Rule of Thumb

"Rick?"

I looked up to see Loren at the base of the driveway. It was hot for 10:00 AM and I'd been concentrating on pulling up elm seedlings. My shirt was off - I'm no great looker at 42, but I still have a few good years left in me. Anyway, I was a little self-conscious.

"Hi Loren. Wassup?" She looked a little distracted, maybe even anxious. It was hard to tell sometimes. I looked around for my shirt, wiping the dirt from my hands on my shorts.

"I'm good, thanks..." She said slowly, and continued. "Uhhh, I was wondering...did you cut a branch off my tree?" She was motioning to the huge maple that sat at our property line, its massive limbs arching almost to the middle of my yard. I loved that tree, but it sometimes drooped branches onto my driveway.

"Oh...yeah. I took a few small branches down that were blocking my driveway. I hope you don't mind...I used the rule of thumb." I smiled at the reference, hoping it would break what appeared to be some tension she might be feeling.

She looked completely blank, her eyes searching mine for some kind of meaning. She wasn't angry, just...confused.

"Rule of thumb? No?" I figured everyone knew about it. "It was the old English rule that a husband could select a branch no bigger around than his thumb to beat his wife with...Never heard that?" I stopped. She had blushed so deeply, and her face tilted down to the ground that I was worried I had offended her.

I had known Loren and Bill ever since they had moved in next door - about six years...no it was five years before Marnie's death, so, seven years I'd known them. I never got to know them very well, just occasional barbeques and dinners, and then since Marnie died, not a lot of contact, at least before the divorce. Loren was always so bright and interesting, Bill taciturn and typically Midwest male. I never could figure out how they ever got together.

The divorce was messy. I watched as their marriage deteriorated and then the subsequent several months, just this year, as she tried to put her life back together. Thankfully no kids, but it was obvious she had depended on him a lot. She had come over to the house a few times asking for help and I'd shared a beer or glass of wine. She didn't talk much about the break-up and I didn't talk much about Marnie, but it was fine to have some quiet companionship.

I never really had much in common with Bill. I remember only once that he actually extended an invitation to join him in a beer. Loren was out of town and I was surprised. As we sat on his front porch that summer evening, insects buzzing, he didn't say much, but then, out of nowhere, he confessed that he wasn't very happy in his marriage.

"I'm not sure why we ever got married," he said. "But after we did, I was okay with it; until I found out she was a pervert."

I looked up in surprise - as much at his sudden vulnerability as his revelation of her sexuality. I raised an eyebrow, hoping he'd go on, but he never said another word. That was August and they got divorced the following February.

Here it was June and I was staring at her blushing and looking at her feet. What had I been saying? Oh yeah, rule of thumb...

"Seriously, they were pretty small, diameter-wise, and they were blocking the driveway. C'mon up here and take a look." I waved her up the driveway to the compost pile, forgetting about my shirt. Still pink from the blush, she made eye-contact with me briefly, as if asking if I knew why she was so embarrassed. I didn't acknowledge anything out of the ordinary but continued making my way 'round back to the mound.

"You see," I said, pointing to the mass of branches I hadn't yet chopped. "Go ahead and take a closer look."

I stepped aside to let her pass. The side yard was a little tight, with my roses and raspberries, so she had to slip by me. I got a whiff of her fresh soap smell, and I realized I must have smelled like a wild boar.

I had never noticed her body in detail - outside the usual inspection and judgment: she was relatively tall with a small frame, well proportioned, everything within my taste for "cute." Today, her halter top and shorts revealed a bare mid-riff, a guaranteed trigger to start me thinking. Her odd behavior moments ago, and now her passing so close to me, triggered something else - a feeling I hadn't had for a long long time. Even before Marnie's illness started. Her face was small featured, a sprinkling of freckles making a light mask across her nose. The fading blush accentuated them slightly. Cute.

Loren looked over the pile, reaching down to touch one or two of the branches. I watched as her slender fingers lightly stroked the bark, and then curled around a branch. She struggled for a moment, separating it from the rest, and then dragged it towards me.

"This one," she said quietly, again not looking at me directly. "Would this one fit the bill?"

It was my turn to look confused. I looked down at the branch, and back to her, standing with her arms to her sides, her face downturned.

"Excuse me?"

