Rescuing a
Rock Star By
Jamie Phillips
Rescuing a
Rock Star By
Jamie Phillips A Newsite Web Services Book Published by arrangement with the author All rights reserved. Copyright 2008 © by Jamie Phillips This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission of the author or Newsite Web Services, LLC Published by Newsite Web Services, LLC P.O. Box 1286, Loganville, Georgia 30052
[email protected] disciplineanddesire.com
Chapter One “Christ,” Rod muttered as he forced his way through the mass of twitching bodies with their nodding heads and vacant eyes. “I should have guessed.” He meant he could have anticipated this madhouse when he’d parked his car at the far side of the park and walked across to his friends’ condo. He’d seen the crews setting up stages and towers, but somehow the sight hadn’t made him realize he’d be making his way back to his car through a crowd of sweaty teenage head bangers twitching grotesquely to what looked like an old-fashioned punk group. Was Punk back in fashion, he wondered idly? Nowadays, from the great age of fifty, he didn’t know one singer or genre from another and could care less. The singer, a garishly clad hag with white hair, white face, and, from where he was standing, black eyes and lips, jumped down from the stage into the crowd and disappeared from his view. Rod shuddered. Not having to pretend he liked all this stuff was the only consolation for being fifty, he reckoned. He continued pushing the crowd aside, working his way slowly to his car. The singer was screaming some filth or other, but the crowd didn’t really seem to be with her, and he felt a sudden surge of sympathy. Acting like a maniac is only really acceptable if everyone joins in; when they don’t, it looks just plain silly. Suddenly, the crowd to his right began falling back, jostling him. The singer’s voice had taken on a new harshness, an edge of fury that didn’t sound like a performance. Rod turned away, pushing to his left with renewed determination. Then a blow to the
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back of his head almost felled him, his knees buckled, the crowd seemed to be spinning, and he felt himself blacking out when, with a surge of fury, he came to his senses. Dodging to one side, he grabbed the swinging arm by the wrist, sending the beer bottle the hand was holding flying. Rod twisted, the woman cursed and twisted away presenting her tightly clad denim bum to his jubilant gaze. In the crowd and the commotion, he hadn’t realized his assailant was a woman but, now that he did, he knew just what to do with such a tempting target. He smacked it hard, and the woman cursed him again. That did it. He’d been going to stop at one swat, but her stream of invective was so offensive, he decided that it was time some adult supervision took place. Rod spanked and spanked, while the woman hopped and yelped. On the giant monitor above the stage, Rod was vaguely aware he’d taken on a starring role. The cameras had obviously decided an elderly gentleman punishing a punk girl was a lot more fun than the band. Rod continued spanking, even though the sound of her yelps was being amplified all across the park. He’d gone too far to stop now. Rod slapped her right cheek, and her foot kicked up. At least, she wasn’t putting her free hand in the way; that would have been a nuisance. He spanked her left cheek, the denim of her jeans rippled away from the point of impact like a sail flapping in the wind, which Rod thought amazing. He’d have sworn there wasn’t enough free material to do that. He slapped her right cheek again, hand flat along the length, fingertips stinging her sit spot. The girl yelped and kicked, dipping her bottom to assuage the pain, but it returned quickly enough to where he
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could smack it. So he did. She yelped, kicked and wriggled, and he smacked. It was a wonderfully pleasant way to spend a late summer afternoon. Finally, reluctantly, he halted. His hand hurt, and he was growing more and more conscious that everyone was focused on him and the girl. And she seemed less violent now; so letting go of her wrist became safe enough. She shot upright, her face as red as a beet, her eyes blazing. They stared at each other for a second. Both stared in horror. Rod saw he’d been spanking the band’s lead singer. While Candace, Candy Ass, to the music world, saw she’d hit the wrong man. Each felt the sickening feeling of doom that comes from knowing you’ve made a terrible mistake. “Sorry,” Candace said, recovering her wits before Rod. “I got the wrong guy.” “The wrong guy?” Rod said sarcastically. “How many white-haired guys are there round here?” He gestured about with a dramatic flourish that should have clinched the argument but didn’t. All around were men with white hair, red hair, blue hair, green hair, every color but hair colored; he dropped his arm, deflated. “You should go to the First Aid tent,” Candace said. “You’re bleeding.” Rod touched his head. His hair was wet, and something was running down his neck. He looked at his fingers. They were covered in blood. “I guess I should,” he said. “Where is it?” Candace gave him directions quickly. She didn’t want him dying on her. God knows what the news would say about her now, and if he died… she pushed the thought away and headed back to the stage. Signaling the band, she started on the next number, but throughout the whole set her eyes kept
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straying to the First Aid tent hoping to see the guy walk out. What a fucking mess, she thought. Because of some stupid dissing from a half-pissed kid, a kid too young to remember the band’s heyday, she’d lashed out -- only she’d hit an old guy just trying to walk in the park. She’d be lucky if he didn’t sue her ass off, never mind whipping it. ______________ Rod pushed open the front door to his house and stepped inside. He still felt a bit sick. In his eyes, taking two aspirins and lying down was major surgery; having a couple of stitches in his scalp was traumatic. Tabitha, the family cat, only there was no longer a family, mewed, pressing her body against his leg, covering his black pants with white fur. He closed the door, stroked her, and hung up his jacket. Tabitha waited patiently with adoring eyes; Rod was her favorite companion and most comfortable bed. He was just slower at putting out meals than she cared for. Rod fed Tabby and had a shower before putting up his feet on the couch where she soon joined him, stretching out along his thighs before quickly falling asleep. Clicking the TV remote through the channels, Rod saw himself, large as life on the big screen, spanking a woman in a huge crowd. He turned up the sound, his insides trembling. What he heard didn’t quiet those nerves one bit. He’d publicly spanked a national celebrity. Even he’d heard of her, and he was the wrong generation to have known Violent Passions when they’d been the band of their day, a mere decade ago. And he’d done it at a reunion concert to promote their new album. Rod didn’t think they’d appreciate his contribution to their re-launch.
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“An irate bystander,” the TV reporter crowed gleefully, “took the law into his own hands at today’s free concert in High Park, giving Candy, Candy Ass, of the Violent Passions, a taste of his own ‘violent passion’…” Rod changed channels and found the same news segment. More flicking showed he’d made a hit on every news report; even the U.S. stations seemed to suggest this was everyday stuff in a remote and backward place like Canada. Driving home, he’d been concerned for his own personal well-being and he’d argued himself into believing nothing would come of it. He’d convinced himself the woman, and he realized now it was a woman and not some teen princess, wouldn’t want to relive her humiliation, and he wasn’t about to broadcast his hastily made mistake. It would all quiet down in a day or two. But watching the news, he was a lot less sure. “Tabby,” he said slowly, as the cat stretched and offered her chin for scratching, “I’ve done something really stupid.” Tabby purred in appreciation of the tickling and stroking. She didn’t watch TV. ______________ Next day at work was a nightmare. Everyone had seen the news, and those that hadn’t had a glorious half-page picture, on the front of the local tabloid, of Rod’s hand splatting Candy’s full cheeks. Coffee time discussions had never been so animated, with opinions for and against being hotly disputed. Rod stayed in his cubicle and tried for a low profile. He wasn’t successful, but by evening, when it was clear he wasn’t about to lead a protest march demanding the introduction of corporal punishment for wealthy starlets, the place grew
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quieter, and Rod had time to think. His thoughts were gloomy. Should he call the woman and apologize before she could get to her lawyer or should he just lay low and hope she wouldn’t be able to find out who he was? The pros and cons of moving to some remote island were still being counted in his mind when he got home. Rod showered and ate supper. Since Mary died, he’d never bothered much with eating in the evening, and tonight was no exception. He and Tabby finished their meals together, and Rod went out onto the deck with a beer. His head ached; he knew the beer was a mistake, but it was hot, and he needed to unwind. A day of notoriety was more than he could bear; his sympathy for the poor buggers that had to live with it every day made him feel even guiltier about Candy. “If someone hits you over the head so hard you need stitches, are you entitled to spank them in public? What do you think, Tabby?” Tabby, who was in the act of washing her face with her paw, stopped and gave him a stern look. Rod knew what her answer would be if she could speak. He was her favorite, had been since a kitten when the kids had been too rough and Mary too allergic to appeal to a small cat. And Tabby was a jealous body, openly hostile to anyone monopolizing Rod but herself. When the kids left home, there’d been no suggestion of taking ‘their’ cat with them. If Tabby could speak, she’d have recommended hanging for anyone who messed with Rod. The phone rang, and Tabby leapt off Rod’s lap, her sharp claws leaving their usual pattern on his thighs. Sighing and wincing, annoyed with himself for not bringing the cell phone out with him, Rod made his way indoors.
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“Hello,” he said rather shortly into the handset. “Hi,” a voice he didn’t recognize replied. “Is that Rod Lawson?” “Yes,” he replied, sensing a sales pitch coming. “It’s Candace Astor,” the voice replied. Rod’s insides fluttered uncomfortably. Yesterday, he wouldn’t have even known who Candace Astor was; her stage name was the only one he’d heard. Now, thanks to a day of discussion, he knew more about Candace than he’d ever imagined knowing; her problems with drugs, with booze, with men, and her long police record -- not a pretty picture. “Oh, yes,” Rod said, grimly. He didn’t know how else to respond. “How’s your head?” “It’s okay,” Rod replied. “Aches a bit but no worse than a hangover.” The moment he said that, he wished he hadn’t. Now she’d think he was sneering at her well-publicized drink problems. “Good. Look, I’m sorry about what happened. Can I buy you dinner to make amends?” Candace tried to make it sound like she always called up total strangers and offered them meals, but she wasn’t sure she was hitting quite the right tone. She sounded brittle, nervous even, and it wasn’t surprising. It wasn’t something she’d ever done before, and the band’s lawyer said she shouldn’t do it this time, only she found she couldn’t stop herself. The offer was so contrary to what he’d been expecting that Rod found he’d accepted before he’d thought it through. He shrugged; since Mary died, he’d been telling himself he should become more open to different experiences; maybe this was the start.
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“That’s great,” Candace said, pleased -- and she was pleased. She’d had serious doubts about what Rod’s reaction would be; most of them instilled by the band’s lawyer. “Only,” Rod said, the vision of him eating dinner with the creature that was Candy Ass horrifying him into firmness, “you dress respectably, and you do your hair and make up like a normal woman.” Candace laughed. “Okay,” she said, “but you’ll be disappointed. I’m no great beauty without my stage clothes.” Rod couldn’t imagine how anyone could look worse than Candy’s stage image, but thought it best not to say so. Women could be sensitive in these matters. “Is there anywhere you’d prefer to go?” Candace asked. “I’m sure you know Toronto better than I do, these days,” Rod said. Since the kids came along, he and Mary hadn’t eaten at adult places in the big city, and they hadn’t had so long after the kids left to get back into the habit. “Okay, I’ll choose,” Candace said. “I’ll assume you want something conventional and respectable there, too?” Rod knew he was being teased but didn’t mind. She sounded so pleasant and normal on the phone, and young women weren’t always offering to take him out for dinner. “I do,” he replied firmly. “I’ll get back to you with the time and place,” Candace said, after they agreed on tomorrow night. “Don’t go far from the phone.” Rod took the phone out to the deck with him, where Tabby was waiting crossly, her tail twitching ominously, to return to his lap.
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“Tabby,” Rod said, when they’d both settled back down. “You aren’t going to believe what’s happened.” And nor will anyone at work, he thought to himself, so I won’t tell them. ______________ Candace hung up the phone feeling a lightness of heart she couldn’t remember having since she was a kid. She’d expected him to be talking lawyers and damages, expected to have to use her slim armory of charm to coax him out of it. The certainty of it had been a constant theme in the band’s discussion; his spanking her could be a useful counter suit that might limit the damages, but she was the international celebrity and he the wronged common man. Her lawyer, when asked for an opinion, felt there was a chance they could negotiate an out-of-court settlement, right after they’d negotiated his fee for handling this difficult case. Candace had listened to all the conflicting arguments and said very little because something had passed between this common man and her, when their eyes met, and she couldn’t explain what. She didn’t really know if he’d had the same feeling, but she knew it would be better for her to approach him than have any lawyer involved. And it wasn’t because she could save money but because, incredibly, she felt he was Mr. Right. The moment she thought that, she blushed at the absurdity of the idea. She was thirty, and he was fifty, if he was a day, and she had nothing in common with him. So as far as she knew, he wasn’t an artist or a wealthy man, so he couldn’t understand her life, and she’d missed out on everyday things, like home and kids, that might help her share his. But she was right.
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He’d been perfectly pleasant to talk to; he hadn’t raged at her for what happened, hadn’t mentioned lawyers, and had accepted her offer of dinner as recompense without demanding anything else. What’s more, she knew from the tone of his voice he was interested in her, so her instincts had been right, too. Better yet, there wasn’t a Mrs. Lawson because she’d made it clear her invitation was to his wife as well and learned he was a widower with two grown up kids off his hands and no one particular person to join them for dinner. Humming a sickly, sentimental tune she wouldn’t have let the band, or her fans, know she knew, Candace headed for her closet to find something suitable for tomorrow night. Rod, meanwhile, lifted an indignant Tabby back onto his lap. She’d need a lot of TLC to get her back to catnapping. She sat rigid on his lap, glaring at him, determined not to sell her righteous anger too cheaply. This was her time each evening, and his attention being given to another was treachery. Rod grinned at her and sighed melodramatically. He’d only been single for six months, and already he was having woman trouble. ______________ The restaurant was very upscale, so Rod was glad he’d put on a jacket and even gladder he wasn’t paying. He looked about; his eyes scanned the tables, but apart from one single woman with short, dark hair, a hauntingly pretty face and a beautiful, though rather pale for late summer, complexion, the room was filled with fat, sweating executives haggling over deals or elegantly dressed women with partners. She’s late, he thought, typical
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woman. This, he knew, was unjust, for Mary was always on time. The young woman sprang up and advanced toward him, smiling broadly. “You didn’t recognize me, did you?” Her eyes sparkled with glee at his surprise. She clasped both his hands and stood on tiptoes to kiss his cheek. Rod found himself blushing furiously. He returned her peck on the cheek and stammered very ungraciously, “No, I didn’t. You’re completely different from what I imagined.” “I did warn you.” “You didn’t ‘warn me,’ you led me astray,” Rod retorted severely, recovering his composure. “You said without your make up ‘you were no beauty’ and that wasn’t -- isn’t -- true.” “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” Candace replied, still holding one of his hands and leading him back to their table. Without the heels she’d been wearing Sunday, he was much taller than she was, and she had to look up to see his expression. She’d never liked having to look up at men and consequently heels were practically the only shoes she had. To her amazement, she found she did like it today, which explained her choice of shoes, though she hadn’t understood it at the time. She ushered him to the seat opposite hers and examined the back of his head when he sat down. “You can hardly see the cut through all that hair,” she said. “You’re lucky to have hair at your age,” she continued conversationally as she returned to her seat, “it’s strange it didn’t cushion the blow.” “Perhaps it did,” Rod said ruefully. “Perhaps I’d have a cracked skull now, if I’d been one of your shaved fans.”
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“Lucky it was you, then,” Candace said mischievously. Rod was about to give her a lecture on safety, and then he stopped. There was no sense in it. And it was ‘lucky’ because nothing remotely this interesting had happened in his life for years. He laughed, and said, “I guess so.” Candace looked into his eyes and felt the same stirring she’d felt yesterday. They were nice eyes, greeny-blue, with a look of patient humor that invited confidences. His face was good, too lean and serious, but not mean-looking as so many thin men were, and no double chin or fat jowls like most of the men she could see around the room. “I really am sorry about what happened,” she said, thinking it best to get her apologies out of the way early. “There was this kid…” “Don’t worry about it,” Rod interjected, “I gave as good as I got. We’re even. And I owe you an apology too. I shouldn’t have done that.” “Oh, and what should you have done?” Candace asked innocently. “I should have restrained you until someone could assist us to a mediated solution.” Candace grimaced. “That sounds totally boring,” she said, “The sort of answer politically correct idiots give to all questions. And when you know me better, you’ll realize it would’ve been impossible. I’m not easily ‘restrained’ at times like that.” “Times like what?” Rod asked. Candace fiddled with her napkin and avoided his eye. Shit, she thought, I wanted to show him my good side before introducing the not-so-good things. But he must know what they are, her mind continued inexorably, everybody else does.
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“When I’ve had too much to drink,” she said at last, looking him squarely in the eye to see his reaction. Rod smiled. “Then we’re buying wine by the glass, and you’re limited to two,” he said primly. “Don’t worry. I was going to be good tonight, anyway.” “What happened to the hair and the nose ring?” Rod asked, thinking a change of subject was in order. “My stage hair’s a wig, and the nose ring is a clip-on,” she replied. “The earrings are real.” She showed him the studs to prove her point. “I presume you don’t object to earrings? But I warn you, I’ll think it hypocritical if you don’t mind earrings when you don’t like nose rings.” “I don’t care for any kind of body piercing,” Rod said with a smile, knowing she was going to be pleased at, and he would be teased for, his inconsistency, “but, you’re right, earrings don’t bother me as much.” “Ha, I knew it. You’re just a conventional, middle-aged guy,” Candace said. Rod sighed melodramatically. “Five minutes together, and you’ve discovered my guilty secret. That’s female intuition, I guess,” he said. “It’s my artistic temperament,” Candace replied wryly, “I’m super perceptive.” She was pleased to have got through the drink thing without comment, and this verbal sparring was what she needed to stop deeper discussion; only that would have to happen sooner or later if she was to get what she wanted. “In the real world, we call that ‘jumping to conclusions’,” Rod said.
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“Smart ass,” Candace said, descending to name calling for want of a better riposte. “Where the fuck is that waiter?” She was looking past Rod when she spoke, but she couldn’t miss the severe expression that came on his face. “I guess an old fart like you doesn’t like women using bad language, either,” she concluded. “I don’t like anyone using bad language unless it’s called for,” Rod said, “and the waiter being considerate enough not to pressure us before we’ve ‘broken the ice’ isn’t when it’s called for.” Candace found herself blushing and unable to meet his eye. Her heart thumped in her breast. That’s what she wanted from him, the thought flashed right to her mind. Ten years of her life floundering about, unable to manage properly, had slowly, like water dripping on a rock, worn a path to something deep inside and released it. Something buried by fortune and success, something she didn’t know was there, something she felt she shouldn’t accept, but which she was moving inexorably toward. She needed someone to lead her, someone she could trust and admire. Someone who wasn’t afraid to say no, and mean no, when no needed saying.
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Chapter Two “Sorry,” she said, looking up at him through her lashes, “it’s the world I live in. We swear all the time.” Rod nodded sympathetically. “Mine’s the same,” he said, “and it can be hard having two voices, but it’s doable. Most people manage.” “You’re very bossy,” Candace said, brightening now it was clear he wasn’t about to turn frigid on her. “I don’t think so,” Rod replied, grinning. “Only punk rockers do seem to push most of my buttons. Not as bad as rap stars, though.” “Well, thank God I’m not a rap star. Being spanked in front of thirty thousand people was bad enough, getting another one in a busy restaurant would be more than my fading reputation could bear.” She loved saying ‘spanked’ and waited to see his reaction. “I hope I haven’t blown it for you. Your comeback, I mean?” “Jeez, no. Our publicist has been on the phone constantly since the gig, telling everyone you were part of the show. She’s never got that much coverage for any band in her whole life. Every major broadcaster in the world carried it. We’re rushing out the album in the UK, Europe, and Australasia to cash in on it.” This different view of the world staggered Rod for a second. “So, instead of being worried about being sued, I should be looking for a paycheck?” he asked sarcastically. “You can if you want,” she said, “but believe me, there’s no free lunch. Once you’re in the game, you’re in to the end, whatever that may be.”
