Adjustments - Chapter 2

It had already been an eventful morning in the Dolovan household.

They both woke up with the sunrise. Ana had never thought she would get used to getting up so early, but being with Max had taught her the pleasures of birdsong in the early daylight, enjoying the first wondrous sips of black coffee on their porch while the sun rose up over the mountains, changing the color of the sky from rosey pink to honey-gold. They sat together in companionable silence, and it felt to Ana as though they’d been married for years – decades, even – when Max reached out from his Adirondack chair and caressed her hand where it was resting on the arm of the porch swing. No words needed to be spoken. The look in Max’s dark brown eyes was enough.

Silence is another pleasure that Ana hadn’t appreciated before Max. Even now, as a middle-school teacher, Ana rarely gets to enjoy a quiet moment: she sometimes feels like her entire day is about putting out fires, saying the right thing and walking the delicate balance between strict authority and simple kindness with her young and impressionable students. She’s always looking for the right words to calm a jilted pre-teen or explain a grammatical term she’s sure she’ll have to explain again the next day, and the day after that. She loves her job, to be sure, but it’s far from tranquil. The only silent moments she gets are after she asks a particularly difficult question, and her entire class is trying their best to avoid being called on – and then, the silence is tense, and she can’t wait for it to be over!

With Max, silence is rich and deep, like the rich, deep darkness of his eyes.

Then, Max broke the silence. “I’ve got to chop up some firewood,” he’d said. “I want to have plenty when your friend gets here, and it’s supposed to rain this afternoon.”

“Ooh, very rustic” she’d said, tilting her head back as he leaned over to kiss her forehead. She takes him by his shirtsleeve with a coy smile and pulls him in for another. She opens her eyes slowly as he stands, her long, fair lashes glinting in the sunlight. “I’m going to start making the nutroll pretty soon.” She laughs. “I feel like we’re in the 1800s. Like we’re pioneers in the olden days.” She puts on a fake, old timey accent: “Darling, we need kindling for yonder fire! I shall be baking away…”

He laughs too, and his smile lights up his handsome face. “Yeah, really. Only, in the olden days, they didn’t have a smoke detector that goes off if you aren’t paying attention. Let’s try not to have a repeat of the last home-fries incident, hm?”

She pouts. “I set off the fire alarm one time –“

“Oh, it was more than one time! What about the popcorn?”

“That was in college!”

“You should still be able to microwave popcorn without causing an explosion! The whole dorm had to evacuate at midnight in the middle of February,” he says, still laughing.

“Well,” she says, color rising in her cheeks, “I learned my lesson.” She crosses her arms, and her blue eyes glance up at him, her expression like that of a repenting child.

“Yes, you certainly did,” he replies in a low voice. He rubs her head as he passes, and she feels a tingle rush down her spine and into her seat that makes her tremble, as though there had just been a cold breeze, at the memory of the lessons she’d learned.

For all of the growing up she’s done since meeting Max, she sometimes still has the feeling of being a little girl when she’s around him. She’s twenty-five and married with a career, and as of this summer they are now officially homeowners – yet, even still, she sometimes feels as though she were playing dress-up. Only pretending to be a mature adult.

She gets up from the porch-swing and goes inside, taking off her shoes on the welcome mat. She hears the back door slam as Max goes to pick out wood for kindling, and again she has the strange feeling that all of this domestic life is a dream, and that at any moment she’ll wake up and be a teenager again. Maybe that’s why it seems so right when Max has to –

Ana shakes her head, relishing another tingle, like a whisper in her ear. Then she ties her apron behind her back.

She begins to set out the ingredients for nutroll, which is one of Max’s favorites (she’s been making it for him on Christmas for years) and setting out the pots and bowls she needs. She takes a carton of milk from the refrigerator and sets it on the kitchen island, which has a built-in iron stovetop that Max installed himself. She pulls a recipe book from the shelf in the pantry and licks her finger to help turn the heavy pages. The recipe calls for scalded milk, which means she’ll need to stir it while it heats over the stovetop’s blue flame. She takes out a wooden spoon, pours her milk into a silver pot, and begins to stir.

The trick with scalding milk, Ana has learned over the years, is that it needs to stay constantly moving. If the milk rests for too long at the bottom or sides of the pot, it burns, sending a plume of gray smoke out from the white liquid and leaving a foul-smelling streak of charred froth. On the other hand, if you don’t let it sit at all, it will take forever to reach the right simmer. Patience has never been Ana’s strong suit. As she stirs, her mind wanders.

And what else would it wander to, other than the most interesting news of the day?

