Contest Entry #11 : Power Exchange

She answered the door to a completely unlikely couple. Certainly not your grandpa’s appliance repair service.

The young man was full of blond and bluster. He wore a black leather belt with every assortment of gadget on it. She was tall, with long, loose red hair and she carried a toolkit. She was smiling meekly now.

“Ms. Kan” he started, “It’s Adam and Ashley, we’re from Well-Grounded Technical.”

“First of all,” she corrected, “it’s not Ms. Kan. It’s ‘Kane’ – pronounced like an aid you might say…walk…with.”

“Ms. Kan, can…” He paused and dug an elbow into his mortified partner’s side. “Kan, can,” he giggled.

“Ms. Kan, can you tell us what happened to the equipment?”

She looked at the young man. It was the same familiar pattern. How many times had she seen it? They were always brave at a distance. And brave in packs. She knew from experience that his fair skin would redden quickly. She guessed that tears weren’t unlikely.

She reached out and gently touched his arm, staring into his eyes. “Make it ‘Kane’ please,” she purred. “We’ll talk about this.”

She explained the power outage to them. “I don’t pretend to understand the technology. I wish you could just get all this stuff running again.”

“Have no fear, ma’am.” He winked at Ashley. “We’re here to make your wish come true!”

“Ashley,” he said, “if you can double-check that junction box down the street, I’ll have a looksie here at Ms. Kan’s, I mean Ms. Kane’s setup.”

He closed the door behind Ashley and turned back. “Have no fear! The difficult we accomplish immediately. The impossible takes a little longer.”

She moved two steps closer to Adam. They were the same height. Her eyes were level with his.

“What did your mother do when you were disrespectful?”

“My mother?” His eyes flitted away and back several times. “I don’t really remember. I’m sure they can’t do that kind of stuff anymore, anyway.”

“Was it on the bare bottom?”

His face reddened. “What? No, I don’t know if I know what you mean. I mean…” He sighed and looked away. “Maybe, yeah.”

“So, there’s hope. Follow me,” she said, cheerfully. “I’ll show you where all technology comes to a grinding halt.”

When he saw the extra bedroom, he just stopped in the doorway and shook his head.

“Good grief! Your server rack is next to a six-foot cat high-rise. It’s no wonder you’re having problems.”

“Not only is it on the rug of that tower thing,” he said in awe, “but I can see hair on the cables and in the ports, covering the fan exhaust, dangling from the server rack.” He sighed. “I’ll need to clean all of this up first. Did you change anything in here before it stopped working?”

“Not really,” she said. “I did add one more level to the cat tree and the VGF (Very Good Feline) likes to be able to see the doorway. So I had to turn it and rearrange some of the cordage to make that happen. But nothing significant.”

Adam scanned the room, appearing to pause momentarily at the metal container in the corner of the room which held a dozen or so of her canes. He didn’t comment, but asked her instead for a vacuum.

As she left Adam and his dark technology arts in the room with her upright, she said “Let me know if you need help turning it on.”

An hour later, Adam and Ashley were preparing to leave. Adam had done marvelous housecleaning and the electrons or photons or whatever were now flowing at high speed to the internet, to and from her hungry audience of fans. The problem had turned out being one of sheer simplicity.

“Thank you both so much for your excellent work. You’ve certainly made my wish come true.”

“Adam,” she added, “I’m sure your mother valued punctuality.”

Soon it was evening, and as he had answered her wish earlier, she was now making a wish of his come true, even if he wasn’t appreciating it at the particular moment.

It had taken him a long time to request the follow-up call, but here he was. He knew the rules, knew he could leave at any time, but she knew he wouldn’t.

A good while back, after many minutes of strong spanking on fabric, she’d lowered his clean, white briefs. Down they’d slid over the curve of his muscular, rounded bottom, and she was now slapping that bottom a darker shade of pink with her palm. She knew it hurt him and that he was desperately looking for diversions. Moving his hand back to cover his bottom hadn’t been successful. That never worked with her, but he had needed to try. Just as he had needed to joke about her name.

Over the years her hand had toughened with experience, and she now enjoyed the good solid connection of hand and bottom. It was a very direct connection between her and someone that craved that sharp pain and correction that she could bring. It felt like her hand was reaching past, through, that sore, trembling skin and grabbing hold of something deep in his soul.

His jokes about her Red Room had stopped awhile back. As had his wriggling around. It wouldn’t be long, she thought as she paddled Adam, before he started pleading with his momentary mother to stop the punishment (“Please Mom, please it hurts. Oh, it hurts so much Mommy.”) But his real mother wouldn’t have, and neither would she, herself.

“The Can-can is an old dance where they wore long skirts,” he started explaining, between deep breaths, “and they kicked their legs in the air…”

She interrupted, never stopping her vigorous spanking, “I know what the Can-can is – I’m surprised you do. You’ve obviously progressed nicely beyond The Twerk.”

She spoke in his ear. “I think you’re experiencing a different sort of dance now aren’t you, Adam?” She chuckled softly. “It’s called the Lap Dance, and many of the participants kick their legs in the air too!”

After she had punished him, after his eternity had ended, after she had soothed his bottom with a light massage, after she’d applied cooling lotion, she had waited for him to dress and given him a sincere hug. Below his soft and respectful gaze, his cheeks were still damp and red. She knew that the spanking had stirred memories, and that his bottom would be a sore reminder of this evening for several days.

Before turning, he looked at her and suggested with extreme politeness: “Really, you could avoid future outages if you plugged the power strip into the wall instead of into itself.”

“And if I did that,” she said, smiling, “how would you have your wishes granted in the future?”

“Thank you again so much,” he said as he went out the front door, rubbing his bottom gently. “Oh, Ms. Kan, can Ashley make a followup call some day soon?  She mentioned to me how she’d hate to see interruptions in your work.”