Dark Favors

“Paige, I’m going to spank you now.”

Silence.

“I’m going to spank you, and you’re going to stand there like a good girl until I’m finished. You aren’t going to cry, and you aren’t going to yell, and you aren’t going to holler. Do you understand?”

“I don’t think-“

I reached out and grabbed the nape of her neck, gripping it tightly. I didn’t hold her hard enough to leave a bruise, but I gripped her hard enough to make a point.

“Do you understand?” I snapped.

“Yes,” she said, biting her bottom lip.

“You can end this at any time,” I told her. “You can get up now and walk out of here and leave, but you owe me, Paige, and I’m not the kind of person who forgets a debt.”

It’s a sort of veiled threat, but it’s not one I would actually follow through on. Not that I’m not being a complete prick to her. I know she doesn’t have the money. I don’t know why she doesn’t have it. She probably gave it to Fawn or donated it to someone. Who knows? Paige has a heard of gold. She’s also craving discipline, and punishment, and she’s the kind of person who needs to be put in her place from time to time.

She grew up without a dad. She grew up with a mother who was always working. She never had anyone to take care of her. Yeah, I knew all about little Paige Key. I also knew a lot more than she thought I did. Right now, though, it all started with this.

“Tell me yes.”

“Yes,” she whispered, and then I smacked her.

My hand hit her ass hard: first on the right cheek, and then on the left. The sound resonated throughout the room, but as commanded, she was silent. She was perfectly quiet, in fact. If I wasn’t wrong, she didn’t even flinch when I smacked her. Strange. Most of the time, new submissives were a little bit uncomfortable when they got spanked for the first time. I’d never had anyone who actually obeyed me when I asked them to be quiet.

I was intrigued.

“You were rude three times,” I told her. “So you’ll receive three times the normal punishment.”

“What’s a normal punishment?” She whispered.

“Ten swats.”

She sighed, but I saw her head move, nodding.

“Okay,” she said.

“So thirty total,” I explained carefully. “Fifteen on each side.”

“Okay,” she said again.

“Do you want me to stop between each smack, like this time?” I asked. “Or do you want them all in a row?” I didn’t know why I was giving her the option. I never gave anyone the option. Ever. I was a devil for a reason, and it had nothing to do with her. The girls I fooled around with were the kind of girls who liked a little bit of pain and a tiny bit of degradation and a little bit of roughness. I wasn’t about to give them a choice, but Paige?

I didn’t really understand why I wanted her to feel she had a say in what I was going to do to her. Paige was someone I was going to use. I needed her, and she needed me. She might not know it yet, but I had something she would want to know about. I had something important.

“Just in a row,” she whispered. “Get it over with.”

“Close your eyes,” I said.

I didn’t know whether she listened or not, but her hands tightened on my desk, and I spanked her. Fourteen more swats on each side for a total of thirty. Her bottom bounced with each smack, and by the time I finished, my hand was a little sore. Even though she was wearing those pink little panties, I could tell that her cheeks had started to turn a bright pink. I tugged on her skirt, pulling it back down, and then I pulled her up to a standing position.

When Paige turned around, I was surprised to see that her face was stained with tears.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Locke,” she whispered. “I know you said not to cry.”

“I didn’t even hear you,” I said, surprised. She had been crying and I hadn’t known. That was like a punch to the gut right there. I was hard on submissives, sure, but I didn’t consider myself to be calloused. Not all of the time, anyway. Not when it came to things that were important.

“I’m very quiet,” she whispered. For the first time, her eyes met mine, and there was so much there that I wanted to unpack. I wanted to ask her how she learned to cry silently. I wanted to ask her what she was thinking. Most of all, I wanted to know what she thought about her spanking. Some people loved getting spanked as a way to do penance, so to speak. They liked knowing that after a punishment, they were square. They didn’t owe the other person.