She looked up, looked down at the branch, and dropped it, as if it burned. "Oh god, I'm sorry!" She started walking away, but I stopped her, my hand on her upper arm.

"What's going on Loren? Is there something the matter? Can I help?" My fingers on her skin, her distress and the heat of the day jolted that long-forgotten feeling up a few notches.

She looked up at me, tears in her eyes. "I...nothing. There's nothing going on. I'm just so damn confused. Th...thanks for helping me with the branches. It looked so much more open and I would have thought they would be much bigger."

That old familiar feeling wasn't the only thing rising. I knew if we stood this way much longer she'd see a lump in my shorts. I dropped my hands, letting my fingers slide across her skin in what I hoped was a comforting gesture; my libido had suddenly taken over: in my mind's eye I was tearing her clothes off and making love to her on the grass.

I stepped aside to let her go, and she thanked me again. I assured her that it was always okay for her to come by, and if there was anything I could to help her through this tough spot, blah blah blah. I frankly couldn't hear anything I was saying by then, wishing she wouldn't look down at the growing bulge between my legs.

I returned to my gardening, puzzled by what had just happened, and excited that my sex drive hadn't been buried with my wife.

*-*-*-*

A week later, another Saturday, another unusually warm spring day, and I was once again getting my plantings together. I was humming a tune, digging and puttering around, when I got the feeling I wasn't alone. I looked up and saw Loren standing just a few feet from me. Her face was a mixture of emotions: fear, near panic, anxiety...

"Loren! You scared the shit out of me! Is everything okay?" I dropped my tools and walked towards her, hoping to give her a hug or something to calm her down.

She swallowed, her breath kind of ragged, like she'd been running.

"I've done something...bad." She squeaked.

"Bad? What do you mean 'bad'?" I imagined killing a cat (not mine, we stopped having pets a while ago), or worse, hitting a child with her car. I looked up past my driveway to her house but couldn't see anything amiss from where I was standing.

"I...I was out trimming my garden, and I think I might have cut down some of your roses." It all came out as one sentence, followed by a cascade of tears. Her hand leapt to her mouth and she looked at me with terror in her eyes.

"Whaaat?" I raced to the common side of our yards to see what damage she had done-imagining my hard work of 10 years destroyed. When I got there, I stopped short. All of the plants seemed to be just fine - there wasn't anything missing that I could tell. "Loren?! What do you think you did?" I shouted back to her.

She walked over slowly, like a dog expecting a beating, and slowly pointed to the far corner of the planting where two long vines from the clinging variety lay on her sidewalk. We walked over there together, and I was relieved to see that they were inconsequential.

"This isn't a problem, Loren. You gave me a real start there."

"When I'm bad," she said quietly, her face to the ground, "I think of myself as Elke. Bill never understood," she continued, "but I really don't like to be bad. When I was younger I used to be punished for my misbehavior. But Bill never understood." She stood, bowed head, hands clenching and unclenching. I kind of remembered she had turned 28 the past year, but standing there like that, she looked almost 20 years younger.

I shook my head trying to clear it. Several things all started happening at once. For starters, I was pretty sure she was bonkers. I'm no shrink, and I'd never seen anything weird the entire time I'd known her, but this behavior was pretty fucking over the top.

Elke?

What the hell was that all about? Best I could figure...absolute tops...was she was having a nervous breakdown over the divorce and just couldn't cope.

Shrink or no shrink, I knew when someone needed a hug. I wrapped my arms around her and gave her as much comfort as I could, thinking back to Bill's disclosure about her being a pervert. Touching her again, and feeling her sobbing into my shoulders started that chain reaction in my groin. I felt my cock pulse. With just my shorts between us, I really didn't want to embarrass myself; especially if I was truly being sincere in offering comfort. Besides, how low is it taking advantage of the mentally disturbed?

"Elke, eh?"

She nodded.

I stepped back, holding her at arm's length and looked at her, to make sure I understood. "When you were younger, your parents punished you for being bad? That doesn't sound too unusual. Did they beat you?"

She nodded, tears dropping from her cheeks to the grass.

"And you expect to be beaten when you are bad...now?"

She sobbed a little, looking up at me and then quickly away. "I'm sorry. I'm being an idiot. I thought you might be able to help. I've been so alone, and Bill never understood, and now...now...shit. I'm just an idiot. I'm sorry. I've got to go."

