Rachel had found herself in the dark, praying for illumination as to what could possibly be wrong with him. Bertie had been withdrawn for the last week, quieter even than usual, and while her boyfriend was a classic introvert at the best of times, he also didn’t tend to hide his feelings from her. Rachel took pride in that aspect of her relationship, there were few secrets that Bertie had tried to keep that she hadn’t deduced, cajoled or teased out of him. And yet, without her even noticing when, he’d picked up another one. And it was chewing away at both of them.

She had at least an idea of when it started. He’d told her about three weeks ago that one of his friends from the restaurant, Sophie, had left her job. She knew that he and Sophie had worked together longer than she and Bertie had been dating. She had also suspected that there was more than friendship between the two, but she’d let that idea die years ago for her own well-being. There had been an attraction, she couldn’t ignore that, but Bertie had the choice almost three years ago between Sophie and herself, and he’d chosen Rachel in a heartbeat. So while he missed his best friend, someone he’d shared a lot of history with, she was pretty certain that was the breadth of it.

Or was it? Because as much as she hated to make the link, it wasn’t just the conversation between Bertie and herself that had been suffering, at this rate she was changing her hair colour more often than she was having sex.

Scheduling alone was a problem. Both she and Bertie’s activity was scheduled around their jobs, hers in the middle of the night spinning club music, and his running the early shift at a trendy restaurant. She’d get back to their apartment in the wee hours needing release only to find him asleep, just as she was gone by the time he returned home in the early evening. Usually, they made up the time on days when neither one had any obligations, but it seemed that Bertie had lost interest recently, and that had Rachel worried. Her lover could be arrogant, stuffy, and dull, but among his redeeming qualities was a great deal of passion in the bedroom (And a certain enthusiasm for going down on her that she wasn’t prepared to say in public).

Whatever it was that had taken his mind off of her, it had frustrated the hell out of her. She’d spent more than one night in the last week lying on the couch with her vibrator, Bertie asleep in the next room, listening through headphones to an intimate video she’d accidentally recorded between the two of them.

And without that passion there, that was another thing she couldn’t tell him – she wanted him to spank her again. The video she’d played again and again had been intended for her podcast, but had been left recording while Bertie had put her over his knee, taken down her panties and… she blushed even thinking about it.

She’d thought of deleting the recording, but for some reason she couldn’t stop watching as he reddened her bare behind and told her to stand in the corner like a bad little girl. In the time they’d been together, he’d only punished her like that a handful of times. It wasn’t that she enjoyed the sensation of being spanked – okay, maybe a little, but for the most part it felt like a swarm of hornets making a nest on her plump buttocks – but each time after he’d raised her from his lap, they’d followed it up with the kind of mind-blowing sex she’d only ever associated with tearful arguments. It was make-up sex, and somehow heightened by the constant burn in her tail.

That was what she wanted right now, and that was what was being denied to her. She wanted that argument, she wanted that catharsis, and she wanted that resolution – even if it meant she couldn’t sit down afterward.

But when the time came that they both had the same day off, she couldn’t bear the thought of spending the time at opposite ends of their apartments, each staring into the screens of their respective laptops. So while it went against the core of her impulsive personality, she made other plans.

“What’s a Milford County Fall Festival?” Bertie asked.

She explained, “It’s an event they do back home every autumn. There’s a lot of farm stuff – a tractor pull, livestock competitions, arts and crafts…”

“It’s over two hours away.”

“All my friends from high school have been asking me to come back for years. Pretty much all of them are married and have kids now, so I didn’t want to be the only single person there. But now I have you.”

“So… I’m part of the livestock competition, now?”

Smart-assed as his answer was, it meant that he was at least considering the idea. “Exactly! You’ll win that blue ribbon for sure.”

He laughed and shut down his computer. And just like that, they were off to the fair.

*** 

The crowd at the fairgrounds was thick by the time Bertie and Rachel arrived. She sat in the car, mouth agape as they saw the lines streaming in – had the town grown so much in the fifteen years since she’d left?

Bertie nudged her from the driver’s seat as they parked. “If we get separated, we should meet up back here.”

Rachel gave her increasingly puffy blue hair a final once-over and returned her hairbrush to her purse. “Can’t I just text you?”

“We’re a long way from the city,” he replied, and held up his phone, “I’ve barely got a signal out here.”

“We’ll figure it out, okay?” She stepped out of the car and shut the door behind her. The cool country air felt good in her lungs – she’d been breathing smoky city fumes for too long. Even with the looming gray clouds above them, it was a beautiful day to be out and about. With Bertie close behind her, she joined the human tide washing into the grounds.

