Asuka, unusually, had beaten him home.

He opened the door to find her naked, and bowing, bent at the waist. Her mouth was pursed and partly open, in the same offer that Yua had made. He stepped inside. She undid his pants and took his cock in her mouth, sucking until he was hard.

He held her head tight to him, and pumped into her mouth. He had been holding back all day, thanks to Yua’s temptations. But at last he pushed her head away. He didn’t want to come in her mouth.   

She said, “Am I a bad girl, Seamus?”

“No, you’re the best of all possible girls. Little tanshi. Angel.”

She smiled, but she said, “I want to be your bad girl again. Do what you did before. Everything.”

So Seamus led her, her hand in his, into the bedroom, and she knelt on all fours on the bed while he caned her, two dozen strokes, but not as hard as the first night he’d punished her. Still, she cried out and wriggled with every stroke, for his benefit. She enjoyed putting on a show. 

Asuka was entranced, expecting more, but he climbed onto the bed, placed his knees between hers.

He used proper lubrication, recently purchased, to ease his path before he condommed up and entered her tight little hole.

Their fuck was rougher and faster than their first time, and Seamus managed to stay with her until she’d come repeatedly, and slumped flat onto the bed, exhausted. He fell beside her, sweating and cockproud.

When they’d recovered, Asuka said, in English, that a woman’s work is never done.

She padded, naked, to the kitchen. She cooked for him again. Until then it had mostly been Seamus who made meals, but she seemed to have decided it was her role, since her surrender. Or conquest, whichever it truly was.  It was as if she cooked as a kind of erotic theatre. She was role-playing, being a submissive Japanese wife. She could play with that role, because it was one thing she never would be.

When she’d made something with noodles, prawns and mushrooms, she brought out only one plate, for him, and slipped her robe off. Naked, she offered him morsels with her chopsticks, occasionally taking food for herself. Seamus humored her for a while, but he felt too much like a baby bird being fed by its mother, and he told her to sit beside him and eat. She did. Heartily.

Afterwards they lay on the couch together, both naked, Seamus lying on his back and Asuka snuggled in his arms. Eventually she said, “You caned Yua today.”

Seamus realized Yua could feel his erection, was pressed against it. Damn, he thought, meaning that several things, some of them contradictory, were regrettable. He put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her back, until the contact was gone and he could think again.

“Yes, you’re a very pretty girl, Yua. You know it, a little too well, I think. And I know it too. But I’m …” He tried to remember the Japanese word. “Taken. You know that. But I’m going to pay attention to you and your schoolwork from now on. You’re going to work hard for me, Yua, or I’ll punish you so hard that you really do cry. Yes?”

“Hai, sensei.” The same as Asuka called him, since he’d started to discipline her. He wondered if Asuka and Yua had talked. They were friends.

By a superhuman effort he managed not to smack her bottom with his hand, before he sent her skipping to her next class.

After school he brought Amida back his cane. Amida had offered him red wine while Seamus told the story of Yua’s punishment, with some details missing. But Amida said, “Did she take you in her mouth?”

“No.”

“Oh! You fucked her?”

“Actually no. I’m trying to stay, well, impersonal.”

“Then you’re going to have more trouble with that girl. That’s a certainty. You must be the only one of the young male teachers she hasn’t fucked yet.” Amida grinned. “Yes, that means I’ve had the pleasure. It is a pleasure; Yua’s a very luscious fuck. And she knows her way around a cock. It’s as if she has her own kind of sexual magic. But believe me, Seamus, if she wants you, she’s not going to give up.”

“Well, she’s sexy, no question. In body and mind. But I think I’m going to hold out.”

“Ah. There’s Asuka. She’s even more beautiful. But she’d let you, you know. You’re a man, and women know that men have their needs.”

Seamus frowned at that, but said something man-of-the-worldish, and they parted.

Seamus found Yua waiting for him in the storeroom. She was on her knees, her mouth prettily pursed, slightly open. She’d lowered her panties, without being ordered, so they gathered just below her bottom.

Her pussy, just above the panties, was prettily-furred, and trimmed. She was used to showing it off, and expected admiration.

