Bad Girls by Brooke Stern

bruises.
    â€˜I think I’ve found the place where the antonyms meet,’ he said.
    â€˜Where?’ I egged him on.
    â€˜It’s difficult to describe where exactly it happens. Let me show you.’
    I looked around the room, playing the fool even though I could well imagine what he was getting at.
    â€˜No, don’t get up,’ he said. ‘Stay right there. Here…’ he put the tip of his index finger in the small of my back, ‘I can run my finger down the cleft—’
    â€˜Cleft,’ I interrupted. ‘Noun; a fissure, a crack or a crevice formed by cleaving.’
    Pete began again.
    â€˜I can run my finger down the cleft of her ass while she’s lying on her stomach on a bed. Beginning at the top, my finger traces a line over the curve and then downward.’
    Pete, clinical and distanced in everything, continued his bizarre travelogue.
    â€˜At the bottom the groove between buttocks widens ever so slightly as the buttocks splay outward. Finally, my finger reaches the vague region underneath…’ he wiggled his finger slightly for emphasis, making me want so, so much more, ‘here, the crack where two buttocks cleave together, cleaves, the two sides of the crack that guided my finger disappear, and I touch her wonderful little kootch.’
    That was Pete’s favorite word for it, and its cutesy informality contrasted nicely with his otherwise officious tone. He was a grammarian, a pervert, and a bit silly on top of it all.
    â€˜That’s where the two meanings of cleave come together, underneath a woman.’
    â€˜What about cleavage?’ I asked, proud to be so clever, but the crack of a hard spank on my backside surprised me. ‘Hey!’ He had primed my kootch for some action, and I could hardly wait for it.
    â€˜You don’t want a spanking?’
    â€˜No.’
    His hand landed hard and loud on my other cheek.
    â€˜Isn’t it odd how “no” can be its own antonym, too?’
    Another spank.
    â€˜No, it’s not.’
    A fourth stroke echoed sharply through the apartment.
    â€˜You really don’t want to be spanked?’
    â€˜No,’ I said, but my heart wasn’t in it. It had begun to hurt, but it lit the fuse on my libidinal dynamite and I didn’t want him to stop.
    â€˜Are you sure?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜That’s my girl.’
    He began to really spank me. It was just like my other spankings – it hurt; I cringed with every stroke and desperately wanted it to stop – but it was different, too.
    â€˜For a long time I’ve wished I could just spank you because I want to,’ Pete said. ‘I’m going to spank you a hundred times, but I’ll stop if you tell me to.’
    One hundred strokes was pretty severe, even for Pete. Only the most serious transgressions called for that sort of punishment. Yet he was going to give it to me for no reason, and I was going to have to stand it or he would stop. I didn’t want to disappoint him.
    â€˜But why are you doing it? I didn’t do anything wrong.’
    â€˜I’m doing it because I like you.’
    â€˜Then don’t stop. Don’t ever stop.’
    I made it to one hundred, even though it hurt horribly. For Pete, I would have taken a hundred more.
    R/L
    8:39 PM 5/10/2004, The Marriot Suites, near Boston
    Ellen arrived late, as they had agreed she would. She arrived just late enough to provide the contrived reason for her punishment, and she knocked on the door so softly that Tom barely heard her. He was watching TV to calm his nerves and was pretty sure that the knocks on the door had been a figment of his anxious imagination.
    He still didn’t quite believe she would come. It felt precarious to stake too much on her bravery, so he had made himself expect the worst. But just in case it was her knocking, he turned off the TV and got up to check.
    He expected to find an empty hallway and to be