Springtime

[mrmarkham]

Another story that was posted a few years ago..


The Unwinding of Sharon
a short story
by PENMAN


Despite the reverberations from the seismic activity in the loft, Julie heard the knock at the front door and, having put down her mother's make-up bag, she discreetly identified the caller and smiled to herself as she went quickly to answer it and to admit the tall gentleman who stood, smiling down to her, as she opened the door.
James entered and Julie closed the door behind him before ushering him into the living room.
James was about to enquire as to the whereabouts of Julie's mother when a loud crash from upstairs, followed by a torrent of inappropriately-pitched barrack room language ( that would not have been out of place in the guard room at a Saxon palace ( furnished the answer to the unasked question. James smiled, knowingly, at the bright girl, so far ahead of her natural years in her maturity, but having lost none of her tweenage sparkle. The object of his admiring and kindly look feigned disdain, albeit unconvincingly, then burst into a giggle as she rolled her eyes towards the source of the commotion and whispered to James that her mother was desperately seeking a costume she had once worn in a pantomime.
"Probably an ugly sister", she volunteered cheekily, grinning widely.
James did his level best to maintain his composure, but even a robust gentleman of his calibre was no match for this sharp-witted young lady.
"So, Julie, where's the young man this morning?"
Julie did not need to feign the boredom in her expression as she informed James that her brother was, yet again, out playing football with his friends.
"Ah, no surprises there then! And where are you off to this morning, Julie?"
"I'm off to the mall with Sarah and Claire, 'cos I need a new top and they just like spending money."
James did not have the temerity to challenge the implied suggestion that such was a pastime totally alien to Julie herself. He had known this feisty girl for too long to take such a foolhardy step.
"Shall I make us all a cup of tea, Julie?"
"Sounds nice, ta! Mum'll be down soon, one way or the other, so she'll be gagging too!"
James disappeared into the kitchen and set about brewing whilst the clattering continued for several minutes upstairs until, after a lengthy, almost worrying, period of silence, a shout of glee filled the loft space as the treasure trove was unearthed. The monosyllabic Anglo-Saxon expressions of delight were less vehement than had been those that had given voice to frustration, but they rang out clearly, nonetheless, throughout the house.
James returned with the tray, laden with tea, cups and other accoutrements, and placed it on a table. Julie looked at him and beckoned to him quietly. Then, as James came across to her, she beckoned again and he stooped to listen to her whispered comments.....
"Mum's been like a spring recently, completely wound up, and she never seems to get unwound. What do you think we should do, James?"
The hint of a smile and the very obvious wink that followed the question told James that Julie knew exactly how her mother needed de-stressing. Julie put the eye shadow on the table beside her mother's make-up bag and looked with wide-eyed and totally beguiling innocence at James.
"Now I could stay out until after lunch, if it suited you, James, like if you and Mum had things you needed to 'talk' about." She winked again and James was left almost helpless with laughter that was bursting to shake the house from wall to wall, but he managed to maintain his calm and he looked seriously ( well, as seriously as one can at the epitome of tweenage craftiness and allure ) at the young lady before reaching into his pocket and bringing out his wallet, from which he extracted a crisp ten-pound note which, in turn, elicited a genuinely surprised smile from Julie, who spontaneously threw her arms around the neck of this man who was so special to her Mum and, if he only knew it, to her and her brother. For a second or two, she was speechless, but then she gathered her abundant wits about her again and kissed James with genuine affection on the cheek.
"I didn't say I'd stay out for that reason, James."
"I know you didn't, because if you had I'd have....."
James stopped before the words came out of his mouth, but the mind-scanner in Julie's head knew full well what had nearly followed and completed his statement for him...
"...sorted me out like you're going to sort my Mum out!"
Her smiling laugh was too much for James and he let out his deep, warm laugh that was always completely infectious.
In fact, the two of them were so doubled up with laughter that neither of them actually heard Sharon come downstairs and enter the living room.
"Oh yes," she said, enquiringly, "did I miss something?"
"Oh no, Mum," retorted Julie, "you won't be missing anything."
The girl smiled warmly again, fluttered her eyebrows at James and protested that she was already late and that she would have no time to drink any tea, as she had more important things to do! She winked visibly at James, who returned the body language verbatim, then dashed off upstairs to fetch her coat.
She was on her way out of the door before Sharon had got round to enquiring as to when she would be back and whether or not she had her mobile with her, questions that were answered with an uninformative "... bye, Mum, bye James...", terminally punctuated by a slamming door and the sound of footsteps racing off down the path.
Sharon sighed deeply and turned to James.
"You're an unexpected visitor, I didn't think you were coming 'til later."
"Oh, I thought I'd just drop by and see you before I head off into town to run a couple of errands."
"Well it's lovely to see you, sorry I wasn't here when you arrived. I had to find something up in the loft. It was so frustrating."
"So I heard," retorted James "........in full detail!"
Sharon blushed and looked away, then slowly turned back to look at James. "You mean you could hear everything?"
"Indeed, Sharon, every last monosyllabic word of mediæval English!"
