“You’re both nuts,” Ellen dismissed them with an imperious snort.
“It’s just a life-style,” Carrie shrugged, “Why are you so… down on it?”
Daniel looked up from his desk and peered at them both over the rim of his reading specs. He was marginally surprised that Carrie had the confidence to answer the older woman back and virtually dumbstruck to hear her use a phrase like ‘life-style;’ she was usually so closed-mouth and reticent.
“Life-style… it’s… I don’t… somewhere between comic and…” she didn’t finish, she couldn’t think of a non-offensive expression for her discomfort.
“Comic?” Carrie frowned, “You wouldn’t think it funny if you had to…”
The 24-year-old blushed and dipped her head. Her long chestnut hair formed a curtain over face and Daniel could see her brief sortie into evangelism was over.
“Tell me Ellen, what are you cool with?” Daniel chipped in to save his protégé.
The older woman pulled a face and shrugged.
“Lots of things, gay, straight, bi…” she offered defensively.
Daniel groaned inwardly. This was a serious erotic magazine for God’s sake, that sort of ‘cool’ was a minimum requirement. He looked across to the 36-year-old short-haired blonde and ran his eye down her immaculate and somewhat masculine trouser suit. It was her armour, he knew, what did make her tick? He was fairly certain she was hetro, but that was about as much as he knew after four years working with her.
“I mean what are you cool with that is not straight out of the manual? What turns you on?” Daniel challenged her.
Something tightened around the woman’s eyes and she looked down at her next article as if suddenly remembering its importance. She sucked in her cheeks and fixed her eyes on the screen desperate not to be seen in the same light as the relatively shy Carrie. Not that she had anything to write. The interview looked like it had fallen through and now all she had to look forward to this issue was grub work. All this fed her frustration.
“I just don’t get why girls… women,” she corrected, “Let men… well punish them… degrade them… you know what I mean,” Ellen sighed impatiently.
“It’s not degrading and anyway it is not just with men,” Carrie piped up, “It has nothing to do with feminism.”
“I didn’t say anything about feminism, I was…”
“You were thinking it,” Carrie accused.
“I just don’t get it, that’s all,” Ellen muttered. “How do you even get into it anyway?”
Carrie blushed and shot a glance at Daniel. He smiled back encouragingly and shrugged as if giving her permission to bail on the conversation. The show of support emboldened the younger woman and she sat up a little straighter.
“I went to live with an aunt when I was 18, the last in a long, long line of uncaring relatives,” Carrie said in a sad voice, “She wasn’t even really an aunt, just a distant cousin of my Mum’s. She… wasn’t exactly a bundle of laughs but she… gave me a sense of… I don’t know… purpose, belonging even.”
Ellen looked at Carrie with an impassive look of polite boredom on her face.
“She sent me to a school to belatedly finish my education. At 18 I didn’t really fit in and at first I hated it. I was such a brat,” Carrie was speaking for herself now and lost in her story. “I got the cane; a hard sharp experience that opened my eyes a bit. It was a wake-up call if you like. But something else, it was… something I needed and it scared me. Instead of accepting it and moving on or embracing it I…”
Carrie looked at Daniel who returned a tight smile. He had heard the story before. Encouraged, she continued.
“I told my aunt, no I raged at her, at the injustice of it. She was calm, but she was angry. She took me by the hand and led me into her sewing room. She said, ‘you have to get over yourself and I am going to help you.’ She told me she was going to spank me…’Spank my bare bottom sore,’ were her exact words and she did. I was dumbfounded.”
Ellen shifted in her seat. There was something in her colleague’s story that held her somehow.
“I cried for a while, but I was also fascinated by the experience. Without prompting I went back to my aunt and apologised. Then I… I blabbed all my feelings of cleanliness and… well submission and well… it was a kind of cosy feeling and I felt… I don’t know, at home somehow. She didn’t quite understand, but she spanked me again, saying she ‘obviously hadn’t spanked me hard enough.’ The second spanking took ages and ages. It left me… purged. After that I just wanted to please her and make her proud. But that didn’t stop me provoking another couple of canings. I just needed it, I can’t explain.”
Ellen listened thoughtfully now, somewhere there was an echo of her own thoughts and needs about sex. Not that she was half as clear as Carrie as to what they were.
“After school I experimented and started writing… it led me here and to…” she looked at Daniel who gave her another tight but encouraging smile.
