Confessions of a Kinky Wife (13 page)

‘That’s what they all say.’

‘Yeah, but I’m not getting in the car, am I? I’d never do that.’

‘Damn right you’re not. Jesus. I can’t believe you’d do this. I’m … right. OK. This is the perfect example of when I should …’ He paused and took a breath. ‘Bend over the bonnet.’

‘What? No!’

‘Do as you’re told, Philippa. I’m very disappointed in you tonight.’

I looked back at the lift door and took another desperate scan of the car park. It was deserted. And something in Dan’s eyes made me feel the impossibility of defying him.

‘What if someone comes?’ I asked in a very small voice.

‘Then I’ll stop. I’m only going to give you a taste of what’s to come. I want to sober up before I deal with this properly. But the book says punishment is more effective when it’s immediate. So … please …’

I could hardly believe I was going along with this, but I turned away from him and rested my elbows on the dusty bonnet of the car. It needed a wash, I thought irrelevantly. I traced a pattern in the dust, thinking of the filthy white van that used to be parked up our road in the grime of which some knob had written, ‘I wish my wife was as dirty as this.’

I yelped out a plea when he lifted up my skirt to reveal my knickers.

‘Must you? This is a public place.’

‘If you can’t do the time, love, don’t do the crime,’ he advised.

I felt the cool air of the basement chamber settle on my thighs and the exposed parts of my bottom. It combined with the slight wine haze to form a sensual cocktail that was much more sexy than I expected it to be.

Suddenly, I was looking forward to the first stroke.

Until it landed, loud and sharp, on my poor bum. My knickers were no protection at all, pathetic stretch lace numbers that served only to hold the sting in and increase the heat.

‘Don’t,’ said Dan, smacking a second time.

‘Drink.’

‘Ow!’

‘And.’

‘Stop it.’

‘Drive.’

‘I didn’t!’

‘Unrepentant?’ he asked dangerously.

‘No, I’m sorry. I wish I hadn’t had the wine.’

‘Just.’

‘Argh!’

‘Say.’

‘Oh, that hurts.’

‘No.’

‘I will! I did. I tried to.’

Another voice added to our fraught debate.

‘Is everything all right here?’

A middle-aged man in a blue uniform stood by the lift door.

I shot up and rubbed my bottom, hiding behind Dan.

‘Fine,’ he said.

‘You realise these premises are monitored by CCTV?’

‘Oh … no. We didn’t.’

‘So I gather. Perhaps you should go home, eh? These things are best kept private.’ He gave Dan a mortifying little wink.

Even worse, while this conversation was ongoing, one of Dan’s friends appeared, jingling his car keys.

‘You all right, Danno?’ he asked, looking after the concierge as he lumbered back off to his secret den of cameras.

‘Yeah, just found out Twinkletoes here is over the limit. Going to have to call a cab and pick the car up tomorrow.’

‘Don’t call me that,’ I hissed.

He always called me that in front of his friends. It drove me mad.

‘I’ll give you a lift,’ offered the friend. I think his name was Patrick. ‘Sears Corner, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah. Would you?’

‘It’s on my way.’

‘You’re a star, mate. C’mon,
Twink
. Let’s make the best of a bad situation.’

I sat in the back seat, feeling the burn from the spanking, while Dan went in the front, beside his friend.

‘Designated driver forgot her designation, eh?’ said Patrick jovially, reversing out of the space.

‘I didn’t mean to,’ I muttered.

‘So what did the attendant guy want?’

‘Oh, nothing, just wondered why we were hanging around in the car park without getting into the car.’

‘Really?’ Patrick left a question mark in the air, as if he knew more.

‘What, do you think I’m lying?’ Dan sounded slightly aggressive, the beers returning in full effect.

‘Blimey, Dan, you sound like one of our suspects. I was just wondering if you realised that there’s a live stream to the car-park CCTV on Jim’s laptop.’

I saw Dan’s shoulders tense and I bit my lip, not daring to react. Had we been seen?

A long beat of silence ended with Dan saying, ‘Seriously?’ in a low tone.

‘Look, it’s none of my business what you get up to in your –’

‘Who saw us? How many of them?’

‘It was just me. I was looking at some photos of Jim’s rock-climbing holiday last month, wanted to see if it was something I’d go for. Got bored and started fiddling around with stuff. Found the car-park cam and …’

‘Yeah, yeah, busted,’ said Dan resignedly. ‘Keep it to yourself, yeah?’

