I waited, holding the rod high until Sa’afia forgot, for a microsecond to be tense. I struck quickly, still medium hard. Hard wood and soft thigh met, loudly. I could feel the impact, transmitted down the length of the rod to my hand. I could feel the sweet resilience of her. 

Sa’afia’s sensations were intense where mine were subtle. She shook her head under her clasped hands. “Ahh-ooahhhh.” It was breathed through her obediently open mouth, not spoken. She puffed twice more, until the pain was under control. In a few seconds it would start to feel warm and sexually strong. The new line on her thigh formed and darkened. Her marks were beautiful.

I nodded. “Good. Good girl. Now, can you remember how many strokes you’re going to get on the back of your thighs?” 

Sa’afia nodded. There was a little shine of saliva at the left corner of her mouth. “‘es, sir.” She kept her mouth open, as instructed, even when she spoke. “Ten.” 

“Good. You’ll bend over and touch your toes for them. No, stupid girl. Not yet!” 

“Sir?” 

“One other thing first. You can put your hands down now.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“And keep your mouth open, stupid girl, or I’ll punish you.”

The first time I’d said ‘stupid girl’ I’d worried if it was traditional, or just a cliché. Well, the next thing I said would be both. 

“Now, girl. Kneel.” 

Sa’afia said, “ah.” 

Sa’afia held the rod clasped between her upper thighs. I lifted it a little, so it pressed against her cunt. Sa’afia moved her left foot a little further leftwards, and moved her hips forward so that a little sliver of the rod disappeared beteeen pink folds. I lifted the rod a little to make the angle more pleasing, and Sa’afia closed her eyes, riding a cock horse. A couple of centimetres of the rod gleamed darkly in the light. She’d got it wet.

I took it away again once she’d relaxed. It was crueller than striking her thighs with it. She opened her eyes wide, shocked, and her mouth to protest. The rod had been wonderful. Why was it gone? I tapped her left thigh, below the first stripe, now slightly raised. I said, “You’ve got two stripes on your right side, and just one stripe here. Is that fair?”

“No, sir.”

“And so…?”

“You’re going to cane me on my left thigh, sir.”

“Holy fuck.” I was jolted out of role. I held up the stick. “You call this thing a cane?”

Sa’afia frowned. “Yes?” She couldn’t see what I was getting at. “It’s always called a cane.”

“Well, okay.” It wasn’t a cane. It was something fiercer, harsher, than a cane. But I was getting off track again. “That case I’m going to cane you. Open your mouth.” 

Sa’afia looked a little bewildered, but obeyed. She’d been quiet so far, when she’d felt my hand or the rod. I wanted to make it harder for her to stay silent.

I didn’t explain that. I knew she’d like being told how to hold her mouth while she was being disciplined. It showed that I cared about her, in detail. “And keep it open until I tell you you can shut it.” 

Sa’afia closed her eyes and nodded, open-mouthed. I tapped her with the rod. “Open your eyes, stupid girl.” She watched, jaw dropped, while I raised the rod and held it poised, letting her wait. 

The rod landed on Sa’afia’s upper thigh, straight wood biting curved flesh. It sounded like I’d slapped her copy of Charmaine Solomon’s Encyclopedia of Asian Food on the table. Sa’afia managed to keep still, and silent, except for straightening the fingers in her left hand. 

I watched the first mark form on her thigh, on plumpish flesh about an inch below her hip. I said, “How many strokes are you going to get on the backs of your thighs?”

Sa’afia opened her mouth but said nothing.

“You can speak to answer questions, stupid girl.” I had doubts about saying ‘stupid girl’. I didn’t worry that Sa’afia might wonder, even for a second, whether I really thought she was stupid. But I did worry that it made me sound silly, something like John Cleese’s Latin-teaching Centurion in Monty Python’s Life of Brian. But Sa’afia didn’t seem to think it was a caricature. Well, maybe it wasn’t a cliche. Maybe it was traditional.

So I added, “And if you think you have to say something, you can ask me for permission to speak. Um. You stupid girl.”

Sa’afia nodded, but still said nothing. She might have forgotten the question. I swung the stick again, catching her a little lower on her right thigh. Sa’afia liked to watch my eyes when I did that, it seemed. I’d ask her about it later. She puffed, as the pain reached her, and relaxed again a few seconds later. The first, fiercest, pain only lasts a few seconds. She made no sound.

I watched the stripe form where the rod had landed. Two dark red stripes, slightly raised, parallel. Like a corporal’s stripes, I thought idiotically. This is corporal punishment.

“Ten strokes. You’re going to give me ten strokes across the backs of my legs.”

Sa’afia was speaking quickly. She was a little high again from the pain – maybe we both were a little high – and she wanted to show me that she was being good. 

I touched the end of the rod to her pelvic bone, just a couple of centimetres from her lips. Sa’afia slipped her left foot just a little further to the left. I took the invitation and lowered it, pressing forward so she could hold it between her thighs. I said, “That’s right, girl. Ten strokes. But we have some other business first.”   

Sa’afia looked at me. “Yes, of course. When I was a girl.”

