Sam didn’t come out of the cubicle for about fifteen minutes and, when she did, she was still red in the face. She strode across the floor, not breaking step as she returned the items to the counter and made straight out the exit without glancing back to see if I was with her. I wasn’t too sure what to say or how to react and didn’t get much of a chance to try until she stopped walking about fifteen minutes later. By that time we were quite a distance from the shop or any of the streets we had been browsing in.

She’d stopped on a little footbridge looking down on a path and park below with a small lake or perhaps it was a canal. I stood silent beside her, trying to look comically contrite. It was a look I’d been practising as I jogged along trying to keep up over the last mile.

“Do you think that we’re even?” Sam asked eventually. “Is that what you meant when you said that I’d know it when it happened?”

“Yes.”

“You pulled down my pants. In a store, in front of dozens of people.”

It wasn’t dozens but I didn’t think that this was the moment to argue. “Yes,” I said, "you were bent over in public showing your bare ass to the world. Did it make you feel sexy?”

Sam was silent for about a minute. “No. It didn’t make me feel sexy. It shocked and frightened me."

She hesitated. I waited, knowing she wanted to say more and was searching for the words. Or the courage.

"It got a wee bit sexy when I thought of it in the cubicle. While I was dressing. Knowing that strangers had seen me.... effectively nude. But I don’t know why. I think it was part of the shock.”

“And now?" I asked quietly "Now, as you think about standing there in front of people in your purple lacy knickers, bent over showing them your bum. And then flashing your bare bum. In front of strangers. Does it make you feel sexy now thinking about it?”

Another long hesitation. "Yeah. It does,” said Sam, making a sort of a resentful half smile.

This was a long way past anything I’ve ever dreamed of now. We were flying in uncharted territory. I had no idea what to say or where this conversation would lead.

Or could lead.

“Like a stripper or maybe even a flasher might get a thrill,” I suggested.

“No!" she answered firmly, quick as a flash. “A stripper is in control. They’re saying 'I can turn you on. I can walk over to you and turn you on whether you want to be turned on or not just by taking off my clothes.' The stripper is in control. I was embarrassed. It was more like a child being punished in public. Humiliation. Almost the opposite of being a stripper, I think"

Sam hesitated. Blushing. "Like being spanked.”

“Yes,” I said. “Punished like a child. For being naughty. I told you that you would be. Now you’ll be a good girl."

“Or maybe I’ll get even. You never know. But you’d just better be careful over the next few days.”

“Now don’t be cheeky or I’ll pull down your pants in front of people again.”

Sam considered this. “Or maybe I’ll spank your bare ass in public instead of the privacy of our room.”

Now, I don’t claim to be an expert in these things but isn’t there supposed to be one submissive partner and one dominatrix?

I wasn’t the one who had mentioned the word “spank.” That was her. Major signal. Alarm bells. My head was spinning so much I wasn't certain which of us was playing what role in this extraordinary conversation. I needed to stop. To think. I needed to work out what on earth was going on. Review before we dug ourselves any further. There was no question this was erotic and was turning me on. But I could not help feeling that this might be something I would regret if I didn't tread very carefully.

I’m not really a particularly kinky type. I’d only ever tried spanking once before. That was with a bloke and never anything with a girl.

I’d been with a boyfriend a couple of years before and once during sex in the bedroom he’d slapped my bottom a bit and I’d let him. Over the next few weeks he’d kind of tried more and more adventurous things. I wasn’t that keen but I admit that there is always something a bit sexy about playing any sort of sex game that turns on your partner.

I suppose the truth is that I was actually quite excited by trying naughty and kinky things too. But I liked to tell myself that I was only pleasing my boyfriend. That I was much too good a girl to really like anything so degrading and naughty.

He had had this way of getting me to bend over the end of the bed, or to kneel with my bum in the air as if we were going to do it doggy style. Then he would use his tongue and then his fingers to bring me off. It's sexy having a man lick you from behind. And then, just as I’d be starting to cum, he’d smack my bare bottom. The pain really does seem to make it hotter. He invented more rules like stopping touching me just at the wrong moment and only carrying on if I begged him for it. It was all pretty sexy stuff and I admit that I always came quite hard.

It was pretty good, actually. But one day, just as I was reaching a particularly strong climax, I realised that I was kneeling on the floor with a strap around my neck begging him to fuck me and to spank me harder and in between times barking like a dog (well, a bitch!). My ass was throbbing and I was sobbing and begging for more and I just thought ,“This is far too weird.”

I guess that I didn’t want to get into it, even if it was working for me. It just didn’t seem to be a scene that I was comfortable with and I broke up with the poor guy soon after that.

Since then, I’ve asked men to spank me in the throws of passion but never received more than a bit of a slap. I suspect a big part of the problem is that I always think of myself as the powerful one, the more dominant one. I can be "girly" around men. A “pretty girl with a hint of bitch underneath” is how I try to come across most of the time.

The more I thought about it, the more I realised that maybe I’m not really dominant at all. Maybe that’s never really been my true role. I seemed to get this glimpse of a new reality where my relationships may all make so much more sense if I saw myself as men did - as I wanted and made men see me. The girly girl they wanted to look after and to fuck.

But what about Samantha. Why was I even asking this in the same context as reviewing my sex life? Samantha is a woman for God sake!

I’m not gay.

I fancy men. I do not fancy women. I never have and I don’t now.

Although that ass... those legs and those pants and... that mouth.

Oh my God!

I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to hold her face and kiss her. On the mouth.

This was new and frightening and could not be good. I’d be safer going back to barking and begging to be spanked harder! At least that was with a bloke. At least that was just kinky sex. Sort of normal. It didn’t lead to comfortable shoes and bad haircuts and unbearable attitudes. My God, was I going to turn into a vegetarian slogan-writing political activist or something?

I feel my face burning with shame at my internal dialogue. What a moment, with all this going on, to discover that on top of my S&M and Lesbian tendencies I appear to be homophobic as well. This was not going well.

I looked up from my deep stupor. I wasn't sure how long we'd been silent. Sam was standing there in her white linen shirt and tight black trousers leaning on the rail of the little bridge. Her chest was scrunched and I got just a glimpse, a hint, of purple in the open shirt neck. I could make out her visible panty line and imagine, only a short while ago, her bent over in those panties, glowing with embarrassment and anger, staggering into the cubicle with her pale muff on show.

“What the hell am I going to do?” I thought, meaning it more as an interested bystander watching myself from afar, out of control, rather than being in a position to make up my own mind about anything right now.