‘Of course.’ He took a quick look back at me. ‘You’re OK, Phil?’

‘God, yes.’

‘You’re sure?’

Great. Now Dan’s colleague was suspecting him of domestic abuse.

‘It was my idea,’ I said.

‘It’s all right, you don’t have to –’

‘Yes, I do. I don’t want anyone getting the wrong idea. I asked Dan if he’d, er, do the necessary if things got out of hand. It all came from me. He wasn’t even that keen on any of it.’ I paused. ‘To begin with.’

Patrick, the tips of his ears bright red, mumbled, ‘Right.’

‘So,’ I continued, ‘I was out of order tonight, having too much to drink so I couldn’t drive home, so he gets to, y’know, deliver a bit of summary justice. Crime and punishment, that’s your business, isn’t it? Not hard to understand, I hope.’

Patrick considered this. ‘Well, no,’ he said. ‘And not even any paperwork to fill in afterwards, eh, Dan?’

‘Not for me,’ he muttered, sounding slightly less stressed.

‘It’s different anyway,’ said Patrick. ‘Different strokes …’

‘Literally,’ I said and he laughed, thawing.

‘Well, that’s given me something to think about,’ he said. ‘When I saw you two down there at first, I thought something else was going on. Especially when he lifted up your skirt. I thought I’d better get down and warn you, before you got done for indecent exposure. And then you started … well, I couldn’t stop watching. I wasn’t sure I could believe my eyes. By the time I got down there, old Uniform was on the case. I know him, by the way, used to work at Sands Lane nick before he retired from the job. If you want me to have a word …’

‘I don’t think that’ll be necessary,’ said Dan. ‘I think he’s let it go.’

‘So,’ said Patrick, turning into our street. ‘If Dan winds you up, do you get to wallop his backside?’

I laughed again. ‘It doesn’t work that way.’

‘Tch. I thought we were all about equality these days.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘And it’s my equal right not to want to spank my husband. Besides, he’s practically perfect in every way.’

I said it with a certain malicious glee, knowing that Dan had had the nickname ‘Mary Poppins’ when he joined the force as a somewhat over-eager young constable. It served him right after all that Twinkletoes stuff earlier.

Patrick laughed heartily at that as he parked up outside our block.

‘Oh, well, all’s forgotten and forgiven, I’m sure,’ he said.

‘Thanks for this, Pat,’ said Dan, unbuckling his seatbelt. ‘You won’t say anything, will you? If this gets round the station …’

‘Don’t worry, mate. Though it’s a lovely juicy bit of gossip.’ He sighed.

‘Pat!’

‘Don’t worry. Night. Go on with you. Kiss and make up.’

‘Thanks,’ I whispered, making a quick getaway towards the communal door of the block.

Once inside, Dan sank down on to the sofa, put his head in his hands and moaned, ‘Fuck.’

‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘He won’t say anything. D’you want coffee?’

‘Please.’

He was less tense, though still pale, by the time I put the cup into his hands.

‘Talk about a sobering experience,’ he said.

‘Yeah.’ The two glasses of wine were a distant memory.

‘I don’t know what I was thinking. What a fucking prat. Of course the car park had CCTV. Of course it did. Shit.’

‘Dan, stop it. It doesn’t matter. The concierge has probably forgotten all about it by now and Patrick promised not to say anything. It’s fine. Let it go.’

‘The concierge
and
Patrick are probably wanking
right now
to the memory of your bare arse over the car bonnet.’ He put down the coffee and buried his head in his hands. ‘Fuck,’ he said again, drawing out the vowel sound in desperation.

‘Don’t beat yourself up about it. It was a silly mistake – everyone makes them from time to time. Even me.’

I hoped my little postscript would lighten his mood. If there’s one thing I’d change about Dan, it’s his tendency to agonise over every single little error.

‘Pip, it’s my job to exercise good judgement. I didn’t exercise good judgement. I feel like my whole career is built on a lie.’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, get a grip,’ I said, cross now. ‘You’d had a few beers and you were a bit pissed off. And you were off-duty. It has nothing to do with your competence as a police officer. Please!’

‘I should never have put us in that position. I could have been arrested. We both could have been arrested. We still could!’

