FEBRUARY
"Um, Johanna, can I ask you something?"
"What is it, baby?"
Kira and Johanna emerged from the auditorium. Bright winter sun stabbed into Kira's brain. Kira cursed and clutched her books and threaded her way through a knot of students.
"Kira?"
Kira kept on walking. Johanna followed her into the atrium of the studio art building. The two girls sat down on a bench next to a rubber tree, out of anyone's earshot. Kira studied Johanna's face, searching for a sign of deception, but found none.
"Kira, you okay?"
Kira nodded. "I'm fine."
"Are you mad at me?"
"No."
"You want to ask question, please ask question. Don't worry, okay?" Johanna had grown up in Lisbon and Paris. Her accent made her sound impossibly sophisticated to Kira.
"I'm not mad."
"Okay, then. What's going on?"
Kira fidgeted and played with the hem of Johanna's skirt.
"I want to ask you something. If Mitchell told you to keep something secret from me would you tell me? Even if you promised him you wouldn't?"
"Ooh! Well, on one hand, he's your boyfriend, and he's not my business, right?" said Johanna. "On other hand, I love you and you are my good friend, and I cannot keep a secret. So that's a tough one. I have to say yes."
"Yes what?"
"Yes, I would tell you. If you asked. But I would not tell you if you didn't ask.
"Well are you?"
"Am I what?"
"Keeping a secret."
Johanna's eyes grew wide. "About what? Mitchell? What's the secret?"
Kira regretted starting the conversation in the first place. "Nothing."
Johanna screwed up her face and took inventory of the inside of her head. "Let me see... Mitchell...secret... Nope. No secret. Except that, I'm sorry, just one. This is sad for you, but he is gay. Very gay. Everybody knows but you."
"Very funny." Kira laughed, despite herself.
"So what is this secret? Everything okay with you guys?"
"Yeah, everything's fine. I just wanted to know something. I thought you might be a certain person."
"What person?" said Johanna, losing patience.
"It's pretty weird."
"Tell me."
"If I tell you you have to promise not to say anything to anyone."
"Okay I promise. Tell me weird secret."
*
Kira was on her back, pinned beneath Mitchell. They were both breathing heavily. With one hand, he was clamping both her wrists over her head.
They'd started out playfully, trying to pin each other to the floor. She'd been boasting about how strong she was. In fact, Kira wasn't particularly strong. Neither was Mitchell, probably, but she liked to goad him into overpowering her. After a thrilling bit of grappling and straining and closeness, Kira found herself struggling vainly in his grip.
Pinned beneath him, she wiggled and bared her teeth, but she was delighted by the outcome. His face was flushed and his eyes shone. Kira thought it was the most delicious feeling in the world, to be helpless beneath him, conquered.
She writhed angrily, hissing. She could feel his hard-on through his jeans. Mitchell leaned down to kiss her, to end the game and take his prize, but she turned her head. He sought her out with his mouth but she refused him. Again and again, with increasing need he tried to kiss her and she refused to be captured. Defiant, she glared at him. She half-hoped he would slap her, just a little. For a moment she thought he was going to.
Abruptly Mitchell got up and stood over her. Kira pouted.
"You're really asking for it," he told her.
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah. You're behaving very badly."
Kira began to see what was coming: a more baroque punishment.
"What are you gonna do? Teach me a lesson?"
She was smiling, he was not. She was playing the unrepentant tease to his stern disciplinarian. He was remarkably good at it, for an otherwise gentle twenty-year-old. She propped herself up on her elbows, looking up at him. She adjusted her legs idly, hoping he could see her underwear under her skirt.
"Get on the bed," he told her.
"Yes, sir." Kira obeyed him but she took her time and made sure a film of sarcasm coated the word "sir." If he wanted her to talk respectfully he'd have to earn it.
"On your hands and knees. Face that way." She did as she was told. Behind her she could hear him open the closet and rummage among boxes.
"Okay, stretch your hands out."
Patiently, she stretched out her arms until she was leaning on her elbows, her ass high up in the air.
