Marriage

I know the ritual of being punished by you off by heart. I knew it after the first time we enacted it. When you stood with me in the room and told me what to do to prepare myself for you. Draw the curtains, you said, turn on the bedside lamp. Talking me through every little thing that I must do.

I removed my clothes item by item until I was naked and unadorned. I bent over with my hands on the bed. You told me exactly what you needed of me. What was expected of me. I did it. And I remembered.

Now when you need to punish me you don’t have to give that same guidance over again. You don’t have to walk me through it step by step. It’s enough for you to tell me to go to the bedroom. To get ready for a spanking.

I don’t remember because you punish me often. You don’t. It is a mercifully rare thing between us. But five times in total now I have earned a punishment spanking, and each of those occasions is seared into my memory. That, in part, is the purpose, is it not? The memory should stick. It should stay with me and help me to be better.

So this time I go to the bedroom alone, ahead of you. I draw the curtains. I turn off the bedside lamp. And as I do I am already being punished. Just knowing that I have disappointed you, that I have made this necessary, that I am having to enact this ritual with you again because of the way I have behaved… that is punishment. To say nothing of what I know is coming.

I shed my skirt. Roll down and strip away my tights. Remove my blouse and the thin vest top underneath. I take out my earrings, and remove the bracelet from around my wrist. I must be naked for punishment spankings, but I always leave the bracelet until last. It is yours. Your gift to me. A simple leather circlet that is your symbol of ownership. I place it carefully on the bedside table, and then I am naked entirely.

It will be a few minutes before you arrive, but I get into position. Even though you cannot see me bent over and waiting, I feel as though you’ll know if I linger. If I wait until I hear you approaching the door of our bedroom before I bend over and take my place. So I put myself there now, at the foot of the bed, hands planted and feet shoulder-width apart. I wait.

The waiting, I sometimes think, is the most difficult part. When it is a maintenance spanking rather than a punishment I wait with excitement, my stomach fluttering giddily. The same kind of excitement I feel just before we make love, or when you kiss me on the lips. A maintenance spanking is similar to those things: it is joyful and shared – a way for you to use your hands or your belt to remind me of my submission to you, of my position as your wife. It is a kind thing. Sometimes it is even tender.

But with a punishment spanking I know you won’t be gentle. That makes the waiting terrible. There is nothing to do but stand there, braced and ready, reflecting on the things that I have done to let you down. I am alone with my sins. I am naked. Without the bracelet I hardly feel like yours, and that is a difficult thing to swallow.

Standing there I can feel myself sweating. My stomach roils. My legs tremble slightly and I am too, too aware of the carpet underneath the bare soles of my feet. I feel small and stripped and vulnerable, like I always do when I’ve done something wrong.

In this case it was to do with my food, again. I skipped lunch. I wasn’t hungry and I had chores to complete – I would eat later, before you got home. That was what I told myself, and I told myself it long enough for food to slip my mind altogether.

And that’s bad. It’s bad because it’s a Rule. One of the dozen Rules we agreed to not long after we married. They are simple enough: I must meditate each day, keep the house neat and tidy, look after myself and my body. They are rules designed to keep me in my place, healthy and obedient. It took a lot of talking to arrive at them, but when we finally did I couldn’t have felt more loved or more cared for.

I wonder how other couples manage without constraints. It must feel so directionless, I think, to have a relationship where neither person is the magnetic north of the other. Where neither sets rules nor obeys them. My friends sometimes talk about sharing burdens, having equal relationships. Equal. To me that feels worse than nothing.

You love me. I know that. I know it in my brain and I feel it in every atom of my body. You show that love by kissing me, holding me, providing for me. And, naturally, by punishing me when I break one of our Rules. I am, after all, yours to punish.

I adjust my stance a little, moving my feet fractionally further apart. I am determined not to move at all once you arrive in the bedroom and begin my punishment in earnest. I won’t move an inch, no matter how much it hurts, no matter if my legs start to cramp. It matters, I know, how I take my punishment. Will I kick and whine and protest, or will I take it stoically, humbly, my head lowered, fully aware that I deserve everything that comes to me?

There’s another reason to take it as gracefully as I can: doing so will mean that you have no reason to extend my punishment. It will show that I am contrite, and that I have learned my lesson. That I am ready to make amends, to take the pain you think I deserve.

