A Very Personal Trainer (4 page)

I swallowed, fingering my clit more urgently now. "It makes me...I don't know...a bad girl, Sir?"

"That's right. It makes you a bad girl. Now I want you to stand there and finger yourself until you come. And while you do it, I want you to look me in the eye. And when you come, I want to hear you say my name."

A keen melange of shame and excitement and unbearable desire held me in my tracks for a second or two. Then I began to rub and circle, to flick and flutter, watching him watching me, knowing that he registered every twitch and flush, that he could see me lose my grip on myself inch by dirty inch...that he saw what I was, reduced to my basest essence, brazenly bringing myself off under his command.

I wanted so badly to shut my eyes when the first sticky swirl of orgasm began at the pit of my stomach. I had to fight to keep the eyelids up, had to arm myself with some of his icy-blue artillery and imagine the fearsome punishment I might earn for disobeying him in this regard. But once the climax blew through me, I forgot to care, and my eyelids flew 33

A Very Personal Trainer

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wide and my eyes stared out in desperation while I panted and whimpered to the conclusion, remembering at the last minute to say the word.

"Dexter. Oh thank you, Dexter."

"My pleasure," he said, taking my wrists and bringing me to sit, gratefully floppy, on his lap. "Or rather, mostly your pleasure. But we'll rectify that another time." He stroked my hair, which was clinging to my forehead. "Good girl, Lara," he said into the crown of my head. "This could be a very...mutually beneficial arrangement. You know I have high standards, and high expectations of you now. Please don't let me down."

Please don't let me down.

* * * *

With five minutes to go until our meeting, the bills were paid, the flat was clean, I'd been to the gym my allotted three times, I'd met the two deadlines I had, the fridge and cupboards were full, I'd dealt with the court summons for non-payment of parking fines and...that was it. There was really nothing. Nothing he could reproach me for. I cast my eyes around the flat, looking for something out of place. No.

It was all perfect. Well, apart from the dirty dishes under the sink and the pile of unopened post behind the sofa cushions—

but he couldn't expect me to be superhuman, surely. And besides, he wouldn't see them.

I was already basking in the advanced glow of his approval, even as a tiny part of me regretted that I wouldn't get a trip over his knee today. I wanted to please him. I 34

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wanted to prove that I was capable of meeting his stringent demands.

I peeked through my shiny sparkly window, looking out for the first sign of him. When I spotted his tall figure rounding a corner, laptop bag in hand, I got this heartburn sensation, then an entire tropical forest of butterflies fluttered to life. My hands were shaking! I couldn't let them shake! What if I spilt his boiling green tea on him?

Even though I saw him press the buzzer, it still made me jump.

My voice was foreign to me as I piped, "Come on up."

He looked almost as nervous as I felt when I opened the door to him, and he couldn't seem to make up his mind whether to smile and be friendly, or continue with the stiff formality. Now spanking and sexual tension stood between us, a shared experience, and neither of us had much of a clue how to negotiate this brave new chapter in the story—an intimate act that nonetheless had no effect on the semi-formal footing of our involvement.

"How are you, Lara?" he asked politely, moving straight into the kitchen and unzipping his bag as always.

"Fine, thanks. Green tea?"

"Thank you."

I had minutes of respite now, with an excuse to turn my back on him and shilly-shally with teacups and kettles. But, oh horror, there were no clean cups—just glasses.

"Or perhaps you'd prefer water? Or fruit juice?" I asked hopefully, eyeing the clean glasses in their display cabinet.

"Green tea is fine."

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Could I open that cupboard under the sink just an inch and slip a hand inside for a dirty cup to give it a quick blast under the taps? Did I dare? I jumbled it all in, in rather a rush. I wasn't confident. But neither could I confess. I didn't want to blot my copybook on the first meeting of the new regime.

I touched the handle of the cupboard, hoping that the whir of his booting computer and the steaming of the kettle would mask any clink or chink from inside. He was deep into the set-up, opening browsers and files and whatnot. He wasn't watching me. I decided to chance it.

