A Lady Pays Her Penalties Read online

  Without warning, he began striking her with hard, fast snaps from the wrist. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Each stroke landing before her ass stopped rippling from the previous stroke. No individual blow was as hard as any in the first spanking, but they were relentless.

  He was hitting her so fast and the onset was so unexpected that the paddle was coming down for the third strike before she reacted to the first.

  Her reaction was dramatic. She began squirming and writhing in her bonds, shrieking shrilly, verbalizing in response to the blows instead of merely yelping, imploring him to stop. “Ow. Ouch. Please don’t. Ow. That hurts. Ouch. Please no more. Please stop. Ouch. Please. Mercy. Please. Oh, God, that stings. Please. Have mercy”

  She was struggling mightily against the stockings binding her to the chair and flailing her head from side to side, flinging her long hair about, alternately sweeping it back and forth across the hardwood floor in front of the chair. She had nice floors in her dining room.

  He had promised merciless and he was determined to fulfill his promise. He ignored her pleas and kept striking, delivering countless blows to her hot red cheeks, continuing until she was wailing too hard to form coherent words.

  When he judged that she had enough, he silently returned to his chair, laid the paddle across his lap, collected his book and pretended to read again.

  He watched her from the corner of his eye. She was sobbing uncontrollably now. Her hair was hanging limply over her down-slung head, covering her face from view. He could see rivers of sweat flowing down her arms. As he watched, she wiped her nose against her bicep and he got a glimpse of tears flowing from her eyes down into her hair. Then she hung her head back down loosely.

  He left her like that for almost ten minutes.

  When he stood up again, he let his chair scrape on the floor. She whimpered at the sound, knowing what was coming.

  “Are you ready for another spanking?”

  She muttered something incomprehensible.

  “Speak loudly and clearly, my dear. You don’t want to earn an extra punishment for failing to enunciate, do you?”

  “No.” That was loud and clear.

  “So, are you ready for another spanking?”

  “As you wish.”

  “No, my dear. As you wish. Don’t forget, this is your wish. This is your wish, so you can ask for it. Go ahead, my dear. Ask for another spanking.”

  “What if I don’t?”

  “Then I’ll punish you for not cooperating. You earned a good spanking when you lost those two backgammon matches. That’s enough. There’s no need for you to earn any extra spankings, is there?”

  He waited for a minute until she relented and said, “Please give me another spanking.”

  “Okay. Since you’re asking so nicely, I’ll give you another lovely spanking.” He patted her ass, a gesture of casual familiarity. “This time, you’ll get twenty-five strokes. To make sure that we get the count right, you will count each stroke after you receive it and then politely ask for another. You understand?”

  “Yes. I understand.” Her voice was ragged, breaking under the fear of having to endure more than twice as many strokes as previously.

  “You can start by asking for the first stroke.”

  “Please spank me.”

  He laid the paddle on her backside with a good hard blow: one that was about as hard as the hardest blow from the first spanking. He had more confidence in his control now. This blow did more than sting; it caused real pain. She knew that the stroke was coming, but grunted in surprise at the extent of the pain. She had not been spanked since she was a young child, and then not often or severely. As an adult, having been limited to self-bondage, she had not been able to experiment with spanking. Now, in the course of an hour, she was becoming a nouveau connoisseur of the paddle. This was clearly a spanking of a different vintage than the first two. It hurt more deeply and, she suspected, would ache longer.

  Twenty-four more blows like this one would make a lasting impression on her backside.

  “One.” She paused for a beat, then said, “Please, sir, give me another spank.” The ‘sir’ was unexpected. Somehow in her present position, it just popped out naturally. She felt even more humiliated when she found herself addressing her old friend so subserviently. But humiliation was at the heart of each stage of her punishment.

  And so she counted up to twenty-four, forcing herself to keep asking for another punishing blow as soon as the previous one had landed, certain that if she delayed too long or refused to ask him to continue, he would start again from one. She did not think that she could stand that many of these bruising blows

  By the tenth stroke she was sobbing and by fifteen, she was crying freely. But she kept asking for more blows, forcing the words through her wailing.

  When she finally wailed, “Twenty-four, sir. Please give me another spank,” Craig paused.

  He said, “Last stroke. You’ve been a real trooper, Leslie. You deserve a nice light, merciful stroke, don’t you?”

  She sniffled, took a deep breath, then said, quietly but clearly, “Do your worst, slugger. Let’s see if you can hit a home run.” She was clenching her ass, anticipating the pain, even as she uttered the words.

  If she wanted to see what it would be like to feel his full strength, then he would oblige. “I’m going to slam your ass right out of the park, babe. Prepare yourself. This is going to be brutal.” They both knew that no mental preparation could decrease the impact of the blow that was coming.

  Her bright red ass twitched mightily in anticipation of the blow, clenching and unclenching, quivering as though it had a life of its own.

  Craig tapped the paddle against her buttocks, taking aim, lining up the swing. He had to be sure that he hit her ass dead center because he didn’t want to break her tailbone by hitting her too high or bruise her legs hitting too low. She involuntarily gasped and clenched her glutes again when she felt the brush of the wood against her burning skin.

