Rachel had never slept well in somebody else’s bed.

She’d managed to get a couple of hours’ rest in the car, but it had done more harm than good – not only was she unable to get back to sleep, but dozing off while seated had left her with an ache in her neck and shoulders that wouldn’t go away.

It wasn’t fair. She hadn’t seen Mika in over a year, ever since the younger woman had graduated and moved home to start an internship. This was supposed to be a weekend where she could relax, meet her friend’s family, enjoy some home-cooked food…

Instead, Mika had snuck them over like a teenager throwing a party when her parents were away, a development that Rachel might have enjoyed were it not for the six-hour drive through blinding snow. She still wasn’t ready to forgive Mika for that little bombshell, but she’d at least gotten a vicarious thrill out of watching Bertie take the lying little miss over his knee and spank her.

She wasn’t reminded of it very often, but with the right inspiration her submissive boyfriend made for a pretty sexy dom. And watching Mika get what she’d absolutely deserved had made Rachel unseasonably hot. She was even starting to warm up to the proposal that Mika had made afterward.

Now all she needed was for this pain to go away.

She held her breath and slipped under the water again, immersing itself in its warmth before coming back up for air. It might be rude to spend all day in Mika’s parents’ bed, but surely no one would hold it against Rachel for taking a nice long soak in the tub before coming down?

Her mother had warned her that she could expect this from middle age. Muscle soreness and cramps had been longtime companions, but especially since she’d turned forty she’d noticed them visiting more often and staying longer. In addition to her neck and shoulders, her left breast (But not, for some reason, the right) had been unusually tender since she’d crawled out from under the covers.

The bath was helping, though. She resolved to spend more time in her own bath at home. The only other thing she could possibly want was—

Was that coffee she smelled?

“Good morning, sleepyhead!”

Rachel fought back the urge to cover herself. After all, Mika had seen her naked before, so there was no need to be modest.

“Good morning to you, too,” she replied, faking nonchalance. “I hope you brought some of that bean juice for me as well?”

Mika moved into her field of vision, nearly hidden underneath her fluffy pink bathrobe. Her wavy dark hair was tied into a knot on top of her head, and she held one – just one, Rachel noted with some aggravation – mug of steaming java.

The young woman perched on the edge of the bathtub, pouting between sips.

“Are you still mad about last night?” she finally asked.

Rachel stretched her arms over her head, drops of water sprinkling back down. “A little. At this point, I mostly just hurt. Where’s Bertie?”

“He said he’d help the neighbours shovel after the storm last night. He’s probably halfway down the block by now.”

That would explain why the house was so silent, thought Rachel. “You’re bored, aren’t you?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe. See, this is why I wanted the two of you to come over. I was hoping we’d get some time to play again before lunch…”

“Again? Mika, you’re not going to be able to sit comfortably all weekend!”

Mika giggled. “I hope not!”

Rachel remembered a time that she’d had that kind of energy and enthusiasm, but it seemed very long ago now.

Distracted, she vaguely heard Mika telling her to scoot forward, and then a whisper of cloth falling to the floor – and suddenly there was a warm body pressed behind her as the water rose from her collarbone to her chin.

“What the—“ Rachel started, spitting out bathwater, “Mika! Personal space!”

“Stiff shoulders, right? My mom’s a nurse, she taught me some techniques. You just need to relax, okay?”

Rachel was certain she’d be able to relax a lot better in a space where she didn’t have Mika’s scrawny knees splayed out on either side of her, but the fingers prodding her spine were narrowing down on her sore spots. They spread out over her upper back, and—

“Oh…”

Rachel didn’t have any words as Mika’s touch worked its magic.  She glanced behind her to see the young woman engrossed in her task. Her concentration betrayed a lack of confidence in her movements, but her heart was in it, and Mika was right about one thing – it did feel pretty good.

“What do you say now, Mommy? Better now?”

The tension in her neck was beginning to fade as well. Closing her eyes, Rachel melted into Mika behind her, as her friend’s hands crept over her shoulders, slowly massaging their way down the curve of Rachel’s neck and tracing the line of her collarbone, where Mika paused.

Rachel heard Mika chuckle. Those same hands began to explore her breasts, lightly pinching at her nipples.

"You couldn’t resist, could you?” she asked, opening one eye.

“Not my style. I guess I’m just naughty like that.”

Rachel sighed and pulled her head away from Mika’s chest. Even with her added body heat, the water was beginning to cool.

“Why are you so eager to get another spanking?”

“Honestly? I don’t know how much time I’ve got left.”

The response was uncharacteristically frank, even for Mika. Rachel turned herself around, expecting to catch a smirk, something to suggest that the girl was joking. Mika only shrugged.

“What do you mean?” Rachel pressed. “You’re what, twenty-four? It’s not like you’re sick or something, are you?”

