Page 41 of Dirty Discipline, Vol. 1

Hallie’s stomach does the answering for her. The loud rumbling of her tummy has both women bursting into giggles. Traci speaks first. “I’ll take that as a yes. Here, let me help you sit up.”

The women spend a few minutes getting Hallie into a sitting position, back resting comfortably against the fluffed pillows. As hungry as she is, Hallie beelines it to the coffee first, and the tall, cold orange juice second. She hadn’t realized how thirsty she was. Only when she’s drained both beverages does she turn her attention to the bacon on the plate. Not too crispy. Not too wobbly. It is the Goldilocks of bacon. Just right.

She digs into her bacon, eggs and toast with gusto before remembering she’s not alone. She glances up to see Traci studying her from the chair at the end of the bed. She has curled up, her legs drawn up under her, looking completely at ease, which in turns helps Hallie relax.

Hallie can see she is a beautiful woman. Probably a half dozen years older than herself, she takes the time to admire Traci’s thick, dark hair. Hallie has always hated how thin and straight her own hair is. What she’d give to have thick, wavy hair like Traci.

“Don’t let me interrupt your eating. I can see you’re hungry and thirsty. Let me know what you need refills on.”

“Thanks. You’re being really nice to me, considering…” Hallie’s voice trails off.

Traci picks up her thought. “Considering you broke into my house in the middle of the night.” The grin on Traci’s face tells Hallie she’s just teasing.

Still, embarrassed, Hallie has the decency to blush. “Yeah. That.”

Traci’s smile turns more serious. “Want to talk about why you did that?”

“What do you mean? I could hear you all the way outside as I was coming up your driveway. I could hear you crying out and knew you needed help. I mean, yes, it was rude to barge in, but at least it got him to stop beating you.”

Traci is remarkably calm talking about something so serious and personal. “Is that what you thought Troy was doing to me? Beating me?”

“Well… yeah. Don’t deny it. I saw it with my own two eyes.” Hallie lets the vision of Troy standing behind Traci as her ass was being thrashed with his belt return. For the hundredth time in her life, Hallie hates that with memories like this come much scarier feelings than just fear and anger. She feels that strange fluttering in her tummy again and she works hard to squelch it.

She wasn’t expecting Traci’s answer. “What you saw as a beating, I prefer to call a spanking. And I can assure you, it doesn’t happen very often, but I had earned this one.”

“That’s what men try to tell us so they can get rough. Nothing we do deserves a beating.”

Traci’s smile is sincere. “Oh, I completely agree with that. No one ever deserves a beating. I just think we might have different definitions for the word.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Okay, let me ask you what the word spanking means to you?”

“I don’t know. I guess of being a kid and my grandma spanking me when I didn’t clean my room or when I was late getting home, and she had been worried.” She doesn’t include her last spanking at the hands of her Uncle Adam the last summer she had spent with them. He had only spanked her that one time, but she would never forget it. She’d wanted to be so angry with him at the time, but she had found she just couldn’t get mad because she absolutely knew she’d deserved it. As much as she wanted to hate him for hurting her, she had found the spanking had brought her closer to her uncle because he had told her at least a dozen times, he was correcting her because he loved her.

Traci is continuing on. “Well, those of us living in Eagle’s Pass believe that the value of spankings doesn’t stop when we grow up. Have you ever heard of domestic discipline or DD?”

“I think I’ve heard… people… mention DD before, but I never really knew what it meant.” Memories of the night of her spanking courtesy of Uncle Adam return. She remembers her aunt and uncle arguing about if they had the right to spank their sixteen-year-old niece since she didn’t really understand anything about DD. She hadn’t understood at the time, but in the end, they had agreed that doing something as stupid as borrowing their car to drive into town to see friends was bad enough to warrant correction. Borrowing the car without permission had been bad. Driving without a valid driver’s license had been plain stupid. The lesson over Uncle Adam’s knee with Aunt Gina’s wooden spoon had ensured she would never repeat that particular mistake ever again.

Lost in memories for a few minutes, Hallie looks up to see Traci still watching her patiently. She smiles kindly. “Welcome back. Want to share what you were remembering?”

“Not particularly.”

Tracy smiles. “That’s okay. You don’t have to. So do you want to tell me what you’re doing in Eagle’s Pass in the first place and more importantly, what had you out walking in the middle of the night in a blizzard?”

Hallie tries to deflect. “Not particularly.”

“Hmmm. I see a pattern.” Traci’s smile grows. “So how about telling me if there is someone I can call to let them know where you are? Surely someone is out looking for you and is worried.”

Traci must see the look of sadness on Hallie’s face she had failed to mask. “No one is looking for me. No one knows where I am and more importantly, no one cares.”

“I find that very hard to believe.”

“Well, sorry to burst your bubble, but it’s the truth.” Then something Traci had said hits her. “Wait. You said the people of Eagle’s Pass believe in the value of spankings. How the hell would you know that? I mean it’s a town. How can everyone feel the same way?”

For the first time, Traci looks like she is a bit uncomfortable, but to her credit, she answers Hallie’s question head on. “Well, that’s the thing. This town is unique. It is a co-op where the residents buy in shares to live here. In order to be approved, everyone is screened and only those people… families… believing in the domestic discipline way of life are approved.” Pieces of a very strange puzzle start clicking into place for Hallie. “Wait. You’re telling me everyone in Eagle’s Pass feels this way? That it is okay for men to beat their women? It’s part of the town bylaws?”

Traci is laughing at her now. “You aren’t listening closely enough, Hallie. Yes, everyone here believes in relationships where one member of the family is the Head of the Household or HoH and the other is the submissive partner. Sometimes called Taken in Hand or TiH. In most couples that means the man is in charge of all major family decisions, but there are some couples where the woman of the house takes the lead. We also have several gay couples living here, but all relationships have one thing in common. Someone is the HoH and someone else is the TiH.”

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