Discipline of the Blue Book. Portia Da Costa

      I can’t stop looking at it. This book I found tucked at the back of the bookshelf in our holiday cottage.

      I can’t stop looking at it and wondering whether Simon’s out there imagining me in here looking at it. And if he is, what does he think? How does he feel?

      The sun’s beating down outside, drowning the patio in light, so I’ve got a good excuse for lurking indoors, in the shade. I’m reading the Blue Book, or more accurately, perving over its pictures again and again. He’s out there, catching a few more rays before he comes inside and probably does some work on his laptop or watches football on the television. By unspoken agreement, this was supposed to be a “togetherness” holiday, but so far we’ve pretty much done our own things, as per usual. My current thing seems to be looking at vintage photographs of wide-eyed Victorian “pretty maidens” baring their rather anemic-looking bottoms and getting spanked.

      Just look at this one, eh?

      A black-haired beauty in layers of voluminous undergarments is stretched across the lap of a stern-looking gentleman with a very serious mustache. The penitent’s old-fashioned drawers are all pulled open to reveal her plump, pallid buttocks, and her husband, lover, disciplinarian or whatever he is, has his hand raised, just about to wallop her one.

      Is it for real? Surely not. It’s got to be posed; a naughty, porny, underground piece of titillation to be sold to respectable gentlemen under the counter, for a tidy price.

      But it must be based on some real need, I guess. Some real kink. Somebody must have wanted it, and somebody must have wanted what it represented too.

      I think I do, even if it hurts. Maybe even because it hurts. Who knows? I don’t, not categorically, not for sure. But I do know how I feel when I look at the Blue Book. I feel horny, and I want to be touched, and maybe more.

      Wriggling a bit, I glance out of the French window toward Simon on his lounger.

      What about you? Does the Blue Book make you horny too, my love?

      It must do. It has to. Mainly because it’s full of bare female bottoms, something he must have noticed when I left it out on the sideboard last night. What man’s eyes wouldn’t be drawn to a sight like that? I know for certain that he must have looked at the Blue Book because the dust wrapper was tucked in at a different page just now, and there’s only been the two of us in the house since then.

      So why haven’t you said anything, you contrary devil? Are you waiting for me to be the one to make the first move?

      I look at him, toasting his well-basted body in the sun out there. I love him to pieces, but he’s not straightforward guy, not a pussycat. He’s a reserved and reticent man. Not a liar or deceiver but somehow always giving the impression of not exactly revealing his whole self to me, of maybe hiding a secret, private Simon.

      Is this it? Your hidden desire?

      I look down at the man in the photo. He’s vintage, of course; older, darker and far more whiskery than my blond, golden Simon, but still, there’s something about the two men that echoes across the centuries. Even allowing for the posed quality of the picture and its fuzzy reproduction, there’s a look in the eye, a gleam that’s vaguely challenging and quietly confident.

      There’s an air about that mustachioed Victorian gentleman that would make a woman do anything he wanted. Even drape herself across his lap with her bottom bare, ready to take a spanking.

      I blink, looking down again, and it’s like a screen-wipe. A perception shift. I see myself and Simon in the faded sepia photograph, and at the same time I feel as if I’m in the scene too, across his knee.

      His thighs feel strong and rock solid beneath me, comforting me. Cooler air wafts across the naked skin of my bottom, emphasizing its exposure. Every millimeter of epidermis is hypersensitized, every last skin cell, every last pore, waiting, waiting....

      I want Simon to spank me, but I’m not sure why. It can’t be because I crave pain, because I don’t. I hate pain. I avoid it at all costs, and I cringe and whine like a baby when I have to pluck or wax various bits of myself, or when I stub my toe or cut my finger on a sheet of paper.

      It doesn’t make sense, but despite that fact, I still do want it.

      I stare out toward the patio again, trying to will him into knowing what I want from him. Like an idiot, I scrunch my face up and concentrate hard, as if that’ll make a difference.

      But I’m no mentalist, and golden Simon still sleeps on.

      * * *

      Later, though, he doesn’t sleep. In bed he’s fierce, delicious, wonderful, pounding me hard, unstoppable. We fuck until it is almost painful, wrenching agonizing orgasms from each other, my head full of visions from the Blue Book all the while. What’s in his head, I don’t know, but I hope it’s the same. It could be. Something’s turned him into a rampant sexual cyclone.

      “What was all that about?” I gasp as he flings himself off me, his chest heaving. His subsiding cock still looks red even though it’s soft again. Maybe the furious friction’s made it glow?

      Blotting me with the sheet, he gives me a tricky sort of smile, narrow eyed and very, very sexy. “What do you think it was about?”

      He’s like this sometimes. Deliberately provocative and combative. The man has a heart of gold and would do anything for me, but he does like to play his little mind games now and again.

      I could go a few rounds with him, prevaricating and giving as good as I get, but instead, I just say, “Well, it was that damn Blue Book that got me going. How about you?”

      He laughs. “Ditto.” Then he rolls onto his back, his hand draped across me, cupping my crotch in a way that’s more friendly than sexual.

      “So? Aren’t you going to elaborate? Tell me why it turned you on so? Whether you’re into that sort of thing?”

      “Oh, ‘that sort of thing’?” he murmurs, looking at me from beneath lowered lids that still don’t hide the blue glitter in his eyes. “Yes, I suppose so. I never thought much about it before. I’ve seen the odd porno with French maids getting their bums smacked and all that…and tossed off to them, naturally.” His beautiful mouth curves into a splendid grin. “But I never really thought about actually doing it? What about you?”

      “I don’t know.... Not really. I mean, there’s kinky stuff in ads and