Chapter Two

I concentrated on work the remainder of the day. Yes, Dickerson and I narrowly whisked by with our presentation, but we had a hell of a lot of work to do. With all that needed to be done, I still found plenty of time to remember KC Gable, to finger the business card I’d stuffed in my suit pocket, and remember the way the words spanking and discipline jumped out of the conversation and into my brain…and suddenly someone else was in my mind besides my maverick rescuer—Rossi the day we first met…when I was just twenty-one…

She’d climbed to the third floor of the Architecture Building—knees shaking as she took each creaky step. The air in the upstairs corridor was sweltering, her skin beginning to sweat—May had been unusually hot. She only had two weeks left in this oppressive place—if she survived the next few minutes.

“Professor Rossi?” she tapped on his office door. It swung wide open with one gentle knock.

His back was to her, and hearing her voice, he turned around, his desk chair squealing.

“Yes?” He looked up absently, still preoccupied by the journal in his hand.

“I have an appointment.”

“You do?”

“Yes, Gail Henry? I made it with your secretary last week?”

He consulted his book, thumbing through a page or two. “Yes, Miss Henry, I see you did. Sit down.” Rossi was an austere man—forty, with sharp Classic features. If anything, his age accentuated his physical appeal. Both lean and fit, the effect of age matured him, enhancing the profound essence of quiet authority he exuded well. “You’re failing my class.” He made the disclosure in a matter-of-fact way, which required his faltering student’s reply.

“I wasn’t sure I was.”

He thumbed through another book and then looked narrowly over his cluttered desk to assault her with his judgmental eye. “You are,” he confirmed. “And why is that?”

Overcome with anxiety, she suddenly spilled out a monologue filled with remorse, confusion and dozens of details that the professor didn’t need to hear. She was on such a downward slide he just let her speak “…. I lost my text, couldn’t replace it until I’d wired for money—because I was overdrawn at the bank… and that didn’t happen until after the final was over … I borrowed one from my boyfriend’s roommate but he had to have it back before I finished my notes. Then the storm, the power was out for two nights, even the library had to close with no lights, so there was no way I could get the research books… or another text… ” she hardly took a breath of air then rattled on, “… I was hoping that you’d give me another day since I’m sure I could make up the work …”

“I don’t think so,” he interrupted without raising his voice. “A semester’s worth of study cannot be made up in twenty-four hours. If you want to pass this class…”

“I have to pass this class or I’ll get kicked out,” she whined like a grief-stricken child.

“If you want to pass this class,” Rossi continued without acknowledging her misery, “you’ll spend the next four weeks in make-up sessions. I have two other students in the same fix. You’ll retake the final then. Shall I put you on the list?”

“But I had summer plans…”

“Then change them,” he jumped on her remark, quickly silencing the beginnings of another rambling monologue. He sat back in his chair appraisingly, “You need discipline, Miss Henry. If you get nothing else this summer, you will get discipline.” According to the way he framed his words and the quiet force with which he spoke them, there was no doubt in her mind that plans would change, and her summer would alter, not to suit her frivolous fancy, but to suit the professor’s blueprint for her future.

When KC Gable said discipline, I thought I was hearing Professor Rossi that first day. Something quickened in my body then, just as it quickened hearing another man in another lifetime—or so it seemed ten years later—in a totally different kind of body and attitude speak with such plain assurance about me. Neither man knew me well enough to make the assessment. But I took it at face value then, and was feeling just as sure of KC’s appraisal now.

I didn’t like the feelings that were arising with this reminder of the past, but I could hardly ignore them. I preferred, however, to think of KC Gable—as unlikely a disciplinarian as he was—than to go into my distant past and relive what I’d dismissed.

