by Maren Smith
And that was it right there. That was what she wanted. Not with Mr. Emerson, per se, but with someone who would look at her like that, with hot and hungry eyes. Everything else—this class, this uniform, the pulsing throb that laved her bottom in a wash of stinging fire and even licked up in between her clenching legs as if it were a corporeal tongue—was all just a shadowed approximation of what it could and should be.
That was, for Kaylee, a very sad thought.
CHAPTER FIVE
Kaylee sat on a stone bench in the middle of the hedge maze, the wall of manicured shrubbery around her just high enough to hide her from castle view. She hoped.
The break bell had rung sometime back. Everyone else had gone inside, leaving Kaylee to sit where she was, quietly shredding hedge leaves between her fingernails and thinking. Now and then, she squirmed a little on the bench, but all tenderness from Mr. Emerson’s switching had faded away. The heat was gone. The sting, too. She missed both, just not enough to go back to "class." Eventually, she was going to have to go back, if only long enough to collect her things and…what? Return to Master Marshall’s office? Tell him the schoolgirl thing just wasn’t working for her? What if he asked her why? How was she supposed to answer that when she wasn’t sure she understood herself? Maybe she just wasn’t cut out for roleplaying games. How stupid was it, to spend all this money coming to a place renowned for its vast variety of roleplaying scenarios and not be able to roleplay?
Sighing, Kaylee dropped the shredded leaf. Pulling her feet up onto the bench, she hugged her knees to her chest and rested her cheek against them. Maybe she should just go home. Was the bus even still here?
Footsteps approached, crunching over gravel as they followed the twists and turns of the maze.
Kaylee raised her head as Jackson came into view, still one hedge aisle over. He was already wearing that aw-baby smile of his and when he glanced over at her, rounding the last corner that separated him from her section of the maze, that smile only grew. She made room for him on the bench and he sat down beside her.
“I didn’t think anyone would find me here,” she said morosely and hugged her knees tighter.
“Cameras, remember?” He pointed to several of the garden posts, positioned throughout the maze. “There is no place anywhere in the castle or on the grounds that we can’t see. Only the guestroom surveillances are safeword activated. The rest are on all the time and monitored 24/7.”
“Oh.” Kaylee stared up at the camera, wincing in dismay. “Did you get sent out here to drag me back to class?”
“Nope. If I have to drag you back to class, then obviously the schoolroom is not where you need to be.”
“There’s nothing wrong with it,” she hedged, picking at her fingers.
“I didn’t say there was. I’m simply saying it may not be for you. What do you think?”
She looked at her fingers and her knees and then at him. His smile hadn’t faded. There wasn’t an ounce of censure anywhere about him. She shook her head. “It’s not for me.”
“Do you want to go back to the nursery?”
“Oh hell n—I mean, no, thank you.”
Jackson barked a quick laugh, patted her on the knee and then stood up, motioning her to do the same. “Come on.”
Kaylee’s budding smile faded. “Does he know?”
“He,” Jackson emphasized in amusement, “knows everything. Why else do you think I was sent?”
“Is that your job, to run around the grounds, gathering in the strays who can’t be placed?”
For the first time, his smile also faded. After a moment, Jackson sat back down beside her. He put his hand on her knee and waited until her eyes reluctantly rose to his. “First of all, you aren’t unplaceable. I know you’re discouraged, but you’ve only tried three scenarios out of countless possibilities. We are going to find one for you. Not only are you going to have a wonderful time, but it’s going to feel so damn perfect you won’t ever want to go home.”
Kaylee had to bit her bottom lip to keep it from wobbling. “You think so?”
“I know so.” He spread his arms, smiling broadly. “Like Hair Club for Men, I don’t just work security—two weeks out of the year, I’m a client too. Remember, I went through seven partners before I finally found the niche that fit how I feel about this as a part of myself and as a lifestyle.”
