…..A king? A completely, utterly, absolutely, entirely useless king!

Holy shit was I in for it now! The king was a nice card but of absolutely no use to me whatever. Patrick’s straight was good enough, and my hope of waving a full house in his face was dashed.

Patrick, of course, was grinning like an idiot.

“Oh, girl,” he said, “I’m afraid it’s time for a little payback.”

I had no reason to doubt that assessment. Well….. nothing ventured, nothing gained.

“I’ve been waiting for this,” Patrick said. He rubbed his hands together. “Do I have to tell you what to do?”

I held a hand up to him. “No, you don’t.”

I rose from my cross-legged position next to the coffee table. I was in a mood to be contrary, disappointed that the return to FemDommeLand I had hoped for had been derailed by that king. So I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of any entertainment. I could take off my clothes any way I pleased. How to get naked was the last activity I’d perform until after my pay-off was done tomorrow over which I had even the least shred of control.

When I reached my feet, I just unbuttoned and unzipped my jeans and pulled them and my panties down and off together. I cross-armed my tee shirt over my head, and then unhooked my bra and let it fall on top of the rest. It probably took ten seconds.

“Oh, I was hoping for something with a little music and a lot of ass shaking,” Patrick whined.

I displayed my middle finger.

Patrick rose to his feet and looked me up and down. How many times had he seen my body naked? Hundreds? Thousands? But now I was nude in a special and compulsory way. There was no romance here, no intimate exchange. I was just a nude woman standing in front of a fully clothed man.

I’ve not been nude in front of a man other than Patrick since the Sunday afternoon I had been required to strip in a dorm room for Paul and Hank, part of paying off the bet I lost to them on the homecoming football game when I was a grad student.

But now, this experience had almost that same underlying feeling. There was a distance between Patrick and me for the present. I was not nude because we were sharing loving feelings or a laugh or both. I was nude because I had lost a bet to him and was required to be unclothed.

Patrick, intentionally or not, seemed less my husband than an objective, voyeuristic observer, coolly evaluating my body. He seemed to be in the act of judging how pleasant he found the shape and size of my breasts, how agreeable to his eyes was the swell of my hips, how delightful he perceived the cheeks of my ass to be, how engaging he found my pubic hair.

Little nips of embarrassment teased at my mind from being nude in this way.

He gripped my chin between the thumb and forefinger of one hand, pushed my chin up just the tiniest bit, I suppose just to let me know he was now in control. Patrick made eye contact with me, held it, then he very deliberately smiled.

His forefinger began to trace a line under my chin, down my neck and chest to my left breast. His finger circled my areola and then he pinched my nipple lightly, and smiled again.

He began a circumnavigation of my body.

His hand went to my side, and he placed the palm of his hand there and slid it down until it was running over the swell of my hip bone. I felt the four fingers of that hand, spread a bit, each a separate sensation, skate lightly over the skin of my hip, and continue with him to the back of my body.

In a moment those fingers were moving over my left ass cheek, just a light touch. The palm of his hand lightly cupped that cheek, and his fingers moved under me in the direction of my vagina. But they never made it there, instead proceeding to my other ass cheek. A cupping, and then those four fingers again gliding over my skin.

The near contact with my vagina had lit a little match in me. A bit of wetness sprang into my vagina. I had started this little exercise feeling somewhat embarrassed, but Patrick’s teasing had kindled a fire. I tried to determine whether it was the teasing of his fingers that was the cause of the commencement of arousal, or if it was the embarrassment I felt, or some combination of the two.

His fingers continued their journey. Patrick came around to the front of my body again. The contact on my skin became just one finger that glided around my right hip. The finger stayed low and ended its journey at my pubic hair, ruffling and tickling it a little. Then two fingers moved between my legs, not far, just enough to spread my labia a little and find my clitoris.

The fingers were tight together. I felt them press on my clit, moving in a subtle circle, and then release. Pressure and release; and again, pressure and release. It was the exact attention I love from Patrick’s fingers on my sex.

After seven years of marriage, Patrick knows how to play my body as well as Weird Al Yankovic knows how to play a kazoo. Okay, lousy analogy.

But there was no question I was getting turned on. Patrick found my mouth with his and our lips locked together, our tongues greeting each other. I moaned as I felt Patrick’s two fingers slide back toward my vagina in slipperiness that had not been there just a minute ago. His fingers teased at my vagina, and then they slid back to my clit, pressing and releasing, pressing and releasing.

