Isobel Outsmarts The Devil

Hey all -- This was *supposed* to be my Halloween story for Lit's contest, but I missed the deadline, so here it is. We're working with admittedly a lot less sex than in my other stories, which wasn't really intentional, but it's just how it all played out. The sex we do have here is focused on women-spanking-men content and blackmail, which I haven't written about yet, but which I think I'll keep up with.

Anyway, this one was also based on two things: an old Scottish folk tale I remember from when I was a kid that scared the bejeezus out of me, and also the life of violinist Niccolo Paganini back in the 1700s, who supposedly sold his soul to the devil. But don't let that turn you off; I tried to keep it fairly sexy at least. As always, everyone here is older than 18 years old and while it's only fantasy...let's hope it's filthy fucking hot fantasy.

***

"How are things?" Isobel asked Carson as they took a seat at the work table in her massage therapy office, his forearms still pleasantly warm from the wax.

He blinked, shook his head, looked away from the gloomy, windswept October afternoon visible through the front door of the strip mall suite. The place was empty -- he usually met with Isobel after business hours, just given their schedules -- but it didn't feel empty to Carson. Carson felt followed.

He felt followed most places these days.

"I'm OK," he said, as he put his elbows on the table in front of him, forearms up. "Busy. Really busy."

"Yeah?" She asked. "Let's see how your arms look..."

She started like she usually did, running her hands over each of his arms between elbow and wrist, applying some pressure but not much, mostly just feeling for anything unusual that only her trained massage therapist's touch might pick up, Carson had learned.

He threw another nervous glance toward the door, cut his eyes back to the table in time to catch her noticing he'd looked away, but she didn't say anything about it.

"You've got a big concert coming up right?" She asked, as she began to prod at his right forearm a little more, digging in a bit with her fingers. "For Halloween? Or...sorry, is concert the right word? Us emo girls will call any performance a concert, but for you it's a symphony right?"

Carson smiled at that for the first time since he'd entered the office today. He caught the faintest hint of Isobel's Scottish accent on the word "girls," but as she'd put it to him, she'd been in America since she was a kid, long enough to lose most of the lilt in her words.

"Yeah," he said, watching as she began to focus her massage on his right elbow. "Yeah, it's actually on Halloween. We're performing the 'Samhain Suite,' by -- and I can never get the composer's name right -- but Mannanan mac Lehr? Irish composer."

"Mannanan mac Lehr," Isobel said with perfect Gaelic intonation.

"Yeah," Carson said, and blinked. "It's pronounced like that. I forgot you speak it."

"Scottish Gaelic, not Irish," she said, pressing harder against the inside of his right arm now. "A bit different."

Carson winced at the pressure. Isobel looked up at him.

"That hurt?" She asked, without letting up.

"A bit," he told her.

She nodded. "You didn't do the stretches I told you to do, did you? Which is why you're all knotted up here."

"I sort of did," Carson said, and against his will another smile crept across his face.

"Sort of did," Isobel said in mock disappointment, focusing her massage on the inside hollow of his elbow. "You're only going to get the benefit of it if you do it religiously. And you're first chairing this Halloween concer -- symphony, right? You're first violin? That's the right term?"

"It is, and I am," Carson told her, and winced as she began to knead the spot he'd felt after an especially long day of practice earlier in the week.

"Hmmm," she said, eyes down, one stray lock of scarlet-black hair slicing across her features like a blade. A small smile had crept across her lips though, he could see. "I think I'm going to have to do something to make sure you actually take care of yourself, with this big symphony coming up on Halloween. I think I'm going to have to punish you tonight, really just make my directions stick in your mind."

Excitement lit up the pit of Carson's stomach, neon-bright and just as distracting.

For the first time since he'd entered the strip mall suite tonight -- really, for the first time since he'd seen her last -- he forgot about being followed. He forgot about what was going to happen on Halloween, after the symphony. He forgot about checking his reflection in mirrors to see if there was something behind him, or listening for footsteps in the dark hallways of the concert hall late at night.

If only for a second, there was only the intoxicating, ebullient thought of being at Isobel's mercy, and her choosing to hurt him, just a little. Just so he could learn.