KC was in my thoughts more consistently than I would have ever imagined any man could be. Usually, finding myself attracted to a man with the sort of instantaneous rush of excitement I’d experienced with KC, the impact would slowly drift away in a matter of days. With my leather-clad rescuer, the opposite was true. My desire bloomed like new wildflowers prying their way through the dead grasses of winter. It wasn’t even the dangerous words he interjected into our conversation that lit the fires; but thoughts of his life—his experimental theatre, the leather, his classic Harley and the casual way he could talk about sex. I knew him only one half hour; and I knew I wanted more. I was attracted by his potential for wickedness, his willingness to skirt the usual lines that outlined life, and the way he stopped and lifted me to my feet without increasing my embarrassment—takes a certain class to do that. Perhaps I assumed too much about who he was, but I liked my assumptions. After all, I had no real social life, I wasn’t having sex, and until KC’s face suddenly became the central focus of my mind, I wasn’t even thinking about men—not seriously. I wasn’t living on the edge of anything—except, perhaps, my own sanity. I often called that sanity into question when my dazed life seemed like nothing more than a confused, blank slate of tired days. KC made me think, and fantasize, and feel alive.

I lived with my thoughts for nearly two weeks before doing anything. KC’s theatre card was dog-eared and dirty in my suit coat pocket—it changed from one to the other like a worry-stone I kept with me, or a talisman or charm to keep me safe. I kept telling myself I was going to call him, but I didn’t have the courage. I could only finger the slip of paper, commit the number to memory, and wonder if I weren’t being a little silly. My affections for the man seemed little more than a schoolgirl crush. I was swimming in the world of a child, feeling childish feelings, thinking childish thoughts.

I’m sure it was my subconscious that finally led me to him—that made me turn down an unfamiliar street in an unfamiliar neighborhood off anyone’s beaten path, and find myself staring at the ACT Workshop Theatre housed in an old warehouse. I pulled the card from my pocket as though I needed to confirm that this was the place. But I shouldn’t have needed any more clues as soon as I spotted a vintage Harley chained to the side of the building. The polished silver gleamed almost too brightly to look at, while my body determined the cycle’s owner not from reason and logic but general intuition. I’d never seen his bike but I knew this was KC’s.

I never go to strange places alone. (If it weren’t for a few brassy girlfriends who drag me from my apartment with my legs kicking, I would go nowhere but work.) Wearing my grey flannel suit with the subtle pin stripe, I could be figured for an attorney, insurance salesman or even the stodgy architect that I am. Did I fit in KC’s environment? I felt like an alien on planet Xenon walking into the peculiar building.

On the outside, the aging brick was covered with ivy clinging so closely to the surface that it would never be pried loose. As I opened a brown, painted door beneath a small marquee, an unexpected feeling of emptiness hit my face like a gust of wind. I was in a narrow hallway, propelled down the length of it as though a poker was prodding me at my back. The walls around me were black, the air was black, and the ceiling seemed to stretch above me to a black forever. When I reached the end of the corridor and turned to my left, the blackness only expanded swallowing up an entire room. My eyes adjusted to the vast vacancy, soon making out the details of the space in front of me. It looked more like a warehouse than a theatre. There were chairs stacked in a far corner, and what looked like risers. And on the opposite walls more risers and platforms—these painted black—and a few oddball items I believe were props. My eyes drifted to the ceiling, knowing that it would never end; yet I found some definition to these upper reaches in a spidery web of metal beams and scaffolding where dozens of lights hung, pointed in all directions.

“May I help you,” a voice behind me asked.

I whipped around, expecting to see a ghost. Instead, a woman two feet from my face peered toward my eyes, kindly, wonderingly. She was dressed in a straight, black skirt, which framed her bounteous hips and stopped at her calves, and an odd-looking silky purple blouse, which must have been a remnant from her grandmother’s last garage sale.

“I’m Loni,” she added because I was too stupefied to speak.

“Hi,” I found my voice, “I’m looking for KC.”

“Oh, yeah,” she nodded. “He’s here.” She didn’t sound so strange anymore, but young. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-two. “KC, hon, you have a visitor.”

Her voice echoed through the cavernous nothing, apparently reaching its intended target, as KC appeared a few seconds later looking just as I remembered him.