Again, she tried to make her escape, but I stopped her. "Now hold on a second, Loren. I can see you're very confused.

I'm

very confused. First off: you didn't do anything 'bad.' You had every right to cut down that stringer. Secondly, just because you may have done something bad doesn't mean you should be beaten for it. And third - what's this thing about 'Elke?'"

She didn't try to pull herself away, but I could tell she wasn't ready to talk. I decided to take a different tact. "Would you mind coming in with me? I've got some fresh lemonade. I'd like to talk with you."

She didn't protest. Moments later we were sitting in my cool kitchen, my shirt back on, two glasses condensing the humid air.

"I can see it's been really tough on you. I'm sorry." I let my hand rest on top of hers. She didn't pull away. I studied her face and neck - a beautiful face and a long sculptured neck. Why hadn't I noticed it before? My eyes drifted down to her breasts, nice bulges in her halter top, but not exposed in any way. Her belly was flat - no kids, like I'd said, and her shorts hugged her hips. Her legs disappeared under the table. When I looked up she was looking at me.

"I'm sorry, Rick. I don't know what comes over me. I guess I didn't have a pleasant childhood." She smiled crookedly hoping I'd let it pass without going into much deeper.

"Apparently not, and I'm sorry to hear it. But I am worried about you, Loren. This is the second time in a week you've acted a little strange. Are you seeing someone about your stress?" I sipped the lemonade to hide my expression from her when she looked up.

She shook her head and took a sip.

I decided to take it a step further. "This punishment thing. Did Bill ever beat you?"

I could see this was going to be hard for her. Her eyes started brimming before she closed them, squeezing fresh tears onto her cheeks. She shook her head. "No," she whispered, "as much as I wanted him to. It's what drove him away."

I had completely misunderstood the tears. She wasn't crying because he had beat her, he was crying because he

hadn't

beaten her.

I don't consider myself to be a pig. I'm a sensitive guy. I try to help people. Lord knows I spent the last year of Marnie's life doing everything I could to help her. But I had never faced anything quite like this in my entire career as a human being. The thought that Loren was a masochist, knew she was a masochist and had lost her marriage over it was intellectually interesting. But I wasn't ready to accept all that so easily. What about this 'Elke' thing? How did that fit in? Maybe not a masochist at all - maybe a multi-personality disorder. Like I said, I'm no shrink.

But here's where it went a little weirder. Rather than my acting the proper concerned neighbor like I figured I would under any other normal day of the year, I actually started figuring the angles on this one. If this is what she needed, who was I to deny it? I actually heard my voice in my head asking that very question. It didn't help one bit seeing her vulnerable, crying and so damn cute,

asking me

to punish her.

My cock had sprung up during all of this gear-turning, not yet hard enough to be painful, but swollen enough for me to shift my position. I studied her body again, to see if that same feeling from last week returned. Once again I couldn't suppress the images of ravaging her, stripping her naked and forcing myself into her.

The years of Marnie's illness, our long buried sex life...the newly awakened feelings surged through me, and I realized she was offering herself to me in ways I'd stopped thinking were possible.

Marnie and I had role played dozens of times...at least in our early years together. It didn't continue after the kids, and it sure never came back after she got sick. But never in that time had we ever engaged in anything like S&M. Ropes, panty gags, a few melted candles, but extended punishment wasn't ever part of our sex lives. The thought of inflicting pain on this young woman suddenly inflamed me. And scared me. I took a breath and a mental step back.

"Loren." I waited until she looked at me. "Are you serious?"

She waited until I could explain further.

"Do you really want me to punish you?"

She closed her eyes and breathed out a long, long exhalation. As if all of the tension in her body was coming out with that breath. She nodded. "Yes," she said very quietly. "Please. You don't know how much I need this."

The way she said it, the immense loss of tension in her body, and the pleading look in her eyes when she opened them to stare at me, pushed me over the edge. My cock, now erect, was taking control of the situation.

"Okay, 'Elke', if that's the way you want it, punishment will be yours. How many strokes do you think would be appropriate?" I flashed on the conversation from the prior week. A quick plan had popped into my head.

"Strokes?"

"Yes. Let's see, rather than me find the switch, I think you will need to do it. You know my willow in the backyard? Let's go pay it a visit."

