“Look I am not sure about this. It seems… silly,” Anita sighed.

She eyed her coat next to the door and considered making her excuses.

“Oh come on it is just a bit of harmless fun,” Julie scoffed.

“It most certainly isn’t,” Molly said indignantly. “It is neither harmless nor silly.”

“Don’t tell me, we have to be believers for it to work,” Julie replied with a mocking grin.

Molly, the oldest of the three friends, eyed Julie thoughtfully. Maybe, ‘associates of necessity’ was a better way of putting it. All three lived in the same Norfolk village and all three were very different animals.

Molly herself liked to project herself as a wise woman and made constant references to events that happened years before she had even been born as if she had been there. Although she wore tweedy layers and wore her grey-flecked black hair in plaits at her temples, they knew this was part of her image in keeping with her Wiccan persona. Julie and Anita doubted if Molly was more than 35.

Julie, on the other hand, was the epitome of the cocky bored house frau and most people considered her the trophy wife of her city banker husband. For her part, she didn’t care what anyone thought. She just lived for life’s adventures to fill out the time to the next foreign holiday.

Molly eyed the arrogant brunette and wondered if there might not be some fun to be had bringing in her down a little.

Anita was another creature altogether. She was a classic leggy blonde who hid her figure in cheap blue denims and wore her hair shorn short pixie style in denial of her femininity. She wasn’t bored exactly. But her marriage to Stephen and life in the country cottage they shared hadn’t turned out to be what she had hoped for.

“Dangerous, dangerous how?” Julie was intrigued now.

Anita looked at Molly in apprehension of the answer. She liked to believe that she didn’t believe in pagan witchcraft, but she was the type who avoided ladders and read her horoscope avidly.

“There is a price to such ceremonies.” Molly went back to her enigmatic personae as she put the tray down in front of them.

“I guess you don’t mean money?” Julie said thoughtfully.

“We are about to call on the old gods,” Molly explained, “And they do not dance at the whim of man nor beast.”

“Or women presumably,” Anita put in, rather unnecessarily Molly thought.

“Well quite,” Molly agreed.

“And?” Julie said impatiently.

“You will both ask for something,” Molly told them. “Don’t be too greedy. It has to be something… attainable, preferably something esoteric; the less materialistic the better.”

“And that’s dangerous is it?” Julie said wearily.

Molly gave her a withering look and then continued.

“Be too greedy and your boon will not be granted, but there will still be a price,” she explained. “If you are lucky the price will… compliment the gift and will not be too great. However, that is a two edged blade, this compliment I mean.”

“This is not like the Monkey’s Paw is it? We ask for money and someone dies to get us compensation,” Anita suggested.

“Wise questions, but no, not quite like that; we do not deal in evil spirits or curses.”

“So we take part in… what? Some sort of Wiccan rites and we ask for a gift and if we pitch our request correctly we get it, but… they want some sort of favour in return. Like a sacrifice or…” Julie liked this game.

“You have it exactly,” Molly beamed.

*

For the ritual itself Molly had insisted that they all be naked as she moved the activity out into the woods behind her cottage. Julie had agreed at once, but it had almost been a deal breaker for Anita.

“Either you will or you won’t,” Molly had shrugged, “in my experience if you were ever going to be chosen then you are already on the gods’ path.”

“You mean if I go through with it then I have already been chosen, but that means…” Anita wanted to protest the logic as con-woman’s trick but no one was listening.

Julie was already stripping off and cackling like a drunkard and before Anita could protest Molly too had stepped out of her tweed cloak and matching full-length dress.

Anita felt intimidated by Molly’s fresh firm Earth mother figure and Julie’s beach-ready supermodel curves, but suddenly, as if she indeed had no will in the matter, she too began to undress.

Molly noted Julie’s open admiration and filed it away for further consideration.

Now the three of them stood facing each other in a glade of mostly rowan trees while a small bonfire burned between them. For both modern women it felt oddly liberating and neither felt the cold although the fire gave off little heat.

