Time waits.
But, sometimes, the wait—the anticipation—makes the wait all the more worthwhile.
I felt like I'd been waiting fucking forever, and I'd become frustrated in almost every part of my life. Don't get me wrong. The materialistic aspects of life pointed to my being the epitome of success. Car. House. Clothing and accessories.
These things, however, had left little time—no, no time—to develop anything but casual, ineffective personal relationships. Clients, of which I had few now, were just that. People who came to me for advice of one kind or another, often when they were in trouble, needed digging out of a metaphorical hole, which, with the skills and expertise I'd developed over the years, was usually well within my capabilities. If I struggled with a situation, I had an extremely efficient support network, all doing their own thing but ready to help out as and when necessity required it.
I'm Margaret, by the way. Maggie. Sitting in that restaurant bar, trying to decide what to eat and if another drink or an early night was the best option, my mind wandered, as it often does when I've finished with the client.
"It's the third time this month I've seen you here, eating and drinking alone," said a pretty young woman as she sat next to me. "Being away on business can be a real pain in the arse, can't it? Once the jobs are done, then what? Too far to drive home. It's too early to go to bed. Nowt on the extensive cable TV in your room. You've finished your book."
I started to smile. It's like she was a younger version of me.
She smiled back.
"What're you drinking? May I get you one? I often find that even a casual acquaintance as a drinking partner is better than no partner at all. Whisky, please," she said to the hovering bartender. "And for my new friend..."
"The same, please, only with coke. Thank you...?"
"Oh! I'm Jack. Jacqueline, if I've been naughty, and I'm being given my Sunday name."
"Maggie," and we shook hands, that ancient formality never seeming to go away, even though I, for one, felt so uncomfortable participating in it.
As soon as the drinks arrived, Jack ordered a duplicate round, only instructing the bartender to make them doubles.
"Don't worry. They're going on my room bill. The rest of my colleagues are in the ballroom, dancing the night away, but one of the guys is already pissed and won't leave me alone."
She paused in her monologue long enough to take a big drink.
"A bit like me," she said, "plonking myself down next to you and plying you with strong alcoholic beverages."
Another pause. Another big drink. Another round was ordered. I was still sipping my first one.
"What do you do? We're the sales force for Sales-Force," she continued, as though her company were a household name. She was more than a little tipsy. "I'm not Jacqueline Sales-Force, although it is my company."
She laughed at her joke, and this name made me laugh too.
I started telling her about what I do, but she interrupted.
"I'm sorry, Maggie, but I'm fucking starving. We only wanted a finger buffet, and there weren't enough fingers to go around." She laughed again. "D'you mind if I grab a burger? They're fantastic here, you know. The gourmet kind. Would you like to join me? My treat. For disturbing you. And the whisky's going to my head."
I considered my options for a moment, and that was too long for Jack. She was at the bar ordering food, not even considering the possibility that I was vegetarian or vegan. I'm not.
"I watched you eat the last time you were here, so I've ordered for us both. It'll be about twenty minutes or so. Some pillock has booked the ballroom, so the chef's a little busy. Defo worth the wait, though. Charlie, my last girlfriend, brought me here the day she broke my heart."
The pause and then drink interval continued, only this time Jack's eyes filled with tears.
"Fuck," she said, scrubbing them away with practised knuckles. "Fuck! I'm sorry. I thought I'd finished with all that crap. Obviously not. Fuck! Tell me all about Maggie. She's rather beautiful."
"Well. Thank you." I replied and continued telling my increasingly intoxicated new friend about my accounting business and how some of the biggest criminal prosecutions have been helped by me and my expertise. She was fascinated, asking all kinds of interesting questions, and, all things considered, I was rather drawn to this woman, this successful younger woman who took notice, and we talked long after the huge, marvellous, extraordinarily tasty burgers were consumed and large bowls of the creamiest local ice cream had also been eaten.
She ordered an expensive 'after dinner' liqueur, sat back, and announced that she felt like Mr. Creosote.
I looked at her, puzzled.