“Look, it’s obvious you don’t get it,” he said to Ellen, realising they had a deadline, “You are useless at the touchy feely stuff anyway. Just cobble me up and article on… internet porn or something. We’ll shelve the interview.”
Ellen hated failure, but if not for Daniel’s words might have come to the same conclusion.
“There is still time, I can get it… I only need…” she countered.
“We have two days; less. How are you…? Look just…” Daniel groaned.
“I can still get it, I have a contact. Surely the sex life of the biggest star in…”
“Get it for next issue, great, but I want to rein everything in now and focus on the deadline,” Daniel said impatiently.
“Listen, you want me to understand the kinky stuff, broaden my outlook,” Ellen cut-in, “If I can’t get this interview for this issue I’ll… I’ll do a scene or whatever you call it. You can punish me like this one. It can’t hurt that much, not if girl here can take it.”
Carrie shot Ellen an irritated glance.
“I really don’t want to mix business with pleasure,” Daniel said, hating office bravado and grandstanding. Nothing would come of this and they both knew it.
“I’m serious, I’ll even write a poxy back-up article just in case if you like.” She was confident there would be no need.
“Okay, fine,” he sighed, I don’t have time to argue.”
Daniel went back to his desk muttering. He really hated grandstanders.
*
Ellen hit the speed dial for the 17th or 18th time in less than two days.
“Oh hello, it’s Ellen Morton again… yes sorry,” she said to the phone, “I know, I know but… I see, however… if I could just… well to be fair I was told yesterday that she would speak to me today and we are rather close to the deadline.”
Ellen listened while the very polite woman with the supressed tetchiness in her voice explained nothing at all.
“You still here?” Daniel said from somewhere nearby, “I thought you were out getting that interview.”
Ellen returned a fix smile and placed her hand over the speaker end of the phone.
“I was just pinning down the final…”
“Pinning down? We go to press in…” he consulted his watch, “167 minutes. You haven’t got an interview yet have you?”
“It is just…”
“Go with the alternate,” Daniel said in his best editor voice.
“But…” Ellen wailed.
“Do it,” Daniel growled as he walked away without a backward glance. “The interview is now on hold over.”
Ellen was just wondering how she could change his mind when she realised that the other party had cleared.
“Bugger,” she cursed.
As it turned out she only just got the substitute article written up in time.
*
Ellen wandered nervously over to Daniel’s desk. Her head was fizzing and each step felt disjointed as she struggled to find a place to put her foot down on a once familiar floor.
“So…” she said in a thick voice, licking her lips.
Daniel didn’t look up from the magazine as he turned over one of the last pages of his new edition.
“Looking good this month, great article by the way. I hear she finally called you back… next month then,” Daniel said enthusiastically.
“Yes great,” Ellen left her mouth open as she spoke as if she was drowning and each breath was precious. “Eh… about what we said…”
“Look, can this wait to the bar? I just want to read this through and I have to wait for the publishers call,” Daniel said finally looking up for a moment over the rims of his glasses.
“The bar? Can’t we get the other thing out of the way first?” Ellen was sucking in her cheeks as she always did when she was on unfamiliar territory. It made her look more sophisticated, if a little more remote.
“Other thing?” Daniel had turned back to the copy.
“You know, we had a kind of… I don’t know… bet?”
“Bet?” Daniel frowned, “What are you talking about?”
Ellen sighed. He was playing cat and mouse with her.
“You don’t mean that stupid offer you made,” he groaned, “I knew that was bullshit. People don’t actually eat hats you know. You can buy me a drink.”
In 13 years as a journalist, albeit in the dregs of some obscure publications, Ellen had never missed a deadline. It was a kind of promise and a matter of honour with her. Making bold offers, even ones she never expected to have to go through with, and not delivering on them was counter to every fibre of who she was.
“Daniel, don’t tease,” she said wearily.
Daniel looked at her again and saw the consternation and dilemma in her face.
“Listen, my lifestyle is a real thing to me, not something to be traded,” he said kindly, “I can’t take vanilla and make it chocolate. It is not how it works. It would be like… exploitation or something. Let’s just say you dodged a bullet this time and chalk it up to experience. We both know you never meant it anyway.”
This dismissal of her core work ethic hurt and she nearly exploded at him. But there was something else; something that she couldn’t quite pin down, like feeling that a major story had suddenly been taken from her. She remembered the time she had been slated to meet a big-name gangster. She had been terrified and had actually thrown up beforehand. It was not her style at all. Then at the last minute the editor had decided he didn’t want a woman to do it. She had been angry, no grief-filled at the loss.