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“Don’t worry,” Rod said quickly, “I won’t be joining in, though I can’t imagine what more they could get from it? Doing it again wouldn’t have the same results. It would just be another publicity stunt.” “Our publicist was hoping you might sue,” Candace said. “That would keep it boiling for a while. You might do talk shows as the outraged older citizen, disgusted at the morals and behavior of today’s youth, appalled at the content of our CD. That would be good for sales. Punk and Rap need that kind of stuff to survive. They wither, if they’re ignored or tolerated.” Like me, she added silently. Rod shook his head. “Well, I won’t,” he said. “I used to like punk music, and I don’t give a toss about the morals or behavior of today’s youth because I don’t believe it’s any worse than any other ‘day’s’ youth. Though, I do object to being hit over the head with a beer bottle,” he added severely. “You’re a strange man. Most guys would welcome being hit by Candy Ass. I’ve whipped asses on stage before.” “Ah, the good old days, when Punk was really punk, and Rock was really rock. What happened to them?” The waiter took their drinks order before Candace could reply. She ordered a glass of white wine, looking slyly at Rod to see his expression. Then she realized she was checking to see if he approved of her choice, and her stomach flipped. Could someone really reach thirty years old and know themselves so little? Apparently, they could. “I did rehab for drugs,” Candace said, when the waiter was gone, “and now alcohol is my only
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stimulant. I’m not sure it’s any better. In fact, I think it’s worse.” “Why’s that?” “With drugs, I was pretty mellow most of the time. Alcohol makes me angry. I’m an angry drunk, rather than a happy one.” “So don’t overdo it,” Rod said. A momentary flash of rage coursed through Candace’s mind, and then almost as quickly, subsided. How could she expect him to understand? He didn’t live in the dog-eat-dog world of performing where you were only as good as your last show or album, where people kissed your ass when you were doing well and rubbed your nose in shit when you weren’t. “I do try not to,” she said, at last realizing as she spoke she sounded like she was making excuses, which, she guessed, she was. Just like when she tried not to over-eat, then starved herself if she did overeat and just like when she tried not lying about in bed all day, or… The list was endless. There were so many things she wanted to do, but without anyone to care whether she did them or not, it all seemed pointless. Improving herself for herself was not enough. Maybe for some people it worked, they really did love themselves so much it could drive them to better behavior. For her, it didn’t. To Candace’s relief, the waiter returned with their drinks and took their order. She mustn’t unburden herself on Rod now; he’d run a mile. What man in his right mind wants to take on a basket case, particularly when he’s just getting over the loss of his wife? “This comeback,” Rod asked, feeling he should show some interest, “what does it entail?”
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“All the usual stuff,” Candace replied. “A new CD, a world tour, interviews on the right shows – or at least the right shows that will take us – news media, music media, any media we can persuade to have us, and believe me, ‘having us’ is how it feels sometimes and not in a good way.” “So why do it?” “Because it’s what we do; it’s our job,” Candace replied. “And there’s been a punk revival lately, so we wanted to cash in on it. Do you enjoy going to work every day?” “No,” Rod admitted, “I guess not.” “So why do it?” Rod laughed. “Mainly because I need the pension to have a comfortable retirement,” he said. “Me too,” Candace said, “and I’m a lot further from retirement than you are.” “I guess I thought, think, all celebrities have made enough to retire on,” Rod said, “maybe not all celebrities, eh?” “Not this one,” Candace said with a rueful smile, “and apart from the tour, I can’t see too much in the future. You might be able to go on into your sixties, if you’re a rock band like The Rolling Stones, but not a punk band. We’d just look ridiculous.” “So use your fame to do something else in show biz,” Rod said. Candace hesitated before speaking. Was this the time to ask him? It was the perfect segue but way, way, way too soon. “I would, if I could,” Candace replied, “but not too many organizations want old punk stars in their line up. We have a bad reputation.” “I can see that,” Rod said nodding sympathetically. I wouldn’t either, he thought. Who in their right mind would?
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“So my pension fund needs this comeback to be safe,” Candace continued. “Then I hope my accidental assistance pays off for you big time,” Rod said with a grin. “You certainly gave us a good start,” Candace replied, smiling back at him. He had a wonderful smile; it seemed to light his face from inside. “Anything else I can do to help, just call me,” Rod continued. “I don’t know anything about the business, but I’ve obviously got a talent.” He grimaced wryly to show he was only joking. Another perfect segue, Candace thought. This time she wouldn’t let it go. She said, “It’s funny you should say that because there is something I was considering.” Rod came back to earth with a bump. His need for excitement was being adequately satisfied by a meal out with a celebrity; anything more would be scary. “While we wait,” Candace began, her heart thumping with trepidation at what she was going to say. She’d never been so open with a man so early before, and she felt uncomfortable with it. Only she couldn’t wait for months of getting to know each other; life was too short when you got to thirty. “I want you to help me with something,” she continued. “Sure, if I can. What is it?” “This is going to sound a bit weird,” Candace said hesitantly. “You’re a Punk Rocker, everything you do has to be weird. It comes with the turf.” Rod’s flippant remark gave her the courage she needed. He was right. She was supposed to be weird. Anything she said or did wouldn’t be judged
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by normal standards, anyhow, so why was she squirming about this? “Okay,” Candace said, “I want you to teach me, train me if you like, to be normal. I’m tired of being a Punk Rocker.” Rod was taken aback. This wasn’t what he’d been expecting at all. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting but a request for ‘normal’ training wasn’t it. It really was weird. “I don’t know what ‘normal’ is,” he said with a laugh, “and your behavior with me has been just fine, so I don’t know how to help you.” Even though only a few days ago, with his head stinging and aching, he’d angrily imagined whipping her into shape, making her behave like the rest of the everyday world, he found her request to do just that made him very uncomfortable. “We’ve spent one hour together,” Candace said. “I can manage that without doing anything too stupid. And you do know what normal is; we all do, even me. I also know if we stay together long enough, you’ll see when I don’t do normal, and that’s what I want you to help me fix.” That sounded harmless enough, Rod thought. He’d brought up two teenagers; it couldn’t be worse than that. Direction and advice given with patient good humor were all she really wanted from him, and he had that in spades. “Okay,” he said, “but I warn you, I’ve had teenagers, so my standards may be lower than you think.” “I’m sure you didn’t let them do as they pleased, and that’s all I’m asking for,” Candace said, though to herself she thought ‘for now’. “I need a mentor, and a regular guy like you is exactly what I’m looking for.”
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“What could ‘a regular guy’ possibly do that would be useful to you?” Rod asked. The whole idea sounded unlikely. “He could mentor me in being a ‘regular gal’,” Candace said. “But you don’t need to be a regular person,” Rod countered. “You’re looking to be something in the media business, and they’re not regular folks.” “Shows how much you know,” Candace said. “Most of them, and all of the ones who make the big decisions, are very regular guys, and while they may hire people like me once in a while for shock value, they’d never hire me for something they wanted to last. And I want to move into something more appropriate for my age than dressing up in a skanky schoolgirl uniform and screaming into a mike.” “I’m sure you don’t need lessons into how to be a regular person,” Rod said, somewhat desperately, “they’re all around. They’re everywhere. And with your money you can hire behavioral psychologists or psychoanalysts or whatever. Anyhow, you’ve made the important step in deciding to change and setting a goal to get there.” “Sort of,” she said wryly. “I made the decision and plan nearly five years ago, and it’s gone nowhere because I can’t do it myself. I need someone helping me. As you say, I can get professional help. I did that, and let me tell you how that works… I sit in a comfy chair in the professional’s expensively furnished office and say something like, ‘the other day I had too much to drink and hit an innocent, middle-aged man over the head with a beer bottle’. The professional says, ‘well, normal people have occasional lapses. Normality is a very
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broad concept, and what happened would fit in there. Pay my secretary as you leave and set up another session for next week’… I don’t want that. I want someone who says ‘if you even think of doing something like that again, I’ll whip your ass’, metaphorically speaking, of course.” She added quickly when she saw the alarm in Rod’s expression. “As long as it is ‘metaphorical’,” Rod answered, “because what happened the other day mustn’t happen again.” Candace almost smirked with triumph, she was so pleased at how simply he’d talked himself into agreeing. Only the suspicion he wasn’t quite on the hook yet kept her from betraying herself. “That’s great,” she said with a relieved smile. “All I need is a neutral observer, a father-figure you might say. Someone who will tell me honestly what I need to hear and be firm about it.” “I don’t really see it working,” Rod objected, still uncomfortable. “If you can’t do it for yourself, why would you do it for a complete stranger?” “Because like the professional help, I find it easier to accept failure than fix it,” Candace replied. “I’m lazy, I guess. Anyhow, it’s easier for other people to see what’s wrong. It’s like writing essays at school. I could never see my mistakes, could you?” “No,” Rod admitted. “I couldn’t. But this isn’t the same. You’re more likely to know what’s wrong with your behavior than I am. I’ll only see the action, only you will know the motives behind it.” “It’s the actions I want fixed,” Candace retorted. “The motives are immaterial if the behavior is bad.” Rod shifted uncomfortably in his seat, saved by the arrival of their first course from having to
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answer right away. He didn’t know Candace, and if everything he read was true, he really didn’t want to. She needed taking in hand all right, but he knew only too well he wasn’t the right man for the job. When the waiter left, Rod continued to voice his objections. “I’d love to help…” he began. “Thank you,” Candace interjected quickly to prevent him going further. She reached across the table and squeezed his hand. “I felt sure you’d understand.” “I’m not sure I do,” Rod answered desperately. His attempted polite rejection to her proposal had drawn him further into it, and he felt panic rising in his heart. “I don’t get up in the morning and put on a ‘normal’ suit. I’m ‘normal’, if there is such a thing, because that’s the way I am. I don’t think someone can be trained to be normal if their spirit is a wild one.” “Lots of kids are wild when they’re kids,” Candace answered reasonably. She felt confident now that she’d have her way. His tone and body language said as much. She just had to stroke him a tad more. “They grow out of it, as I have pretty much. Only for people like me, we’re stuck with an image that we can’t shake, and it makes the transition hard, especially when we’re alone most of the time. All I’m asking is for you to be my conscience and tell me when I’m screwing up. It’s as simple as that.” Rod knew in his heart it wouldn’t be simple at all, but he couldn’t refuse. “Okay, you win,” he said ruefully. “I’m a sucker for a damsel in distress. When do we start?” “I think we’ve already started,” Candace said. “Your feedback on hitting people over the head with
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a beer bottle, for instance, helped me make better decisions, like this one. Your suggestions on dressing for the occasion and your advice on not swearing all the time…” “Stop,” Rod said, laughing. “I meant formally. I didn’t know I was being a role model when I did all that.” “Why don’t I meet you tomorrow and start then?” “Okay, but it will have to be after work,” Rod said. “I work downtown so we can get together then.” “We can eat out and…” Candace began. “No, we can’t,” Rod interjected. “I have a cat to feed, and anyhow, ‘normal’ people don’t eat out every night. We’ll drive back to my place and eat there.” “You’re the boss,” Candace said, “so long as you don’t expect me to cook. That’s not the sort of normal I’m aiming for.” Rod rolled his eyes by way of reply. He had no doubt she’d soon grow tired of being lectured by an old fart, and he’d never see her again. Till then, he’d have a glimpse of a world most people never see except from the outside, celebrity, show biz, and all that entailed. It would be fun, something to remember in his declining years. He’d sit in his rocker on the nursing home porch boring them all silly with his one month in the spotlight – or very nearly in the spotlight. ______________ Candace sipped her morning coffee, gazing out of her apartment window and considering her position. The first few days with Rod had gone okay. He was as good as his word. If she said or
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suggested anything too extreme, he gave her that frozen look of displeasure she’d learned to obey and brought her quickly to her senses. But he didn’t go beyond that, and when she had time to think, as she had all day when he was at work, she realized what she wanted from him wasn’t just going to happen unless she gave him a push onto the right level. So far, she’d correctly sensed his approval or disapproval and modified her behavior accordingly. That wasn’t going to work when things got rough, and they soon would get rough because the band was going on tour to cash in on their new notoriety. If she had more time to bring him round… but she didn’t have time for a long drawn-out campaign. The band was leaving, and the best way forward for her was for him to come as well. If necessary, he could quit his job and go on the band’s payroll. She had many failings, but one of them was not indecision; she knew what she wanted, and she’d work to get it. Candace punched Rod’s number into her cell phone and waited while it rang. “It’s me,” she said, when he took the call. “I know,” Rod replied sharply. He’d come out of a meeting because he saw her number on the screen. “What is it?” “We’re going on tour.” “I know that. You told me,” Rod said in exasperation. “I mean a longer tour,” Candace said. “Thanks to you, we’re going world wide. I’ll be away for three or four months.” That was bad news. He’d always known she’d tire of him, but he thought they’d have more than a week together. He was going miss her. Seeing Candace had become an important part of his day.
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“You’re very quiet,” Candace said, hoping this meant he was sorry she was going. “I hadn’t expected you to be gone so long,” Rod said. “Come with me,” Candace pleaded. “I can’t, not for four months.” “Leave that dumb job. We can pay you.” “If it was a dumb job,” Rod snapped back, offended at having his life written off by someone who was happy to have the products of his industry but obviously contemptuous of the effort needed to bring those products to market, “I would. But it isn’t, and anyway, it’s my dumb job, and I’m sticking with it.” At least until I’ve got my pensionable service in, he thought wryly. It was one of the things he hated about being fifty; the golden handcuffs you couldn’t afford to lose. “Sorry,” Candace said. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant you could have a new job in the music industry.” “Doing what? I’ve no skill, no experience, no ideas to add, nothing. I’d last the length of the tour and be unemployed.” “No you wouldn’t,” Candace replied but without conviction. He’d last as long as she was protecting him and not a moment longer. He was right. It was a crazy idea. “Okay, maybe it isn’t right for you but can you come for a while?” she asked. “I could, I haven’t taken any vacation this year,” Rod said. “It didn’t seem worth it on my own.” “So take it with me.” “Okay, I will,” Rod replied. “When do we start?” “Two weeks time in Boston. Then we head west through the States, on to Australia, the mid-East, then Europe.”
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“I’ve only got six weeks vacation,” Rod said. “We’ll have to arrange this carefully.” “Let’s talk about it tonight,” Candace said and pressed the off button. It wasn’t the only thing she wanted to talk about. Now she was leaving, she needed to pick up the pace. She needed him to understand what she wanted from herself and he had to start being more forceful when she was letting herself down. That meant he had to talk. Men didn’t like that, she knew, and Rod was no exception, but he’d have to learn to do it. The strong, silent hero was okay when he was driving off the dragon but no good if he and the princess were to live happily ever after. Talking with him these past days had raised two concerns. The first one was he thought her behavior fell into the range of ‘normal,’ which it probably did. Unfortunately, it was the bottom end of the range and she wanted to move to the top. Second, he didn’t see it as his position to change her. In his eyes men and women should love each other for what they were – ‘warts and all,’ he’d said, quoting somebody she couldn’t remember. And that was certainly true, except what if one partner wanted to change? What if one person knew ‘your loneliness means that you’ve sinned’ – she could quote people as well – then a true friend would support, and that’s where she’d start, looking for his support. How to get him to change was the problem. How could she get him to help her moving from the bottom (that word kept creeping in somehow) to the top of normal behavior? How could she get him talking, discussing what she did and what she wanted to be doing better in future? She’d been puzzling this out for a while and as she proposed and rejected possibilities in her mind,
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a solution had presented itself. She’d do what businesses do, what the restaurant did after their very first meal together – hand out a questionnaire for them both to do. He couldn’t object to that, not if they were both doing one on how she’d done that day. At supper, side by side, they’d compare notes and examples. As they talked, he’d see he was accepting standards of behavior of her that she thought were too low and she could train him to see the standards she wanted to meet. It would take a while. Not everything would be discussed every day, and even in areas that were discussed daily, the examples wouldn’t necessarily point to the same conclusions. Eventually, say in a week or two, he’d see what she saw and the two questionnaires would line up pretty closely – they didn’t need to be exact, only close enough to show he understood. Then they could use his assessment as the standard, and hers just for checking things that he hadn’t seen. Their daily discussion of events would also train him to articulate what he saw or felt failed to meet her new standards she set for herself. It was a stroke of genius, and it would work. Candace sat down to draft her questionnaire and found it to be a lot more difficult than she’d imagined, but after three or four failed efforts, came up with: How Did I Do Today?
Date:
How Was My Behavior Toward: Civilized Normal My usual Family Friends Workers Others
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Worse
Examples
How Was My Attitude Toward: Good Unhelpful Family Friends Workers Others
Sarcastic
How Was my Language/Speech Toward: Pleasant Moderate Foul Family Friends Workers Others How Was My Grooming Today? ApproOkay Sloppy priate Family Friends Workers Others
Evil
Cruel
Slovenly
How Was My Weight Management effort? Good Less Than Greedy Stupid Adequate (starvation)
How Was My Alcoholic Consumption? Good Normal Unwise Stupid
Examples
Examples
Examples
Examples
Examples
She typed it up on the computer, made it look official, and printed off fourteen copies, one for each of them for a week. Now to get Rod started...
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Chapter Three “Do you think this is really necessary?” Rod asked in alarm when he saw the questionnaire. This looked like a disaster to him, criticizing her to her face. People weren’t good at being told they were anything less than wonderful. “Yes, I do,” Candace replied firmly. “You can’t reduce people’s personality and behavior to ticky boxes,” Rod objected. “That’s why I never like doing these things.” “There’s a place for examples, and we’re going to talk about it together every night.” “You’ll be offended, if every night I sit and criticize your behavior during the day,” Rod said, still hoping to avoid what looked to him to be a constant source of embarrassment. “I can’t see us staying friends long, if we do this,” he added to emphasize his point. “If I’m unpleasant about it, you can whip my ass again,” Candace said. “You have my permission.” “Wouldn’t that make things worse?” “It didn’t last time,” Candace replied, “so won’t you give it a try? Please?” The winsome expression and soft squeeze she gave his hand were too much for Rod’s resolve. “Okay,” he agreed with a groan, “but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” “Thanks,” Candace said. She wrote tomorrow’s date on two questionnaires. “Here’s your copy. Start observing.” ______________ Their first review went as Candace had expected. He’d marked everything as okay, and she’d marked herself down in almost every area.