She knows how charming she looks, he thought. It was not an offer to be refused lightly. Obviously it had worked for at least some of the other male teachers. He wondered how she distracted the women.

“No, Yua. Get up on your feet. Take your panties down to your knees, and bend over.”  She obeyed, the skirt rising as she bent, to show the three stripes he’d already given her.

He admired those three stripes, and the prettiness of her bottom and thighs in that position. She looked beautifully submissive. She really was very fuckable, thought Seamus, and shook his head: that was not a thought to have. She was a little plumper than the slender Asuka, though in a very desirable, delicious way. But he only said, “And grab your ankles. Don’t let go.”

“Hai, O’Grady-sama.”

He smiled. She’d promoted him to the highest title of respect. But he tapped the cane against her bare bottom, and then he swung it, medium hard. She knew there was no point in theatrics, so she kept still, and silent, while a fourth stripe joined the three he’d already delivered, blooming red on her bare skin.

“Aaah. Ah. Thank you, O’Grady-sama.” He hadn’t asked her to thank him. Obviously she was no stranger to discipline. He considered asking her how he compared to the other teachers, men and women, who had already had the trouble, or pleasure, of having to discipline her.

How many people on the staff had made her adopt this position, and used a cane or strap across that immensely feminine and charming flesh? He wondered, but he simply lifted the cane and swung again, the stroke horizontal and harder than the others.

That hurt her, but his only clue that she had been stung was the brief pause before she took another breath. Her wailing, weeping performance in front of the class had been exactly that: theatre.

He gave her the sixth stroke, making it lower on her thighs so that the stripe could sometimes be visible when she walked. If she wanted it to be.He expected that she’d walk in a way that swung her skirt to reveal that stripe. She was not a feminist, he thought, but she knew how to do and to get what she wanted.

He put the cane on a filing cabinet. “Yua, you’re done. Do your homework, girl, or you’ll be here again. I won’t go so easily on you, a second time. You can get up now, and go to your next class. Don’t forget to tell your teacher exactly why you were late.”

Yua stood, and rubbed her bottom with her hands. Then, before he had a chance to move, she embraced him and made to kiss him. He turned his face away, and was kissed on his cheek. But her breasts and thighs pressed against him, and her belly was touching the hardness of his cock. He couldn’t help bringing his hands down to hold her bottom, still bare and heated from her caning. He ran his fingers over her new set of stripes. They’d raised themselves into welts. She was so soft…

Seamus faced his class again. No one met his eyes. He spoke quietly for the rest of the class, so they had to be silent, and there was no further mention of disciplinary matters except for occasional sniffs from Yua, in the corner, hands on head, her bottom no doubt sore after her caning.

All was peace until the whistle sounded and the class filed out, some of them glancing at Yua, still standing with her nose to the wall. The skirt covered the three bright stripes that had to be there, where he’d caned her.

When the room was empty, Seamus said, “Yua.”

She walked towards him in little steps, head down. She stood by his desk, silent. Seamus remembered something that his friend and fellow teacher Amida had told him about punishing students in private. Most of the girls would lift their skirts and take down their panties, if ordered. Seamus expected she’d be very cooperative. Still, that was probably too much, for now.

On the other hand, he did think he’d let Yua off too lightly. So he said, “I expect you to do last week’s homework and next week’s, and to give them to me at the start of class next week. Is that understood?”

“Yes, O’Grady-sensei.”

“You know what to expect if that work is less than excellent. I know very well that you aren’t stupid. Even if your excuses have been stupid. So you’re going to stop pretending to be a dummy, and give me your best effort from now on. Is that understood too?”

She bobbed down a little, twisting the bottom of her skirt. It looked like it might be anguish, but it also showed him more of the tops of her thighs. “Of course, O’Grady-sensei. I’m so sorry.”

But when she smiled at him then, it came too easily and too cheerfully, and Seamus decided. The decision was not in her favor. “Good. Now go into the storeroom, Yua, and wait for me. I am not finished with you.”

She lost her smile immediately. But she turned and obeyed. Seamus let a few minutes pass before he followed her, wondering about what she was up to. He was going to give her more strokes of the cane, of course.

She deserved them, so it was, arguably, his duty. He wasn’t going to do anything sexual with her.