“We had a deal,” Ellen pressed him and angrily spat, “I mean if you… I am not like some of the bimbettes in this office…”
Daniel heaved a sigh and then like a man in defeat he said, “Fine. Drop your pants and trousers and go and face the corner. I’ll be with you in a minute.”
“My what…? Here?” Ellen hadn’t known what to expect, but this?
Daniel was becoming impatient. He was almost done for the week and just needed to do a read-through before his boss called.
“Look, there is no one here. Not even cleaners. That’s how it works. Either do it or don’t do it, but I am busy here,” he snapped.
Ellen felt the blood flood her face and the fizzing in her head from before she approached him returned with a vengeance. The office in which she had worked for the last four years suddenly seemed like a lion’s den in a foreign country.
Just then the phone rang and Daniel answered it.
“John, yes great issue, I am just reading it now. Any problems…? Great.”
Ellen was left feeling that there should be more discussion about her fate, but she was obviously unimportant in this. Well, she could show him, she wasn’t a kid. Reaching down to the clasp she worked it open and then slid her trousers down her thighs. As she did so she offered her behind to Daniel seductively. Maybe this would be fun, she thought. Then realising he was engrossed in his phone call she grit her teeth and pushed her knickers down to join her trousers at her ankles. Then humiliatingly like an errant schoolgirl and hobbled by her clothing, she shuffled embarrassingly across the large alcove to the wall across from Daniel’s desk.
Daniel, who had been watching Ellen’s quite splendid figure heave into view, suddenly got a rise. He could not quite believe this was happening. Then remembering he put a hand over the receiver and said sharply.
“I said the corner. And put your hands on your head,” he growled. “No John, I was just… yes I agree…”
Ellen had thought it couldn’t get worse but then at his order the flood of blood to her ears was so great she felt lightheaded. The corner was somehow worse that just facing the wall. The wall had posters on it.
“Nobody puts baby in the corner.” The phrase from her favourite movie played through her mind and taunted her.
Also putting her hands on her head lifted her jacket and blouse up higher so that she was even more exposed. It was an awkward position and despite the office being a regulated 22 degrees, she felt a chill on her naked flesh.
Daniel seemed to ignore her and continued with his call for several minutes until the time seem to run into hours. There was a lot of laughing and Ellen could not help fight the impression that John Denham the publisher on the phone knew about her plight and was enjoying the joke at her expense.
“Okay John, Saturday. I am looking forward to it and thanks. I’ll pass that along to the guys,” Daniel closed.
The silence that followed was almost eerie. A magazine office was not a quiet place and Ellen felt as if she were in a spotlight at Wembley Stadium.
“Now young lady,” Daniel said.
There was a scuff sound that indicated the editor had stood up.
“I have a good mind just to put you across my knee and take you down a peg or two,” he said sharply, “But in deference to your… seniority, I’ll give you a lesson for grown-ups. Then at least you will have more respect for Carrie.”
Ellen looked back over her shoulder wishing she had kept her big mouth shut earlier. A spanking would have been embarrassing, but like a slapstick movie she could have laughed it off… maybe. What did he have in mind?
“Nose to the wall,” Daniel barked.
Ellen obeyed, embarrassed by her quick submission. But in the moment she had turned around she had seen him retrieving a long thin stick from behind a filing cabinet.
Daniel felt a more than usual hum of excitement. Spanking scenes with young wannabes and even Carrie sometimes became too routine. Here was a real professional woman about to be caned for the first time and what is more, however reluctantly, was willingly submissive. Too submissive perhaps, he mused, maybe the lady has protest too much.
Her bottom was a good one, if a little on the small side. But for a woman who hit the gym far too much, she had not yet got that gaunt look and despite her being too skinny, her bottom was prominent enough and jutted out well in profile.
“Were you ever caned in school? I know it was still the vogue back then?” Daniel swished the cane lightly and was pleased to see that she didn’t react.
“No,” she said. Her voice sounded sullen.
“You say ‘no Sir’ in this situation,” Daniel scolded her.
“No Sir,” Ellen said in the same tone.
“Do you want a good spanking before we even begin your punishment?”
Ellen was startled. Why was he angry?
“Please… I don’t…”
Then he realised that her apparent sullenness was a tight voice brought on by nerves.
“Attitude is an important part of this,” Daniel said more gently.