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They discussed their observations, and he seemed to see where she was headed with this, enough to agree to do it again on the next day. Only a week later, Candace was reviewing Rod’s filled out questionnaire and mentally comparing it with her own. They were almost identical, had been for days now, and he was saying all the right things as if he’d been critiquing her forever. The time had come to move onto the next phase. It had happened much quicker than she thought possible, but would he accept the next step? “Did it make you feel good, being rude to that shop assistant?” Rod demanded, finishing up the day’s review with what Candace knew had been a very low moment in a poor day. He’d joined her at the Mall where she was buying stuff for the trip, and, perhaps because he hadn’t spent all day at it, he was appalled to find her snappish with everyone. “No,” she admitted, “I just said the first thing that came into my head. I’m sorry.” “Saying you’re sorry to me doesn’t do any good, does it?” “No,” Candace replied, her tummy fluttering with apprehension. He really was getting good at the correct tone of voice. She suspected this was something he’d really wanted to do for a long time. “If that happens again, and I hear it,” Rod said severely, “I’ll have you apologize to the right person, right away. Do you hear?” “Yes,” Candace said meekly. “I hope, of course, that won’t be necessary.” “I’ll try not to do it again,” she said. “And you’d better succeed,” Rod concluded for her, “but that isn’t what I meant. I meant I expect you to apologize to them without being told to.”
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“Rod,” Candace began hesitantly. “Now that you’ve seen what I’m struggling with, and how little success even this daily review is having on improving my behavior, do you think you could help me by applying some discipline? Self-discipline isn’t doing it for me yet.” She spoke carefully, trying to judge from his expression whether he would reject the concept out of hand. His expression didn’t change; no unhappy frown clouded his face though she knew she was taking him further down a road he’d initially resisted. Rod had thought for some time this might be coming, and he’d tried to be ready with good arguments against. He wasn’t ready with those arguments, and anyway, based on the shop assistant incident, Candace could use some straightening out. It didn’t matter how rich or famous you were, in Rod’s mind you didn’t treat people badly simply because you could. If anything, you should behave better than ordinary people should because ordinary people had given you your advantages. “I’m sure you’ve thought this out,” he said slowly, “so what is it you’re proposing?” “We continue with the daily review,” Candace began, “which gives me a reminder to try harder the next day, and we add a weekly review where you provide the discipline I haven’t been able to apply through the week. Good behavior has good consequences, and bad behavior should have bad consequences as well.” She stopped to give him time to think about what she’d said. “Wouldn’t it be more natural to deal with the bad behavior when it happens?” Rod asked. Candace heaved a mental sigh of relief. That was the kind of thinking she was hoping for. “If you
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can, sure,” she said. “Only a lot of what happens, happens in public, and a lot of it is Mickey Mouse stuff, so I thought we’d find it more practical this way.” “You have been thinking about it, haven’t you?” Candace nodded. Her cheeks were flushed pink with embarrassment. Still it was worth it. She’d got him from indifferent to ‘when do we start’ without any hitches. Her plan was working brilliantly. “Well this is Friday,” Rod said, “and we’ve done the daily review. I suggest you bring me the full week’s sheets and we go through them.” Her insides turning to water, her knees wobbling like jelly, Candace left the table and retrieved the sheets from the binder where she kept them. This was just like she’d imagined it. Could he keep it up? She handed over the forms and waited for his next words, hands behind her back in the time honored posture of wrong doers everywhere. Rod added Friday’s questionnaire to the back of the bundle. He had no idea how he was going to proceed. Smacking her bottom that first time had been an angry reaction to events, this cold review of the past week wasn’t the same thing at all and would need a different, more formal, approach. He scanned the top sheet, last Saturday’s list of misdemeanors, to give himself time to think. Candace’s idea of the questionnaire was, he realized at once, a sensible one. He would never have remembered any of these trivial incidents without the written evidence. Having that evidence in front of him, however, brought both the incidents and their subsequent daily review discussion back to him with startling clarity. She was also right about the minor nature of the incidents. On their own, the incidents didn’t warrant action; taken together, they
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did. He noticed she was still standing and was about to tell her to sit, then realized she was right about that too. The daily review was two partners trying to evaluate and solve a puzzle together. This was about actions being taken by one partner with authority over the other. The relationship, for the next little while, was different and needed to be seen to be different. She could stand until it was time. Thinking that made him uneasy; could he play his part properly? He had no experience, other than some fun stuff with Mary and that once with Candace. Even bringing up two kids was no help. His two children took after their parents, pleasant, well-behaved, thoughtful people who’d never given their parents more than the smallest of scares. How he’d have coped if they’d had a third and it had turned out a small spitfire who went through life antagonizing everyone by following its own agenda at the expense of everyone else, he couldn’t imagine. He felt an overwhelming surge of sympathy for Candace’s parents, and that, thankfully, steeled his resolve. He had no experience but, Candace herself wanted to change and wanted his help to do it. If he were to fail, it wouldn’t be because he hadn’t tried. She’d asked for it, and he was going to see she got it. “Hold these,” he said curtly, thrusting the questionnaires at Candace who took them instinctively. Rod stood up, grabbed the chair he’d been sitting on with his left hand, Candace’s arm with his right hand and marched both to the center of the room away from the furniture. He didn’t want her hitting her head or legs on the woodwork. Those weren’t the places he wanted her to feel his
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displeasure. He sat back down, with Candace at his right side, and recovered the papers from her. “Last Saturday,” he began, “do you remember what we discussed?” Candace thought briefly. “Not really,” she said. “Obviously not,” Rod continued, “because, if you had, you wouldn’t have behaved as badly toward that shop assistant today as you did. Today was, in many ways, a repeat of last Saturday. Wasn’t it?” “Yes,” Candace whispered. “I remember now.” “In fact, when I look back over the past days, it’s a fairly common theme isn’t it?” “Yes.” “Why is that?” “I don’t know,” Candace answered, squirming uncomfortably. “I don’t know either,” Rod said grimly. “I don’t know why someone with all your advantages would behave badly toward people much less favorably situated than yourself. It’s little more than bullying. I don’t know why you do it,” he concluded, “but I want it stopped. Is that clear?” “Yes,” Candace replied meekly. She wished he’d get on with it. When she’d worked out the weekly review, she’d imagined conversations just like the one they were having now. What she hadn’t appreciated was just how excruciatingly embarrassing it was standing beside someone’s lap, knowing you were going over it, and listening to a stern recital of all your trivial, daily failings. Being spanked was exciting; being scolded made her squirm, and she wasn’t sure she liked it. “Also on Saturday…” Rod began. Candace listened in misery. She definitely didn’t like it. She didn’t like him saying it and didn’t like having to admit to it. This was the worst. She wished she’d
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left this part out. Maybe just suggested he spank her daily without… “Are you listening?” Rod’s sharp tone cut right through her self-pitying thoughts. “Y-yes,” Candace stammered, hoping he wasn’t going to ask her to repeat what he’d been saying. “Then what was it I just asked you?” Candace hung her head even lower, if that was possible. She just wanted the floor to swallow her up. Now, she’d added lying to her already extensive list of misdemeanors. “Well?” Rod asked warningly. “I-I don’t know,” Candace whispered at last. “That does it,” Rod said in exasperation. “Come here.” He grasped her arm and pulled her toward him. Candace stepped forward, her knees bumped his thigh; she teetered but pulled back. No way was she going over there. He’d screwed the whole thing up by issuing orders without consulting her first. This was her initiative, not his. His next tug, however, was considerably stronger, and she’d sprawled across his lap before she could object. “No,” she objected, trying to get back up and failing. His forearm lying along her back pressed her hard against his thighs. When she felt her skirt being tucked up from her bottom, she stuck her hand back there, and it was soon clasped in his. She tried to get her feet on the floor, but he suddenly slid his left foot forward, and his thigh fell away from under her. Her nose sank to inches from the carpet, and the resulting swiveling of her hips around his right thigh left her no purchase with her feet. It was also acutely embarrassing. The previous time he’d spanked her, standing bending over, she’d felt quite grown up. Being upended, her nose
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and toes at the floor with her bum the highest point, was childish. She could only imagine what he could see back there. “Rod -- let me up -- right now,” Candace snapped. No way was she letting him go on one more minute. Rod didn’t answer. He picked up the forms he’d laid down to free up his hands, and said, “I’m going to start with the minor item on Saturday, then move to the major one.” He patted her cheeks warningly. “Stop it, Rod,” Candace said, struggling against his arm. “I’m going to be good from now on.” She really felt she would. This warning was all she needed. She didn’t need the whole thing. Just being like this was enough. “Then,” Rod said, ignoring her whining, “We’ll move onto Sunday, Monday and so on. If you’re having difficulty at some time, I’ll give you a rest.” “Rod,” Candace said firmly, “I’ve changed my mind. It may have been my idea, but you’ve gone too far… Yeow!” This last exclamation was because Rod’s hand had landed with a firm smack on one cheek. “Stop it!” Candace cried, struggling to escape and finding she couldn’t. “Ow! Stop!” Rod slapped each cheek firmly, not putting any weight into the strokes, just letting his fingers act like the tip of a whip, swatting each round orb until they jiggled on his thigh even when he wasn’t spanking. “That was a reminder not to leave the car unlocked,” he said as he rested his hand. Her bottom was pink and warm, and, he thought, should be receptive to some serious smacking. Her cries and struggles suggested they wouldn’t get past Saturday tonight, and he was unsure as to how to
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proceed if she couldn’t. The truth is, he thought, ruefully, I’ve no idea what I’m doing. “Now the more serious offense, the one you regularly repeat,” he said when the stinging in his hand had died away. “Being rude to people who are only trying to do their jobs.” “Rod, don’t you dare,” Candace cried, seriously alarmed at the suggestion of more and harder punishment. “I’ve learned my lesson, and I’ll never do it again, I swear.” She wasn’t sure if the ‘lesson’ she’d learned was she didn’t want to be spanked or being nicer to shop assistants and waiters, but either way, she’d taken it to heart. If he’d just let her up right now, while her bottom was nice and tingly, she’d be so good to him he’d think he’d died and gone to heaven. “You asked for it,” Rod said pausing to roll up his shirtsleeve, which had become undone with all the swatting. He took hold of her hand that had taken the opportunity to slide down over her bottom and lifted it away. He patted her bum with his free hand, setting her feet kicking in desperate entreaty. “And you’re going to get it. You can re-visit your decision later.” “OW-OOO!” Candace screeched as his hand cracked down on her behind. “Stop, please. Owooo!” Each swat rattled her teeth, sending a bolt of pain racing from her scorched backside, through her body, to her brain where it exploded like a lightning bolt. This was unbearable. He had to be stopped. She kicked and struggled, twisting and bucking on his leg, begging for mercy between each scorching spank. He wouldn’t listen, and her indignation turned to self-pity, then hot, scalding tears that streamed down her cheeks and dropped on the floor from her nose. She kicked some more, but she was
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powerless to escape. Her poor butt would be blackand-blue, she thought despairingly. She wouldn’t be able to sit for weeks. “I’m sorr-ee,” she screeched when the pain had grown too much to bear. “That’s a start,” Rod said cheerfully, still whaling away at her scarlet wobbling cheeks, “and this is the finish -- for now.” He stopped and rested his hand on her bum. He was a bit alarmed at the way it twitched and jumped without Candace doing anything. But, he figured, she might as well know the worst right from the start. Spanking was a serious affair and not for fun. Candace gasped and gulped air as if she hadn’t breathed for minutes, which she hadn’t. At least, she’d stopped crying. She didn’t like to think she was so easily brought to tears, not by pain, anyway. Her cheeks were burning, all of them, and the lower ones ached. Taking stock, now she could think and feel rationally again, she’d survived her first serious discipline pretty well. The thought of the six more days to be dealt with before she could get up off his lap gave her goosebumps. Only most of the things on those days were just itty-bitty complaints, so she could survive them too. Today’s argument with the waiter would be hard to bear, Rod had already pointed out it was a repeat offense, but that came right at the end. His hand stroking her bottom was wonderfully soothing, like calamine lotion on a rash. It was almost worth the spanking just to feel how good it was – almost, but not quite. She’d have to improve her behavior because she couldn’t go through this every Friday night for the rest of her life. It hurt! Somehow, she’d missed that now obvious fact when she’d been thinking this through. So, did she lie here and take the rest or leave? He wouldn’t stop
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her if she did leave; she knew that. It was up to her, and she couldn’t decide. Candace’s silence was a concern to Rod. Her agitation had died away, and now she lay quietly, still jackknifed, over his lap. Somehow, her angry demands to be let up were more reassuring than this silence punctuated only by occasional sighs. Rod stroked her rounded curves, keeping his fingertips well away from areas that would send her the wrong signal. Her discipline wasn’t over yet by a long way, and she needed to know it. He waited patiently until she squeezed his hand, and he breathed a silent sigh of relief. He could continue. “Now we come to last Sunday,” Rod said lifting the sheet of paper from the floor. “Your behavior that day wasn’t bad, mainly because we didn’t go anywhere or do anything, and I’m too easy on you…” That was true, Candace thought, but it seemed to be changing. Her hot bot suggested he’d decided to be firmer. Would it last? Now she was past the first, worst, disciplining, she was proud of herself, partly because she’d taken it so well but mainly because she’d chosen and trained him so well. “And you aren’t paying attention again,” Rod said in exasperation, slapping the backs of her legs till she cried out for mercy. “I was internalizing what you were saying,” Candace said in what she could hear was a very whiny voice. “Isn’t that what I should be doing?” “Don’t get smart with me, young lady,” Rod replied, slapping her legs again until she said she was sorry. “What you don’t seem to be getting,” Rod said sternly, “is that all these lapses are going to be added on at the end.”
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“What!” “You heard. These are all Friday failings, and you’ll be punished for them when we reach Friday. We’re a long way from there just now, so you might want to behave better to save yourself from an even more unpleasant few minutes at the end.” “No fair,” Candace grumbled, though she found she rather liked the idea. Now the pain was receding, pleasantly sensuous feelings were emerging that suggested she was on the right track. She’d try harder to be good, and she’d enjoy training herself to be good. It was a win-win, if ever she saw one. Rod picked up the Friday sheet and used her nearer cheek as a desk while he added a whole new category called ‘How Did I Take My Discipline’ and wrote Candace up as ‘below expectations’. He also noted her lie in the ‘Attitude’ category under ‘unhelpful’ before returning the sheet to the floor in front of her face. “You can add the new category to the form later,” he said when she read and complained about the additions. “I think I’m taking my discipline pretty well considering it’s the first time,” Candace whined. “You don’t pay attention to what I tell you; you were slow in getting across my knee; I had to put you there, if you recall, and you keep trying to escape,” Rod reminded her. “Seems like you’d expect a body to behave that way, if they’re getting their bare butt whacked,” Candace said. Did he think she was just going to lie there? Would anybody? It hurt, for God’s sake! “The yelling and wriggling, I’ll accept,” Rod said, “but this whole program is your idea, and I’d expect you to be prompt in carrying out the terms of it.”
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“What was it about ‘I know where I want to be, but I can’t get there without help’ you didn’t understand?” Candace retorted sarcastically, until his hand smacking across the back of her legs made her squeal. When he stopped slapping, she added, “All I’m saying is I’m not good at doing things I don’t want to do, so I think my behavior has been better than you should have expected.” “Actually,” Rod said, “your behavior has been better than I expected. I marked you down as ‘below expectations’ because, as you so rightly said before you were bare bottom uppermost and over my knee, we’re trying for a higher standard of behavior in future. Or had you forgotten that in the heat of the moment?” “It isn’t the moment that has too much heat in it,” Candace replied, and then continued reluctantly, “and I guess you’re right, I was aiming for better behavior.” “Then that’s settled,” Rod said, “and we can return to last Sunday’s misdemeanors, which were only using foul language…” “And I’ve gotten better there too,” Candace interjected quickly to gain a few more pain-free moments. “You know I have.” “You have indeed,” Rod replied, agreeing to her assertion while being irritated by the interruption, “which suggests that you can improve without being spanked, if you put your mind to it.” Candace bit her lip. She could hardly agree without giving him an out, and she couldn’t completely disagree because it was true. His calm, polite manner when dealing with others had become her role model, and she was trying to emulate it. However, despite her discomfort only a few minutes ago, where she wanted to be in future was right
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where she was, over his knee having her bare bottom smacked. That thought lasted right up to the moment he actually smacked it, and she remembered exactly what it felt like. It felt like her butt was being roasted with a hot shovel. She felt someone his age should be taking it easy in case he broke a bone or something. As it was, the only thing likely to be broken was her behind. “Rod, please,” she gasped at last when the pain threatened once again to overwhelm her. Rod kept right on spanking, enjoying the sharp slaps that seemed to echo throughout the room. She was making a lot of fuss, but he could see clearly her bottom was only pink. When the pink was a deeper blush, he stopped to let her rest.
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Chapter Four Candace tried to rub her cheeks, but Rod held her hand tightly against her back, and she had to make do with kicking her feet to assuage the sting. She tried to imagine what her buns looked like now. They must be purple, she thought, whimpering in self-pity. She’d put herself into the hands of a brute, and her wisest course was to get away from him and stay away. “Monday,” he said, breaking into her bitter thoughts, “wasn’t so bad either. If the week had all been like Sunday and Monday, you wouldn’t be over my knee at all.” Candace listened carefully. She didn’t want to have any more questions asked she couldn’t answer, not with a maniac loose on her ass. When he realized she had no smart answer to make, Rod continued, “So I’ll deal with Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday all in one go.” Candace felt panic rising in her breast. Sunday had been okay, and he’d scorched her tush like she was a major criminal. Three days were impossible. “Rod,” she pleaded, “I can’t.” “There’s nothing you can’t do,” Rod said, “But right after this, I’ll give you a rest.” She felt his hand on her buttocks. It made her jump, and she wriggled in nervous anticipation, but he seemed to be checking out her behind. Normally, she would have been indignant at such casual manhandling. Right now, she hoped it meant a reprieve. His eyesight was obviously so dimmed with age he couldn’t see what she could feel. “I’m too bruised for any more,” Candace said, determined to make him admit his brutality and release her.
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Rod laughed. “Poor Candace,” he said, patting her cheeks playfully, “Your behind is a pleasing shade of pink and no more.” “It can’t be,” Candace cried, trying to twist round and see with her own eyes. It wasn’t so easy. All she could see were two rounded humps silhouetted against the ceiling, and they showed no color at all. The smacking had all been over the other side. Rod’s hand rose menacingly up from the two humps and swooped back down again. She saw the humps shudder, bulge briefly upward and felt the pain rekindled in her cheeks. Candace lay back down on his left leg, her breasts squished either side of his knee. She would run away the moment she was able, if she survived. She wiped her eyes with her free hand, but it was useless, more tears took the place of those first few, and she resigned herself to crying. She hated crying. The stinging slaps came to a halt, and she lay quietly considering her bleak future. There was Thursday and Friday to come, and they weren’t so good. She very much wished she’d been better behaved and vowed she would be next week, not that it mattered, as she was never going to see Rod again as long as she lived. “Up you get,” Rod said, assisting her by lifting his left leg. “It’s time for that rest.” Candace staggered to her feet. She took a step when he gently tugged on her arm but had to pause. Her knees felt like jelly. Her bottom was twice its normal size and was unbalancing her. She’d never make it to a bedroom, if that’s what he was thinking. He wasn’t. After only a few steps, she found she’d been placed in a corner like a naughty kid.
