Chloe bit her lip. “Yes, sir.” Chloe didn’t bite her lip when she was nervous. This was acting. I wondered how I could be sure that she was enjoying this. Was she wet under that little skirt?

It occurred to me, at last, that she could never have worn her skirt like that to her expensive school. It was far too short. She must have worked – when? – to take the hem up to its current, absurdly sexy, height. Still, however much she’d prepared for this, she might have changed her mind now that it was happening. I realised that I didn’t have to wonder about this. Mr Mortimer had the power to find out.

He said, “Take down your panties.”

“Sir? I thought you were going to strap my hands.”

“I’ll strap your hands and your legs if you don’t do as you’re told, girl.”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.” Chloe reached under her skirt and tugged the panties halfway down her thighs, taking care not to lift the hem more than necessary for the purpose.

She put her hands back out.

She put her hands out, palms up. They shook. I was shaky too. It occurred to me that Mr Mortimer hadn’t given a direct order. I’d softened it to a suggestion, so that if Chloe complied it was through choice, not obedience. Avoiding giving orders was part of the sexual politics I’d worked out, to be a dom and a pro-feminist guy.

But this was only a game; none of it was real. So they wouldn’t be real orders. And Chloe had initiated the game anyway. I decided to think about it later and get out of Mr Mortimer’s way.

He said, “Good girl. See, you can be a good girl.” Chloe smiled. I remembered that six weeks ago she’d asked me if she was my good girl. It had been a joke and not a joke. 

Mr Mortimer said, “I’m going to give you the strap, Miss Sendak. Keep your hands out straight.” Now it was an order, but Chloe already had her hands out. She couldn’t enact her obedience. I remembered something else from the texts.

Mr Mortimer tried again. “And thank me for your lesson, Miss Sendak, each time I strap you. Say, ‘One, thank you, sir, Two, thank you, sir’. And so on. Got that?”

“All right, Miss Sendak, you’ve asked for a very severe punishment, and now you’re going to get it.”

Mr Mortimer considered possibilities. The uniform would come off soon, but I liked its mixture of innocence and depravity, and I knew that Chloe had gone to a lot of trouble to set this up. It could stay on for now. I let the strap thwack onto my palm again, looking into her eyes. “What happens to naughty, cheeky girls?”

“It’s sweets, isn’t it, sir?” (Then we can do a Curly-Wurly joke.)

“They get given sweets and taken to the movies, sir?” Sir. I’d never been called sir before. It sounded sweet from her mouth, and satisfying. Yes. I would be sir.

“You will be taken, girl. But not to the movies. And not yet.” That was good for impromptu, I thought. I was starting to get the hang of being Mr Mortimer. “I want you to hold out your hands, Miss Sendak. If you could put both your hands together, palms upward?”

See? I was terrible at giving orders. But I swung the strap onto Chloe’s bed. I knew how to do that. It really was loud, and it made an impressive dent in her bedclothes where it had landed.

Chloe stood and faced me, still with her hands on her head. I wanted to step out of role to check that she was all right, that her consent was real, to reassure her. But that would only be about reassuring me. Chloe had shown me what she wanted, she’d taken a brave risk, relying on my response, and so I swallowed my doubts and tried to be worthy of her.

Yeah, I felt ridiculous. It was like I was channelling this. (I think this is a British music-hall comedian called Jimmy Edwards, by the way.)

Mr Mortimer the strict teacher might be ludicrous, but I could be him, and he could do this. He said, “Well, Miss Sendak, Miss – what the hell was her name? – Laffers or something says that you have been a Very Naughty Girl.”

“Miss Laforge is silly.”

Mr Mortimer also felt slightly silly, but he did have an erection.

He realised that he did have a script for this game. There were any number of literary sources. He said, “I think you’ll find, young lady, that you’ll think twice before you say that again.”

“Hah.” Chloe put her tongue out.

If I were not already in love with her, I’d have fallen at that moment. I wanted to multiply into many men, like Krishna with the Gopi girls, to fuck her in every way simultaneously. I wanted to whip her mercilessly and caress her gently. I wanted us to dissolve in mist and merge. She was my fellow pervert, she was brave, beautiful, clever and generous.

And, of course, she was as cute as a baby panda, if one were to put its hands on its head and poke its tongue out.  

I opened Chloe’s desk drawer. There I found a long and heavy leather strap, three inches wide and nearly five feet long. There was a buckle at one end, but it was too big to have been a belt. Chloe later told me it had been part of an old suitcase.

