I canât stop looking at it. This book I found tucked at the back of the bookshelf in our holiday cottage.
I canât stop looking at it and wondering whether Simonâs out there imagining me in here looking at it. And if he is, what does he think? How does he feel?
The sunâs beating down outside, drowning the patio in light, so Iâve got a good excuse for lurking indoors, in the shade. Iâm reading the Blue Book, or more accurately, perving over its pictures again and again. Heâs out there, catching a few more rays before he comes inside and probably does some work on his laptop or watches football on the television. By unspoken agreement, this was supposed to be a âtogethernessâ holiday, but so far weâve pretty much done our own things, as per usual. My current thing seems to be looking at vintage photographs of wide-eyed Victorian âpretty maidensâ baring their rather anemic-looking bottoms and getting spanked.
Just look at this one, eh?
A black-haired beauty in layers of voluminous undergarments is stretched across the lap of a stern-looking gentleman with a very serious mustache. The penitentâs old-fashioned drawers are all pulled open to reveal her plump, pallid buttocks, and her husband, lover, disciplinarian or whatever he is, has his hand raised, just about to wallop her one.
Is it for real? Surely not. Itâs got to be posed; a naughty, porny, underground piece of titillation to be sold to respectable gentlemen under the counter, for a tidy price.
But it must be based on some real need, I guess. Some real kink. Somebody must have wanted it, and somebody must have wanted what it represented too.
I think I do, even if it hurts. Maybe even because it hurts. Who knows? I donât, not categorically, not for sure. But I do know how I feel when I look at the Blue Book. I feel horny, and I want to be touched, and maybe more.
Wriggling a bit, I glance out of the French window toward Simon on his lounger.
What about you? Does the Blue Book make you horny too, my love?
It must do. It has to. Mainly because itâs full of bare female bottoms, something he must have noticed when I left it out on the sideboard last night. What manâs eyes wouldnât be drawn to a sight like that? I know for certain that he must have looked at the Blue Book because the dust wrapper was tucked in at a different page just now, and thereâs only been the two of us in the house since then.
So why havenât you said anything, you contrary devil? Are you waiting for me to be the one to make the first move?
I look at him, toasting his well-basted body in the sun out there. I love him to pieces, but heâs not straightforward guy, not a pussycat. Heâs a reserved and reticent man. Not a liar or deceiver but somehow always giving the impression of not exactly revealing his whole self to me, of maybe hiding a secret, private Simon.
Is this it? Your hidden desire?
I look down at the man in the photo. Heâs vintage, of course; older, darker and far more whiskery than my blond, golden Simon, but still, thereâs something about the two men that echoes across the centuries. Even allowing for the posed quality of the picture and its fuzzy reproduction, thereâs a look in the eye, a gleam thatâs vaguely challenging and quietly confident.
Thereâs an air about that mustachioed Victorian gentleman that would make a woman do anything he wanted. Even drape herself across his lap with her bottom bare, ready to take a spanking.
I blink, looking down again, and itâs like a screen-wipe. A perception shift. I see myself and Simon in the faded sepia photograph, and at the same time I feel as if Iâm in the scene too, across his knee.
His thighs feel strong and rock solid beneath me, comforting me. Cooler air wafts across the naked skin of my bottom, emphasizing its exposure. Every millimeter of epidermis is hypersensitized, every last skin cell, every last pore, waiting, waiting....
I want Simon to spank me, but Iâm not sure why. It canât be because I crave pain, because I donât. I hate pain. I avoid it at all costs, and I cringe and whine like a baby when I have to pluck or wax various bits of myself, or when I stub my toe or cut my finger on a sheet of paper.