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“No!” Candace snapped. She shook his hand off her arm, pushed him aside and headed for the door. He was a dork, a total moronic jerk. This wasn’t about him getting off on pervy practices. It was about her getting her freakin’ act together, and she could do that without being beaten to pulp by a freakin’ lunatic. She stormed out, incandescent with rage, and slammed the door behind her. Rod watched her go. He wasn’t surprised. It was what he’d expected to happen, but still it made him surprisingly sad. Candace woke late next morning from a strange erotically charged dream. Her butt tingled, and her face felt hot. She slipped out of bed to examine her behind in the mirror. Last night, there’d been no bruises, just a pink blush, but today, she was sure, there would be. She was wrong. Even the blush was gone, and her rounded tush was unmarked. She returned to sit on her bed. Sitting made the tingling go so wild, Candace almost stood back up, but she didn’t. She let the feeling ebb slowly, luxuriating in the oddness of it all. When the moment passed, she returned to the mirror, still unable to believe her behind showed no outward sign of what it inwardly felt. Nothing had changed. No matter how she twisted, turned or bent to examine the rounded surfaces, the smooth ivory buns betrayed her. She’d imagined herself beaten to an inch of her life and instead discovered she was a just a wuss. As her fingertips ran across the soft skin, the tingling began again, and she knew what she must do. She slowly approached her bed, enjoying the growing feeling of anticipation, and then sat as carefully as she could. Once again, the tingling went wild. Candace purred with pleasure. Pleasure that was only slightly dented from realizing
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she’d have to grovel before Rod to get him back on her side. Her behavior had undoubtedly confirmed his judgment, and he’d be unwilling to continue spanking her without a lot of stroking. She cursed herself. After all the work she’d done to set it up, she deserved a spanking for throwing it all away. As the tingling subsided, her thoughts became more cheerful. He was a man, and she was a woman. She’d bring him round. Then there were those last three days to pay for, and she was done. He was a good coach, and next week she’d be a model citizen. One he’d be proud to know. ______________ “No!” Rod’s response to her suggestion she was ready for the rest of her spanking now was emphatic, as she’d known it would be. “But you will still advise me, won’t you?” Candace pleaded. She’d hung round outside his office tower most of the afternoon to catch him when he left, knowing if she didn’t meet him faceto-face he’d refuse to talk to her. She was right. His expression, his stiffness toward her all yelled louder than anything he might say that he was really mad. “Okay, but that’s all I’m doing,” Rod said firmly. “For the rest, you’re on your own.” Candace slipped her arm through his and joined him on his walk to his car, saying, “I guess that’s best. I didn’t take it very well, did I?” She grinned up at him, willing him to see the funny side of last night. “I told you how it would be,” Rod replied crossly. “I know,” Candace said penitently, “and I didn’t listen. I have to learn the hard way, I guess.” “Well, not from me, you’re not!”
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“Don’t give up on me,” Candace begged. “I haven’t given up on you.” She hugged his arm tightly and stopped, making him face her. “Please,” she added, “don’t be mad at me.” “It’s me I’m mad at, for letting you talk me into such a crazy scheme,” Rod answered ruefully. “I shouldn’t have let you do that.” “Sure you should,” Candace said. “It’s what I want. You’re upset because I was angry. It was the first time, and I overreacted, sorry. I can’t explain properly, but it was just too much. Don’t beat up on yourself. It was my fault.” Rod could feel the solid ground he’d thought he was standing on slipping away from under him. The big eyes and little girl lost expression were undermining firm resolve. “I think it would be best if you got experienced help,” he said. “I’m not cut out for this.” “This morning, I looked at my butt in the mirror,” Candace said. “There wasn’t a mark, and I realized what a wuss I had been. We can’t both be wusses. One of us has to be strong, and that has to be you so get on with it.” She gave him a mock serious glare to soften her words. Rod shook his head in defeat. “Be it on your own head,” he decided then, whispering in her ear, “or in this case on your bottom.” Talking like this in a busy street was more embarrassing than anything they might do in private. “Tabby needs feeding,” Candace said, tugging his arm to restart his progress to his car, “and I need coaching, so move it.” ______________ “Will you come with me to my parents for dinner tomorrow?” Candace asked later, when she’d been
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released from the corner and promised faithfully to behave better in future. Now they were ‘warmed up’ to the process, she felt a visit with her parents would be a bigger test. If Rod’s ‘coaching’ survived that ordeal, the band’s tour would be a breeze. Visits with her parents were always fraught with tension and frequently ended in unpleasant quarrels that became month long sulks. “Don’t you think they’ll want to have you to themselves?” Rod asked. Candace thought that was the last thing they’d want but didn’t say so. “They’re always interested in my friends,” she said. “They’re getting anxious about my singleness.” “I won’t be a help there,” Rod answered. “They’ll see me as too old to marry you -- and rightly so.” Candace laughed. “Trust me, they’d be pleased with anybody at this stage,” she said. “Anyway, I want you to go so you can fill in the form. My parents always bring out the worst in me.” “It sounds like a great evening umpiring and all, but…”Rod said sardonically. “I think I’m washing my hair tomorrow night.” “Thanks, I knew you’d come,” Candace said, correctly guessing he wasn’t serious and hugging him to show her appreciation. He was going to need lots of stroking to get through this one. ______________ “Mom, Dad,” Candace said when her Mom ushered them inside their tidy, suburban home. “This is Rod.” “Aren’t you…” Candace’s Mom, Maureen, began hesitantly. Her voice tailed away as she realized that, once again, she may be going where Candace would be furious.
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Rod, who had practice now at having complete strangers recognize him, nodded and said, “Yes, I’m afraid so.” “Oh, right,” Maureen said, looking at Candace quizzically. “I hit him with a beer bottle,” Candace answered her unspoken question, “and offered to buy dinner as recompense for the potentially huge sums of money he could get from suing me or, alternatively, the huge sums he may have to pay out if the court saw me as an abused woman.” “It seemed like a deal to me,” Rod added quickly. “I didn’t need any legal nonsense in my life.” “And you just hit it off,” Bill, Candace’s father, said with a laugh. “Erm, pun intended,” he added when all three stared at him in disbelief. “Something like that,” Candace said coldly. She hated her father’s sense of humor; it was so childish. In front of someone mature like Rod, someone whose opinion she valued, she found it particularly embarrassing. “Well, come in, Rod,” Maureen said to cover the chill that was descending, “Candace’s friends are always welcome.” She hustled the couple in to the lounge. “What’ll you have to drink, Rod?” Bill asked. “A beer, or are you a Scotch man?” “A beer’s fine, Bill, thanks,” Rod heard himself saying, though he rarely drank beer. His mind was absorbed in digesting the knowledge he could already feel Candace seething with rage at his side. “What about you, Candace?” “White wine, if you’ve got it,” Candace answered tersely. She was sure her father had placed an inflection of ‘Scotch man’ as another of his god-
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awful jokes, and it simply stoked her resentment. Every time she came home, there was always something. Either it was advice on something the news said she was struggling with, or disappointment at something the news had accused her of, or it was this too hearty sucking up to her latest boyfriend, not that there’d been many of those lately. None she wanted to introduce to her parents, anyhow. “We do,” Bill said brightly. “One wine, one beer coming right up,” he added as he set off for the kitchen. “I hear you’re going on tour again, Candace,” Maureen said. “Yeah, we’re on the road again,” Candace answered. “It’s a world tour now, thanks to Rod here and his brilliant piece of marketing.” “Is that what it was?” Maureen asked with what sounded like relief. “Not exactly,” Candace answered, “but that’s how it turned out.” “So it wasn’t marketing?” Maureen asked, looking from Candace to Rod and back again. “It was the best fucking marketing we ever had,” Candace said sarcastically, and then colored bright pink when she saw Rod’s stony expression. “It was an unfortunate incident where Candace and I acted without thinking,” Rod said. “The media saw it as a great story and flashed it round the world. Apparently, in the music business that counts as marketing, and the band got more venues to play.” “You’re a regular guy, Rod,” Bill said, returning with the drinks. “Does that make any sense to you?”
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“It wouldn’t in my day job,” Rod agreed, “but I can see how it would work in the Punk music world.” “Damned if I can,” Bill answered. “It seems to me they give away money nowadays for any dumb thing. I work hard for my money and watching it get handed out in wads for any old crap burns my ass. No pun intended.” “So why don’t you get yourself a share of it, Dad?” Candace mocked. “If it’s so easy, you shouldn’t have any trouble getting some.” “Can I get you folks anything to eat?” Maureen asked. “We already ate,” Candace answered flatly. “Rod?” Maureen continued. “I never knew a man who couldn’t find room for more. We have nuts and wings and things that go well with beer. Bill will want some anyhow, so…” “Mom, we’ve eaten,” Candace interrupted savagely. Rod, who’d been prepared to accept graciously to help the evening flow, felt stuck. If he overrode Candace, she’d see him as siding against her and grow even more agitated. Keeping quiet meant the food Maureen had undoubtedly prepared would be spoiled, which would annoy her. The evening was hardly begun, and it felt like it was about to end. “We did just eat,” Rod said, smiling, “but I’m sure I’ll find room in a while. Like you said, men are always able to eat more.” He hoped he hadn’t sounded too desperate to please, though it was how he felt. He should have refused to come. This wasn’t something a ‘regular guy mentor’ was equipped to cope with. Candace shot him a furious glare but recovered herself quickly. They’d talked about this on the drive
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over. She was going to try to stay calm, and he was going to smooth out any rough edges. Somehow, she’d imagined the rough edges being smoothed would be those of her parents, yet here he was going against her express wishes. He’d be the one to suffer, she thought savagely, because Mom always bought the cheap snacks at the local cutprice place, and Rod would be disgusted, she knew he would. And she’d be ashamed of her parents like she always was. “You’ll get fat,” she said to Rod, “and die of heart failure.” “I’ll do more at the gym tomorrow night,” Rod said. “Maybe that will be enough to keep me safe.” ______________ The journey back in the car from her parents had been in silence; a silence Candace wanted to break but decided should be part of their discussion rather than get lost in translation. When they reached his house, they spent a few minutes apart to complete their questionnaires before meeting at the kitchen table to review the day and, in particular, the evening. “Before we start reviewing,” Candace said, “what did you think? Are my parents dumb jerks who trample all over my tender feelings or what?” Rod hesitated. He didn’t know how she was going to react when he told her what he thought. This was the moment he’d predicted only a few days ago, the moment their friendship ended. “I thought your parents seemed a gentle, kindly couple who were doing all they could not to upset you,” he said at last. “They looked like people walking on broken glass with bare feet all night.”
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Candace wrapped her arm round his shoulders and, pulling him to her, kissed his cheek. “See,” she said, “I told you. You are the man for the job. You tell me the truth.” “If you already knew that, why do you need me to tell you?” Rod asked, aggrieved as well as relieved. “Because I didn’t ‘know’ that, I just thought that, and anyhow, it doesn’t help,” Candace countered. “I can’t stop myself going there already defensive and jumpy. There’s just too much history to forget.” “Then knowing for sure it’s your fault isn’t going to help either, is it?” “With you to help me, it will,” Candace said. “Not overnight, I’m not stupid. It’ll take some work and time, but we’ll get there. Tomorrow, I want you to join me and the band for lunch with our management team. They’re all dying to meet you, as you’re joining us on the tour.” “Is this another test?” Rod asked in dismay. Candace nodded. “’fraid so,” she said. “I’m hopeless at dealing with them too.” “I’m getting the impression your dinging me with a beer bottle is just your way of dealing with everyone,” Rod said with a rueful grin. “If you do it again, I’ll probably say ‘oh, that’s just Candace saying hello’.” Candace flushed pink and tears pricked her eyes. She blinked quickly to clear them. “Hey,” Rod said, hugging her. “I was only kidding.” “I know,” she replied, her voice trembling, “but that’s exactly what people do say when I behave rotten, and they usually laugh as if it’s a joke. Only it isn’t a joke. It’s a serious problem. No one calls or
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invites me places, anymore; I’m like that kid at school who no one wants to play with.” “I see,” Rod said cuddling her tightly to still her shaking. “I would’ve thought your publicist would love that sort of thing.” “She did when I was twenty, probably still does. But for me it’s just plain embarrassing when you’re my age. I’m not joking, Rod. I sit for days in my apartment without seeing anyone. People are afraid of what I’ll do, and you know what? I’m afraid too. It isn’t funny.” “That Courtney Love seems to get away with it.” “Does she? I’m not sure,” Candace said. “Anyhow, she isn’t a role model I want to follow.” “And who is?” “Madonna.” “Madonna?” Rod cried. “Yes,” Candace replied firmly. “She’s gone from rebellious U.S. schoolgirl, through a series of carefully managed steps, to dignified English Country Lady. She suits her behavior to her age. That’s what I want to do. Nobody should still be a bad kid at thirty or more.” “And I’m supposed to get you there?” Rod asked, even more alarmed than before at what she expected of him. “Of course, not,” Candace replied, hugging him. “You’re just helping me to see what I need to do to grow up. I’ll work on my next steps.” It was still too early for him to see the big picture. “Okay,” Rod said, “let’s ‘see’ what we each saw at this evening’s visit.” Candace grimaced. “It wasn’t good, was it?” “No, it wasn’t good,” Rod replied, taking Candace’s review sheet and laying it beside his on the table. “You rated your behavior as ‘My usual’,”
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he continued. “Was that your ‘usual’ at your parents? I rated it as ‘Worse than usual’ but I’ve never seen you with your parents before.” “It was pretty much how all my visits there go,” she admitted. “I may have been a bit more uptight knowing you were watching me, but I don’t think it made much difference.” “What is your problem with your parents?” Rod asked. “Why this awkwardness, I mean? Were they so bad? I can’t believe they were abusive, for example.” “Nothing like that,” Candace replied. “They were just in my face all the time. I could barely breathe.” “You don’t think they were just protecting you -you being their only child.” “What if they were?” Candace said sulkily. “It didn’t make it any easier to live with the prying and poking, always questioning what I was doing, where I was going, who I was seeing. I couldn’t stick it, so I left.” Her casual ‘I left’ sent a chill down Rod’s spine. “How did you leave, exactly?” he asked, praying silently it was all open and honest, no running away to live on the streets. “One day, when they were at work, I packed my things and moved out to a friend’s apartment in town,” Candace said defensively, rightly sensing that, as a parent, Rod wouldn’t like the sound of this. “I left a note,” she added, when she saw from his expression her intuition was right. “And was your note phrased in a way that set their minds at ease?” “I was very young and emotional,” Candace replied, squirming at the memory of the frantic search, the wild newspaper stories, and her parents’ abject groveling relief when she was found. She
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decided honesty was the best policy, even though it was likely to make things worse for her already tingling bottom. “I vented a bit…,” she hesitated before adding, “and suggested they’d driven me to suicide.” Rod shivered, trying to imagine how he’d have felt if his daughter had left such a note. “No wonder they’re scared of you,” he said. “And were you feeling suicidal?” “I don’t think so,” Candace replied, “but you know how kids are. They’re always imagining their parents will be sorry when they’re dead, particularly when the parents realize their kid was driven to kill themselves by the parents’ unreasonable behavior.” “And now you’re older,” Rod said with deliberate softness, “you don’t feel you should cut them a little slack? Now you’re mature enough to recognize your own failings?” Candace blushed hotly. Even if she ‘kind of’ felt he had a point, and even if she ‘sort of’ thought she might be still behaving badly, it was no excuse for him to take their side. “It takes two sides to make a quarrel,” she said. “Why don’t you ask them to cut me some slack?” “Maybe because I didn’t hear a word of criticism from them the whole evening,” Rod replied. “Well it was there,” Candace cried. “I can feel it radiating from them.” “I think you took that feeling with you,” Rod said, “because I didn’t feel it coming from anyone but you.” “Maybe you’re too much of a parent to remember being a kid,” Candace snapped.
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Chapter Five “And you’re too old to be a kid, Candace,” Rod replied sternly. Candace lapsed into sullen silence and stared at the carpet, thinking, trust him to take their side; it must be some kind of geriatrics union that makes them think alike. Then she realized staring at the carpet might give him ideas, so she sat up and said, “How did you rate my attitude?” Rod turned his sheet, so she could read it clearly. “I thought you alternated between ‘sarcastic’ and ‘snarly,’” he said. “What did you think?” Candace showed him her sheet. “I saw it as ‘sarcastic,’” she admitted. “And language you thought ‘moderate,’” Rod continued, “where I saw it as mostly ‘cruel.’” “I thought I did okay,” Candace said defensively, “better than most times, anyhow.” “Then I’m glad I wasn’t there ‘most times.’ Grooming, I had some problems with, but generally, I thought it was ‘okay.’ You felt it was ‘okay’ as well, so at least, we agreed on one.” “So what were your problems, then?” Candace asked. “I may as well know.” “There was too much of your stage persona in your clothes,” Rod replied. “I doubt if there’s a parent in the world who really likes to see their thirty year-old daughter in punk street clothes.” “Well, I didn’t wear my ‘Screw You’ T-shirt,” Candace said, laughing. “For which we’re all eternally grateful,” Rod answered. He added, “I said it was okay. I just couldn’t mark it as ‘appropriate.’”
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“You’re probably right,” Candace agreed, “only they wouldn’t know it was me, if I wasn’t a bit outlandish.” “The ‘weight management’ question isn’t an issue,” Rod said, “but you were lucky I was there to drive you home. I don’t think your parents were impressed by your ‘alcohol consumption’ any more than I was. I rated you ‘unwise.’ You, I see, felt you were ‘moderate.’” “I usually drink lots more than that,” Candace protested, “so I was moderate.” “Moderate in my view doesn’t mean less than last time,” Rod said firmly, “it means in proportion to the occasion. Visiting your parents is a time for being sparing with your vices.” “So that only leaves the ‘how well did I take my punishment’ question to answer,” Candace said nervously, “and we can’t answer that until we know.” “We’ll know soon enough,” Rod said. “Take my chair into the living room; I’ll follow in a moment.” Candace did as she was told, anxiously glancing over her shoulder to see what he was staying back for. Whatever it was wouldn’t be good news for her bottom, she was sure of that. She was pleased he was taking her seriously over her need for correction, of course, but this possibly swift escalation in firepower was unnerving. She wouldn’t have minded a few more ‘moderate’ introductions to correction. She didn’t have long to wonder. Even as she was setting the chair in its usual spot, Rod was entering the room with the large wooden spoon she kept in the utensil drawer. Her heart rate skipped up to a new level, and she found it hard to breathe. While Rod settled himself in the chair, Candace
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edged gingerly round to his right side. After laying the spoon across his lap, a sight that forcefully reminded Candace that was where she was going, he unbuttoned her jeans, which almost unbalanced her because her legs were finding it hard to keep her upright; lying down would almost be a relief. Her pants and panties were sashayed over her hips and, as they were sliding down to her knees, Candace covered herself with both hands. She knew it was stupid, he’d see everything soon enough anyway, but it felt better. Rod lifted the spoon from his lap and said, “Over you go, young lady. We’ve a few things to discuss, and I need your undivided attention while we discuss them.” Candace wished she could think of a cute remark by way of reply, but she couldn’t, so she didn’t. Instead, she meekly crept across his lap, wishing she hadn’t invented this crazy scheme, wishing she’d behaved better at her parents, wishing he’d be more frightened and taking it slower, wishing she was anywhere but where she was, which was over his knee staring at the carpet with her bare bottom being patted with a large wooden spoon. “First,” Rod began, patting the center of each cheek meaningfully, “some new rules. One, from now on, when we visit your parents, you’re driving home so no more than one drink…” “The law allows two,” Candace protested. “We aren’t testing the limits of the law here,” Rod said. “We’re ensuring you have a head clear enough to control your own behavior and attitude.” He patted her bottom more forcefully to emphasize his point.
