At first I felt silly.

I didn’t want to look at the big, black hairbrush in her hand and I couldn’t look her in the eye, so I glanced over at my trousers. They were folded neatly and laid over the back of the sofa. On the floor beneath them was a shapeless puddle of white cotton— my jockey shorts. Even though my shirt tails covered me back and front, the slight draft on my legs made me feel very naked. It didn’t help that I knew what was coming next. In fact that made it even worse. From the first instant that our eyes had met I had known that someday I would be standing in front of her waiting for a spanking. That knowledge did not change anything.

I still felt silly.

She looked at me as she had on that first night. Her ice blue eyes seemed to look through me as though I wasn’t there. The only difference was that now there was a slight smile on her lips. Then her forefinger separated from her fist and bobbed up and down like a hen pecking at a kernel of corn in the farm yard dirt. The finger pointed at her lap. The command was unmistakable. Suddenly I no longer felt silly.

I was scared.

I knew it would not be wise to keep her waiting. I swallowed hard and trudged over to her side. My legs felt like I was wading through thigh deep water but I willed them to move forward a step at a time. I stopped a half a pace from her right side and looked down. She had hiked her dress to mid-thigh revealing her long, shapely legs covered in black nylon. She was wearing traditional stockings and her skirt had ridden up so far that I could see the dark black welt at the top and the creamy flesh of her thighs separated by the straps of her garter belt. I stared like a sweaty teenager at his first peep show.

As I waited for her next order, I swallowed hard again and, trying to get my mind off what would inexorably happen next, thought back to how this had begun.

It had started at one of my sister’s parties. I hate my sister’s parties. All the guests are from the hospital where she works and the conversations limited to the obscure details of rare tropical diseases and which Mercedes dealership has the most honest repair department. I find it hard to be interested in either subject.

I had spent the party— as I usually do— in the company of my younger brother and the friends he brings along to relieve his boredom. Although he is more than fifteen years my junior, I have a youthful appearance and can— at least visually— fit in with him and his friends. My brother had brought a couple of watermelons which he had corked and saturated with vodka. After a couple of slices we were pleasantly high and having a good time spitting seeds into the night.

I was giggling so hard that I did not notice the woman walking across my path until the seed was out of my mouth and arching high in air. It hit her on the cheek.

Our eyes met as she turned in surprise. Then I saw her face. I was transfixed by the vision before me. The high cheekbones, square chin, and long features framed by her long blond hair were identical to those I had seen hundreds of times on television and the movie screen. It was not just any woman who was staring at me but a ghost from the past. Marlene Dietrich was staring at me. A week after her death, the image of Dietrich as she had been in the 1930’s was staring at me from the gloom of a suburban garden. She was beautiful. She was a goddess.

I blinked and then looked again. It was no ghost; it was a real woman standing there deciding how to express her anger. My mind knew it was just a woman who looked like Dietrich— a lot like Dietrich— but my heart sang a different song. I was, instantly, as captivated as Jimmy Stewart had been in Destry Rides Again.

She glared at me with eyes as blue and as frigid as an iceberg trawling for ships in the North Atlantic. We stood for a few seconds in that frozen tableau. Then her lips parted and she spoke. "If you don’t behave, little boy," she said, "I know how to make you very, very sorry."

Her words washed over me. Her voice was husky with sensuality. Her accent completed the illusion. It was a German accent with all the Nordic fury of Erich von Stroheim telling a defiant prisoner that there were ways of making him talk, or asking a frightened refugee if he had relatives in the old country. Chills danced up and down my spine. In the instant she spoke I was as much her slave as Emil Jannings had been in The Blue Angel.

My throat was suddenly dry. I knew instantly and instinctively what her warning meant. There could be no doubt as to its meaning. She had every intention of taking me across her lap and administering a good, old fashioned spanking until I was blubbering and kicking like a little boy deprived of all dignity as a stern woman punished him for some misdemeanor. I tried to say something but there was a lump in my throat. I could not speak. Neither giving nor receiving spankings had ever been a part of my fantasy life but, in the moment she spoke, I had a vision of being draped over her long legs and being paddled like a ten-year-old.

