She was small, pretty and nervous. Her name was Tammy and she had huge blue eyes in a pixie face and shoulder-length chestnut hair. I don’t think she had any idea how attractive she was. Those beautiful blue eyes were usually hidden behind thick, squinty-looking glasses and she dressed like a nerd in baggy clothing that did nothing for her slim figure and she generally wore her hair in a ponytail.

She didn’t really seem like the kind of person who tried out for community theater, but there she was, and she had turned out to be a very good dancer and a more than passable singer so she had joined our cast. Most of us had worked together many times before so I made an effort to make her feel welcome, chatting with her a little bit when we weren’t needed onstage, telling her a little bit about what the director was like to work with, introducing her to some of the other cast-members and so forth.

Even then I noticed how high-strung she was, always tapping her feet when seated or rubbing her hands together--and biting her nails. Whenever she saw me noticing her doing it she would quickly fold her hands in her lap, or hide them behind her back if she was standing, and give me a sheepish grin.

I said nothing to her about it at first; it was no concern of mine. I really hadn’t given her much thought beyond giving her a little friendly attention from time to time to help her get into the swing of things.

But one day the play rehearsals had reached the point where the cast had begun trying on costumes and experimenting with hair and make-up. And when Tammy ventured out onstage I hardly recognized her. She had replaced her glasses with contacts; she had curled her hair into ringlets, which she had piled on her head and allowed to fall around her face; she was wearing heels, a fitted blouse and a skirt that floated down from her hips. She looked fabulous—and for some reason I seemed to be the only one who noticed. Even the act of raising her thumb to her mouth and biting her nail now seemed very sexy—until she saw me looking at her from in front of the stage and whipped her hands behind her back.

Later on, backstage, I complimented her on her looks, and she smiled shyly up at me, started to raise her hand to her mouth then caught herself and dropped it to her side, giving me a guilty look as she did so.

I caught her wrists in my hands and pulled them up so I could look at her fingers. She resisted at first, then subsided, blushing as I examined her nails then looked at her over them.

“I’ve been trying to stop,” she murmured, then looked down and continued, “I haven’t had much luck so far.”

I waited for her to look back up at me. Then, still holding her wrists, I looked into her eyes and said, “Yes. You need to stop doing that. And you’re going to.”

Her eyes went wide for a moment at the firmness of my tone, but after a moment I simply dropped her wrists, smiled at her and walked away, giving her shoulder a friendly squeeze as I passed.

The next evening, we were chatting backstage and in a moment of distraction she raised a forefinger to her mouth and began to gnaw on the fingernail. I immediately grabbed her wrist and pulled her hand away from her mouth. She started to give me her nervous little laugh but it became a gasp when without releasing my hold on her I opened a side door and yanked her out into the hallway next to the theater. Pushing her back against the wall, I grabbed her other wrist, then imprisoned them both in one of my hands and raised them over her head, pinning them against the wall behind her.

She was staring at me as if I had gone crazy, her eyes fearful. I put my face close to hers and said, smiling, “I told you—you are going to stop biting your nails. How many times have you bitten them since yesterday?”

Her mouth fell open and she began to stutter, “I…I d-don’t….d-don’t know!”

“Guess.”

Her eyes rolled wildly, her gaze meeting mine for an instant before skittering away, over and over. “I don’t know !” Her eyes were edged with tears. M-maybe…ssss-seven?”

I used my free hand to take her by the chin and steady her. “All right, that will do. Calm down. Now, what you’re going to do, Tammy, is look me in the eye and apologize for biting your nails—do you understand?”

I released her chin and waited for a moment. She stared blankly at me. I continued, “And since you think you bit them seven times since yesterday you will apologize seven times.”

Nothing but the sound of her quick, shallow breathing. I pulled her up by her wrists and shook her a little. “Now , Tammy.”

Her lips quivered. “I’m…I-I’m s-sorry,” she quavered.

Her eyes darted away from me again and once more I took her by the chin. “Good start,” I told her. “But what you are going to say is, “I’m sorry for biting my nails…”

She started to nod, as much as she could with her chin in my grasp, but then I added, “…Sir.”