“Well,” he seemed surprised as he moved toward us.

“Hon, I have to split,” Loni announced in order to excuse herself. “I have a math final I’m going to fail, but I have to take it anyway.”

“At least you tried,” he offered sympathetically. She gave him a hug and a peck on the cheek while he gave her a squeeze; then we watched her leave.

“Your girlfriend?” I asked the first question to enter my mind.

“No. Just a friend. Little daft, but a good actress.”

“And not good at math.”

“It isn’t a requisite for the theatre, only if you’re trying to get a degree.”

I could understand.

“So, you’re here?” He seemed to question my presence, though not to make me uncomfortable. I suppose he was surprised that I showed up, but likely not as much as I was astonished by my own unplanned act. “Want me to show you around?” he asked.

“Sure.” That did seem reasonable and took some pressure off me, as though I were just an invited guest and KC was playing the gracious host.

I learned a good deal about his black box theatre that afternoon, how this shapeless void transformed itself a hundreds ways depending on the requirements of the play. They would be doing Shakespeare soon—a farce in 20th century garb. And after that, One Acts about sexual dysfunction. They could base one on my life, I immediately thought, but I wasn’t ready to say that sort of thing aloud.

I saw the scene shop, the costume racks and make-up mirrors. KC instructed me about stages, lights and the various ways he manipulated the emptiness of his converted warehouse. He even let me peek into the miniscule apartment where he lived. After the tour was complete, we stood in the center of the presidium stage he was about to tear apart. The focus of our conversation transferred to me. He asked no questions, but my appearance that afternoon was so unexpected that it required some explanation. I wasn’t sure what to say. But the energy driving my body felt as though the weight, speed and force of a freight train were barreling through my own empty cavern. It picked up speed the closer it got to its destination—the destination was my need.

“I stumbled here today,” I finally said.

“As in sprawled on the concrete like when we met?” he asked amusedly.

I attempted to look amused as well, and I’m sure I blushed. “No, more as turning into this neighborhood and finding myself looking at your theatre marquee.”

“You believe in psychic influences?” he asked.

“I don’t know. You think some hand outside guided me here?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “But I do think you have something to say.” There was a gentle edge in his voice.

“I know,” I answered with a sheepish grin—there was that schoolgirl thing again. Couldn’t I just act my age! “It’s just not that easy.”

“I’m an easy person,” he offered trying to commiserate with my dilemma.

“I know. And that’s probably why I’m here. You’re safe, and you don’t run in my circle of friends—I’d even be disappointed if you did. And this seems like the most anonymous place I could go.” All this said, I wasn’t sure KC was easy at all. There was too much underlying intensity in his spirit to call him easy or safe. I imagine his voice could cut like a knife. But looking around at his four black walls, having been inside them for nearly a half-hour, I was comforted by their anonymity. I was much more uncomfortable being in my tedious business suit than in KC’s black box.

“All that’s true,” he agreed with my assessment.

“You mentioned something when we were having coffee at McGill’s.” I was struggling here but I would get it out. I had to, or I’d look foolish.

“I mentioned quite a few things when we talked.”

“This was about sex, quirky sex I think you said. And you were right.” I paused, waiting for him to do anything that would stop me from proceeding, but he remained so openly benign—even gentle, as though his acceptance had the power to nurture me through my difficult confession. I would say his attitude was persuasively fatherly, although I could not relate this feeling to any experience with my own father. “You even mentioned spanking and discipline,” I almost choked on the words.

KC saw me start to stammer and he didn’t waver in his constancy. But he did ask, “Do you want to sit down, and we’ll talk?”

Yes, I did. It would easier on my jelly-filled thighs. Either that or I’d be running from the room, and then I’d look really stupid. “Why not?” I replied.

We were already at the side of the room. His arm at the back of my waist had gently guided me there, while the other pulled a chair from the cluttered stack. I sat on the chair; he sat on one end of a riser a foot above me, his legs dangling down, his mood as friendly and casual as it had been. I was still feeling like a confessing a child to this younger man’s fatherly calm.