“Think about the boon you wish to ask of the old gods and then focus on it. But I warn you, never reveal what you asked for.” It was the last words of English Molly was to speak for a while, as no sooner were they out of her mouth before she began to half-sing and half chant in what sounded like Welsh.

The chanting was accompanied by a curious dance that Julie took delight in emulating until all three were gyrating and leaping over the fire like rejects from a Hammer House production of Macbeth.

*

The next morning Anita awoke with a start. Her dreams had been troubled with shadows of a dark man lingering just out of her eye line and something nameless in the woods that had chased her until dawn.

Strangely she had no memory of coming home or what had transpired after Molly had told her she must be naked. She had been going to refuse, but she was dimly aware now that she hadn’t.

It might have concerned her more, but for some reason she was aroused, so aroused in fact that she could think of nothing else. She reached out for Stephen, but he had already left for work. She rarely saw him these days, she mused as she sank back in dejection.

“Stephen,” she called out desperately, in case he was still in the bathroom.

There was no reply.

Instead she rolled over on to her stomach and let her hand slide between her lower belly and the sheets. Thoughts of the sinister man from her dreams returned and to her shock and surprise she brought herself to climax almost immediately.

“Damn,” she gasped, once she got back her breath.

What was she doing? She blushed and tried to put it from her mind. Ten minutes later she completed an even more intense fulfilment that she did not even remember starting. This time she did not dwell on the thought, but instead dragged herself to the shower.

“Oh Stephen,” she gasped in frustration as the warm sensuous lines of water began to caress her body. “Maybe I should shift this to cold.”

But with every nerve on fire she could not shake her strange new feelings and nor did she want to. Not right then. Spying the rather phallic shampoo bottle she seized it and began to caress her sex with it. Then acting on a fantasy she had never dared share, she pushed the long round head of the bottle top gently against her anus and was surprised at how easily it was inserted.

In her wild imaginings, wild hands reached out of the moist shower mist that surrounded her and pulled her spread eagle at ankle and wrist until she was suspended with an urgent strangeness deep between her bottom cheeks. No forward relief did she attain while a nameless male phallus sated itself deep in her behind. Although in truth, gentle fingers dallied between downy lips until she came so hard she screamed out loud.

“Enough of this,” she chided herself as she sank to her knees, but already her eyes were running wild along the bathroom shelf for other pervertables.

*

Days went by like this; always the same. She would awake aroused and finding Stephen gone she would dally in bed while dark insistent thoughts played out in her head until she had the strength to break free and head for the bathroom. A short reprieve of course, as here all her improvised and assembled toys awaited her.

Never once did she connect her feverish new activities with her unspoken wish under Molly’s tutelage, perhaps because despite some supressed shame, she was not yet ready to abandon her private adventure.

Then she saw Xander. He was sitting in a black jaguar outside the post office fixing her with his eyes. A shiver started somewhere between her shoulder blades and ran all the way down her spine to the small of her back. There was something in his dark gaze that put her in mind of the shadowy man in her dreams and for the first time in days she thought of Molly.

‘There is a price, it is dangerous,” her friends words whispered from somewhere just behind her, or so she imagined.

There were no other shops in the village and the pub had yet to open, so Anita’s coy attempts at nonchalance and contrived crossing and re-crossing of the hamlet’s one street was in vain.

“Hey, are you going to talk to me or not?” The man said in deep but friendly tone.

“Me…? Why would I…?”

“Hey save it little girl,” he said easily, mocking her with his eyes.

“Look I don’t know who you think you are but…” Anita tried to sound indignant, but it came out breathless. God he was handsome, she thought.

“Xander,” he said crisply in the same way that Craig or Connery might have said ‘Bond,’ but he added nothing as if he had said all that was important.

“Xander… well good for you…” She cringed inwardly at her own pathos and wished she could think of a witty come back. “I’m Anita.”

“Come on let’s go Anita.” It sounded like an order and he opened the car door.

“Go where? I mean I’m married,” Anita blurted. An admission of what she was thinking if ever there was one.

“You sent for me, but don’t get the idea that you’re running things,” he said, again it sounded so final. “Now get in if you are going to.”

“Look I have no idea…” she began a carefully crafted indignantly lie.

