Off of the Beaten Path

by Lizbeth Dusseau

  ***

  The two fell into Nick’s bed. Ashley was hardly sure how she got there, but feeling the softness at her back, she was lost in the downy comforter, hardly caring what Nick was doing.

  “You know, Ashley,” he said, “you’ve been a very bad girl tonight.”

  “Bad yes,” she agreed with a silly laugh. “Wicked wouldn’t you say?”

  “You know what happens to bad girls?” he asked.

  “Hummm, let me see,” she said. She was swimming in a not so sober never never land, thinking Nick might be in the same place. But he was not so drunk and much more sane, and was suddenly looking down at her with an authoritarian intensity she hadn’t seen since … . since Jess certainly … Jess, when the man was at his most tyrannical. It might have been frightening, but Nick was very cool.

  “Been a while since you’ve had a good strapping, am I right?” he said.

  “You’re gonna spank me?” she asked, thinking it was a joke.

  “Like an angry old uncle,” he said.

  “Oooo my,” she purred, still not taking him seriously.

  Lifting Ashley’s half limp body from the bed, Nick flung her over the back of a low-backed overstuffed chair. The height of the chair was just right, so that bending over at the top of her thighs her bottom was high above her, Ashley’s torso draped down the seat. She was on tiptoe in her high heels, her feet hardly touching the floor; and her half exposed leather clad backside was teetering on top of the chair.

  “You’re really going to do this,” she said, the surprise finally getting inside her.

  “You said you love it, darling, just giving you what you want, and what you most certainly need,” he said very sternly. He was standing back looking at her well displayed ass end. “Can’t wait to show you off like this,” he added, His comment went right by Ashley’s inebriation, being uttered just as Nick was pulling up her skirt, so she was focusing on the impending act, not his words.

  This was nothing like a punishment from Jess, and not something she was sure she wanted; but she was much too dazed to know for sure. And yet, still in the mood to consent she didn’t utter one protest.

  Looking back at Nick from the corner of her eye, Ashley saw the leather strap in his hand. Something made for spanking. The three inch wide flexible paddle was poised ominously over her rear end. She saw his hand come down the first time, as if it moved in slow motion; but after the first smack landed, she remembered little else, nothing else mattered. The first sting was strong enough to force her eyes closed. Her heart jumped, her legs wiggled madly, and her shoes were quickly kicked from her feet.

  There was some kind of innocuous howl, as she felt that first smack burn.

  Nick paused for a minute and admired the red that briskly began to appear on Ashley’s bottom. He’d hit her right at the center of her ass, managing to cover both cheeks with the eighteen inch long implement. Once Ashley was calmed, once the first rush of satisfaction raced through Nick and then died away, he drew his arm back again and landed another smack of the paddle, right over top of the first. Another hit, and then another. A determined and methodical spanking followed, the lovely Ashley getting exactly what Nick had been fantasizing about for weeks.

  After a good dozen smacks, his blonde girlfriend was crying like a baby. But it was much more than crying, much more than something that simple. He’d heard the same cry when he’d listened in to her being punished by her ex-boyfriend, Jess. Not only was Ashley letting loose with a flurry of spirited cries, she was wriggling against the back of the chair with her groin, as if she was fucking a lover.

  “Oh, Nick, this is horrible!” she finally cried out. It had taken some time for reality to hit, not the first six, not even the first dozen blows got through to her; but once Nick had paused and then started again, Ashley was beginning to sober, recognizing a familiar but all too painful burning sting rising on her punished skin. “Oh, Nick, pleeeeeesees,” she pleaded.

  Nick’s response to her woeful cry was another several smacks, and she wanted to bolt, her ass moving fast to get off the chair.

  “Oh no, you don’t,” he roared, drawing her back.

  “Please, this is enough fun and games, please!”

  “Oh hon, this isn’t fun and games,” he said, pausing just an instant.

  “Nick, please,” she said.

