by DJ Black
The rain fell like silver needles and pierced the lakes of water lying in growing pools on the road. It was one of those late summer days when the heavy leaden sky had closed just above the rooftops to cast the city in a hard grey light. Normally lacklustre neon shop signs came alive, each one with a duplicate hanging in the puddles on the street, images that barely had time to be seen before afternoon shoppers and the endless parade of red buses scattered them.
Carolynn loved it when it was like this. She danced down Oxford Street, every footfall a neat skip and every once in a while pirouetting around to take in the scene behind her. Where others pulled their light rainwear coats up to their ears as they dashed from shop to shop, Carolynn let the rain wash over her, offering her face up to the raindrops with a laugh. Her short dark bob cupped the top of her head to frame her mischievous triangular face with its permanently astonished round blue eyes and painted pink lips.
She was already late back from lunch, but the streets were far too clean and shiny to abandon just yet and she was banking on the fact that Mr Black would not return until mid-afternoon.
Carolynn got as far as Top Shop before she saw a darling little hat in the window and stopped to consider buying it. It was a little old-fashioned for a 24-year-old, but that was the way she liked things. Then she saw the price.
"At £200 anyone would love it," she said with a small gasp, her lips pursing into a small pout of disappointment. Then with a sigh she turned to back the way she came and returned to the small office in the Charing Cross Road where she worked.
As she had guessed, Mr Black had not yet returned and his door was wide open. With his PA, Clementine, still away on leave, she had the office to herself. It was an old type of establishment in a side street above a shop. The dark wood panelling made it resemble an old lawyers' office, as if it were something out of Dickens.
It was eerily quiet, in contrast to the lively streets outside, and the action of filling the kettle sounded too loud. Then as it sang to her she spooned instant coffee into her Dr Who mug.
Christopher Eccleston stared at her from the relic of her teen years, his cruel mouth making him look a little bit toppy. She loved the way that in his role as the Doctor he could switch from boyish to menacing in a blink. He had been good in the movie, Elizabeth too, she recalled, the kind of villain you wanted to win.
The kettle boiled and she poured the water with a satisfying glug into her cup. Then with nothing left to stall with she moved reluctantly over to her desk.
Her work email had four new messages, which she ignored, choosing instead to drink coffee and check her own personal email account.
There were two from Steven, several from the girls, and not surprisingly, one from Michael Coleman. She took a sip of coffee and considered which to answer first. Then with a grin she deleted both of Steven's messages unopened. It took only a few minutes more to message back all-important comments to the usual girly afternoon gang, leaving her with just Michael.
Michael was handsome, but married. A state of affairs... she giggled at the unintended pun, a state of affairs that was far from a problem for her. Usually that is. However there was nothing usual about Michael.
"You're a naughty girl aren't you?" he had said to her that first evening in the bar.
Carolynn had blushed and giggled at this. He was a middle-aged man with iron-grey hair and strong hands bounded by clean white cuffs, held with old fashioned gold cufflinks. He had regarded her with his casual grey eyes that saw right through to her secret. She was indeed a naughty girl and one that was in a constant quest for a man like him to keep her on the straight and narrow.
That first night he had spanked her firm round white bottom until it was decidedly red and stingy. She had loved the way he had moistened her eyes and other things. She hated token spankings. If a girl needed a firm hand, then she needed a firm man to administer it; faux strictly lifestyle by numbers spankings were like much else in the modern age - fake, hollow and unsatisfying.
After he had put her firmly in her place, he had tossed a scatter cushion on the floor at his feet and invited her to kneel on it.
"Let us see how naughty you are," he had said with a casual confidence.
"What kind of girl do you think I am?" The protest and shock had been real. Carolynn had never gone this far as fast with a man before.
"I think you're a girl who is going to get another spanking unless you do exactly as you are told." His threat was real and she involuntarily dropped to her knees.
"Look, I like you but..." She was embarrassed by her easy surrender and had wanted to take it back.
The second spanking had far exceeded the first and she was soon begging in light-headed submission to do anything he said.
After their third meeting, Michael had introduced her to his cane. Carolynn had hated it. Well so she had insisted to herself, but she couldn't deny that it was a classic love-hate relationship and one that she quickly became addicted to. Best of all was the submission that followed. It abrogated her from all responsibility for the things he made her do. And what things, she shuddered in delight. I'm a bad girl, she admitted to herself as she thought ruefully of Michael's cane.
In the end, however, the cane had turned out be Michael's downfall.
One day after a particularly heavy session at Michael's, Carolynn had been unable to sit down at the office. In fact just walking across the room to her chair had been a public comedy.