“So who used it? Your mom? Your dad?” I was on dangerous ground. I wasn’t asking out of erotic curiosity. I didn’t want Sa’afia to tell me a story about childhood discipline, or to think I was asking for one. There’s no such thing as a sexy story about Sa’afia being punished when she was little. There’s nothing sexy about a little girl, or anyone, getting hurt against their will. It’s just so.

“My pa. He’d take me to my room, and he’d whip me cross my bum. Backs of my legs. God, if I talked back I’d have bruises for weeks.”

I hate, vehemently hate, adults hitting children, but my own feelings aren’t necessarily any guide to how other people feel about their childhoods. I’d once told a parolee that his parents’ punishments had been borderline abusive. It had been a stupid thing to say, since there was nothing I could do to change the past and he wasn’t going to get any help from the State if he needed counselling. Unless it was from me. So I’d pretty much destroyed my rapport with that client, for nothing.

These days I shut up and was less judgemental. I also knew that Samoan families traditionally used levels of physical punishment that people from a lot of other cultures – mine, for example – would find unreasonably violent, if they knew about it. I still hated the idea of adults hitting children, but it was up to Sa’afia what she felt about her own life. 

I said, “Okay.” Then I pulled my embarrassed face. “So if there’s anything I should not do when I use this stick, because it could remind you of something, with bad associations … Then this would be a good time to mention it.”

Sa’afia looked at me, not pleased. “I have nothing to report, Mr Probation Officer, sir.” She was a little angry.

“Then I bet you were an absolute brat, and deserved everything you got.”

It was a wooden rod about the length of my arm and the thickness of my thumb. There was a silver handle at one end, carved with intricate patterns, with slight indentations to allow a comfortable grip.

The business end had been carved with long straight grooves, about two millimetres deep, at four millimetre intervals. It had been dyed a dark purplish brown.

It was a serious instrument of discipline. The grooves would bite and pinch the skin when the rod landed. It would hurt, and leave dramatic welts. It would be quite tricky to use it effectively without hurting Sa’afia more than I wanted. Whatever Sa’afia wanted. In her current state of mind and body, she probably thought she needed more hurt that I’d feel right about giving her. But in this respect as in others, she would not be choosing what happened.

I looked at her. I probably looked a little doubtful. She did not.

A thought struck me. “You’ve been punished with this before. Haven’t you?” 

Sa’afia opened her mouth and shut it. She frowned, and then nodded solemnly.

“And I’m going to find your little cunt wet, girl. If you’re not wet, I’m going to take my belt to you. Understood?”

She’d already have been wet, but I gave her a few seconds to react to the threat to take my belt to her. I knew that would have reached her. Sa’afia nodded, then gasped when I pushed inside her, reaching excited girl wertness immediately.

I pressed my fingers upwards, from inside her, to press against that spongy upper vaginal wall. And I smacked her again with my other hand. Sa’afia made a higher pitched sound, with very little pain in it. She was going to come soon, if I wasn’t careful. I said, “shhhhhhh.”

I kissed her, still stroking slippery, sensitive Sa’afia cunt. Sa’afia turned to face me, spread her thighs wider, and put her arms round me. We kissed. I was still stroking her, but I rested my other hand on her ass. She was burning hot on the undercurves of her buttocks, where I’d smacked her hardest.

I could have objected to her moving without my permission, but she was too welcome in my arms for me to pretend to make an issue of it. Neither of us could help reaching for the other. We were a clothed Jaime and a naked, freshly spanked Sa’afia, holding each other.

We’d been here before. It was all as it should be.

Sa’afia was in the kitchen. She had her back to me. Her bare back. I stopped at the end of the corridor to stare at her. A dark-golden girl. Sweet thighs with just a trace of plumpness, and a very slight tremor in the muscle just under the crease of her left buttock. Gorgeous ass, with a swimsuit triangle of slightly paler skin contrasting with the tanned skin of her back and legs.

She had her hands on her head, so I could just see the swell of the underside of her left breast. 

She must have heard me coming down the corridor, though I’d tried to be quiet when I approached. But I was sure she hadn’t had her hands on her head all the time she was waiting. Other girls who enjoyed being bad girls, or at least being treated as bad girls, had told me that holding their arms in that position starts to hurt at about half an hour, and burns after about an hour.

I appreciated that it was costing her some effort not to turn around. My silence was unnerving her. 

Sa’afia had brought out two things to set our agenda. There was some sort of rod on the table, thicker than I expected, wood rather than rattan or cane. And she was wearing a pair of bright lemon-coloured socks. The socks were to disobey what I’d told her on the phone, that she had to be naked. The horrible dayglo-citrus colour was to make sure I noticed, and to make it clear that I was supposed to notice. And the rod meant what it meant.

It crossed my mind to say something amused about the socks, something playful and reassuring.

But I stepped forward suddenly, without having formed any conscious intention, and put the flat of my left hand on her lower belly, where the top of her pubic hair would have been. Sa’afia was a waxing girl. With my right hand I pushed her shoulders gently so she leaned forward, slightly bent at the waist.

Sa’afia looked at my face, and I nodded. I didn’t know what I meant, but she did. Then I smacked her bottom, hard, watching her eyes. She held her face turned to mine but she was no longer really looking at me. She was focussing on sensation now, not on the visual world. I watched her mouth for the little movement she made when I hurt her a little.

And, with real force, I smacked her again.