‘Dan.’ I tried to speak very slowly and clearly, although my temper was riding up hard, snatching at the edges of my self-control. ‘The concierge won’t do anything. Patrick won’t say anything. He might tease you a bit in the locker room, but that’s as bad as it’ll get. I’d swear to it. Can we please just forget it now?’

‘I could have been charged with assault. It is assault, isn’t it? Technically, it’s actually assault, what I do to you.’

‘Christ, if a bit of consensual spanking is assault, pity the poor bloody judges. The courts are going to be busting at the seams.’

Dan stopped angsting for a while and drank his coffee, staring out at the black night beyond the window.

‘I really am sorry I had that second glass of wine,’ I said. ‘I wish I hadn’t.’

‘I don’t know why you had the first.’

‘There’s never enough decent non-alcoholic stuff to drink at parties. I can’t drink Coke all night. I’d never sleep.’

‘That’s a line of defence, if not a particularly stunning one.’

‘I think you’re turning this into a crisis when you don’t need to. It isn’t. It’s a silly glitch, that’s all. And you were only trying to do the right thing.’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘But when I get mixed up with the right thing and the bloody stupid thing, perhaps it’s time I accepted I’m not cut out for this.’

‘Oh, really? What, for …?’

‘Domestic discipline,’ he elucidated. ‘To do it properly, I have to be, like, infallible. Don’t I? I have to know what’s best all the time. And I don’t, Pip. I don’t always know.’ He wrung his hands, breathing fast, almost on the verge of tears. ‘Sometimes I haven’t got a fucking clue what I’m doing or why …’

I put down my coffee and flung my arms around him. He responded in kind and we held each other tight on the sofa while he worked at choking back his dismay.

‘You don’t have to be infallible,’ I whispered, stroking his hair. ‘You don’t have to be perfect. That’s your hang-up, darling, I know, but you really don’t have to be this flawless individual.’

‘I want to be,’ he gasped. ‘I wish I could be. For you.’

‘I know, I know. You are, darling. You are perfect for me, because you try so hard and you make me so happy.’

‘I get it wrong, though. I get things wrong.’

‘We all get things wrong. We’re human. We can’t help it. I don’t care if you don’t always make the right call. I care that you’re doing this for me because I asked you to and you love me and you want me to be happy. That’s all that matters. Really and truly. All that matters. We love each other, don’t we?’

‘God, of course, of course we do.’

‘So you don’t have to be infallible. You don’t have to be all-knowing. You just have to do what you do out of love. Just do that and it’ll be all right. Always.’

He took a deep breath, recovering.

‘You don’t think I’m turning into a monster?’ he asked.

‘No!’

‘You still think I’m sexy?’

I laughed, through a little haze of tears. ‘You moron, of course I do. Because you are.’

He prodded my chest. ‘Who are you calling a moron?’

I prodded his. ‘You, sarge.’

‘Come over here and say that.’

‘I already am over here.’

‘Oh, yeah. So you are.’

In a second he had me pinned to the sofa and screaming while he tickled the life out of me.

‘Stop, stop,’ I begged. ‘Don’t, I’d rather you spanked me than this!’

‘Oh, yes?’ He laid himself down on me, full-length, our noses tip to tip. ‘I think I’ve had enough of that for one evening. But you might prefer this instead.’

His mouth covered mine, robbing the breath from my body. We writhed together, legs twisting around legs, hands in hair, pelvises grinding while we kissed and kissed until our lips were sore.

At one point we rolled together off the sofa and on to the rug, knocking the half-full coffee cups off the table, but for once Dan didn’t fret about the stain.

Instead he picked me up and carried me into the bedroom. Our clothes came off slowly, the removal of each garment interspersed with much more kissing and touching and linking of limbs. Once we were naked, he slid into me without meeting any resistance and we took it slowly, revelling in each thrust, each bump, each new burst of sensation. We didn’t look away from each other once and we still kept eye contact when the slow build of pleasure crested into orgasm. I loved him so much I thought I might die of it. I know it sounds mushy and lame, but it’s true, and I know he felt it too.

I wanted to feel his heart beating against mine for ever.

I left him snoring in bed when I went to work the next day, and he was on a night shift so I didn’t see him when I got in.

A lot of the kids had had their GCSE results while I was on holiday, and work was frantic with discussions about their next steps, phone calls to local schools and colleges, helping with CVs and job applications. Last night’s débâcle and its aftermath didn’t have time to muscle into my consciousness until I got home.