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“Okay, okay,” Candace said hurriedly. There was no sense in annoying him on such a small point. “If you’re offered a second drink, as I’m sure you will be,” Rod continued, “you’ll decline because you’re driving. If you seem to be going to do otherwise, I’ll step in and remind you that you’re driving. At that point, you’ll decline graciously. Is that clear?” Candace pouted. She’d only agreed to this stupid rule because she was sure she’d be able to sneak more drinks without him noticing, citing her Dad’s pressing them on her as her excuse. “Is that clear?” Rod repeated, rapping her quivering cheeks with the spoon. Candace squealed in surprise. That spoon hurt. It concentrated the force into a small round burst of pain that rattled her bones. “Okay,” she said, “okay.” “And if you don’t follow my prompt,” Rod continued, “you’ll get a double dose of whatever I’ve decided when you get home. Is that clear?” “Yes,” Candace muttered. “Good, now repeat it back to me.” “What?” “You heard. Tell me what you’ve just agreed to.” “I-I-I,” Candace began before realizing her brain had gone missing. She couldn’t remember what it was she was supposed to say. Rod spanked each cheek in turn, firmly enough to get Candace wriggling and begging him to stop. He stopped and waited until she’d caught her breath. “I can only have one drink at my parents’ house,” she said, the words tumbling out as she tried to make amends for her earlier obtuseness. “And?”
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“And if I’m offered a second drink, I have to turn it down gracefully.” “And?” “And if I don’t turn it down, you’ll remind me I’m driving, and if I still don’t turn it down, I’ll get double punishment when I get home.” “Good,” Rod said, “very good.” He patted her some more to ensure she stayed on edge. “The second new rule is, I get to see what you’re planning to wear before we leave, and if I don’t like what I see, you go back and change. Repeat back, please.” Candace had been expecting this and had already decided she’d go along with whatever he suggested, so agreeing was easy. Her wardrobe didn’t extend to too many things he’d find acceptable, but there were enough for her to get by. She dutifully repeated his words, happy she seemed to be escaping reasonably unscathed. Her bottom was warmed but not aching. “The next bit is more difficult, but it’s vital to getting your relations with your parents reestablished,” Rod said. “Next time we go, you’re going to apologize to your parents for the way you left home.” “That’s not fair,” Candace cried. “They should be apologizing to me for driving me to do it. Anyhow, they won’t care. They’ll be embarrassed by an apology after all this time.” “It isn’t for them,” Rod replied, patting her cheeks again sternly, “it’s for you. They’ll never trust you again as long as they live, so you’re right, they won’t care. You, on the other hand, need to put this behind you and, who knows, when you’ve apologized to them they may apologize to you.”
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“I won’t,” Candace said angrily, “and nothing you can say will make me.” Rod raised the spoon up high and brought it down sharply on Candace’s right cheek. She shrieked and tried to escape. He wrapped his arm around her waist and peppered her buttocks with a flurry of firm spanks. Candace yelled and kicked, wriggling hard to escape the punishing swats. The spoon was a fiery tool, and it was imparting a lot of its heat to her. “Stop,” she cried as the pain grew unbearable. “Please.” “I’ll stop,” Rod said loudly above the din of spoon smacking on bare skin and frantic howls from the other end of Candace, “when I hear you agreeing to apologize.” “All right,” Candace yelled, straining to escape from his tight grip, “all right.” “There,” Rod said, laying aside the spoon and running his hands over her hot bot, “doesn’t that feel better?” “It feels better because you stopped,” Candace said crossly. “It still hurts.” “So tell me what it is you’re going to do when we next visit your parents?” Rod asked, ignoring her complaints. “I’m going to apologize for running away from home fifteen years ago,” Candace replied sarcastically. “It’s dumb.” Rod picked up the spoon and whapped each cheek six times while Candace howled and fought to escape. When she began to bawl, he stopped. “Now,” he said reasonably, “tell me again what you’re going to do next time we visit your parents.” Candace couldn’t speak at first, she was too busy sobbing and gasping for breath. Finally, with a
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supreme effort, she repeated what she’d said earlier but without the offending comments. “Better,” Rod said. “You’ll prepare your apology and run it by me before we go. Now, about your attitude…” he raised the spoon and smacked her soundly for a few minutes. Candace struggled to soften the blows, but the spoon landed plumb center of each aching cheek every time. She felt like her butt was being beaten flat, and it hurt like anything. Crying, pleading, and begging didn’t make it stop. Only when she gave up and sobbed pitifully did he take pity on her and throw the spoon aside. Candace was too far gone to even notice. Her butt pulsed with bursts of pain, and each throb felt just as if the spoon was still landing. “You can get up now,” she heard Rod say, but she didn’t want to move -- ever again. She felt her only hope of survival was to lie very still. Rod stroked each hot orb and watched the center turn steadily bluer. He felt a twinge of concern that he’d overdone this. She usually bounced up afterwards, but not this time. It seemed a lifetime before Candace began to lift off his lap and slide down to the ground, landing on her knees. Candace wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands and looked up at him timidly. He looked very stern, much more severe than she’d ever seen him, and it made her shiver. Had she picked a homicidal maniac to guide her? “You okay?” Rod asked. “I’m okay,” Candace replied. Then she added feelingly, “That spoon hurts.” “I guess,” Rod said. “It needed to hurt to break through the years of walls you’ve built around your heart to keep out your parents.”
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“It isn’t my heart that’s hurting,” Candace said wryly. “Isn’t it?” Candace considered for a moment then said, “You know, you might be right.” Amazingly, she did feel as if a great weight had been lifted from her chest. Who would have guessed the way to a woman’s heart was through applying heat to her behind? “You’re good,” she said nodding happily, “very good. You could charge a fortune for this cure and have some fun while you’re doing it.” “It wasn’t fun,” Rod said soberly. “It scared the shit out of me.” “Then we’ve both come through our ordeal stronger for having experienced it,” Candace said with a shrug. “What’s your rating for the last question on my form?” “Noisy, but acceptable,” Rod said. “And what was your rating?” “I thought I did very well considering how much it hurt,” Candace replied. “I won’t sit for a week, but I guess that’s the idea.” “You’ll sit,” said Rod, “and when you do, you’ll get a reminder of tonight and a warning for the next time we visit your parents, if you don’t behave when we’re there.” Candace grimaced. “I’m thinking I won’t ever visit again,” she said. “We’re visiting again just as soon as your tush is recovered,” Rod said, “so you get the apology out of the way before you go on that tour.” “Do I have to?” Candace whined. Rod took her by the ear and marched her to the corner of the room. “And here you’ll stay until I hear a more positive response,” he said, slapping
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her bum before leaving her to brood on the meanness of mentors. ______________ “…and this is our manager, Zak,” Candace concluded with a flourish. She’d introduced Rod to the band and its small group of support staff, all the while wanting to laugh out loud at the way she felt. After the journey to the company offices, her butt ached and tingled in turns, so she could hardly concentrate on the people she was introducing. The effect was so peculiar she wanted to show them all her bruises, and yet she was terrified they might guess what had happened just from looking at her without showing or saying anything. Rod nodded at the assembled gang and took his seat beside Candace at the huge round table of the meeting room. Out of their Punk uniforms, they were an odd assortment of men. Dull beyond belief and as unlikely a bunch of ‘stars’ as Rod could imagine. The phrase ‘scrub up well’ came to mind, if you could describe their stage presentation of outrageous hair, clothes and makeup as scrubbing up well. “We owe you a big ‘thank you’, Rod,” Zak said with a nervous laugh. “Thanks to you, we’re hot property.” “So Candace tells me,” Rod responded. “Apparently, I have a talent for publicity.” “Any more ideas?” Terri, the publicist, asked. “Sorry,” Rod replied, ruefully shaking his head. “That was my one spark of genius.” “And it was a good one,” Zak said, “now we have to capitalize on it. That’s what we’re here for, to organize ourselves for the tour.”
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“Tour organization’s your job,” Shane, the rhythm guitarist said sourly. “We don’t need to know anything other than it’s arranged.” “The last tour,” Zak replied “wasn’t a success because we didn’t set some rules upfront. This time I want things agreed to before we leave.” The discussion began amiably enough, with each member assuring the others ‘he didn’t mind what they did so long as the others were happy.’ Rod knew from his own experience this wouldn’t last, the devil being in the details. And sure enough, as soon as Zak began outlining his suggestions, objections began to arise. The idea the band should travel and stay together was unpopular immediately. “We’re not kids,” Rocco, the drummer, said, speaking for the group, “If you need us somewhere, tell us where and when, and we’ll be there. We don’t have to be a crocodile like a fucking daycare outing.” There was a general nodding of heads at this. “Guys,” Zak said, “It’s not that simple. We’ve interviews lined up at every city, and we need you together as a unit. We gotta kill the rumors about the band not getting on.” “Hanging out together for the cameras will just look like we’re putting on a show,” Gordy, the lead guitar, said. “It’ll cause more rumors, in my opinion. Anyhow, I’m taking my partner with me, and I’ll be spending my time there, not with these jokers.” “And I’m taking my new behavioral coach with me,” Candace said, gesturing at Rod, “so we need space.” Rod saw the band members eyeing him suspiciously. He sensed that even his presence was making them uneasy and more guarded in their
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speech, which may or may not be a good thing. If they moderated their speech, maybe it would moderate their behavior. Alternatively, they may be more likely to be difficult if Rod appeared to be having an influence over Candace that they couldn’t share. Rod decided to stick it out and see how the meeting went. He could leave if his presence became a real problem. Zak shrugged. “Okay,” he said, “but you’d better be there when we need you,” he glared at them, “all of you.” The band assured him of their obedience to his wishes, and Zak appeared satisfied. Rod personally thought their resolve wouldn’t last to the first interview, but he said nothing. Maybe they were different from his colleagues at work. Maybe the possibility of huge profits would be enough to bring them to heel. “Rod, as Candy’s behavioral coach,” Zak asked, “can I rely on you to see she’s there when needed?” “I’m sure Candace is mature enough to understand how important this is to you all,” Rod replied. He was taken aback by being put on the spot so publicly. The others crowed in mockery at his naivety, and Rod found himself flushing in embarrassment. “Fuck off, you cretins,” Candace said. “I’ll be there the same as the rest of you.” “Like in Chicago,” Bryce, the bassist, sneered. “And what about you in Seattle?” Candace shot back. “Why is it always me?” “Because it usually is you,” Gordy said. “We’re regular little nine-to-fivers compared to you.” “You’re right,” Candace replied hotly, “You are nine-to-fivers. Without me, you’d all be teaching
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music to kids after school, if you were still lucky enough to be in the business at all.” “There’s no call for that, Candy,” Zak began. He hadn’t finished developing his point before Candace rounded on him savagely. “There’s no call for what?” she demanded, “for telling the truth? Don’t you remember you and me, waiting backstage for these jokers to turn up? The gig canceled? The tour canceled?” “We didn’t turn up,” Bryce replied sardonically, “because you did. Sure you were there, but you were the reason we weren’t. Maybe you’ve forgotten that, but we haven’t. The only reason we’re here today is cos Zak said you’re clean and have been for years.” “And who started me on that shit, you bastards,” Candace practically screamed in outrage. “Guys,” Zak pleaded. “Lighten up…” “And you fuck off, too,” Candace snapped. “You’re the one who pandered to all of our weaknesses, giving us anything to keep sucking us dry and dropping us when we imploded.” Years of brooding alone had given Candace a clear picture of the band’s success and downfall, even if it was a jaundiced picture. “I did what I could to keep a bunch of spoiled kids from wrecking their chance to make it big,” Zak protested. “Jeez, I kept you bastards going for two years past when you’d have crapped out. Is that so fucking bad?” “It is when you’re wrecking our lives for your own profit,” Candace snapped in reply. “It took me five years to get clean, and every day was a nightmare.” “And that’s my fault, how?” Zak demanded. His face was flushed with rage and, Rod could see
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plainly, fears for his safety. Candace’s accusations were undoubtedly just, but she was close to fingering him for arrest. “Candace!” Rod spoke sharply. There’d be no tour, no comeback if she didn’t stop, and unless a neutral intervened, she wouldn’t stop. Rod’s intervention hit Candace like a bucket of cold water. She fell silent, guiltily glancing at him from under her lashes. Her insides trembled at the expression she saw on his face. He looked really mad. Her bottom tingled in anticipation of their review and subsequent interview when they got home. Her mind, however, was awed by the way in which he’d come to represent authority to her in so short a time and not because of his hand or the spoon. She just felt he was her boss, and that was that. The group was also staring at Rod in surprise, partly because he’d shut Candace up when no one could have done and partly because they found they didn’t want to risk being slapped down either. Rod took the opportunity their silence allowed to impose some order on what he realized was a disorderly crew that had fallen apart the first time they were making a fortune so were unlikely to achieve much more the second time around when there was so little to keep them together. “The past is over,” Rod said sternly to the band, “and you’re all old enough to know better. Get yourselves focused on making something of the next six months, and then you can go your separate ways, if that’s what you want. Right now, you have a chance most people would kill for, so don’t blow it.” “Rod’s right,” Zak said, recovering faster than the others and anxious to re-establish his
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managerial authority. “There’s money to be made, and we all need it, so let’s go get it.” The group nodded and relaxed, even Candace, who said, “I need the money, that’s for sure. Sorry guys, I was out of line back there. Old habits die hard.” The group shuffled uneasily, and Rod guessed they were finding it difficult to come to terms with a Candace who apologized and were themselves unsure if they shouldn’t be accepting some of the blame as well. They were all subdued enough by the brief incident to allow the meeting to continue in reasonable harmony. Zak’s other suggestions were accepted without complaint, and Rod and Candace left the meeting with the group’s good wishes following them out to the parking lot. “So, what do you think?” Candace asked when they’d reached the car, and Rod still hadn’t commented on her performance. “About what?” Rod asked. “The tour?” “No! Well, that too,” Candace replied. “I meant my behavior.” Rod grinned. “You want to know how red your butt’s going to be, is that it?” Candace grinned sheepishly in reply. “Something like that,” she said with a nervous laugh. “You’ll have to wait until the review to know that,” Rod said. “I’m not going to make your afternoon easy for you.” “I am right about them,” Candace continued, bolstering her case for leniency. “They did introduce me to drugs, and Zak did supply us with them to keep us happy.” “I’ve no doubt that’s true,” Rod said, hugging her to his chest. “Just as I can see their argument
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that no one forced you to take the drugs, or that Zak didn’t do what he did to keep you all happy. It’s common enough in the entertainment world, so I hear and read.” “You think I should’ve kept quiet?” Candace asked as they drove out of the parking lot.
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Chapter Six “I think you’ve all got to look forward, not back,” Rod replied, “and you can provide the leadership they need to do it.” “I’ll try,” Candace said, “but I can’t promise to always succeed.” From what he’d said, his assessment of the meeting didn’t sound so bad, and the tingling in her tush ebbed significantly, which was a relief and, oddly, a disappointment. She hadn’t been looking forward to having her behind smacked sore, but… “No one expects you to,” Rod answered. “You did well recovering the situation today, and, if you can keep doing that, the tour won’t be wrecked by you.” He smiled at her and added, “Some of the others maybe, but not you.” “You’ll be there to keep me straight,” Candace said soberly. “Maybe you can work some magic on the others, too. I hope so, ‘cause I really do need the money.” Her springtime meeting with her accountant leapt forcefully to mind. Apparently, rehab had cost her most of her earnings, taxes took a lot, and the man had suggested she find some employment, otherwise, he’d have to drop her as a client. His words had been a shock to Candace, who’d been under the impression he worked for her and not the other way round. “Good behavior is catching,” Rod said a shade smugly. “When one person makes a stand, others follow.” “In your world, maybe,” Candace retorted, “not in mine. In this world, it’s a race to see who can behave the worst.” Her gloomy words worried Rod more than he showed. Even his brief review of entertainment
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‘news’ confirmed her diagnosis completely, and his own life experience wasn’t a reliable guide. Worse, he couldn’t be on the whole tour with her, he could only hope she’d be strong enough to stand up to events after he left. That evening, as they sat side-by-side, Candace saw her guess had been correct. Rod’s assessment of the day was much milder than hers. “You didn’t think my calling them untalented parasites was a tad extreme?” she asked. “It wasn’t helpful,” Rod agreed, “and I marked you lower on Attitude and Behavior because of that, but I felt you were provoked to some extent. There’s a lot of resentment in the group, and it’s mainly directed at you.” “They have reason,” Candace admitted. “I was out-of-control a lot, back then.” “And feeling that way makes you too hard on yourself,” Rod said. “An innocent bystander like me sees things differently.” “Maybe,” Candace responded, “but if you hadn’t called me to order, things would’ve gotten out of hand pretty quickly.” “But, when I did intervene, you apologized to them quickly and gracefully, which I thought a good sign. They didn’t respond nearly as professionally.” “You can coach them too,” Candace suggested, smiling at the idea. “People have to want to be coached for the process to work. Otherwise, it makes matters worse. I don’t think your colleagues see a need for coaching.” “You’re right about that,” she said, “but I think they need help as much as I do. They haven’t made the transition to regular life well, either. Anyhow, I
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don’t much care about their problems. It’s what my immediate future looks like that’s bothering me.” Rod laughed and shook his head by way of reply. Let her sweat. Another few minutes of anticipation would do her good, reaching depths of her soul that his hand on her bottom couldn’t reach. If Candace had been standing, she would have stamped her foot in exasperation. “Tell me,” she demanded crossly. He picked up the pen he’d been using and very deliberately ticked off ‘below expectations’ in the ‘How Did I take My Punishment’ section. “You don’t know that,” she complained. “As waiting to hear my decision is part of your punishment,” Rod said, “I can certainly say that. I’m the coach, and I decide what and when, and that includes when you’ll be told.” Candace flushed and bit her lip. He always seemed to be putting her in the wrong and, as this whole coaching thing was her idea, he should be doing it her way. She’d imagined that, once he was seeing things her way, she could let him manage the process, and it would run smoothly ‘her way.’ This disagreement, minor of itself, was a reminder that other people have their own ideas of what’s right. Could she accept his decision, or should she assume it was the start of things going horribly wrong? “Okay,” she said slowly, “but we can’t sit and look at each other all evening.” “We can talk about the coming weeks. In fact, we have to, because I’ve got to fit it into my work and vacations.” “So you’re not going to do anything about today?” Candace asked in dismay.
