Old-Fashioned Values (6 page)

“Tell her I’m sorry I made her cry, but I’m going to be watching. If I see the slightest thing that looks any more like abuse than this already looks like it, I’m calling her parents, health services, and the police.”

Rachel knocked on Sally’s door and heard a muffled, “Who is it?”

“It’s Rachel. Can I come in?”

“Okay,” Sally said, slightly less muffled.

Rachel found her already in bed in her nightgown, her face tear-stained on the pillow. Rachel closed the door and said softly, “I’m so sorry, Sally. I could see that you didn’t want to tell Cassandra, and I just didn’t cover for my blunder fast enough. It’s just that you seemed sooo happy when you came in. I didn’t think it could be anything that you wanted to keep secret.”

“I
was
so happy,” Sally said with a little sob. “I was, wasn’t I? I think I’m in love with Mark.”

“What? This was your
second
date. You’re a
freshman
. Come on.” Rachel kept her tone gentle, but even she felt a little alarm at the calm assurance in Sally’s tone.

Sally turned on her back and looked up at the ceiling, probably to avoid Rachel’s eyes. Rachel sat down in Sally’s desk chair. “I know it sounds absurd, Rachel, but the way he held me… and yes, I’m eighteen, but I always dreamed that someone would hold me like that.”

“Plenty of guys can hold you like that.”

“I don’t know that that’s true. One thing’s for sure—there aren’t plenty of guys who would have spanked me on the second date.”

That actually made Rachel giggle, and her giggle made Sally smile again at last. “So you’re really saying that you liked it?”

“No! I’m not saying that. It
hurt
… and it was so embarrassing, but…”

“But what?”

“But like I said to Cassandra, I liked that he did it. I liked that he told me he was going to do it, and then he did it. He gave me tons of chances to break up with him, but he made it clear that if we were going to be boyfriend/girlfriend, I was going to have to take my spanking, and follow his rules.”

“Or?”

“Or… get spanked again.”

Rachel fell silent for a while. She wanted to ask something, but she didn’t think she dared.

“Rachel?”

“Yes?”

“Do you think I’m crazy, or weird? Cassandra obviously does.”

“I… well, I guess I don’t have the same kind of strong opinions she does about gender and sex stuff. I’m, um, a little worried, I guess? But I also—I also kind of see why you would like it.” She decided she just had to ask. “Do you think he’s going to spank you again?”

Sally gave a shiver at that, and then she gave a quick little nod. “Mm-hmm.”

“Would you… I mean, would you… say a bad word to
get
him to spank you, ever?”

“What?” At first Sally seemed taken aback, but then she seemed to consider the question more seriously. “I don’t know?” she said. “I mean, I definitely don’t want to get spanked on our next date… but maybe on the one after that.” She giggled. “Now I really feel like I am crazy, but you were the one who had the thought, weren’t you?” She turned onto her side and looked into Rachel’s eyes again. “Why did you ask?”

“I don’t know,” Rachel said honestly. “I’m having all kinds of weird thoughts about this, I have to say.” She shook her head slightly, in a vain attempt to clear her mind. “Cassandra wants you to know that if she thinks Mark might be abusing you, she’s going to call your parents, health services, and the police.”

Sally laughed at the emphatic sound of Rachel’s report on Cassandra’s intent. “I guess that’s fair,” she said. “Next time I get back from a date, though, let’s talk about it just us, okay?”

“Okay,” Rachel said. “Goodnight, Sally.”

“Goodnight, Rachel. Thanks for taking my side, at least a little.”

More than a little,
Rachel thought as she passed back through the common room into her own bedroom. Really, she didn’t know if she had a way to express how she really felt about the news that Sally had been spanked by her boyfriend. Envy, though, was definitely, disturbingly a large part of it. Rachel couldn’t tell why, though, and she couldn’t tell what it meant that she envied Sally. She had already envied Sally’s having been asked out by brilliant, studious, dreamy-handsome senior Mark Weaver; was envying that he had spanked her for saying ‘fuck’ just a weird inadvertent extension of that envy, or did she actually envy the spanking?