“Waste any more of my time and I’ll spank you, and do mean that. Hard and for real,” he told her as if he was delivering the BBC news broadcast.

“I can’t… I told you…” she whined.

The postmistress was studying the exchange through the post office window and mentally taking notes. Still it took as much will power to resist his offer as it did not to explore alternative used for bathroom items; a test that Anita had so far failed.

“Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said with an easy shrug and closed the door.

She had never felt so much regret as she did watching him go and it was all she could manage not to run after him.

The next morning she relived the spanking threat until she fell tumbling into a sweat bath, to sleep until almost noon.

*

The next time he confronted her it was in the quiet lane behind her house that led into the village.

“Get in,” he said, again throwing open his car door.

“I told you… I’m married,” she protested.

“I’m not,” he shrugged, “But I can’t force you. But I think you will get in anyway.”

“Alright,” she sighed impatiently as if yielding to another cup of coffee, “But I have no idea what you want.”

She slid sideways in beside him and sat on the passenger side as he pulled away.

“Put your seat belt on, it’s going to be a rocky ride,” he yelled with a broad grin as the jaguar roared into life.

“Where are we going?” It seemed appropriate to ask, but she had no interest in the answer.

“Somewhere I can spank you properly without being disturbed,” he said dismissively.

“What?” Anita’s gasp sounded too loud to her own ears; almost as if she believed such a thing could happen.

“I gave you fair warning last time,” Xander said conversationally, “Now it’s going to happen. It’s not such a big deal. I expect I’ll be spanking you a lot.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, that’s stupid,” she scoffed, but uncertainty crept into her voice.

Xander brought the car to an abrupt halt right next to the village green. So sudden was the arrest of the forward motion of the car that several people turned to stare. Anita blushed, suddenly conscious that she was a married woman who had just got in a sexy black jaguar with a stranger.

“See that bench over there in front of the church,” Xander said sharply. “Well I can easily take you to it and put you over my knee for a sound bare-bottomed spanking.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Anita said completely flustered and looking around anxiously in case someone had heard.

Xander shrugged and opened his car door.

“What are you doing?” Anita said in panic.

He frowned so that two heavy lines formed atop of the bridge of his nose. Anita shivered and marvelled as she became instantly damp.

“I just told you,” he sounded puzzled. “I am going to take you over to that bench and spank you in front of everyone.”

“Please be quiet,” Anita gasped. “Someone will hear you.”

She was blushing so fiercely now that a stray thought of melting hair came to her.

Xander got out of the driver side and strolled around to hers.

“Hear? They are about to see” he said casually.

Anita knew he was bluffing, but it didn’t calm her nerves. Then he opened the door and took her arm. She felt herself yield automatically, almost as if she was someone else.

“Please don’t do this.” Her eyes were wide and her heart was racing.

“Oh so the penny has dropped that it is going to happen,” Xander said in a bored voice as he drew her from the car.

“Okay, yes I believe you, but please not here,” she said in an urgent hush.

“You have to learn that I do what I want when I want and you will do exactly what you are told.” He took absolutely no pains to keep his voice down and Anita was sure that someone had heard him.

“Yes I get it,” she hissed, “But please not here, please, please, please.”

He was pulling her at her stroll towards the bench an inevitable public humiliation and although she tried to resist by pulling back, the only affect it had on their progress was to afford her rather tottering steps. She thought for a moment about sitting down on the grass, but that would definitely get too much attention for the small village. Luckily he paused and turned to weigh up her words.

“So you agree you deserve a spanking?” Xander did not lower his voice.

“Yes okay,” she hissed.

“Say it,” he growled at her.

Anita gaped at the man she hardly knew, why was she submitting to this, just one look from him the day before and she was ready to follow him. Then she saw he wasn’t going to wait and as he turned to pull her towards the bench she answered hastily, “I deserve a spanking.”

He looked at her sharply and said, “You will accept a bare bottomed spanking whenever and wherever I say.”

“Yes.” It was the tiny sigh of a timid creature and Anita was crushed by the blush that accompanied it.

