Page 121 of Dirty Discipline, Vol. 1

Until the New Year's Eve party, when Maud had refused to stop drinking champagne although David had repeatedly and with increasing urgency and anger asked her to think about their plans for the hotel room afterward. Instead of making love in the enormous jacuzzi tub in the beautiful suite, he had held her hair back from her face while she threw up into the toilet.

When she awoke, with the memory of David's kindness and patience warming her heart, she found him sitting on the side of the bed with a grave look on his face. "Maud," he said in the same soft but steel-edged tone he had used in her room on Thanksgiving, "I know you don't want to hear this, but I need to try again. It's very important to me that I be the one to take the lead in our relationship, especially when you're making foolish choices."

"I know, I know," Maud said, feeling sorry but also feeling a little panicked that she might have to have another of these conversations. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have drunk so much. Any chance we can take that tub now?" She tried to smile winsomely.

David shook his head. "No, it's nearly eleven. We have to pack up and get going. But before that, I need to make it clear to you that you're going to have to let me guide you, and discipline you, or I think we might not make it."

"Might not…" Maud tried very hard to pretend she didn't know what he meant. Really, she didn't, at least as far as the leading and the guiding and above all the disciplining went.

"Don't pretend you don't know what I'm saying, Maud," David said calmly and a little sadly. "I've tried to let you think about if for the past few weeks, without any pressure, but what happened last night makes me think I should have forced the issue earlier. In any case, I want you to get up out of bed and come over here and lay yourself over my lap. I'm going to spank you. Then I'm going to fuck you from behind just like I should have done on Thanksgiving. We'll pack and go, after that, but when we get back to my apartment, you're going to give me a blowjob, and then we're going to have anal sex. I'll be gentle, because I know it will be your first time, but I feel strongly that I need to do what I can to help you understand my expectations."

Maud's whole body had seemed to go burning hot and then ice cold while David delivered this speech. Her mouth hung open as she gazed at him across the rumpled bed. He regarded her with his kind eyes set in a determined face. She tried to speak, but for a moment no sound emerged from her throat. The stillness of the beautiful hotel room seemed perfect — oppressive in its perfection, actually, as if the furniture itself waited for Maud to make up her mind how to respond.

Again, as on Thanksgiving, she pictured it: over his lap, then on hands and knees; then, much worse, on her knees before him, trying to give him pleasure with an inexperienced mouth; and, at last, the… the other thing.

She felt her face, which had seemed to her to wear an unaccountably open expression for the last few moments, as if part of her didn't understand what David meant, or didn't grasp how stupid it was, grow hard in its lines. She set her jaw in her best I know right from wrong fashion. She said, "Don't be silly," and she got up and walked to the bathroom to take a shower, closing the door firmly behind her, and locking it despite an absolute conviction that David would never intrude unless invited, no matter what bizarre things he said about sex.

Chapter Two

Evasion

What was she supposed to do about this new version of the silly sex game? David could spend his money any way he wanted, of course. If he wanted to create an engraved invitation, or summons, or whatever, and hire a calligrapher to put Maud's name on the envelope… well, fine. Whatever. But frankly this one seemed to have taken the thing a little too far. She needed to confront him and make sure this was the end of it. Despite the strange quirky things he seemed to be into in the relationship department, she never felt anything but safe and secure with him, and she definitely didn't want to break up with him, but he needed to take no for an answer when it came to this stuff.

She couldn't deny that she had a tiny bit of curiosity about what might actually be located at 45 Hunt Road, Highfield, CT — was this all a way to propose on Valentine's Day, maybe? Enough was enough, however. If he wanted to propose, he would have to do it without bringing in these ideas about "discipline."

The fact that he had, with apparent regret, told her that they would have to celebrate Valentine's Day a day late on the 15th seemed to Maud now evidence that David had some sort of romantic plan. He had told her he would have to be at a conference in Stamford on Valentine's Day, a Friday, but would make it up to her on Saturday with a fancy dinner. She had told him that was fine, because of course it was: David had the knack of making her feel loved even if every detail didn't come out exactly right.