“No! I mean, it’s a long story, alright?”

Rachel didn’t need to be anywhere else, and she gave Mika a look that said exactly that.

Mika rolled her eyes, but relented. “Look, right now I’m just an intern at my parents’ firm, but it’s a career path. I’ve got it all planned – five years from now, I’ll be married and on track for junior partner. You’re both invited to the wedding, of course.”

“Thanks. Who’s the lucky guy?”

There was no answer, and Rachel wasn’t surprised. Once upon a time, she too had a dream board for her imaginary future husband. Back when she was fourteen.

“Mika, I’m sure there’s a man out there who’s both husband material and is willing to put you over his knee from time to time. Take it from me.”

“Sure, that’d be nice, but this good man of yours, is he educated? Does he make as much as I do?  Will he get along with my family? Is he Catholic? I want our kids to receive Communion, you know?” She threw up her hands, accidentally splashing Rachel. “This is a fun way to spend the weekend, but I’m talking about the rest of my life here.”

“Sorry, did you say ‘kids’?”

“Well, yeah, eventually. Didn’t you ever talk with Bertie about starting a family?”

Rachel hadn’t. At Mika’s age, she’d been bouncing from one bad relationship to the next, just trying to keep a roof over her head. She hadn’t been thinking about the future. At forty years old, it struck her that she still wasn’t thinking about it. Sure, she and Bertie were comfortable, but had their relationship really grown in the ten years they’d been together? They’d traded back and forth on which one spanked the other, but they still lived in the same apartment they’d moved into back in 2015.

They weren’t even married.

Mika must have sensed her unease, and wrapped her arms around Rachel in an embrace.

“Don’t worry, Mommy. No matter what else, we still have the next two days.” She squeezed Rachel’s breast playfully.

Unfortunately, it was the left one.

“Ow! Fuck!” Rachel yelled, exploding from the water. “Mika, I told you I was in pain! Don’t you listen?”

“I’m sorry—“

“This is what you do, you poke and prod until you annoy the other person into giving you what you want! Just because you’re—“

It took all of four seconds before her white-hot rage was blown out by an errant gust of cold air. Without that rage powering her, Rachel was left a middle-aged, five-foot-nothing naked woman shivering in knee-deep bathwater.

Mika’s eyes were wide… but she looked anything but frightened.

Rachel sighed, rubbing her sore boob. “If you’re going to laugh, just do it.”

“I won’t get in trouble?”

“Not any more than you’re in already.”

And so Mika laughed, quiet at first, but as she looked back at Rachel’s scowl, the joke somehow got funnier. The laughter broke down into sniggering, and Rachel stepped out of the bathtub, reaching for one of the towels hanging on a rack from the nearby wall.

“Alright, Missy,” Rachel grumbled, securing the towel around her bust, “Come on out of there and dry off. You’re about to get that spanking you want so much.”

“You mean right now?”

“I don’t think you can wait, can you?”

Mika bit her lip.

“No, Mommy,” she said, and rose from the tub.

Rachel repressed a pang of jealousy at her friend’s toned, unblemished body with her small, dark nipples. Even if Mika had no figure to speak of, she was still a beautiful young woman who took for granted the privileges of that youth and beauty.

She folded her hands behind her and presented herself, dripping on the tile, in front of Rachel, every bit the obedient little girl. Rachel handed her a towel.

“Should we wait for Daddy?” asked Mika softly.

Bertie was a block away, probably writing his name in the snow, Rachel thought. And then she remembered, Mika liked to have an audience. Well, Rachel had an idea about that, too – and the vanity was right there.

Leaning into Mika’s ear, she whispered, “Bend over.”

Naked as the younger woman was, Rachel could see the little hairs on her neck and back rise. Mika did as instructed, placing her hands on either side of the sink faucets.

Rachel brushed a hand down her brat’s flat little bottom. She’d thought first of taking Mika over her knee, but the only raised surface that would have worked was the lip of the bathtub, and that would have likely been too narrow for Rachel’s more ample proportions.

Besides, this posture had the added benefit of bringing the taller girl down to Rachel’s level. She patted Mika’s butt a couple of times… and then she let loose.

It didn’t appear that the girl’s punishment from the night before had left any impression. She immediately started to squeal from the impact of Rachel’s hand, her toes clawing at the slippery floor in an impromptu jig.

Rachel grinned. “I don’t think this is what ‘dance like nobody’s watching’ is supposed to mean.”

“Nobody is watching,” Mika sulked back.

“I don’t know about that… look up.”

Mika’s confusion was clear, but she raised her head from the sink. In front of her, she stared into her own face in the bathroom mirror.

Realization dawned. She actually giggled.

The spanking continued, with Mika seemingly fascinated by her own reactions. She couldn’t look away even as she found herself wincing as the sting set in.