"Wait, take off your clothes first."
Sighing and rolling her eyes at his incompetence, she stood up. "Take them off yourself."
She faced him, arms at her sides, attempting to provoke a reprimand. Instead he approached her and unbuttoned her shirt. She had the idea of restarting the wrestling match, grabbing him while his hands were busy, but there was a charge in the air, a seriousness, and she felt cowed. She let him remove her shirt. He tugged her skirt down and she stepped out of it. She stood in front of him in her bra and panties.
"Okay, back down."
She resumed her position on her knees and elbows and waited patiently while he tied her hands together with the soft bit of rope he kept under the bed. Mitchell attached her wrists to the headboard and then went back to the closet. Kira wondered what he was going to do to her. He came back with a piece of fabric and tied it around her eyes. It felt like stretchy cotton, like maybe he'd cut up an old t-shirt.
"Don't move," Mitchel told her.
She didn't move. A few moments went by, with no sound from Mitchell. Kira felt lewdly exposed, her ass high in the air. Her panties felt tight on her pussy. Kira expected some spanking would come next. She moved her hips from side to side, enticing him.
Mitchell would slap her ass once in a while during sex, he an outright spanking wasn't really his style. Neither were blindfolds, for that matter. The only time he'd really spanked her had been a serious occassion. She'd done something wrong, cheated on him, and when she'd admitted it he'd spanked her enough to make her cry. The spanking not only relieved of her guilt, but turned her on much more than she'd expected. She'd been angling for a replay without the guilt and the heartache.
Kira heard Mitchell leave the room. His footsteps receded through the small apartment he rented by himself. She stopped moving. Where the hell was he going? Looking for something to spank her with? Then, far away, at the edge of her hearing, she heard the front door open.
She heard Mitchell's voice. She couldn't hear what he was saying. Was someone at the door? Was there another voice? She hadn't heard anyone knock. She froze, and strained to listen.
Silence.
She waited.
She pictured herself as she must look: head down, ass high in the air. Wrists bound. Her pussy was barely covered by thin panties, which felt damp. She was positive her panties were visibly wet. What a sight she would be when Mitchell returned.
She heard footsteps in the hall, drawing closer. Two sets of footsteps. Had Mitchell closed the door on his way out of the bedroom? She couldn't remember.
Kira's mind raced. She took stock of her situation. Only her hands were tied. Kira tested her bonds. Mitchell had tied them expertly-not painfully tight, but she didn't think she could free herself. She could move her body, though, curl up into a less brazen position.
The footsteps paused just outside the door. Kira remained still, hardly breathing. She knew the stranger would see her in moments. She decided not to move, not to speak. If Mitchell thought he could scare her he was wrong. And if someone did see her... at least she wasn't naked. Thank god her bra matched her panties, she though absurdly.
Kira's heart pounded. Whoever came into the room would be able to look at her as long as they wanted, and she couldn't look back. The stranger would see her bound and blindfolded, voluntarily displaying her ass...
The bedroom door opened. Two sets of footsteps entered.
Kira froze. Who was there? Her mind spun through a wheel of possible suspects. Mitchell's friends, Dan and Matt; maybe Johanna, maybe Dave. Or Daisy? As she thought of each possibility she imagined that person looking at her, seeing her with her head down and her ass in the air, wearing only a bra and panties. She imagined all of them, an entire crowd, standing around her and marvelling at her lack of shame. "Such a nice girl!" they were thinking, "who knew she was such a slut?"
Kira forced herself to be calm. Someone was in the room. Someone, probably someone she knew, was seeing her in her underwear. So what?
But quietly, conspiratorially, Mitchell was talking. Talking about her:
"She appears well behaved, but don't let her fool you. She's very willful. And impertinent. She deserves to be spanked, without a doubt. As a punishment, though, it's only partially effective. You see, suspect she likes it. Just before you arrived she was wagging her ass like a puppy, practically asking me to spank her. Kira, can you show our guest how you move your ass when you want a spanking?"