I stood up, making it clear she was to accompany me. She put down her glass and joined me. I put my hand on her upper arm, the smell of her morning shower wafting to me, and I gently pushed her out the door of the kitchen into the back yard. Our two houses were the highest ones on the ridge that ran the length of our block. Our backyards fell away towards a gully, part of a park with running trails, the far side rising to another ridge with a matching set of homes. During the winter the oaks and maples were stripped bare and I could practically see into their bedrooms, but by late spring, the leaves blocked the view creating a private enclave.

I knew our neighbor to the west was gone for the weekend, but even so, they had no windows that looked out onto the part of my yard where the willow grew.

I could feel her trembling, her breathing irregular, mixed with sobs. I don't know why I was so flushed with excitement, but I knew, right then, I was going through with this. I had convinced myself it was what she wanted, ignoring all of the possibilities that she was actually a little unstable. From my position just behind her, I could look down her halter top, the ribbed cotton fabric held away from her chest by those two beautiful breasts, her erect nipples revealing the lack of bra. My cock stiffened with my resolve. It was definitely what she wanted. Needed.

She didn't protest, letting me lead her to the shade of the willow tree. I held out the clippers and pointed to the draping branches.

"Pick three you think would be appropriate and bring them back to me."

She never met my eyes, taking the clippers and turning her attention to the swaying branches. A dry hot breeze had picked up. I felt the sweat begin to drip down my back.

She reached up and clipped three branches, each about the diameter of my middle finger. Still avoiding my eyes, she handed them and the clippers back to me.

"Elke. While I prepare these, you know what to do." I turned away to strip the branches of their leaves.

"What?" She barely whispered.

"Strip, Elke. Strip. You have been 'bad' and you know you must be punished. Now I must prepare your punishment while you prepare yourself." I never looked up from my work, hoping she would get over whatever turmoil she was going through and accept the new terms I was making for the situation she herself had suggested.

I peeled off the leaves and some of the green bark, clipping the branches to the length of my arm. Gathering the bunch together, I tied them with twine from my utility belt and looked up.

I was not prepared for what I saw. Standing in the shade of the tree, 'Elke' was stock still, completely naked and waiting for me. Her breasts were as beautiful as I imagined, a strip of white across their sides and around her nipples and areolas where her bikini top protected them. Her belly was flat, her navel moving in and out with her breath.

But her bush was what caught my eye and breath. A full triangle of dark hair, neatly trimmed to fit the patch of lighter skin, the tell-tale from her bikini, drew my eye down to the top of her slit. Her lips were unlike Marnie's: full, twisted and starting high up from where her thighs joined; their thick edges were clearly visible through the thicket of her pubic hair. I watched in silence, knowing she was demanding this, yearning for it.

I knew my erection would be obvious by now, and I wanted her to see what she had done to me. I approached her, holding the bundle of branches in front of me. I saw her eyes flick to my crotch, then the bundle and then return to the ground a foot in front of her. When I was only a couple of feet away, I lightly moved the branch tips up the outside of her legs until they touched her fingers. I moved them between her left wrist and her waist, sliding them up the inside of her arm to her elbow.

I pushed her arm out with the branches and she understood, raising her left arm above her head. I moved the branch to the other side, but before I could get there, she raised her right arm. The thicket of hair beneath her arms was a surprise. Surprising because she chose not shave, but even more surprising that I found it such a turn on. The color of her hair there wasn't as dark as her bush, red and gold highlights glinting in the sunlight. I licked my lips in anticipation.

Her breasts moved with her breath, and with her arms up, she was perfectly exposed, their soft swelling pushing out towards me. I could smell her sweat and the obvious arousal this was causing her. Seeing her exposed, her thatches of hair a stark contrast to her lightly tanned skin, I flashed on a memory of Marcie, after the chemotherapy. She had always been shy, but now, without any body hair, she was careful to wear a robe whenever she might be exposed. I walked in on her as she got out of the shower one afternoon, surprising her. Her body was completely smooth, from her head to her toes, her slit uncovered by any pubic hair, her arms and legs silky. She grabbed a towel and turned away from me, but later that night, in bed, I made sure to spoon against her, my hands softly stroking her skin, feeling her so completely shaved. Her being hairless had been a turn-on, mostly from the novelty, I supposed; and now I was feeling similarly looking at Loren/Elke covered in hair.