Caught up in the thrill of being back home, Rachel began excitedly pointing out the familiar faces in the crowd – a pastor here, a former schoolteacher there, some old neighbours and her grade school rival. Herb Widmark, a retired farmer, actually came up to her and gave her a big bear hug after he’d confirmed that she was the same little girl who’d used to go for rides on his four-by-four.

She’d been expecting a lot of ribbing about her looks – brightly coloured hair and tattoos were commonplace in her line of work, but in the country they were reserved for rebellious teenagers. Herb instead left that conversation alone and shook hands with Bertie, asking the two of them to tell him about life in the city. Inactivity hadn’t agreed with Herb, who had clearly taken up gossip as a hobby in the ensuing years and talked for nearly half an hour about people she didn’t remember. Finally Bertie came to her rescue.

“It looks like everybody’s going inside,” he observed.

Herb spat on the ground. “You two picked a bad time to come all this way. They say a storm’s coming, and all the outside exhibitors are being told to come back tomorrow. You’ll miss the demolition derby.”

Bertie gave Rachel an exaggerated pout, and she punched him in the shoulder. She gave Herb a polite goodbye and pointed Bertie toward her old high school across the field, where the arts and crafts displays were taking place.

“Come on,” she urged, “I’ll show you my old locker.”

They were cutting across the baseball diamond toward the school when they both heard a child crying. Their eyes met each other, and together they dashed toward the source of the sound, around the corner of the building ahead. As they came around the side, they could hear a slapping sound accompanying the cries, and Bertie stopped, holding up his hand.

“Don’t cry like that to me, mister… you’re going to apologize to your sister and behave, or we’ll finish this at home!”

Rachel peeked around the corner to find a young mother furiously applying her hand to the seat of her eight-year-old son’s pants. For all the fuss the boy was making, Rachel could see that he was more embarrassed than hurt by the summary discipline. The blood rushed to her head, and she stood transfixed as the boy wiggled and kicked in a manner she was all too familiar with. She quietly stepped back, only to stumbled into Bertie, whose face was frozen in the same expression that gripped her own.

The woman jolted to her feet, suddenly aware of her watchers. She sized up the pair and immediately placed them as out-of-towners.

“Sorry, folks, my son here got a little too big for his britches and upset his sister. We’re a little old-fashioned out here in the sticks.” She grinned sheepishly. Suddenly, her expression changed. “Rachel?"

It turned out that the young woman was Connie Delaney, one of the friends Rachel had mentioned. In the years that had passed, Connie had taken a job as a letter carrier, gotten married and settled down as a homemaker and mother of three. 

She insisted on leading Rachel through the marketplace set up in the high school gymnasium, stopping at each booth to reintroduce Rachel to the vendors, who would all reminisce about how pretty and well-behaved they remembered Rachel to be – all to the glowering of Connie’s son Christian, who still rubbed at bottom when nobody was looking. After an hour of his constant pouting, Connie was ready to send him over to his father, who was tending to his prize cows over at the agricultural tent.

“I can bring him over if Christian’s all right with it,” Bertie volunteered. Rachel gave him a look – she’d never known Bertie to be comfortable with kids.

“Can you? He’ll be at the Delaney Farms paddock. He’s about forty, tall, light beard…”

Bertie finished, “…answers to ‘Daddy’?” Christian giggled at the joke and nodded. Bertie took him by the hand, then reached over to whisper in Rachel’s ear.

“Half an hour by the car, then?”

She nodded, and he passed her the car keys, adding, “In case you get out first.” Then he kissed her and stepped away with Christian, swallowed up in the flow of people.

“Your husband is very… well-spoken,” Connie murmured, “Comes from money, does he?”

Rachel bit her lip, unsure what to make of the implication. “His parents got rich in the eighties from real estate, but got divorced and lost most of it by the time he was ten. So for now he manages a restaurant.”

“Oh. I just figured, with you still doing your music that you must have found somebody with deeper pockets, that’s all. And he looks a bit younger than you…”

“What are you saying?”

“Nothing, nothing.” Connie raised her hands defensively. “You were always one to skirt expectations, that’s all.” Perhaps deciding that she’d overstepped, Connie turned her attention to the commissary at the end of the hall. “You remember Kennedy Cole, right? She’s got two daughters in the Miss Milford pageant, and they are so cute. You have to see this…”

***

“Attention all visitors. This is not a drill…”

The announcement made Rachel jump as it bellowed over the loudspeaker. Connie looked up from the jar of homebrewed cider she’d been showing off and pointed toward the closest window. Rachel’s eyes widened – in the time since she’d last glanced outside, the sky had turned black. With Connie silent, she could hear the pounding of rain against the glass. She looked down reflexively at her phone and cursed. She’d promised to meet Bertie fifteen minutes ago.