I knew that I would accept it just to be with her. I knew that if I saw her again, she would inevitably have me in that undignified position. I was not sure whether I liked the image or not but I would have suffered it just to be with her.

I wanted to say something. I wanted to apologize. I wanted just to talk to her. I was too dumbstruck to say anything even though our eyes were locked in meaningful contact. Then, abruptly, she ground her cigarette into one of the flagstones of the patio and strode away, disappearing into the shadows like a wraith. I stood staring into the gloom. I did not move a muscle for a long, long time.

It should have ended there. I could have asked my sister who she was but I didn’t intend to do that. My sister had decided long ago that one of her missions in life was to marry off her eccentric older brother. To have asked her about the reincarnation of Dietrich would have resulted in endless aggravation. As I watched the tall figure guide gracefully into the darkness, I sighed. I thought that our paths would never cross again.

I was wrong.

Two weeks later I was attending a gallery opening when a familiar voice with a familiar German accent spoke to me from behind.

"Well, little boy, are you here to spit melon seeds at art?"

I turned. She was standing there with a drink in her hand. Her lips formed a smile as faint as the Mona Lisa’s.

"No," I said when I could speak, "For the art."

The smile did not leave her face. "It is bad art." she said. "It deserves to be spat at."

I looked at her for a moment and pointed to an abstract on the far wall. She cocked her head and peered at it for a long time. "You are right." she said finally. "There is good art here, too."

"Thanks," I said. "That’s mine."

She looked at me with the same intensity on her face that had been there when she studied the painting. "You are older than you look." she said.

I rubbed my hand over my bare cheek self-consciously. I had shaved that evening even though I did not have to. "I’m sorry about the melon seed," I said. "How about dinner tonight to make up for it."

She looked at me again. Two long strides and she was standing directly in front of me. I was taller than she but her heels elevated her face until it was even with mine. Her hand came up and took hold of my chin. Her head leaned forward and her lips brushed mine. Then our lips met, pressing against each other.

"I am hungry," she said and kissed me again.

This time the kiss was deep and passionate. As soon as our lips and bodies joined I forgot completely where we were. Our arms held our bodies together as we embraced in the crowded room, oblivious to what was going on around us.

"I am hungry," she said again when we came up for air.

"Let me buy you dinner." I said. "It will make up for the melon seed."

She looked at me again. Her eyes seemed to penetrate to the depth of my soul. "A dinner is not sufficient." she told me. "After dinner we will go to my apartment."

She said no more. She didn’t have to. I understood exactly what she was telling me. I knew exactly what she was going to do.

I could not take my eyes off her beautiful face as we ate. I answered her questions automatically and made the usual meaningless small talk. I barely even tasted the food that was put before me. We lingered over our coffee until she set her cup firmly in its saucer.

"It is time for us to go." she said. She was smiling at me again.

I did not take my eyes off of her when I put my credit card on the table. I barely looked down when I signed the slip. Silently she rose and silently I followed her out of the restaurant. We walked in silence down the street. She said nothing until we stood in the center of her living room.

"Your trousers." she said. She lit a cigarette and stuck it in a long black holder as she waited for me to comply. I stared at her pretending I did not understand what she was saying.

She took a long drag on her cigarette and looked at me with disdain. "Take off your trousers," she said. "I will not tell you again. I will not give you another order twice."

I did not take my eyes from her face as I fumbled with my belt and my zipper. It seemed like a long time until they were unfastened and my pants dropped to the floor.

She smiled at me like a shark contemplating its dinner. "Not like that, little boy," she told me, her voice sharpened by a slight bit of anger and annoyance. "Neatly. Hang them up neatly."

I picked them up and smoothed the fabric. I laid them over the back of the couch.

She smiled again. "Good. You are learning." Then she paused. "Now the underpants."

I did not hesitate. My fingers stretched the elastic of the waistband and, without thinking, I pulled my underpants down and over my feet. Then I stood there, feeling silly, and waiting for her next order. She smiled at me and left the room. When she returned there was a wooden hairbrush in her right hand. Moving deliberately she took an armless wooden chair from the dining area. She placed it carefully in the center of the room and, hiking up her skirt, sat facing me. I stood there feeling like a small boy called to task for some mischievous behavior.