My arms came up and around Patrick’s neck pulling his mouth harder onto mine, and my hips began to move, trying to get every pleasurable sensation from what his fingers were doing to my clit. I could see my friend in the distance, and she was covering the ground between us in a hurry.

“Oh, my gosh, Sweetheart,” Patrick said, breaking our kiss, his fingers leaving my clit, my clit begging for them to return, “I’m so, so sorry. You must be anxious to begin paying off your bet. I can’t believe I’m making you wait. How completely inconsiderate of me.”

Well, it seems he’s a fast study in the fine art of how to get the most gloating out of winning a bet.

“Don’t you have a hot date with a razor?” Patrick asked sweetly.

I know what my first impulse for a response was, but I restrained myself: frankly, my middle finger was going to get awfully tired if I used it tonight all the times I had the urge.

Patrick got behind me and took me by the shoulders, pushing and guiding me toward the bathroom. Once there he stood me by the toilet while he rummaged in a drawer, pulling out a plastic bag of disposable razors. He held one out to me.

“There,” he said, “a nice new sharp one for you, to make your shaving experience a pleasant one.” He smiled and gave me a kiss on my cheek. “Come see me when you’re done.” He turned and left, closing the door behind him.

Well, this was no fun; not at all the evening I had been hoping for and expecting. This was far and away the easiest task I had to perform to pay off my bet, but just as unpleasant as the rest. I sat on the john and looked down at my pubes. At the moment they were trimmed pretty short and not shaped to any great degree: just razored off around the edges to keep strays from escaping my panties.

I sometimes do more elaborate sculpting: occasionally a landing strip, and I’ve tried several widths; sometimes a defined shape of some kind. I tried a heart once, but it didn’t come out terribly well. Patrick said he liked it though, the sweety. But bare? Never. I hate it.

I understand there are plenty of women who like bare for any number of good reasons, and that’s fine. To each her own. I’ve tried it, but have never liked the ‘little girl’ look it gives me, or how stark and exposed it leaves my vulva. So I very much favor some pubes there. Now, Patrick bare: that would have been beyond hilarious, and the thought made me regret I had missed out by losing my bet. But there was no way I could change that last card to a winner, so I took a breath, let it out, and got down to my task.

My hairs were trimmed short enough that I didn’t think I really needed to shorten them any more for the razor. I got out the can of Patrick’s shaving cream and slathered some on. I started on top, using short strokes to take the cream and hair off. The fresh razor was nice: almost no pull at all. I moved each leg to the side in turn and stretched the skin to get into the crease between my abdomen and thighs.

Shortly, everything down to my vulva was gone. Then I spread wide and started in on the hard to reach places. Soon the job was all but done. I wet a washcloth with warm water to rinse off the last of the shaving cream, the warmth from the cloth a welcome addition to the sensations from down below. After wiping the shaving cream off, I warmed the cloth again, placed it directly on my clit, and rocked a bit back and forth, enjoying the sensations. I stopped abruptly, realizing I really didn’t want to get going too far in that direction right now.

I checked carefully, moving things around, looking for hairs the razor had missed and flicking the blade over them carefully to clean up the last. When I was satisfied I would pass inspection, I toweled myself dry.

I found Patrick in the living room watching a sports round-up show. I stood directly in front of him, presenting my bare pubis for his inspection. I was there for just a second when his hand grabbed my hip, pushing me to the side, his eyes intent on the television.

“Wow!” he exclaimed. “Did you see that play at the plate?”

I gave him a little smack on the head. “I’m standing right in front of you naked as a jay bird and all you care about is some baseball game?”

Patrick looked up at me, a wry smile on his face. “Just kidding. Just kidding. Your pussy is still first in my book.” He picked up the remote and flicked off the television.

He pulled me back in front of him again, his eyes intent on my vulva. His fingers explored every crack and crevasse, and he seemed pleased that everything that could be classified as growing from a follicle was gone. Then his fingers slowed and came to a stop at my clit and he began again the process of applying pressure and releasing it. It would have been oh so easy to get into the pleasant sensations, but who could fall for that twice in one hour?

I pulled my hips away from him. “How dumb do I look, mister? Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.”

He looked a little disappointed, but then brightened.

