Bad Girls by Brooke Stern Page B

reassure her with his guiding embrace, he resisted the urge to lighten the weight or to dissipate the tension with small talk or pleasantries. The payoff for keeping his head in the game was great. This was a once in a lifetime encounter, a first meeting with someone he had only known online. It was classic. She was the schoolgirl on her first trip to the principal’s office; she was the maid, called to her aristocratic master; she was the 21 st Century liberated girl finally realizing the fantasy that had been hidden away for so long. It was all of this and more. When she faced him she faced the instrument of her own, personal justice.
    While lovers who knew each other could play these roles, it was impossible to replicate the feeling of an absolute first time between two who had never met. The familiarity of a known lover would inevitably dissipate the anxiety of the first exposure, of the first touch. This, on the other hand, would be a fantasy come true. They both found themselves trembling. From the first moment he was touching her on his terms and he would punish her first, before anything else had gotten in the way.
    They wouldn’t wade in slowly; they wouldn’t be checking in with each other every step of the way. They were going to dive in, or more precisely, he was going to dive in and pull her with him, for she had warned him that she would inevitably be overcome by the worst parts of herself; cowardice, unwillingness to see things through, hiding from the consequences of her commitments. Where the normal first date was a long negotiation of consent in order to satisfy mutual desires, this would necessitate the immediate imposition of his will upon her in order to satisfy their unusual desires. He would have to make her, and he came prepared to do so.
    He had thought about how it would go. He would see her naked before they kissed; he would have her bottom-up across his lap before she had a chance to really look him in the eye. This was the pay-off of not cracking, of staying in character. So he was careful to stay in the moment, not to smile nervously or blush as he guided her into the room. She, of course, did all these things: she smiled, blushed and giggled a little. This was as it should be. It was her role to want to change the tenor of their encounter. It was his role to stop her. She would try to defeat him, to deny him and in the process deny herself what she sought. Her hand covered her mouth to suppress a giggle and her eyes snuck glances upward at him, impressed as all women were by his height. When he didn’t respond to her gestures of seduction she got nervous and looked at the floor. In other contexts he would have been a complete sucker for her attention, but here he found her attempts slightly feeble. With all the responsibility resting on his shoulders he felt stronger than usual. Freed from having to look to her for approval, he was able to give himself over to directing their fantasy.
    For all his efforts, though, this beginning was far from the way they had written it. He sympathized with her fear and recognized her bravery. It took guts to meet a man on these terms, even if she was doing it under the intoxicating influence of their emails. This just wasn’t the sort of thing she did, except she was doing it. He guided her gently into the hotel room. With her warm hand in his he felt an instant affection for her. In spite of her late arrival, in spite of the ink they had spilled to choreograph the perfect spanking, he felt the momentary inclination to kiss and hug her, not to strip her naked and hit her bare ass. He led her gently to the far side of the room and turned her so that she was facing him, her back against the wall, eyes demurely watching her own toes wiggle in her sandals.
    With commanding magnanimity he began with a tender stroke of her cheek with the back of his fingers. When he ran his fingers down her neck he could feel her rapid pulse and see her shoulders