  “I have every reason to paddle your behind. That was a lewd dance you were doing at the club with that other guy. Bad girls get their asses spanked.”

  “Nick really!” she said, hearing his words and realizing what he meant. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Oh, but I am.” He landed another half dozen smacks right on the center of her ass end. But by then, her erotically waving rear was too much for him to bear. Arguments ended, punishment over, Nick dropped the leather spanker and descended on her back side. Sliding his prick inside her juicy pussy, another, far more glorious sound rose into the teaming air.

  “Ahhhhhhh, ah yesssssss.” An automatic response was taking over as Ashley backed up on him. The wild letting go began, and took her quickly to the edge of a climax.

  ***

  “You had a lot of surprises for me,” Ashley said, as she lay back against the sheets of Nick’s bed, and looked about his dimly lit bedroom.

  “Why do you say that?” he asked.

  “You give me leather, sweep me off San Francisco for dinner and dancing, and then spank my bottom.”

  “All that surprised you, did it?”

  Ashley didn’t know if he was serious or not. She couldn’t see his face, the way she was laying in the bed, and the sound of his voice didn’t give her a clue. “I’m still reeling,” she answered, truthfully. Her body was stilling tingling from sex, her bottom still aching from the punishment. But it was a good kind of feeling, at least she thought so.

  “That’s good, I like you reeling,” he said. “Just as I hope you got the message in the middle of my madness.”

  “Oh?”

  “I was easy on you with the spanker, Ashley,” he explained. “But the fact is, I don’t like my girlfriends smooching up to other men.”

  “Smooching?”

  “Playing around on the dance floor tonight, it was too damned cozy to suit me.”

  Ashley took notice of the edge that remained in his voice. He was upset. She rose up on one elbow and looked down at him.

  “You’re really serious, aren’t you?” she said, knowing he was.

  “Does that bother you?” he asked.

  “I’m just shocked.”

  “Why? Because I look like the perfect 90’s kind of liberated lover.”

  “I don’t know, I just didn’t expect you to be so … so moral.”

  “You could say I’m the jealous type; though I don’t like to think of it as petty jealousy. I know you weren’t going to run off with the guy, and I knew I’d get everything I wanted from you tonight. But maybe I’m just a little old-fashioned about love and girl friends. I like it straight, you and me, no fooling around.”

  “I don’t have a problem with that,” Ashley said.

  “Good. We might as well be honest with each other, don’t you think?”

  “Sure,” she replied. It all sounded as strange as everything else that had to do with Nick. Oddly, she appreciated his possessiveness. She liked knowing where she stood with him. After Jess, not that he’d been vague, but their whole relationship seemed vague. This one was certainly not.

  “You can’t imagine how delighted I was to find a woman who understood getting their bottom spanked. It’s the kind of penance I find really satisfying. In more than one way.”

  “So you’d spank me again?” Ashley asked.

  “Wouldn’t you want me to?” he asked.

  “Well, spanking has always been something that just happened. A spontaneous kind of thing. I haven’t had many boyfriends that understood. But then it’s not something that easily fits into a casual conversation.”

  “For you and me Ashley, I th
ink it’s essential.”

  Nick took her off guard all the time, this being one of those times. Where she could spar and fight with Jess over everything, there was rarely anything she could say to Nick. It was either one way, his way, or not at all. No compromise, no negotiation. She believed that if she ever raised a serious objection to his style of living; he’d simply tell her to leave. Why was she so compliant and agreeable with him, it was still a mystery. She’d never tolerated this attitude from other men. But, there were few men like him, and few relationships like this one.

  She fell back on the bed, and stared up at the ceiling, wondering what was motivating her now.

  Chapter Eleven

  There were several weeks of blue skies, and sunny days and lots of flying, Ashley taking Greg’s planes all through Northern California, to nearly every tiny runway in all the nowhere places. Her days were like heaven, and the nights … without Nick they were lonely … with Nick, they were curious.