She lay awake for a long time, thinking about it. Eventually, she began to try not to think about it, or about the battery-operated boyfriend in her nightstand drawer. Finally she sighed and reached over to get the tiny device. So tiny, yet so effective: such a wonderful going-away present from her naughty friends at home, who had all gone together to the sex shop and bought them for one another the month before they all left for different colleges.

She waited until she had it muffled under her nightshirt and between her thighs and under the comforter before she turned it on, so that the buzzing sounded even to her ears like no more than a mosquito’s. She thought about a boy—not Mark Weaver, definitely not him—just a faceless boy, telling her that she had been a very bad girl to use a vibrator on her pussy. In her imagination, he was a crude sort of boy, the kind Rachel would never consider dating, and he called it her ‘sweet little cunt.’

He told her to get over his knee, and then he ripped her nightshirt up, and he started to spank her so, so hard. Rachel screamed, in her imagination, bit her cheek in her real bed, and then she came hard and quick, clenching her thighs around the buzzing vibrator and emitting only a tiny little whine as evidence that maybe she needed a spanking even more than Sally did.

Chapter Seven

Mark and Sally had dinner together in the dining hall the next night. It seemed strangely normal after the events of their date the night before. None of those events came up; instead, Sally told him about her day, and he told her about his—she had gone to the football game, and he had gone to the library. It wasn’t a date, really: it was exactly what Mark had always hoped to have with a girl he loved. It was also their formal coming out as a couple, Mark supposed, as he noticed other seniors—senior women, in particular—notice that Mark Weaver was dating an underclasswoman.

Several friends, mostly fellow economics majors, came over to say hello, and more than one said, “You guys make a cute couple.” Sally blushed and said “Thanks,” every time, but Mark could tell that there was more than a bit of dismissiveness from his female friends—though that was complemented, he supposed, by the envy from his male friends. All of them, Mark was sure—male and female—assumed that he had fucked Sally the previous night.

The thought, rising in his mind of its own accord—
They all think you fucked her—
took him by surprise. He would have assumed that his imagination would put it some gentler, more romantic way:
They all think we made love
or even
They all think we hooked up
. But there it was. Mark remembered John and Carol talking about the same dichotomy, and John telling him not to pretend about his desires.
You want to fuck her.
Did Sally want him to fuck her? He looked at her as she talked to Annette, a brilliant senior economics major, and saw the animation in her face. He saw to his delight that Annette’s condescending look had vanished as they talked about Sally’s plans for her first novel.

But Sally definitely didn’t look like the kind of girl who wanted a guy to fuck her. She looked like she wanted to make love tenderly.

How could Mark know that, though? He had never made love to a girl, let alone fucked one.

After dinner, they went up to Mark’s room. When the door was closed, he took Sally in his arms, and now they kissed, for real, for the first time, their tongues meeting and their arms twining. They both seemed to have a little experience in that area, and the heat of the kisses matched the way they had been looking at each other at dinner.

Then, though, Mark felt himself at a loss. “Do you want to take off your coat?” he said. Sally nodded, and he helped her off with it and hung it up next to his own. She had sat down on the bed by the time he turned around, and he went to sit beside her.

“What next?” she whispered. “I… like I said last night, I don’t want to go… too fast, but…”

“What?” Mark asked, putting his arms around her. Sally wore a wonderful blue cashmere sweater that shaped her little breasts so perfectly that he found he was having some trouble thinking straight. She had on just a tiny bit of lip gloss that he could taste now on his tongue—strawberry—and she had a very subtle floral perfume that matched that taste, as well as her strawberry blond hair. He wanted her so much that his head felt light as air. “We can go as slow as you want,” he murmured, kissing her again and wondering if he was telling the truth, exactly. “But what?”

“I’m really… really…” She blushed furiously. What did she mean? “Tell me what to do, Mark,” she whispered.

Mark felt his eyes widen a little. Then he knew what he wanted to say, and before he could chicken out, he said it. “Let’s get your sweater off.”

