Rachel had been getting little hints for almost a week now. The first sign had been at the club a week ago – one of the women attending her friends’ second bachelorette party had spent twenty minutes trying to recall the name of a song she’d wanted to request, a memory made all the more hazy by the previous hour spent downing shots from cock-shaped glasses. 

The forty-something partier had paused for a moment, her mind on the cusp of some realization that had her so absorbed that she’d left her body behind, open-mouthed over the soundboard, sounding “um…” like a mantra. Rachel had waited patiently for the thought to complete, waited further still for the woman to abandon her search. In her mind’s eye, Rachel could see herself reaching out with delicate fingers, taking hold of the drunken woman’s chin and closing that open vodka pit. She even distinctly imagined the click the woman’s teeth would make, a satisfying final note.

But she resisted. Her guest had made some hand gestures that further obscured any meaning of what she wanted, and Rachel had shrugged. The woman had left in a huff, no doubt blaming Rachel for how she’d made a fool of herself. Rachel had dealt with it before, the woman would stew in resentment until she had enough drinks in her to decide that she really wanted to sing some karaoke – probably Rush or something equally challenging that she would butcher onstage – after which she’d congratulate herself on the talent she hadn’t known she’d possessed, and Rachel would be praised as the one who helped her realize her moment. Or maybe she’d just pass out. Either way, her bad mood would pass in short order.

That left Rachel with a dissipating cloud of bad breath and a warm, tingling feeling in her seat that had little to do with her hard plastic chair. She hadn’t acted on her thought, but the image of gently but directly shutting up the stupid bitch continued to dwell in her mind, and she had to bite her own lip to keep from giggling until the woman was once again safely lost in the crowd around her friends’ table. As inconspicuously as possible, she reached back a hand to scratch her bottom, but she found that the effort did nothing to help with the itch. And she knew what that meant.

She was going to get a spanking.

***

It had now been five and a half years since she’d gone up to her nervous but handsome young coworker and asked him to take her out. She and Bertie had quickly fallen in love together, and now they shared an apartment, a Netflix subscription, and – even if they hadn’t made it formal – a future.

There was something else that they shared, although it had taken some time to realize. Since she’d turned eighteen, Rachel hadn’t let herself be intimidated by sex, and had eagerly explored her limits with a handful of past lovers. She knew – though he’d never said – that Bertie had been terrified at the beginning, thinking that he could never measure up to the milestones set before him, that she would be disappointed by his virginity and lose interest. He’d nearly made it a self-fulfilling prophecy by holding back, claiming that he’d have sex “once he was ready”. She’d pushed him – and not in the most mature of ways, she could admit now, but she was sick and tired of his inhibitions – and once he let himself out, he proved to be a lot more interesting.

And that’s how she found out about his long-buried fetish for spanking. She’d accommodated him at first before she decided she liked the dynamic, she playing the temperamental brat, he the punishing hand of authority.  And when Bertie confessed that he wanted a turn over her knee, she’d gleefully reversed their positions. She enjoyed the opportunity to play, and the sore bottoms would lead to tender reconciliations and then to sweaty lovemaking. But now, months had passed since their last bit of playtime.

It had been Bertie’s turn on the receiving end, and this time Rachel had noticed a change in him while he was being “punished” – how seriously he took the whole thing, how his voice changed and disorientation left him swimming across her lap. She’d once dated a man who had practiced BDSM as a lifestyle, and he’d tried to instill in Rachel what she herself had seen in Bertie. The ex-lover had called it sub-space, where the submissive partner lost himself fully in his loss of power. Rachel had thought at the time that it sounded like brainwashing. Even after Bertie had recovered from it moments afterward, she still wasn’t comfortable with the idea. She had made various excuses not to spank him since, even when she told herself that he really deserved it.

