Desiree stepped out of her morning shower squeaky clean, steamed pink and still a little drowsy – no matter what they say on the soap commercials, a hot shower in the morning only makes you want to crawl back into bed and doze off again, warm and clean.
She strode down the hall toward the bedroom, naked, still toweling her hair, when she was startled into sudden and painful wakefulness by the snap of a towel on her exposed backside.
The pain, as intense as it was sudden, mingled with her shouted expletive – "Shiiiiiiiit!" And beneath her shout was Dennis's laughter.
"Dammit Dennis, why do you do stuff like that? That hurt," she said, but he had already disappeared into the bathroom and turned on the water for his own shower.
Bitterly, she rubbed the spot on her butt where the towel struck. Already it was an angry red and swelling into a good-sized welt. Dennis always did things like that – he was not purposely mean, but he had never lost that adolescent, casual cruelty he thought of simply as "grab-assing." Even his literal "grab-assing" was more fervent than Des found comfortable, and many times his playful pinches and swats on the butt left bruises or the red outline of his hand. She talked to him about it frequently, but he would forget and then – as this morning – do something again that genuinely hurt.
Angry, she dressed for work and left without saying good-bye, still too irate to even look at him.
She fumed all the way to work and most of the morning, her mood apparent to her co-workers. Her friend Jill finally asked her what was wrong.
"Oh, it's that damn Dennis," she huffed. "This morning when I got out of the shower, he snapped with a towel really hard." Taking a quick look around to make sure they were not being observed, Desiree lifted her skirt and peeled down her hose enough to show Jill the colorful welt.
"Jeez, Des, that's nasty," Jill said. "Why does he do things like that? I know you've talked to him about that crap before, so why does he still do it?"
"To him it's just horseplay. He doesn't mean anything by it, but it's so damn annoying."
"Yeah, well, when I was in school you got spanked for 'horseplay.' Too bad you can't find someone big enough to spank the immature little shit for you," Jill said with a chuckle.
"Yeah, too bad," said Desiree, her voice trailing off and her eyes suddenly distant, as though a thought had just occurred to her.
That evening Dennis came home from his construction job sore and tired as usual on a Friday. Des fixed him a stiff drink and plopped down beside him on the couch.
"Man, that pneumatic hammer is a shoulder killer," he groused, taking a big gulp of the scotch-and-soda Des offered him. "I feel like I'm one big knot."
She reached over and began to gently massage the muscles at the back of his neck, then said with enthusiastic brightness, "Tell you what – after dinner, why don't you take a nice hot bath, then we'll smoke a little bit and I'll give you a back rub. Sound good?"
"Sounds great," he answered with a weary smile. "You're too good to me, hon."
"Usually," she said, returning his smile.
They ordered Chinese food, and while they waited for the delivery boy Dennis downed two more hefty drinks, then drained a beer with his dinner.
When they finished eating, Dennis went up to the bathroom to run a hot bath, while Des quietly slipped outside, fetching some items from her trunk that she'd purchased that afternoon. When she returned, Dennis was stretched out in the big claw-footed tub, luxuriant, steam enclosing him in a soft haze.
Des went into the bedroom to prepare.
When he Dennis came into the bedroom 20 minutes later, naked and lethargic from the drinks and the bath, he was surprised to find Des lying on her side of the bed, bare but for a tiny red silk thong, several candles casting her alluring form into soft shadows.
"Wow," he said, stretching out beside her and running his hand over the stirring swell of her hip. "I take it you have more than a back rub on your mind tonight."
"Definitely," she answered, certain that the gleam of mischief in her eye would be construed as simple lust. "But first things first."
She reached over to the bedside table and picked up a joint, knowing his eyes were fastened on her delicately swaying breasts as she bent over a candle to light it. She exhaled a small cloud of the sweet smoke and handed the joint to him.
"So, what did you have planned?" he asked, his voice strained with the effort of holding in the smoke. "We better get to it, whatever it is, because I'm bone-tired."
"Your bone doesn't look too tired." She was right. He had begun to grow at the first sight of her stretched out on the bed, and while she had not touched him yet, he was almost fully erect.
They finished the joint, talking quietly as they passed it back and forth, and as soon as he snuffed it out he reached for her.
"Not yet," she teased. "You've got a back rub coming first."
"Hey, twist my arm," he said, adding "But be careful – I'm so relaxed right now you might put me to sleep."
"Well, if you fall asleep, I'm pretty sure I can think of a way to wake you up."
"I bet you can," he replied, giving her a sly smile as he rolled over onto his stomach.
Des poured some scented oil into her palm, rubbed her hands together and began to work Dennis's tense and knotted muscles. She started with his neck, being thorough, working her way down to his shoulders, squeezing, pressing, then kneaded the broad muscles of his sculpted back. Within five minutes his breathing deepened, and he slept.