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“Not tonight, I’m not,” Rod replied. “It wasn’t so terrible that we can’t deal with it at our usual weekly review.” Candace nodded her agreement. She was so disappointed, she didn’t feel it safe to speak. The weekly review felt like it would never come, and Candace grew more and more agitated as the days went by. She didn’t see Rod every day, but when she did, she was snappish enough to warrant more than one trip over his knee, but it didn’t happen. This holding off was maddening, particularly as she was deliberately goading him into action. Finally, Friday evening arrived, and she made the trip out of town to Rod’s house in a state of nervous excitement and serious alarm. If he meant to make her pay for a week’s worth of wrongdoing in one evening, she wouldn’t be able to drive home after – not comfortably, anyhow. Rod had his daily assessment sheets already piled on the coffee table when she arrived and handed him hers with a sinking stomach. He looked very serious, grim even. It didn’t look good for her tush. “I wish you’d acted on some of those right away,” Candace complained, as she saw his expression turn bleaker while he read through her comments. “I’m sure you do,” Rod said sternly, “but I’m not allowing you to play games with this. The only reason I agreed to do this was to help you overcome a serious problem, not to give you an out every time you felt like being a pain.” “It’s the same thing,” she protested. “I don’t just feel like being a pain; I can’t stop myself, and
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it’s not handling all the little aggravations well that sets me up for screwing up the big ones.” “I can believe that, but this week you were seeking attention, and I’m not giving in to that. If you want to play spanking games with your boyfriend, that’s fine by me. I’m here to administer discipline, and that’s a lot different.” “I don’t see how,” Candace said stubbornly. “We agreed everything wouldn’t wait till Friday, and now that’s what’s happened.” “It didn’t ‘happen,’” Rod objected. “I decided to do it that way to teach you a lesson, one you won’t forget in a hurry, and the lesson is, don’t play games with me.” Candace pouted and said nothing. He was a pompous prick. Who did he think he was? It was her idea; the whole thing was her idea, and he was wrecking it. She should fire him right now before this went any further. She was coming to this conclusion when Rod’s voice interrupted her stream of angry thought. “At least, we agree on the seriousness of your offences,” he said. “So, we should have agreed on what needed to be done about them,” Candace snapped, “only you’d gone off on some self-righteous tangent.” “I saw different motives,” Rod replied, “and felt they needed addressing as well because I want to nip them in the bud. I think tonight will go a long way toward doing that.” Candace didn’t like the sound of this. It sounded painful. It sounded like she might get hurt, and, despite her frequent yelling, she hadn’t ever really been hurt. She should walk out while she could, before anything began. She was about to do just
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that when Rod stood up and, grasping her ear, hauled her to her feet. “Hey,” she said, holding his arm, “that hurts.” “It won’t, if you stick close to me.” He marched her into the kitchen, where Tabby watched them arriving. She stared at them suspiciously, concerned they were planning to raid her bowl. “I want to go home,” Candace said when he released her ear and began pulling a chair out from the table. “You can go home when I’m finished with you,” Rod answered, setting the chair to face away from the table. He began unbuckling his belt. The clinking of the metal buckle and the swishing of the leather as it slid out through Rod’s waistband gave Candace a funny feeling inside, unlike any of the other preparations she’d had the dubious pleasure of standing through. “I-I,” she began. She wanted to say ‘I want you to stop’ or ‘don’t you dare’ or anything to bring him to his senses. Leathering her ass was a phrase she might use, but it wasn’t something she expected to happen. The belt was a particularly heavy looking thing, thick, worn, and supple, more suited to a farmer than a suburbanite like Rod. While she stood rooted to the spot, eyeing the belt in horrified fright, he was laying it over his lap and taking hold of the hem of her skirt. “No,” she squeaked at last. “Please, Rod. I…” She never got to develop the thought further because with a swift tug, her skirt was flipped up, and she was tumbling across his lap. The feeling of comfort that usually brought was drowned in a rising tide of panic. She grabbed the belt and tried to throw it away, but he’d already gotten a hold of the buckle end, and it was jerked out of her hand.
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The ominous clinking of metal set her insides leaping, and she couldn’t decide if it was terror or pleasure that was uppermost. What was uppermost were her buns, something she was reminded of a moment later when she felt her panties sliding over them. She grabbed at the descending cloth and got her hand slapped for her pains. “You forgot the assessment sheets,” Candace cried, trying to delay the inevitable as long as she could. “I don’t need any sheets just yet.” Rod wrapped the leather around his hand to leave a manageable tail for her tail. “First, I’m going to deal with your motives this week, and only then am I going to deal with what’s on the sheets.” He drew her close against his stomach and tucked his left hand under her waist, anticipating he’d need to provide her with some additional support. Candace now knew what the feeling inside was; it was sheer terror. She struggled to escape but found she was stuck. There was nothing for her to get any leverage from - his legs were spread wider than usual, and she was laying flat across them. Neither her hands nor her feet reached the ground. The belt flopped down across her butt, and she froze. Then it lifted off her skin, and she kicked her feet in alarm. “Rod, stop,” she managed to call before the CRACK of leather on skin shocked her by its noise, and a second later a wave of stinging pain seared its way through her nervous system to her brain. “Yee-oww,” she screeched. Candace twisted around to plead her case and saw another stroke land squarely on her buns. She put her hand across her butt to protect it but had to watch in dismay as Rod took hold of her wrist and quickly tucked it
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under her waist with his hand. Now her bum was defenseless, the belt lashed down again, and she yelped in anguish. Rod found the belt a bit hard to manage at such close quarters. It needed a longer swing to be really effective, he thought, though Candace seemed to feel the results well enough judging by the noise she was making. Even the wooden spoon didn’t produce such a fine display of lap dancing. He pulled her head and shoulders closer under his left arm, which had the effect of swiveling her behind away from him. Her right leg slipped between his knees, and he had to clamp his legs together to prevent her rolling off his lap. The belt now landed diagonally across her cheeks, and he had more room to swing it, an altogether improved position in his mind. Candace obviously agreed, for she hollered louder than ever. With her head now behind his back, Candace couldn’t see the belt landing. She didn’t need to. She could feel it worse than ever and had the ‘pleasure’ of seeing how high and how far back he was swinging it. Just knowing how far it was traveling before scorching her already fiery tush was enough to send fresh waves of panic through her. He couldn’t seriously be planning to punish her for each misdemeanor on top of this, could he? The nightmare ended when she was in tears and begging forgiveness, which she’d known would be the case, but had fought against for as long as she could. He let her recover a little, twitching and sobbing on his lap, before helping her to her feet. Candace clutched her burning buttocks, feeling the heat against the palms of her hands, trying without much success to hear the lecture she was getting. She heard so little, it was a surprise to her
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when she found herself being guided into a corner to reflect on her behavior. Her sulky acceptance of her fate was not helped when, as her own agitation quieted enough, she could hear Tabby purring. Sulky acceptance turned to outraged indignation, but self-preservation prevented her from speaking the angry words on her tongue. After all the times she’d been nice to that cat, this was her reward! She heard Rod leave the kitchen and pick up the assessment sheets in the other room. Fresh tears sprang to her eyes as he returned, studying them as he walked. “Rod…” she began timidly, but at his stern response ‘I said, not a word’, Candace fell silent. She couldn’t afford to add to her already unimaginable total of swats still to be delivered. She began to snuffle again, though she tried hard not to, and her arms trembled above her head. “The meeting with your fellow band members and manager comes first,” Rod said almost conversationally. The tone of his voice wasn’t harsh, but it didn’t have to be. Candace knew where that was leading, and she began to cry properly, large tears coursed down her cheeks. It wasn’t fair. The spanking for her behavior that day deserved to be hard, but it should have happened then, not now. She wouldn’t be able to bear it after the belting she’d just received. “Come here, Candace,” she heard him say, and her stomach flipped. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t walk across the room back to where he was now undoubtedly sitting. She stopped herself shaking her head, hoping to spin out the time long enough to find an escape. Why had she thought this would be an okay thing to do? She must have been mad.
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“Candace, get your butt over here, now!” With no great plan for escape miraculously appearing in her brain, Candace found herself turning toward him. He was sitting, lap ready for her. Her hands left the top of her head, where he’d placed them when he’d left her in the corner, and returned to soothing her aching tush. The distance across the floor to Rod was no more than six paces, but it looked like a lifetime’s work to get there. Nothing would make her feet move; she was sure of that. “I won’t ask again,” Rod said, still in a conversational tone, “but I’ll give you some further information to help you decide.” He paused to see if his words were registering, and she looked bemused, stunned even. When he saw her eyes glance quickly to his and then down again, he decided she was aware enough to take note. “If you come here and present yourself for punishment for the way you behaved at the meeting, I intend to give you a suspended sentence on the rest of the week’s behavior. That is, you won’t be punished for it unless it happens again, in which case you’ll be punished for the new offence and the old ones. Is that clear?” Candace nodded, unable to speak. “If, however, I have to go over there and get you,” Rod continued, “I’ll carry out every punishment on these sheets tonight, one after another until you wish you’d never been born. Is that clear?” She found her feet could carry her the distance after all, and practically fell across his knee in her eagerness to get the reduced sentence. In a moment, she was as tightly gripped as she had been previously, her head and shoulders behind his
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back, her middle balanced on his right knee, which felt surprisingly sexy, and her legs dangling precariously to the floor in front of him. The belt again flopped onto her bottom and made her jump. “Next meeting we attend,” Rod said, “we’ll practice some coping strategies before we go.” “Yes, Rod,” she answered meekly and was rewarded by seeing the belt swing up beside his head before hearing it whistling back down again. Her tush, just recovering, felt like it had been branded, and she shrieked in pain. “The others should be getting this too,” Candace said when he paused to examine her butt. Now she was getting it, it didn’t seem too bad. Maybe her ass was numb. “I agree with you, but,” Rod replied as he wrapped the belt back around his hand, “my job is to correct you, not them.” He measured the belt along her nearest cheek and felt her start in alarm. Candace wriggled in fearful anticipation and found the movement produced electrifying sensations where her weight pressed her pussy forcefully against his bony knee. She’d only just begun to wonder if he knew what was happening and what he’d do if she came, when the belt landed and drove out all such thoughts from her brain. ______________ “Right, children,” Zak said to the assembled group, “I expect you at the studio by midday, as promised.” The band members gave muttered sounds that were meant to be taken as assent, which Rod interpreted as determination not to appear for the first interview, and shuffled away to enjoy their free time in this first city of the tour. The early fall day in
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Boston was damp, with a chilly wind blowing from the sea and the morning drive from the airport in a cramped limo had set a dismal tone among the band members, few of whom seemed like morning people. “Get your coat,” Rod said to Candace. “We’ll go out and get some fresh air.” The thought of being trapped in the hotel with a bunch of cranky musicians gave Rod the shivers. “It’s raining,” Candace whined. “You won’t melt,” Rod replied unsympathetically. Candace made her feelings plain by pouting, but she followed him out into the salt-scented air where the fine mist soon clung to her hair and clothes, chilling her. The streets were busy with commuters hurrying from buses into tall office towers, and the sight of their pinched, stressed faces really made Candace shiver. If the tour didn’t make money, she could be a regular worker by this time next year. She had to keep focused, and she had to see that the band stayed focused, or she was dead. No way could she punch a clock for the rest of her life. “You look worried,” Rod said. “What’s on your mind?” “This,” Candace replied, motioning to the crowded sidewalks. He wouldn’t understand her fear; he lived in this commuter herd every day. For him, it probably looked okay. Maybe it was why he wanted to come outside, anyhow, to feel safe among the jostling bodies. She slipped her arm through his and pressed close to him. “You see more people than this at your shows, don’t you?” Rod asked. “I see them,” Candace replied with heavy emphasis of the ‘see’, “but unless I’m very drunk, I don’t get in among them.”
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“Which goes some way to explaining why you lashed out that day,” Rod said seriously. He hadn’t realized. “We’ll find a quieter place to walk,” he added, guiding Candace back to the hotel and into the lobby where he felt her grip on his arm relaxing quickly. “It wasn’t that bad,” Candace protested weakly. Rod got directions from the Receptionist for nearby parks while Candace waited. She felt guilty about making difficulties for him, and yet she was relieved to be away from the crowd. “You go,” she said, when Rod returned. “Don’t let me stop you.” “You aren’t stopping me,” Rod said with a smile, “and you’re not stopping you either. There’s a park just out the back of the hotel.” He took her hand and led the way. “How fresh can the air be in a city this size,” Candace grumbled as they stepped out again into the damp morning. She slipped her arm through his and pressed close again to keep out the cold. “Fresh enough to wake us up,” Rod replied, “and put some color in your cheeks.” “Seems to me you spend a lot of time putting color in my cheeks, already,” Candace said and wished immediately she hadn’t, for she felt him stiffen, and a wooden expression replaced the smile on his face. “Just kidding,” she said squeezing his arm. “Are you sure?” Rod asked, stopping to face her. “I’ve always thought you’d get sick of being treated like a naughty kid, and it sounds to me like you have.” “I’m sure,” Candace replied. “Don’t give up on me now. Not when we’re getting somewhere.” She met his gaze, willing him to relax, seeing the doubt
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in his eyes and cursing her careless words. If ever she needed a spanking it was right now, when she’d almost wrecked her own carefully built plan. “Okay,” Rod said coolly, “but you tell me when you do.” He tucked her arm more tightly under his and set out again. “I will,” Candace agreed, relieved her plan had survived the scare. She vowed silently to choose her words more carefully in future -- though she acknowledged with a secret smile, if she did, it would be because of his ‘coaching.’ ______________ The band assembled on time in the conference room where they were to meet the press, and Zak was all smiles, his chubby face beaming with pleasure. Rod couldn’t help feeling, looking from the band’s lean, drawn faces to the manager’s well rounded frame, that whatever problems the band had suffered, Zak had come out of it just fine. But then, he thought with a shrug, why shouldn’t he? He’d behaved as sensibly as anyone could in this crazy world of entertainment and deserved the reward that goes with it. The band behaved like spoiled brats and got what they deserved, harsh though that seemed. There was no faulting them today, however. They answered questions, speaking as well as any entertainer can about their latest ‘project,’ and generally behaved like the thirty-somethings they were. Rod hoped it boded well for the tour, but his nagging doubts remained. On stage, in front of the cameras, they may look the part. Away from the bright lights, their relationship was brittle and amazingly slight; they’d separated the moment
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they’d reached the hotel and had only come together minutes before the interview began. “That went pretty well,” Rod said when the interview ended, and Candace re-joined him. “Did it?” she demanded. “Didn’t you hear what that bastard Bryce said? The tabloids will be all over that.”
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Chapter Seven Rod’s complacency was shattered. He searched through his memories of the interview to see where his perception was wrong and finally hit on a phrase used. It hadn’t seemed so important, a gentle joshing between colleagues was what he’d thought based on his own experience, only his experience didn’t include tabloids, and Candace could be right; probably was right. “It didn’t seem so bad to me,” Rod admitted defensively. “This is where my lack of knowledge can’t help you, I’m afraid. Are you sure it will be a problem?” “Fu…” Candace began and then recovered quickly, “No, I’m not sure, but it’s likely. That’s what used to happen.” “If the tabloids do whip it up into a story, won’t it help the band and the tour?” “Which makes me wonder if Terri wasn’t behind it,” Candace agreed. “Helping the band and the tour is important, of course, but not damaging my future prospects is just as important to me, and reminding everyone of the past is exactly what I don’t want happening.” “Then we tell them,” he said, “at the next meeting.” “Sure,” Candace said derisively, “then they’ll all just start doing it.” Rod flushed angrily at her insinuation of his naivety. “We have to present it properly,” he agreed, “not just hope they’ll behave. We need them to see it’s in their best interests, too.” “And how is it their best interests, exactly?” she asked. “They really are a bunch of talentless jerks
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whose best hope is to make a killing on this tour and live small for the rest of their lives.” “Talking like that will destroy your chances as surely as anything they can do,” Rod said firmly. “We need the band to work together. As a team, you have an opportunity. As a bunch of squabbling aging brats, you have nothing. As you’ve already realized, the market for aging rebels is pretty small.” Rod’s return to ‘coach’ voice subdued Candace’s anger quickly. “So what do you suggest?” she asked. “We, you, need to have them see their future as being more adult,” he said, “just as you have come to do. If you sell them on that vision, they’ll realize they’re hurting themselves.” “My vision doesn’t include them,” she objected. “Maybe not,” Rod replied, “but for the purposes of the meeting, you need to. And anyhow, having the band move on musically into something more adult would be a good stepping stone for you. The people who make decisions in the business would see the progression, and you’d be closer to getting the roles you want.” Candace thought about his suggestion. It made sense, even if it meant her laying aside a pile of righteous resentment, which was the problem, really. She didn’t know if she could do it. “It’s worth a try, I guess,” she said at last, but without much conviction. “Do you think they’ll go for it?” “I think they’re as frightened about the future as you are,” Rod said, “and they’ll come round to the idea if someone takes the lead.” “This is what Zak should be doing,” Candace grumbled. “He’s the manager.”
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“So we get him on side first,” he agreed. “It will work best if he thinks it’s his idea.” “It should’ve been his idea.” “Zak has other artists in his stable,” Rod said patiently, “and he can always get more. He isn’t going to waste his time and money on a band that’s self-destructing. The band has to come to its senses, and you need to take the lead.” “They won’t follow my lead,” Candace said bitterly. “They see me as the tits and ass marketing.” “I think you’re misreading their anger. They’re angry with you because you should have led, and you didn’t. They see you as having let them down.” “You’re delusional,” she replied cynically. “They hate me because I got all the fame and most of the money, and they didn’t.” “But that’s my point, Candace. You were the lead; you were paid to lead, and you didn’t. You shirked your responsibility.” He saw her expression shifting from angry pout to aggrieved victim, and he hugged her to his chest. “I’m sorry to be so rough on you,” he continued, “and I’m not trying to make you feel bad. But you need to see where you can improve. If you want to be accepted as a serious person for serious jobs, you have to change, too.” “I don’t see how it’s all my fault,” Candace responded in a tone that, even to her, sounded suspiciously like a whine. “I didn’t say it was ‘all your fault’,” Rod said gently. “What I’m saying is you had a chance to lead them before, and you didn’t take it. You have a chance again, and this time you must take it.” “There’ll be fighting, if I do.” “And there’ll be fighting if you don’t,” he said, hugging her tightly again. “You may as well be
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fighting to make things better as fighting to make things worse.” “Okay,” Candace agreed, wearying of a discussion she wasn’t winning, “have it your own way. What are we going to do?” ______________ “That went pretty good today,” Zak said heartily, when the band gathered after lunch to prepare for the first rehearsal. “If you ignore Candy’s dissing us,” Bryce remarked sardonically. “Me dissing you!” Candace cried, “It was you dissing me.” “You started it,” Bryce snapped back quickly. “Guys,” Zak pleaded, “you’re both over-reacting. Drop it.” Candace and Bryce glared at each other but took his advice and said nothing. Zak turned to Rod and asked, “You’re an independent observer, what did you think?” “I saw it as harmless joshing between colleagues,” Rod replied, “the sort of stuff that goes on everywhere every day.” He paused then, before anyone else could take over added, “and the simplest way for it to stay that way is for you to be seen working together and blowing off suggestions to the contrary. Fighting among yourselves will add to the problem.” “Right on,” Zak cried, enthusiastically endorsing Rod’s words. “We got to hang tough; keep it tight, guys.” Rod nodded at Candace, who was biting her lip in frustration, wanting to speak but waiting for the right moment. Rod’s signal seemed to be it.
