“Good. So when I spank you, from now on, Ana, you should remember to tell yourself that it’s your fault. You didn’t have to do whatever earned you that spanking. You chose your behaviour, and so you chose to get spanked.” 

“Yes.” She made the word into two syllables, and packed an impressive amount of sarcasm into those syllables. So she felt my hand lift from her ass. “No! Please!”

This time she got sixteen hard spanks on her lower buttocks. She was very energetic while I spanked her, arms flailing, ass bouncing and legs kicking. And she was vocal: “Ow! Ow! No! Ow! Shit! Ouch! Owowow!” And so on. She was having a wonderful time.  

I stopped and waited, hand still poised, wondering if she was going to say something like, “Is that all you’ve got?” or, “Huh! Didn’t even hurt!” Somehow that seemed likely to be her style.

But for the moment she was subdued. Her lower bottom glowed a beautiful dark pink, and was deliciously warm when I lowered my hand (Ana shivered at that movement), and rubbed her gently.

“Good. You don’t get to be a brat any more, Ana. What happens to brats?”

Her voice was tiny. “Brats. Get. Spanked?” The last word was pronounced so quietly and so high in pitch that I didn’t actually hear it, though I knew what it was. 

I got an “ouch” from Ana with the fifth smack, and after that she had something to say about every spank. She got two more on her left side, because I didn’t want her to think that spankings came in multiples of six. That would make them predictable, to some extent. Then I gave her eight smacks, just as hard, on the right side. Ana writhed spectacularly, like a fish on a boatdeck. She said, “ow”, and “ouch” pronounced as written, as the smacks landed. People don’t say things like “ouch” if they are actually hurting.

I stopped, still holding her in place. Her legs had splayed a little further open, and her cunt was swollen and more than a little wet. “Would you like your cunt stroked some more, Ana?”

“Please.” Then her voice turned sulky. “You hurt me.” 

“You deserved it. Now, if you listen to me you’ll get my hand back. Back stroking your cunt, I mean. Are you listening?”

“Yes!” The impatience in her voice told me that she hadn’t been hurt at all. She was still being a brat.

I smacked her again, on the undercurve of her buttocks, just above her thighs. “Listen better. Now. If I tell you to do something, you do it straight away. If you don’t, or you give me cheek, or you do it half-assed, I’ll give you a sore backside. It’s completely simple. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” That sounded almost sincere.  

Ana didn’t move.The order I’d given her was too embarrassing for her. There’s a difference between opening your thighs for a man, and obeying him when he tells you to spread your legs. She wasn’t sure if she would give me what I wanted. I sighed. “Ana, when I give you an order, I expect you to do as you’re told. Quickly. Didn’t you understand that?”

Ana arched her ass up a little further. She was sure that would please me.She could feel my cock, hard, against her hip. Then, slowly, her thighs parted. It took her an effort of will, and her body felt very stiff.

I slipped my hand between her thighs and stroked her lightly, fingertips running up and down sensitive and damp skin, outside her lips, as if I was slowly strumming a washboard. I felt her relax again. Over my knee was a good place to be. “Ana, you’re supposed to obey immediately. I’m not going to put up with waiting around while you think about it. Do you understand that?”

She breathed, “Yes.” Most of her attention was on those fingertips brushing her cunt.

“And if you don’t obey immediately, you get punished.”

“Ah.”

“Like this.” I didn’t really have her attention until I put one hand on her left cheek, and pulled it a little apart from its equally cute neighbour. With the hand I’d used to stroke her cunt I smacked inside that hidden valley, on the left side. The first smack shocked her into immobility, but she was all movement after the second one landed, bucking and jolting over my knee. I held her down, still holding her hard little buttocks apart, aiming the smacks as close to her cunt as I could reach.

Ana turned. She still had her hands on her head, and the posture made her uncertain. She’d been happy about flashing me, the night she’d stayed on my couch, but this time her nudity was at my discretion. And I was looking at her, unsmiling. She liked the display, and at the same time wanted to cover her breasts and cunt with her hands.

Similarly, she’d liked being punished, when she’d hesitated about undressing. The spanks didn’t really hurt, though she’d wanted my sympathy for her suffering. But being smacked meant she’d done something wrong. She didn’t want me to think she was bad.

She took a step forward, coltish and awkward. I put the book down. “You can take your hands down now. Good girl.”

Ana put her hands together, in front of her cunt. She looked at me, hoping that was right. I’d meant to be unsmiling and serious but I couldn’t help breaking that resolution. Ana liked being smiled at, and she looked relieved. I said, “You were wondering if you were going to get extra smacks for covering your cunt. Weren’t you?” 