Ellen swallowed. She felt like a rookie reporter who had just libelled the town mayor.
“Please Sir, I don’t understand,” she managed to say.
“It’s alright, you are doing okay,” he told her.
Ellen felt a warm-fuzzy cliché and weirdly she was relieved that she had pleased him.
“So you have never been caned?”
“No Sir.” Her voice wobbled and she thought of the gangster she had never met.
“Six is a girl’s punishment, although eight was standard at my school, even for girls,” he told her. “How does double that sound for a first adult punishment?”
The tone carried no sense of negotiation, although in truth it was to some extent. He was experienced at this and she was after all a beginner.
“Double eight Sir?” Ellen gulped. “Will it hurt?”
“It is going to hurt a lot, yes, but I meant 12 not 16 actually. I can soon make it 16,” Daniel intoned with smooth menace.
“That’s up to you Sir, isn’t it? I mean that is how this works?” Ellen actually sounded a little humble.
“Carrie is up to 24 for a standard caning,” Daniel chuckled, “But 12 is quite enough for your first set and I don’t think you’ll want a second.”
Ellen tightened at the jaw and her bottom tensed; a sure sign that she was torn between the implied slight and the relief.
“Alright then, bend over that chair with your bottom up and your elbows in the seat,” Daniel ordered.
Ellen hesitated. She knew that if she turned she would show him her naked front, but it seemed to altogether too meek to hide it with her hands so defiantly she didn’t.
Daniel smiled in appreciation.
It was another awkward shuffle for Ellen as she obeyed; each movement an embarrassing display that stripped away her hard-won shell. As she bent over her bottom jutted perfectly like a pale tightly split apple. The pose had the effect of exposing the delightful lightly-furred closed purse of her sex and she knew it even as he saw.
“You might want to close your legs,” he suggested as her ears melted.
“Yes Sir,” she squeaked.
The act of obeying caused her thighs to close and there was another revelation. The sexual dimension is real then, she thought. Although in truth she had known this from the first.
The cane-tap across both her cheeks was a caress and she shifted a little. Maybe this won’t be so…
The line of fire reached behind her eyes and she made the beginners mistake of thinking it was over as she yelped. She might have held fire as the pain kept on building as it sawed into her.
In her mind she leapt to her feet and refused further assault, but somehow in reality she held her post.
Daniel was impressed. Even as a plum-purple line developed across her hindquarters, apart from a squeak and a quick violent knee-dip, she had taken the stroke well. So after waiting a prerequisite 30 seconds or so he struck her again.
“Hm,” she gasped and again dipped her knees.
“Okay?” he asked.
She nodded fast, but her eyes were closed and her mouth was clamped shut.
“Attitude, remember,” he chided her.
“Yes Sir, I’m alright,” she said breathily, opening her eyes and blinking.
The next strokes followed and she grunted and groaned through them until at six or saw she was breathing harder than she ever did at the gym. Six lines stood out in bas relief and she could not keep her bottom still. Too much blinking had brought on tears and some make-up had run a little to give her panda eyes.
“How are you doing now?” he asked, placing a hand gently on her shoulder.
“Fine… Sir,” she nodded as she spoke, but the tears were running.
Daniel adjusted his trousers and smiled. The last six would be put right where she sat. Carrie would know tomorrow that Ellen had gone through with it by the way she used a chair; or didn’t. It was a small office; there would be gossip he realised.
The seventh stroke partially crossed a previous one and Ellen’s mouth went wide and she made a strained noise in her throat. The eight had much the same effect.
As the last four sliced in, Ellen’s grunts and groans came together as sobs and although she didn’t break, she did grip the top of the chair and struggle to present her bottom.
“Good girl,” he said triumphantly, “And a good sport.”
She was smiling and nodded as she rode out waves of pain from all 12 strokes fresh on her bottom.
“Okay, you can stand up,” he said.
She winced as she slowly gained her feet and then with no regard now for her nudity she pointed to the corner and asked, “Sir, do I?”
“I’d like that but…” he grinned.
“We are only half done aren’t we? Or did you intend to give me multiples of eight Sir?” she panted.
“No, another 12 will suffice… this time,” he agreed, not letting his amazement show.
Ellen shuffled painfully to the corner and with another wince, placed her hands back on her head.
Maybe she was grandstanding again, he mused, or maybe she was discovering something about herself. Either way he had a lesson to teach her.
The end