I hear you on the stairs. Slow footsteps. Swallowing my nerves, I look straight down at the bed, at my hands braced against the wooden frame. Will you use your belt this time? Probably. When you asked me whether I had eaten lunch that day I hesitated for a moment, and stuttered over my reply. I was not honest – not as honest as I could have been at least. That in and of itself deserves the belt.

The door opens. I do not move. I am a statue, poised and waiting. In my head I can see how I must look to you: a slender, pale, small creature, braced against the bed, her bottom naked and bared. As vulnerable and submissive as I can make myself. Perfectly still. Waiting.

You stand at the door for a moment before entering, and shut it behind you when you do so. I try not to tremble. The soft click of the door latch feels like it is ingrained in me – a sound as intimately linked to punishment as the sound of my own flesh being whipped. You so rarely shut the door like that, so firm and final. When we make love you leave it ajar and the sounds of us echo through the house. Only when you punish me is it closed. I am trapped.

But it was my actions that brought me here. I chose this. It is dark and quiet in the bedroom. Again, it feels so much like the moments before we fold your bodies together and make love, but so different as well. I have to fight the urge to turn around and throw myself into your arms. I know what would happen if I did. You would catch me, hold me for a moment, then gently but firmly guide me right back to the bed.

I know better than to plead with you over punishments. I know better than to question your judgement. I don’t want to be one who questions like that.

The next thing I’m expecting to hear is the whisk of your belt through the hoops of your jeans, but instead I hear your footsteps as you cross the floor to the closet. You take something from within.

“Tell me again what you did wrong,” you say, your voice low and level. Calmer by far than I feel.

“I broke one of our Rules,” I say. “I… I skipped lunch.”

“And?”

I feel a twisting, shameful sensation in the pit of my stomach. You shouldn’t have to prompt me like that. I should give everything without it being demanded of me. “And I didn’t tell you about it. Not straight away. I should have owned up. But… but I tried to hide it.”

You are beside me now. You place a hand, very lightly, on the small of my back. I don’t move. I won’t move until I am told that I may do so. But I feel your hand and it makes me ache. Makes me want, more than ever, to feel your arms around me. To feel you accepting my body against yours, welcoming it. Embracing me.

“Very good,” you say. “And you know that as a result of those actions you’re going to have to take a spanking.”

“Yes,” I say. “Please.”

You sigh. In that sigh I can hear how much you would rather be cuddling with me on the bed, eating dinner with me, giving me a light and easy maintenance spanking. Anything other than this. The disappointment in that breath almost breaks my heart. “I thought about using my belt for this,” you say. “But I think this lesson needs something a little harder. We’re going to be using something new.”

I feel a shivery sensation pass over my body. Something new. I hope fervently that it’s not a cane. We’ve discussed the possibility of caning me now and again, and every time we did we concluded that it was possible, but only for the most serious of infractions. Surely this doesn’t merit that…

Your hand disappears from the small of my back. Something cold and flat and hard presses against my bare backside. It is hard and square. Wooden. A paddle, I realise, and a heavy one at that.

“Stay still,” you say. “Don’t move until I tell you your punishment is done. Don’t speak. When I do tell you that we’re finished the first thing you must do is thank me for disciplining you.”

I know this. I know these stipulations every bit as well as I know the Rules. You don’t have to remind me, but you are being kind. Making sure I don’t forget. “Yes,” I say. “I will. Thank you.”

And then the waiting is almost over. Just the last few moments as you draw back the paddle, as I wait for the first stroke, as I wait to see how bad this will be. I feel my muscles wanting to tense all through my body. My mind reels. My stomach contracts around a heavy, heady ball of guilt. Soon enough that last sensation at least will be washed away. I just need to take what I deserve before I can be free of it.

The first stroke comes. And it is hard. So hard it almost makes my knees give way. Almost makes me flop, howling, against the bed. But I brace myself and plant my feet. The paddle is heavier than either your belt or your hand, the thick width of it slamming into me with a loud, hard thud. The pain of it goes deeper that I was expecting. It makes me feel shaky inside.

Your hand is loving. Firm but intimate. The belt is sharp and biting, but brief. This, on the other hand, feels like I’m being beaten. It feels hard. Inarguably violent.

The second stroke. I always think it will get easier as the punishment goes on and it never does. It gets harder. Pain on top of pain – and, worse still, the knowledge that it is you doing this to me. My husband. The one I am closest to in the world. It is the knowledge that you have to do this to me because my behaviour has fallen short of the standards you expect. Because I have let you down.