“Say it,” Xander ordered her.

Her heart actually fluttered and she was aware of the blood coursing through her head making her dizzy.

“I will take a…” she swallowed and her voice became tight, “sp-spanking, whenever you say.”

“Even here if I decide or shall I prove it by taking your knickers down in front of everyone?”

Beginning with her lungs, her whole body surrendered its control and so it was without her consent that her head offered up the small nod.

“Get back in the car,” he said gently as he let go of her hand.

The press of the world was lifted and she could breathe again, but another emotion touched the back of her mind. Something like disappointment.

*

The whirl of green matched her thoughts as the car raced through tunnels of trees to a small hilltop layby.

As Anita got out of the car she wondered at the location, which wasn’t exactly entirely secluded. In the distance she could even see a woman on a horse, although she was riding away.

Xander strode across the open field to a fallen tree trunk set under a large oak and sat down.

“Come here.”

Anita gulped at the order, but something trilled through her and with small shy steps she moved towards him.

“Someone will see,” she squeaked.

He frowned a little his face touched with something between puzzlement and disbelief. “We can drive back to your village green if you like,” he warned.

“No,” she wailed and quickened her pace.

“I want your jeans and knickers at your ankles,” he said.

He held her gaze with his and even as she wondered if she could obey, his face held no such doubt. So after one skipping beat of a heart she began to fumble with her belt and zip to push at her denims so that they slid over her hips.

“Oh God,” she sighed as after one more short pause she hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her now exposed knickers and pushed them down with her jeans over her knees with a neat bow to him.

As she stood back up he could see the trimmed dark blonde covering on the tight purse of her sex and she blushed again.

“Will it hurt?” her hands fluttered on her thighs.

“You know it will,” he answered tipping her over his lap.

She hugged into the firmness of his thighs and slipped an arm around his waist so that the neat curve of her bottom was pushed up at him as two smooth white domes.

He delivered one sharp smack and revelled in the firmness of her crisp behind. She announced it with an “ooch.”

The second stung her more, but she took it and the volley that followed it in silence until her bottom was decidedly red. Although she did increasingly squirm on his lap as her ankles, still hampered by her jeans and pants, crossed and re-crossed.

“Don’t you wish you had come with me yesterday?” The question was accompanied by determined spanks to her bottom.

“Yes,” she conceded through gritted teeth.

“Your first spanking?”

She began to breathe audibly now. She nodded.

“Not the first you have thought about though?”

She turned her head to look at him with watery pools framing her blue eager eyes. Her cheeks blushed in confessional red; a perfect match for their sister sitters.

“It won’t be your last, you know that?”

She hugged into him more firmly and nodded.

He kicked the spanking up a notch so that the crisp spanks echoed across the fields. In the distance the horsewoman turned her head suggesting a familiarity with the sound, but she didn’t see the lovers.

“I will also teach you to endure, canes, whips, paddles and the like until you have marks that last for sometimes weeks.”

She groaned through a clenched jaw and bucked a little on his lap. Whether in response to the continuing spanking or his promise, he couldn’t tell. But her head turned to regard him with accepting eyes, tears now evident on her cheeks. She was crying at both ends now, he noted.

She wondered what she would tell Stephen when he saw her bottom, but found at that moment she didn’t care, she was under Xander’s spell.

“Don’t worry most of the redness from this tryst will be gone by tomorrow,” he said as if reading her mind.

Like you care, she thought. But she already knew better than say it aloud. Then taking her quite by surprise a chuckling sob escaped her throat and she began to cry in earnest.

“That’s it let it out,” he soothed her.

She nodded and began to bawl.

The horsewoman pirouetted her mount and began to scan the surrounding countryside more thoroughly now. Xander smiled as he watched her still unseen. The set of the woman’s shoulder suggested frustration. I’ll let you watch one day if you are on hand, he silently promised her. It is the very least I can do for this one.

Finally the spanking came to an end and Xander set the sobbing woman on her knees behind the fallen log. Then he quickly tugged her jeans and knickers over her trainers and worked open the fly of his trousers.