"Absolutely stuffed."
We laughed, and that took us on another tangent. TV. Film. Music. Everything made sense.
Then suddenly, "I got to get to bed. I've got a 6.30 am appointment, and it's," she checked her watch, "2 o'clock now."
"Goodnight, then. And thanks so much for a brilliant, unexpected evening."
"Here," she said, thrusting her business card at me. "We could do it again if you'd like that. Yes. Just give us a ring. That'd be great. It was lovely, wasn't it? Maybe a little too much to drink, but my god. Those fucking burgers are awesome. Ring me. Please."
I watched her sway unsteadily towards the lift and wondered if I should help. Then she was gone as the doors closed behind her. I saw her turn as she disappeared and looked at me, watching her. I knew I wouldn't ring, but it had been a good night.
Three weeks later.
"You didn't ring," Jack said, placing a large whisky and coke on the bar in front of me. "Why didn't you ring?"
"Honestly?" I was surprised by Jack's appearance.
"Of course. Otherwise, I'm going to take you to my room and spank you. And who knows where that'll lead?"
"You'll what?"
"You heard. I said I'd take you to my room, and..."
"Yes. Spank me. But how do you know that that's not exactly what I wanted?"
She paused, taking a long drink.
"You didn't know I was going to be here."
"I hoped, though."
"Oh! So what? Do you want me to?"
"Do you want to? Is that your thing? Picking up lonely older women and threatening to spank them?"
"Nope. This is a first. But yes. I'd fucking love to spank you, that is. I asked and bribed the concierge to let me know when you were back. I had a feeling you'd not ring, but I wanted to see you again."
"Why?"
"You're interrogating me. Why do I want to spank you? Why did I want to see you again? The second one's easy. You made me feel seen and noticed, and you took me out of myself for the first time in ages. The first one is far more difficult."
"Try."
"Ok. What turns you on? When you're alone in your room and you need to relieve the tension, shall we say, What do you think about?"
I squirmed, feeling more than a little self-conscious. I'm purely hetero, ok? But increasingly and recently, my masturbatory imagination has steered me in an altogether different direction. Last time, once I was back in my room, as usual, the shower cubicle was my first port of call. Once I was fresh and clean from top to toe, I took to my bed, slotted my earbuds in, and began the latest Taylor Swift album.
The drink made me drift in and out of sleep, but she, Jack, kept invading my relaxed mind. And the longer it went on, the hornier I became—until I gave up trying to put off the inevitable.
Lube and usually two vibrating toys are my constant travelling companions. The usual young men with huge cocks, who are also my usual wanking companions, failed to show, replaced instead by a sexy, sinewy girl, a woman who was my imagination's rendering of a semi-naked Jacqueline. And she made the next half hour or so so amazingly and erotically wonderful that it stayed with me throughout the next few days. Her tongue. Her fingers. Her breasts, bottom, and bits, even though they were just created from my imagination, kept me on that wonderful edge of erotic arousal, distracting me until I just had to enjoy my toys again.
Twice, most days. And if I wasn't specifically deadlined, even more.
And almost every day I dialled her number, chickening out at the last moment.
"Young boys with big cocks" is all I admitted to.
Food and drinks arrived.
"I know you've not eaten yet, and the drinks are virgin. No whisky."
We consumed it in relative silence.
"You want to know what turns me on?"
She asked this as she finished the huge bowl of ice cream with a flourish, dropping the spoon noisily into the bowl and rising to go to the bar. Her short summer dress, barely covering tomorrow's laundry, was, I think, one of only two garments she wore. The other was tomorrow's laundry. And I was transfixed. She looked back at me, and this, I think, was the moment I became smitten.
Under the air conditioning, unbidden, her nipples stood to attention in the cooling draft, making increasingly obvious mounts in the material of the pretty dress. She saw me looking and smiling lasciviously, licking her lips, and, while only I was watching, gently stroked the surrounding breast, thumbing the nipple to even greater definition.
Spinning back to the bar, she flicked her skirt up, revealing, momentarily, the sheer material of the panties covering her shapely bottom.
