The Aftermath

Photo-story from Janus 125 featuring Rebecca Coleman as Donella Lancing

It was the worst day of Donella Lancing’s life. She had hardy slept for the past two nights, and when she did so had woken weeping. It was her fault, hers alone. Working late she had left the office in a rush and neglected to apply the security lock and set the alarm. There was no way she could possibly blame anyone else.

He had seemed remarkably calm, but she knew him well enough to know that it had disturbed him far more than he cared to show. This small business he ran was his whole life. ‘And what do you think we should do about it?’ was all he had said in that firm, quiet voice. Most of the missing stock was insured; all the thieves had left behind were the desk and filing cabinet and the posters on the wall. Ironic posters, exhorting staff to ‘lock up or lose it’.

Well, Donella had lost it.

‘I don’t know, John,’ she’d answered, fidgeting and flushing like a girl in sore need of a reprimand. Except he didn’t reprimand her, merely looked bleakly beyond her as if still trying to come to terms with the catastrophic consequences of the robbery. She had wished he would rage and shout, tell her she was a slovenly, forgetful bitch. Or even fire her! But that would have only made things worse for him, because she knew his exacting little business inside out: they were a team.

‘I want you,’ she said after a terrible silence, ‘to punish me in any way you see fit.’ And she’d flushed again, feeling her pulse unaccountably quicken.

He had laughed at that, mirthlessly and bitterly. ‘Take it out on your hide, you mean? Ha, ha, very funny.’

Adrenaline had surged like an electric current passing through her. For several moments Donella had scarcely been able to breathe.

‘Okay,’ she’d said at last.

‘What?’

Again that gaspiness of breath as she fought to control what seemed like a cross between panic and elation.

‘I said… yes, if you want to. Take it out on my hide.’

And she’d seen it in his face — a flash of incredulous excitement, hastily modified to a frown. He’d licked dry lips, then said, ‘You’re joking, I assume? I assure you that if I took that course I certainly would not be lenient.’

Donella had stood up, watching him watch her vital slimness and fullness: lush curves, tumblety blonde hair, ripe lips, exquisitely pretty face.

‘Turn round,’ he’d said. When she did so, she could feel his gaze caressing her rear curves like warm phantom hands. ‘Tomorrow morning, at nine o’clock sharp, I want you — and this wicked bottom of yours — to report here, standing to attention and dressed in clothing appropriate to the punishment you will receive. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, John.’

‘Sir!’ he had snapped. His tone’s harshness thrilled her horribly.

‘Yes, sir…’

----//----

Now here she was. Nine o’clock had struck, then moved along. She had heard no sound of his arrival. She’d taken ages to decide what to wear. The thought that he would actually punish her physically had both frightened and excited her. Her mental picture of a repentant girl awaiting the stinging rebukes of her chastiser had been that of someone clad in gym kit of trainers, socks, top and tight briefs.

Carefully she had chosen these from the back of her cupboard, pensively cupping her buttocks with both hands after she had pulled up the briefs. The curves felt sleek and springy. Would he really have the gall and effrontery to strike them? Not John, surely.

Arriving at the office, she’d stripped down to this ‘punishment gear’ and stood, as bidden: legs correctly together, facing the desk, determined to at least show willing to fulfil her part of the bargain. But as more time passed, and John didn’t appear, Donella began to feel silly. Of course he wouldn’t dream of touching her. It was crazy to have imagined that he might!

She sensed, rather than heard, his arrival. He was standing behind her. No words were spoken, though she could hear him breathing. Slowly she turned her head to look over her shoulder. And gasped, turning fully. She knew what the implement in his hand was, though she’d never seen a real one before. It was three or four feet of springy, whippy wood with a curved handle.

A cane.

‘I’m going to punish you with this, Donella,’ he said. She noted that his voice didn’t sound as confident as it might.

No… please.

Suddenly this was real, and she was frightened. The fantasy situation which her mind had been able to cope with, and had even found stimulating, had been overwhelmed by stark actuality.

When he next spoke, his voice was stronger and more certain. ‘You will do exactly as I say, and don’t dare to challenge it. Is that clearly understood?’

The beautiful girl swallowed hard, licked her lips, shuffled feet.

‘Yes it is,’ she whispered.

‘Very well!’ This was a John she’d never known before. Donella wasn’t sure whether she liked it. Her mind seemed to float, freeing her from the irksome need of decision.

‘As you’re dressed for the gym, you can damn well do some exercises to warm you up before the main action begins.’ His voice rose. ‘Hands behind head, swaying from the waist — go!’

Donella found herself being put through her paces. Her body swayed and jerked as she responded to his curt commands, sinews straining, lungs panting, arms and knees pumping. It was not only tiring, it was humiliating, her initial urge to laugh was quickly replaced by a sort of panic, that she must do his bidding as efficiently as possible. And, as she strove and gasped her way through a variety of exercises, he made her feel worse by turning his back on her and opening the cabinet as if to casually consult a file.

‘Stop!’ he called, and Donella froze in mid-movement. There was an awful silence. ‘Turn and face the desk.’

Donella did so, glancing apprehensively towards him. But it was the cane she was staring at. It quivered in his hand like a live thing. It would hurt terribly.

‘Bend over against the desk and push your bottom out!’

With a shock, she felt his hand gripping her left buttock and squeezing, as if to test its resilience. She knew she should have recoiled, slapped him away. But she didn’t. The feeling was nice.

But then the niceness stopped. Now her pushed-out seat felt a different sensation as the thin, hard shaft of the cane tapped against it. Then he swung back and brought the implement smartly in.