“Well, only one thing to do then,” Patrick said. He took me by the hand and led me to the bedroom, and I was off to pay task number two of my lost bet.

In the bedroom, Patrick brought out the leather ankle and wrist cuffs I occasionally wear. He began to buckle them on me. Once, during a past encounter when he had been doing this, I had told him that I could do it, but he told me that buckling them on me was very pleasant for him and helped to warm him up.

He tied thin and smooth rope to the rings on all four and then piled pillows in the center of the bed. He put out his hand.

“Your throne awaits, Your Worship.”

I knew what was required. I crawled onto the bed, lay on my front, my hips over the pillows, my ass high in the air, lewd and inviting. Patrick took the rope emanating from one of the ankle cuffs and tied it off to the corner of the bed, then did the same with the other. Now that my lower extremities were anchored in place he took the rope from my right wrist cuff and pulled it to the post at the right side of the head board. He pulled, my arm now stretched, and he tied off the rope. He did the same on the other side and soon I was stretched in all four directions, immobile. He gave my bottom a little slap.

“Don’t go running off now,” he said as he went into the bathroom. This time I used both middle fingers, although I don’t know that he saw.

Patrick likes anal, I not at all. I’m happy to provide him with his heart’s desire from time to time. I mean, I’m his wife after all and one of the things that makes our marriage successful is that we are each ready to put the other first. I make my ass available to him when he asks, and he limits how often he asks, and the whole arrangement works out quite well. But our typical session with anal involves me on all fours on the bed, or out on the coffee table kneeling, my wrists attached by the cuffs to their corresponding ankle.

But doing it with me tied spread wide on the bed, my ass up in the air, is something that happens only on the rarest occasions, when the odd happenstance occurs that he is feeling particularly dominant and I happen to be feeling especially submissive.

Off the top of my head I can only remember one such aligning of those planets. It was within the first year or two of our marriage. So this was the first time I had been here and prepared like this in five or six years. I’m pretty sure at this point that it would take a lost bet to get me here. I don’t think I was going to volunteer or was willing to be drafted for the spread-eagle bondage variety of anal submission.

I wanted to complain, but really how could I? When I think of how willingly Patrick had paid off his bet to me in February. He really hadn’t been expecting to be the toy of a femdom bitch; hadn’t even known he was married to a woman who now had designs on reaching femdom bitchdom.

So, as unpleasant as it was, I really had no grounds for complaint. I just had to offer up my ass to satisfy my bet and be done with it.

I suppose that is why they call it a wager: you agree to put up what the other wants and you don’t want to give up, against the other putting up what you want and would prefer not to give up. The principle is no different than wagering money. I risk one hundred dollars in order to get your one hundred dollars, and we both would prefer to hold onto our one hundred dollar bill.

Except, of course, that wagers of a sexual nature, I was quickly discovering, were so much more interesting and suspenseful.

Let’s face it: anyone can take out their wallet and hand over some currency to satisfy a lost bet. What could be easier? It was much, much more difficult to have to take off your clothes and let others feast their eyes on your personal parts, or surrender your body for another’s use, or be compelled to engage in some embarrassing or humiliating activity to satisfy a lost bet. Of course, being on the other side, winning and receiving the payoff was exponentially better than being handed a piece of green paper and putting in your wallet.

In fact, I was quickly coming to the opinion that those who bet mere money are truly the world’s meek and spineless, faint-hearted and lily-livered: just weenies and cowards who simply don’t have the spine to make a bet of any substance or meaning or difficulty.

These thoughts occupied me while I waited for Patrick. As I lay bound, I reflected that I’d soon complete two out of three tasks. Our bet for tonight involved three forfeits: the shaving (and, darn it, wouldn’t Patrick have looked so cute sans pubes?), getting something big up their butt (and I’d gone out and gotten a few special items to give Patrick a surprise if he lost - they’d have to wait for another occasion now), and a third forfeit that wouldn’t take place until tomorrow. I’d have to go where Patrick told me to and get myself off in public. That one made me shiver. I knew what I had planned for Patrick. Would the way he required me to complete that task be just as difficult? All three were rather loosely defined, open to interpretation by the winner.

A moment or two later I heard the toilet flush and the door open.

Patrick came over and got the lube from the night table. He upended the tube above my ass, squeezing out gel as he moved the tube the length of my ass crack; much as if he were applying mustard to a hot dog. Then he worked the lubricant deep into my ass crack....