“Yes. I guess.” She was nervous. 

“Of course you are. Put your hands together behind your back, Ana, and come here.”

She crossed the floor quickly, and stood in front of me. She represented an enormous temptation. I wanted to tell her to drop to your knees, and guide her mouth onto my cock. But I wanted to give her a new experience, and she must have had that one before. Even Manaia would have known how to get his cock sucked.

“Stand at the side of the chair. That’s good. Now get over my knee. You’ll be all right, Ana; just do as you’re told.” 

Ana was out of practice. She bent at the waist, and put her hands on my further, right thigh, and lowered herself. Once she’d draped her body more or less over my knee, and her ass was the highest part of her body, she dropped her hands to the carpet, to steady herself and take some of her weight. I liked her weight. She’d rested her body on mine. It felt trusting. 

I put my hand on her ass. My client’s ass. I shook my head at that thought. The moment had much too much power for me to stop. I patted and squeezed that flesh, and felt Ana relax. Time to hear her come. I smacked her smartly to make her hiss, and said, “Spread your legs.”  

Ana stood naked in the corner, her nose to the wall and her hands on her head. She tried not to jiggle with nervous energy while I watched her slender back. I’d told her once to keep still, and she knew I’d reinforce that order with a hand across her bottom if I had to repeat it. But she couldn’t keep still. It wasn’t her natural state. 

Her bottom was smaller than Sa’afia’s, apple-cheeked where Sa’afia was a little riper and softer: a mango woman, perhaps. Sa’afia had graced that very same corner in the same posture, just a couple of months ago, so it was hard not to compare them. It’s important not to be original about rituals. Ana wanted to experience submitting, and that meant I had to put her into settings in which she knew the meaning of the postures she was told to assume, and the time she was made to wait

I’d pulled over a kitchen chair, because it had no arms to get in the way when she put herself over my knee. I pretended to read while I waited, but most I watched her. Ana bounced on her heels and twisted from side to side. She hadn’t dared glance back at me, since I’d threatened to take my belt to her if she did, but she would if I left her much longer. 

She’d had her first order, when I’d told her to strip, and her first punishment, when she’d stopped before she took off her bra and knickers. I’d grabbed her arm without warning, and – ignoring her protests – smacked her bottom, hard, about twenty times before telling her to get naked as she’d been told. She’d liked those things, I knew. And she’d had no hesitation in stripping properly naked, once I’d spanked her. 

But what had dropped her, properly, into submission was seeing the blank look I’d given her when she’d complained that her spanking had hurt. As if I couldn’t even imagine or understand that she thought it mattered if she got her bottom hurt.

I’d been acting, of course, but she’d stared and swallowed once she understood. It seemed she liked being in a world where she did as she was told, and she could tell herself that she didn’t matter.

So Ana waited, with goosebumps on her shoulders and down her flanks. I turned a page on my book, letting Ana hear it. But I was thinking about the stick that Sa’afia had given me. It was a fearsome implement, and we’d had a lot of pleasure from it. Should I use it on Ana?

It seemed a kind of unfaithfulness to Sa’afia to use it on her cousin. On the other hand, Sa’afia had married another man, and she was gone. Perhaps notions of faithfulness didn’t apply. I wasn’t sure. Anyway, Ana had waited long enough. 

I said, “Ana. Turn around.”

Ana undid the top button of her blouse. She looked up, watching my eyes throughout the little bow she took, to see if I glanced down at her warm, brown, slightly conical breasts. I said, “Off-white, lacy plunge bra. You’ve been shopping. Lovely breasts, that’s not new.”

“But you noticing, that’s new.”

“God. No, it isn’t. But if you thought I wasn’t noticing …”

“I thought you were gay. And then that you were made of stone. And then I thought you didn’t want me.” She managed to look hurt, convincingly. “I wanted you. Now you’re looking at me.”

“Yeah well. I was trying to be…” I didn’t want to speak the word “professional”. I was about to fuck a client. “Ah fuck it.” I took a sip of beer. “Anyway, you’re going to get that spanking you’ve been angling for for the last year.”

“Just a spanking?” Ana took a long sip of the Tequila Sunrise. She just had some of the red and the bottom layer, which was green, to go. She drank her cocktails with great care.

“And if that doesn’t mean I fuck you afterwards, I’d be pretty amazed.”