He and Isobel had never dated. They'd never had an exclusive romantic relationship. As much as he trusted her -- and she him -- he knew they both thought about this as mostly a platonic thing. But he'd sought her out eight years ago when he first made it onto the Galina City Philharmonic Orchestra and every waking hour of his life had gone into violin. Back then -- even more than in college -- all that repetitive motion had wreaked havoc on his upper body, but especially his forearms and wrists. Isobel was one of the few therapists he'd been able to find who had worked with professional musicians before, specialized in treating the types of pains and injuries playing an instrument for hours and hours every day could inflict.

He'd waited too long to try to get treatment, she'd told him at their first meeting; it was going to take a while to fix what he had going on in his forearms and wrists.

She'd scheduled him for a few sessions with her a week, and Carson probably would've blown them off, except for the fact that he noticed his playing got better. He was able to play for longer, his form stayed pristine, and things hurt less. He moved up to first chair within six months.

Isobel, to her credit, had never flirted with him or made anything weird between them, even though he was spending more time with her back then, in her salon as a customer, than he was with anyone else. And even though she was physically touching him -- even if just on the forearms -- for almost the entirety of that time.

Everyone said the life of a Galena City Philharmonic Orchestra musician was lonely -- that you never got a life and had to just watch everyone lived theirs -- and looking back, he knew that was it. He was starved for any sort of human interaction outside of rehearsal, and Isobel was easy to talk to.

And, for his part, spanking had come up organically years ago. He hadn't forced it into the conversation. Their friendship really had been a natural one.

He could still remember how it happened though. She'd been talking about a movie she'd seen with friends, a group thing where she'd been playing wing-woman to try to help a friend get someone's number.

"This guy was more prudish than we thought," she'd said, smiling at the memory, as she moved up to his wrist and started to massage it. "There was this scene with this man getting spanked by this woman -- super unnecessary to the plot, but it was funny -- and he, was, like, super offended by it."

She'd later tell him she'd felt his pulse quicken at that -- she was pressing into his wrist in just the right spot -- but Carson was also pretty sure his face gave it away. They'd locked eyes than, for the first time since he'd started working with her, that felt weird to Carson; felt like more.

"You OK?" She'd asked, her smile fading just a touch.

He'd looked away, down, anywhere but at her, and willed himself not to blush, but of course that only made it worse.

"Yeah," he'd said, and gave an awkward laugh.

"Oh God, I'm sorry," Isobel had said then. "I didn't mean to, like, offend you or something. Like by saying he was prudish or, like, bringing that up if I offended you or something. I..."

She paused, and for the first time in a long time an awkward silence wafted between them.

"Sorry," she said again, at the same time he said, "you didn't offend me."

He'd laughed -- nervous now -- and thought about it.

He could probably tell her. Just as a friend. He knew she had a friend in a D/s relationship -- she'd mentioned it once -- and anyway, half the time he saw her here she was wearing a choker, collar-like. He'd be willing to bet good money he could at least tell her and good *God* in heaven, what if he died tomorrow? He'd have spent his whole life in ancient, dusty practice rooms playing the music of dead men, and no one would ever really have known who he was.

Because it wasn't really just another kink on a list of them. It was really his whole sexuality. And no one really knew that either.

"It doesn't offend me," he'd told her, and sighed; she'd moved her hands away from his wrists now. "I...um...it's kind of my thing."

She'd smiled at that. "Really? I mean, I feel like you could be in worse places then. There's got to be at least a few cute orchestra girls who want to be spanked every time they mess up a note in practice -- "

"No," he'd told her, then laughed. "I mean, sure. But I...I mean, it's my thing to be...on the receiving end."

She'd later tell him it wasn't the weirdest thing a customer had ever told her -- not by a long shot, nope, not at all -- although he was the first man to say he preferred that particular setup. It still hadn't seemed to phase her in the moment though.

"Oh," she said, and smiled again. "Sorry. I guess that's a bit rarer then."

"It seems like it," he'd said, and the ice was broken after that.

It had taken another six months for them to actually get into the dynamic they were in now, but it had happened.

