Readers,
Here is another excellent submission to my recent ‘Story of US’ writing contest. ‘Under Your Authority’, a story in five parts, is yet another example of the wonderful reader-submitted content which I have the good fortune to share with you, every month. Enjoy! – Dana
Under Your Authority
Part 1
“How long has it been, young man, since you’ve had a discipline spanking?”
Out of the thin air of innocent conversation, the dreaded word had been spoken. I tried so hard to maintain an appearance of cool, but the color associated with that word had surely blossomed on my face to shine warm in the light of your office.
“I asked you a question.”
Avoiding eye contact, I shifted in my chair. “Over thirty years.” It had not been this difficult confessing through email.
“You are very long overdue.”
I searched frantically for an argument. Now that I was facing the music, I did not like the arrangement. “I’m really sorry.”
You appeared to find my sincerity amusing. “Yes, I imagine you are. Really sorry to know what happens here to very bad boys.”
“But I promise I’m going to change.”
“That sounds sincere, Dear. However, for someone who has been misbehaving and avoiding the consequences since… when?”
I did not know if you had really forgotten or just wanted to hear me say it.
“When one who has been misbehaving since his rebellion decades ago promises to be a good boy, he lacks… what shall we say… credibility?”
You smiled again, and it was a smile that made my breathing a conscious exercise. Under the circumstances it was terribly disconcerting to be seated across the desk from such a striking woman. Your smooth ability to take control of a situation was rendering me weightless.
“I really mean it this time. I could pay you extra,” I sputtered, the words spilling from my mouth before I could stop them. “It would be the fine for my crime,” I blurted to amend, seeing the look of disdain cross your face.
“Well, you warned me you might say anything.” You sat back in your chair with arms folded across your chest. “You’re not going to buy your way out of this. Did you offer to give your mother your allowance money when she got out the paddle?”
We both knew I did not.
“No, you would not have dared. Why would you dare make such an offer to me?”
Your tone of voice was a deception, a pretty fish that will sting with poison. “I’m sorry, Ms. Kane. I wasn’t thinking. Please forget what I said.”
“You were thinking alright. Thinking that I’m not really your mother today. Is that what you believe?”
You had taken the role and were owning it. I was frozen in my seat, unable to find the air to speak to this younger woman with stylish dark hair framing perfectly her beautiful face.
“Because if that is the case, I am going to disabuse you of that notion right now. We’ve discussed the nature of my authority, have we not?”
I studied the back of my hand. I was able to nod.
“Look at me, young man. Is that how you answer a question?”
You have a way of speaking, so calm and under control, that made me so anxious and about to lose it. “Yes, we discussed your authority.”
“And…?”
I detected a slight irritation in your voice, and that is not a good thing. “You have total authority, no different than my parents had when I was a boy.”
“Correct, Stephen. For all intents and purposes, when you are under my roof, I am your mother; I am your father. Are you ever going to forget that again?”
I assured you I would not. Ms. Kane is judge, jury, and executioner. My insides were churning. You spoke with a hint of what sounded like sadness. “And I raise boys as you were raised, at least until the decision was made to stop providing you with the discipline that was so effective. Is there anything about this you fail to understand?” you asked me sweetly. “Do you need further clarification?”
“No, Miss.” I studied my shoes.
“Good. Then it is time to address your behavior. There will be no more negotiating. Have I made myself clear?”
I uttered the affirmation, sat still in my seat rather than getting up and running.
Part 2
You were no longer behind your desk, and I was no longer at the safe distance across it. You had taken me by the hand and then walked me at a more brisk pace than I would have liked to the punishment room down the hall. Dressed simply as a woman might dress at home, your body language nevertheless spoke strictly business. I knew precisely what was happening, and the knowledge was a swarm of bats wanting to escape the dark cave that was my stomach. Had it really come to this? To a point where I was not in control and being marched to my comeuppance? I knew you were a woman of many talents, several of which Ms. Kane employs as a professional disciplinarian.
“I want you to tell me again what you did that has you in so much trouble today.”
If emailing you had not been easy, and then if talking to you from across your desk had been more difficult, then this now was impossible. You were seated firmly on a sturdy platform as I knelt before you. The intimacy was overwhelming. You had pulled me so close, your hands on my shoulders, your eyes the ruler of mine. I was a small planet attracted to a blazing sun falling helpless into your massive magnetic field.
“It wasn’t so bad as I made out.”
“Are you saying you lied to me in order to make a game of this?”
“No! I’m sorry. I’m confused. I would never lie to you.”
“Oh, really. And how can I be sure of THAT?” Your eyes sparkled prettily. “Don’t answer that.” You had placed your finger over my lips. “You better not lie to me now.”