She froze again for a moment. I cocked my head and gave her a look that said I was willing to keep her there all night if need be. Her eyes closed, briefly, as if she was gathering her energy, then she opened them, met my gaze and whispered, “I’m s-sorry for biting my nails…S-sir.”

I smiled at her encouragingly and released her chin. “Better. But I can’t hear you. Six more, Tammy, and if they’re not loud enough they won’t count, understand?

She took a shaky breath, then nodded. When she spoke her voice was still unsteady, but clear:

“I’m sorry for biting my nails, Sir.

I’m sorry for biting my nails, Sir.

I’m sorry for biting my nails, Sir.

I’m sorry for biting my nails, Sir.

I’m sorry for biting my nails, Sir.

I’m sorry for biting my nails, Sir.”

When she finished she seemed to relax slightly, though she kept her gaze fixed on mine. She thought she was finished, understandably. So her eyes went very wide when I told her, “Turn around. Face the wall.”

But she did it. I loosened my grip on her wrists long enough for her to complete her turn, then tightened it again.

I leaned forward and spoke softly into her ear. “Seven times, Tammy.”

Then I began to spank her.

The costume skirt she was wearing had several layers of material so I’m sure it was more shock than pain that made her cry out the first time I smacked her across the bottom with my open palm—a yelp that echoed in the empty hallway.

“Shhh,” I told her, before I swatted her again. This time she managed to control herself to the point where it was only a grunt that escaped her. I smacked her behind a total of seven times, and by the last one there was barely a whimper from her.

I leaned to her ear again and said firmly, “You will not bite your nails again.”

Then I left her, releasing my hold on her wrists so suddenly that even as I opened the door on my way back into the theater she was still standing with her arms outstretched above her head.

For the rest of that evening, whenever we were near to each other I could feel that she was staring at me. But if my glance should meet hers she pretended to look elsewhere and quickly moved away. We didn’t speak again that night.

When we met again for rehearsal the next evening Tammy seemed to have decided to pretend that nothing had happened, greeting me in much the same offhand way as anyone else. But she still wouldn’t meet my eye and seemed uncomfortable standing near me.

And she kept her hands clasped behind her back except when it was absolutely necessary to use them.

Still, I’m pretty sure she knew exactly what was going to happen. At least, she didn’t seem entirely surprised when, at more or less the same point in the rehearsal as the previous night, I grabbed her by the elbow and without a word propelled her out into the hall.

That evening’s rehearsal was not full-dress and Tammy had reverted to her glasses and shapeless clothing: baggy pants and an ugly, oversize sweater. Her eyes were wide behind her glasses as I grabbed her wrists and held her hands up to examine her nails, but her expression was defiant. She didn’t even wait for me to ask.

“Four times!”, she spat at me, and tried to pull her hands away. “But it’s none of your…”

Before she could say another word I had spun her around and had her pressed against the wall, wrists above her head, in the same position as before.

And this time, with my free hand I pulled her pants down before I spanked her.

She cried out, “No!”, as she felt them being jerked past her hips and allowed to fall around her knees, and she struggled to free her wrists from my grasp, hissing, “Stop it! Let me go, you bas—“

But she stopped with a gasp as my first swat, much harder than those I had given her the night before, landed on her behind, protected now only by the thin fabric of her white cotton panties.

She stiffened in pain for a moment, her breath hissing in through her teeth, then she let it out again as a sob. I leaned close to her ear as I had the night before. This time I said, “This is your second warning, Tammy. So you will be spanked twice as many times as you bit your nails—and twice as hard.

And that’s what I did, making her apologize after each of eight open-handed slaps to her behind. She moaned and cried and gritted her teeth with each blow, but she did as she was told.

When her punishment was complete and she was sagging against the wall, glasses askew and tears running down her face, I leaned close to her ear again. “You will stop biting your nails, Tammy. Or tomorrow it will be three times as many…and three times as hard…and—” I shoved my free hand down the back of her panties to emphasize my point, making her gasp out loud again. “—it will be on your bare ass.”

Again I released her and walked away without another word. But I’m pretty sure that she was just as aware as I was that, on the hand that had just been inside her panties, the fingertips were covered with sticky moisture.

There was no rehearsal the next night, so when I saw Tammy again it had been nearly forty-eight hours—a long time to struggle with an old bad habit.