The merest crack threatened to set off a cacophonous chain reaction of tumbling china. I shut the door. Shit. Wasn't it supposed to be quite sophisticated to drink tea from a glass? People did it, I'm sure. In posh hotels and dramas about the colonial past. Okay, there was nothing else for it. I reached for a tall tumbler and popped the teabag inside, half-filling it with boiling water then topping it up with cold from the fridge, just as he always specified. It looked quite drinkable, in a sludgy green-brownish kind of way. Shame the glass didn't have one of those metal holders with a handle, but I wasn't running a bloody cafe. It would have to do.

I plonked it down in front of him and turned swiftly back to the kettle, hoping that my speed would make up for my failure at projecting a nonchalant air.
How do you do
nonchalance? Should I whistle a jaunty tune or something?

Ask him about the traffic?

"Lalala," I sang in a high-pitched, panic-attacked attempt to sound relaxed.

"Lara."

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Oh God. I wanted to collapse on the counter with my head in my hands and howl with shame.

"Yes?" I didn't turn around. I didn't want to see his face.

"Don't you have any cups?"

I was going to have to face him. "Cups?" I trilled, leaning back on the cupboards, smiling weakly.

He smiled back, not so weakly. "Yes. Cups. China receptacles for the consumption of hot beverages. You've heard of them, I take it?"

Oh, ha, ha. Mind you, I'd never heard Dexter trying to be funny before, so perhaps it wasn't such a bad sign.

"Yeah. You, um. You want a cup?"

"Ideally. Glass gets quite hot, you know. When it's got boiling water in it. Don't want to burn my fingers or drop it."

"No. Right." I chewed my lip.

"I'm sensing a problem." Dexter swivelled towards me, averting his eyes from the computer screen, his face pleasantly expectant.
He knows
.

"It's just...I don't have any."

"Don't have any? You had them last time I was here. What happened?"

Visit from the cup monster? Theft? Mass breakage? Not a single convincing explanation sprang to my deceitful mind.

"I do have some," I muttered sheepishly. "They're just...I haven't got round to washing them up yet."

"Oh." Dexter watched me, rather hawkishly, for a moment or two, then he swung back round to the computer and tapped at the spreadsheet. "Yes. Washing up. As and when 37

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necessary. Did you not consider it necessary to wash up when you found you had no clean cups?"

"Didn't have time. Been busy. I've done
everything
else," I wailed in a sudden outpouring of guilty defensiveness.

"Have you, Lara? Everything?" He smiled sadly. "Tell you what. Why don't you wash up a cup and I'll pour this brew into it. Then you can sit down here and we'll go through the list together."

He hadn't mentioned a punishment. Perhaps he would let me off. Perhaps he was quite a generous-spirited kind of automaton after all. I smiled gratefully and pulled open the cupboard door. An ear-splitting crash of falling crockery and aluminium rent the air.

"Oh. Dear."

* * * *

"You've done extraordinarily well," he told me, closing the spreadsheet and turning to me with a melancholy smile. "So much better than I would have expected at this stage. I think our little motivational scheme might be working."

I glowed in the sunshine of his praise, then the inevitable shadow chilled the air.

"Of course, I don't expect perfection, and I'm almost inclined to be lenient with regard to what happened earlier."

"The Teacup Incident," I said, having already christened it in my mind so that its notoriety would live forever.

"The Teacup Incident." He smiled.

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He really was so much more human

and...approachable...since I gave him the green light to redden my bottom.

"After all, you will have to replace all that broken china from your own pocket, and, judging by the finances we've just trawled through, that won't be easy. A punishment that truly fits the crime."

I perked up, and yet at the same time, my heart sank.

Was he letting me off? Did I want him to?

"So I'm not going to punish you for hiding the washing up."

"Oh. Are you not?"

He chuckled at the note of disapproval in my voice.

"Don't worry, I'm taking everything just as seriously as you need me to. I might not spank you for hiding dirty plates.