“I would not want to make something up to get in so much trouble.”
“Then tell me again why you are in this room with me today. I want the truth and nothing but the truth.”
“It’s embarrassing.”
“Embarrassment goes with the territory in this room. I think you have good reason to be ashamed of yourself.”
I tried to expel the words from my lungs. My mouth was in the way. You cupped my left cheek in your right palm, looked deep into my eyes. “Tell Momma what you did.”
“I didn’t get my work done.” I spoke the words as if they were a full confession.
“Yes and I warned you what would happen if that problem continued. But why did you not get your work done yesterday?”
“I took a long lunch.”
“You had better speak up, Stephen Eugene Roberts. You were a very bad boy, weren’t you?”
My nod was a child’s. In my mind, I was a rebellious, irresponsible teenager—a bad boy in bad trouble at home.
“What were you doing at lunch that prevented you from getting back to work?”
Shame can be debilitating. Somehow, I managed to speak. “Watching the girl next door.”
There it was. The confession I did not think I could make to another human face. There was a grim cast to your voice I had yet to hear. “Tell me all of it.”
“Arienna was sunbathing at the pool. I could see her clearly from the window of my office upstairs.”
“Do you know this girl?”
“She’s the daughter of our neighbors.”
“And why were you spying on her?”
“She’s in college. She’s home early on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
“Does that answer my question?”
“No. Sorry.” I was starting to catch my breath. Maybe confession really is good for the soul. “I see her car parked in front. Sometimes I check. I heard water splashing in the pool…”
“Why are you ‘checking’ on her?”
“She’s the most amazing girl I’ve ever seen,” I stammered. “I know that sounds pathetic.”
“Indeed. A girl not half your age. How long did you spy on her? Was she at least decent?”
“She was wearing her string bikini. I don’t know how long exactly. Maybe half an hour.”
“You stood at your window and watched a girl sunbathe for thirty minutes? What, may I ask, is so special about this girl?”
I could not look you in the eye. “Arienna is like a dream, the kind you wake up from out of breath and sweating.”
“What makes her so special she has you acting like an adolescent?”
“I think if you saw her you would know.”
“I’ve seen hot, young girls,” you laughed. “They’re a dime a dozen. It’s amazing how male hormones can turn an ample chest and shapely behind into Venus and Aphrodite.”
“She’s petite, Miss. Her hair is brown silk. Her face is so pretty, it could seduce a corpse.”
“I hope you don’t think it funny that you were watching this young thing while she was in the privacy of her parents’ backyard.”
“No, Ma’am.” I made sure I sounded contrite. It was not at all funny.
“How unfortunate she can’t be here in this room right now to see what her seduction has amounted to. But I think you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
I shook my head decisively. How much humiliation could I bear? It was hard enough to suffer for such a beautiful woman acting as my parent, but at least Ms. Kane understands me. It was only through that understanding that this was even possible.
“So after watching this pretty girl in the sun, what kept you from work?”
“I got distracted.”
“That sounds like the truth but not the whole truth.”
“I spent the rest of the afternoon on the computer. Looking…”
“Looking for what? Or at what?”
“Um…. for pictures. At pictures.”
“And I can imagine the kind of pictures. Instead of doing your work. Spying on young girls and playing on the computer. That sounds to me like a young man earning himself some discipline. We had better get you undressed.”
Part 3
I was being undressed. Like in a dream I was unable to move. In a nightmare I needed to run. You resolutely went about unbuttoning and removing my dress shirt and then pulling over my head the shirt beneath. I was passive as a lamb as my insides roared in protest.
“Stand up. Take your shoes and socks off.”
You were sending me a message. Despite my lack of experience, the situation was to be treated as a serious matter.
Where I had knelt I was now standing, the wood floor cool under my feet. You had unbuckled my belt, unsnapped my fly, and as you casually pulled down the zipper, it had still not registered fully for me that my pants would be coming down. It was surreal. Ms. Kane was going to take my pants down for a spanking! You worked them easily past my hips and they began to fall. I grabbed where my belt hung loose. It was merely survival instinct. You slapped my hand away and yanked the trousers down.
“Step out of your pants. Now.”
I did, and you whisked them out of the way. I was standing before you in the punishment room in my white cotton underpants. There was a desk behind you, and you turned to remove something from one of its drawers.
“Do you think you’re going to regret how you behaved yesterday?”
“I do regret it, Ms. Kane. I do.”
You were holding a small object clearly designed for spanking. The round-bladed paddle cut from a thin sheet of dark wood shined hard in the overhead light of the punishment room.