She told Connie that she had to meet him, but the other woman grabbed her arm and held her fast. “Aren’t you listening? They’re locking down the school. You’ll be closed out.”

“Then we’ll just go home.”

“Through that?”

Rachel considered the view outside again. Bertie was a nervous driver, he would definitely be reluctant to tackle the roads under these conditions. After a moment’s thought, she handed Connie her purse.

“I’m just going to dash out there, grab Bertie and come back, okay?” She raised the hood on her jacket. “Try to keep the front door open for me.” Connie nodded, and Rachel stepped out into the rain.

The downpour struck her all over in her first few steps, raindrops hitting her face with such force that she closed her eyes and huddled into her jacket. Her clothes soaked through in seconds – she’d dressed for the autumn chill, not waterproofing. She ran across the campus, back toward the parking spaces at the edge of the fairgrounds, her feet slipping across the wet grass. Finally she could see the cars of the few visitors that had stayed, and peered inside them, searching for Bertie.

“Rachel!”

She turned and saw his approach, water dripping down his clothes. He was drenched from head to toe and walked with his arms folded against himself for warmth. She grabbed him in a soggy embrace.

“Why aren’t you in the car?” she shouted over the rain.

“You have my keys, remember?”

She winced. She’d put them in her purse – not only did Bertie not have them, now neither did she. The boom of thunder drowned out her apology, and instead she pointed toward the school and shelter. He nodded, understanding, and the two set off across the field, the sky beating down around them.

Bertie reached the double doors first and grabbed the closer handle. He pulled – and the door held. He tried the other door to the same effect.

“She said that they’d keep it open!” Rachel howled. She beat at the door with her fists, shouting. No one came. She pushed the hair out of her face, then saw the azure liquid dripping from between her fingers. The rain was washing out her (candidly, cheap) hair dye.

She screamed loudly to the heavens, forcing Bertie to cover his ears.

“That’s not helping!”

“I don’t care!” She was cold and wet and had just been abandoned. But right now she was most angry at Bertie – if he hadn’t been so dead-set on meeting her at the car, she could have stayed inside and he could have joined her.

Bertie grabbed her by the shoulder. She tore away from his grasp, but noticed that he was pointing to something – a prominent stone cube at the edge of the school property, near the baseball diamond. A small building of some kind? Bertie turned up his collar and ran toward the structure. After a final look to see that nobody inside the school could see her, Rachel took off after him.

For once, luck was with them – the building, a utility shed for the school, had been used for the fair and hastily abandoned during the storm. The door had been left unlocked, and Bertie and Rachel found their way shivering into the tiny room. Lighting up their cells, they found themselves surrounded by sports gear and outdoor equipment.

“At least it’s dry,” said Bertie through chattering teeth.

Rachel didn’t share his optimism. She parked herself in a corner, trembling all over, and glared through the darkness at Bertie. The light from his phone blinked off, and after a moment she wondered if he was even still standing at the point she’d fixed for him. A loud clank sounded from a nearby corner of the room.

“Bertie?”

            A blinding light suddenly filled the room. Blinking the spots from her eyes, Rachel stepped out of the stream to find Bertie standing behind a portable halogen light, stripping off his soaked jacket.

“There you are. Do you mind bringing over that hockey net?”

She didn’t know what he had in mind, but she rolled her eyes and complied.

“The lamp’s hot, it’ll dry out the clothes,” Bertie explained, “You should do the same.” He continued to undress until he stood in only his underwear, the rest of his clothes slung over the net, casting shadows on the nearby wall. Finally, he pulled up a short bench and sat down in the heat. He patted the seat beside him, waiting for Rachel.

Instead, she held on to her ground – and her sour expression.

“Come on, honey,” he said, not meeting her eye.

“I’m fine.”

He shrugged and sat in his corner. She seethed, but three layers of soggy clothing were dampening her anger. After a further minute of scowling, she pulled off her outer clothes and draped the wet articles beside Bertie’s on the hockey net. She looked at her work and was satisfied.

“Are you trying to tell me something, Rachel?” he asked with an edge to his voice. “Because as I see it, we’ve got nothing but time until the storm lets up.”

She exploded, “No, what would I have to say? You haven’t been talking to me for weeks! I planned this trip for us to have some time together, and you ditch me the first chance you get!”

“I was giving you some time with Connie. I thought it was what you wanted.”

“It was what she wanted. We were friends in high school - now she’s a fucking soccer mom, and she looks down on me. Once you were gone, she started asking if you were my underage sugar daddy. I wanted to be with you, not her.”