“Yay,” Kaylee said tonelessly. “I’m halfway there.”
That won another chuckle from him. “That’s the spirit. Let me ask you this: Was the nursery better than the dungeon?”
“In a lateral sliding way, yes.”
“Was the schoolroom better than the nursery?”
Kaylee didn’t even need to think about it. “Yes. By at least a dozen times.”
“I’ll bet your next scenario is even better. I’ll bet it curls your toes.” He patted her knee and stood up again. “Come on. We’ve kept the boss waiting long enough. Let’s get you situated.”
Her reservations weren’t exactly banished, but Kaylee followed Jackson’s lead, trailing along behind him as he took her back inside. They stopped in the schoolgirls’ barrack and collected her stuff. She didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to Selena, but as they passed through that short hall of classrooms, detention hall and principal’s office, she could hear the sharp snick of Mr. Emerson’s busy switch and she remembered how the two of them had looked at one another.
With any luck, Jackson would be right. Maybe in her next scenario, she would find someone who would—if not in actuality fall in love with her like that—at least spin the fantasy that way. Even if it was only let’s pretend, Kaylee could be happy with that.
* * * * *
They stood side-by-side outside Master Marshall’s door for almost a full minute in silence. Kaylee stared at the wood grain, her hands relentlessly worrying and twisting in the folds of her skirt until Jackson gave up waiting for her to take the initiative and knocked. Master Marshall’s answering hail was prompt, but when she still didn’t move, the burly security guard opened the door, patted her on the shoulder and pushed her inside.
“Good luck.” He ruffled her hair as he withdrew and pulled the door closed behind him, sealing her in the lord’s office with the Master of the Castle.
Oh God. He was looking over her (bogus) file again, red pen out and busily making notes in the margins. His brow was furrowed. He shook his head once, crossed out a line, and changed it to something else. It took him a moment before he noticed she was still standing at the far side of the room.
“Come in, Ms. Waters.” He beckoned her to the visitors chairs set out before his desk. “Sit down.”
Kaylee stayed where she was, fidgeting her fingers until he glanced up at her again. “I don’t think I can do this. Something must be wrong with me.”
To her, it felt like she was stating the obvious. Master Marshall cocked an eyebrow at her, first in surprise, but then his expression shot quickly beyond incredulous to sternly bemused.
“Nothing is ‘wrong’ with you,” he drawled. “Come here, pet. Sit down. Let’s talk about it.”
Shoulders drooping, Kaylee headed for the waiting chair. She sat down on the hard, wooden seat, squirming only a little, but the aftereffects of her earlier switching were as good as gone. There was only the barest warming sensation left, the slightest half throb. If she weren’t already feeling like such a failure, it might have been the most erotic sensation she’d experienced all day. Well, apart from the orgasm Master Marshall had stroked from her as she’d stood with her nose in the corner and her aching bottom crushed up against his obvious erection. That ranked pretty high on the list, too.
She looked at his hands, blushed hot, and then made herself look away.
Studying her silently, he closed her file and dropped the pen on his desk. He folded his hands over the top of both. “So, what happened?”
Picking imaginary bits of lint off her skirt, Kaylee shrugged one shoulder.
His expression changed, melting into
a Look stern enough to make her fingers still and her stomach. “I asked you a question, young lady, and I will not be shrugged at. What happened?”
Thrown into the defensive, Kaylee couldn’t stop herself. Her hands erupted from her lap into another, even more exaggerated shrug. “I don’t know! I wish I did. I just…it felt wrong! Everything feels wrong!”
“Okay.” Setting her file aside, Master Marshall left his chair and came around the desk to perch on the edge. He folded his arms across his chest and pinned her with that frowning, assessing Look. “It’s the spanking that draws you the most, is that correct?”
Kaylee burned hotter. She nodded. “Yes.”
“All right, then. Tell me about the first adult spanking you ever received—where were you, what was used, who gave it to you. Everything.”
