Chapter 6

Grace

For a moment I just stared at him. The words didn't seem to make sense. Licks? It wasn't that I didn't know that the word meant a hit or a blow, in old-time speak, but my brain seemed set on telling me that Mr. Carpenter couldn't mean that. I had an absurd yet stomach-churning image in my mind's eye for an instant, of him… licking my backside.

I also knew that I had decided to focus on the word licks because I didn't want to think about the rest of what he had said.

"Y-you…" I stammered. "You c-can't… can't be…"

He reached out his right hand and took the strap from me. Part of me wanted to try to hold on to it, as if while I held it he wouldn't be able to use it on me, but most of me just didn't want to touch the terrifying thing any longer than I had to.

Then, with his left hand, he took hold of my arm again, and he started to pull me toward him, as he turned, so that he could propel me toward the bigger of the two chairs that flanked the fireplace. Not having any idea what he intended, I stumbled in the direction he drew me. Did he mean to have me sit down so he could talk to me?

"I try to be as patient as I can," he said, his voice rising slightly, demonstrating very clearly that his patience had definite limits, and I had crossed at least one of them, "but your foster mama will tell you that when my instructions get ignored, my patience can wear out pretty quickly."

The chair seemed to rush toward me, and not at an angle that would allow me to sit down. My confusion about what was happening lasted, though, until Mr. Carpenter actually began to bend me over the arm of it. I let out a cry of alarm, but even if I had had the foresight to brace myself I would have stood no chance of keeping him from pressing my upper body downward with his strong left arm.

"Face in the cushion, honey," he told me. "That's how a girl takes her whipping in this house."

How could he say honey and then follow it with such a mortifying command? My body started to resist then, out of sheer reflex from the terror and the embarrassment. Mr. Carpenter overcame that little bit of physical defiance with such ease that I couldn't tell if he had even noticed I had attempted to stop him. I found myself bent deeply at the waist, and I had to put my hands out in front of me to keep myself from falling over into the chair.

I needn't have worried, because my foster father's muscular left arm came around my waist at that point, to hold me in place. I wouldn't fall—but I also wouldn't rise until Mr. Carpenter allowed it.

"Let her keep her jeans on, sir?" I heard Shelly say from the kitchen. "For this part? It's her very first time, I'm sure."

My stomach lurched. Had Mrs. Carpenter just called her husband sir? For some reason that simple word, from her mouth, seemed to bring all of it—the whole crazy ‘program'—home to me in a gut-punching way that nothing previously had done. About to try to twist out from under my foster father's arm in some certainly foolish attempt to get to the door a second time, I froze instead.

"That's a fine idea, hon," he said, from what seemed way above me. "I don't want the girl to think I'm a tyrant."

I shook my head. Really, it happened completely instinctively, so it was more like I felt my head shake, my chin move across the worn leather seat of the armchair. The way Mr. and Mrs. Carpenter were discussing the horrible, unimaginable fact that he had a strap in his hand and he would soon start whipping my ass with it… it made the odd sense of detachment that had started to engulf me even more striking, the strange floating feeling even more distancing from my body.

Then my foster father's arm tightened around my waist, and the shaking of my head turned into a wild flailing of my body. It seemed like an intimate communication from Mr. Carpenter's body to mine, that my terrible lesson would start momentarily and that he would make certain my backside remained firmly in place to receive it. My nervous system seemed to react on its own, though my floating-away mind told me that it would do me no good at all. I tried desperately to free myself, even as I heard the horrid whistling sound that could only be the strap, traveling fast through the air.

I heard it before I felt it, a crack that resounded from the rafters of the farmhouse living room. That very sound sent a wave of heat to my cheeks. I thought suddenly about the humiliating household ‘tradition' my foster father had informed me of, of girls putting their faces in the cushion when they got whipped. I wondered if it might have come into use as much to save the girl from having her blushing face seen as to make her bottom the most prominent part of her anatomy.

When I did feel the lash a split second later I thought for a moment that I might have been terrified of nothing. It stung, but not so much that I screamed or even grunted. Then I understood, because the discomfort built into pain, and Mr. Carpenter delivered a second lick across the seat of my jeans, and my first cry, a little grunting sort of whimper, had already escaped from my chest.

"Oh," I heard myself say, into the chair cushion. "Wait… please…"

Another cut from the strap cracked across my bottom, lower down, and I cried out louder. Despite my jeans, whose denim I had thought pretty thick, it felt like the leather made contact with my bare skin. It came down again, and I felt my backside start to squirm, desperately trying to soothe the smart, my hips bucking over the arm of the chair though Mr. Carpenter's arm kept me from moving more than an inch or so.

