“He’s chuffing what?” Candice Hamilton gaped.

Johnson frowned and sat back to consider the petite brunette who was now far too close for comfort; not that she wasn’t pretty, but someone hadn’t taught her while growing up to rein it in a little. At 18 this in your face attitude of hers might have been cute, but at 28 it was wearing thin.

Thinking about it, Johnson wasn’t surprised that someone had taken a contract out on her, she was definitely very annoying.

“Who the hell has put a price on my head? I mean…” Candice stepped back at last and let her mouth hang open as she stamped her feet in disbelief.

“The price isn’t exactly on your head,” Johnson suppressed a smirk, “I mean you aren’t in any… serious danger.”

“Wh-what…?” Candice shook her head again as if trying to clear it of buzzing little flies, after all that was all that most people were to her, “What are you talking about? You said Anderson had taken a contract out on me.”

Johnson sat back and let his fingers flip through the documents as if he were checking them. His office was high on the 47^th floor and through the window the city towers glimmered in the afternoon son. He would much rather be playing golf. He sighed.

“Anderson is just the corporate operative for your uncle’s division. He’s just the messenger.  I don’t know where the order came from, but your uncle’s office isn’t taking any calls,” Johnson said slowly as if explaining it all again to a child, which in one sense he was. “Not from me anyway, none of your family is.”

Candice made a pout and frowned at the seemingly growing inconvenience.

“So this contract, my family are behind it, or at least don’t care…?” she asked more calmly.

Do you blame them? He thought, before adding aloud, “It does seem to be that way, yes.”

“So I am not in danger then, I mean, I know they hate me but…” she was beginning to relax.

“I told you, the contract is for a PPR, a Private Punitive Relator, they call them Peepers, you must have heard of…” Johnson was getting bored with his client’s dim-wittedness now.

“A Peeper, a goddam Peeper, but they… you don’t mean…” Candice was gaping again and her hands surreptitiously stole to her prominent skirt-clad bottom.

“They have ordered you a spanking, yes,” Johnson said, now you’re getting it, he sighed. “My information is that one Jack Dade has picked up the contract, apparently they call him…”

“The Daddy,” Candice whispered.

She had read about Jack Dade, it had been a hoot reading the gossip columns about celebrities tracked down and spanked by the Peepers, Jack Dade was her favourite. Only in her wildest fantasies had she… this was… too much, it was… humiliating. Candice blushed, her first display of human weakness in anyone’s memory.

“He always gets his… eh… he always fulfils his contracts I am told and this one has a 90 day expiry on it instead of the usual 28 days,” Johnson informed her. “But curiously… that seems only an commencement limit, I am not sure what that…”

Interrupting him she yelled, “Are you saying I have to go on the lam for 90 days or…?” Candice was horrified.

“I am saying…” Johnson sagged into his chair and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Look, if I was you I would call Mr Dade and make an appointment, get it over with. That’s how they used to do it in the old days; you know when they called these people Justice Adjusters…”

Candice launched herself into another rage at this. “If you think… I-I I’ll go to the police I’ll…” she thought about the papers. PPRs were semi-official and tolerated. Attempts to go through the courts would make things worse and risked opening her up to ridicule. She thought about the gossip columns she so enjoyed. “Well I am not sitting around…” she blustered.

“Well you won’t be once he catches you,” Johnson chuckled.

Candice glared at him until he found his resting face and something interesting on the desk to fix his gaze upon.

“Goodbye Mr Johnson,” she said sharply and turned about to face the exit as she marched away.

“Goodbye Ms Hamilton,” Johnson said officiously to the closing door, but she was already gone.

*

Candice booked three different flights and then took none of them. Instead of going to the airport she dumped the hire car and took two random cabs to the subway. Then instead of boarding the carriage she ducked into the restroom, changed clothes and donned a wig. Then she left the way she had come and by a deviant route via a few department stores and the ladies’ facilities. From there, she walked to the subway on the next line and bought a ticket with cash to a suburban transit stop.

Who the hell takes the train anywhere these days, she congratulated herself? I’ll get off at a backwater and hire car there and head out to the sticks until I find a small town to hole up in, and then… and then… This was crazy, it was just some Peeper, a glorified special dick. She could just go to a sane country like Canada for a three-month vacation, she thought, but wondered if that wouldn’t be even worse than a spanking.

The private suite on the train was reasonable enough. It had been worth paying for first class and if she stayed away from the dining car… well… how paranoid did she need to be anyway? She slumped onto the hard bed and stared dejectedly at the face in the small bathroom mirror. She looked like a hunted animal, what the hell did I do anyway? She thought about that for the first time.

The TV interview hadn’t gone down too well, her uncle had been furious, but she had made the front page of three nationals and several news channels had picked up the story. It was just some PR business shit, who would care or remember in a month?

She also thought about the shares she had sold options on. They were hers weren’t they? Who cared if… she suddenly couldn’t remember the name of the private buyer her uncle hated, but she remembered what trouble he might make for the family. That had been made clear to her.

The knock on the door shook her.

“Who is it?” she asked tentatively.

“Room service,” came the bored reply.