Anita was panting hard and thrust back to meet him. Unbidden she remembered the shampoo bottle and for a moment she wondered if he would take her by a virgin opening. He didn’t and she was faintly disappointed; but not for long.

She clambered with her right arm for the point where they were joined and found his balls. They were hard and tight in her hand, not like Stephen’s at all. Then aiding his thrusts with her fingers she came quickly.

“Fuck me,” she said as she slumped under him.

But her bottom was still uppermost and he continued to plough her relentlessly. She came twice more before he did.

“Now you may clean me up,” he said as he sat back.

She knew exactly what he wanted and obeyed eagerly even as she tried to form the words of protest, her tongue flicking under his offered balls and hooking them towards her mouth.

*

She was still naked below the waist when he dropped her off at her house. The rapid journey back had been another blur and all the way the seat had chaffed pleasantly at her bare bottom.

“We have arrived,” he said when she didn’t move.

She flicked a glance at her naked thighs.

“I’ll return your things when I next see you,” he told her.

A blush seared her face, but instead of protesting, she had to suppress the urge to beg for an encore.

“When?” She gushed.

“Tomorrow, maybe,” he shrugged, “Perhaps the next day.”

“Will I be… I mean, will you…?” She was still blushing.

“Bring a suitable hairbrush,” he replied.

“But I haven’t done anything,” she protested.

“You cheated on your husband and are planning to do it again,” he said.

She blanched. Stephen, she thought. But she was another woman now and one who didn’t care.

“I’ll see you soon,” he said.

She nodded and placed her hands over her naked sex. Then with one hand to cover her front, she opened the door with the other and got out. The house was apart from the others and there was no one to see her cross the lawn to the front door. Or at least she hoped not. She began to run.

Xander watched her red-stained bottom bob across the lawn and then he drove away.

*

Day followed day and each one without Xander felt like a squandered life all of its own. Sometimes she would walk the lanes around the village when he did not come and hope to chance upon him. Once when he did not come for three days she spent an afternoon on her knees experimenting with a bath brush to self-spank her own behind.

But most days the friendly threat of the jaguar’s roar greeted her and she fled the house like a schoolgirl in love.

In those first days he spanked her without fail. Always somewhere semi-public and inevitably over his knees with some classic implement to burn her behind. Nor did he stop the spanking until she was quite lost in sobbing and convinced that she would never sit down again.

Then he would take her with a passion she had never had. Often it would be on her knees or bent over the jaguar’s bonnet, but always there would be more.

At the end of the first week when Stephen was away on a long business trip he took her to the same fallen tree trunk on the hill. There he had bent across it while he fetched a cane from the boot of the car.

“Please I…” Anita whimpered.

“Shall I drive you home then?” He teased.

Without further protest she braced herself and thrust out her bottom at him as he had taught her.

The cane had bitten her hard for stroke after stroke until it cut into her like a wire and she shrilled. Nor did he stop for her tears and demanded more and more from her.

“Please,” she begged, but it was to no purpose, the pleading was submission for its own sake.

Finally he had taken her last virginity, falling on her with a gentle firmness until she yielded with a violent orgasm before he had even fully entered her. Such was her fulfilment of an old and long held wish. She thought of Molly even as he pressed on to extract another abandonment from her.

If she had any limits, he had yet to find them. That first time she had puzzled for a few long seconds at the mention of a bank machine, until he explained the acronym. Her heart leapt then as if in a fall, but she went down eagerly enough.

“What, what we will… I mean I… oh God,” she had stuttered and blushed afterwards. “Do it again.”

It hadn’t been her talking, but a crazy woman.

“What exactly?” He had laughed.

“All of it,” she gasped.

And so he had bent back across the log with her bottom skyward and caned her again by way of an encore.

“I hope you can’t sit down for days,” he whispered eagerly as she cried out.

‘You won’t sit down for a week young lady,’ came an unbidden voice in her head and she gasped, “Oh yes.”

It hadn’t been quite so bad, but there were still clear marks when Stephen returned. Somehow he never noticed.

Three weeks after that Anita had got her first birching. That really had unseated her for a week.

To be continued.