The drawer also contained a wooden hairbrush and a heavy wooden ruler, and a jar of something that said on the lid that it was Dubbin. I assumed Dubbin must be lubricant, Chloe for the buggering of. Ignorant sod that I was.

Chloe had collected these items from her parent’s home, along with her old school uniform. She’d worn that uniform in earnest just five years earlier. Somehow, in the intervening time, it had turned into a sexual costume. It was a self-mocking costume, like a naughty nurse outfit or a French maid’s costume. But once all the layers of irony had been duly acknowledged, she still looked sexy.  

I picked up the belt. I’d only hand spanked Chloe, apart from a couple of occasions I’d used the back of her hairbrush. A strap seemed much more serious.

I folded it and hit my palm experimentally. It gave a slow and heavy impact, more of a thud than a sting. And a satisfying clap.

Chloe winced. I supposed she must have already tested the leather on her leg, to see how it would feel.

I felt, again, that familiar rush of power and sexual energy. “All right, girl.” I coughed. “All right, girl. Stand up.”

I took this in, astonished, and Chloe met my gaze with embarrassment that was no doubt genuine, though it suited the role she was playing. I knew what role-playing was, but I wasn’t sure I wanted it. We had serious things to talk about, hadn’t we?

Anyway, the closest I’d come to role-playing was as Ostler (one line) in a school production of Henry IV Part I. I was nobody’s actor. And the note was to Mr Mortimer, who seemed a very authoritarian sort of fellow. I wasn’t sure I could do him. I wasn’t authoritarian, back then. I might provide pain, for sexual purposes, but I didn’t give orders.

Where did all this come from? I wondered what would happen if I just said, “Anyway Chloe, so how was your day?” I laughed, briefly, at that thought. Chloe’s face fell.

Not quite like this, but the same general effect.

Christ. I lent down and kissed her forehead and whispered, “No, darling, you’re … I wasn’t laughing at you. Sorry. You’re fine.”

Straightening, I said, “So, Miss Sendak, it seems you’ve been a naughty girl.” I sounded nervous. I might be a fearsome disciplinarian, but I didn’t seem to have the voice for it yet.

Chloe said, “Miss Laforge is mean, and I bet you’re mean too. And I’m not sorry, and I’m not scared of the strap, anyway.”

“Strap?” I forgot to be Mr Mortimer. “What strap?”

“It’s in the drawer.” 

I was talking about teacher/schoolgirl stories and roleplays. I mentioned that I’d learned how to go deeper and darker, as a dom, than I’d ever been before, by playing that game. It’s a silly scenario, but it did turn out to have more power than I expected.

Here’s the story: (an excerpt from a book I’m trying to sell, as it happens):

 Chloe’s game 1

The message was from Chloe, inviting me to visit. It was odd she hadn’t called my mobile. I supposed she’d wanted to leave a message without talking to me. There was something odd in her tone. She sounded very earnest. She didn’t answer, on either phone, when I called her back.

 So I drove round and warily walked the path to her room. Chloe must have heard my approach, because the door was open for me, despite the cold. She sat, an extraordinary sight, on a wooden chair she must have borrowed from the elderly couple she was renting from.

She wore a white shirt, top buttons undone, and a tie with bottle green and emerald green stripes. The blazer was green with a shield and a Latin motto; hardship led, as it so often does, to the stars. The skirt was bottle green, pleated, and tiny. I stared stupidly at her.

Chloe said nothing, but passed me an envelope she’d been holding in both hands.

I took it, and she placed her hands on her head, fingers interlaced.

The envelope contained a folded note in Courier font:

Dear Mr Mortimer,

Chloe Sendak, the bearer of this note, has been late for school three times this week despite repeated warnings. She had been caught vandalising school property and stealing from other girls. Worse, she has made up an extremely improper poem about poor “Chalky” Carstairs. I have spoken to Chloe about her misconduct but she responded quite insolently. I have referred her to you because of your reputation for strictness. This girl requires firm corporal punishment on the bare buttocks, though you have my consent to remove her clothing altogether. Please punish Chloe extremely severely, and then keep her in overnight.

Yours faithfully, 

Rowena Laforge

Form teacher, Upper Sixth Girls

Rowena Laforge didn’t exist, as far as I knew, but she’d signed her name in spidery green ink.