by Paul Markham
It never ceased to amaze Helen that it was perfectly feasible to become stuck in a 3-lane crawl of traffic even at one o'clock in the morning - even on a Sunday morning! As a result the very positive feelings that had been growing in her all evening as she and her partner Mike had sat at a very well-supplied table with their hosts, enjoying the benefits of Julie's culinary skills and of the refined taste of John, Julie's partner - also CEO of the highly successful company where Mike was working - had all but vanished by the time they finally turned off the motorway and made their way along the side-road that led to the home that they had created together during the nine years that they had shared.
Helen went into the house whilst Mike parked the car in the garage. She threw her very expensive leather handbag onto the table in the hallway then kicked her equally expensive shoes off. Even though she had nothing whatsoever to prove to her partner or to their hosts for the evening, she enjoyed taking the time and trouble to look somewhat different from her normal workday appearance - which was by no means displeasing to anyone who met her. However, Helen had a mind of her own and she was not one for being deflected from her intentions, no matter how well-meaning people were in reminding her of just how attractive she was. This was not to suggest that she was in anyway unhappy with the way she looked - it was just that Helen liked things to be at their best. Second-best did not feature in the dictionary where she was concerned. Paradoxically, she was remarkably forgiving and tolerant towards others who did not always emulate her efforts at achieving the highest standards and who failed to make the best of their attributes and talents. Surprisingly, one such person was none other than her partner, Mike, whom she had known for a good twelve years and with whom she had shared the previous nine years of her life.
Part of Helen's efforts at achieving the high standards that she had set for herself involved at least twelve hours a week at the gym, where she and Mike had joint membership. To look at them both, it would appear that their membership fee was well spent, but part of the credit for Mike having kept himself in fairly good condition had to go to a local and very successful rugby team in which he played quite regularly as a prop forward.
Mike was about six years older than Helen and, consistent with his sporting role, he was tall and ruggedly built. He was also ingenious and imaginative, characteristics that served him well in the workplace and in his social life. Having graduated from a very forward-looking Northern university with a first class honours degree in Chemistry, he had found a very promising position within the Research and Development Department at a small but highly successful and adventurous textile manufacturing company, which had had the vision to sponsor him after two years service, for a post-graduate course in Materials Sciences, in which he had specialised in textile research. Having again completed his course of studies with distinction, he had found himself appointed to the post of Deputy Head of Research and Development, where a combination of his academic and scientific skills with his lifelong interest in the natural world had led to a very promising career path.
If there was one thing that Helen had in common with Louise, Mike's younger sister, it was severe arachnophobia. Yet it was these very feared insects, which - love them or hate them - carry formidable skills in their genes, that had attracted Mike's attention from a very early age. He had, emulating Robert the Bruce, watched in fascination, one summer's afternoon, while a garden spider had woven an intricate web between two clematis plants outside his grandfather's garden shed deep in the English countryside. The fact that this web remained virtually intact after the storm that blew in during the following night had set Mike thinking.
It is true that Mike had not been entirely altruistic in the manner in which he exploited his love of arachnids in the presence of influential females, both family members and friends. One particular incident - involving a younger female member of the family fleeing at high speed from the bathroom, wearing nothing but panic and with skin of a pallor normally seen only on a funeral director's premises - had led to his only encounter with what he now regarded as the wrong end of a cane. It was wielded by a very irate older female member of the family in the form of his grandmother, who had not taken kindly to the cruelty displayed by her grandson in depositing a very large and very alive arachnid in Louise's bath.
Whilst the ladies in Mike's life may not have been particularly enamoured of these incredibly talented little creatures, it was this species that had set Mike off on a research product that had led to the development of a revolutionary fibre that the company had patented and that now looked set to take the world by storm.
Helen walked slowly to the kitchen and filled the kettle, which she then switched on and prepared the requisites for a late-night hot drink and a brandy before she and Mike retired to bed.
Leaving the kettle heating up noisily, Helen climbed the stairs wearily and made her way to the bedroom, where she lifted her oyster-coloured silk dress over her shoulders before laying it over the back of a chair. She walked past the full-length mirror and turned to look at herself, dressed now in nothing but black lace knickers that highlighted her very feminine shape. She turned around slowly, allowing her hands to move from her hips round over her firm and well-toned buttocks. As she did so, she felt a shiver - almost akin to premonition - as her hands ran smoothly over the curves of her bottom. Slowly, she slipped her hands inside her knickers and pushed them down before stepping out of them and stooping to pick them up. As she did so, her eye caught a glimpse of her bent posture, her bottom pushed out in a manner that sent a second, even stronger shiver down her spine. This was not so much a case of narcissism as of a woman who was becoming aware of a growing sensation of need that she was not yet able to define in detail, but a woman who knew that her smooth and firm buttocks would play a very big role in the satisfaction of that need.