And it wasn’t just Bertie’s mindset that had gnawed at her since. She’d gotten an unwelcome reminder as she’d been styling her hair for her show earlier in the night, as under the flamingo-pink due and blue highlights, under the honey stain of bleach, under the dark shadow of her roots, she’d found a couple of grey hairs. Their presence wasn’t news, she’d found their siblings along her scalp before. It was what they implied: You’re not a young woman anymore.

She would be turning thirty-two at the end of this year. The number itself didn’t scare her anymore, she’d faced most of these hurdles when she came down on the other side of thirty. But she looked at the other women she saw around her, other women in their thirties, and she grew more and more self-conscious.

Those other women were mothers, or career professionals. She had friends who were raising families, or saving for retirement, or having regular doctor’s visits to examine various aches and pains. Even the drunk woman at the club, who she’d first characterized as somebody’s mother, was probably less than ten years older than she was. And as for herself? Rachel had decided that university wasn’t for her and had gone straight into music as a career. She entertained a couple of local clubs on the weekends, she produced her own music on the side. She wasn’t a mogul, she wasn’t a millionaire, and she probably wouldn’t even be able to afford the rent on her apartment on her income alone. What had she done with her life?

And what did it say about her that she still sometimes spent her evenings shrieking and panting while her younger boyfriend spanked her like a child? Did other adults see her that way, when they looked down on her short frame, her multicoloured hair, her shredded clothes and youthful appearance? And why did she have such a hard time applying that word, “adult”, to herself? Was she still a child, who’d somehow ignored until thirty-two that there was a time to grow up and had only acknowledged the message now?

She spent a long night with her eyes fixed upward, pleading to the ceiling for insight while Bertie politely snored in the covers beside her. He’d risen and gone to his own job by eight, and she even left by herself she couldn’t drift off to sleep. Restlessness finally forced her first out of bed, then out of the apartment. Turning down the bus, she opted to walk through the downtown core. A need that she couldn’t put to words drove her forward, and she knew that she would know what she was looking for when it came to her. It was a boutique where she received her message, a silent proclamation from a formless white mannequin.

***

She’d tried to see the full effect in the bathroom vanity at first, once she’d gotten the makeup right and was ready for the criticism that the harsh fluorescent light would give. But there wasn’t enough space, and Rachel finally gave up trying to crouch and twist her body into the reflective frame. She fell back to their bedroom instead. She switched on the overhead light, the bedside lamp, and when those proved inadequate, flung open the curtains and let the noon sun illuminate every corner of the room – and with the light streaming in, she opened the closet door and faced what looked back at her from the full-length mirror.

So. This is me.

Her eyes were sunken. She hadn’t slept for over a day, that couldn’t be avoided now. They added a good five years to her perceived age, which still wouldn’t be enough for her to buy alcohol without her health card. She combed her short hair into something that could pass as businesslike if one ignored the gaudy pigment. She’d pored through her makeup kit, passing over her exotic array of lipsticks in favour of a muted burgundy that was just enough to call attention.

An hour at the shop had found her the coating she’d been looking for. A plain white blouse – now the only such top she owned that didn’t cover her chest with a band logo or a cartoon character. A navy blue blazer, the first she’d ever purchased, and still felt as if it were too confined in the shoulders. A pencil skirt, in a style that had once been hopelessly out of fashion but had recently come back into prominence from a designer in love with detective films of the nineteen-forties. The grey fabric clung to her figure beneath the waist, accenting the prominent curve of her hips.

If she weren’t so tired, the reflected Rachel would look stunning.

And she would still be an imposter.

Rachel stood across from her double as the minutes passed. A hitch caught in her breath, and that was the only warning before she could taste the hot brine that slid down from her eye. She found a seat at the foot of the bed.

She didn’t know how long she sat there. At one point, she just looked up and saw Bertie standing there, his necktie loosened and hanging uselessly from his neck like a stray hair.

“Are you alright, sweetie?”