And I knew, the moment I saw her—saw first her terrified gaze and then how quickly she turned away from me—that it had been a losing battle.

And when we reached the point in the rehearsal when previously I had taken her out into the hall, as she saw me approaching she cowered against the door, one hand out-stretched before her as if to fend me off, whispering, “Please don’t…Please don’t…”

I stopped very close to her and said, “Wait for me—right here—after rehearsal.” Then I turned away and waited for my next cue without saying anything further.

Tammy and I only had one small bit of business together during the play itself: we sat together at one of several small tables in a café setting, as did several other couples, while the two leads sang a love song to each other. At a certain moment, ‘inspired’ by the romantic singing, each of the men at the tables was to raise his hand and caress the face of the woman at his table while everyone joined in the chorus.

Tammy’s position in this scene had her seated facing mostly away from the auditorium. And on the two previous nights, when we had done this scene after I’d spanked her she had either looked away or closed her eyes when I’d touched her face. Tonight, however, she was staring directly into my eyes, her face white, so nervous that twice she caught herself raising her fingers to her mouth and then whipped her hand back into her lap. Not before I saw her, however, and I smiled at her each time, which only seemed to increase her nervousness: beneath the table her heel began jogging up and down at a furious pace.

But when the moment came for me to raise my hand to her face she went completely, utterly still…and waited.

I caressed the side of her face on cue. Her gaze, behind her glasses, was frozen on mine. Her position on stage, and the lighting--which was focused mainly on the leads--were such that no one could have seen as I extended my thumb and used the tip to trace her quivering lips before gently pushing it into her mouth.

She sat there, unable to move, breathing through her nose in short, gasping breaths as I sang the romantic chorus to her and probed her mouth with my thumb.

When the lights came up at the end of the song I removed my hand from her face as if nothing had happened. We rose from our seats together and walked off-stage arm-in-arm with the rest of the couples as we were supposed to. The moment we were backstage, however, she dropped my arm and literally ran for the women’s dressing room.

But somehow I knew she would be waiting for me afterwards.

I told the director that I wanted to stay and work through my lines onstage a few times and that I would lock up. As soon as the theater was empty I made sure that the doors were locked, then ran up to the light-booth. I turned off all the lights in the auditorium except for one spotlight, which I focused at the front of the stage.

Returning to the stage, I picked up a wooden chair and set it down, with its back to the auditorium, where the spotlight was focused. Then I turned and called, “Come out here.”

She had been waiting, as I’d known she would be, there in the darkness as I’d instructed her. She seemed ghostlike as she emerged into the dim light of the stage. Contributing to her ghostly image, to my surprise, was the fact that she had changed into her costume and done her hair and make-up and removed her glasses—even though that evening had not been a dress rehearsal and she had not worn her costume then.

I was standing outside the spotlight, and when she arrived opposite me I reached out, took her by the wrist and led her to stand in front of the chair, facing the empty auditorium. I dropped her wrist and stepped out of the light again, leaving her stranded in the spotlight.

“Say it,” I told her.

She flicked a momentary glance at me, but she understood. She raised her chin slightly, then spoke to the imaginary audience in a voice that was soft but clear, even though it quavered a little.

“I’m sorry for biting my nails, Sir.”

I returned to her then and taking her by the shoulder slowly turned her around to face the chair. Strangely, she seemed very calm and made no resistance as I gently bent her over the back of the chair, then went around and drew her hands forward to grasp the edge of the seat. Only the shallowness of her breath gave any indication of what she was feeling.

She had allowed her head to fall forward when I had placed her in position; I used my fingertips to tilt her face up so that her gaze met mine, then released her. I said nothing at first—just let her watch as I slowly unbuckled my thin, black leather belt, drew it out of its loops then doubled it over and held it in both hands, just at the level of her eyes.

She stared at it.

“I’m not going to ask if you’ve bitten your nails since last time,” I said to her, flexing the belt as I spoke, “because you’ve made it obvious that you have.”

She made no reply—only stared at the belt then raised her eyes to mine again.

