Chapter 29

Grace

I yelped from the start, and I kept struggling. They both made it feel easier, somehow. One of Cal's huge hands held my wrists tight and held me firmly down over his knee, so that my wriggling resistance felt completely fruitless. His other hand came down on my ass-cheeks and my upper thighs in a rapid rhythm, so that my little but increasingly sharp cries of pain obviously had just as little effect. My suitor could make it absolutely clear, simply with the strength of his manly body, that—as he had told me patiently, over and over—I had no choice in the matter of how he would discipline me and train me.

My entire backside burned. At the same time, I could tell that Cal was administering this part of my humiliating lesson as a longer, less forceful kind of spanking. With my bare bottom raised and my shaved pussy exposed, I realized, he probably wanted to keep me over his knee for a good long time.

He wants to make sure I remember it, and that means he intends to make it last. I felt my cheeks burn anew at the idea; my dominant suitor would keep my bare bottom there, upturned and perfectly positioned for the well-deserved correction of his hand, as long as he chose.

My cries got progressively louder, though; the spanks were sharp and they stung like crazy. Cal delivered them quickly enough, too, that the agony of the next slap began before the pain of the last one had faded away. They rang off the living room walls, echoing like gunshots and cutting even through the sobbing wails I began to let out with each new swat.

"Shh, darlin'," he growled, though he kept spanking me, as if the easiest way to get me to quiet down wasn't simply to stop punishing me. "You're getting used to it. Take it now. Learn your lesson."

My brain, despite all the discomfort, somehow connected Cal's words with another reason he might say Take it now. I even felt a little additional blush as I realized for the first time that the rhythm of a spanking had a certain resemblance to the cadence of his hand between my thighs—or of his hardness inside me, when the time came.

When the time comes? I felt my eyes go wide at the sheer confusion inside me, of painful and aroused sensations, of fear and need, of helpless, crazy-seeming affection for Cal because he had taken the trouble to correct my faults in this intimate way. Something in me tried to remind the rest of me about some sort of promise I had made myself—something about demanding to go home, after my naked paddling. That idea wouldn't come into focus; it seemed even crazier than falling in love with the gorgeous man who understood me enough to give me the kind of training I needed so badly.

That thought brought a new kind of motivation, within my body, something that felt like a purely physiological response. My cries subsided to low, moaning sobs. I stopped struggling. I even tried to arch my back and push out my bottom, hoping to show Cal that I accepted that I had behaved badly and needed a spanking for it.

He stopped. He let go of my wrists and started to rub my back. The moan that came from my chest seemed to have my entire soul in it. Then his other hand, the strong right hand that had spanked me so sternly, began to rub my bottom softly in a circle. My whole body shuddered, and my hips bucked so violently I thought for a tiny moment I might actually move the leg that restrained my own lower body so securely.

Not a chance of it. Cal shifted a little bit, so that I wondered, with a flash of heat in my cheeks, whether my movement had made me rub against his penis through his jeans. The hand on my back stopped rubbing for a moment, and exerted downward pressure, as if to make certain I knew I wouldn't be going anywhere until Cal decided the time had come to let me rise.

"Shh," he murmured. "That's it. Good girl."

I greeted the gentle words and their condescending tone with a sob. I felt my bottom squirm as if of its own accord, trying to press all of me, down there, into my dominant suitor's hand.

"I'm going to ask you to do something difficult now, Grace," he said, continuing to fondle my backside so softly that I could hardly think with the rapidly growing need between my thighs.

"What?" I asked, choking the words out.

Cal didn't answer. His left hand pressed a little harder. The middle fingers of his right hand worked their way downward and inward.

I understood, and the heat in my face grew.

"What, sir?" I asked, feeling my forehead crease as I complied with his unspoken command, not at all sure how to think about just how well I seemed to understand his training methods, and to comply with them.

It got a good deal more difficult at that point, too, because even as Cal told me what he wanted from me I knew: I anticipated his words before they had emerged in his deep, rumbling voice.

"You're going to ask for your paddling, now," he told me, his tone matter-of-fact and simply authoritative, despite his having said a few moments before that he would ask me to do something difficult, rather than telling me I would do it.

My face crumpled. "I can't," I wailed. "Sir… please… I… I just… can't."

The words had come out without thought, from what seemed to me utterly physiological instinct—as if my nervous system, the part of my body that felt pain and pleasure, which Cal Perkins had such obvious skill in controlling… educating… training… as if it had decided to deny me the capacity to produce the words my suitor, my trainer, my… my man had instructed me to say.