She found it in herself to nod, even if she didn’t feel sincere in it. He sat down beside her and held her in his arms. It was a warm gesture, a warm feeling, made empty. He couldn’t understand. She inhaled, a sharp honk that shocked with its volume and badly timed comedy.

Looking up at her lover through eyes muddied by streaming mascara, she asked, “How do I look?”

He smiled weakly. “Like someone about to sell me real estate?” he tried.

It wasn’t funny, but she giggled a little bit anyway.

“Seriously, Bertie. Do I at least look like a grown-up?”

“You look uncomfortable.”

“That’s not the point…”

“Yes, it really is.” He took off the tie and set it over a nearby bedknob. “You’re not just wearing clothes. You’re wearing an authority, a confidence. And I’m not feeling that right now, I’m hearing ‘Get this thing off of me’.”

She laughed, genuinely this time.

“Why do you ask?” he asked, reaching for a tissue from the box beside their bed. She eagerly accepted and blew her nose.

“I don’t know,” confessed Rachel, “I just don’t feel like I’ve really made it, you know? Like I’m still back in high school or something.” She found herself making the same vague hand motions as the drunk woman the night before. “You know what I mean?”

Bertie was quiet for a moment. Finally, and to her surprise, he nodded.

“Yeah. Why are you so shocked? I’m in the restaurant business, I meet somebody every day who thinks I’m some idiot trying to wear big-boy pants. Rachel, I didn’t know you then so I can’t say for sure – but do you really think you’re the same person you were in high school? Mentally, I mean.”

She had a brief flash of black nail polish and processed lunchmeat. She miserably shook her head.

“Me neither. And I mean, it wasn’t as long ago for me…”

“Shut up.”

“…But I think back to what I was like then and I wish I had… not really knowledge or experience, what good is that to a high school kid? Perspective, then. Just to be able to tell the big problems from the little ones. That would have really changed how I came out. I mean, I was a pompous little know-it-all back then.”

“What do you mean, back then?” she teased.

“You shut up.”

She was beginning to feel better. The room was beginning to feel warmer, and she stripped off the inhibiting blazer.

“What about the spanking?”

Bertie fell silent as a firey blush came over his face. A lifetime of hiding his interest, more than a year of exploring it, and he was still intimidated by the word itself. She loved this man.

“Okay. Would teenaged-you have been turned on by…” he licked his lips, “…being spanked?”

Rachel tried to imagine. “Maybe? I don’t…”

“Would you have even considered it?”

That gave her pause. Fifteen years, she reflected, it had been that long since those years had ended for her. Nearly half her life. What had been her fantasies then, kissing a rock star? Peeling a wet shirt off the skinny torso of her then-boyfriend? Maybe at their most lurid, having him rub her nipples while his nervous hands made putty of her breasts.

Almost reflexively, her own fingers had reached for the buttons of her blouse. Bertie guided her up and replaced her trembling and distracted digits with his own.

“No,” she whispered.

“I was, but I wouldn’t have been able to handle it for real back then. That’s perspective. You grow up learning to understand what people want from you, but you also learn about yourself. What you want.”

A wisp of fabric slithered down her legs, and it dawned on Rachel that Bertie had continued to undress her, slipping off the skirt along with the blouse. Both lay pooled on the floor beneath her. The heat that she had felt earlier had gone, and she was suddenly very aware of her standing in front of the open window in only a bra and a pair of lacy panties. Bertie’s hand brushed against her ribs and traced its way down the curve of her torso, chilling her as his touch flowed down her hip. And she felt it again, that tingling sensation in her backside that had started this all off the night before. This is what her own body had seen coming, this is what she’d been expecting.

Turning around, she bent over the footboard, lifting up her ass to the sky. He didn’t move at first. Did he wonder what he was supposed to do now? Or was he just enjoying the view?

She felt a spark, a pop of static electricity as he came back to her, grasping the elastic of her panties with both hands. He pulled, slowly and gently, and she was bare. He took the now-useless garments and dropped them on the floor. He never said a word throughout. Rachel’s breath grew short, her spit thick in her mouth.