And now, here, on this frigid, rainy October night just a week-and-a-half before the Halloween symphony the thought of her spanking him -- and the memory of it -- was still enough to make him forget he was being followed. Enough to make him stop listening for phantom noises in the empty salon, the kind of thing he'd been hearing in every quiet place for months now.

He'd known -- earlier in the week, when his elbow had started to flair up and he hadn't done the stretches she'd told him would help -- that she'd do this. She'd done it before. And he'd shown up with anticipation bubbling in his gut, waiting for her to ask and then threaten him with punishment.

"I'm afraid it's going to have to hurt a bit though," she said, looking up at him now, that teasing half smile still on her lips as her hands kept working the muscle of his arm. "No point in just rewarding you for bad behavior with a spanking you'd enjoy, is there?"

Isobel and her rhetorical questions, Carson thought, in spite of himself. Her most British Isles trait.

He swallowed hard though, actually nervous and -- consequently -- engulfed in arousal. Isobel specialized in touching people's bodies to relieve pain. She'd told him once that gave her a good knowledge of how to go the other way when she wanted to -- to *cause* pain.

"No Isobel," he said, trying to hide his smile. "There isn't."

She nodded and sighed, then moved a little further down with her massage. She kept her eyes down, on the small tattoo of a song lyric just below his elbow. Her smile widened.

"Or," she said, and giggled now. "I could just post a video or photo or two of you bent over my knee, getting spanked, one of the ones with your face so clearly visible? I could post that somewhere, and we could see who might notice? Could really go viral, don't you think? The first violin of the Galina City Philharmonic Orchestra bent over some woman's knee getting spanked naked? I'd be fine, of course; my face isn't in any of those."

Carson's breath caught in his throat and Isobel took one hand from his forearm and moved it up to his wrist, pressed down hard to feel his pulse. It was machinegun fast.

Isobel had always been into spanking. Blackmail wasn't one of her things though, not at first. He'd asked her to do that, once, deep in subspace and drunk on arousal. To be fair, he hadn't *wanted* to be into blackmail either, but the thought of being at the mercy of someone who could wreck his entire career -- the thing he'd dumped years of his life into and torn his body apart to accomplish -- sounded hotter than just about anything else.

She'd resisted for a long time, and even now, she wasn't totally comfortable with the idea of threatening with exposing him. It didn't matter that she'd never actually do it -- and he never expected her to -- just threatening it made her feel awful, she'd told him once.

But it had grown on her. The immense amount of trust involved had been a turn on for both of them, and anyway, Isobel had a bit of latent exhibitionist streak. She'd found filming a spanking or two here or there kind of hot in the end.

"You wouldn't do that," Carson breathed.

"No?" Isobel asked, and raised her eyebrows. "I don't think you actually want to find out. The best way is for you to do everything I tell you to do to take care of yourself before this Halloween symphony of yours. It's important."

Not for the first time, he was glad the table was between them because his dick had stiffened in his pants at the thought.

"Plus, one of my friends wanted to go on Halloween," Isobel said.

And this was classic Isobel. Sometimes she said she enjoyed planting the idea of punishment in his mind early in a session and then switch to something innocuous. She liked how anxious it made him.

Carson blinked. "You mean, like, to the symphony?"

Isobel nodded. "Yeah. One of the other part-time professors at the college. I'd mentioned 'Samhain Symphony' in a lecture and she was curious about it."

Carson had forgotten that Isobel taught a mythology class part time at Atalantahna State University. In another life -- for just a year or so, before she'd gotten into massage therapy -- she'd written on Celtic mythology in literature. The class was an easy lift and the students usually took it for that reason, but people were oftentimes more interested by the end of it than they had been when they started.

"Oh," Carson said. "So you've heard of it."

"Yeah, mac Lehr pulled pretty heavily from Celtic mythology for his inspiration," she said. "There are all kinds of things you can pick out in there, so she was curious to come and see it."

"Did you already get tickets because --"

"Yeah, we're good," Isobel said with a wink. "But the first violin isn't going to fuck this up because of a strain on his arms and shoulders he didn't care enough to fix, is he? Embarrass me in front of my friend?"

Carson smiled. "We can hope not."

"Good," she said, and smiled.