Bertie nodded, “So you left me out in the rain as some kind of punishment?”

“Not intentionally.”

“Ah,” he said. He gestured again, patting his lap instead of the bench beside him. “Come here, honey.”

Her hands reflexively shot forward. “No…”

“Rachel, if there was a problem you should have found a way to tell me instead of behaving like a spoiled brat. I haven’t been out here long, but I’ve already seen how they deal with brats.” He grabbed the closest of her protruding hands and hauled her over his knee. Rachel gasped, not only from the force of landing in his lap, but from the realization that she’d pushed him into doing exactly what she’d been hoping for. Why couldn’t she have provoked him when they were at home and dry?

Her thoughts disappeared as she saw his hand shoot down in her peripheral vision. The crack of his flesh against hers struck like lightning through the tiny space, and she yowled. She was still soaked, her panties clinging to her flesh, and the spanking hurt more than she was used to.

“Bertie, please! It hurts!”

He ignored her, slapping away.  She threw a hand back to protect herself, but she needn’t have bothered. Her hands were tiny, and her bottom was not. After a few seconds of useless flailing, Bertie seized her wrist in one strong hand, and the waistband of her panties in the other. Rachel could only wail as her last, dripping vestige of cover slipped down to her ankles. Then the spanking continued.

Hearing her own cries echo through the stone shed, Rachel clenched her teeth. She wasn’t about to give Bertie the satisfaction of hearing her yell again. But as the sting continued to build in her back end, she began hissing through her molars. His hand came down again and again, and she was desperate for him to stop…

And then he did, rubbing his hand. Clearly it wasn’t just her who was feeling the burn. She reached back to do the same, hoping to deliver some comfort to her glowing behind – but Bertie stopped her.

“We’re not done yet.”

She heard a rummaging sound from behind her – a metal bucket with spare sports equipment, including what looked like the parts to a folding ping-pong table. She leaned in to see what had captured Bertie’s attention, but he held her fast. As her naked bottom glistened in the halogen light, she followed the glow to the wall, where she could see the shadow of a paddle taking shape in Bertie’s hand.

The crash was spectacular, and Rachel was taken aback at how she could feel her entire backside wobbling with the impact. She moaned loudly – there was no way she could keep quiet for this! The paddle blasted her buns again and again, and Rachel strained to keep herself composed. Then, as suddenly as it started, the paddling was over. Bertie threw the offending instrument down and raised Rachel’s chin to his lips.

“Was that too much?” Bertie asked after a moment.

“You could have said something.,” she answered, pressing a cold hand against the pink stain across her bottom. “Half the fun is in the anticipation.”

“This is fun, is it? What’s the other half?”

She thought he’d never ask. Kissing him furiously, she lowered her hand down to his boxers, tracing the outline of his penis against the fabric. She could feel him engorging beneath her. Seating herself on his lap, she ground against him, her thighs rolling against his most sensitive area.

He took her there, on the concrete floor of the utility shed, on a bed of gym mats. And despite her best efforts, he ended up making her scream after all.

***

It wasn’t until the afterglow wore off on the trip home that Rachel realized that she had never gotten an answer from Bertie as to why he’d been so withdrawn recently. Fidgeting in the car seat, she figured that the time to ask had passed, and they drove home a smiling, happy couple.

Still, the mystery continued to pick at her. The next day, after Bertie had driven into work, Rachel reached a decision. Once she knew he was gone, she opened up his laptop and looked into his browser history. It was a violation of his privacy, she knew, and if she found nothing here she knew she’d earned herself another punishment – but she was sure that Bertie was hiding something, and he’d been glued to his computer ever since she’d become aware. There had to be something there.

His recent websites left little in the way of clues. Most were familiar – some blogs, a few business pages, and a lot of webcomics – even her own webcast, which brought a smile to her face (He’d never admitted to watching it). After half an hour, she was about ready to admit that she’d snooped for nothing and take her medicine when she got the idea to review his recent searches.

“Driving directions to Milford Fairgrounds… how to pronounce wine names… watch Dilbert series online…”

She was going to get another sore bottom for this, she was sure. But the moment that thought crossed her mind, she saw the words on the screen in front of her, “spanking”, a keyword which he’d started numerous searches in the last month.

After an initial moment of shock, she had to admit it made sense – they missed out on a lot of opportunities for sex, so it made sense that he’d be getting some release from online porn. And it wasn’t as if she didn’t know he had a fetish, as she still found sitting down to be an awkward proposition. But something had changed about his porn preferences lately: He’d added an “fm” prefix to his last few searches. Checking the blinds to see that none of her neighbours could be watching, she clicked on the link.

TO BE CONTINUED…