Читать книгу Shadow Lane Volume 8: The Spanking Libertines A Novel of Spanking, Sex and Romance - Eve Howard - Страница 10

Chapter Three Alison’s Knight

Alison Albrecht 28, though no fault of her own, was a difficult girl. Fortuitously, her sharp, tense, meticulous personality was suited to her new job as assistant to the bursar of the Braemar Academy. This was her first important position and also her first return to her birthplace in five years.

The death of her father over the summer had transformed Random Point from a dreaded destination into a desirable locale. Her mother, who lived in Paris, did not return for the funeral, but sent Alison an enchanting gown and the deed to the house in which Alison had been raised.

It was a charming cottage in the woods, only five minutes from the cove. Her mother, an obsessively artistic homemaker, had turned it into a showplace.

Alison got a thrill walking through the rooms for the first time without fearing that her father might materialize with a scolding or irrational harangue.

Both her parents had been perfectionists. But at least her mother’s concerns: cleanliness, tailoring, grades and comportment, made some degree of sense to Alison. Besides which she had taught Alison many valuable accomplishments, such as skating, drawing and the ability to do her own hair. Appearances were vital to her mother, including that of a happy home, which was of course impossible with her father at the helm.

It was well for Alison that her mother had striven to mold a perfect daughter, because an awkward one might never have survived childhood under Alison’s father mentally in tact. Alison was only barely so herself on the happy day she had finally escaped to college in another state. Luckily she had been born pretty and bright. These pleasing attributes – combined with the appearance of filial passivity which she constantly labored to project – had allowed Alison to occasionally tap the extremely modest reserves of tenderness in her father’s heart and enjoy the hugs, kisses and prolonged lap sits that her mother never had the time to give her.

She rather imagined that in his own way, her father had loved her. No doubt, he, in his turn had been an abused child. But that didn’t counter the fact that she had spent her entire life in cowering fear of him and him alone.

Not that Alison received many spankings as a child. She was too fearful, well behaved and sneaky for that. But the threat was always there.

Once she was of high school age, the threat became that of a strapping, rather than a spanking. Then it became even more vital not to get caught doing whatever it was he didn’t want her to do. Which was everything except studying and helping her mother clean.

Not that Alison ever received a strapping from her father as a teenager. She was much too docile to anger him with overt disobedience and much too cautious to get pregnant from the illicit sex she had begun to have with boys from age 15. But the threat was always there.

Alison was sure that the strap was her father’s favorite implement for use on girls because she was almost positive that she had once heard him use it on her mother.

Alison questioned the memory whenever it arose, wondering whether she’d merely imagined the entire incident, in view of her fascination.

It seemed that one night, when she was about aged three, her parents went to a dance at a country club. Her mother looked divine in her gown. Alison was put to bed by the babysitter and her parents returned quite late. She awoke to the sounds of a quarrel, not her father’s usual vitriolic monologue but two voices raised in anger. Then it was put to a stop by the sounds of – a strapping!

Or had she dreamt the whole thing?

Now that her father had expired, she could write to her mother and ask what had really happened that night. For the first time she wanted the details. If only she could believe that on some level her mother found that thug in a pinstriped suit arousing, she might feel better about their marriage and her childhood.

Quite independently of fearing spankings from her father, Alison was, from toddler age on, completely fascinated by and enraptured with Spanking.

As early as age three, Alison thought about spankings. Then, as a child, she was always the one to initiate spanking games with her playmates. She never wondered why she found it the nicest thing in the world when someone talked about spanking, or she saw a spanking on TV. But she knew instinctively never to discuss this phenomenon with anyone. Because even as a child, Alison observed that other people didn’t feel the same way about spanking as she did. Other people thought it was a silly or very bad thing – always to be avoided. Nobody else seemed to feel it was an immensely intriguing subject. Except perhaps the writers who put spankings into TV shows and old movies. And novels. Oh, how she loved to read a book where one might come across a spanking! Perhaps these creative geniuses alone understood about the power of spanking and put the references in, just for the likes of Alison and a handful of others who might also understand.