Carson winced as she pressed down hard on another spot on the inside of his left arm. She stopped.

"That hurt?" Isobel asked.

"I mean, in a good way," Carson said.

She rolled her eyes. "Stupid question, asking you if something hurts in a bad way."

That made him laugh.

Someone walked past the glass door to the suite on the rain-slick sidewalk outside, a dark shape moving too fast. Carson glanced at it, to his left, but it was gone by then.

He looked back at Isobel.

"You sure you're OK?" She asked.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just tired. This symphony is a big lift."

She didn't look like she believed him, but she didn't force the issue either. They'd moved onto other topics -- Halloween, the gloomy weather so rare for Galina City even this late in October -- while she finished the massage. Once she was done, she stood, and the familiar tingling-numbness that always took over Carson's forearms after a massage held sway.

"OK," she said. "Don't move for a few minutes, like usual. Just let it rest. And besides..."

She moved her chair to the open space away and behind the table.

"There's one thing I need for this spanking tonight," she said.

She left the space, headed toward a storeroom in the back. Carson swallowed hard, mouth dry.

He heard footsteps behind him on the tile floor and he spun so fast he almost knocked the chair over, but it was only the echo of Isobel's feet on the floor, heading back from the storeroom.

She laughed. "What did I say about not moving? Do you want to make this worse for yourself?"

Carson caught his breath. "Um...no."

She raised her eyebrows, still smiling. "No...what?"

"No Isobel," he said, addressing her correctly.

She sat down in the chair again and gestured to her jeans-clad thighs, the black denim stretch taught over her legs beneath.

"Since you already moved sooner than I told you to, why don't you just get over my knee right now," she said. "And drop your pants first."

This never stopped being the most humiliating part, for some reason. Just stripping in front of her while she sat, fully clothed on the chair, hands on her hips, observing him with an amused, haughty gaze so unlike her usual demeanor.

While he slipped out of his clothes, he could see what she'd brought back from the storeroom and set on the counter next to her. It was a small bottle of something, but he couldn't see what from the label.

Then he bent over her lap, felt the tight muscles of her legs against his stomach and chest, and -- as it always did -- the world went quiet, for once. Nothing mattered now -- not the symphony or the next rehearsal or even who was following him, the noises he kept hearing.

Nope.

He belonged to Isobel, and he'd fucked up, and she was going to punish him.

"OK," she said, and he could hear the smile in her voice above him while she said it. "I really hate to do this, but I *do* need to make this hurt, because you clearly haven't learned your lesson yet. So I'm going to put this lotion on your ass here in a second..."

He heard her rub her hands together, then felt them on his skin, moving with the same strength she used in regular massage.

"It's a special kind of lotion we don't use often," she said, still rubbing his bottom. "We normally use it in a certain kind of therapy. It makes the skin -- and the muscles beneath -- extremely sensitive to any touch at all. That can be pleasurable and feel really good a lot of the time, which is what we normally use it for, but if you were to, say, put it on someone's ass before giving them a spanking...well."

Carson swallowed hard, hands shaking now. He gripped the legs of the chair to keep them still, kept his eyes on her ankle boots.

"I really want that to soak in as much as possible before I start," she said, resting her elbows on the small of his back now and wiping her hands on a towel. "And I want it off my hands too so that *I* am not in any pain here. So while we're waiting on that, why don't you tell me what's happening and why?"

He was pretty sure she could feel his heart slamming itself against his ribs and into her knee by this point.

"You're giving me a spanking, Isobel," he said.

"Mmmmhmm," she said. "Where?"

"On my bottom," he said, then remembered what she usually wanted, and his blush deepened. "My bare bottom."

"Yes," she said. "And is this for fun or punishment?"

"It's punishment," Carson said, resigned.

"For what?" She asked.

"I didn't do the stretches for my arms like you told me to," he said.

"And what happened because of that?" She went on.

"I strained them," he said. "Ahead of the symphony."

"Good," she said, then added, "and by the way, don't put any more pressure on your forearms than you have to during this. I *just* got them worked out."

"Yes Isobel," he said, remembering how to address her this time.

"Good boy," she said. "All right. You're going to count these and say you'll do better, OK?"

"Yes Isobel."