He let the belt fly a dozen times before he began to talk, but once the lecture started, she felt like he was stripping away pieces of her pride with every word. He talked about how it had felt, being with her again, how it brought back everything they’d done together. He talked about how he tried to support her in the days before the funeral, and how it felt to be pushed away and treated like some stranger on the street, even though he was grieving too.
She regretted that. Her father had treated Sam like a son, especially after Sam’s own father had died. She regretted a lot of what had passed between them—even before her father’s death. She just didn’t know how to explain to him that most of it had been reactions to what was going on inside her head, and very little of it had been a conscious choice to hurt him.
She was crying, loud wrenching sobs, by the time he told her how he felt each time he woke up to find her gone. “It’s not that you aren’t there, Charlie. It’swhyyou aren’t there. It’s wondering if you’ve changed your mindagainand are going to blamemefor something else. Do you know what it’s like to wake up with a smile for someone you love, only to have them treat you like you’ve done something wrong next time you see them?” he demanded.
It was probably rhetorical because the belt continued to lash her sore, red ass without pause, but she couldn’t help the babble of apologies that spilled out of her anyway. And shewassorry. She knew it wasn’t his fault, none of it. It was just so easy to lay the blame at his feet.
The belt couldn’t begin to match the aching pain in her heart as she was forced to listen to how much she’d hurt him. The worst part was that she couldn’t defend anything she’d done because she didn’t have any excuses that made sense even in her own head. She began to be grateful for the belt. She needed it to burn away all that pain and regret.
She was pretty sure there was no untouched skin left and that he was just layering the swatches of fire on top of each other by then. She’d given up trying not to clench around the ginger invader; it just wasn’t possible, and the burning inside had become a constant undercurrent of discomfort. It didn’t, quite, match the stinging welts the belt was leaving across her tender backside, but in a way it was worse.
It was so personal. It constantly drew her attention back to the physical, grounding her so there was no chance to slip away on the endorphin clouds. It seemed to be pulsing inside her hole and sending ripples of heat through her body. But her sopping pussy hadn’t gotten the memo that this was punishment and when those ripples hit her clit, they had a very different effect.
She wailed in pain, desperately apologizing and begging him to stop. The fact that she hated what was happening, but her body continued to react with arousal anyway was confusing and strange—but it didn’t make the punishment any easier to take. She’d thought it would, but no, if anything it made it worse.
And all that arousal would just turn into more punishment if she didn’t get to come. It made herwishshe could turn it all off, but it wasn’t an option.
And yet.
The contradiction of being miserable with pain and turned on at the same time seemed oddly fitting. It was just one more example of how conflicted she was. At least this time the conflict was physical. It was out there, easily seen.
There was too much happening, too many things pulling her attention in different directions. Sam was continuing to talk to her, and it was all important stuff she should be listening to, but then there was her skin, prickling and burning like she’d sat on a fire ant nest. The ginger added its throbbing inside of her ass and her clit pulsed merrily right along with it.
If she’d had a safeword she could have used it right there, not because she was anywhere near her limits physically, but because emotionally everything was hitting her at once. She collapsed, her body went limp across the stand and her hips were no longer wagging back and forth trying to evade the leather. Her howls tapered off to a waterfall of tears and quiet hitching sobs that shook her body.
Watching her body strain against the ropes, exposing tantalizing glimpses of her soaked pussy in her distress was hot as fuck, and his cock was so hard it was aching as it pressed against the front of his jeans. The urge to toss the belt aside and shove his way into her in one hard thrust was nearly overwhelming.
He struggled to ignore it because it was secondary to working out all the weeks of frustrations on her ass. His palm had itched to smack her backside every time she’d sassed him and now, he finally had the chance to teach her a lesson. Maybe he should have taught it to her before. Brats got punished; that’s why they were brats and maybe things would have gone better if he’d tugged her back in line whenever she started acting up.
It wasn’t about getting revenge. Yeah, he was enjoying a little payback for what she’d put him through, but it was more than that. There was a kind of emotional release that he hadn’t been expecting to come from this. The one being punished was supposed to get the catharsis, not the punisher, or so he’d thought.
But the simmering anger that had been lurking under the surface finally had an outlet. He could see now why she’d pushed so hard for punishment without a safeword. It felt morereal. He’d probably stop, at least to check in with her, if she actually tried to use one, but just the act of doing this without that magical word in play lent the scene a different level of intensity.
He hoped she was getting the same value out of the punishment. Now that he’d had a chance to blister her ass for all the stress she’d been causing him, he was feeling like this was something they both needed going forward. Talking about his emotions wasn’t easy for him, it never had been, but somehow in the context of punishing her he’d been able to let everything he was feeling pour out on her in the form of a lecture.
Every word was true. There were things he hadn’t even realized were there until he heard them coming out of his mouth, but watching her reaction to the tirade had been hard. She stopped complaining about how much it hurt, stopped begging him to go lighter, and instead she just seemed to crumble.
He wanted to stop when he heard the soft, broken little sobs, but—it wasn’t the pain doing this to her. He was very well attuned to her limits and this was nothing close to them. Her ass was covered in red stripes from the belt and the scraper he’d used before it, but he doubted there’d be any sign of the spanking in a few days.
It was what he’d said, and maybe a little bit of the pent-up grief she’d been stuffing down since her father’s death. Should he stop? He didn’t have a manual for dealing with this. And this wasn’t like their play scenes. This wasn’t bedroom D/s that turned into sex—that’s why he’d specifically chosen another place to do it.
He got it now though, all the pushing and asking for punishment. She needed him to be strong for her, so she could let go.
That meant all the burden was on him to know when it was enough and that was a lot of pressure. He took a deep breath, eyes narrowed, lips tight as he pushed his chaotic thoughts towards the right answer. He let the belt fall to the floor and then he moved around to crouch next to her.
“Charlie?” After a few seconds passed and she didn’t reply he repeated her name again. “Charlie? Come on darlin’; talk to me.”
She sniffled, a thick snotty sound of misery and he cursed the fact that he hadn’t thought to grab the tissues on the table. He didn’t want to leave her, even just to go that few feet, to grab them right now.
“Y-yes S-sir?” She sounded so woeful.
He hesitated, picking his words carefully, “You okay, little girl? You seemed like you were checking out there for a minute.”
She nodded slowly and he caught a flash of her tear-stained face and red eyes peeking out from under the mess of loose hair shielding her. “I…I’d really like the plug out. Please? Daddy?”
The request was so carefully polite that he could tell she was trying to keep any sign of attitude out of her voice and that was reassuring. He relaxed a little, lip twitching as he held back a grin. “I bet you would, darlin’, but it’s not coming out until I’m ready to replace it with something a lot bigger.”
There was another loud sniffle and he was willing to bet that under that hair her bottom lip was in a full-on pout.