“Young man, you’ve only begun to regret it. You haven’t regretted your misbehavior the way you need to regret it since the last time you were punished properly.”
The little paddle fit well in your hand, as if it were an extension of your hand, its size rendering it a hard wooden stand-in for your hand. Ms. Kane’s hand of justice.
“It’s been so long,” I said, as if that could help me, and under my breath, “I’m not sure I can take this.”
“Did you ever have any choice but to take it?”
I shook my head in abject resignation.
“We’ve been over this, haven’t we? I have a responsibility here. A parental responsibility. I will decide what is needed, what you have coming. This is not a game for your amusement or pleasure. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“You’ve been a very bad boy, and that is the last thing you want to be when you come to see me.”
I felt I would melt right into the floor. I had tried many times through many years to imagine this moment, where I was to be held accountable precisely in this way. Those attempts had done little to prepare me. I could only clutch with desperation the security blanket of knowing I was in the hands of a professional and more; there was no one in the world better to handle this than Ms. Kane.
“Let’s have you over my knee.” You tapped your leg with the hard little paddle.
It happened fast, catching me off guard. Having been taken by the wrist and pulled, I was a rag doll upended over your lap, and before I could appreciate where I was, my face was at the floor, my feet were in the air, and I was being spanked. There was a moment where I was aware of the surface beneath me, warm and soft, but that feeling was then made irrelevant by a fire that had broken out on the seat of my underpants. You had immediately taken control of my senses. With brisk, sharp, wrist-snapping licks, you were peppering my behind with the hard flat of the little paddle, left cheek then right, every spank targeted deliberately to a same sorry spot upturned low on a matching buttock. Each and every yelp, wriggle, and kick produced from yours truly was purely genuine. I reacted without thought, and it was only when you stopped punishing that an awareness of where I was came back into focus.
In a mild state of shock, I thought I could feel the shape of the paddle on two places behind me. The small round surface designed for bottom business had done the work of a branding iron, and for several moments I thought you might have burned two holes in the seat of my shorts. The discomfort quickly diminished to a pair of bearable twangs as the heat not contained by cotton continued to glow to warm the punishment room.
“Am I making my point, young man?”
I had yet to regain the breath to answer, but you were not waiting. I had to endure another ten sharp spanks rapid fire on my right cheek, and then a matching ten on the left. I kicked and howled my displeasure.
“Yes, I believe I have your attention.” You were fussing with my underpants, tugging briefly at the waist and seams as if to arrange and smooth them to your satisfaction, and then I felt your palm exploring where underneath cotton my flesh was a choir singing.
“Do you like Momma’s little paddle? I picked it special just for a bad little boy.”
“No, Ma’am. I don’t like it.”
“I’m afraid I can’t blame you for that.”
Your fingers remained busy assessing the discipline you had administered. I welcomed the light touch much like a thirsty man accepts liquor. I managed not to admit an outward show of appreciation, and when you squeezed or, worse, pinched, I only squirmed to lodge my grievance.
“Stand up.”
I was relieved both to be released from the awkward and uncomfortable position and that my punishment was over. Overall, it had not been so bad as expected. The moments while I was being paddled were bad, but it had not taken long, and the pain had become actually quite manageable. A little soreness for a day or two would only serve to remind me that the beautiful and talented Ms. Kane had taken the time to correct me.
“Turn around. Let’s see the damages.” You lowered my underpants and allowed them to fall to my feet. I was painfully aware that you were seeing a full closeup of my bare behind. My hands instinctively sought to cover myself in front. You asked me to bend a little at the waist.
“Isn’t this cute? I’m impressed with how this little paddle can redden so nicely. It appears your jockeys did little to afford you protection.”
How it embarrassed me to have you appraise my paddled rear, but I was not surprised by your evaluation. Where you had punished felt red. It felt very red, and I knew my lack of experience was a susceptibility to marking. As I cringed and self-consciously covered my front, I felt your cool fingers on my blazing skin.
“When you leave the punishment room today, you’ll be wishing never to see Momma’s little paddle again.”
Your words registered as confusion. I turned to you. “No, Ms. Kane, I never want to see it again. Should I get dressed now?”
“Not yet, sweetheart,” you said, your voice tinged with sympathy. “Momma needs to paddle on the bare today.”
“No, please!” I was startled and panic was rising. I really had thought it finished.
“Baby, this is no time for you to attempt to evade justice. I am sure I made it very clear what happens in the punishment room. Tell me what happens here to very bad boys.”
There was no way I wanted to answer that.
“If you have forgotten, then I will make an extra effort to impress the fact on you.”
Your beautiful eyes were blue ice, and with a set to your jaw that had my mouth moving. “No, I know. Very bad boys get punished. Really punished.”
