One Evening, After Wine

Imagine you are standing in a hallway on the very uppermost floor of an old apartment building in an unnamed French or Italian city. (You wouldn't be, unless you happen to be one of the two people who are allowed up there, and both of them are in the hallway's one occupied room. But imagine anyway.) A faint light comes under the closed door of a room about halfway along the hallway. It's otherwise dark, except for some moonlight and city light that comes in through a window at the far end. It's very quiet as you stand there in the near-darkness. Until it isn't. Until there is a sound from the room-the unmistakable sound of an open hand on flesh. It splits the night, that sound. Then it comes again, and again. There is another sound too, faint and muffled. It's a human voice, female. Its sounds could be cries of pain, or laughter, or even a kind of singing.

You, anonymous trespasser, are rather curious about the provenance of those sounds. You would like to peep in at the keyhole of that room. You're something of a voyeur, perhaps. But you know that if you tried to walk to the door, your footsteps would be heard. The old building is full of creaks and whispers. So you'll have to trust me to tell you the story-as much of it as I choose to tell, anyway. And to do that I must go back in time a bit, just a few minutes, and go into the room.

There is a small lamp lit. There are curtains at the window, pulled across it, and they move a bit with the evening breeze. The man and the woman, whom he calls by many names, have been out this evening. He wears a suit, she wears a summer dress, floral. They have eaten well and had wine. But there is a melancholy in the room tonight. He has seen it in her throughout the evening, despite her smiles and her talk.

He kisses her forehead and tells her quietly to undress for him, then sits on the edge of the bed to watch her.

When her dress is a silky pool on the floor and her breasts have emerged from her lacy bra, he stops her. "Leave your panties on," he says. "Come here."

She stands before him. Still seated on the bed, he leans forward until his forehead rests against her skin, just beneath her breasts. His hands rest lightly on her hips. He kisses the skin of her belly, softly, thoughtfully.

His hands move over her body: her ribcage, her lovely smooth arms, the small of her back, the backs of her thighs, her calves, the cheeks of her ass through her panties. He still seems lost in thought as he caresses her.

There is a trembling in her tonight. It seems born of many things: excitements, anticipations, but also sadness. His hands come back to rest on her hips and he looks up at her.

"Lie across my lap," he says.

She does so. He caresses her again, more firmly this time. He squeezes her ass through her panties, squeezes her thighs, lets his fingers move up to cup her drenched sex. He massages her through the panties, thoroughly soaking the fabric. Then he slips his fingertips under the waistband and pulls them down, works them over her hips and down her legs.

Now he has her panties in his hand. Flimsy, pretty, but with a certain delicate weight to them, from her wetness.

He makes a ball of them in his hand, then passes it to his other hand. Then he reaches to her face and tucks the pretty wet panties into her mouth.

"Taste," he says.

And then his other hand comes down on her ass with a crack that sounds like a firecracker in their little room.

Twice more he strikes her that way, and she makes the sounds that could be cries of pain or laughter or singing. Her body tenses and writhes with each impact of his hand. In the dim light from the single lamp, the skin of her ass blooms pink. It deepens to red as he spanks her again.

After ten hard blows, he pauses. He knows her skin feels as if it's on fire. He lets his fingertips trace her body; an interlude. She's breathing heavily but fighting to calm herself. In a moment of silence, he hears an almost infinitesimal sound: a tear falling from her cheek to the worn wooden floor of their room.

He leans to look at her face. It's flushed, her eyelashes are diamonded with tears. Unspeakably lovely.

He says it: "You are unspeakably lovely."

Which makes her tears flow more. He strokes her as she cries, gently, gently. When his hand touches her ass he can feel the heat he's made there.

It's quiet. He holds and caresses her until she's calm, and then he asks her a question.

"More?" She seems to hesitate. He says: "More, but different?" And she nods.

He repositions her on his lap, so that her legs are spread now, so that her cunt rests directly on the lower thigh of his right leg.

He spanks her again, but now he is spanking her cunt itself, her slick swollen needy cunt. He doesn't strike as hard now, but because the flesh there is so delicate, the pain is even more exquisite.

Every strike of his hand pushes her clit against the hard muscle of his leg.

He varies his pace: a long series of spanks in rapid succession, then a series with irregular pauses. Bringing her to the edge over and over.

And now the muffled sounds she makes are much more like music. A song that laughs and begs and sighs.

Now when he spanks he lets his hand linger on her cunt. She is so wet that the impacts of his fingers make little splashes. She is soaking the trousers of his suit. Which delights him.

He feels her push down against him, trying to grind her clit against his leg as he spanks her.

And now, because he can feel and hear and see that she's close, he spanks lightly, but quickly and rhythmically, using his hand, his perfectly timed blows, to bring her to orgasm.

"You may cum, my whore," he says. And she does. The room fills with her muffled cries.

The curtain moves with the night's breath. He holds her on his lap as she cums for him, as she writhes, and whimpers, and weeps, and feels.

"Good girl," he tells her. "Did you need that?" And, "Does it hurt?"

He pulls the panties from her mouth so she can answer him. "Yes," she says, "I needed it." And "Yes, it does hurt. It burns. It's like my skin is in flames."

"Shall I make it better?" he says, and she says, "Please. Even though I love how it hurts. Please."

He lays her on the bed, face down, legs spread. He strips himself naked and kneels between her thighs. He takes himself in his hand and strokes, looking at her smooth back in the lamplight, her reddened ass, her hair flung sideways across the pillow.

He cums so hard that he shoots straight up her spine, gasping. Then he lays warm stripes of his seed on her ass, and uses his hands to gently, gently rub his essence into her punished skin.

And finally he collapses on top of her, the weight of his body a deep comfort to her, and they lie there breathing together, moving gently and slowly until they are spooned there.

She falls asleep with his fingers in her mouth, and soon he falls asleep too, and the melancholy that was in the room seems to have gone, out through the open window or burned up in her ecstasy. And the person in the hallway, if there ever was one, has tiptoed down the long stairs and gone away too, footsteps echoing in the quiet stone streets.