Or not directly sexual; she was a very attractive woman and he already had an erection. He could feel the press of his own clothes against his cock, like sweet pain. There was no doubt that he’d be even more aroused when he caned her, and something about her performance after the three strokes he’d already given her suggested that she might be too.

But she’d gone out of her way to deserve her extra stripes, in a school in which corporal punishment was common. She must have known what she was doing. His abstention from school custom, in relation to corporal punishment, had only stood out, so far. It made him weird, not admirable.

He suspected all of his classes would do better work in the coming weeks if he gave Yua a proper tale of woe to tell and some painful-looking marks to show the other girls. Besides, he remembered, he’d borrowed his cane from Amida, and he’d promised to tell him how he’d used it. He hadn’t wanted that story to be about Asuka. So it would be about Yua.

He picked up the cane and followed Yua into the storeroom.

But the next day one of his students, a girl called Yua, had again failed to do her homework. She stood beside her desk to tell him that she’d made a parcel of it, and on the bus one man had bumped her and when she dropped her homework another man, a black man, had stolen it and run from the bus. She was a pretty girl, a little older than Asuka, maybe nineteen, and she wasn’t stupid. But she’d clearly decided she could coast through school, and that Seamus was the teacher most likely to accept no work at all.

Seamus looked at her. It was known that he didn’t cane his students. He told her to come to the front of the class, carrying her chair. Yua did so, suspicious but not too alarmed. She didn’t expect him to punish her.

But he said, “Yua, I’ve had enough stupid excuses from you.” He paused, and spoke the truth. “It’s not just that you’re lazy and not doing your work. It’s that your excuses are so stupid. It’s insulting.”

He took out Mr Amida’s cane, and her gasp was lost in a collective in-take of breath from the entire class. She said, “Oh.” Then, when she’d recovered from her surprise she put her hands together and crouched in front of him. “Sir. O’Grady-Sensei! I’m so sorry. I’ll do extra work. Please don’t punish me!”

He considered asking her to say that in English, but he knew she couldn’t, simple though it was. “Yua, turn your chair so the back faces the class. Then bend over the back, head right down. Put your hands on the further edge of the seat, and don’t move until I say you can.”

She snuffled, tears already flowing, and obeyed. Yua was a woman, not a girl, and if Seamus had stopped to admire her, he’d have found her an attractive sight displayed in that position.

But he faced the class instead, and held up the cane.

“Many of you expected that I wouldn’t need to use this. I thought so too. But it’s in use, in my classes, from now on. For that you can blame this girl.”

He lined up Mr Amida’s cane on the lower slopes of Yua’s uniform, trying not to admire her soft, bare thighs, and delivered a stroke across her bottom, close to the most rounded area. Just that single evening with Asuka had improved his aim. Yua yelped, but held her position. He was caning over her skirt, so he’d have to imagine the stripe forming.

Seamus made the next stroke harder, and Yua began to wail, her face a mask of sorrow. Seamus glared at the class then. If she was going to be theatrical, then so would he be. They were utterly silent, watching Yua intently. No one seemed to feel much sympathy. She really should have come up with better excuses.

He gave the girl one more stroke, this one just below the uniform hem, on pantied, rounded skin, just above her thighs. There was a murmur from the class. They could see that stripe rising and reddening as they watched. It obviously hurt Yua, but otherwise it made very little difference to her. She was already wailing, and she had nothing more to give.

Seamus reached for the girl’s ear and pulled her about halfway upright. He snapped, “Be quiet now, Yua, or I’ll give you the same again.” Her wails stopped as if she’d turned off a tap. When she stood upright the three stripes disappeared. He considered making her raise the skirt, but decided against it.This wasn’t going to turn into something sexual. He hoped.

“Yua, you’re a silly girl. You’re to go and stand in the corner there. Nose to the corner, hands on head for the rest of this lesson. When class is dismissed, you can come and tell me you’re sorry.”

She looked at him, hands on head, for one last time before facing the wall. She was smiling. As if she’d done something clever. As if triumphantly. Then her mouth pursed into a kiss, and Seamus understood that he was wrong. This was about sex. Very much so.