"Well, it's so frustrating, James, and it holds me up when I can't find things, then the whole day gets thrown into chaos and the next thing you know......"
James walked over to Sharon and put a gentle finger over her lips. " Shhhh, Sharon. I know you are tense, I have it on good authority."
Sharon went almost crimson.
"Has that little Madam been telling tales again?"
"No," replied James, "she has been expressing concern for you and for the fact that you appear to be so wound up all the time. Which makes me think that this is something we need to deal with as a matter of some urgency, don't you?"
" 'Deal with'.... what do you mean, James? I'm not with you."
"Oh but you are with me, Sharon, make no mistake about that, and I intend that you should know how much I care about you too and how I am going to make it my job to see to it that you are given the help you need."
"Help!" retorted Sharon, "who the hell said I need any help?"
"There you go, is that the answer of a calm, level-headed person, Sharon?"
Sharon glared at James, partly because she began to feel that this man, no matter how much she cared for him ( and vice versa ) was beginning to get to her private space, but the far weightier reason was that , if she would only admit it to herself, he was right."
"The bloody cheek of it!" Sharon nearly spat the words out and James knew he had struck a very sensitive reflex, which confirmed that he was on the right track.
James fixed Sharon with a firm, calm but totally authoritative stare.
"I am going upstairs to your bedroom, Sharon, and I shall expect you there very shortly so that we can drain some of this tension from you before it does you harm. Do not keep me waiting!"
As James turned and headed out and up the stairs, Sharon stood, ashen-faced and completely speechless. What was this man saying? Who did he think he was? She stood, arms folded defiantly, and stared at the empty space in the doorway, whilst footsteps and sounds from upstairs told her that the bedroom curtains at the back of the house were being drawn. She heard a cupboard door, then a drawer, being opened and then re-closed.
At this point, anger, stubbornness, hurt pride, a misplaced sense of betrayal and the purest bloody-mindedness all ganged up against common sense and sent Sharon stamping round downstairs, desperately finding things to do. She studiously avoided the tray with the tea things on it and carried on with her frantic effort at distraction from what she was beginning to perceive as inevitable. So possessed was she of these thoughts that she did not hear James come downstairs and she was taken totally by surprise when she turned and saw him standing, in his short-sleeved shirt and grey slacks, at the kitchen door.
"I shall be waiting, Sharon. This is the last time you will be asked. Don't make things any more difficult."
Sharon was about to plead when James turned around and went off, back upstairs. Sharon stood there with her arms folded and the battle raged on in her head.
Despite the weight of argument against compliance, there was a very definite gradual shift to acceptance that James ... and Julie ... were right, but she was not going to take it lying down! No way! A foot stamped firmly on the floor, before Sharon marched out of the kitchen, across the living room and, with a resolute step, up the stairs to the bedroom.
"And just who the hell do you think you are to tell me..........?"
Her words tapered off into silence as she looked at the scene that met her eyes. James was standing with his back to the window, leaning against the curtains, holding one of Sharon's brand new sandals with the single toe-strap. At the edge of the bed, there were three pillows neatly arranged one on top of the other. The message was quite unmistakable and somewhere in Sharon's mind, a plug was pulled in her bravado reservoir.
"James," she asked, in a markedly more conciliatory tone, "...w-w-what is all this about?"
"You know very well what it's about, Sharon, since we've talked about it many times. Now is the time for me to show you that I say what I mean and do what I say. I am going to spank this tension out of you, once and for all."
"You, you, you....." Sharon stammered in a way that even surprised her. "You seriously mean you're going to .....?"
She could not even bring the word to her lips and simply stood there, quivering with emotions fuelled by a cocktail of anger, fear, uncertainty and a powerful force that gnawed away in the pit of her stomach, to which she could not put a name. What she dared not admit, even to herself, was that she also felt wildly excited and elated.
"James, look, we need to talk about this like adults....."
"Oh we will be doing just that, Sharon, I assure you, but before we do, you are going to submit quietly and take the spanking that is due to you, do you understand?"
There was a quiet firmness and authority in James' voice that turned Sharon's knees quite weak, but she managed to conceal this.
"James, please, we don't want to be hasty and do something we will regret."
"Who said anything about regret, Sharon. I shall not regret a second of this, be sure of that! Neither, more importantly, will you!"
James smiled, infuriatingly, and Sharon felt compelled to respond with what was intended to look like frozen, resolute determination not to accede to James' wishes.
For a few minutes, the two of them stood looking at one another, Sharon looking anxiously for a sign of a break in James' resolve - yet desperate that she should see none  whilst James maintained the quiet, assured posture of a person utterly convinced that he has made the right decision.
It was Sharon who eventually broke the silence.
"J-j-james, what did you have in mind, please?"
James looked at her with a warm and very loving expression.
"I am going to give you six on each side with this sandal, Sharon, so the sooner we start the sooner it will all be finished."
He remained motionless, apart from slow breathing, whilst Sharon fumbled in her mind for words to take her through this last barrier between her and the inevitable.
"W-w-w-hat am I supposed to do, James?"
James beckoned to her. "Come over here, Sharon."