“How are they punished?” you insisted, your impatience apparent.
“You spank them. On the bare butt.” My face was surely glowing.
“Yes. I always spank very bad boys on their very bare bottoms, and don’t think for a second that you are an exception to the rule. Your behavior needs to change.”
“It will change, I swear!”
“I bet you said the same thing years ago. What could you have expected as a reply?”
I knew but had no desire to answer.
“The philosophy is that your promises will be far more meaningful after the discipline has been fully administered. Let’s have you back over my knee.”
The panic that had flared was coursing through my bloodstream. I was all the more vulnerable and, upended again across your lap, it was apparent that nothing was going to come between my tender flesh and that nasty little paddle. I now knew the threat posed, but this time you did not immediately apply the punishment.
“Tell me why I have to do this.”
“For discipline.”
“I think that’s fairly obvious. Why are you being disciplined?” You were alternately setting the flat of the wood on the two spots you had already reddened, to measure your target or perhaps to announce your intentions.
“I didn’t get my work done.”
“I sincerely hope you’re not minimizing the trouble.”
I felt the paddle, hard and uncompromising. “I spied on Arienna. I know it was wrong. I invaded her privacy.”
“And now I must handle this. Correct?”
“Yes,” I admitted, but I sounded so unhappy about it.
“Do you trust Momma to punish?”
I again admitted defeat. At the risk of sounding as if I am reading from a text book on the subject, the essence of providing positive, effective punishment is the disciplinarian’s considered determination of what is needed based on the offense and its frequency in congruence with the nature and experience of the offender. Right then it mattered not what I wanted. I was trapped on the lap of righteous maternal justice. I had placed my complete trust in your ability to measure both my needs and constitution, knowing you sincerely enjoyed spanking naughty boys and girls, but with the assurance of a commitment to providing a sensible authority figure for those who needed fair and measured discipline. Ms. Kane is the ultimate arbitor of justice. Placed in the best of hands, I would worship at the alter of your divine judgment, giving me good reason to trust and with equal good reason to fear. I could trust I was in for a spanking I was not going to forget.
Part 4
This is the most difficult part of the story to tell. It is the part that feels the most private, the part that for anyone not in that room for those moments an event that may be viewed only more thinly through the imagination. Only you and I share the full flesh and blood of those dramatic minutes.
The second paddle spanking, this one on the bare skin of my upturned buttocks, was applied with a different strategy than the first. It was apparent that your method was to prolong the experience to make it a more conscious and palpable lesson. We both were aware that my novice’s flesh was in no condition for the harshest severity.
You had me cross my wrists behind me in a formal surrender, and holding my hands against my back, you started with alternating spanks on the two spots you had punished previously, not as hard on skin as cotton, but each made to sting like an angry hornet. To the otherwise silent punishment room, reverberating with the sharp crack of the paddle, there was little to distinguish the activity but for one pause where I had to be told to keep my feet down. I did not like Momma’s little paddle. There was something inherent in the grain of wood to bite the surface of its target with a sting greater than the damage caused, an ideal voice with which to scold a very bad boy turned over for his first adult spanking. After a good ration of stingers you paused and waited for me to stop squirming.
“You’re not going to get away with anything this time, are you, Stephen?”
“No, Ma’am!” I almost shouted, not quite so loud as the message instilled by the paddle.
You seemed many times larger than your physical size; I felt small pitched forward over your lap, and it was apparent now that your intention was to make me sorry where I sit, where I was uncomfortably aware of every lick you had given me.
“I hope you’re thinking, not only about yesterday’s shameful behavior, but about all the years leading to this moment.”
This moment was fire as you brought flat judgment down swiftly, one very meaningful rebuke to the softest spot on each buttock.
“Keep your feet down. I don’t want to have to tell you again.” Your direction was punctuated with more fire-hot spanks to where I was most vulnerable. My feet complained but obeyed your directive.
“That’s better. You can kick like a little girl… if you must… but don’t you dare interfere with your punishment.
Your words sting my face even now, but at the moment dignity was not my priority. I was not sure how much more I could take. I was helpless in facing both the paddle and your indictment.
“Such a bad boy you have been. The grief you put your parents through as a teenager…” Where buttock meets thigh, you delivered two hard spanks low on my bottom causing me to exhale a low moan, a burn scolding me with a voice as bitter of acid as my disciplinarian’s voice had been laced of honey.
“The irresponsibility that has been a burden on your wife…” Again you punished sit spots with fire. “The temper you too often have not controlled…” You repeated the sit-spot scolding. “The self-indulgence…” Two more doses of paddle punishment from a strict disciplinarian. “This is the spanking you should have been given.”