My man. My dominant, masterful, gorgeous, affectionate-but-firm man. My future husband?

How could I possibly have just thought that? Another sob burst from my chest, one that felt like some sort of final, gasping expression of the idea I had of myself until…

Until you decided to steal those earrings. Until… all of it. Until Grasskiln. The judge, the bus, Frannie getting spanked at the gas station, Jake whipping me with his family strap and then making me come for the first time, Jake and Shelly fucking in front of me, the training panties.

Cal. Until Cal.

He had become so patient once again. He held me down with his left hand and he caressed me with his right, and it felt like his fingers had a sort of wisdom and knowledge I needed… a simple but essential capacity to take a handful like Grace Franklin in hand.

In his firm hand.

The fingers between my thighs stroked lightly along my bare private lips. My pussy clenched hard and my hips jerked. With every breath through my nose a tiny whine told my man how strong, how irresistible an effect he had on me. When I felt his fingertips dip inside me and then spread the slippery need up and down, I knew I had lied, a moment before.

Not only could I ask… beg… plead for my well-deserved, much-needed paddling, I couldn't keep myself from it. I needed to learn my lesson. I needed to follow where Cal led, even when he had decreed a correction so terrifying that my body shook as I spoke in a tiny voice that matched how small, and yet how cherished, my suitor made me feel.

"Please paddle me, sir," I whispered. I figured that probably met Cal's requirements, but I found that I couldn't leave it at that. The way it felt to be over his knee, held down, punished and then caressed, demanded more. "Please paddle me naked over the side of your bed."

Jake had said that, hadn't he? That Shelly got punished that way, in the bedroom. My face went blazing hot as I realized that I had kind of, from a certain perspective, just proposed to Cal—at least in my own mind.

When Cal replied, the growl in his voice made my heart jump.

"Corner time first," he said. I thought I could hear, in the rumble of the words in his chest, that punishing me had gotten him very hard. I swallowed almost painfully at the surge of arousal that idea brought down between my thighs, at the same moment Cal took his hand away and started to release me from my position over his knee. "Get up and go stand in the corner over by the fireplace. Hands on your head."

I climbed awkwardly and uncomfortably to my feet. Every movement reminded me of the punished, red state of my backside. Instinctively, with my back toward Cal, I reached down to pull up my panties.

"Nope," Cal said. "Leave your underwear where it is."

"But…" I said, turning my tear-stained face over my shoulder. "I can't walk like this."

"Of course you can, darlin'," Cal said, frowning. "You just mean you can't walk that way without remembering that you're a naughty girl who disrespected her suitor."

I felt my face contort itself into what felt like the saddest expression a naughty girl had ever worn.

"But… but, sir…" I found myself saying, while at the same time I realized that Cal had spoken the precise truth.

I looked into his dark eyes as he sat on the couch, his hands on his thighs and his knees still spread, as if to remind me that he could take me back over his lap and keep spanking me if he chose. I saw his forehead cloud slightly, and at first a thrill of fear went through me because I could see his patience beginning to ebb away again.

Then his expression changed, and I understood that he had put his temper under control one more time; instead of wrath, I saw sympathy in his eyes. But he shook his head nonetheless.

"Put those hands on your head and get going," he told me. "Into the corner, now."

I swallowed very hard. My arms seemed to fly up of their own accord at the sound of the extra emphasis he had placed on now. With my brow working hard in utter embarrassment I started to waddle across the room toward the fireplace. I could see how perfect a place for corner time that part of the room made: the rug ended two feet or so from the wall, so that when I got there I would stand on the wood floor. It felt as if my teacher had sent me into a special, humiliating place to display my spanked backside, but of course one where he could look over and inspect his handiwork and evaluate my behavior at all times.

I arrived in the corner. I looked at the walls that joined there, their off-white color. I felt certain Cal had painted them himself, and I tried to distract myself from my shameful lesson by wondering why.

Because your future husband is a hands-on kind of man, a serene voice answered in my head. He paints his own walls with those huge, strong hands, and he punishes his future wife with them, too, when she's been naughty.

I closed my eyes and lowered my head. I tried to keep myself from it, but I shuffled my feet out of sheer bodily instinct, clenching my butt cheeks, all as if I could somehow prevent Cal from seeing my bare bottom, red from his firm hand, on display in the corner of his living room.

"Think about what you did, darlin'," he said. "How you ended up with your panties down and your butt spanked, and the paddle coming."