Megan Dooley: Why Does Love Have to Hurt So Bad?

Readers are strongly encouraged first to read “Megan Dooley: a Love Story” and “Megan Dooley: Love Hurts”, posted here on or about July 5 and August 21.

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Megan nuzzled contentedly into Max’s chest, relieved that her nightmare was only that – her subconscious, managing her growing anxiety about the first “reminder spanking” of their new marriage.

“I love the way you smell.”

“So what was that little trip to the woodshed all about?”

“I don’t know, Max. You wouldn’t let go, wouldn’t let go, and I started to apologize, and you asked what I was sorry for, and I didn’t know. I still don’t know.”

“Must be something.”

“No.” She looked up. “Why would you say that?”

“Shush, Meg, it’s four o’clock. Get some sleep.”

“Yes, Max.” She drew the polished nail of her index finger lightly through his chest hair and snuggled back down.

“I’ve been so good,” she thought to herself.

How bad could it be?

She lay there recalling Max’s many stories – made up, she assumed. Well, mostly made up. Amazing sexy stories of flailing runny-nosed brats frantically pledging improvement as their crimson bottoms bucked and bounced. “Yes. Yes. OW! I will! OW-W-W! Stop! P-p-please! AH! I promise! Oh, OH!” Crack. Crack. Crack.

After we’re married, there’s no turning back and I’ll have a sore bottom to help me remember. I’ll never forget ’cause I’ll have a sore bottom to help me be better. I’ll love you forever, Max. Love you forever.

Oh!

Sometimes the stories were too hot.

“Of course I’m listening, Max.”

She was not at all like these self-absorbed vixens of Max’s imagination. She knew he was just teaching her what to watch out for, preparing her for the life she had chosen with him.

“It won’t be that bad,” she thought when she finally screwed up the chardonnay-fueled courage to tell him her secret that night at the summer house.

-0-

How many times had she conjured the images? Caught in the act, confronted with evidence.

“How could you do this? What were you thinking? What do you have to say for yourself?”

“Um…”

“Come with me, Megan.”

“Wait…”

“Now, Megan Dooley!”

Whisked off her feet, she would offer desperate explanations for the obvious, but the gabardine slacks and the Calvin Klein panties always found their way to a tangled bunch at her ankles.

“It’s high time I taught you a lesson.”

Sometimes it was “I see you haven’t learned your lesson.”

Always a lesson. Why was that?

Like the errant wives and girlfriends in Max’s tales of swift correction, she winced at the first pair of rude smacks, swaying a bit as the old varnished hairbrush flattened the peaks of her pale freckled backside.

“No!” CRACK! “Oh, don’t!” Her hobbled calves rose involuntarily past horizontal, rigid, now bent, at last pumping frantically.

Brave half-whispered exhales yielded inexorably to staccato yelps – “Ow! Ah! Oh! AH!” The cute scattered freckles disappeared beneath layers of sizzling swaths painted relentlessly across her bare bobbing bottom.

“I expect you to be on time!”

“Yes!”

“Do you understand?”

“Yes! Ow! Yes! Yes!”

“Do you? No more excuses, Megan!”

“OW! Yes!” Anything, anything, anything. Please!

Smack. Smack! SMACK! SMACK!!

At last she looked back through tear-blurred eyes for permission to tumble from his lap, to rub what she could from the broad bright circles, to dab the tips of her fingers ever so lightly on the raging fuchsia blotches just above her thighs.

“Yes,” as she wiped the streaks from her face.

“I will. Yes.” Clear strings of snot hung from her lip.

“I know. Yes. Never. Ow-w. Always.”

-0-

“I just want to set the record straight. No secrets,” she told herself as she folded her jeans, took a deep breath, and lowered herself onto his lap in the sticky August moonlight.

“Am I doing this right? It feels weird.” She was boozy, not drunk. She knew what she was doing.

“It won’t be that bad.” She was sure she could handle it without too much fuss. How bad could it be?

“Lift up, Megan.” She peered across her shoulder and watched as her panties disappeared over the crest of her wobbling raised bottom for the first time.

Her heart thumped harder when Max pressed her back into position and pulled her hip tight.

“I’m a little nervous.”

I almost got spanked once.

“Unnh…”

Almost, but I didn’t.

“Unnh… Ah! … Oh!…”

Oh, God! I’m getting a spanking! All this time! My first spanking!

“Max? Can we stop, Max?”

She raised one foot, then the other.

“Ow! That’s enough, Max! AH! OW!”

-0-

“I wish my Dad hadn’t just grounded me.”

“What? Geez, Meg. Go to sleep.”

“That time I backed the car out of the driveway. I wish he’d – you know – taught me that ‘lesson I’d never forget.'”