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“I’m sorry if anything I said this morning seemed to you like I was dissing you guys,” she began, looking around the band. “I certainly didn’t mean it that way. Like Rod said, I was trying to sound casual, you know, kidding around with the team.” She watched them to see their reaction. Most seemed okay with her explanation; only Bryce’s expression remained suspicious. “I think,” she continued, “we have a good chance at rebuilding our image with this tour, and we should take it, for all our sakes.” “Yeah, right,” Bryce snorted. Candace flushed but continued, “Yes, right. We stick together, keep clean, and get another CD put together for when we get back. Build some momentum, build us a future. Other bands have done it and we can.” “We can’t go on being punk rockers forever,” Bryce objected. “It’s ridiculous enough in regular rock stars; it’s ludicrous for punk stars.” “We change our image and take our fans with us,” Candace said. “They’ve grown up, too. They have kids and homes, or they’re divorced, separated from their kids, and all the rest of that shit. They want to hear that reflected somewhere. We still have things to say. We just got to say it differently.” The band looked skeptical, but even Bryce didn’t trash the suggestion, and Rod gave Candace a smile that said ‘stop there’. Pushing them wouldn’t work; they’d follow if they had someone to lead, but they needed time to see their future for themselves. “Will they go for it?” Candace asked Rod when practice was over and they were alone.
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“They’ll come back with questions,” Rod replied. “They’re not all going to be persuaded with one speech but, yes, I think they will. I think the past ten years have been as bad for them as it has been for you, and they’ll grab onto anything that gives them a chance at the big time again.” “The thing is,” she said, “I don’t entirely see my future with them, so they’re right to be suspicious.” “Don’t worry about that. They’ll have their own projects in mind. Let them argue for those, then, when the concept of both a shared and joint future is agreed, you can safely talk about your separate futures. You’ll see. They’ll come back and bargain for themselves.” “So how’s my performance so far today?” Candace asked, changing the subject. “Pretty good,” he replied. “If you keep this up, you won’t need a coach by the end of the week.” “I’ll always need a coach,” she said, frightened by the easy way he’d slipped in the suggestion of abandoning her. She searched his expression for evidence he was joking, teasing her, but she saw none. He looked puzzled at her words, and she realized he still didn’t get it. For someone like Rod, life was easy. You made sensible decisions based on sound judgment. He just couldn’t understand life wasn’t that way for everyone. For someone like her, life was a series of disasters brought about by acting on impulse, saying the first thing that came into her head and doing whatever she pleased and hang the consequences. It may look exciting, and on the upswing it was exciting, but few people were around when the consequences happened, and the downswing hurt only her and the few remaining people who cared for her.
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“Maybe the ‘end of the week’ is a bit ambitious,” Rod said, smiling at her worried frown, “but one day.” The nerves that were gripping her stomach relaxed a tad, and Candace smiled back tentatively. That would do for now. He’d learn soon enough he’d taken a job for life. “We should review my performance before the show,” she said, returning to her earlier question. “It’ll be too late after.” “Is that a good idea before you go on?” he asked doubtfully. He could see and feel her nerves stretched to breaking point. Running through a list of her faults didn’t seem like a good addition. “It’ll take my mind off of it,” Candace replied with a laugh. “Anyhow, today wasn’t so bad. The morning was below where I should be, but the afternoon was good, wasn’t it?” “That’s pretty much how I saw it,” Rod agreed. “So my time over your knee should be just fine,” she said, hugging his arm to her chest. “I’m almost looking forward to it.” Rod smiled and shook his head. They were on shaky ground here. If she was upset by it, and her performance wasn’t well received, she’d be more frightened, and their relationship would dissolve like flesh in acid. “Then let’s do it now,” he said. He didn’t want her upset too near the show. Candace finished her assessment sheet, and, seeing he was also done, handed it to Rod, who studied the two sheets for a moment. “We do see things alike now,” he said. “I’m not sure if I’ve moved to seeing things your way, or you’ve moved closer to my view, or we’ve both moved to a middle ground.”
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“It doesn’t matter which it is,” Candace remarked. “It means I can stop doing the assessment and rely on your judgment in future. “Nice try,” Rod said with a grin, “but you’re not getting out of it that easily. This was your idea, and if you start relying on me, you’ll stop monitoring yourself. No, we’ll both continue with the feedback sheets until we can both do without them.” This wasn’t how Candace had planned it, but she said, “Okay, you’re the boss.” “I prefer ‘coach’ or ‘mentor,’” he answered, “but in this case, ‘boss’ is right. On this point, I insist.” “So ‘boss’,” she said cheekily, “what’s the verdict today?” “I’m considering the evidence. Did the morning spat outweigh the afternoon progress, or was it the other way round?” Candace found herself hoping he’d decide on the negative side. She really wanted the comfort of his lap at this moment. She was trembling with fearful anticipation of the show, and some good oldfashioned discipline would settle a lot of nerves, she was sure. Rod stared at the sheets of paper in his hand and, surreptitiously, observed Candace over the top of them. At any other time, he’d have judged the afternoon’s conciliatory meeting to have outweighed the morning’s quarrel, but he could see the need in her eyes. He only hoped she knew herself better than he did. “It’s a finely balanced decision,” he said at last, “but I’ve decided this way. The afternoon went well; you did good.” He could sense the rising panic through her sharp intake of breath. “But that was because we’d talked it over and you were following the direction I’d laid out.” He saw her relax a little.
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“The morning was still where you’re at. Still not quite there when it comes to giving others the benefit of the doubt, so…” he paused to look her squarely in the eye, “as you suggested earlier, you’re not getting off without some correction, but it’ll be moderate. Get one of those chairs,” he pointed to the breakfast table of the suite, “and place it in the center of the room.” Candace carried out his orders, torn between pleasure at having her wishes met and irritated that she was moving the furniture. Surely, he should do that? He was the one who’d be sitting on it. She waited at the chair while he, provokingly in her view, shuffled the two pages and added them to the file they kept. If she was right about the spanking settling her nerves, it wasn’t working yet. His deliberate slowness, leaving her standing at the chair awaiting her punishment, was driving her mad. “Can’t you do that after?” she cried in frustration, as he set out to return the file to the drawer in the bedroom. Rod stopped and gave her a cold stare, which made her tremble even harder. She found it hard to meet his stern gaze and dropped her eyes to stare at the seat. “If you’re in such a rush,” Rod said, “you can get started by slipping down your jeans and panties; I’ll be back in a moment.” Candace bit her lip. Far from making things better, his orders made things worse. Now she was supposed to stand by the chair bare-bottomed while he took his time getting back to her. Her nerves couldn’t stand this. “No, I won’t,” she cried, not caring if things got worse for her behind. She needed him to deliver now, nothing else would do.
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“If I have to come over there and do it,” Rod said, “you’ll be sorry. Now get those pants down and be quick about it.” Candace felt as if she would burst. Half of her wanted him to come over and make her sorry, and the other wanted to demonstrate she was getting the better of her behavior, and the war between the two halves was fed by her fear of the show to come. Unable to act or speak, she glared at him in impotent horror at the future she saw collapsing in front of her. “I’m waiting,” he said meaningfully. His voice broke her furious concentration, and, without thinking, Candace undid the button of her jeans. She couldn’t break the eye-contact they were frozen into, and she fumbled with her zipper until it, too, was undone. “That’s better,” Rod said, turning away toward the bedroom. She found she was relieved; even that small piece of his attention had lowered her emotional turmoil, and she was able to slide her jeans and panties down to her knees with something like a steady determination. She clasped her hands in front of her. He was her coach, not her lover, and some dignity needed to be preserved. Rod returned the file to Candace’s bedside drawer and eyed the hairbrush lying on the dresser. Originally, he was going to use his hand, but her little outburst needed to be addressed as well. He’d never smacked anyone with a hairbrush in his life, but he knew they’d been a popular tool for discipline in days gone by. He picked it up. It was a heavy wooden brush, exactly the sort of thing an outraged parent would have used in the past. He took it with him.
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Candace saw the brush in his hand as he reentered the room, and her tummy flipped. His hand was what she needed, firm, warm, and, despite the circumstances, friendly. The brush would come between their human skin-to-skin contact and was, therefore, unwelcome, even if it had been her behavior that had brought about its appearance. “I thought…” she began, then stopped as she realized if she questioned his decisions all the time he’d walk away from the whole project. “You thought right,” Rod said, crossing the floor and plunking his butt onto the chair, “however, the backchat I just experienced needs to be added to the day’s review and dealt with a tad more firmly. That’s what this is for,” he added, waving the brush before her eyes before placing it on the floor at his side. Candace allowed herself to be assisted across his lap with a sigh of relief. Relief she was finally there, and also she wasn’t going to lose all the benefits she’d longed for. His hand hurt, she knew that, but it was so-o-o comforting. And that comfort began immediately as he placed his hand lightly on her bare cheeks. She wriggled into a more comfortable position, if there was one. She thought briefly how often the word ‘comfort’ came to her mind when she thought of these spankings. It was ridiculous, of course, to the ordinary person’s view to describe this as comfort, but so it was. She must be a very strange person. Only she’d paddled people on stage, lots of people, so she wasn’t all alone in her strangeness. She’d thought then they were kinky looking for a high, now she wondered were they just looking for the same comfort she felt.
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“First,” Rod said, when she was settled, “we’ll deal with this morning’s foolishness, and then, we’ll discuss the petulant outburst of a few minutes ago.” Candace didn’t reply. His comments didn’t seem to require a reply, and she was still mindful of her too-ready tongue. “What have you to say about this morning?” he asked. “Nothing,” she replied, studying the carpet that was only inches from her face. “I know I was to blame for most of it, and I’m sorry for that.” The carpet wasn’t as clean as it should be, she noticed, when examined from up close. Probably, very few people did examine it from up close, but still, this was an expensive hotel and an expensive room; she should complain. How she’d explain noticing the problem was a puzzle. “You’ve come a long way from when we started,” she heard Rod say, and for a second she was irritated. Why wouldn’t he just get on with it? Then she realized she’d missed a bit and tried to focus on the coaching. “…so as you’re now sorry when you misbehave, the correction isn’t going to help you learn that lesson. What it has to do is provide retribution that may remind you to behave better in future.” “I guess,” she mumbled, not sure the distinction was all that important. Her view was simpler; wrongdoing should merit punishment, and when it didn’t, she hurt inside, end of story. And further, as she’d discovered today, she didn’t believe doing something good could wipe out doing something bad. Good behavior was what should be expected of everyone all the time. It wasn’t an excuse for being bad somewhere or sometime else.
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“That wasn’t a very convincing reply,” Rod said, patting her bottom ominously. “Sorry,” Candace said, feeling goosebumps prickling her cheeks. “I was agreeing with you. I just didn’t express myself very well.” This being sorry business tripped off her tongue so easily now, she wondered if she really was or whether it had just become a habit she’d learned while trying to encourage Rod to be her guide. “I can help you there,” he said with a wry grin, “because I know you’ll be declaring your remorse passionately in a short while.” I’ll have died of boredom before then, Candace thought rebelliously. She didn’t, however, press her luck by expressing that thought openly. The hairbrush at the end was scary enough without encouraging him to use it from the start. But she wished he’d get on with it; waiting like this was psychological torture. “It seems there’s no more to be said,” Rod commented when Candace remained silent, hanging balanced from her middle, waiting patiently for him to begin. He was reluctant to do so. The fear this step would be a disaster sat heavily in his heart, almost outweighing her obvious belief it would help her through a difficult period. “Not by me, anyhow,” Candace replied. “Okay,” Rod said and smacked his hand down sharply on her further cheek. Candace gasped and gritted her teeth for the matching smack on her left cheek. When that came, she grabbed the chair rail and clung on tight. Each smack stung sharply. He was really putting some effort into teaching her a lesson. The spanks blurred one into another, leaving her gasping and kicking,
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fighting the urge to cry out, but feeling her defenses crumbling with each painful slap. “Am I getting through to you?” Rod asked, punctuating each word with a sound spank. “Yes,” she replied though gritted teeth. Her behind was on fire and seemed to be jiggling about in a peculiarly disconcerting way. Was it so big it could wiggle like that? “Good,” Rod said, spanking heartily on, varying the landing site and the angle of approach but not letting up on his work of turning her ivory skin red. She wanted this, and he intended she’d get it and get it so thoroughly she’d remember it when she was leaping about on stage. “I’m sorry,” Candace cried, unable to stay quiet any longer. “Please, I’ve learned my lesson.” She pushed herself up, only to feel his hand between her shoulders, pressing her back down. She scuffed her toes on the carpet trying to escape that way, but Rod lifted his right leg over his left, raising her so she couldn’t reach the floor with any strength, and all the while his hand flew up and down, scorching her burning butt. “Rod, please,” she cried desperately, “isn’t that enough?”
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Chapter Eight Candace’s bum was now tipped further over, and his spanks were landing on her most sensitive skin. It hurt like hell, and she regretted trying to escape almost as much as she regretted encouraging him to be firm with her. Why hadn’t she talked up her good performance -- and where was her earlier belief that good deeds shouldn’t mitigate bad ones? “It will be enough,” Rod answered firmly, “when you stop asking me to stop.” He changed his approach from a full palm and fingers to clipping her cheeks with just his fingers, like the flick of a whip. Candace didn’t appear to notice the difference, judging by her struggles. She clamped her mouth shut and hoped for the best. The spanks were sharp and stung like crazy. Tears filled her eyes, and she fought them back. She wouldn’t cry, not until that hairbrush, anyhow. She clung to that, and the chair, until he stopped. “Now,” he said, “I’m going to give you a moment to reflect on how you might behave better in future. Then we’ll take up the matter of this evening’s backchat.” Candace was too busy gasping and wriggling to fully understand everything he said, but the tone of his voice gave her goosebumps all over. Now he’d stopped, however, her earlier beliefs returned, and she was disappointed at her own behavior. “Do you have to wait?” she asked. “I’d rather get it over with.” “This isn’t only about you,” Rod said primly. “I’m the one doing all the work here, and I need a moment, whatever you may need.”
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She blushed even hotter than she knew she was blushing from the spanking. He was right. She was very thoughtless. She did see this as only being about her and her wishes, however strange they may appear to an outside observer. “Sorry,” she mumbled, “I didn’t think.” “That’s okay,” he said. “Your own part in this is necessarily overwhelming. There’s no reason why you should see things from my point of view.” Candace giggled. “Your ‘point of view’ would answer the old question, ‘does my butt look big in these?’” she said. “Your behind looks beautiful at any time,” Rod replied gallantly, “and more so when it has some color in its cheeks.” “By color, I guess you mean black and blue?” “Just a glowing pink,” he replied, “and very attractively so.” “Pink isn’t a punk color,” Candace objected. “My fans would expect black and blue, and they wouldn’t expect me to be lying here patiently waiting for my butt to be smacked.” “Maybe not,” Rod said, “but they seemed to like it last time it happened.” “That’s ‘cos there was force involved,” she answered thoughtfully. “They don’t have a problem with pain; they like it. What they’d find objectionable is me meekly accepting my punishment.” “That’s why you have to move on. You’ve grown out of that way of thinking to a more mature acceptance of how things should be.” “Getting your bottom smacked when you’re naughty doesn’t sound very mature to me,” Candace said, giggling again.
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“Well, it is when you know that’s what you need,” Rod replied. “And speaking of moving on,” he bent down to retrieve the hairbrush, which brought his face dangerously close to her elevated private parts and a realization his feelings weren’t as neutral as he tried to believe, “it’s time to discuss your evening performance.” She rolled her eyes; fortunately because of her position, a response he couldn’t see. “There’s nothing to discuss,” she said. “I was wrong, and you need to impress upon me that it mustn’t happen again.” “I’m glad we understand each other so well,” Rod said. “It won’t happen again, will it?” “I’ll do my best not to,” Candace said, “but I can’t promise.” “I think you will promise in a few minutes, but that answer’s probably the more correct,” he said with a wry smile. He patted her glowing cheek with the flat, shiny back of the brush ,admiring the way the color came and went as the gentle pats struck the surface. Candace gritted her teeth and clung on tightly again. It couldn’t be worse than the wooden spoon, could it? I was right again, she crowed silently the next morning as she scanned the morning news on TV and the Internet. Everyone said so. Well, almost everyone. One or two critics complained there wasn’t enough ‘attitude’ in the show, but that kind of criticism was music to her ears. ‘Mature’ was a common theme in all the reviews – and they were right. The band played like they’d been together forever, and she’d been better than she remembered, and without a drug anywhere. Meanie Coach Rod had even withheld alcohol before the
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show. Still, the main reason the gig had been a great success was because the pre-show tune-up she’d prescribed had worked, and Rod’s doubts had been wrong. “I told you so,” Candace said, pointing at the laptop screen where a particularly glowing review proclaimed success in bold headlines. “I should be the coach, not you.” “Like I said at the beginning,” Rod began, “I don’t have the kind of life experience to help you properly…” Candace’s jubilation disappeared at once, to be replaced by a cold, sick feeling in her stomach. “Don’t say that,” she interjected before he could talk himself away from her. “You have exactly the experience I need. I guessed right yesterday, but if you hadn’t followed through, nothing good would’ve happened. Your steadiness is what’s going to reestablish my career, not me ‘knowing.’” “Okay,” he said, hugging her briefly and immediately wishing he hadn’t. His feelings toward her were rapidly becoming anything but coach-like, and it bothered him a lot. Could he really spend a month in her company without kissing her? And when he did, what then? He almost wished he was at home living quietly with Tabby -- almost, but not quite. That day was the start of Rod’s education in what it means to tour with a band. The work wasn’t hard, they had enough roadies for that, but the hours were long and the boredom factor high. Every day, they were either traveling, or setting up, or rehearsing, or performing, followed by dismantling the equipment, packing it and then traveling again. It was mind-numbing days of nothingness
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interspersed with interviews and shows that set everyone’s nerves on edge. The band was behaving better; Candace was generally sensible, but they weren’t yet doing it naturally. There was a lot of tension in the air when they met -- so they met as infrequently as they could. Rod finally understood why he was so important to Candace. The band members either hung out together or with their partners or with some of the young women who they met at each stop. Without him, Candace would be alone. “That’s why you have to stay with me to the end,” Candace told him one day when they were discussing the tour. Rod gave her a non-committal answer. He understood why he should stay, agreed that for her sake he should stay, but knew he couldn’t. His pension and lifetime benefits were too close to lose now, although he’d never make her understand his view. Somehow, he had to build her up to survive the final weeks of the tour without his actual presence. Candace, for her part, felt her constant, steady pressure for him to become more than just a coach was paying off. The more he experienced her life, the less often he mentioned leaving. He was making the shift from ‘coach’ to ‘companion’ and, she knew, even further than that -- he just wouldn’t admit it, yet. He was moving her way, and she could afford to relax, sow seeds and not push. She’d helped him from nervous novice to confident coach; now she was helping him with that final step. It was easy, really; men were easy to manage when they were in love, and Rod was well on the way. “You have to meet the press,” Rod reminded her, to change the subject.