Third stroke. The force of it rocks my whole body forwards, and I have to brace my arms to keep from sprawling on the bed. A thin whine leaves my mouth, but I clamp my lips together. Not a sound. It is difficult, in the brief moment before the next stroke, not to cringe. Not to dip my hips forwards, away from the source of the pain. I have to fight every natural instinct in my body to manage it.

Fourth stroke. It is so hard to stay still. My whole body is arch of tension now, my face screwed up, my eyes tight shut. I am biting my lip so hard I can taste blood already. Anything rather than misbehave further. Anything rather than make a noise.

Fifth stroke. Another whimper, despite my very best efforts. This is a punishment more severe than any I’ve taken before, and I am so intensely shamed by it. I feel tiny. Pathetic. Deserving of every moment I spend here.

Sixth stroke. I bite down even harder on my lip. Pain there isn’t a distraction from the pain you are giving me. Not a bit of it.

Seventh stroke. It is a hard punishment, but I need that. Every stroke is wiping away my transgression, allowing me to be forgiven. Part of me, deep, deep down, wills you to beat me harder. To use all your strength and exhaust yourself so that I will know I have taken the most that I can possibly take.

I want the bruises to last, both for myself and for you. The lingering pain will keep me on track for weeks to come. And you will be able to see the evidence of your ownership on me every time I’m naked in front of you.

These thoughts flit through my brain, and I try to seize them. Hold onto them, comforting as they are. But they’re driven out by the immediacy of the pain. They don’t make it any easier to take in the moment that it’s happening.

Eighth stroke. Ninth stroke.

The tears come on the tenth. I am holding myself so tense and so rigid, desperately trying not to move, trying not to scream. The sobs stay in the pit of my stomach, but I can’t do anything to stop the tears. They squeeze from my closed eyes and I feel them trickle down my cheeks, drip from my face to the bed.

This is part of the punishment, I know. The humiliation of my own tears. Eleventh stroke. Or was that the twelfth? I’ve lost count. I’m losing myself. Nothing left except a mess of guilt and pain, pain and guilt, the one a payment for the other. I am penitent in this moment in a way that I never possibly could be without the punishment, without you spanking me.

But just because I am penitent now, doesn’t mean the punishment is over. Doesn’t mean you’re done. You decide when you are done. You know what is enough for me. What will make the lesson stick.

And so it goes on. One moment I feel almost numb to the pain, and the next – when the paddle lands and the shockwave of it runs through me and the pain in my bottom redoubles, fresh – I feel like I’m about to collapse. If only I can hold on just a little bit longer. Take one more stroke, for you, for our marriage, for both of us.

One more stroke, I tell myself. I tell myself that a dozen times. I can’t hold back the sobs anymore. I’m weeping, and I can hear myself whining – a thin, steady, plaintive sound. There is more of a begging tone to it than I could ever put into words. I think of what I did. I think of how bruised my bottom will be tomorrow. I think of you.

In the end, that’s what I fix on. You. The image of you standing, bare-chested in front of me. The feel of you kissing me on the lips. The way you always hold the point of my chin as you do so, guiding me. The way you put your hands on my body. You love me, and that is what makes you able to punish me like this. That is why it matters.

I am shaking all over by the time it finishes. Shaking so badly that when you put the paddle down on the bed and take me in your arms and turn me around to face you I almost collapse. You lower me gently to the floor. You come down with me, straddling me on your hands and knees, your face an inch from mine. I look up at you.

“I’m sorry,” I babble. “And thank you, thank you for disciplining me, thank you so much. I’m sorry I was bad, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. You were right to discipline me and thank you…”

Slowly, carefully, you gather me in your arms. You lift me easily, up and onto the bed, where you lay me down so gently that it’s hard to remember you were beating me just a minute ago. You kiss me – kiss my face wet with tears, and I clutch you, and all the guilt is gone. All the stress is gone. The knot in my stomach has unclenched and I’ve never felt cleaner or lighter or better or more free than I do in this moment.

“Thank you,” I mumble. I cannot stop saying it. “Thank you, thank you. I love you. Thank you.”

*

This story is an extract from my collection Spanking Variations. If you want to read seven more stories on a similar theme, maybe buy a copy? It costs about the same as a cup of coffee, and I’m willing to bet it’ll last somewhat longer than one.