  She counted on him twice a week, flying in for an evening, occasionally on Friday, Nick taking her back to San Francisco for the weekend. He became an adventure for her every time when she realized that his swinging moods were difficult to predict. Some evenings she’d have a lothario in bed, other times, a sullen testy man who was always one second away from spanking her, so he said. At other times, when he was neither amorous or sullen, Nick was bright, amiable and full of fun.

  One afternoon Ashley had just arrived in from her afternoon milk-run to places north. It had been a hot exhausting day, the plane had broken down twice, and she was two hours off her schedule.

  “Dammit Greg. I will NOT fly that useless bucket of bolts again!”

  “Slow down, Ash,” Greg said, as the storming aviator whisked past him on the way to the office with her flight book in hand.

  “Don’t tell me to slow down, I’m fuckin pissed, and you know why.”

  “Did the plane get off the ground?” Greg asked. He was annoyed himself, and not just with Ashley, though she happened to be the major annoyance of the moment.

  “Of course it got off the ground.”

  “And did it land?”

  “Don’t patronize me, you ass.”

  “You want your job?” he offered a glowering retort.

  “Don’t you dare start making stupid threats you’ll never live up to.”

  “Oh, you think I won’t live up to my threats?”

  “You need me Greg. And you know this is just a temporary snit.”

  She said it as if there was joke about to break through their angry battle; but instead, he glared at her angrily, and she stormed out of the office, blowing by him like a bone chilling blizzard.

  “You know, Ashley Bloom, you try my patience one more time, I just might throw you out of here!” he charged back, as he watched Ashley’s back side swish with a haughty bounce, a little more than usual.

  As Ashley was on her way to the far side of the building, she caught sight of Nick leaning against the door to the tarmac. He might have been smiling having seen the brief blow-up, and found it amusing; but he looked serious, contemplative kind of serious, as if he was deciding on some course of action.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” she blurted out, stopping abruptly in her tracks; though she continued on her way when she decided that she didn’t like Nick’s expression.

  “Ashley,” Nick spoke sharply.

  She didn’t stop her brusque retreat.

  “Ashley! You come back here now!” he ordered her.

  The blonde with the bouncing ponytail was almost to the outside door, when it finally dawned on her the intensity of Nick’s demand. She whirled around.

  “Don’t you start, Nick, because right now, I couldn’t care less if there were no men on earth!” Her eyes were shooting darts. She was about to turn back around and march out the door.

  “You walk out of here and we really have a problem,” Nick said. His cool calm tone carried the absolute weight of his resolve, but Ashley wasn’t paying attention. She gave her boyfriend the foulest scowl, turned her back on him, and walked away.

  Greg was on the other side of the small airport watching the conflagration with a ready wonder. The two lovers looked like a matched set in passionate defiance. He wasn’t sure who was going to win; but there was something about Nick’s calmer demeanor that would make him bet on him, over Ashley Bloom’s hotter fire.

  With Ashley winning the “I’ll walk out the door if I damn well want to” war, Nick gave Greg a shrug and smirk, and turned himself walking back toward his plane. It was an easy bet that Ashley would see Nick refueling the aircraft, and try to haul him back.

  Twenty minutes later, Nick was just about ready to close the door of his Cessna, when he saw Ashley jogging toward him from the airplane hangar. Paying no attention to her, he turned to start the engine.

  “Nick, Nick please!” she said.

  “You think I’ll stay after that scene?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry, Nick. I’m not mad at you, just men in general.” She was much calmer, the hot anger having suddenly vanished.

  “Since I’m a man, Ashley, that would include me.”

  “But I don’t mean you, Nick. I’m apologizing. What do you want me to do, get on my knees and beg?” They both knew, she’d never do that.

  “That would be a start,” he said. “But since you won’t, we don’t have anything to say.”

  “Nick, please give me a chance to explain.”

  “You want to pay the price for that drama in there, I’ll stay, otherwise we’ll talk in about a month.”

