Notebooks of the Young Wife by Tara Black Page B

tale. ‘After I’d been whacked, Matilda – I may as well call her that, okay? – said how well I’d taken it, and it must have been an awful shock, and if I’d go up to her room she’d give me something to make it feel better. And she did. Fucking jeez she did.’
    The girl took a swig and swished the dregs round in the glass, eyes fixed on what she was doing. ‘Well, this time I got the tights right off and the skirt too and she put me over these two pillows on the bed. Then out came this bottle of aromatic oil, I don’t know what kind, and she starts on a massage. But not like any massage I ever had before. It’s not just the arse, it’s kind of from the waist down to the thighs, and in ten seconds flat I’m ready to come. But I don’t, well not like a big climax that goes whoosh and fizzles out. This just goes on and on, and fucking on till I don’t know whether I’m laughing or crying. Jeez!’
    There was just a splash of the red left and I put it out in the pause. ‘Something else, eh, kiddo?’ I said gently. ‘So you’re going back for more.’
    For the first time she looked me straight in the eye. ‘Bloody sure I am. Look, Jane, I get a sore bum and get into sex with a woman twice my age. I mean it’s not been sex sex yet, but it will be and odds on there’s going to be more strapping. What kind of perv am I?’
    ‘Well, Tams, just consider this. Older and supposedly wiser than you, I spend the afternoon captivated by the self-abuse of a boy who’s of an age to be my son. I’m living in hope that he’ll appear in my room later and the gods know what that might lead to. You and I plainly make a good pair of deviants. Let’s drink to it, I say.’ With that I reached for another bottle from the sideboard and stabbed it with the corkscrew. The PA’s worried face creased and before the cork was out she was doubled up with laughter. That’s my girl, I thought for the second time that day, and filled both glasses to the brim.
    Later, after coffee, Tamsin insisted on resuming the search for hot lesbian titles of earlier ages, but I ducked out of any more library work until the morning. I lay back on the vast bed in my room meaning to rest weary eyes, only to find myself waking with a start to an insistent tapping on the door. Head muzzy from the wine, I gulped a mouthful from the glass of water on the table and turned the key in the lock. He sidled in, the perkiness tempered by a certain hesitancy. I was suddenly struck by qualms.
    ‘Just how old are you, boy?’ I blurted, assailed by the prospect of banner headlines proclaiming BRITISH LIBRARY PORN WOMAN CLOSET PAEDOPHILE.
    He shrank back, looking alarmed, then rallied. ‘Seventeen, all but. Honest, Miss. I can prove it if you like. It’s just I act like a kid a lot of the time.’ From where I stood at the grand old age of thirty-six, seventeen was pretty kid-like, but I let the thought pass. The lad had made the running to that point and was keen enough to have showed up. So I fixed him with a stern eye and wagged my finger.
    ‘That was an outrageous stunt you pulled today. Playing peeping Tom is bad enough, but you have to go and drag me into it. Well, I told Ms Bingley the whole sorry tale and she has generously allowed me to deal with you myself.’ I was warming to the rôle and for his part the boy was grinning happily until he remembered to be the penitent.
    ‘I’m sorry, Miss. It won’t happen again, I promise.’
    ‘That may be so. However, a young man must be taught that misdeeds have consequences. Am I not right?’
    ‘Yes, Miss.’ He was looking down and shifting from foot to foot. The little scene was shaping up well.
    ‘Painful consequences.’
    ‘Yes, Miss.’
    ‘So bad behaviour will be punished in order that a boy may learn his lesson. Perhaps you can tell me the form this punishment takes. What exactly is it that happens to a naughty boy?’
    ‘He gets spanked, Miss.’
    ‘Very good. It seems we are of a like