Ana scooped up the last of the grenadine, making it chortle through the straw like the end of a milkshake. “I wouldn’t be surprised at all.” She tipped the straw. The grenadine ran dark pink under the shirt, and onto the slope of her left breast. It would be hard to get it out of the bra. She shivered deliciously as the granulated ice liquified on her skin, and ran down the slope of her breast.

I stood and reached for her glass, putting it out of her reach. “We’re going to my place. Now.” I took her hand and pulled her out of her chair. Ana followed me, but at the door she took one last look back at our table.

She’d never walked away from a cocktail before.

Unfortunately, it was quite possible that Jock really was an alcoholic, while I doubted that Maynard really did anything illegal with ruminants. 

There’s a story (Byron tells it in a footnote to Don Juan) that a minor Elizabethan poet called John Sylvester once challenged Ben Jonson to a battle of rhymes. He kicked off with, “I, John Sylvester, lay with your sister.”

Jonson replied, “I, Ben Jonson, lay with your wife.”

“But that isn’t rhyme,” Sylvester protested.

“No,” said Jonson, “but it is true.”  

So Seth won, on truth grounds. It didn’t matter. It meant he was cheerful enough to hear from me at the end of the day, and to tell me that Curnow was still missing.

Before we hung up Seth said, “Hey! Ok, you’ve got your sources. So have you heard any rumour that someone might have splatted Curnow?”

“Well, I know Ana’s dad doesn’t like him. But Curnow knows that too, and he was moving fast the last time I saw him. He could be a long way away by now. I haven’t heard anything and I just don’t know.”

“And yet – How’d you know that Maynard fucks goats?”

“Huh.” 

“K. Well, if you hear anything, tell me, okay.”

“For sure.”

The phone rang again as soon as I hung up. It was Ana. 

I said, “Hey.” 

“Have you heard of tequila sunrises?” 

“Well -“

“The bartender is selling them half price. He says it’s happy hour. It isn’t, you know.” 

“Okay, I’ll be right there.” 

Ana’s voice was like the grenadine layer, sweet and cherry-colored. “They’re really nice. You should have one.” 

“Right there, girl.” The phone giggled at me, faintly, before I cut it off. I thought, as Ana had probably intended, about how much she needed spanking, and, for that matter, fucking. She was not a girl to leave alone with a cheap supply of tequila sunrises. I grabbed my coat. 

“Are you sure?” I thought Ana’s father was in Samoa, staying out of the US if not out of trouble. “Have you seen him?”

Ana had expected more sensation and less skepticism. “No, not seen him. He called me yesterday.” 

“So where did he say he was?”

“He didn’t. But calls from Samoa, they’ve got a sound to them. Like you’re talking through an old-fashioned telephone. Like echoes inside a box. You know what I mean.” 

“All right.” I wasn’t convinced. They could have just got a good line. It happens. “What did he say?”

“He said I’d be all right. He said you’d be all right too.”

“Me? How come he’s even heard of me?”

“I don’t know. It’s the first time I’ve talked to him in ages. I’ve never mentioned you. But he knew quite a lot of what I’d been up to. And he knew you’ve been looking out for me.” 

“Um. Um. All right.” I suppose I was relieved. Being noticed by organised crime is alarming. But it’s nice when they don’t want to kill you. I’d rather be in my shoes, just then, than Curnow’s. 

While I was thinking about that Ana said, “I’ll see you at the Longshoreman. I’ve got lots more news, but I’ve got to get to work now.” 

“Ana.”

“Yes?”

“You’ve got client confidentiality. I can keep most things you tell me to myself. But …” I thought about what I could tell her about Curnow. There was nothing. “But if something you tell me is likely to be relevant to an investigation, I’m not allowed to keep that from the cops. There’s a limit. I’ll push that limit as far as I can in your favour, but remember there is a limit.” 

Ana held her wrists out. “I have the right to remain silent, but anything I say may be taken down and held in evidence.” 

I looked at her, head tilted. “Knickers.” It was traditional.

Ana said, “‘And, true to his word, he knelt and removed the flimsy evidence.'” 

I gave her eyebrow activity. “Just so.” I didn’t recognise her quote. At the time I thought that it was odd: I didn’t remember there being a policeman in Are You Being Served. “I won’t say that I heard anything about your tama from you. But I’m going to have to mention it, even if I just say it’s just some rumour. I’m sorry.”

“No, it doesn’t matter. I don’t know where he is. And they’ve never found him if he didn’t want to be found.”

 “Mmmmf. Now, vamoose. I’ve got a client. See you this evening.”

“Knickers. You pervert.” And she was gone.