I didn’t find this any easier sitting on my ass, but I no longer felt as though I might panic, or, without warning, my legs would buckle under my weight.

“Whether it was an accident or your powers of intuition were particularly acute that day, you managed to hit squarely on two sort of sexually charged desires that have been with me for some time. If anything drove me here, KC, it was the desire to feel a man’s hand spanking my bottom. Am I a total fool to bring this up to you, or can you…” Suddenly feeling so foolish confessing this deep, dark secret to a near stranger, I couldn’t go on. Let him say something.

I held my breath, hoping he wouldn’t blurt out something totally, inanely juvenile, which would destroy the fantasy mood that was operating in my body right now. KC didn’t fail me.

“Can I, and will I spank you?” he asked. And then, without making me reply, he went on, “I’m sure I can. We have an amazing erotic thing going on here, Gail. I haven’t had anything like this happen in a long time.”

Just his saying this made me shudder more, so profoundly, I wasn’t sure I could speak.

“It frightens you, doesn’t it?” His eyes seemed to clutch at mine as he spoke. “The desire has to be pretty powerful for a woman who never does anything inappropriate in her life to walk into a bizarre theatre and broach this subject with a stranger.”

“Then, you don’t think I’m some sort of wacko?” It was a relief that he understood, but maybe even scarier to suddenly stumble into this unrequited desire after so many years.

“Maybe, but I’m use to wackos. I already told you that.”

“When you gave me your card, did you think I’d come to see you?”

“Truthfully, no. I did bait you—like one of my ongoing people experiments.”

“Why me?”

“Because I like the way you look, and I’m always curious about people who don’t run in my circle. Your world is about as strange to me as my world is to you. Whether the two find a way to fit together, I don’t know. But I do know when I’m aroused.”

“And I arouse you?”

“Oh, yes.”

He was certain enough that I could feel the impact of his desire clawing at my crotch. My eyes were drawn to his thighs, the muscles, and the pouch of maleness that seemed to tent his pants even more as the conversation went on. I looked up almost embarrassed to have noticed.

“And, it was just a regular sort of attraction? You didn’t psychically see me getting spanked or something like that?”

“Not really, maybe it was an intuitive guess, maybe just an accident. Does it matter?”

“No, I guess not.”

“But if getting spanked is what drew you to me, I have no problem with that. It excites me controlling women. Makes me a dangerous man, and I like that too.” There was something devious in his expression that made my body flutter even more. “I like living incorrectly—outside the bounds of politics and feminism and anything that puts people in pigeonholes. People die that way, and I’m not planning to do that. I figure if it’s in your gut you need to live it out. That’s why I do theater. It gives the human animal a way to express what’s not sanctioned. Though sometimes, as long as no one gets hurt, real life is even better.”

I was following his logic moving to my own conclusion, “That’s why murder’s good on stage, and sexual things are better in the bedroom.”

He was impressed by my understanding and so was I. I knew exactly where this was headed. The door was open and I was walking inside a dream that might look like my past, though I stayed clear of that other entrance, and stuck to the now, to KC and me. We were occupying one single space, by then, knowing our minds were fused to the same picture, eroticism leaping on ahead of us, fantasy racing towards an end.

He pushed himself from the riser, and took my hand, pulling me to my feet. Exchanging places, his ass went down on the hardwood chair, while mine went over his lap. Every nerve in me jarred loose and my skin tingled as though he were blowing his breath across the surface. KC reached for the hem of my skirt—this one was not as short as the one I’d embarrassed myself in two weeks before. It was tight, though, and took some gentle tugging for him to raise it over my hips. That didn’t faze him. Each inch raised, my body fired again as though little rockets were going off inside me. With KC’s body fused to mine, and the heat from his crotch flooding my sex, I thought I’d get off before my ass was bared. He wouldn’t need to touch me more. But he did.

