A Little Focus

“I think it will suit us quite well.” John suppressed a smile at the young woman’s obvious terror as her eyes darted from the crop to the slender strap and back. It surprised and amused him how clearly he could read her emotions, her hazel-green eyes deep and guileless, her light skin brightening on her cheeks and at her throat, visible even in the low light. After a most thorough but carefully delivered spanking the strap he held would be vicious indeed – had his intent been anything like she feared. Instead, shifting both instruments to one hand, he reached in his pocket and produced a handkerchief – uncommon these days but something he found to be uncommonly useful.

“I want you to focus,” John told her and once again she blushed guiltily. Clearly her focus had not been on improving her behavior though – while John had no intention of telling her – he wanted it right where it had been during her spanking. “I want you to watch yourself, but without a mirror. I’m going to blindfold you and I’ll fasten it with this. Inside your head I want you to see just what it is you are feeling – from all different perspectives and angles.” The mention of angles just seemed to make her blush more deeply and he continued. “Also, I’m going to hold your head up while I’m cropping you – just like you did with Midnight, didn’t you? And I don’t want you distracted by looking around.” John knew that if she was not watching him watching her it’d be easier to modulate her embarrassment with his voice alone, to segregate an understandable disapproval of her behavior from any perceived (and wholly erroneous) disapproval of her body. And all his persuasions were unnecessary, not only because she had no intention of opposing him in any case – he had, in fact, read her correctly and she was only too anxious to have her eyes covered. John watched her feelings about the strap turn from anxiety to relief.

Draping the white cloth over her nose and tucking the crop under one arm, John circled the long strap around her head, first flipping her ponytail up so that it was caught under it. This way he could hold her hair with two fingers each above and below the strap, controlling her even further. As she waited, kneeling bolt upright and still hugging her blouse closed, he fixed the buckle with a momentary pinch. “I want you down on your elbows,” he told her softly, “palms up, fingers touching.” It was a difficult position to rise out of. With the crop again in one hand, the other holding her head, he positioned her with “forward a little,” reminding her “I need to be able to reach your bottom, down here” as the crop showed her where “down here” was. “Good girl.”

Having posed her to suit him he threw his leg across her back, planting his foot inside her elbow, calf firm against her side as he bent to where he could keep his hand low and her head up, his wrist resting within the fashionable keyhole that opened below her collar in the back, between her shoulder- blades. His other calf he shifted over until it, too, pressed her firmly.

The crop landed lightly on the outside of her right hip and he jerked her head back just slightly, correcting her even if she had not shifted forward. A second smack followed, and a third. John kept them light, knowing that it was not a pleasant place to be struck – then landed one harder and, shifting his weight, exaggerating her movement as she jerked to her left. “Move your knees, if you would – I don’t want you toppling me” - not that she would have – “a little more, please, just to be safe.” While it may have kept him safe from being toppled, it certainly was not a safe posture for the woman under the crop and she wouldn’t need a mirror to recognize how exposed she was. The smacks moved around to her cheek and became more pronounced, eliciting short gasps and small sounds from his immobile mount. Some of the strokes were hard.

“Struck and powerless to do anything about it – a new sensation for you, I expect.” As John said this he leaned close to her ear, letting his tie hang over her shoulder and run along her neck, touching his forehead to her hair. “A frustrating feeling and” – as the smacks continued – “not one you can just choose to stop. Can you?” He was not sure she’d answer, that she was capable of speech, so far away seemed her focus. “See yourself. See the crop land,” a vision he facilitated with a sizzling smack, “see what you are feeling.”

“Yes sir,” was all she managed.

“Arch your back,” he demanded suddenly, and she complied instantly, but only for an instant. “No, down,” he chided. They both knew what he wanted though the crop still landed on her cheek, her right cheek – and so far only her right cheek. “You said I wouldn’t need a bit, that you’d comply.” This and an easing of the crop-strokes had her trying to obey, fighting her body’s protective instincts. John knew that she wanted to obey and would find it easier with a threat and an appeal to her honor.

If she was watching herself in her mind, by now she was seeing a growing red patch centered on one cheek, streaked upward from the stem of the crop. She would also be seeing her own core crudely displayed and rudely offered, more than exposed, itself exposing her extreme arousal. She might imagine – she might even be right – that John did not see this so directly, but she would be fooling herself to think he was unaware of it.