Then as she had lowered herself gingerly onto her chair she had spied Mr Black watching her from the doorway of his room. "Carolynn," he had said with a compelling edge of steel that only he could command, "I think you had better come in here. Don't you?"
Mr Black was a sharply dressed man in his 40s, with grey-black hair and a disconcerting habit of shifting from kindly to stern in an instant. Not unlike Mr Eccleston, she always thought, although he was even more handsome, if a little bookish. A trip to his office was shy-making as he usually wore his reading glasses when he sat at his desk and peered sternly at her over the rims.
He had originally been a client of her first boss and had been extremely understanding about a mess Carolynn had made of his project.
"What that girl needs is a sound spanking to buck her ideas up," Mr Black had suggested with the lightest of touches and a twinkle in his eye.
Carolynn had squirmed at the suggestion and had looked hopefully at her boss. Unfortunately her boss had been appalled at the idea and had singularly failed to see the funny side. She had been sacked.
"Sorry, I tried," Mr Black had said to her as she was gathering up her things, "I would have given you another chance."
"Would that have been before or after a sound spanking, I wonder?" Carolynn had lisped cheekily.
Mr Black had taken pity on her and hired her on the spot.
That had been two years before Michael and since then his paternal interest in her had blossomed. She happily never made a move without taking his wishes into account. Well hardly anyway. Michael had been an exception.
"Do you love this man?" Mr Black had asked.
Carolynn had shaken her head, her lips forming a pout as she looked demurely at her shoes; she was just infatuated with his cane, she realised.
"Where do you imagine this relationship going?" her boss had persisted.
"I don't know." Carolynn could only shrug and look down at her feet again.
"Are you interested in what I think?" Mr Black had asked kindly.
"Always," Carolynn exclaimed forcefully, looking up.
"He is a married man. I want you to have nothing more to do with him. Is that clear?"
"Yes Sir, absolutely." Carolynn had meant it. "But what if he contacts me? I mean a man like that is not easy to say no to."
"I understand that, but I forbid you to have any contact with him, any at all. You can block calls and emails. If you get any, then I will hold you responsible." Mr Black was reassuringly commanding. Carolynn shuddered.
Carolynn looked at the unopened email from Michael and sighed. Why hadn't she blocked him? She had known he would contact her. He knew weak little girls like her too well to believe her lies when she had told him his cane was too cruel and she didn't want any more.
She could just delete it and pretend it had never been sent, she thought, but even the idea of it seemed like a betrayal. Mr Black had been explicit. After another moment's consideration, she used the right-click to block sender and the email vanished from her in-box.
With all the important things attended to she opened her work mail to see that there were now six unopened messages.
"I guess I had better see what the clients want," she said aloud, rolling her eyes.
"Mr Black... eh... good afternoon," Carolynn said when her boss finally arrived back from his meeting.
"Eh, good afternoon? What is that supposed to mean?" Mr Black paused at his office door and gave Carolynn a long hard stare.
"Coffee...? I mean tea...? I mean..."
"Carolynn." Mr Black crooked his finger beckoning to her. "What have you been up to?"
"I... I eh... well you see it's like this..." Carolynn blushed and began to study the floor for trap doors and other means of escape. She could never hide anything from Mr Black and one look from him and she was ready to confess to things she hadn't even thought of yet.
"I think you had better come into my office, don't you?" Mr Black said, offering her a tight, patient smile. He wasn't angry she realised, not yet anyway.
Carolynn looked up, pouting woefully, and nodded. She had a hunch that she was about to be undone by patience and kindness mixed with a heavy dose of old fashioned loyalty.
She followed him into his room as he moved across to his desk gesturing at the door behind her as he did so. "Please close the door." She did as she was told. "Sometimes I wonder about you. When you are a naughty girl, you wear it like another layer of make-up on your face for all to see. Why don't you tell me all about it?" There was an implied threat in his words.
She shuddered deliciously at the word 'naughty' and chewed at her lower lip.
"I was late back from lunch." Carolynn started with the least of her sins, not meeting his eyes.
Mr Black nodded and seemed to ponder something, and then he leaned forward and made a church with his hands. "How late?"
"Maybe 45 minutes." Carolynn risked a sad-eyed glance at her boss.
"Maybe 45 minutes? Maybe longer?" Mr Black suggested.
"Maybe."
"What else?"
Carolynn inhaled sharply through her nose and bit her lip. Black was actually disconcerted, what had she done?
"I... well it's like this... I... you see..."
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