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh… Am I doing that again?”

“Yes.”

“Where you don’t know what I’m thinking about?”

“Mm-hm.”

“That time in your office. I said you looked like you were getting ready to punish me?”

“I wasn’t.”

“Well, you looked like it, and anyway, I was thinking that maybe if my Dad had – you know – then maybe everything would have turned out different.”

“What? You’d have married your college sweetheart and lived in a big house with three snotty kids and a pair of 530 Beemers?”

“Well…”

“A Saab and a Volvo?”

“No…”

“Sunday, Meg. After church. In the living room.”

“I know.”

She diddled his penis absentmindedly, then drew a nail to and fro along its stiffening surface.

“Go to sleep, sugar.”

“What have we here?” She licked the salty swollen tip, slipped it into her soft mouth, caressed it with her tongue.

“Okay, don’t.”

“What?”

“Go to sleep.”

“Anyway, it’s just a reminder.” She wiped her lips.

He watched her nipples jiggle to rest as she rose from his crotch.

“Max?”

“What?”

“Sunday. It’s just a reminder, right?”

“Just? More like memorable.”

“MAX!”

“Sh-h-h.”

“No!”

-0-

In the morning, Megan showered first while Max made coffee and went through the sports and business sections. She padded downstairs in her terrycloth robe, toweling her hair and humming a tune from…

“Max?”

“Hmm?”

“What’s that show we saw last spring?”

“Oh. The ragtime thing.”

“Not ragtime.”

“Old jazz.”

“Yeah.”

“Fats Waller.”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know.”

“Me neither. French toast?”

“Mm-mm. And bacon. I’ll make bacon.”

“You have time?”

“My meeting’s at ten.”

“Okay.”

He followed her into the kitchen and patted her rump when she bent to get the eggs.

“Hey!”

“Oh. I forgot.”

“Now who needs a reminder, mister?”

“Sorry. I love you, Megan.”

“I love you, too, but you spank hard.”

“Duh duh duh DAH DAH…”

“What?”

“That’s the song, right? From the show?”

“Oh. Yeah. Ain’t Misbehavin’…”

“… Savin’ my love for you (one two three), Poor Poor Megan!”

“Okay, enough. I’m glad it’s over with.”

“What? We still do Sunday.”

“Huh?”

“After church. In the living room.”

“But…”

“Megan…”

“But… That’s not fair!”

“Watch your tone, Megan.”

“Don’t ‘Megan’ me! I’ll still be sore from last night!”

“I said ‘Watch your tone’.”

Max cocked his head and raised an index finger.

“Didn’t I?”

Megan took a step back.

“Well? Did I or didn’t I?”

Her eyes darted from side to side and stopped on the door to the dining room.

“Don’t even think about it, Meg.”

“Um…”

-0-

After breakfast, Max did the crossword puzzle at the dining room table.

Megan heard him
fold and smooth the newspaper.

She heard his footsteps recede up the stairs.

She heard the splatter of the shower, thought of him soaping his broad hands and washing away the dried remains of her sweat and spunk and saliva.

She heard him approach in his shiny black oxfords, all shaved and combed and smelling of spices – the good stuff she’d bought when they stopped off in Portugal.

“Max, I’m sorry. I know better.”

“I know. But that doesn’t excuse it.”

“I know.”

As she fully expected, he took a seat in the armless quarter-sawn oak Arts-and-Crafts chair.

“Please take off your robe, Megan.”

She loosed the belt and let the robe fall to her feet.

“Touch your nose.”

When she put her face back into the corner, her breasts grazed the cool November walls. He saw the flinch.

“You’re right, Meg. We should get some new windows.”

She stood silently.

“Any questions?”

“No, Max.”

“Do you still think you’re not like those girls in the stories?”

“No, Max.”

“Which one are you like?”

“Um, Jennifer, I guess. Maybe Alex.” She felt prettier somehow, just saying the names, comparing herself to these spoiled younger women.

“And why is that?”

“They both had a temper.”

“I see. Yes, they did. And which one is most like you?”

“I don’t know. Alex, I guess. She looks more like me.”

“Really?”

“I just pictured Jennifer with straight black hair. Asian.”

“Oh…” He hadn’t. “Okay. Anything else?”

“Well, Alex got spanked twice in the same day.” Without thinking, Megan reached back and rubbed the dark center one of her twin pink ovals.

“Right. She did. A friendly reminder.”

“Not so friendly. The second time, she got the hairbrush.”

“Yes, you liked that part, didn’t you?”

Yes. Yes. OW! I will! OW-W-W! Stop! P-p-please! AH! I promise! Oh, OH! Crack. Crack. Crack.

Megan felt a tear well up. She swallowed hard.

“Do you have a hairbrush, Max?”