ears. An unmarked car was right behind them, its blue dashboard lights flashing.
“Quinn!! Sit down! NOW!”
Ned rarely raised his voice. Quinn’s heart thudded as she moved back to the front seat and fumbled with her seatbelt. Her husband’s face was grim as he moved the car over to the side of the road. The other cars moved past, bumper to bumper.
“License and registration.” The cop did not look like he was having any better a day than they were. He took the documents Ned handed him and lifted his sunglasses, checking Ned’s picture against the photo on the license.
“Sit right here,” he said, walking back to his car.
“I’m sorry, honey,” Quinn said.
“Yeah, well you’re going to be even sorrier when we get to the rest stop. Because as much as I hate digging through luggage on a trip, I’m going to make an exception and get the paddle.”
Quinn didn’t say anything. The paddle wasn’t in the suitcase, and while she knew her bottom would not be spared, it was a small sort of consolation.
The cop was back at the window now, holding a clipboard out to Ned.
“OK, I’m citing you for having an unrestrained passenger,” he said. “Below is the court date. You can pay the fine or show up on that date to contest the charges.”
Ned signed the ticket. The cop tore a copy off and handed it to him.
“You two stay safe,” the officer said.
“You too,” Ned replied. He folded the ticket up and put it in the dashboard compartment.
“I’m sorry,” Quinn said again.
He ignored her.
The cop flashed his lights and cars stopped to allow him entrance into traffic. But they had to wait twenty more minutes for someone kind enough to let them in. Quinn was torn between desperately wanting to get to the rest stop so she could pee and dreading it because it meant a spanking.
When it finally loomed, the place was crowded. Ned drove around, selecting an isolated spot back near where the truckers parked.
“Honey, I have to pee. Can’t we park closer?”
“No. Now get out and go. I want you back here in ten minutes.”
She could see him heading back to the hatch as she walked up to the rest stop. This was going to get ugly. She began regretting that she’d hidden the paddle. Ned was going to be furious. She stopped. Maybe if she went back and told him before he pulled everything out to look for it, he’d be less angry. But on the other hand, if she went back now and told him, he might be so angry that he’d haul her into the car and spank her right there. And she had to pee so bad…
Quinn continued to the restrooms. There was a line of holiday travelers. She stood behind a very anxious lady holding the hand of a little girl dancing from one foot to the other and asking, “How much loooonger, mama?” Quinn knew exactly how she felt.
Finally it was her turn. Quinn checked her watch just before washing her hands. It had been eight minutes. She hurried back, not wanting to make things worse. She prayed that more trucks were parked at the end of the lot where Ned had pulled in; that would give them less privacy. But there were less vehicles. Her heart sank, and sank further when she saw Ned leaning against the Subaru, his arms crossed.
He didn’t waste time confronting her.
“Where’s the paddle, Quinn.”
“The paddle?”
“Don’t play stupid.”
“Are you sure you packed it?” Stupid was all she had, so she decided to just use it.
“You’re making this worse.”
“Ned, we’re on vacation!” she whined.
“Yeah. And now thanks to your impatience and lack of consideration we’re running about forty-five minutes late, Quinn. And I’m facing a $150 fine on top of it.”
“Honey…”
“Don’t honey me, Quinn. Where’s the paddle?”
“If I tell you, will you just drop this?”
“Not hardly,” he said, his f
ace grim. “But if you don’t then I can guarantee you’re going to be sorrier than you can possibly imagine.”
She mulled this over. Quinn had a good imagination. She sighed and looked up at him.
“I took it out and hid it.”
“Where?”
“Between the mattress and the box springs of our bed.”
“And you didn’t think I’d notice.”
“I thought you’d be too excited by the trip,” she said hastily. “And besides, Ned, do you really want to paddle me on our vacation?”
“No,” he said, taking her harm and leading her to the car. “And I didn’t want to switch you on our vacation either. But guess what…? He opened the door. On the driver’s side was a peeled willow switch. “That’s exactly what’s going to happen.”