Her face flamed. Her fingers fidgeted endlessly, picking at one another and at her sleeves, at all those specks of imaginary lint. “Um…”
And the truth shall set her free—she winced, shifting in her seat—or considering she’d already lied to him, it could also get her money promptly refunded and her ass thrown onto the first bus for home. She chewed her bottom lip in indecision, but after a brief mental debate, she finally told the truth. It was a grudging, halting process and it could not have been more reluctantly given had he pried the information from her with a rusty crowbar.
“It was, um, in an office, with his hand, and…” She cringed even more, painfully aware that her confession was starting to sound like a really screwed up game of Clue. “…um…it was you.”
He studied her silently and his expression did not change. Finally, he asked, “You’re telling me you’ve never been spanked before today?”
“Not even as a kid,” she confessed. She chewed her bottom lip until it hurt, wishing she knew how to read him. He didn’t look angry. He was a far cry from pleased, but at least he didn’t look angry. That had to be a good thing, right?
“Just so I know I understand.” He reached behind him, opened her folder and held up her application. “You’re also saying that this application, which you declared on multiple occasions—online, at orientation and then again in front of me, directly to my face, I might add—declared it to be as truthful as you can make it, is in fact a work of utter fiction.”
Still not angry. He was starting to look a little irritated, though. She fidgeted, twisting and twisting her fingers in the folds of her schoolgirl skirt until they began to throb in the tips from lack of blood flow. “Yes, sir.”
“Total twaddle. Complete bupkis.”
“Yes.”
“There’s not one question honestly answered anywhere in these pages?”
She winced. “My name might be right.”
He was not amused. “Don’t get cute with me. You lied from start to finish.”
“I didn’t want you to think I was a novice,” she protested.
“You are a novice!”
“But I didn’t want you to think I was!”
“Why in God’s name not?”
“Because I don’t want to get matched up with someone—”
“Who has the experience to help you explore the different nuances of the fetish, offering gentle guidance while you learn what does and does not work for you?”
“—who’ll treat me as if I’m so fragile that I’ll break if he spanks me too hard!”
“In about two seconds, you are not going to be worrying about that.”
“Good!” she snapped, throwing up both hands again. “Because I want to be spanked hard! I want to feel so burned by someone that I can’t handle it anymore! I want to finally know what it feels like to be held down by someone so strong that I can’t get away, no matter how I kick and cry!”
“You want to kick and cry?”
“Yes! And I want him to keep right on spanking me until I can’t sit down again afterward! I mean, at all!”
“Apart from lying to me, what makes you think you deserve such punishment?”
Kaylee turned away, casting helplessly about the room as if the answer might be lurking somewhere across the carpet. She locked her lips together, flat and angry. Her shoulders sagged again.
Master Marshall came off his desk and the next thing she knew, he was bending over her, one hand braced on the arm of her chair and her chin was caught in his other. It was a two-fingered grip but from the moment he turned her to confront him and his piercing blue gaze locked with hers, it became one she could not break from. She couldn’t look away. She couldn’t even blink.
“What have you done,” he repeated, calm and quiet, “to deserve such a punishment?”
“I haven’t done anything.” Her frustration bubbled over. She didn’t mean to tremble, but she began to anyway. She didn’t mean to cry, but stopping the tears was like trying to stop the ocean tide. The instant the first trickled onto her cheek, however, she slapped it away and stiffened herself. “Why do I have to do something to get spanked? Can’t I just want it? I live. I breathe. I lie. Pick a crime.”
“The first two are not crimes. The last is merely an annoyance.”
“That’s subjective.”
“No, what’s subjective is your definition of hard, or of what will leave you unable to sit and of where exactly within you lies that very thin, subtle line that separates a well-deserved punishment from abuse.”
“I don’t have that line.”