Fabric slid and clicked behind her – Bertie rolling up his sleeves and removing his cufflinks, she imagined. The thought thrilled her, she had never given herself to him like this before.  She waited for what she knew was coming.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Bertie crouch down on the floor behind her. What was he--?

Something wet gently caressed her sex, probing its way towards her throbbing clit. No, not caressing – licking. She gasped, and his feathering tongue quickened its pace. The attention was glorious. Warmth filled her body – but it wasn’t what she needed right now. She wiggled her hips, just enough to dislodge him. He adjusted his position, drifted in again, and was again rebuffed.

“Isn’t this…”

“Spank me,” she murmured, and stopped, cleared her throat. “Please.”

He could never refuse her.

And he didn’t wait. The words had no sooner taken leave of her than his palm splashed down against her proffered bottom, once – then again, and again. He had no reason to punish her, after all. But she wanted this. And he was no doubt mesmerized as he turned her cherubic bottom pink. With each ringing crack of his hand, her thighs bucked rhythmically against the bed frame.

And she could feel the dampness that was starting to leak down those same thighs with each thump. Bertie must have noticed too, as he leaned over beside her ear and whispered, “Oh dear, you’ve been a very bad girl.”

She hissed. This wasn’t about scenes or fantasies this time. She just wanted to feel the spanking. To experience it.  He jerked back, and she worried for an instant that she’d taken him out of it. But then he smiled.

And took out his belt.

From the corner of her eye, she saw him fold the leather over in his hand and pull back his arm. She held her breath-

-and had it suddenly pulled out from her. The sound as the belt bit into her soft cheeks was deafening, but it was nothing compared to the agony that burst from the point of impact. She bit down the pain, bouncing on the balls of her feet.

Jesus, that hurt. But it’s just the first…

The second one didn’t sting any less, but she managed to keep herself quiet for that as well. Bertie unzipped his pants, without the belt in place they were starting to sag. The lump at the forefront of his briefs told her that he was enjoying himself immensely. And why wouldn’t he, seeing her jiggle her bum with every spank? He’d just be getting started.

“Stop…” she managed. And to his credit, he did exactly that. He dropped the belt and came to her side, slowed only by a need to kick off the pants that were clumped around his ankles.

He held up her chin with his palm. The same palm that was still red and tingly from hurting her a moment ago.

“Too much?”

She nodded. She’d had to say something, but now that he’d stopped she could feel her own libido draining. Before he’d picked up the belt, she’d been feeling at the edges of release, and she wasn’t about to let go.

Cocking her head, she gestured for him to move in.

“You don’t have to stop all of it…”

He didn’t understand, so she showed him – seized his hand in her own and brought his fingers to her wet slit. He reached inside her, his fingers wandering, and she moaned. The broad lines of fire he’d lit on her backside faded into the background.

A thought occurred to her. She might not like this either – but lust was coursing through her and made her brave. Even if she backed out in another moment, she’d look back on this day and say that she tried.

Reluctantly, she guided his hand away. Still lying down across the mattress, she pointed to the small table beside her bed, to the top drawer.

He gave her a look, but followed her gesture. He couldn’t say no to her. He only had to rummage inside for a moment – the drawer contained very little. Just a few pairs of panties that weren’t appropriate for most occasions… a small, slim vibrator she used on her own time… and a tiny bottle of lube.

She nodded, and closed her eyes. For commitment, she told herself. She needed to feel what was happening, not see it. The sight was just… set dressing, part of the play like Bertie’s fantasy scenes. Besides, what could she be seeing, anyhow? He was behind her…

A coil of fabric looped over her tightly shuttered eyes, smelling like cooking oil and musk. Bertie’s necktie, then, it had to be. He pulled the loop closed, and her sight was taken from her. And then… nothing happened. Wasn’t he noticing how her skin flushed, how her breath grew short, for fuck’s sake she was turned on. He should know her better than this.

