No Ordinary Affair (4 page)

And when I looked around, in my mind’s eyes I could see them, the faces of those ghostly students looking, looking at me, each of their gazes saying the same thing, “Better you than me, lass. Better you than me….”

So why did I bend over? I really don’t know. I could have just as easily stormed out, refused, told him he was a complete nutter and then demanding he drive me back to town. But I did neither of those things. Instead I lay over the table in front of me, hooking my fingers over the little lip of wood on the end and held my position, heart pounding, as Ethan Willoughby lifted the hem of my dress to expose my cotton knickers.

“Since this is your first offense, I shall not bare your bottom,” he said. “However, should you anger me in the future make no mistake that the knickers will come down and I will smack you on the bare. Is that understood, naughty Mary?”

“Yes sir…”

Whose voice was that? Was that my voice that sounded so vulnerable, so childlike, so submissive?

“Professor,” he corrected. “Professor Willoughby.”

“Yes, Professor Willoughby,” I said.

The air on my thighs was cool, and I could feel myself shaking as I lay across the table. It was as if I’d fallen into a dream of my own making, submitting myself to this man’s will.

“This is wrong,” a voice in my head said to me, but that voice was so far away that I could barely hear it, even though I know now I’d have been powerless to heed it no matter how loud it screamed.

I was thoroughly in this man’s spell and at that moment nothing mattered but holding my position across that table and accepting the first blow of that wicked paddle.

When it fell I cried out as the pain of the first smack suffused my skin, sinking in with a heat that went through me and collected between my legs until I could feel the crotch of m
y panties damp against my shaved
pussy.

A little sob escaped my throat with the next blow and I cried out and involuntarily sought to rise, but his hand was on my back then, holding me into position.

“There are only six this time,” he said. “Don’t make me start over when you’re doing so well. You do want to obey me, don’t you, pretty Mary?”

“Yes Professor!” The words escaped me in one breathy exhalation and I gripped the desk again.

“Put that bottom out, Mary. Good girl, good girl. Just like that.”

His voice was deceptively calming and I felt my back arch as I offered my bum up for another crack of the paddle. This time it fell low on my buttocks and I bobbed up and down with the pain even as I resisted the urge to put my hands back for protection.

“Nooo!” I cried. “No more!”

“Three more,” he said. “You’ll get the full measure. Lying is not tolerated in my classroom.”

He landed these rapid-fire, four, five, six. A sob exploded from my throat at the pain, which now struggled with the pleasure that had somehow been triggered by the experience as I lay there crying even as I shuddered from the most powerful orgasm I’d ever had.

I heard him step back.

“Stand up, Mary,” he said,
"
and turn to face your classmates.
" 
I did as he instructed, still feeling as if I were in a dream and strangely finding it not the least bit odd to guiltily raise my eyes to an empty room.
 
“To the others here who just witnessed Mary getting her bum warmed for lying, let this be a lesson to you.”
 
He turned to me. “And as for you, lass, you shall write ten times on the board, ‘I will not tell falsehoods.”

Reality punched me then. “But my job…”

“…is to be an obedient lass, and so you should hurry if you’re going to be finished on time.”

I took the piece of chalk he offered to me and walked stiffly to the board. My bottom was throbbing and the inside of my thighs were slick with my own juices as I wrote on the board. “I will not tell falsehoods, I will not tell falsehoods, I will not tell falsehoods.” Ten times I wrote it, and when I was finished I put down the chalk and turned to him.

“May I be excused?” I asked, knowing I needed to get back but unable, or unwilling, to break the spell he’d put me under.

“Yes,” he said. “Class is over for the day and while it’s not customary for me to give students a lift home I’m going to so that I can be assured you don’t run off in a temper.”

I nodded and turned to pick up my coat. My head hung down as I walked meekly behind Ethan to the car, where he opened the passenger side door so I could get in.

We said nothing as we drove back, but with each passing meter I felt a growing sense of shame. What had just happened? What had I just allowed to happen? My bottom throbbed beneath me as we traveled the road, and between my legs the secret place, still damp with desire throbbed as I replayed the whole sordid scene over and over and over.

It was five minutes before the end of my lunch break when we pulled up in front of the shop. I’d been afraid that some of our more regular customers – or worse,
Miss Parsham
– would have arrived ahead of me and question why I was in the company of this strange man. But the sidewalks outside the shop were busy.

I turned to him as I opened the door and realized as I did I had no earthly idea what to say. It was the most awkward feeling I’d ever had in my life, sitting there in that car not knowing whether to thank him or to apologize or to offer some excuse for my wanton behavior.

But Ethan saved me.

“I trust you will be kind to your aunt and help her out in the shop,” he said. “She tells me she needs your help tomorrow as well, so I will excuse you from school until your lunch hour, at which time I shall come round and pick you up.”

“I…no…” I began.

“Don’t try to get out of it, Mary,” he said, looking ahead at the rain. “You girls always look for ways to avoid school but you know how important an education is if you are ever to make something of yourself. So please be ready for me when I come. I’d hate to have to express my dismay to your aunt in the wake of how willingly you came with me today.”

I sat there, staring at him. Was that a threat? Was he implying that he’d suggest something unseemly about me to my employer should I refuse to go? I did not know and could not tell. All I knew was that he was trapping me, or -  more accurately -  I was telling myself I was trapped, that I had no choice but to obey. And I was so relieved that I almost began crying again.

“Run along, girl,” he said. “Don’t keep your aunt waiting.”

“Yes, professor,” I said, sliding out of my seat.