“I didn’t order any,” Candice snapped back suspiciously.

“It’s first class,” the weary voice outside might have added a ‘dummy’ under his breath, but of course she wouldn’t hear that.

Candice felt a bit of a dummy too, of course there was room service and her paranoia was getting crazy. “Hold-up kid,” she shouted.

Only it wasn’t a kid. The man was barely contained within the smart dark suit and looked as if he might burst the seams at his shoulders. He also had steel grey hair that was completely white at the temples. His eyes too were not that of a kid, they were ocean blue and soul-piercing. Nor did the man smile as a waiter should; instead he had a stern countenance and reminded her of her father during the troubled teen years.

The thought made her sad. If Daddy had been alive she might not be in such a fix.

“Who are you?” Candice asked, pouting now as she did when something challenged her expectations, but somehow she knew.

She wasn’t surprised when the man growled, “Dade, Jack Dade, I will be your PPR for the day.”

Candice felt a sinking feeling in her tummy and she gulped as the room span a little. Dade rhymed with made, but she suddenly got why the called him the Daddy, only that wasn’t why, was it? Gosh, so much insight so suddenly, she thought idly as she took in his paternal glare.

“I… I eh don’t need a… PPR today, I already decided…” she was lying, she was always lying, she knew that even before she had finished making one up. P-PR suddenly she got that too, always so slow, she blushed as her mind raced.

Ignoring her, Dade asked, “Are you going to invite me in young lady?” as he strode at her and make her back up.

There was a strange finality to the sound of the door closing; and then he locked it behind him.

Candice worked her mouth for some moisture and swallowed nervously. Her eyes were saucers now.

“Look, Mr Dade…” Candice dismissively batted down the air with her hands as her eyes blinked rapidly. “I don’t know what they told you but…”

Dade folded his arms and fixed her with a firm gaze. He had heard it all before.

“Most of my clients call me Daddy,” Dade snorted.

Candice found a tone of disdain as she managed to sneer, “Good luck with that.”

“I never used to insist upon it,” Dade explained as he casually slipped off his jacket and folded it over the back of the chair.

He wore neither dress shirt nor a tie, but under the jacket he wore a thin dark blue roll-neck leisure top that emphasised his broad frame. Candice noticed that there was something menacing about the way he turned up the sleeves.

“These days I find it marks a point of submission,” he continued and pushing out his lower lip thoughtfully added, “You know the point where a girl is ready to start taking her spanking for real.”

“Sp-spanking,” Candice swallowed, “About that…”

Dade smoothed down the bed sheets on the narrow cot and sat down. Then after offering a stern look and a tight smile he patted his lap.

“Yes about that,” he said.

“How does… how does this work exactly?” Candice whispered.

“Oh, simple really, I bare your little bottom and I spank you until I think you get it. Then I spank you some more and if necessary you can go stand in the corner to think it over while my hand and your bottom cools off some,” Dade was matter-of-fact, adding, “Then we take things form there.”

Candice blanched as it sunk it that this might actually happen. The door was three strides away. She didn’t make it. Instead she was deposited unceremoniously face down across his knees while he rucked up her small skirt.

“Dade, Mr Dade I mean, I don’t  think…” Candice gasped as she felt red leggings go south and her panties with them. “Mr Dade,” it was a groaned breath.

Dade’s hands were like paddles and twice as hard and he used one to steady her across his knee. The other, at the end of his good right arm, blasted down with a breath-stealing sting.

“Cute get-up, let’s see if we can match the colour,” Dade chuckled as he spanked her again.

“Whooo,” Candice wailed and began kicking impotently as she began to learn what a real spanking was.

“You know your uncle wanted me to do this in front of the board and anyone else with an interest in you,” Dade told her as he continued his rapidly volley, “But I don’t like being told when and how to work. If I think you would benefit from such a spanking I’ll get to it.”

“What?!” Candice yelped, only half in pain. Then it occurred to her that it might not be over after this, “What do you mean ‘if you think I would benefit’?”

“Oh, that’s right, this is an open-ended arrangement. I will be monitoring your behaviour from now on, carte blanch, so to speak. I have a year-long contract. Renewable, of course,” Dade told her while his hand imparted a sharper message.

“That… ah… figures,” Candice said miserably through gritted teeth.

Dade spanked a beat per second, each swat the equal of any high school dean’s efforts and Candice’s groans quickly got lost in heavy panting as she bucked and mewled across the man’s lap.

“Mr Dade, Dade, please…” she gasped after a few minutes, there were already tears, but no sobbing, “Please Mr Dade,” she shrieked and then she was.

Long minutes passed.

“Da-d, da-d, dd…” she cried.

“Come on, you can say it,” he coaxed, his words soft even as his spanking hand was hard.

“Daddy,” she sobbed, but she wasn’t entirely thinking of him as she sagged in surrender.

Dade noted the time; it had taken 17 minutes to get her here. He would spank on for another three and then let her cool her tail in the corner for half an hour. Then they would talk. He guessed they both had a lot to say over the next few months. But first there was a long train ride ahead, and he might even fetch his little bag from the baggage car.