And she knew him. This was uncharted water for both of them, and Bertie was uncomfortable. He’d already hurt her, even if that hadn’t been his aim. And Rachel was scared. She was bent over and vulnerable and now she was blind as well. It was thrilling. But maybe Bertie couldn’t understand that, maybe that was why he needed the pretense. But again, she knew him. She knew how to make him understand.

She wished she could see the look on his face when she arched her back, giving herself up to him. It probably would have been relief that washed over him then, but another, naughtier part of her hoped it was bafflement. Bertie was so cute when she got him all flustered—

The cold was the first sensation that hit her as he eased his slippery, probing digit against her sphincter, and she clenched involuntarily. Then the lube did its work, warming against her skin and she relented. Slowly, carefully, his finger pushed its way inside. It felt… weird. Invasive, sure, but Rachel had steeled herself for that part.

She heard Bertie talking to her, someplace far away, “Are you good there, sweetie?” She felt a tiny bulge – his knuckle popped as it entered her. Her voice caught, she couldn’t speak as his wet digit made its rounds before slipping out with careful slowness. Again, she nodded. And then she gasped.

Lost in her own head, she’d missed the telltale sounds of his buttons being loosened, or his pants sliding off. He already stood naked behind her - naked and ready.  She had no time to prepare before she felt that pressure again, and this time far stronger than before. Reflex forced a grunt from her, but it wasn’t going to stop her now. Taking a deep breath, she unclenched. Behind her, she could feel Bertie’s own breath caressing her back, hissing out in short spurts. His presence inside her was massive, alien – and not for the first time, Rachel was tempted to call off the experiment, take a shower and come back for some real sex. He’d still be up for that, right?

His hands found her hips and he thrust himself into her. His own legs were shaking. He was nervous, but refused to be hesitant. Not when she’d asked for this. He withdrew a bit, then pushed forward again. The bed shook.

Rachel let out a gasp that turned into a groan as the initial discomfort subsided. After a moment, her body accepted the invader, plied by lube, and he pressed into her more smoothly, again. His thighs met her backside with a slap and a stinging reminder of her recent spanking. But it’s not so bad, she decided.

Nor did it last long. Less than a minute afterward, Bertie moaned softly and spasmed. Rachel felt the pulse as he came, and held on to that feeling as it reverberated within her. Spent, he lowered himself down to the carpet and sat on the mess of clothes they’d left behind.

“So,” he began.

“That was… different,” she admitted, “I mean, not bad, but…”

Bertie snickered. “Butt…”

She grabbed a pillow from in front of her and smacked him upside the head, which only made him laugh harder.

“And I thought I was the childish one.” She straightened out her back and strode off to the nearby bathroom to wipe herself off.

Bertie spent the moment in silence. When she returned, he said softly, “’When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.’”

She recognized the quote, but not its source. “Mark Twain?” she hazarded.

“C.S. Lewis.”

“Huh.”

She sat down on the floor beside him, laying her head down on Bertie’s fuzzy shoulder. “You hear so much about it that you get caught up in what it’s supposed to be. So when it finally happens, its like, meh. Ow. What-“ she interrupted herself to fidget, then gave up and returned to her feet. It would take a few hours before sitting was going to be any kind of comfortable.

“By ‘it’, are we talking about anal? Or growing up?”

The comparison was so apt that she had to laugh. “Both, I guess.”

He rose to his feet and they embraced, standing naked together beside the window. Bertie trembled in her arms, the hair rising on his back like a cat’s.

“Honey?”

“It’s nothing. Or rather, it’s not nothing, but maybe it should have been brought up earlier and the time to do anything about it has passed.”

Rachel rolled her eyes. She hated his little riddles, and he knew it.

So he cut to the chase. “Did you know that window was open?”