They played it out well into middle age, though they were no longer the limber, elegant couple who turned heads as they strolled the gravel paths of the little leafy square by their home. As she’d told him so long ago now, in a tipsy moment at a table overlooking Lake Como during their astonishingly randy honeymoon travels in Europe, she thought she might just like a little spanking now and then. Or not like, exactly, she’d added, fearing as she spoke that she’d already gone too far.
Go on, he’d said, his voice quiet, intent, a little hypnotic.
You see, John, the thing is, she’d told him, it would have to be good and hard, you see, or not at all. I mean…but she’d trailed off again.
Oh, but surely you don’t want to know, she’d blurted, clenching a napkin in her lap.
But it seemed he had wanted to know. How hard, then? he’d asked, quietly, calmly, soothingly. And she’d felt his fingers raising her chin, gently forcing her to look at him. She did, then. And he smiled just a little, sweetly, right there with her.
'Well, John…since you ask…if you truly want to know…I suppose by that I meant rather like papa did it…if I got too big for my britches and he took me to the barn for a leathering I'd not soon forget. Hard like that, when I'd been really bad. Like the real thing, do you know?'
John, she soon found, did know.
