waited with trained alertness as Vincent sat on the bed. When he gave the word, she turned to take off his condom and toss it in the trash. Never in five years had he used her without one, although he’d done tests, blood work to prove he was clean. He was her only partner, but she was not his, so, in deference to that inequality, he protected her. He protected her in many ways actually, many of which she would probably never even know. Pain and pleasure, jeopardy and protection, I love you…but not like that . Complicated—but she understood, as did he. Would anyone else ever understand her? She couldn’t bear to think about that.
She resumed her previous position, her hands curled into fists beside her head. She felt the lack of cuffs, the lack of a collar, with devastating clarity. She hoped he might bring them and leave them with her, a souvenir of their time together. She had nothing, absolutely nothing of him, save her memories and a few, very few, ghostly pale stripes of scars across her ass. Even that she was sure he wished she didn’t have. When he was gone, he would be truly and utterly gone. There was no hope in her mind that they would reconcile. This was the most final good-bye she’d ever participated in. Even the good-bye to her father as she’d stared down into his casket had not felt so acute.
After a few moments—she had no idea how many—Vincent came and sat beside her and ran his fingers up and over her back. Lightly, so lightly. He’d taken off his clothes and come to her naked. She could feel the warmth emanating from his skin. She wanted to touch him, every inch of him. She wanted to throw her arms around him and plead with him—
“Wednesday,” he said. It was at that moment, when he breathed her name in something akin to reverence, that she realized he might have been in danger of falling apart too. But such an occurrence would have traumatized her, and fortunately he held himself together and took another quiet breath.
He unfastened her bustier and set it aside, then touched her for a long time as she knelt there. She was perfectly still, just taking in the soothing, familiar sensation of his caresses. He traced his fingertips over her ass, the curve of her hips, the round hollows of her shoulders, then he reached beneath her to fondle and squeeze her breasts. Eventually he worked his fingers into the back of her hair, and he pulled, hard enough to tell her what he wanted. She sat up and moved to him, and he guided her over his lap. He spanked her for a while, but he was never much of a straight spanker. He stopped after a few moments, when she had barely warmed up.
“Go and bring me your hairbrush.” She stood and went to fetch it, then handed it over with a sigh. She hated hairbrushes.
He held her hard as he paddled her with the rigid, stinging back of the brush. The numbness of grief was replaced by the searing, stinging torture of her ass cheeks. The cracks sounded loud in the silence of her apartment, coming one of top of the other, and her ass started to burn like hell. She jumped and fidgeted, trying to evade the raining blows. Even after all this time she couldn’t help it. Pain was still her enemy, because her mind wanted it as much as her body fought against it. He held her fast, taking all choice away from her. It was one of the reasons she needed him so much.
It was a hard spanking, one of the hardest ever, as she’d expected it to be. Something to remember me by , he told her wordlessly, each time he brought the hairbrush down on her ass. About halfway through she began to cry. It was no slow trickle of tears; it was a waterfall. A dam breaking, a storm spitting down rain. It was anguish and catharsis unwinding inside her, letting her breathe again. She drew in deep, shuddering gasps until he put down the brush. She relaxed over his hard thighs, the pain of good-bye forgotten, replaced with the torment of a hard, inescapable spanking. He