Sounds coming up the stairs from the hallway told Helen that Mike was in the house and she heard his footsteps moving from room to room downstairs as he looked for her. She giggled to herself and decided to let him find her in his own time. Helen moved to the laundry basket and deposited her knickers there before going to her underwear drawer and retrieving a pair of loose white cotton shorts that formed part of her favourite night-time apparel. She slipped them on quietly and, for reasons she did not understand, felt compelled to run her hands down her buttocks and thigh tops again, triggering yet another, even more powerful shiver down her spine. Quickly, she re-focused on her surroundings and put a white camisole top on before heading back downstairs to Mike, who was waiting in the kitchen.
Helen knew full well that she and Mike would fall asleep as satisfied lovers that night, but something else was going on in her mind, something enticingly but darkly erotic, and it was beginning to intrigue her. Whatever it was, her subconscious mind had yet to make it known to her conscious thinking, but of one thing she was absolutely certain - with a good measure of bewilderment. It did not involve Mike.
As Helen entered the kitchen, she noticed a long, fairly narrow, rectangular box on the worktop. She walked up to it and asked Mike what it was.
"Open it and see for yourself!" came the reply. The big grin on Mike's face told her that she should be prepared for a surprise.
Surprise was probably not an entirely accurate description of a sight that greeted Helen's eyes as she lifted the lid carefully, almost as if she was half expecting a tarantula to come leaping out of it. In fact, she experienced a fourth and visible shiver down her spine and a very strong tingling sensation in her bottom as she looked down upon a dark brown and not entirely straight cane, lying on folded sheets of issue paper like some object of historical interest out of the distant years of antiquity. She froze for a moment, then looked at Mike, smiling.
"Oh yes, have you been having ideas without my knowledge?" Helen winked at Mike, who was now grinning even more widely.
"Well, not entirely my ideas..."
Helen frowned. "So who's been planting ideas in that excuse of a mind of yours?"
Mike looked at her, in a way that made it difficult to read his mind. "It's from John and Julie!"
Butterflies stormed into anarchic chaos in Helen's tummy, but not even Mike would have noticed this. Helen was very good indeed at keeping herself to herself when the need arose.
There was a brief pause in the conversation before Helen asked, in a half whisper, "So is he coming to give you instruction?"
Mike looked inscrutably at his partner. "I don't actually need instruction as I have already observed this cane in use."
Helen looked shocked but was insatiably curious. "How so?" she enquired, almost visibly impatient to hear how Mike had done this.
"John has given Julie three canings now."
Helen looked at him, with just a flicker of an expression that suggested that she had been caught off-guard. "And they both let you watch?"
Mike smiled as he answered the question slowly and succinctly. "Not only let me watch, but also made sure I knew how to use their favourite cane."
Helen shuddered with a strange but potent mixture of fear and excitement that she had rarely experienced previously.
"You mean you...?"
Mike went straight into his reply as he read his partner's mind. "I mean I gave Julie 12 strokes with this cane!" He grinned and watched Helen's every move. She did not know whether to be angry that Mike had kept this from her or to give in to a powerful hunger that had suddenly developed in her pelvis and behind. She sensed that she was becoming very aroused, but this was not so much at the prospect of being caned by Mike as it was at the way in which her mind had tied this cane to the image of John, an image that she had found it impossible to ignore.
Helen had first met John and Julie when the company was planning to appoint Mike to the post of Deputy Head of Research and Development. She had struck a rapport instantly with Julie, a woman a few years older than her, still in very good shape, a keen member, with her husband, of a different gym and a woman blessed with the sort of figure and looks that would make many a girl half her age envious of her.
However, Helen had been far more guarded with John, who seemed to keep himself very much to himself, a man in his late 40s whose military training and sporting background were clearly evident from his physique and his demeanour. Here was a man with the gifts of extremely rapid and crystal clear thinking, a man who was used to taking control and who was not particularly well accustomed to dissenting views, unless they were well supported by evidence and logic and well presented, in a clear and articulate manner that matched his own.
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