Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 57623 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 288(@200wpm)___ 230(@250wpm)___ 192(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 57623 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 288(@200wpm)___ 230(@250wpm)___ 192(@300wpm)
“That was an absolute…” Jane is momentarily lost for words. “A display of such reckless and public disobedience. It was as if you were begging for a thrashing. Is that what you wanted, Storm? Is that what you need?”
“I…” Storm tries to find words, but uncharacteristically they fail her. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she says in a small voice.
Jane sits next to her, so poised and professional as always, not a hair out of place. Storm now truly looks and feels like she’s been dragged out of a hedge backwards. She is sore, and not just her bottom. Every part of her is aching from the efforts of the day.
“That is not how a proper discipline session should go,” Jane says. “Not in any sense. I am not pleased with you, and I am not pleased with myself, if I am to be honest.”
“You’re not?” Storm is confused, but curious.
“No. I do not ever wish to leave you in the state you were just in. But your behavior required swift, immediate, and dramatic correction. I had to make an example of you, and I had to do it quickly. Those are not ideal circumstances, and you determined every single one of them. Do not do that again. Do you understand?”
Storm nods, feeling very guilty for seeming to have upset Jane on a different level than usual. She focuses on the blanket, on the little pattern that…
“Look at me.” Jane interrupts her sharply.
Storm looks up again, and finds herself staring into a very stern, very caring gaze.
“My concern is that your talent for disobedience far exceeds your capacity for punishment. You are not as tough as you would like to imagine you are. You are a sensitive creature, and, Storm,” Jane makes sure she is looking her charge dead in the eye when she gives this warning. “I could easily break you.”
Storm sucks in a deep breath, feeling the truth of those words in the very center of her soul.
“Do you understand?”
Storm understands in a deep, old kind of way. A pre-civilization sort of way. Tomes could be written as to the depth of her understanding of that sentiment.
Outwardly all she does is nod a little. “Yes, ma’am.”
That seems to satisfy Jane.
“Lay over my lap and let me tend to this bottom of yours,” Jane says, picking up a jar of cream from beside the couch and patting her thighs.
Storm hesitates for a brief moment before remembering disobeying this woman is a bad idea and she has no pride left anyway. She doesn’t know what happened to her underwear and shorts, but they are gone, presumably kicked off into the fountain, so when she lies over Jane’s lap, there is nothing but the relatively thin fabric of her dress to abandon her.
The position is comforting, though perhaps it shouldn’t be given how reminiscent it is of punishment. The feeling of contact with the couch beneath her chest and stomach and the warmth of Jane’s thighs is grounding and soothing even before she starts spreading cream over the same places she previously punished.
Storm closes her eyes and lets herself drift.
Jane says little, but her fingers move in soothing circles and some of the pain and sting and even somehow, some of the humiliation is massaged away.
Storm could quite happily stay here for a very long time, she thinks to herself. It is comfortable and it is warm and it is safe and the cream, whatever it is, is doing a very good job of making what is hot feel nice and cool.
“I want you to behave yourself,” Jane says. “This bottom of yours is not made to take the punishments you earn, and if you keep escalating, you will be a perpetually sorry young lady. The very idea of taunting a school guard and leading him on a wild chase through the chalet in the middle of a school day!”
“He didn’t have to chase me,” Storm mumbles.
Jane’s palm stills its rubbing motion, and Storm tenses, anticipating pain. It does not come.
“No,” Jane says. “He did not have to participate in that absolute charade.”
Storm can hear the restrained annoyance in Jane’s voice. She feels bad. Even when she’s acting out as hard as she can, she never really intends to make Jane mad.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I thought it would be funny. I didn’t think it would end up like it did.”
“No, the notion of consequences is still a fresh one to you. I hope you learned something today, young lady. I do not know how many hard lessons you have left in your bottom in the short term.”
Storm can only agree with that sentiment. She has no idea either. She goes back to being quiet, and being tended to in a way that feels quite nice, really.
“I think that’s as much relief as you are going to get,” Jane muses when Storm is almost half asleep. “You can get up.” She taps her lightly on some unmarked skin to rouse her.