The obvious place to look was the bedroom, but Dan was a police officer with ambitions to be a detective, so I supposed he’d eschew the obvious. Or maybe a double bluff? I started in th
e bedroom.
I looked in his sock drawer, wardrobe, under the bed, in the box where he keeps the sex toys … nada.
I had a similar lack of success in the cutlery drawer, the bathroom cabinet, behind the PlayStation, inside the tumble dryer. This book had vanished.
Had he taken it to work with him? Surely not. Imagine the furore, should he be caught with it in the locker room.
I had to try and think outside the box. Where would I never look in a million years?
It took a while for inspiration to strike, but when it did it was harder and more exquisite than any of Dan’s belt licks.
The box file in which I kept all details of my tax affairs and investments.
I took it off the top bookshelf and laughed with fiendish delight to find it several times heavier than I expected. When I opened the spring clip, there it lay. Advanced Discipline Techniques: A Handbook for Marital Harmony.
The cover was very plain and it was spiral-bound like someone’s dissertation – but it was obviously cheaply self-published, by necessity, so this wasn’t too surprising.
I skimmed over the annoying foreword with its continuing antediluvian insistence on fixed gender roles and patriarchal rule and went straight to chapter one. Caning. Eek.
Chapter two, then.
But I couldn’t focus on chapter two, which was a bit dull and about chore lists and micro-management. Something kept tugging me back to chapter one.
The cane, that instrument of legend and lore. Its reputation was enough to make strong men quake. Before my time, it had been the ultimate sanction in school – well, the penultimate, I suppose, expulsion being more serious – something to contain the uncontainable elements of youth.
I couldn’t imagine being called upon to use it on a young person now. I certainly couldn’t work with children if I was expected to do so. But how did I feel about it being used on me?
I’d seen it in films and historical dramas on TV and the ferocious swish and crack were noises that both terrified and excited me. I’d often felt myself blushing and having to look away. The idea of it exerted a power and fascination over me that I found both repulsive and compelling.
When I pictured Dan, in his uniform, maybe, or his best suit, wielding the slim, crook-handled monster, I had to put my fist in my mouth to suppress a moan.
But he would never use one of those things on me. It would hurt.
God, yes, it would hurt, and the pain would last. Imagine the stripes and the soreness and the difficulty sitting down for days afterwards … imagine how chastened I would feel every time my bottom met some surface or other. And I didn’t have to imagine how wet it was making me.
Damn.
Did I actually want to be caned?
I decided I’d better flick swiftly on. Flick the pages of the book, I mean, in case you think I’m referring to something else.
I ignored the boring chore chapter, but the next chapter was even worse. Toilet training. Was this serious?
Before I knew what I was doing, I’d picked up my thick laundry-marker pen and scored through the whole chapter.
The nib hovered over chapter four as well. ‘Anal Discipline’, what the fuck? But I read the first paragraph and put the pen down, my hands suddenly shaky.
This was the most depraved, the most horrible, the most humiliating thing I’d ever read about. But it was turning me on. Oh, God. What kind of person was I?
Butt plugs. Lubricants with sting-factor. Ginger root! Ginger root? The idea of putting any of these things up my bottom made me squirm in my chair. But the squirming was accompanied by a heat and an undeniable juiciness. I tensed my sphincter muscles for all I was worth, but that only aroused me all the more.
I stood up, opened the window, tried to get a breath of air, but the day had been still and humid and, even now the sun was setting, it hadn’t cooled a great deal. I held on the window frame and visualised myself in the corner with a plug of root ginger up my arse. How on earth would that feel? I couldn’t really imagine it, but I could imagine Dan looking on with his arms folded and a smirk of satisfaction on his face as he watched me writhe and, oh, God, it was too much.
I ran to the bedroom and got the toy box out from the bottom drawer.
Before a minute had elapsed, I was doubled over on the carpet – couldn’t even take the time to get comfortable on the bed – running a vibrator around my clit then thrusting it inside me. But what would it feel like, I wondered as I pushed and pulled, what would it feel like in that other opening? I yanked it out and reached between my thighs, trying to line the tip up with the tight pucker inside my cheeks. It was difficult to do – one really needed a partner for this, if unpractised in the art – and I lost courage before I’d gone much beyond a tentative nudge.