  “A month! C’mon.”

  “I don’t like bitchy women, Ash. And I don’t like raving women throwing fits, particularly when it’s my girlfriend, and especially when it’s in public. I don’t care how right you think you are.”

  “Please Nick, I’m sorry. I was going fix dinner for you tonight. Couldn’t we just forget this mess? It’s between Greg and me anyway. Please.” She cocked her head like a kid, her sassy ponytail swaying behind her, and the sweetest expression was breaking out on her face.

  Nick considered the proposal for a moment.

  “Don’t try the sweet talk, because it won’t work. But if you want to pay my price, then we can talk.”

  “You’re price?”

  “Your butt, my belt.”

  It was Ashley’s turn to consider. It had been several weeks since that first inebriated spanking. She thought maybe it was just a fluke, despite the little speech that said otherwise. She looked at his shadowy face, knowing that he was perfectly serious. She suspected there was no way she’d get beyond this place in their relationship without sacrificing her bottom. If she was lucky, it would be like the half erotic, half punishment session they’d had the night in San Francisco. With that thought in mind, her body was starting to respond, her loins in a heated dance, that strange something that always rose in her at the thought of getting spanked, was doing the same delicious tango inside her.

  “You’re that pissed?” she asked, still trying the sweet flirtatious routine.

  “Pissed wouldn’t exactly describe it,” he said.

  “Then you win. Let’s go to my place, and we’ll … . take care of it.”

  It suddenly mattered to save the relationship. There was something about Nick she needed to get out of her system, either that, or she might just be mesmerized by it forever.

  Ashley stood back and watched Nick climb out of the plane. “Your house is much too tame for what I have planned,” he said. Taking her by the hand, he led her back into the airport.

  In the few prickly moments that followed, Ashley watched as Nick negotiated his way into Greg’s office, leaving her behind as he had a private conference with her boss. A few minutes later, Nick stuck his head out of the door, and called her inside.

  “I think you have some apologizing to do, Ashley,” he said, after she entered.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  “Greg’s as pissed as I a
m with you; I think it’s only fair to let him take part in your atonement.”

  “NOT on your life!” she roared. She was about to make a classically Ashley Bloom bolt from the room, when Nick’s long arm reached out and grabbed hers.

  “You don’t behave yourself, I won’t even close the door.”

  “You wouldn’t!” she blared.

  “Don’t try me, not one word … “ he warned, keeping a fixed eye on her. She was about to speak. “Not one word,” he repeated. Eye to eye, he was devastating. No man had quite reached inside her the way Nick could. When she was used to running away from men, and running all over some, Nick didn’t give her an inch, not even a single footfall of room to move within. Seeing that she wasn’t going to bolt, Nick shoved the door closed with this foot, and with her arms still held tightly in his hand, he brought her brusquely to the side of Greg’s desk.

  “Take off your shorts,” Nick ordered.

  “Nick please,” she whispered.

  From the other side of the desk, Greg sat in his chair, a look of wonder constant on his face. The guy was going to spank her ass, what an amazing development. This would be one day to remember!

  Nick leaned in to Ashley, whispering in her ear. “You want to try that one again, you want to try protesting, you want to even suggest that I stop what I’m going to do?”

  He was ensuring complete compliance, which was as bizarre for Ashley as anything on earth. Something about the severe way he framed his words, went straight inside her like a well focused arrow, to her heart, to her emotions, beyond and everywhere. She felt like he was taking over.

  Nick stood back again.

  “Take off your shorts.”

  Without hesitation this time, Ashley undid the buckle of her shorts, and unzipped the zipper. Tight as they were, she had to wiggle a little to get them over her bottom so that they’d drop to her feet.

  “Bend over,” he ordered next.

  As Ashley was bending over the front of Greg’s desk, Greg was rising from his seat, the better view obviously on the other side of the room. It was a relief for Ashley not to have to look her boss in the eye at this humiliating moment.