"Please what?" he asked, and lashed me again, even harder and with an even louder gunshot sound of leather against denim.

A sob came from my chest.

"Please, sir," I whimpered, feeling the tears start to flow freely.

His grip loosened slightly. Hope rose inside me.

"Alright, honey," he said. The little spark of relief, to my distress, seemed to be accompanied by something else—a strange sense that maybe I'd gotten away with something, despite the lingering soreness in my bottom. It really hadn't been that bad, I told myself. "Now show me you're learning. Go ahead and take down your jeans and your panties. You'll stay here, waiting, while your foster mama and I finish dinner."

Again I felt grateful that he couldn't see my face. I felt my jaw go slack against the leather of the cushion. My cheeks blazed with a scalding blush. Much, much worse, down below I felt another kind of warmth—the kind I'd gotten just a bit of experience with, so far, when making out with boys in dark corners of the dorm. I had no idea why, but something about the remaining sting from my foster father's belt seemed to intensify that private, intimate need to a level I'd never felt before. I suddenly wondered if I'd started to get the gusset of my panties wet.

Then I remembered, with a fiery flare in both places, that I hadn't had any clean panties to put on that morning. The realization made me frantic for a moment, and without any real intention to I started to struggle again, my body trying just to get up and run away, as if an enormous farmer weren't pinning me down under his arm, with a strap in his other hand ready to punish my disobedience.

Because Mr. Carpenter had loosened his grip, I managed to twist about six inches, but it didn't take more than a second for him to tighten his arm and put me right back with my face in the cushion. At the same time he started to whip me again, harder and faster than before.

"Sir… sir…" I screamed. "Please…"

He didn't stop though. My ass felt like it had caught on fire, and suddenly the idea of having him whip me with my pants down and my bottom bare sent a wave of panic shooting through my body so intensely that I screamed, as much in fright as in pain.

"Let… me… know," Mr. Carpenter said in a grim tone of voice, as if he had no desire to extend this terrible lesson, but he had no doubt that I needed it, "when… you're…"

Each word carried a lash from the strap. My bottom cheeks clenched and unclenched, trying to make it feel just a tiny bit better.

"I'm ready!" I yelled. "Sir! I'm ready!"

In comparison to the agony my foster father had meted out to my rear end, the embarrassment of them seeing that I had no panties on seemed completely preferable.

The whipping stopped. His arm loosened.

"Alright," he said, his voice rough but satisfied. "Show me, Grace. Get those jeans and panties down."

"I…" I said. "Sir, I…"

Mr. Carpenter's arm started to tighten again.

"I'm not wearing panties!" I shouted into the cushion. "I'm… I'm… sorry?"

"Oh," he said. His tone had surprise in it. I wondered, with a flare of heat in my face, whether he was trying to suppress a smile, or even a laugh.

"Oh, honey," I heard Shelly say, from further away.

"Why is that?" Mr. Carpenter asked, his voice gruff.

"Jake!" his wife said, surprising me and confusing me again. She had seemed so subservient and submissive when she asked him to punish me over the top of my jeans, and now she sounded… well, like a regular kind of wife. "What kind of question is that? She's never lived in a proper household. I bet she didn't have any clean ones because she hadn't gone to the laundromat or whatever folks do in the city. Is that right, Grace?"

"Yes," I said, turning my face to the side to make my voice more audible. I couldn't see anything but the hearth and the fireplace, which made the whole conversation even stranger. Then, hardly even thinking about it, I corrected myself. "Yes, ma'am."

"Well," Mr. Carpenter said, "in this house you'll wear underwear like decent folks. Your foster mama will get you some at the store tomorrow, so you'll have enough, and you'll be doing the laundry on a regular schedule as well. Go ahead and get those jeans down anyway, though. I won't whip you extra tonight for not having panties on, but next time that's ten extra licks."

I bit my lip and turned my face back toward the cushion. I didn't want my foster father—Jake, I remembered, wondering if I'd be able to think of him that way—seeing just how bright a shade of red my face could get. I reached under my tummy and found the button of my jeans. For a moment I pretended to fumble with it while I really tried to think of some way, any way, I could avoid baring my ass to this strange, strong, handsome farmer's eyes.

He shifted his arm a little—I didn't know whether he meant it as a signal he would start in with the strap again, or he was only adjusting a bit, but it sent a thrill of fear through me that made me unfasten the button instantly. Then, biting my lip to keep from whimpering at the terribly ambiguous feeling, I started to lower my jeans.