didn’t have a chance to get to the market today, myself.”
“Why don’t you come over? You know I love feeding you.”
“May I?”
“Please do, but drive carefully. It’s raining pretty hard.”
“I will!”
In less than fifteen minutes she was at Peter’s cottage door, clutching a bottle of her father’s best burgundy, which she’d pilfered over the weekend. Peter studied the label and smiled.
“Thank you!”
“What are you cooking?”
“Roast beef.”
“Mmmm! I picked the right night to invite myself for dinner.”
“You know you’re always welcome. In fact, I wish you’d never leave,” he declared, then went out to the kitchen with the wine to hide his embarrassment. She hung her raincoat in the closet and followed him out to the kitchen, where she sat down on a wooden settle and asked him to help her remove her outer boots.
“With pleasure,” he told her, unbuttoning each one and yanking it off with the efficiency of a man who’d been tugging galoshes on and off children’s tiny feet for fifteen years.
“Oh, Peter!” she sighed, throwing her arms around his neck and hugging him hard. This gesture made it fairly clear to Peter that whatever had happened between Jessie and Lionel, it hadn’t won her away from him yet. In fact, she looked as happy to be in his house as he felt to have her there.
“All right, young lady, come clean. What happened this weekend in Boston between you and Lionel?”
The question popped out so abruptly that for a moment she could only stare at him with wide eyes. Then she dropped her gaze and looked ashamed.
“I’m afraid I didn’t behave very well in Boston, Peter,” she admitted, watching him pop the sliced potatoes into boiling water.
“Oh dear.”
“I did everything wrong thing I could possibly do!” she confessed passionately.
“I guessed as much when I saw you at lunch today.”
“You’re going to be disappointed in me,” she told him with conviction.
“Only if you tell me that you’ve fallen in love with that brute.”
“Oh no! I could never love a man of so little finesse! Not to mention his harshness with the children.”
“Then I’m not losing my girl to Lionel?”
“Oh never, Peter!” She went to him and wrapped her arms around his waist from behind to press the whole length of her torso against his straight back.
“Please, Jessie, not while I’m slicing an onion,” he scolded, his eyes watering profusely. She released him and retired to a kitchen stool.
“So you’re not upset?”
“Why should I be upset?”
“Because of what I did.”
“Well, Jessie, I’m not sure I understand exactly what you did do.” He deftly carved radish rosettes.
“I allowed Lionel to sodomize me.”
Peter stared at her in surprise. “You did what?”
“I pretended to be a good girl, as you suggested, but got greedy for sensations and told Lionel that he might spank me. He interpreted that as an invitation to take my bottom, thus satisfying his need to humiliate me while preserving my alleged virginity.”
“You told Lionel about the spanking thing?” Peter was more shocked by this than the idea of Lionel inserting his undeserving penis into Jessie’s divine bottom.
“I offered it as a substitute for sex.”
“But you wound up having sex anyway.”
“He virtually forced himself on me, Peter. Though once I’d become visibly aroused from the spanking, my protests had a hollow ring. He’s a sexual predator, just as you suspected and I was easy game.”
“Well, how was it?” Peter asked stiffly, for some reason feeling more piqued at the other man for spanking Jessie than violating her.
“You mean the spanking? Well, as you might expect from Lionel, it was rather too hard. All the same, I knew he was only thinking of sex and not of correcting me at all.”
“But you said you became aroused,” said Peter, shucking corn and dropping it into boiling water.
“Well, of course I did. I get aroused when Little Nancy in the comics gets a spanking, so of course when a handsome man does it –”
“Lionel does cut a dashing figure, I suppose,” Peter granted gloomily.
“But I find you a hundred times more attractive, Peter,” Jessie confided.
“Still, Jessie, I thought you shared your special secret with me because you liked me and knew you could trust me. Now here I find you’ve told it to a man you neither like nor find trustworthy!”
“As I said, Peter, I was recklessly curious.”
“And look what happened! Lionel took advantage of you.” Peter found himself actually becoming angry with Jessie.
“He certainly did.”
“You know, if you’d behaved like the good girl you were pretending to be and said goodnight on the stoop, none of this would have happened.” Peter declared with a degree of irritation that set Jessie’s tummy fluttering.
“I intended to be good.”
Peter checked the kitchen clock and saw that he had about ten minutes before the corn had to come out of the water. He therefore purposefully removed his apron, pulled a heavy oaken chair into the center of the floor, sat down on it and patted his thigh. “Come over here, young lady.”
Jessie gingerly approached him and within an instant of coming into grabbing reach, found herself thrust face down across his sturdy lap.
“I can’t believe you allowed that reprehensible bully so many liberties,” he sternly declared, bringing his hand down hard on her skirted bottom.
“I’m very sorry,” she gasped, startled by the vigor of his first few smacks.
“You had no business accepting that date in the first place,” said Peter in a way that filled Jessie with secret contentment.
“You should have insisted I break it!” she asserted, casting him a look at him over one shoulder.
“Oh? It’s my fault, is it?” Smack! Smack! Smack!
“You