Alison “came out” at aged seventeen, by answering an ad in The East Village Other when she was a freshman at Sarah Lawrence. It was the first of many correspondence adventures, followed by a collection of somewhat sleazier escapades initiated in pick-up bars around Manhattan. But she never had the fortune to penetrate the actual Spanking Scene, bouncing around instead in the New York BDSM community for years and beginning to hate life.

Then, quite by miraculous chance, during her very first week at Braemar, she happened to discover that two of the other staff members, an English instructor, Mr. Lawrence and a guidance counselor, Miss Rohan, were both into spanking! Not BDSM, alternative lifestyle, or anything like those commitments, but simple, traditional American spanking. She figured it out just hearing them flirting one day during afternoon break and boldly confronted them because she was that sure she was right. Ever since that day they had become an intimate luncheon clique and Mr. Lawrence had lent her a collection of magazines, called The New Rod Quarterly, where she could place ads and find a companion, possibly here on the Cape.

Alison didn’t have much faith in personal ads after all these years, but then again, she had never advertised directly in a spanking specific magazine. That concept in itself was mesmerizing and she poured over the ads in the back issues David Lawrence had given her with irrepressible excitement.

Freddie Johanson, 38, also a native of Random Point and the network manager for Braemar, was also into spanking. But Alison did not discover this fact until he answered the coded personal ad that she had placed in The New Rod Quarterly.

If he had known that it was Alison Albrect’s ad he was answering, this fact might have discouraged Freddie, because during the past several weeks he’d received the impression that the bursar’s smart young assistant didn’t care for him. He had felt her frowning at him more than once and this was strange to him – because females, young or old, straight or gay, conservative or wild, generally adored Freddie.

Freddie was as warm and expansive as Alison was cool and controlled, possessing, in her opinion, too much personality. He was a big man of at least 6’4” and rather well set up. Not handsome, but certainly charming. Too charming by half for Alison, who despised on principal anyone who wasted time in idle chatter during a business day.

Freddie did talk, often and on the slightest provocation. But most people enjoyed this about him. He was intelligent, good-humored, sympathetic, helpful, courteous and universally well liked, except by the grumpy and small. He was also highly competent, though Alison could not see how he managed to fit in any work at all in between the vast amount of socializing Freddie did.

In fact he held so many conversations as he went about setting hard discs to rights, that Alison could scarcely find a moment for a private confrontation.

Finally, on Friday afternoon, when everyone was packing up to go home, she knocked on the door of his office, entered and waited as he backed up some work, smiling at her but blessedly taciturn for once. Finally, when he was ready to give her his full attention, she floored him with the statement, “You answered my personal ad in the spanking magazine. Didn’t you?”

She held up the envelope she’d received from him the previous day, with his photo and a letter about himself. He gazed at it then her in amazement.

“So, what do you think we should do?” she demanded, adding hurtfully. “I really don’t think we should go out. I’m sure we’re not suited.”

For once at a loss for words, Freddie replied at length, “You never know. They say opposites attract.”

“That’s nonsense,” she declared, fussing with the snaps on her portfolio to avoid meeting his dark eyes.

“Right,” he agreed dismissively, beginning to pack his own briefcase. She saw she’d made him angry and this made her heart jump.

“I’m sorry, but I just have a feeling it wouldn’t work out,” she replied guiltily.

“I understand,” he returned indifferently.

“Well, good night,” she murmured, scarcely remembering when she had ever felt so uncomfortable with a man.

“Good night, Alison.”

She walked towards the door then turned, about to offer him his photo back so that he could send it to someone else. But something made her cram the letter back into her jacket pocket instead.

“Well, good bye,” she said once more.

“Well?” His look gave her butterflies.

“Well, what do you think?” she asked timidly.

“I don’t know what to think.”

“I mean, now that you know that it’s me.”

“I’d be happy it was you if I thought you didn’t hate me.”

“I don’t hate you. I don’t even know you.”

“But you feel I’m not you’re type.”

“Right. And I’m sure I’m not yours.”

“What about getting together once, just for fun?”