I held her gaze for a moment, then turned and walked slowly behind her. There was nothing keeping her bent over the chair but the fact that I had placed her there. I had not told her to remain still or silent—and yet she did, and continued to do so even as I shifted the belt to one hand, bent down and slowly raised her costume skirt and petticoats up over her hips…

…And in doing so discovered that she was wearing nothing underneath, as her feet, slim legs and finally her bare behind came into view.

I used my foot to nudge her lags apart, eliciting a gasp from her as I did so. Then I began a slow caress up the back of first one leg, then the other, using the flat surface of the doubled belt to stroke her from ankle to behind. Her legs quivered and her breathing became more unsteady—but she remained silent.

“I’m not going to ask you how many times you bit your nails, either,” I said, now slowly stroking her inner thighs with the edge of the belt, “because I’m not going to punish you.”

Her breathing stopped for a moment and I saw her twist involuntarily as if to turn and look at me. Then she subsided.

“Oh, don’t worry, Tammy,” I said, still stroking her inner thighs but now even more slowly, “I am going to whip your ass with this belt…” I tapped first one cheek then the other. “But not as a punishment.”

I leaned down, my lips almost touching her ear, and said softly, “I’m going to whip your ass, Tammy…because that’s what you want .”

As I said the last word I tapped her, ever so lightly, between her legs with the belt.

Tammy suddenly cried out, “Oh!” …And then she came.

It wasn’t a huge orgasm but her legs shook and her knees bent several times and I heard her gasping for breath.

And even then she remained in her position.

When she had recovered herself somewhat I made her gasp again by reaching between her legs and gathering some of her moisture on my fingers. Then I walked around in front of her and pressed them to her lips. She recoiled for a moment from the slimy texture, then realized what I wanted and began to lick my fingers clean, looking up at me the entire time as if seeking approval.

I nodded, unsmiling.

When she was done she looked up at me again. I held up the belt so she could see it, then questioned her with my eyes. After a moment, with the barest movement of her head, she nodded…and then lowered her head.

Once more I walked around behind her. I allowed myself a moment to run the palm of one hand over her bare behind, taking possession. Then with scarcely a pause I raised my hand and brought the belt down on her.

The sound it made on her behind was like a whip being cracked, and the sting of it jolted her nearly upright. She cried out, “OH!”. And stood there gasping and wringing her hands in the air as if trying to shake off the pain. Then after a moment she lowered her hands.

“I’m s-sorry for biting my nails, Sir,” she whispered…then bent over the chair again, pulled up her skirts and grasped the seat.

It had been my intention to give her a full ten strokes, and by the sixth her behind was criss-crossed with red welts the width of my belt. Her legs were trembling and she was sobbing so hard that she was barely able to speak her apology. But she said it, sniffled and gasped a few times, then lowered herself into position again.

There was moisture literally dripping from between her legs by this point so perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised at what happened next:

When my seventh blow landed on her behind it was as if I’d administered an electrical shock. She jerked bolt upright, whirled to face me and before I knew what was happening she had wrapped an arm around my neck and was kissing me—moaning out loud, her tongue thrusting wildly into my mouth while with her free hand she rubbed and fumbled with the front of my pants.

In a moment she had pushed my pants and underwear down around my knees and had her hand wrapped around my cock, frantically squeezing and pumping it. Then she broke away.

She seized the chair and jerked it around. She grabbed me by my shoulders, dragged me over to the chair and pushed me down into it. Then without a word she lifted her skirts again, straddled me and dropped down onto my cock so hard that her head snapped back for a moment.

Then she began to ride me.

“I’m sorry for biting my nails, Sir,” she moaned as she raised and lowered herself, gradually picking up speed as she did so. “I’m…Oh! Oh god! …Sorry for biting my nails, Sir! Sorry for…sorry…sorry for…Ohhhhh, god! Oh god! Ahhhhh….”

She collapsed onto my shoulder as she came again, her face buried in my neck and her entire body shaking as if with epilepsy.

After a while she sat up and looked at me almost shyly. She must have felt me, still inside her and still hard, because she got a mischievous, if slightly woozy, grin on her face and said softly, “Actually…I’m not sorry at all.”

She raised a hand to her mouth and, still grinning at me, deliberately gnawed at the tip of her forefinger.

Then she dropped her hand to my shoulder, placed her mouth on mine…

…And we began again.