  He raised the paddle high above his shoulder and brought it down with all of his strength, putting his full arm and wrist into it. The air whistled shrilly through the heart-shaped holes. He hit her right in the middle of her ass. The impact was explosive, the crack of the wood against flesh echoed back from the farthest rooms in the house.

  The force of the blow actually rocked the chair. Leslie’s ass flattened and then quaked up and down, side to side.

  For a long second, she made no noise at all, shocked by a whole new level of pain, the intensity of the sensation overwhelming her senses. Then she drew a tremendous breath and began to scream, a constant loud tone like an old fire siren. She struggled against the stockings binding her wrists, trying to stand upright, trying to free her hands to rub her ass, trying to do anything that would mitigate the pain.

  Craig watched her struggle for a minute until, finally, she collapsed against the back of the chair, limp, defeated, sobbing quietly, waiting for him to make the next move.

  He glanced at the clock. It had only taken half an hour to administer the three spankings, but he had no stomach for torturing her any longer.

  He read the last instruction. “Free me when you are satisfied that I’ve been well and duly punished.”

  He was satisfied. She had been fully and duly punished for losing two backgammon matches. It was time to untie her. He looked down at her wrists and realized that she had pulled the knots so tight in her struggles that he would never get them untied. “I’ll be back.” He left the room.

  * * *

  Craig was gone before Leslie had time to ask him where he was going. She hoped that he realized that he could not leave her bent over the chair for much longer. The muscles in her lower back were aching miserably from being stretched over the chair for half an hour and her hands were tingling because the stockings tied around her wrists had worked themselves so tight that her circulation was impeded. If he intended to leave her overnight, there was a serious danger that she would develop gangrene b
y morning. She was not supposed to lose her hands just because she had lost a couple of backgammon games.

  She need not have worried. He returned in a couple of minutes, carrying the big tailor shears back from the basement. “I’m going to have to cut you free. I hope you didn’t want to wear those stockings again.”

  It only took a couple of snips to free her ankles completely and to cut the link between her wrists and the chair legs, but he could not fit the big shears between the skin on her wrists and the stockings, the material was pulled so tight that her skin bulged around it. She pushed herself erect and stepped back from the chair. Craig was amused to see that her first reaction was to ignore the black bands of ruined nylon around her wrists and to try to cover herself, breasts and pubis, with her arms and hands. He thought that she would be long past modesty, having spent the afternoon utterly exposed to him, but there was no explaining women. Even Freud never figured them out.

  She backed a couple of steps toward the door, said, “I’ll meet you in the living room in a few minutes.” Then she turned and fled as quickly as her aching body would allow – which was not quickly at all. He watched her red ass bouncing as she hobbled out of the door. It must still be hurting like a son of a bitch. For that matter, her nipples must still be tender as hell and every muscle in her body aching. He was amazed that she could move at all. After the wringer that she had put herself through, she should have just collapsed on the spot, curled up into a ball, and stayed there for a week until the pain went away.

  He took his book into the living room to wait for her.

  She returned in about ten minutes, dressed in a white terrycloth bathrobe and fuzzy pink slippers. Her hair was wet and her face was shiny; it was apparent that she had taken a quick shower. The wrists that extended from the arms of the bathrobe were free of the nylon stockings but were encircled with angry red welts.

  She saw him looking at her wrists and laughed lightly. “Guess I’ll have to wear long sleeves for a few days.”

  As she walked across the room to lower herself onto the couch, she moved cautiously, making him keenly aware that he had hurt almost every part of her during the afternoon. Now that her ordeal was over, he felt an overwhelming wave of tenderness toward her. Though she had asked for everything in detail, though he had only been doing exactly what she had asked, he felt inexplicable guilt about having been a participant in her torture. She had not suffered mere discomfort or torment; he had truly tortured her. And he had enjoyed it more than he would have expected.

  As she sank into the overstuffed couch, she said, “Ow. I used to think this couch was soft but I don’t think anyone makes a chair soft enough to suit me right now. It’s going to be hard to accomplish much when I’m sitting at my desk this week.”

  “I’m sorry.” And Craig was. Deeply sorry.

  “Please don’t say that. Ever. You were perfect. No one could ever ask for a finer friend. I’ll dream about this afternoon for a long time to come.”

  “Well, then, if you’re happy about the way it turned out, then I’ll be happy for you.”

  “I’m happy. Happier than you could guess.” She smiled softly. The word, bliss, sprang into Craig’s mind and he envied her. “I’d like to show you my appreciation, Craig. If you want to wait until I get dressed, I’d like to treat you to a steak dinner.”

  “That would be wonderful, but I can’t. I have to get back to Mary and the kids. They’re expecting me for dinner.”

  “I understand. I’ve already taken up too much of your time today.”

  “But maybe we could go to lunch sometime?”

  “I’m good for any day this week.”

  “Okay. I’ll call you.”

  “Thanks again.”

  Craig stood up, “Don’t get up. I can let myself out.”

  She smiled ruefully. “Thanks for that, too.”

  “Before I go, would you mind answering one question, though?”

  “Anything.”