She took only the briefest of moments to make up her mind to comply and she walked slowly over to James, stopping about three feet away from him.
He stood up and faced her, then stooped, undid the buckle on her belt, then the button, and slowly unzipped her jeans, which he slid down off her hips and to her feet. These he lifted out of the jeans in turn and then he picked the garment up and folded it, before placing it on the chair by the dressing table. He returned to Sharon, stood in front of her and stooped again.
Sharon moved her hands as if to take hold of her knicker waistband, but she re-directed them and rested on James' shoulders. He looked up, reading her actions and her mind, and smiled warmly. Then he looked down again and rolled the navy blue underwear down over Sharon's hips and buttocks and down to her ankles. Again, he lifted each foot out in turn, before picking the knickers up, opening them out again and placing them on top of the jeans. He returned to Sharon and took her hand. He fixed her in his gaze and whispered to her......
"Lay yourself across the pillows, Sharon, and grab hold of the quilt. This spanking is going to sting so I want you to have something to grip."
"Sharon focused her gaze on this amazing man for a while, then looked at the bed and stretched herself over the pillows and rested her forearms across the quilt. She turned her head to the side, then closed her eyes, very conscious of the bareness of her bottom, framed between her shirt and her hold-ups. A delicious sensation swept through her body as she felt James' gaze fixed on her bottom, scanning the beautiful feminine shape from her waist to her thighs. Instinctively, she tensed her buttocks slightly and flexed her left leg at the knee.
James stooped for a few moments by the bed, then began slowly to brush the soft skin of the exposed cheeks with the palm of his hand. Carefully and delicately he traced the shape of the curves and cupped each cheek in turn in his palm, spreading and closing his fingers across the warm skin.
As James stood up, Sharon tensed and an atmosphere of anticipation filled the air between them. So acutely tuned were Sharon's senses that she heard the almost imperceptible sound as James picked up the sandal and positioned himself by her side. She winced as his left hand came to rest in the small of her back, reassuringly, whilst the coolness of the leather sole brushed against her right buttock, then tapped lightly, twice. Her body went completely rigid.
The interval between the first echoing crack, as the sandal struck the right buttock right along the Equator and on the horizontal mid-line, and the loud gasp that escaped from Sharon's lips was infinitesimal and was followed by an equally infinitesimal silent interval before Sharon's back arched and her hands reached back to assuage the angry sting in the smacked cheek. Ready for this move, James moved swiftly to secure both wrists in his large, strong left hand.
The remaining five swats that landed on the right buttock turned the cream skin into an inferno of deep red heat and Sharon writhed on the bed, flexing her legs, and interspersing her pleas for leniency with choked sobs. The pleas were to no avail and James set with determination about repeating the pattern on the left side.
Sharon felt that she was unable to bear any more after the first sharp swat fell on her left cheek, but then, quite unexpectedly, she felt herself sinking into what felt almost like a euphoric floating state in which, far from wanting the spanking to stop, she wanted to draw the full experience from each swat. Unconsciously, she raised her bottom to greet the second and third falling swats and James, realising what was happening, aimed the final three with the lower edge of the impact zone right at the point where the thigh met the buttock. Sharon's whole body shook under the three impacts, which all landed in exactly the same place, but she now remained silent, apart from very deep breathing. So deeply was she affected that it was a while before she realised that the spanking had stopped and that it was now a soothing and loving hand that was spreading icily cold cream across the fiery skin, following every curve in meticulous detail. She winced slightly as the hand cupped the base of her cheeks, but pressed her bottom subtly against the ministering hand, which delivered its cream slowly and carefully up the insides of her buttocks, massaging the skin gently. Sharon felt her hips beginning to gyrate, but then became conscious that she was now alone. She sought to bring her mind back to full consciousness, but had not achieved that state by the time James returned, hands carefully washed, and sat on the bed beside her. His left hand moved slowly to her thighs and began to massage the soft skin at the back of them. Several times the hand moved down to her knees and back up to her buttocks. Sharon drank in the warm and tantalising sensation and moaned very, very softly to herself. Gradually, she parted her thighs just sufficiently to allow the edge of the stroking hand to slip between them at the knees and to brush the even silkier skin on the insides. She kept her eyes firmly closed and allowed her body and mind to be elevated to a place characterised by a collage of vibrant and pastel colours, soft and coarse fabrics, an exquisite range of sensations. Deep inside her, she felt the totally satisfying peace of an unwound spring and the culmination of her expression of her womanhood in a flurry of mind-searing colours that took her soaring to the very heights.
James and Sharon looked up from the sofa and smiled warmly as Julie came clattering into the house, carrying a medium-sized carrier bag  from a boutique of great appeal to tweenage girls  in one hand and a large bunch of daffodils in the other. She looked at the tray, still laden with unused crockery and a full teapot, as James followed her gaze round and blushed slightly, before breaking into a beaming smile.
Julie winked at her Mum and moved to kiss her on the cheek. As she did so, she whispered in her ear........
"Oooh Mum, don't you just adore Spring?"

[Often123]

Ah, stress relief.