Rachel was having a similar problem. The same tingle that Mika was feeling in her backside was creeping into her own hand, and it didn’t help that both of them were still wet. Rachel needed a way to switch up her game, and she’d already seen one.

Taking a break from peppering Mika’s little bottom, she reached down to a hook beside the vanity.

“What do we have here?”

She’d used a hairbrush on Bertie before. But the thing hanging there was to a hairbrush as a pine tree was to a petunia – the handle alone was the length of her arm. It ended in a flat round head, one side with rough bristles.

“Have you ever tried this one before, Mika?” She held it up so that Mika could see it in the mirror.

The younger woman gulped. “I haven’t been that bad, have I?”

Rachel was still trying to figure out how to hold her new implement. She’d choked up to about the middle the handle, but found she couldn’t move her wrist freely. Gripping it by the end felt better in her hand, but she’d needed to take a step back.

“Well, you did give Mommy a titty twister…”

“It was an accident! Please, Mommy, I’m sorry!”

She couldn’t see Mika’s reflection anymore, but the little butt wiggle was hard for Rachel to miss. Her brat was braver than she’d given her credit for.

“You’re going to be sorry,” she said, and swung. The brush head struck with an ear-splitting crack, leaving a stark-white oval blotch where it landed on Mika’s rump.

“Jeezus!” Mika shouted.

“Too much?”

“Just… not what I expected.”

“Do you want me to stop?”

Mika shook her head. “No, Mommy, I’ll be a good girl.”

Rachel took aim at Mika’s other cheek, resolving to hold back in her second strike. There was another crack, and Mika’s hips slammed against the vanity.

“Fuuuuck!” she whimpered, “Ow, ow, ow…”

“Do you think you’ve learned your lesson, little girl?” Rachel tried.

Mika took a deep breath, and then turned and stuck her tongue. The movement put the first cheek back directly into Rachel’s line of fire, and she took the shot.

“Ow! Shit, that burns!”

Rachel left Mika to stamp her feet as she tucked the brush under her arm and adjusted her towel. Confident that she wasn’t going to disrobe herself with her next movement, Rachel rearmed herself.

“Are you sure you want to continue, Mika?”

Mika nodded, but Rachel could have sworn she’d heard a sniffle. Mika’s cute little butt was already marked from the brush, and Rachel decided that it would better that this punishment ended quickly.

She quickened her pace, letting her wrist and elbow do the work. As the brush bit into her ass again and again, Mika’s playful defiance crumbled.

“Rachel!”

Rachel froze. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard Mika refer to her by name.

With a groan, Mika lowered herself onto the vanity, rubbing at her freshly tenderized bottom. The white spots left by the brush were beginning to fade to a dull purple.

Rachel considered the damage. “Do you have any cold cream?”

Mika tilted her head toward the mirror, her hands occupied behind her. Behind it was a medicine cabinet, and Rachel found the jar she was looking for quite easily.

The menthol overwhelmed her senses, but Rachel dipped her fingers into the chilly goo and knelt down behind the poor girl. As she spread the ointment onto Mika’s bruised skin, she saw the girl’s thighs quiver in relief.

“Better?”

“Yes, Mommy.”

Mika had Rachel’s sympathy. Even if it had been her choice, she’d taken a much harder spanking than she’d needed to, just to make Rachel feel better. This bit of aftercare felt like the least Rachel could do under the circumstances.

Rachel snorted, trying to clear her nose of the smell of mint, and picked up another familiar, more intimate scent instead. The furrow splitting Mika’s cheeks was shallow, her inner treasures close. Rachel licked her lips and took the plunge.

Mika gasped, but made no move to stop Rachel as her tongue drew circles around the younger woman’s tight hole, then sank down deeper into the cleft between her legs and back again. She would have probed further had Mika not pressed her legs shut.

Confused, Rachel sat back.

“Don’t you like—“ she started, but was cut off as Mika whirled around and kissed her deeply on the lips. The silence lasted until Rachel had to take a breath.

“I probably taste like ass,” she joked.

“I don’t care.”

Mika once more pressed her lips on Rachel’s, her tongue reaching needily past Rachel’s teeth. She groped at the fold of Rachel’s towel, trying to tear it from her with one hand without a hint of patience or elegance while the other crept in from under the hem, guided by the outline of Rachel’s milky thighs.

A door banged open downstairs. Both women held their breath.

“Ladies, I’m home! Do I smell coffee?”

Mika grinned. “Do you think we should invite him upstairs?”

It was a tempting thought… but the distraction had taken its toll, and in any case, Rachel’s shoulder was starting to flare up again.

“Tomorrow, I think. Right now, I think I need some of that cold cream as well. And Mika?”

“Yes, Mommy?”

Rachel sighed. “Be careful where you put those hands, okay?”