Sally’s eyes widened, too, at the words, but she whispered, “Okay,” and she held her hands obediently over her head. Operating on adrenaline and testosterone, hard as a rock, Mark took hold of the bottom of the soft cashmere, and pulled it up over her head to reveal a white bra with hint of lace along the edge of the cups that held in her small but perfect breasts.

Sally looked into his eyes expectantly. Did she want him to call all the shots? The thought made him even harder. “Let’s lie down,” he murmured, and reached out and touched the bare skin of her tummy, her back, her shoulders for the very first time, reclining and pulling her with him so that they lay face to face in his narrow bed. Should he take his own shirt off? He didn’t want to—he liked the contrast of his own oxford-cloth-clad chest with her bra, and her bareness.

He kissed her, and kissed her again. She still looked at him, waiting for him to say what would happen. “Your bra is very pretty,” he said.

Sally giggled. “I bought it today, for you.”

“Really?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“I’m…” Again Mark hesitated, but each time he almost caught himself and stopped, he seemed to trust himself a little more now. The desire he had felt before, the previous night and here again just a few moments past, to push her farther than she wanted to go, to steal forbidden caresses… that seemed to fade in the face of Sally’s clear willingness—eagerness—to follow his lead, to let him gently initiate her into mysteries that Mark himself had really for the most part only imagined. “I’m going to touch your breasts now, Sally,” he said—not because he wanted to make her do something she didn’t want, but because he wanted to see in her eyes what he did see: acquiescence, desire. Sally wanted him to touch her breasts, because she wanted to feel his hands there and because he wanted to put them there.

She gave a little whimper as he ran his fingertips gently under the lace. Mark could hardly believe how soft Sally’s skin was, under the bra. Was he really going to touch her nipple now? Just touch it? He did, gently, her left nipple with the middle finger of his right hand, and Sally gave a soft, low moan.

“Oh, God, Mark,” she said softly.

He pulled down her bra strap, and now he could see her breast, with its little pink nipple. He wanted to kiss it, but there wasn’t room in the bed to bend his head. On a sudden impulse, he slid himself down the bed, thinking also of what else he might do, further down Sally’s body, where her jeans covered the spot he couldn’t stop thinking about.

“What are you doing?” she whispered, a tiny hint of panic in her voice.

Mark’s answer was to kiss her nipple, and then to move to her other breast, pull the bra strap down there, too, and kiss that nipple in turn.

“Mark!” she said, giggling. He looked up at her, still kissing her nipple, smiling between kisses.

He thought again about things he might do further down, but as before, the way she had let him guide her brought out his care for her.

“Nothing,” he said mischievously. He kissed her other nipple, and gave it a little flick of his tongue, experimentally. Sally gave a gasp of arousal, and he smiled. Then he said, “I hope you don’t think I’m going to do anything naughty down here. I’m certainly not going to do that tonight.”

“Oh,” she said, sounding a little disappointed.

He slid himself back up the bed so that he could kiss her lips again. Now, as he kissed her, he held her breasts and rubbed them gently. Sometimes it seemed like he was tickling Sally instead of arousing her the way he wanted, but she didn’t seem to mind very much. His cock, of course, was raging inside his own jeans, and suddenly he felt the need for some sort of equality—the hunger to feel Sally’s touch there for the first time. More, he wanted to
tell
her to touch him there, for the very first time, just as he had told her that he wanted her sweater off.

Could he? He felt much less sure of himself when it came to this. He could tell he had been right to put aside the thought of taking down Sally’s jeans.

Suddenly the thought came to him that going slow—relatively slow, at least, for playing with Sally’s breasts tonight could probably be considered going quite fast, at least by the old-fashioned standards it seemed she had apparently adopted for herself, though it seemed those standards hadn’t come from her parents—had a great deal to recommend it. Going slow wasn’t just about making sure Sally was comfortable with the way they touched each other: it was about savoring the delights they would both feel as they crossed the borders—literal borders, between erogenous zones, and the symbolic borders of intimacy that went along with them.

The act of savoring that was something Mark hadn’t even considered might exist, before he had spanked Sally the night before. The way he had discovered then and, even more, now, lying kissing her and getting to know the joys of their bodies, her willingness to let him tell her how he wanted things to go, seemed to have unlocked it.