  “This was just Envelope Two and it was more severe than I could have guessed. If you’d lost that last game and earned Envelope Three, what would I have had to do to you?”

  She looked at him for a long beat, then lowered her eyes. “Foolish things. I was arrogant about my backgammon skill when I made up those envelopes. Envelope Three was so foolish that I don’t think you would have participated if you had read it. This afternoon was about the right level for Envelope Three. I never want to have to suffer more than I did today.” She looked up and smiled impishly, “At least, not until the next time I play backgammon for a penalty.”

  “Next time?”

  “Not any time soon. But in a couple of months, when today’s bruises are a distant memory, don’t be surprised if I tell you that I’m getting itchy to throw those dice again. Would you mind?”

  “When you want me, I’ll be there.

  He slipped away to his happy marriage to his plain, vanilla Peggy, leaving Leslie sitting on her couch awash in her own endorphin-induced paradise.

  The Lady Gammons Herself Good

  “I’ve been playing a lot of backgammon on the Internet lately.” Leslie raised an eyebrow. “It’s getting boring. It’s time to spice it up a little, again.”

  “So you want me to spot you again?” Craig asked.

  “If you wouldn’t mind,” Leslie replied, feeling herself blush as she remembered the last time he had helped her ‘spice up the game’. She lowered her gaze.

  “I don’t mind.” He sipped his coffee, then asked, “Same setup as last time?”

  “I’ve changed the rules a little. To make it more interesting for myself, you see.”

  “So what are your new rules?”

  “I have six envelopes with numbers on them.” She waved a handful of manila envelopes at him. “At the start, I hold numbers one, two, and three; you hold four, five, and six. I’m going to ignore the matches and play as though I’m playing a series of single games of backgammon–”

  “On the Internet,” Craig injected.

  “Yes, on the Internet, just like last time.”

  “Okay,” he smiled. “I just want to make sure that you don’t plan on playing against me this time.”

  She laughed nervously. “Don’t worry. I want something more challenging than that.”

  “If you’re going to insult me, then I might just start hoping that you lose all the games.”

  “Don’t be cruel,” she said, a mocking tone in her voice.

  “Okay. So you’re playing backgammon. What then?”

  “Just like last time, these envelopes contain penalties. I start with three penalties and I’m playing to get rid of them. Every time I win, I get rid of an envelope by giving it to you.”

  “And when you lose, I bet you take an envelope back from me.”

  “Exactly. Every time I win, my penalty gets easier; every time I lose, my penalty gets worse.”

  “And this whole thing ends when either you get stuck with all the envelopes or you get rid of them all, right?”

  “Or when I chicken out. I can stop playing any time I want. So let’s say I get down to only one envelope. I might decide to stop playing then, when I have only a little penalty to pay rather than risking losing and getting some envelopes back. That’s the interesting part. After each game, I have to decide if I want to take what’s coming to me at that point, or if I want to take a chance of improving my lot by risking getting myself in deeper.”

  “So how bad are these penalties?” Craig asked, looking at the stack.

  Leslie looked down at them, then back up and said, “I don’t want to have to serve any of them, not even Number One. But the thought of having to work through all of them, right down to Number Six terrifies me. The only way that I could force myself to stuff that envelope was because I knew that I could stop at Number Five.”

  “So is it the usual schedule? That you play today and, if you lose, you pay your penalty next weekend?”

  “If you’re free next Saturday, I’d like
that to be the designated penalty day.”

  “I can do that.”

  “Then let’s play some backgammon.” Her casual words were belied by her somber tone.

  Leslie handed Craig the bottom three envelopes, then led him to her computer.

  “What about the doubling cube?”

  “That would double it to two envelopes, of course,” she replied absently; her attention already distracted by her first roll.

  The first game was close. Her anonymous opponent played adequately, though not brilliantly. The dice favored him slightly, but not enough to tip the scale against her superior strategy. He had five men left on his One and Two Points when she cleared her inner table and won. She smiled at Craig and said, “That gives me a little breathing room,” as she handed him Envelope Three, leaving only two envelopes in front of her.

  The next game went well until they began bearing off. She had a substantial lead and doubled her opponent, expecting to force him to resign. Instead, he accepted the double. “Great,” she commented, “Now we’re playing for two envelopes and I’ve only got two left. I’m going to beat him and that will clear my penalty completely.”

  She was trying to sound happy, but Craig heard a note of disappointment in her voice. Maybe she didn’t want to pay even one of the penalties, but he knew that she wanted more excitement than simply winning two games outright and ending the drama.

  She needn’t have worried, though; the gods of the random number generator were feeling evil today. Her opponent rolled double sixes and double fours in succession, reversing her lead. A few minutes later, she had to ask Craig for Envelopes Three and Four. He noticed that her voice had an unmistakable tone of dismay. It seemed that the fourth envelope was the cutoff point. She didn’t seem to mind the first three envelopes nearly as much as the fourth. Whatever was in there would push her beyond some limit.

  Now she was playing for keeps.

  Her opponent was happy to have won the game and quit without finishing the match. That was typical of a lot of the lesser players who styled themselves as ‘experts’ but never wanted to push their luck.