Kiera, her best friend since the fourth grade, is going to be joining them at the cabin! Right now, as she glances at the clock above the oven, she’s probably already on the train. Ana can hardly contain her excitement: her two favorite people in the entire world, together for the holidays in her favorite place on earth! She had always regretted that Max and Kiera had remained in separate circles for her, always friendly but never close. Now, at last, her world is coming together. Kiera is the funniest and most well-read person she’s ever met – when she published her first book, Ana thought her heart was going to explode with pride. And Max, well, who could dislike Max? They’re going to get along great, she felt certain.

Only…

The wooden spoon splashes milk too far up the side of the pot, and it makes hissing contact with the rim. She steps back, careful not to let the spoon drip into the burner. The thought that just occurred to her is making her palms feel sweaty and her heart race. Kiera, until just the other day, had no idea about her and Max’s…arrangement. Her disciplining had always been private, a secret that almost no one else knew about, aside from her parents and Max’s mother, who had all approved. Kiera, though…well, Kiera might not understand.

To make matters more complicated, Max had only agreed to having Ana join them in their private retreat on a singular condition: if he decided that Kiera would get to witness one of her punishments, she would have to allow it. No arguing. No complaining. This, after all, was his cabin – it had only become theirs when he married her. If Ana earned a consequence, it would be up to him to decide how and where that consequence would happen. And that, of course, means that hiding the fact of her being spanked from Kiera would not be up to Ana. That was why, last Saturday, Ana took Kiera to a diner and told her the truth. If it should come to pass that she earn a spanking while Kiera is here, well…

Ana would certainly prefer if it wasn’t a surprise!

On the other hand, how could it be anything else? As often as it had happened, Ana still felt the same rush of suspense and fear whenever Max pats his lap or removes his belt…so how can she expect that Kiera will ever –

“Oh!” she cries. The milk splashes over the rim of the pot and dashes over the fire, hissing and spluttering as Ana, startled, covers her mouth. The wooden spoon falls, clattering to the ground, and she curses as she stoops down to grab it. She’s about to stir it again but, realizing she hasn’t swept the kitchen floor yet and it’s probably dusty, she goes instead to the sink to wash it off.

But she’d been distracted for longer than she thought. Apparently, the prospect of her best friend Kiera seeing her having her bare bottom spanked was enough to completely throw off her internal clock, and now the scalded milk was over done. Her cheeks are flushed as she stands over the mouth of the pot and curses again. The froth at the sides of the pot begin to brown and smoke, and moments later the wispy steam is gray and dark, rising to the high ceiling of the cabin, towards the smoke detector’s blinking green eye.

“Oh shit!” she says. Frantically, she throws open a drawer and rifles through until she finds a dish towl. She waves it at the smoke, trying to disperse the cloud. Just then, the backdoor open again, and Max’s footsteps sound on the back steps. “Shit shit shit!”

“What’s going on?” Max says sternly. He drops the kindling bag with a dull thwump, and the bundle slides out onto the floor. He rushes forward, his forehead corrugated with concern, and comes up behind his wife without her seeing.

“Fucking shit!”

“Hey!”

Ana whirls around with her eyes wide, dropping the towel in her surprise. She was too late anyway. The smoke detector blares, and husband and wife cover their ears.

“What’s burning?”

“What?” Ana cries. The alarm is directly above them, unbearably loud.

“I said, ‘What’s burning?’”

“Whose turn for what?”

“WHAT’S BURNING?”

“Oh…Oh! The milk!”

Then, realizing she hasn’t taken off the milk yet, she curses again and jumps forward to turn off the stove. Her husband reaches the dial first and takes the pot to the sink. He pours it down and sprays cold water on the pot. It hisses loudly, and steam rises again. Ana steps back and wrings her hands. When her husband turns to look at her, she looks down at the floor.

Neither of them say a word as the smoke detector continues to wail, but the message in Max’s dark brown eyes could not be any more obvious. And Ana hears him – even with the alarm ringing in her ears – loud and clear.

It takes a few minutes for the smoke to clear, during which time Max stands on a chair in the kitchen waving the dish towel by the smoke detector’s filter. At Max’s request (which sounds a lot more like a command), Ana goes to open the windows and doors. Having finished that, she stands holding one arm at the elbow, looking as though she wants to shrink down until she disappears. Finally, the detector stops chirping, and Max sighs.

Ana whimpers, wishing she were invisible.

No such luck.

Max steps down from the chair and removes the yellow workman’s gloves he wears while cutting kindling. He places them on the counter and folds his arms, all the while glowering at Ana, who continues to stare mutely at her feet.

The cabin is silent again. But this silence is very, very different.

Finally, raising one eyebrow, Max tilts his chin at Ana and says expectantly: “…Well?”

Ana doesn’t reply. Her face is glowing pink now, a lovely compliment to her strawberry blonde hair, which sits messily atop her head, pinned there with bobbies. She’s wearing a comfy sweater and a snug pair of jeans beneath her apron, but she knows she won’t be wearing them long.