This… summons, however, just didn't work for her. Maybe she could persuade him to keep the romantic bits and jettison the sex-game stuff. Maud felt no pang of guilt about that, she supposed, because the summons seemed so over the top. "The gentleman whose friends have referred your case to us" — what did that even mean? And, apparently, the us took it upon themselves to "award" Maud to David? How? Why?

Maud made a resolution before she picked up the phone. Either David would let go of this nonsense, or she would break up with him.

"Sure," he said at the other end of the phone when she told him she was coming over. "I'm packing right now, though, and I need to leave for Stamford in an hour to make it to the opening reception. What's up?"

His voice sounded so calm and blasé that Maud could hardly believe this David shared a skin with the David who had come up with the bizarre summons — or the instructions, twice given and never obeyed, to put herself over his knee for a spanking. But, she reflected, he had spoken calmly then, too: Maud herself just hadn't had the slightest chance of keeping her cool.

"It's about this… thing you put through my mail-slot…," she began, but suddenly a burst of static on the line drowned out David's reply.

It sounded like he said, "What?" or maybe "What thing?" and then something like "I wasn't even near your place today," but the interference reached a volume so loud that Maud couldn't tell. Then she thought he said, "Really bad connection, sweetheart. Just come on over, okay?"

Then he hung up.

Feeling strangely uneasy, as if the bad connection on the phone had represented some sort of omen, Maud descended the steps of the brownstone where she had a second-floor apartment to the parking area in back where her little red VW bug awaited. The sight of the car reassured her as it always did: it sheer cuteness seemed to call out to something in Maud's character that loved to be thought of as cute.

But as she walked to the car door, she noticed that a tall man in a trenchcoat was leaning against a telephone pole only a few yards away. Then she noticed that he was looking steadily at her through the twilight. He had fashionably, if severely, cut salt-and-pepper hair and a well-trimmed beard, and his dark eyes seemed amused but not very pleased. He wore a dark-blue suit over a shirt so white it gleamed, but no tie.

"Miss Fredericks," the man said in a pleasant baritone, "you're making a mistake."

Maud's hand froze as it reached for the handle of the VW's door. "Do I know you?" she said in a very weak voice. She found herself trying to decide whether this encounter was the strangest thing that had ever happened to her, as if somehow to rank its disquieting effect among other disturbing occurrences might damp down the anxiety that rose inside her now. The summons… the static on the phone… the man leaning against the telephone pole… All together, yes, probably the strangest thing ever, but that must mean that it couldn't get any stranger, right?

"You do now," the man said simply. "Don't go to David's apartment. Obey the summons you received, and I promise you that you will find great happiness. Indeed, I promise you that even if you disobey me, you will find the same great happiness. You will find it, however, in a less pleasant way."

Maud's stomach lurched with fear and a welter of other emotions she could hardly have named. She finished reaching for the door handle and yanked the car door open, practically leaped inside. Then realizing that she hadn't had her keys out, she started to fumble desperately for them in her purse, sure that the man in the blue suit would now approach and try to remove her forcibly from the car. But when she gave one panicked look up from the purse and out the window of the car, she saw that he seemed to have gone. Shocked, Maud swiveled her head back and forth, trying to figure out to where he had moved, but she found no trace of him at all.

When the police car's lights went on behind her, three blocks from her apartment, Maud could hardly believe it. At least she regarded having her registration on top in the glove compartment as a nearly religious duty, so she was ready with it, and her license, when the officer, a red-headed man of forty or so, wearing the severely disapproving look they must teach at the police academy, leaned down to speak with her.

"Do you know why I pulled you over, miss?" he asked.

Maud had no idea at all. "No, officer," she said, trying to sound as innocent as she could.

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