Her next order was not long in coming. She shifted slightly in the chair, settling back into a comfortable position and beckoned me to get over her lap.

I paused when I reached her side and looked down at her legs. Even my knowledge as to what was about to happen could not stifle my feelings; I could feel my penis grow with an erection.

As I hesitated she impatiently tapped the hairbrush on her thigh as if to remind me of her previous warning. I swallowed again as I bent at the waist and allowed my knees to buckle. I knew that as soon as I was over her lap she would feel my erection. Embarrassed by that thought, I lowered myself over her lap as gently as possible. Then I was in position. My weight was supported by her long thighs. I reveled in the press of my flesh against hers and the delicious pressure of my erection pressed between our bodies. Her hand moved slowly across my buttocks, covered only by my shirt tail, creating chills of excitement that made my body shudder from the crown of my head to the tip of my toes.

"Well, little boy," she said as her fingers danced across my bottom. "You are comfortable."

She was right. My position was humiliating. I was being treated like a juvenile. I was being treated with the cavalier disrespect appropriate for a misbehaving child. She was making it plain that neither my dignity nor my feelings mattered in the least. I was, nevertheless, comfortable.

Then I felt her fingers on my legs and the tail of my shirt being folded over my back. My rear end was exposed to the air and to whatever she wanted to do with her wicked hairbrush.

"Little boys are not supposed to be comfortable when they are being corrected." she told me. I could almost hear her chuckle as she spoke to me. "Little boys are supposed to be very sorry when they are naughty. You are not sorry now. You will be sorry very soon."

I did not respond. I expected her to say something else. She didn’t. She had a more effective way to communicate with me.

The back of the hairbrush crashed into my backside with a sound like a book being dropped from a great height and landing flat on a wooden floor. I felt my groin being pushed against her legs by the force of the blow. Then my vision went white as the pain flashed across one side of my rear end. She did not even pause.

*SPLAT*

Before I could even catch my breath from the first swat the hairbrush landed on the opposite buttock creating a new fire. I was surprised at how much just two spanks had hurt. And, worse, I knew she was far from finished.

"Ouch." I cried. "That hurts."

This time I heard her low, throaty laugh. "My little boy is no longer comfortable." she said. "Now you are starting to learn how to be sorry."

She said nothing else. The hairbrush clutched in her long fingers spoke for her. Its electric message came through loud and clear. I didn’t even have a chance to catch my breath; the paddle began to land on my bottom an instant after she spoke.

It stung.

It was even worse than that. It felt like someone had taken a burning torch and dropped it on the soft flesh of my bottom. It didn’t take long for me to start to cry out. By the time she had given me a dozen hard swats my whole bottom felt like it was on fire. I gripped the legs of the chair to keep from reaching back. I kicked my legs in the air.

Then it got worse.

The hairbrush started to revisit spots that it had already set on fire. The stinging got worse. Between each spank I could think only of the pain in my bottom. Then the hairbrush would crash down again and the fire would burn even hotter. My rear was so sore that even a light tap would have created waves of pain. She didn’t give me any light taps.

She didn’t stop just because I was yelling and kicking and wriggling. She continued to swat my buns with that evil paddle until my eyes clouded over and, unable to stand any more. I could feel tears in my eyes as I reached back with one hand and tried to cover my bottom.

"Please," I cried out. "No more. I’m burning up. I can’t stand anymore."

She stopped then.

When she stopped paddling me, I thought she was finished. I took a deep breath and told her how sorry I was. I was wrong.

"Stand up." she ordered.

I almost jumped to my feet. My hands flew back and tried to comfort my throbbing buttocks. I was so intent on rubbing my bottom that I did not notice her maneuver me between her legs. I was not aware of what was happening until she started to pull me down again.

"What?" I exclaimed.

She did not pause until I was draped over one of her legs. I was bent at a very acute angle with my nose almost on the floor. Then I felt her other leg push against the back of my legs, pinning me in position.

"I am not done yet, little boy." she said. "You are just starting to learn your lesson." I could almost hear the chuckle in her voice.