But concealing them and lying to me about it...that's quite a different matter."

It had taken a mere millisecond for him to snap back into that terrifying mode and my lips parted, suddenly dry, like the back of my throat.

"If you lie to me, Lara, what are you achieving? Can you tell me?"

I looked at my hands. "I get to...look good. I get...to win."

"Are appearances so important to you? I'm so very disappointed. I thought you were genuine in your desire to change and improve your organisational skills. But it seems that you've been fooling both yourself and me. You aren't serious, are you? It's all a game to you."

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I opened and closed my mouth. I wanted to protest, but I felt so terribly guilty—really guilty! Not the fake, fun kind of guilty. I was even close to tears.

"Please don't...I do want to be better," I blurted. "I really do. I'm just...it's hard. It's scary."

"I understand that it's hard, Lara. That's why it's so important that you're one hundred percent honest with me. If you lie to me...well, for one thing, I will know. And for another, I will have to withdraw from our arrangement. With the greatest regret. But I would always, always prefer for you to fall short and confess your shortcoming, than to believe you're sailing through without a struggle when you still need my help. You need my help, don't you? Still?"

"Yes, I do, I really do, I'm really sorry." A tear trickled out.

The sight of it seemed to affect him, because he wound up the lecture and handed me a handkerchief.

"Good. Now dry those tears and come here."

He patted his thigh and I stopped crying straight away, my thighs clenching with dread. Oh no, that's not dread, is it, when you feel wet between them? That's something else.

I really had no alternative, and the feeling thrilled me. I had to obey him.

I felt that same childish embarrassment in the act of placing myself to be spanked as I did on the first occasion—I felt so meek and submissive, letting him straighten the hem of my skirt so that it was tighter over my bottom. I had dressed especially for him, though I hoped he didn't realise it—short, tight skirt, stockings, light cotton chemise that almost showed my bra. In my bent over position, the skirt 40

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hem edged just high enough up my thigh to reveal the bottom of the stocking lace, with its plastic suspender snap holding it up. His thumb stroked along the line. He liked it. I could tell by the uncomfortable lump digging into my stomach.

"You're incorrigible, Lara," he said, his voice soft, almost caressing, so unlike the voice of somebody who was about to...

"Oy!"

"Yes, it's going to hurt more than the first time. It's a punishment, not an experiment. I take honesty seriously, and I intend to demonstrate that to you."

And he did. He demonstrated it with a thoroughness and efficiency that took my breath away and brought stinging tears—matching my stinging behind—to my eyes.

"You do need this, Lara, don't you?"

"Ohhhh." There was hardly any time for pauses between ouches and ooohs now, so they poured forth in an unbroken stream as the blows fell, hard, fast and relentless, burning my bottom ten times hotter than last time.

"Well? Don't you? You know you do."

"Yesssssssss." It hissed out of me like steam. I did need this. I needed it and wanted it, and I needed Dexter and I wanted him, and it was all mixed up in a jam of needing and wanting, loving and desiring, fearing and hurting.

"You're taking it well, if not very quietly," he told me, stopping for a moment to rub his self-satisfied hands over the seat of my skirt. "I think I need to check the damage though.

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I don't want to go too far. I'll need to look under this. Do you mind?"

He wanted to raise my skirt. He wanted to look at my bare arse! Did I
mind
?

"Be...my guest..." I shuddered out.

He took his time, pulling the skirt gently upward, inch by inch, until my bottom in its thong was revealed, and oh, the touch of his fingers against that warm, tightening skin, oh. It was almost unbearable, an erotic tickle that made me jolt over his lap and muffle a giggle.

"You're very warm," he said, his voice thick with admiration. The pads of his fingertips stroked firmly downwards, then upwards. I wanted them to travel. I wanted them down, up, in, a long way in, and I did a wriggly movement with my hips in the hope that he would understand this.

"I think you're trying to distract me, Lara," he tutted. "Are you?"

"No," I lied.