The room had warmed considerably, not only due to the diligent work of the heater – the participants were contributing equally if not more and John observed a drop of sweat as it found its way down her temple. A mixture of blows – high, low, dangerously close and far off-center – landed without a discernible pattern or rhythm, stoking her anticipation. And while John was in a position to be much more patient, soon enough a medium-sharp smack found home.

“Ow!” came the protest as she jerked, heaved, and cowered.

“And what was that?” John asked, letting her know that his face was still close to her ear.

“That… got me.” When she got no reply she had to go on. “There… you know…”

“Where?” John demanded.

“On my… in the… middle.”

“Ah. Arch your back,” he reminded her.

“Please, sir…”

“Are you going to behave for me?” he threatened.

“Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”

None of the intervening strokes had been hard though once she was back in position a few caused her to jump. John also started landing some on her previously unblemished left cheek. When a second hit its mark, he gave her a breath before responding “Arch…”

As she did so he instructed her in a firm, quiet voice. “Any embarrassment you may be feeling,” he started, as if the possibility was a remote one, “I want you to channel into your actions, not your punishment. Nothing that happens in here can compare to what you’ve been doing out there. Don’t be ashamed of yourself when you can’t help resisting me,” he said, never mentioning the most likely sources of her discomfiture, “it’s understandable that your body resists being chastised. I want you to make sure that your mind isn’t the same way. You need to accept this and resolve – not to avoid future discipline when you’ve earned it – but to avoid the behavior that requires it in the first place.”

Throughout this little lecture he continued to attack her soft cheeks, low, and under the spray that followed another incident occurred as he contrived to land a stroke on her bottom-bud. Again she protested, differently, this time with a hiss.

“And that? What was that?” he asked as if innocent of all knowledge.

“That landed on my… on the other place,” he was told.

“Oh, I see. We won’t concern ourselves with that.” He hadn’t even needed to remind her to present him with his target. As she arched and tremblingly offered her overheated sex to him he smacked it once again.

“That’s three – count that one, aloud,” he instructed.

“Three,” she pronounced obediently. “Please, sir – how many… how…”

“If I happened to catch you the very first and only time you’ve done this then you’re a very unfortunate young woman indeed, for I suspect this is merely the first time you’ve been caught. I think a few more are called for. If I’m being unfair, speak up and I’ll consider what you have to say – but I consider you to be getting off pretty lightly and I don’t want to be hearing you dismiss your misdeeds to save yourself a few moments’ discomfort.”

“Four… sir. I’m sorry, sir,” she apologized, unbidden.

The punishment could not have better fit the offense, as while she trembled and whined and pushed herself to meet his demands John was discovering by demonstration what her motivation might have been. To have this bucking, struggling, but ultimately compliant body vibrating beneath him was every bit as stimulating as she had found it earlier – so much so that he could well understand her desire for a second, or third, or habitual performance. Though he didn’t stop at five, or six, it was only because of her wide, broad-based position that she was able to remain upright, and only due to the grip of his calves, his strong fingers holding her head by the hair, and the power of his voice that she was able to remain between his legs. Whether she pressed her shoulders forward, arching herself further, or tried to curl up and found herself backed into the flashing crop, or even lowered herself, widening her stance and her display, the only thing that seemed to move her toward an end to all of this was her counting seven, eight, oh God! nine…

By now John’s strokes, of which there were dozens for each integer she pronounced, were barely hard enough to register except in the sorest – or most sensitive – locations. At this point he resumed putting a bit of fire to her cheeks, giving each spank a touch of bite, unless it was one of the few directed at her core, one of the ones to “count.” Here he merely tapped, signaled, suspecting just how sensitive she had become and not wanting to drive her past the peak of her arousal. Her swelling, parting, and lubricating were all plainly evident and John worried that anything more forceful would overwhelm her. Ten, she said, and her voice trembled, but not from pain – the relief of progress, perhaps? Or an insatiable desire for contact now that such a responsive state had been reached?

Nearing the end, he could not resist torturing her in her anticipation, thrashing her bottom harder, knowing that she could well take it and yet would feel it dearly later, stretching out the wait until the next critical, countable stroke. At length came eleven and then, when he was confident that he had landed every smack he’d wanted to, tended to every curve, removed even the smallest patches not only of white but pink and some of the lighter reds, twelve.

Releasing her head, hand on her shoulder, easing the grip of his legs, he let her rock and mewl and breathe, tracing with a fingertip on the dampness of the back of her neck, and between her shoulder-blades, stepping back and smoothing his hand down her ribs, his thumb on the small of her back, stepping his left leg between her feet, slowly sinking his knee between her own.