Page 28 of Shamefully Trained

“You accepted a consequence. Now you’ll show me whether you mean to keep accepting what follows.”

“Please don’t make me.” The words came out breathless. I had the strange impression that they, the words, had shocked Alex simply by coming out of her mouth. As if the very idea that she might have to beg not to strip in front of me, here, had shaken the foundations of her identity. “Not here?”

I watched her carefully as she said it. I wanted to see what mixture of emotions her plea came from—revulsion or shame. With Alex, so much depended on the distinction. Revulsion I would not press through. Shame I absolutely would.

What I saw in her was shame, pride, arousal, fear of exposure, and the desperate wish to preserve some internal story in which she remained fundamentally unlike a girl who stripped on command for a rich man in a bathroom.

Unfortunately for that story, she was indeed that kind of girl. More important, she was mine, if she chose to be.

“Alex,” I said, “if you’re going to belong to me, I need to know whether you can obey me, when I want to enjoy you as I choose. Because a woman who needs what you need will often lie to herself right up until the point she ruins something important. And because I won’t invest myself in you while allowing you to pretend this is gentler than it is: you will learn to submit even when submission feels shameful to you. Indeed, I will demand things like this because they embarrass you.”

Her lips parted. I saw the tears gather before they fell.

Then her chin lifted a fraction despite the tears, and I saw the intelligence in her again, the clever, defensive creature who would absolutely use ambiguity later as a place to hide if I gave it to her now.

“I can’t,” she whispered.

“Yes, you can.”

“No.” She drew in a shaky breath. “I’m serious. I can’t do that.”

I let a beat pass.

“Then you can put your clothes straight and leave,” I said. “I’ll cancel the sponsorship.”

* * *

Alex

“I… I…” I started, but I had no idea what I could possibly say next. Finally, a question came to me, and I asked it before I could chicken out. “Will you tell me,” I said, hating how unsteady my voice sounded, “that if I do it now—if I strip to my lingerie—you won’t just… punish me afterward anyway?”

His eyes held mine for a moment that felt much too long.

“No,” he said.

The answer hit me like a slap.

“You’ve already earned a spanking for making me repeat myself.” His tone stayed calm, almost conversational, which somehow made the words worse. “Having my finger in your bottom was just the first taste of your consequence for that. If you obey me now, however, you can avoid a whipping.”

I stared at him. My breath had gone thin and high in my chest.

“A whipping,” I repeated, in a whisper.

“Yes.”

Something hot and terrible moved through me. Fear first, clean and immediate. Then, braided up in it, that sickening pulse of fascination that had begun to make me distrust every response my body produced.

“With what?” I asked before I could stop myself. “Your belt?”

One dark eyebrow lifted slightly, as if he found the question revealing.

“Sometimes I’ll use my belt,” he said. “But it’s not my first choice. And not what I’ll use if you disobey now.”

I should have left it there. Instead I heard myself ask, “Then what… what will you… use?”

“A cane.”

The word seemed to open some abyss under me.