“I’m waiting, Ana.”

“I-I’m sorry, Max,” she says in a small voice.

“What happened?”

“I-I was scalding milk for the nut roll dough and I…I…” She ventures a look up, but quickly returns her gaze to the floor when she sees the way his brow is furrowed and his lips are pursed. “I got distracted,” she adds quickly. “I was thinking about…about something else.”

“Thinking about what?”

She shifts her weight uncomfortably. “I was…well, I was thinking about Kiera getting here.”

“Mm.”

He looks to the counter on her right. At first, Ana is too ashamed to raise her face and follow his gaze, but after a few agonizing moments pass, her eyes dart to where he’s looking.

He’s staring at the wooden spoon.

Her stomach plumits.

“You know,” he begins slowly, “we were just talking about the smoke detector. Weren’t we?”

She nods miserably.

“And I believe I recall you saying that you had,” He makes air quotes to surround her words: “’learned your lesson?’”

Ana winces, remembering her poorly chosen words.

“Mm,” Max says again, agreeing. “I think maybe you need the lesson one more time.”

Ana sighs, knowing exactly what comes next. Her narrow shoulders fall, then rise as she takes a deep breath in preparation. She reaches to the small of her back and unknots the apron before pulling it over her head and setting it down on the kitchen island.

“Be sure that isn’t touching the stove,” Max says sternly.

She nods, takes the apron up again, folds it into a small rectangle and sets it down far from the offending burners. Then her hands go to her waist.

Max clears her throat.

She looks up, eyes wide with anticipation.

His voice is kind, but steady as he says: “Aren’t you going to ask for something?”

Ana looks down again, embarrassed beyond belief. Already, just the thought of what’s about to happen to her poor bottom is bringing fresh tears to her eyes and blurring her vision. She wipes the salty dew from her lashes and tries her best to collect herself as she says, in a practiced voice that, even still, trembles with the effort: “Max, I wasn’t paying attention while I was cooking, like you’ve asked me t-to. So I think I’ve…earned a consequence. Will you- will you give me a,” she swallows hard, her face changing hues from pink to red, “a s-spanking on my bare bottom?”

Max nods, but still doesn’t look completely satisfied. “You know,” he begins again. “I think we’ve also talked about language in the past.”

Ana makes a soft sound in her throat, something like a moan.

“Especially when it doesn’t suit the situation. I came in here and found you cussing like crazy – I didn’t know what to think.” He adds in a softer voice – one that expresses concern and causes her heart to ache – “I was worried you’d hurt yourself.”

She shakes her head.

“I’m glad you didn’t,” he adds. Then, taking the wooden spoon from the counter, he says, “But I think that, to make sure this lesson sinks in, I’d better use this.”

Ana whines: “Please, please don’t use the spoon. Can’t you just use your hand? It hurts just as much,” she lies, and immediately her face burns anew with shame under Max’s annoyed glance. “O-okay, it doesn’t hurt as much, but…please?”

Max inspects the wooden spoon coolly, turning it over in his hand.

In her anticipation, Ana stands on her tip toes.

Finally, Max shakes his head. “Ana,” he says earnestly, “I really want you not to make this mistake again. This is a log cabin. It’s made of wood. What if you’d actually started a real fire? You can’t be so easily distracted.” He folds his arms. “You know this as well as I do.

Ana immediately opens her mouth to protest: “But –“ A single stern look from her husband is enough to halt her mid-sentence. Her lip quivers slightly, but she obediently (if slowly) unbuttons her jeans and pulls them down to her knees. They’re snug enough that they stand up around her calves, and for a moment she is like a buttfly partially emerged from a crystallis. Next, she pulls down her snow-white panties to reveal her peach-pink bottom, her bare thighs fresh and unmarked. The fabric whispers and the silver button clinks as she pulls them to her ankles and then, stepping out of the leg holes, lets them drop to the bare wooden floor. Max watches her patiently but attentively as she steps towards him, naked from the waist down and blushing darkly, to climb over his knee.

Her spanking begins without another word. The wooden spoon cracks down on one firm butt cheek, then the other, and each time a pink mark blooms on her fair skin, the precise shape of the spoons head. Her backside dances as she scissors her feet (all the while being careful not to squirm out of his lap, lest she increase the length of her punishment). Soon, the marks from the spoon begin to blend together and, like the burners of the stovetop that heat unevenly at first, then fully, her bare hindquarters redden to a searing crimson red. The pain is such that Ana finds herself gripping the legs of the chair as though for dear life, each mighty thwack bringing a renewed sense of desperation and another wailing sob. But even as it’s happening – even as the spoon cracks a splinteringly loud contain with her sore heinie, and she clenches her eyes shut and squeezes out tears that run down both sides of her face – even then, she knows she deserves it. That Max is only acting out of love.

