[ <– continued from It’s Not You, It’s Me ]

I let a few more days pass, and then I texted Paul.

Hi. Are you busy?

A minute went by.

Hey. Not at all. What’s up?

Here’s where it got sticky. I mean, two weeks earlier I dumped the poor guy over dinner, so how was I supposed to approach this?

I’ve been thinking. Wanna try this again?

A longer pause.

Really? Absolutely!

But you have to promise to bear with me. Don’t laugh at me. I want to try something different.

Different how?

Just… different. Come over tonight and see.

And on that enigmatic note I let him wonder.

 

That evening, Paul arrived, flowers in hand, scrubbed and clean. Clearly he was going the extra mile. I told you he was a nice guy.

I met him at the door to my apartment, and as we stood there in the doorway awkwardly, I had a serious moment of doubt. What was he going to think of me? Oh well, he was here now, so I had better at least let him in. Maybe I could just pour some wine and drop the whole idea, just spend a relaxing evening, watching a movie or something.

No, that wasn’t going to work. The basic problem still existed, still needed to be solved, and besides, I had dumped this guy once already. Either we tried something different or the whole exercise was pointless. Going on as we did before was not an option for me.

Well, the wine was still a good idea. I was pretty nervous.

“Hi.”

He smiled broadly. “Hi. I, um, brought you these.” He handed me the flowers. I smiled and opened the door wider, ushering him into the living room of my tiny Queen Anne apartment. I nodded over at the bottle on the dining table.

“Pour us each a glass while I get these into some water.”

I pulled a vase out of a kitchen cabinet, filled it with water, cut the ends of the stems, and put the flowers into the vase. When I turned around, Paul had gotten the cork out of the pinot noir and was just pouring the second glass.

“We should let these breathe a little first,” he said.

I picked up one of the glasses and took a healthy swig. Paul just looked at me.

“What? The rest of it will breathe. I needed that now.”

“Are you ok, Olivia?”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, you just seem a little edgy.”

I took a second drink from my glass and looked him in the eye. How the hell was I supposed to do this? Well, only one way to find out if it was going to work.

“Come with me,” I said, then pointed at the bottle. “And bring that.”

Paul picked up the bottle and followed me into the bedroom. Now he was drinking from his glass, too.

“Um, Olivia? Are we even going to talk about, you know, the other night?”

I couldn’t quite meet his eye, so I just started unbuttoning my blouse. His eyes went wide and he opened his mouth but no further words came out. Having sort of thought this through earlier, although whatever plan I’d had was already shot to hell, I wasn’t wearing a bra. When I got the last button undone, I hesitated a moment, though why was beyond me. I mean, it wasn’t like we hadn’t already done it. He had definitely seen me naked before. Why was I so nervous now?

Before I could back out of it, I pulled the blouse open wide and slipped it off my shoulders. Paul’s gaze was firmly on my breasts now, the wine bottle in one hand and glass in the other all but forgotten. I blushed again, the heat spreading across the tops of my breasts, up my neck and onto my face, but I don’t think he even noticed. Moving quickly, nothing especially seductive about it, I shimmied out of my skirt and tugged my panties down. I stepped out of my heels, which frankly I had only put on for greeting him — I don’t usually bother wearing shoes inside the apartment — and stood there before him, naked as the day I was born, blushing even brighter red.

He didn’t say anything. His mouth was still open, and I wasn’t sure if he was shocked or excited. He was definitely surprised. I reached for my glass again and finished it off, then took the bottle from him, refilled my glass, and set the bottle on the nightstand.

“Well?” I said. “Are you just going to stand there?”

Paul still looked a little uncertain, but he didn’t think about it too long. He started pulling off his shirt, perhaps a little too eagerly, as he got himself stuck with his arms bound up in it behind his back. For a moment there I thought of keeping him there, like that, and I had a brief frisson of excitement race through me, from a point between my breasts right down between my legs. The moment passed, however, and I just giggled a bit, turning away and climbing up onto the bed. I reached over to the nightstand and pulled out the handcuffs.

Paul’s eyes fairly goggled when he saw them, and he stopped in his tracks.

“Um, what’s up with those?”

I grinned over my shoulder at him as I threaded them through the slats in the headboard.

“An idea I had. Come on.”

He seemed really uncertain about it all, as I put first one wrist in a cuff, snapping it closed, and then my other. When that second one clicked into place, it passed quickly through my mind, what the hell am I doing? I didn’t let that stop me, however. Facing him again over my shoulder, my upturned ass in the air as I kneeled on the bed, resting my elbows on the pillows, I smiled, not at all as sure of myself as I tried to sound.

“I want you to spank me.”

Poor Paul. Now he really had that deer in headlights look, his shirt hanging from one wrist, his fly unzipped, standing there in shock.

“Spank you?”

“Yes, that’s right, I want you to spank me. I told you I wanted to try something different. Come on, it’ll be fun. Anyway, it’s an experiment.”

“I don’t know, Olivia. I mean, what if I hurt you? Are you sure about this?”

I heaved an exasperated sigh.

“Paul, get your ass up here on this bed, and spank me!”

His eyes grew even wider, if that were possible, but he finally got himself fully untangled from his shirt, kicked off his shoes and, still wearing his half-unzipped pants, climbed up onto the bed behind me. I wiggled my bare derriere at him and giggled again, although inside my heart was pounding something fierce and I could feel the heat of a blush spreading across my face and chest. I tugged on the cuffs experimentally, and yes, they held, very securely.

He put a hand on one of my butt-cheeks, and I liked that, so I wiggled again to encourage him.

“What are the handcuffs for? And when did you get those? Did you have those before?”

“I just got them, and I don’t know, it’s just an idea I had. I thought it’d be fun. Now come on, get busy!”

He lifted his hand, hovered over me with it for a moment, then sort of softly whacked me.

“Harder!”

He smacked me again, very slightly harder this time, but still very tentative.

“Did that hurt? I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“Paul, I’m not a baby, and you barely tapped me. It’s supposed to sting a little, isn’t it? It’s a spanking. Come on, spank me harder.”

“Can’t we just make love like normal?”

I sighed. So far, this experiment was a bust.

“Paul, please, can we just try it?”

He hit me one more time, no harder than before. Nothing. I was not aroused. I wasn’t turned on. This wasn’t working for me.

“I’m sorry, Olivia, I just don’t know. I don’t think this is right.”

He climbed off the bed and stood there, looking at me. Obviously it wasn’t working for him, either. He zipped up his fly, stepped into his shoes, and picked up his shirt.

“I don’t think I can do this, Olivia. I’m sorry. I’ve gotta go.”

I stared open-mouthed at him in shock.

“Go? Now?”

“Yeah. Maybe you were right the other night at dinner. I mean about us not being right for each other. Anyway, see you around, perhaps, ok?”

And with that, he walked out of the room.

“Paul!”

I heard the front door shut behind him as he left the apartment.

“Paul, dammit!”

I rattled the cuffs. I looked over at the nightstand, at the closed top drawer. The drawer I’d gotten them from. The drawer where the key sat.

Now what the hell was I going to do?

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[continue to Finding the Key –>]

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