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The Very Varied World of Spanking Delights
Spanking fans, sometimes called spankos, come in many types, just as spankings do. Some people love the role-playing aspect, the way engaging in spanking allows them to enter another persona, become a heightened, kinkier version of themselves. All these and more are represented in this varied collection of spanking stories.
In some of these tales, spanking is simply a given, an innate part of a couple's (or single's) relationship, a way of communicating, connecting and loving. It's the ultimate give-and-take for thee partners who engage in it, and they are able to read each other's verbal and physical cues. These are the characters who come prepared—or at least think they do—like the narrator in Shanna Germain's "shine" who lays out a round leather paddle, a rawhide flogger with suede tails ("a mean little toy") and a metal zester. Germain delivers a before, during and after that is the type of story I know I will reread again and again. In my story "Marks," a couple embarks on a vacation to a nude hotel armed with spanking implements as well, but they get used in a way Emma, at first fearful of what her fellow vacationers will think of her kink desires, wasn't expecting.
For the woman in M. Marie's "Self-Management," showcasing perhaps the most carefully arranged scene in this book, a woman constructs an elaborate plan to make sure the gets exactly the spanking she needs. "A Timely Correction" by Dorothy Freed looks at a Master and sub where spanking is part and parcel of their relationship. Victor is a stickler for punctuality; Lucy, not so much, and when her lateness finally makes him take her to task, she claims, "If I’d known what Vincent had planned for me, I might have stayed on the plane." One can't help but think she's a bit of an unreliable narrator at that moment, or rather, that she captures the way many who want spankings also want to act like they don't. Perhaps it's more complex than that, even: Lucy wants to get spanked, but by entering into an agreement where Victor determines how hard and how long, she has forfeited her agency, which, protest though she might, turns her on very, very much.
For other characters, spanking unfolds as part of a burgeoning relationship, or there's a shift in who's doing the spanking and who's getting spanked. In "Proxy" by Lucy Hughes, when a man's lover isn't available, a stranger is sent to his home to do the deed, while his lover watches by webcam. There, the actions may be the same, but the intent behind them, and the reason lonely Zach submits, are different and arousing anew. Hughes draws out the tension between all three characters to its maximum effect. She writes, "Zach loved the fact that both of them were enjoying themselves at his expense," capturing the thrill of pure submission. In "The Window," by Bex vanKoot, the narrator cannot give Megan the kind of spankings she wants, so they seek out a woman who knows exactly how to deliver those powerful blows, in full view of whoever might be watching. The tension triples as Megan is spanked, and watched, and the narrator is drawn deeper into the action, in surprising ways.
The curious characters including writer Ms. Patterson in Donna George Storey's "The Assignment," who goes to investigate a professional spank daddy and winds up getting a very personal, gonzo journalism look at how he's become so successful. In Elizabeth Coldwell's "The Spanking Salon," a woman sneaks into the famed Salon to slake her curiosity, and becomes the centerpiece of the action, much to her delight. Other surprises include the woman vacationing in Giselle Renarde's "Butch Girls Don't Cry" and the titular "Bad Boy" in Isabelle Gray's story, who expresses his shock outright, while the woman spanking him calmly continues delivering her blows, making him see not only the error of his ways, but that being "punished," with his own belt no less, is something he didn't know he would enjoy quite so much.
Other stories simply revel in the art of spanking, in the way it affects so many senses at once, in how lost the spanker and spankee can get in their actions. In "Echo" by J. Sinclaire, the semi-public setting adds to the naughtiness of a very thorough, loud glorious encounter.
As Shanna Germain writes after the spanking scene in "Shine," "Somewhere, the pinpricks of pain become a flush, a burn, a test that I have endured and won. My ass radiates heat as though I have a fever. And the rest of me moves into a space that is beyond anything else, beyond pain, beyond the soft brush of Rob’s fingers along my clit, beyond the soft mews that come from my mouth." That sense of victory, of pain turned into something so much more, of communion with a partner through the act of spanking, is what makes these stories come alive, what makes them so powerful.
Rachel Kramer Bussel