Returning with the drinks, she sat in a way that ensured that now I'd be in a position to see the other view, should I care to look.
I did.
"Teasing."
"Pardon," I said, momentarily mesmerised.
"It's one of the things that turns me on," she said, grinning and stroking the other breast, stimulating the nipple back to erect attention. "Teasing. And with responses like yours, I can see it's all been worthwhile."
"You're the one who should be spanked, not me. You do know you're turning me on, don't you? You're a naughty girl..."
"And naughty girls must have their bottoms spanked. Bare bottoms. Not that these would give a naughty girl's bottom much protection," she said, lifting her skirt and flashing her knickers for me. "Now, would they?"
I asked her for her room number.
"I've got an hour's worth of work to do, and I need a shower. I'll be there a little after ten if that's what you want. Is it? What you want?"
"Come to my room as soon as you can. You'll find out."
I knew that if I thought about it too long, I wouldn't go. And I could work later, couldn't I?
Twenty minutes later, I was closing her door behind me, showered, shaved, quickly pampered, and dressed in some of the finest underwear that I possessed, gazing at the vision that greeted me.
"I'm a spanker," she said. "This is what turns me on."
She gently took my hand, led me towards the dressing table stool, sat down, and draped me over her thighs. Laying one arm across my back, curling the palm of her hand around my waist, and using her other palm to stroke my barely protected bottom, she began to talk, all the while continuing the smoothing and caressing.
"I'm a spanker. And for the last three weeks, since we were so tipsy together, all my fantasies while relieving myself have been about this moment and what follows."
She slipped her hand up inside the loose leg of the flimsy silky shorts I'd chosen to wear and cupped the goose-fleshed globe she found there, squeezing, not too gently, her long fingers extending slowly to my suddenly damp sex. Without warning or gaining any form of consent, her fingers slid easily inside me, creating the first of many new sensations and emotions I felt before leaving for my room some time later.
With some very deft movements, her fingers slid out again, and she created a rhythmic pattern that, in moments, had me panting and squirming, widening my legs to give her easier access. In: almost out. In: almost out. In: almost out. Her free hand grabbed a fistful of my long, damp hair, pulling my head back. At the same time, and with the next 'in,' an extended thumb slipped slowly and deeply into the, until that moment, forbidden adjacency.
I heard myself crying out as an orgasm of unimaginable magnitude spun through every fibre of my being. (I know. But sometimes, normal language isn't nearly enough.)
The hand grabbing my hair gripped tighter, making me wince with the incredible pain in my scalp and neck as my head was pulled even further back. I'm not as young and flexible as I once was.
"Good girls, which you're not, can have pleasure like that whenever and wherever they want," she growled, leaning forward and speaking quietly, malevolently, close to my ear.
The fisted hair got worse, and I cried out for a completely different reason.
"Naughty girls, which you are," she continued, using the same scary voice, "must go through transformative punishment. Sometimes here," she said, removing her slick fingers from inside my shorts and bringing her curved palm down hard, twice, on each barely protected bottom cheek. "Invariably beginning here," she continued, giving me several more, even harder smacks to each now tender cheek.
She spanked and spanked.
Pain at both ends, scalp a constant throb, bottomed becoming an unbearably awful mess of stinging and spanking. I tried to escape.
"You want to go? Go," she said, stopping immediately and releasing her hold on me.
Time stopped! This is what flashed through my mind in the instant that she let me go.
I'm going; no, you're not. but it hurts. but have you ever ever felt anything like this before? no of course not. so stay. but it hurts. I know but in a good way. no. liar. fuck you. we've been doing that and thinking of her for three weeks. but it hurts. yes, I know. and you want more. no. liar. no I'm not. so why are we still lying here?
And time started again.
"But if you stay, that orgasm and this spanking are just the beginning." Her voice had returned to normal.
"I'm staying," I whispered.
"What?" she said.
I knew she'd heard. My hair was gripped tightly again.
"I'm staying," I repeated more bravely than I felt.