And that, soon enough, it will be over. And all will be forgiven.

But before it ends, Max pauses, and he says something she hadn’t been expecting.

“What was it,” he says, as she pants heavily on his lap, relaxing her butt cheeks as the swat she was bracing for doesn’t come, “that you were distracted by?”

She hiccups and asks in a tremulous voice: “W-what do you mean?”

“What were you thinking of that distracted you? I feel like there’s been something on your mind lately. What’s going on?”

Ana sniffs, arching her back. Moving quickly, she wipes tears from both sides of her face using the back of her hand while her other arm keeps her up. “I-“ she begins. For a moment, she considers making something up – but she’s never been able to lie to Max. She smiles, then, a choked laugh that brightens her tear-stained face. Max is silent, listening. “I- I was thinking about Kiera getting here. And…I was thinking about her knowing about…you know…” She laughs again, shrugging up her shoulders and gesturing around with one hand before quickly bringing it back to the chair leg again to prop her up. “This.”

“This?”

“Y-yeah.”

“But you told her about it, didn’t you?”

This time, her laugh is wry and nervous. “I did. Still, though.” She glances over her shoulder at him, her handsome husband, his hair mussed from his woolen cap, his eyes dark and glittering. “I-I…” She drops her head, suddenly tired. “I don’t know. I’m just nervous, is all.”

Max considers this silently for a moment.

And then, raising his hand again, he says in a low voice: “One minute more.”

The next spank catches her unawares, and she gasps, her eyes and mouth wide. Then, settling in to the rhythm of the wooden spoon and the blistering heat that emanates off her rear end, gritting her teeth and shutting her eyes, Ana rides out the rest of her punishment until her bottom is cherry red and fresh tears are glistening in her eyes. At long last, Max sets the spoon on the counter behind them, and Ana takes a breath like a swimmer reemerging from a deep dive.

He rubs her sore tushy as she sniffles and sobs, hanging her head so that strands of her hair dangle from her messy bun into her face: Max always lets her regroup at her own pace. When her sobs have sudsided and her breathing is normal again, she pushes herself up and he helps her stand on wobbly legs. She hugs him, pressing her face into his broad chest, and he rubs her back in a circular motion as she gets out the last of her tears. She pushes further into him, wiping her face on his flannel, and he grins. He presses his lips to the top of her head, and she makes a small, contented noise.

Finally, she steps away from him. Her face is still wet in places from crying, so her cheeks shimmer in the sunlight pouring into the cabin. She turns, looks to the front windows, out at the emerald landscape and the mist curling at the tops of the mountain, and she laughs.

“Good things there’s no one out here,” she says, leaning into him.

His grin broadens.

“We would have had an audience,” she goes on, looking out dreamily. “Maybe the bears and the deer were watching.” He places his hand on her shoulder and she puts her small hand on top of it, squeezing his fingers. When she turns to look into his face, his smile is gone. She blinks. “What’s wrong?”

Max inhales slowly, then steps back to lean on the counter. “I have an idea,” he says. “You aren’t going to like it, though.”

She blinks again, confused. Then, realizing, she sighs. “Oh. Cornertime?”

After some of her more intense consequences, Max has her stand in the corner with her hands on her head and her red bottom on display. At their new house, there’s a full body mirror in the corner of their master bedroom, so she has to look at herself. Sometimes he even places another standing mirror so she can see her behind and reflect – no pun intended.

But Max shakes his head. “Not quite.”

She tilts her head, confused, as Max picks up her jeans and panties and puts them over his shoulder. “You said,” he begins, “that you’re nervous about Kiera seeing you…like this. But it’s easier, now that she knows what to expect. And it will be even easier once she sees it for herself. So,” he goes on, taking the apron from the counter and pressing it into her hand. “Let’s get it out of the way.”

“Y-you want me to –“ For what feels like the hundredth time this morning, Ana’s face flushes scarlet as she takes the apron from his hands.

“Put on your apron, and finish making breakfast so it will be ready when Kiera gets here. You can keep your shirt, but other than that, it’s the apron – and nothing else.”

Ana’s eyes go wide as his meaning sinks in. Between preparing the nutroll and breakfast, she’ll be in the kitchen until Kiera arrives. And when she does, she’ll come into the house and find Ana wearing an apron with her shiney red butt on display, the evidence of her most recent consequence. The thought makes her stomach do a flip. There’s a strange feeling in her head as the logic of it sinks in, like sugar dissolving in coffee. Kiera will get to the cabin not knowing what to expect.

But when she comes in and sees Ana…she’ll know.