I was surely getting it now, a bad boy’s comeuppance over your knee, the little firecracker in your hand falling ten times on the crowns of my behind, five crisp ringing out in the air of the punishment room setting a new blaze on the left, then five just as brisk to burn the right. I prayed silently for you to stop but did not interfere with the spanking you were fashioning for me.
“Are you ashamed of yourself, Stephen?”
You had asked me sweetly, no assault on the ears but rather a tug to the heart. My eyes were beginning to well, ready to cry about more than my burning bottom.
“I am very disappointed in you.”
The dagger. “I know. I’m sorry.” I was sputtering, but you were already spanking again with no discernable pattern. In your infinite wisdom, and by some scheme known only to Ms. Kane, the stiff medicine you were administering was being applied with a perfect abandon and in short bursts of scalding heat. I was not aware of my crying until having realized my face was dripping.
“Baby, your days of doing as you please are over.” I was aware of your palm rubbing my bottom where it burned, as gentle as your words assured me. “I am in charge now, and you are going to be the good boy you have always wanted to be.”
“Yes, Momma, I will,” I cried as your now scolding hand propelled me over the edge. For this blazing moment I was a boy and you my mother. Perception was reality.
Part 5
I was at the window watching when she appeared on cue, Arienna, padding softly on small bare feet to the pool lounge, slowly pushing little shorts down that had done little to conceal the shape of her. As expected, more peaches and cream were revealed, long hair shimmered and a glint of silver from her ear caught the late afternoon sun as she turned her head to face me. She knew she was being watched, had always known. She looked up, large eyes accepting, blood-red, bee-stung mouth offering a kiss so sweet it would burn where placed forever.
She had let herself in, walked up the stairs and was now standing over me in her tiny string bikini, a giant in all but size and me in my bed unable to move a muscle. She brought her face close to mine and the air was pretty flowers. Her skin was smooth as I had never imagined, bright eyes deeper, nose a button of dearer perfection and candy lips, even more generous, lifted ever so briefly from sweet petulance to a playful, wicked promise.
“And just what do you think you’re doing, young lady?”
Her pout opened, and I saw the flash of fear in large brown eyes. Arienna turned abruptly to the voice behind her.
“Nothing, Ma’am, I promise.”
“Nothing?” said Ms. Kane. “You do not belong here, and certainly not dressed, or shall we say, undressed, like this.”
“I’m sorry.” I heard the surrender in the girl’s voice. The beautiful woman was already seated on the edge of the bed, tapping her thigh with the hard little paddle. “You’ve only begun to be sorry.”
“No, Mommy, please!” I had never seen anything so vulnerable as Arienna’s heart-shaped little behind, the skin so refined it might blush if touched lightly. Her slender form was upended across Ms. Kane’s thighs, the stinging hornet raised to bring down fiery redemption and I was fighting to break the bonds holding me when I arose gasping.
Had it all been a dream?
On my back in bed, I was uncomfortable in more ways than one. Not all a dream, but I got up and followed my urge to the mirror in the bathroom to check the evidence again. Before falling asleep, I had crawled into bed naked, and now my reflection over the sink showed that I was still wearing only the lesson imprinted that afternoon. The little paddle had left its signature circle twice, two matching sit spots as ruby red as Arienna’s most seductive pout. The hornet’s hive you had angered there was still temperamental. It was an oddly comforting sight, nonetheless, and pleasantly stirring to see how you had deftly, dare ruthlessly, painted a bad boy’s bottom. The precise and deliberate way you had marked me told of a punishment administered fully under control and without distraction. The evidence was unmistakable, stating loud and plain that Ms. Kane was now my absolute authority. She had taken time and care to intelligently perform her focused task and had left me with her clear and measured judgment. I could not stop thinking of you.
I returned to bed wondering how many bad boys and girls were in their beds at that moment preferring to sleep on their stomachs. The spanking had been as painful as I had feared but not beyond to a point of regret. The physical pain had not been my primary fear. What had caused me the most concern was the emotional pain I might suffer. I had visions of unbearable humiliation and wondered if, when all was said and done, I would leave your studio an empty shell of a man having paid a woman to beat him for his failures. So what relief to have fallen into nurturing arms. Ms. Kane had punished me in the service of her pleasure and my well-being. To submit to her had been a privilege. She had made me feel safe and well cared for, and accepted even as she lectured and scolded a very bad boy. I had been allowed to reveal my shame to a Goddess, to lay at her feet my secret offering. Now I lay in bed with her imperial mark upon me. If only I could sleep, to dream, to return to where Ms. Kane was ruler of the kingdom.
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