As I stepped back onto the sidewalk I watched him go, standing there in the rain and getting soaked as I did. It was only when I felt the rain dripping down my face that I snapped back to the reality of my situation and began frantically digging through my purse for the shop keys.

My hands shook as I put them in the lock and stepped inside, turning the sign just before slamming the door. I put my back to it, my breath coming in sudden gasping sobs as I stood there. I put my hand over my mouth to stop them as I heard the phone start to ring.

I had to answer it, and sought to stop my sobbing gasps and moderate my breathing as I made my way over to it.

“Good afternoon, Curiosities. This is Mary speaking.”

“Mary? Good Lord, girl. Are you alright?” It was
Miss Parsham
. “You sound entirely out of breath.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. Sometimes Mark called me after lunch, since his break fell shortly after mine.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m fine I just…I was just in the back room on the stepladder and fell. Scared myself half to death is all.”

“For heaven’s sake. Are you hurt? Is anything broken? I’ve got some very expensive pieces back there, you know.”

I frowned, irritated. I should have known better than to think she was talking about one of my bones.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Just gave me a fright is all.”

“I’m glad you’re not hurt then,”
Miss Parsham
said. “I just wanted you to know that I’ll be back a bit late, possibly before you lock up. I had great success today at the sale, great success. The car will be jammed full by the time I leave.”

“I could stay late and help you unpack,” I offered.

“No,” she said. “That will be
quite
unnecessary. I spent so much today that I could ill afford to pay you for the extra time. And besides, the exercise will do me good. I met Mrs. Baggart here and we went out for lunch. I ate entirely too much blueberry trifle.”

“Very well then,” I said, disappointed. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

“Yes, yes,” she said. “Tomorrow.”

I hung up the phone and stared at it for a moment. I should have insisted, that’s what I should have done. Then I could have stayed later, because the last thing I wanted to do was go home and see Mark and worry he’d tell with one look that I’d been up to no good.

Even though
Miss Parsham
said I could go home, I still found excuses to stay behind. I walked in the front door an hour-and-a-half later than usual to find Mark hovering by the door, phone in hand. When he saw me he pushed it open, a look of concern on his face.

“Mary, where on earth have you been? And why haven’t you answered your cell? I’ve been calling for the last thirty minutes!”

It didn’t help my already guilty conscience that he looked so stricken.

“I’m sorry. I got hung up a bit.” I said, reaching in my coat pocket for my phone. “And here’s why I didn’t answer. Apparently I accidentally turned my phone off.”

I will not tell falsehoods. I will not tell falsehoods. I will not tell falsehoods…

“Mary, are you all right?”

“What?” I turned and looked at Mark. I was in the foyer now, although I was so lost in thought I’d been barely conscious of walking in. “Yes, I’m fine. I’m just tired.”

“Too tired to go?”

“To tired to go where?”

Mark put his hands on his hips and let out the sigh he reserves for those times when he wants to make it clear how difficult I can be.

“Dinner. With the McKennas?”

I closed my eyes and put my fingers to my forehead. “Oh, that was tonight.”

“Yes,” he said. “And we’re already late. So come on unless you want to change first.”

“Change?” I asked. “Don’t you like this dress?”

“It’s much like your others,” he said, grabbing the umbrellas and ignoring my hurt expression. The dress was not like the others. It was more fitted, more feminine, the sort of thing I wished he’d require me to wear all the time. Not that Mark ever would.

“Well then,” I said. “If it’s much like the others there’s no reason for me to bother then, is there?”

I turned and walked back out not even waiting for him to hand me the umbrella. If it didn’t matter what I wore, did it matter whether I arrived with soaked hair? I didn’t want to go to the dinner anyway. The McKennas were nice enough but were twenty years older and stodgy. Mr. McKenna worked with Mark at the school and Mrs. McKenna stayed at home with their two English bulldogs, both of which parked their gaseous bodies under the dining room table whenever we went over, to the apparent ignorance or indulgence of their owners.

This night was no different. Mark and Richard replayed the same complaints about St Regis – lack of support, unappreciative parents, declining standards – while I pretended to be interested when Marion detailed Flora and Popkin’s latest exploits. I’d endured similar evenings with the McKennas before without the level of irritation I was feeling now. I was hating it - hating every minute of it - and resenting Mark for dragging me along, for not noticing my dress, for not…for not knowing me well enough to sense how uncomfortable I was, for not knowing me well enough to know what I wanted, for being married to me for six years and not knowing me as well as Ethan Willoughby knew me after six minutes.

For Mark life was a cycle of work, home, work, home – a predictable wheel that always clicked just where he knew it would. And I was just another one of those predictable clicks.

Why should I be the one to feel guilty? I couldn’t help but ask myself that as I sat there listening him complain the same complaints while Marion tried to get my attention so she could show me Flora’s latest trick. Mark didn’t notice me because he didn’t care to. Marriage wasn’t a journey of personal exploration for him, a process of discovering himself and his partner. It was just another routine part of his routine world.

I stood and Mark looked at me, a question in his eyes.

“I’m not feeling well.” I turned my attention briefly to our hosts. “So sorry but I feel a bit off suddenly.”

Mark stood and walked over. “Goodness, Mary,” he said. “If you were feeling poorly I wish you’d have told me before we came all this way.”

“Well I didn’t feel quite so dodgy or I would have,” I said. “And you’re quite welcome to stay if you’d like. Perhaps Richard could give you a lift home. But I really think I should be going.”

Mark looked from me to our hosts and back again. “Do you think you can drive?”