"No." I cried. "No more," and reached back again to protect my rear. She grabbed my wrist and pushed it up into my back. My nose bumped against the carpet and the back of the hairbrush fell again on my bottom. Her strong leg and hand firmly immobilized me. I could not move as my sore heinie stuck up as a perfect target for her hairbrush. I have never felt so helpless in my life. I struggled and wiggled but my bottom stayed in position and the hairbrush continued to fall.

All I could think about was my bottom. The rest of my body seemed to become nothing more than dead attachments to a spot of pain. My buns seemed to swell and pulsate as she continued to spank me. Finally I realized that I was no longer kicking or struggling. I was crying; I knew that because I could feel the tears rolling down my cheeks and I could taste the salty drops as they dripped into my mouth. I was begging; I knew that because I could hear incoherent pleas pass my lips between my sobs. Otherwise I was just laying there absorbing each swat. My bottom no longer throbbed. All I could feel was a deep ache that seemed to penetrate even deeper with each of her regular spanks. I thought that I had been over her lap forever.

She stopped then.

She stopped spanking me and laid the back of the hairbrush on my back. She held me tightly in position as her hand played with the sore flesh of my bottom.

"I think you are sorry now." she told me.

"Waah." I cried like a small child. "I’m sorry. I’m sorry." I bubbled like a naughty child trying to appease an angry parent.

"I think you have learned a lesson."

I sobbed again and gasped as I tried to talk. "Yes," I told her between sobs. "I have. I have."

"Good," she told me. "When you get up, kneel and thank me. Then you can kiss the hairbrush and thank it for helping to teach the lesson."

Even though the fire was still raging in my bottom I realized what a humiliating ritual she was ordering me to perform. I balked.

"No." I said. "Don’t embarrass me like that."

"I see I was wrong." she said. "I see that you have not learned your lesson."

She did not use the hairbrush now. Her hand was sufficient. She slapped one buttock and then the other. There was not much force behind the blows. There did not have to be. Even the light slaps made the stinging worse.

"No." I cried. "I’ll do it. I’ll do it."

She paid no attention. As I cried and protested, she slapped me a dozen times before she stopped again. She held me in place for a few seconds.

"I will release you now." she told me and, as she spoke, I felt her hands leave my wrist and the pressure depart from my legs.

Free at last, I rolled onto the floor. I stood, stumbling as I got to my feet. My hands were on my bottom as I hopped and danced around the room. Nothing helped. The pain continued. The throbbing continued.

She allowed me to bounce around the room for a moment before she issued a sharp command to get my attention. "You were not told you could do that." she said sharply. "You were told what you had to do. Do you wish to be spanked again tomorrow?"

I ignored her.

The pain in my rear was too great. I continued to caper around the chair rubbing at my sore bottom.

She spoke again. "If you do not stop that right now, I will put you back over my knee."

This got my attention. I did not question her right or ability to do so. I forced myself to stand still and then walk over to her. She spread her legs to provide me with a place to kneel.

I forced my knees to bend until they touched the floor. I could feel her knees close against my sides. They touched me and held me in place. I looked and saw the hairbrush extended to me, hanging in the air just inches from my lips.

I tried to talk but could not. I swallowed and looked up at her. There was a stern expression on her face and I knew what I had to do.

"Thank you," I choked out. "Thank you for correcting me."

I stopped talking.

"And the hairbrush." I shivered at the commanding tone in her voice.

I put out a hand to steady the brush and bring it to my lips. It felt warm as though heated by the exercise of beating my behind.

"Thank you," I told the inanimate object. "Thank you for the lesson you taught me."

I looked up again. There was a smile on her face now. It was a smile of amusement and of pleasure. It was a smile that said that she now owned me and that this scene would be repeated whenever she thought it necessary. I did not care, for I knew that I would be with her.

Her hand reached down and caressed my chin. With gentle pressure she lifted me up. Our lips met for the first time since we met in the gallery. Her tongue probed deep into my mouth.

"Now," she said. "I will show you the bedroom."

She patted my sore behind before she took hold of my hand and led me back into her apartment.

I knew that I would belong to her forever. I knew that I wanted to belong to her forever.