She climbed off the bed and quietly went to the closet. The thong she wore clearly showed the red mark from his morning towel snap – she glimpsed the mark as she walked past the full-length mirror on the wall, but as mad as she'd been this morning, her plan was not just for revenge any more. She had to admit that, as she'd formulated her plan of retribution she found herself growing more and more aroused. It surprised her. Although she never really considered herself "that type," the more thought she put into her plan, the more lascivious she felt.
Taking a large shopping bag from the closet, she rummaged through its contents on her way back to the bed, locating the items she needed first.
Dennis snoozed on, his head resting on his hands. Slowly, with great care not to rouse him, she pulled his hands out from under his head. For an instant she feared he was waking up, but he just turned his head the other way and slept on.
She slipped a leather manacle around one wrist, then looped the connected cord through the slats in the headboard and attached its mate to his other wrist. She repeated the process with another set of restraints, binding his ankles. There was enough play in the manacles to allow him to turn over, but that was it.
He was ready, but was she?
It was not without some embarrassment that Desiree had purchased the items. It was her first time in an "adult" store, and at first it was something of a shock.
The walls of the shop were lined with sex toys of every description, some of which she heard of before, most shockingly foreign to her. Vibrators she had heard of – Jill had one she seemed to like better than her boyfriend – but even the different types, sizes and features of those were mind-boggling, to say nothing of the rest of the store's offerings.
There were blow-up dolls ("Pathetic," she mumbled to herself when she saw them), and vials of Spanish Fly that had kept generations of teen-age boys surreptitious and hopeful. There were lubricants, flavored oils, exotic outfits – she grabbed the diminutive thong as soon as she spotted it from a rack of scandalous panties. A "Thai Basket Chair" hung from a hook on the ceiling, its various opening making its intended uses clear. A huge assortment of magazines and videos also were available, and she marveled at how much thought people of various kinky proclivities put into this aspect of their lives.
At first she could not find what she wanted and almost left, thinking she simply could not bear to ask someone for help, but finally she spied what she sought in a tiny alcove given over completely to leather goods. She picked out two sets of soft leather manacles and one other item.
Her face was as red as the wispy panties as she paid the bemused clerk and left the store.
Now she pulled the other item out of the bag. It was a leather riding crop, thin and flexible, about two feet long. Testing it, she casually slapped it against her palm, satisfied by its snap, noting with satisfaction how much t sounded like a snapping towel when it struck.
She walked over to the bed and contemplated Dennis's exposed and vulnerable (and, she had to admit, very appealing) buttocks. She pictured a cartoon devil on one shoulder, an angel on the other. "Two wrongs don't make a right," the angel scolded. The devil simply whispered "It's payback time."
Hesitantly, she touched the business end of the crop to his rounded gluteals, brushing the rich leather in soft circles over them. By degrees, she realized she was losing her nerve.
A look of determination came over her face, and she raised the crop.
Dennis snapped into consciousness with a look of sheer panic on his face. The panic increased when he reached back to feel the area where he had been – what, stung by a bee? That's what it felt like – and he found he could down move his arm down more than a few inches.
"What the hell!" he yelled. "What's going on? Des? Des! Where are you?"
"Right here," she replied coolly, her voice coming from somewhere behind him. He couldn't see her, but she let him no where she was in no uncertain terms, once again bring the riding crop down on his vulnerable buttocks with a short, swift snap of her wrist.
"Owwwwww!" he howled. "What the hell are you doing, Des? Why am I all tied up?" He sounded more frustrated than frightened, but there was an element of fear in his voice nevertheless. "Why are you doing this to me?"
"Maybe you could answer that one yourself," she answered, hoping her own voice did not betray her timidity in acting in such a manner. "For example, why did you flick in on the ass with that towel this morning?"
"I was just playing around, just grab-assing. C'mon, you know that."
"I know I've asked you dozens of times to stop it. I know I rarely get through the week without you pinching my butt hard enough to leave a bruise, or slapping me on the ass hard enough to bring tears to my eyes. Look at this," she said, walking around to the side of the bed where he could see her and pointing at the vivid welt he made that morning.
"Oh come on, it was just a little flick of a towel. It couldn't have hurt that much."
At that, the crop cracked again, making a sharp, satisfying report as it connected.
"Ow, SHIT, you bitch," he spat, but with a note of desperation in his voice. Stop it right now, god dammit!"
"Excuse me, but you aren't calling the shots here Dennis. And what did you call me?"
Again the merciless crop bit into his ass. A stream of epithets spewed from his mouth, and when they petered out, she brought the vicious leather device down again, surprised at how she relished the way he tensed when it struck, enjoying the faint purple-red marks that rose with each blow.
Somewhat chastened, he tried another tact.
Look, I'm sorry. I won't do it again. Honey, please let me up."