“Everyone has that line, and that is exactly what I’m talking about, right there. What one submissive might consider foreplay, another could interpret as misuse. You don’t know what hard is for you. You don’t know where your limits are or where your comfort zone is because you haven’t explored them. There’s nothing wrong with being a novice or in not knowing what you want; this is a learning process. It’s long, it’s involved, it requires constant communication. We are all driven to start this journey by desires we barely understand, but there is a big difference between fantasy and real life. Almost everyone who comes here is grownup enough to admit they have questions. You, on the other hand, stood in my office, looked me right in the eye and lied, and I have to confess, little girl, the urge to take you in hand and personally introduce you to your inner line where more-than-you-can-handle meets way-too-God -damned-much is just incredibly strong right now.”
Unbidden, her eyes flicked past his shoulder to the cane hanging on the wall.
His hawk eyes didn’t miss a thing. “I am not going to use that,” he said, his tone dark and low. “I don’t need to use that.” Letting go of her chin, he stood up and yet somehow still held her no less pinned than before. “Sheer curiosity on my part, let me ask you a question.”
Humiliation nettled her. She hated being scolded like this. Slapping away another tear, she nodded. “Sure.”
“On a scale from one to ten, with one being very soft, ten being the height of all severity and five being the ideal balance, Goldilocks-version of a just-right spanking, how would you rate the one I gave you this morning?”
There was no stopping the involuntary squirm that shifted her in her seat. “The whole thing or…”
“The whole thing.”
She thought about it, her fingers picking constantly at one another. “Five, I guess.”
“That was my idea of a three, with that handful of swats I laid across the backs of your thighs being the only reason I’m not labeling it a two.” He gestured between them. “Two different people; two distinct definitions of hard.”
“Oh,” she said, because he seemed to be expecting some kind of response. “I see.”
“Not yet you don’t, but you will because I intend to bring our differing definitions into very sharp alignment right now.” He jerked his thumb at her. “Stand up. Remove your uniform.”
The spasm that shivered her was a mingling of both electrified arousal and no small amount of panic. It tightened in her chest, crawling up her legs and across the backs of her thighs, making her skin prickle. She couldn’t make her legs move right away, and
for a few seconds, only sat there staring up at him with hugely rounded eyes. “O-off?”
“You don’t think you’re in enough trouble? You’re seriously going to make me repeat myself?” He still didn’t look angry, but his irritation seemed to kick up a notch. “Skirt and panties, right now. Take. Them. Off.”
Kaylee stood up, her hands trembling as she fumbled with the clasp at the back of her skirt. Unzipping herself, she pushed it down her legs and stepped out of the plaid puddle. She touched the elastic of her underwear, but couldn’t quite bring herself to push them down. And that was silly, really. A flush of heat stole up from her belly, burning outward through all the rest of her. Having already spanked her once, Master Marshall was well introduced not just with her bare bottom, but her widely-splayed legs and every feminine secret she held between them. He’d touched her there, stroked her, slipped his fingers up inside her and fondled her into fierce orgasm. So why was she suddenly so shy? Why was she trying to tug at the hem of her too-short white blouse as if she could pull it down far enough to shield her sex from his hard gaze?
“Off,” he told her, pitiless. “And kindly remember, my office is not your bedroom floor.”
Kaylee scooped up her discarded skirt and folded it neatly with shaking hands. When he held out his hand, not knowing what else to do, she passed it to him. When he continued to keep his hand held out, she lowered her hands to her panties and reluctantly took them off. When she laid them, a meekly-folded square of white cotton, on top of the skirt, he tossed both onto the edge of his desk and pointed to the armoire-style cupboard set against the wall between the fireplace and the door. “Go, open it. I want you to be honest with me and with yourself. You’re to select whichever implement you think is best suited for the punishing of liars and bring it to me. You want to feel your bottom burn, fine. I’m going to teach you the wisdom behind that old adage: Be careful what you wish for.”
That spasm hit her again, tightening the knots inside her so violently that it felt almost painful.