Having my skirt over my thighs, I waited at the ends of anticipation. I couldn’t have been baited more by any sexual scene. When his fingers caught the edge of my panties, and he jerked the fabric down my ass, I groaned caressing my pubis against his thigh. How obscene could I get? KC didn’t care. He didn’t stop either. When I would have been just as happy to have him screw me as spank my ass, he proceeded to the main event of our staged drama. Drawing back his hand, he whacked my behind with a firmness that brought back the past, and carved out new sexual territory for me. His slaps were steady. His unrelenting toughness unmatched. The sting was focused on the center of my cheeks, and though I couldn’t see, I felt the surface turning red, and wondered if he could blister me with just his hand.

Agony mounting, I struggled; but KC’s arm around my waist kept me still enough so that he’d strike again in the same burning places—one more time, then one more time… then again, and one more time—until even he couldn’t stand another whack at my ass.

“You want more?” he asked when he stopped. His palm massaged the warmth while I writhed against him. When his fingers slipped between my slightly-parted thighs, I opened them as far as they would go with my ankles half-bound by my panties. “More, Gail?”

“Your hand, yes,” I managed to say.

He understood. Without really knowing how he maneuvered me into position, I soon found myself on my feet, my panties tossed aside, and my torso draped over the back of the chair. He was fucking me. The long stalk of an erection I’d managed to picture with some surprising accuracy was thrusting happily inside my cunt while I groaned and he responded with a throaty hum—all until his voice and body seemed to roar as he spewed thick cream into my clenched insides.

He was coming down from the wildest spasms of his climax, taking the time to reach around to my clit. He fingered the hard little bud, and when his cock finally slipped out of my hole, he fingered that, too, while his other hand slapped my ass. I orgasmed on the sensations of pain and being controlled. I orgasmed because my ass was hot and my pussy molten and grabbing for release. I have no idea how much I might have embarrassed myself with the nonsense screaming from my throat. But it didn’t bother KC, and he was the only one around to hear.

“You okay?” he finally asked.

I heard his voice. My mind had been other than this room and it took some moments to find reality again.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“My, you are pent-up, Gail. How long has it been since you’ve had sex?”

“Two years since I’ve been with a man.”

He looked shocked, and shook his head. “Good gawd, you need an orgy.”

I couldn’t have agreed more, though I was embarrassed to admit my current sexual deficiency.

I give KC credit, he was as kind coming out of the scene as he was going in. “You’re awfully wet, maybe you want to clean up?” he suggested as he stroked my face with the back of his hand.

“Yeah, sure,” I said rather dreamily.

“There’s going to be people coming soon, how about you slip into my apartment?”

I nodded.

He led me to the hall behind the far black wall, and into the tiny room and his private bathroom. “There are clean cloths and towels in the cabinet.”

I wasn’t sure whether to be embarrassed or happy. I desperately wanted to know what he was feeling, but he was right, I was a mess.

By the time I put myself back together, there were two more women in the theatre, each dressed in the same deathly sort of attire that Loni had worn. KC was busy explaining something and I felt like an odd fifth wheel, the alien woman from that other planet.

I thought I should slip out, but KC intercepted me at the front door.

“Why are you leaving without saying goodbye?” he leveled his objection tersely.

“You looked busy.”

“So, this is just fuck and run?”

“No, no, no, I thought that’s all you…”

“You thought wrong, Gail. I don’t screw every woman who walks in the theatre. I don’t do groupies, and I’m not the kind of man to fuck and run. Is that all you wanted?”

“I don’t know what I want, but this was just so…” my words ran dry, “astounding.”

“And being astounded is probably good for you. I want you to come back.” He looked sincerely worried.

“I don’t know if I can,” I said as if I were drifting. A sea of sensation swelled around me.

“You’re sure you’re all right?”

“Yes, and I have to go—so do you.” I smiled and retreated to my Mercedes, feeling a tiny trickle of KC’s cum wet on the insides of my panties as my sore behind wiggled against the seat.