CRACK.

The explosion of pain across her bottom made Donella shriek. A narrow line of fire burned through her sensitive flesh.

Whack.

Another followed, almost at once. She jumped, gasped, tried to take the pain into herself to get outside the burning hurt. She could hear him grunt with effort as his arm swung back again. The hiss of the wood as it travelled back to the mark made her cry out almost before it struck

Crackkk!

Donella ground her teeth together, wrenching her hips from side to side. This was far worse than she had imagined a physical punishment would be, yet she felt a desperate need to cope with the successive jolts of pain that flashed across the tightly-stretched seat of her pants.

John was striking with vigour, aiming the pliant shaft to strike firmly across Donella’s squirming buttocks, indenting the soft rounds of flesh beneath the taut fabric; and as the cane-strokes continued to fall, she swayed, and yelped, trampled her feet, groaned.

Whack. Whack. Whack.

John had stopped, stepped back. Surely he’d finished now! Donella’s bottom prickled and throbbed. She longed to rub it, but he stopped her.

‘Don’t you dare! Now it’s nicely warmed, Donella, we can get down to the real business. Take off your pants.’

She gaped round at him, eyes wet and lower lip quivering. ‘That’s enough now, John,’ she said hoarsely.

‘I’ll be the judge of that. Take them down!’

When she pushed the skimpy fabric down over the smouldering skin she felt almost grateful for the cool air that played on her suddenly naked cheeks. The man stared at the round, lush pillows of brazen bareness and gripped the cane in a hand that shook rather more than it ought to.

‘God,’ he murmured, ‘your arse is lovely. Present it properly to me. I want it to beg for the thrashing it deserves.’

For Donella, it was as if her bottom had suddenly developed a will of its own, pushing rudely back towards him as she bent her body more deeply across the desk.

‘Thrash it then, sir,’ she said huskily. ‘Yes, it needs it!’

With her opening caning over, Donella felt that her bottom had somehow gained more resistance; and that, bare as it was, it could take more than he had so far delivered.

John wasted no time in tapping the cheeky mounds, then swinging the cane in hard to sink snappily into the chubby rumps, already reddened, infusing them with another shock of pain. Then, methodically, he struck the hissing shaft vigorously across the divine divide, deepening the hue of each proffered moon to a livid glow.

Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!

Donella groaned and yelled as fresh infusions of naked pain flared across her unprotected rear. As the willowy shaft rose and fell, her hips gyrated and her feet stamped, while her back dipped gradually lower as she bent across the desk.

It gave him an idea. ‘Bend right down!’ he ordered. ‘Breasts flat on the desk and bottom up!’

His excitement communicated to her as she complied. While her hips rose and her back lowered in obeisance, he stood up on the table top, positioned himself directly above her yielding body and began to sweep the cane downwards to connect loudly and extremely painfully with each buttock in turn.

For Donella the change was extraordinary. With the implement now whistling down from above, it struck sharply at right angles to the other streaks of throbbing hurt, igniting fresh areas of bottom-flesh to searing sensation.

Whack! Whack! Whack! Whack! Whack!

As the cane did its work on her juddering haunches, Donella now experienced something new. Through the smarts and sears and shocks to her bottom blossomed a curious sense of joy, despite the pain, of strength giving way willingly, for the duration of her punishment, to surrender.

So she was hardly aware at first that he had stopped the caning. She lay quivering and gasping across the table, heard him climb down, then felt his hands, surprisingly gentle, ease her to her feet.

Donella stared. Those hands were pulling on a pair of surgical gloves. Why? Her brain seemed unable to function. She only knew that he was sitting on the table now and pulling her forward across his knees.

This was an intimacy she had never known with him. Held across his trousered thighs, a hand gripping her waist to steady her, she couldn’t resist jerking her hips in a rutting motion against him. Her facial cheeks flamed almost as much as her bottom-cheeks as she tried to still the lewd, convulsive movement, but she started to jerk more as he took hold of her red-hot buttocks in either hand and squeezed. Donella gasped as a nugget of ecstasy began to expand in her.

But it dissolved in a rush of pain as his palm smacked, full and hard, across both cheeks as he started to spank her, by no means gently and certainly not sexily. As each hefty slap succeeded the other the heat and hurt built unbearably in her bottom.

Smack-smack-smack-smack-smack!

There was no pleasure in this now, even if there ever had been. He wanted this to be a punishment, and it was! They had never so much as touched before, except in perfunctory greeting and here she was sprawled bare-bottomed across his lap like a naughty bawling girl dampening his trousers with her unexpected and highly embarrassing arousal, his hard palm slamming on and on, driving out the incipient thrillings and replacing them with pain, pain, pain.

‘No… no… no…’ Donella was mumbling, moaning, kicking, struggling, but as his hand spanked on and on across buttocks already tenderised by no-nonsense strokes of the cane.

Smack-smack-smack-smack-smack-smack!

She was sniffling, sobbing, crying out. She hated it, and yet a part of her soul found satisfaction that her unforgivable forgetfulness should have been dealt with in a way that so clearly satisfied him.

After six more spanks, three on each bottom-cheek and landing so loudly that the sound of it almost deafened her and the pain of it made her yell out hoarsely, he stopped.

Weeping, trembling, she rose to her feet on legs that threatened to give way, and rubbed at her blazing bottom. He steadied her, gazing into her face with surprising tenderness.

‘I’m sorry, John. I’m so, so sorry,’ Donella managed at last. He kissed her forehead, and took her face in his hands. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘You were very brave, darling. It’s all right now. And he smiled.