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“Yeah, yeah,” she replied. The band had its act together, and, despite attempts by the media to encourage fighting, they were hanging tight. The conferences and interviews were becoming almost a game. The press wanted dirt, and the band laughed them off. The press printed outrageous parodies of the interviews, and the band replied by setting other journalists to diss the previous ones in later interviews. They had the press fighting each other instead of the other way round. Life was good, and all because Rod kept her sane. “Yeah,” Rod said, “so go get ready. You can’t afford to take those people lightly. One slip and the new reputation you’re building is gone.” “Jeez,” Candace grumbled. “You’re worse than a mother, nag, nag, nag.” “I’m worse than a mother because you’re worse than a kid, and a teenager at that.” “Okay, okay, I’m gone, but you have to come and talk to me while I change.” This was happening a lot, and it also bothered Rod. Did she now see him as an aged parent, so her semi-nudity wasn’t a problem, or did she know how it made him feel, and it was a deliberate come on? Despite everything they’d done together, and the fact he’d seen the ‘private places’ usually considered as only for lovers, he couldn’t bring himself to attack this subject head on. Perhaps, he thought ruefully as he followed her back to her room, because he didn’t want to know the answer. Watching her change was torture, but it was torture he couldn’t miss. He’d become a dirty old man after only a month in her company; another month could only make things worse. He had to get out and force her to find someone her own age. ______________
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“I need some air,” Candace said after the media conference, surprising herself with an urge to be outside. “Those rats have me wound up tight.” The park near the hotel was quiet as people were rushing home from work, not killing time downtown. Candace slipped her arm through Rod’s, thinking how domestic it made her feel. It was as if they were an old married couple, a comforting feeling for someone who’d been living alone so long. Did he feel the same, she wondered. His life had been lived with a family, so maybe he was looking forward to some single years when he could just be Rod. “Performing takes a lot out of you,” Rod said, breaking into her thoughts. She grimaced. “To be honest, I was terrified at going back on stage,” she admitted. “Performing was why I got into drugs, and I don’t want it to happen again. It’s why I need you to watch me, so I don’t slide back into that.” She gazed up at him, willing him to say ‘yes, he’d stay for the whole tour’. Rod gave her a reassuring smile. “I’ll be here as long and as often as I can,” he said, “but you’ll be fine. You’re more mature now, and you’ve learned a lot since those days.” “Stay with me,” she pleaded, “please.” “We’ve talked about this. I’ll be with you for the first month of the tour; by then you’ll be back into your groove, and all these worries will be gone. We’ll talk on the phone every day after I leave, and I’ll join you for short breaks when I can. You’ll be okay, you’ll see.” Candace tried to feel reassured, but she couldn’t. He really had no idea. Every day since she’d left rehab, she’d wanted to experience a ‘high’
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just one more time. Back in her apartment, she’d been able to fight it. The gig in the park where she’d met Rod had almost broken her resolve, but his intervention gave her thoughts a new direction, and the moment had slid by. The tour had brought back the all too familiar ache, the overwhelming desire to score. Performing needed a larger than life personality; one she didn’t have without chemical assistance, and alcohol was barely enough. “I don’t feel like I’ll be okay,” she said at last, her voice wavering with disappointment at his obduracy. Why couldn’t she make him understand? “I won’t let you fall,” Rod said, squeezing her hand in his. Candace acknowledged his assurance with a smile, but she felt doomed. He could have no idea how an addict behaved, how easily an addict can hide their addiction in the early stages, even from people who are right on the spot. She gave herself a shake and changed the subject. “I used to hate being outdoors,” Candace said. “Now I love it, when I’m with you. And it’s working. I feel better getting away from the hotel and the others.” “I love it when I’m with you too,” Rod said, and he meant it. “Do you?” Candace asked. “You know I do.” “Then why are you going to leave me after LA?” “You know why,” he responded almost wearily -they’d discussed it often enough. “And you know it doesn’t mean I don’t care about you.” “You wouldn’t go, if you really cared about me.” She knew her words were unfair, but desperate to use any means in her power to chain him to her side.
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“That’s childish,” Rod said, slapping her bottom sharply. Candace purred with pleasure at this unlooked for attention. It wasn’t like him to be so demonstrative in public, not that there was a lot of the public about in this quiet park. She felt he was almost hers, and if she could find the right words, he’d capitulate before his time to leave? “We should be getting back,” Candace said, “so you can coach me on my performance today.” Rod smiled guiltily. Since that first show, when he’d spanked her before, she’d insisted on having her ‘review’ every time. When he protested this wasn’t what his coaching was for, Candace replied it brought her luck, and she wasn’t going on stage without it. Rod complied with her primitive blackmail because, the truth was, she was right. If she got her bottom smacked before the performance, she went on stage in a happy, stressfree state of mind that saw her through the show. He dreaded to think what the result might be if she didn’t go out ‘coached’. “Okay,” Rod said sternly, “but don’t forget your behavior at the hotel this morning – or your treatment of the flight crew on the flight. Candace assumed a penitent expression she hoped was convincing. Forget? How could she -she’d been dreaming of it all day. “I wasn’t that bad, was I?” she asked plaintively, gazing coyly up at him through her lashes. Rod laughed and shook his head in disbelief before taking a firm hold of her arm and escorting her back to the hotel. Sometimes, coaching was just plain fun. The elevator had to be the slowest in the whole wide world, Candace thought, as it ambled its way
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to their penthouse floor. It was a mixed blessing. Her tingling bottom was a pleasure to be enjoyed longer, but the feel of his hand on her behind was a joy delayed. “In you go,” Rod said, scooting her into her room with a slap that echoed along the empty corridor. Candace squeaked theatrically and arched her butt away from a possible second swat, which disappointingly never came. “Can’t we miss out the assessment sheets?” she asked when she saw his intention to carry out the whole tedious procedure. “No, we can’t,” Rod replied. “When you get to my age, you can’t remember what day it is, never mind what little naughtinesses your student has gotten up to over the past week. I need these sheets for the Friday night review.” Candace rolled her eyes and sat down to fill out her appraisal. Sitting gave her an added buzz, reminding her of the pins and needles prickling her tush. She finished writing with a flourish and handed it over to Rod who was slowly, maddeningly slowly, working his way down the sheet, filling out examples with the appearance of deliberately dragging it out. “When you said you couldn’t remember what day it was, I didn’t think we were talking about this one,” Candace teased. Rod sighed and marked the ‘sarcastic’ box on the sheet. “Hey,” she cried, “that’s not fair.” Rod shook his head sadly, tut-tutted and marked her low on the ‘how did I take my punishment?’ section, too.
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“You’re abusing your position,” Candace said. “You should be ashamed.” “You should be getting me a chair to sit on,” he answered. Candace provocatively flounced theatrically away to retrieve a suitable chair; it was important she kept her coach sharp; otherwise he’d go sloppy on her when she needed firm. As she lifted the chair, she heard the room door close and, looking round, discovered he’d gone. She stared at the door in stunned disbelief. What had she done or said? What should she do with the chair? He hadn’t given her any other instructions, so Candace carried and placed it in the center of the room. She felt weak, but felt it wouldn’t be right to sit in his chair. Unbuttoning her jeans, she slid them and her panties down to her knees with trembling hands. The weakness was stronger now, her knees felt like jelly, and she lay down over the seat to recover. She was still there when she heard the door open and saw Rod’s feet re-enter the room. She couldn’t look up. It would be too embarrassing. “Good idea,” she heard him say. “The extra swing will help a lot.” She had no idea what he was talking about, but he seemed pleased enough, and that’s what mattered. “I decided I needed some extra sting today,” Rod said. That caught her attention and, embarrassing or not, she looked up to see what he was talking about. What she saw was one of his large, rubbersoled slippers. “You didn’t walk along the corridor carrying that, did you?” she cried in dismay. Everyone who saw
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him would know what it was for. It would be all round the hotel and then the world. “How else could I get it here?” Rod asked. “Tell me no one saw you,” Candace pleaded. He laughed. “You’re frightened they might think I was going to use it to smack your butt?” he asked. “What else would they think,” she answered crossly. “Nobody saw you, right?” Rod was tempted to wind her up but decided against. Her stress levels were already near breaking point. “Nobody saw me,” he said. “But they might hear you.” He bent forward to place his left hand on her back and pat her cheeks with the slipper. “You’re mean,” Candace said, gripping the chair legs tightly. The slipper looked like it would sting, and she wanted to be ready for the onslaught. “Maybe,” he grinned. He patted her cheeks some more just for the pleasure of watching them tremble and Candace jump. He stepped closer, so the slipper would land along her cheeks rather than across them and patted some more. “Will you get on with it?” she snapped. “When I’m good and ready.” “Well, I’m good and ready now,” Candace cried in frustration. He was a brute, a sadist, a bastard of the first order. Fortunately, she didn’t tell him that. She’d learned some discretion these past weeks. “Your wishes don’t really come into it,” Rod said, though he knew he was lying. These spankings were only because she wanted them. They were nothing to do with coaching, unless getting the best performance out of the star was considered coaching. Candace ground her teeth, but before she could make things bad for her butt, he lifted up the
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slipper and swept it down to land with a flat THWACK on her right cheek. The relief she felt was immediate. She felt her whole body relax; it was like sliding into a hot bath. The second smack stung her left cheek, and she purred with pleasure. She understood how Tabby felt when Rod tickled her chin. Rod stopped when her bottom was glowing red, even though he could see Candace was lifting up her butt for more. She’d be fine now. Another great performance should give her the confidence she’d need when he wasn’t there to apply a helping hand. ______________ LA was Rod’s last city with the band. For him, it was a flight back to everyday life, for Candace and the others it was to be a flight overseas and the start of the ‘world’ part of the World Tour. Rod was relieved. If he’d ever dreamt of being a rock star, these past weeks had cured him of it. It was like business travel that never ended and without the sanity provided by dull meetings or presentations he’d have in his work. “Call them and say you’ve quit,” Candace begged him the first evening in the city and as she had frequently, now the time for him to leave was approaching. “I can’t do that,” Rod replied stubbornly, though he longed to stay with her. “Please,” she asked again, hugging him tightly and gazing up at him with blatantly puppy longing. He hugged her in return. His heart ached at refusing her anything and this in particular, but all those years building a life and position demanded he see it through to its conclusion. He owed it to his family, though what ‘it’ was, he couldn’t tell. He just
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knew having their father wandering the world as a punk star’s groupie wasn’t something they’d take to easily. “Candace, stop it,” Rod said. “You’re going to make us both unhappy, continuing with this constant whining.” She stared at him mutinously. Whining? All she was doing was asking for a simple extension to his vacation, something any decent man would do, knowing what Rod knew. “You’re the one making us both unhappy,” she replied angrily. “You know how much I need you to help me, how much I rely on you for support. And yet you still want to fuck off back to your stupid, freakin’ job.” “It’s my job, and people are relying on me to be there, too,” Rod said. “Or do you imagine utilities run themselves?” “They’ve gotten by without you for a month now…” “And that’s as long as anyone should have to cover for their co-workers,” Rod interjected. “Believe it or not, we little people are important, too.” “You’re more important here,” Candace yelled, her fear getting the better of her judgment. “That’s enough…” “No, it’s not,” Candace screamed and punched his arm in frustration. Rod grasped her wrist and began to haul her to the large, leather couch that occupied one wall of her suite.
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Chapter Nine “Get off me,” Candace said coldly, sobered by her realization of his intent. “You can’t get out of it that way.” “Suit yourself,” Rod answered, now as angry as she was. He released his grip on her wrist and walked out of the room, returning to his own to calm himself. Thank God, there wasn’t a gig tonight ‘cos she’d be really out of control. He poured a large scotch and flung himself into an armchair to brood and wonder if he could bring his flight home forward a couple of days. Candace sat on her bed and considered her future. It looked bleak whichever way she turned. If she went to his room and apologized, she wouldn’t sit for a week. If she didn’t, he’d leave before they made up, and she’d slide into disaster as the tour continued. She got up and poured herself a large scotch and then another. The drinks gave her heart. He was a hopeless coach, anyhow; she’d been practically training herself, so what was she losing. He was right; he should go home. After another drink, she decided she could manage without him. She was strong now, and the band was strong now. They saw their future and they were united in their determination to get there. Rod’s purpose was done, his usefulness at an end. She’d be good to him for the next few days, maybe even let him give her that much needed ‘coaching’ before tomorrow’s show, then they’d say goodbye. She poured another drink and fell asleep on the couch. ______________
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For a long worrying month, Rod followed the tour from the band’s website. The press hadn’t been as kind to them since that night in L.A., when the cracks in their new ‘together’ image began to show. Candace, he knew, blamed it on him for leaving, and he understood her point-of-view. He’d tried to make her see that his presence had been just papering over the cracks, but she’d stopped taking his calls. He’d shrugged it off. In the end, it was up to Candace and the band to work together without outside help because outside help couldn’t, wouldn’t, always be there, particularly when the help got as much stick as the band liked to dish out. The Japanese and other Asian papers’ reviews were bad, but the Australian and New Zealand reviews were brutally honest. Gigs were starting late and ending early. Candy Ass was shrill and temperamental, delivering a ten minute harangue casting aspersions on the parentage of a too vocal heckler. And suggesting his country’s culture was backward didn’t endear her to the crowd or the local media. Picking up the phone, Rod called again. It was early morning over there, and he got Zak. Zak suggested Rod fly out and join the group for a few days, settle Candace down, spread some mature oil on the very troubled waters. Rod agreed to work something out and get back to Zak. At his office later that day, Rod reviewed his work schedule for the coming weeks and thought he could take a week off when the band was in the Middle East. His flight would be shorter, and he could spend more of his time off with Candace and less flying. He’d call Zak tomorrow morning and have him arrange the flights.
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Rod accessed to the band’s website and gazed in guilty despair at the picture of Candace on stage in Manila. She looked a mess, her face contorted not just by the effort of performing but also with pain. The reviews, the band sniping, and the fear of failure were eating away at her, and it showed. Rod felt her pain just watching the short clip on the website and, knowing Terri would have put the best clip on the site, made Rod shiver with fear. He closed down the clip and went back to reading the blurb. Even those cleverly constructed promotional words couldn’t hide the sense of watching the people self-destruct in front of what should have been an adoring public. He’d promised her he wouldn’t let her fall, and he had. It wasn’t entirely his fault; he wasn’t a psychiatrist. Rod decided to fly out as soon as he could, if only to pick up the pieces. ______________ “Thanks, Rod,” Zak said when Rod called back. “You couldn’t come sooner, could you? We need you.” “I wish I could,” Rod replied, “but we have too much on at work just now. As it is, it’s going to be difficult. Can’t you get her to answer my calls?” “I can’t get any sense out of her these days,” Zak said gloomily. “We’re pretty well back to the bad old days.” “It’s not drugs, is it?” Rod asked anxiously. “Not that I know of,” Zak replied, “Just alcohol and high anxiety.” “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Rod said. “In the meantime, get her to call me, do anything. Use force if you have to.”
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“Believe me, I’ve tried everything but force,” Zak answered gloomily. “Even when you get here, you’re going to have your work cut out to get back on her good side.” Rod hung up the phone despondently. The same thought had occurred to him. He could fly halfway around the world only to be told to fly straight back home. If it wasn’t for the way seeing the clip and photos had made him feel, he wouldn’t bother. He couldn’t let her hurt herself this way, not now, not ever, but would she see it that way? ______________ The limo was air-conditioned and Rod sank into its plush back seat gratefully. Just the short walk from the terminal to the car had felt like stepping into an oven. He knew now how a turkey felt on Thanksgiving morning. The city shimmered in the heat as the car swept along the wide boulevard from the airport to his hotel. The lush lawns and flowering shrubs at the roadside demonstrated the kingdom’s petro-wealth better even than the starkly new, white office towers on both sides of the road. Irrigating that much greenery in this desert setting cost big bucks. “Did you tell Candace I was coming?” Rod asked Zak, after he’d taken in the surroundings, and his head began to feel less fuzzy from lack of sleep on the overnight flight. “I told her this morning,” Zak said. “There was something in the way he said it that bothered Rod. “She didn’t take it well?” he asked. “She took it okay,” Zak replied, still with the hint of something unsaid. “How was last night’s show?” Rod asked, still probing.
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“Not good,” Zak said. He paused, then, deciding this was the moment to explain, said, “Which is why she got drunk after.” Rod grimaced. “She’s okay now, though?” “She’s sober, but in jail,” Zak said. “They say we can get her out this afternoon when the court has heard the preliminary hearing.” “Shit,” Rod said emphatically; he’d arrived a day too late. Then, he asked, “She didn’t know I was coming, did she?” Zak shook his head. “No,” he replied. “I didn’t tell anyone until I told Candy this morning. She didn’t do it because of you.” “I’m glad to hear it,” Rod said. “What’s the penalty for ‘drunk and disorderly’ round here? It isn’t anything terminal, I hope.” Zak frowned. “That’s the million dollar question,” he answered. “We don’t know.” “There are a million Western ex-pats hereabouts, who have nothing much to do except drink,” Rod said wryly. “They must know what happens to people who fall foul of the law.” “Normally, yes,” Zak said, “but there’s complications.” “Go on,” Rod said, when it was clear Zak wasn’t about to elaborate. “First, Candy was a bit outspoken about the local cultural norms,” Zak said guardedly. “And second?” “There’s been a rash of public drunkenness cases lately, and the authorities have been clamping down,” Zak continued. “Great.” “And then…” “There’s worse?” “Maybe,” Zak said uncomfortably.
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“Well?” Rod demanded. He was growing irritated at Zak’s drawn out explanation. “Another Rock band was here a month ago, and they were pretty obnoxious,” Zak said. “There were parties the locals didn’t like, public drinking and some wild sex that wasn’t very discreet.” “So what happened to them?” “We don’t know, but we suspect they paid dearly to leave without jail time or worse,” Zak replied. “It’s bad, right?” Rod asked. “Yeah, it’s bad, but what makes it worse is she’s a woman. They understand men behaving badly; they take real exception to women doing it.” “I never thought of that,” Rod said. He thought for a moment. “You’ve got a lawyer, right?” “First thing I did,” Zak replied promptly. Here he was on stronger ground. Here he felt he’d done well. “It was the lawyer who outlined all the stuff I was telling you. I’m still in shock myself. I came straight from him to the airport, and I haven’t gotten it all straight in my head yet. The tour is in real trouble, if we aren’t out of here by Sunday.” “Candace is in worse trouble if we can’t get her out of jail,” Rod said. “Yeah, that too,” Zak said but his tone suggested he thought a spell in jail was just what Candace needed. “When can I see her?” “Like I said, me and the lawyer are picking her up this afternoon,” Zak replied. “You can come with us.” “What’s to stop us driving straight to the airport and flying out of here? Or driving to the nearest border?” “They’ve taken our passports, and we’ve posted a half million bail bond. We ain’t going nowhere.”
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“Have they taken everybody’s passport?” asked Rod. “Nah, just me and Candy’s,” Zak replied. “The band’s already jumping ship.” “Nice.” “They don’t want to be next,” Zak said. “Solid team spirit,” Rod said contemptuously. Zak shrugged. He couldn’t blame the guys because he felt the same way. What happened to people who failed to honor a bail bond was a question he’d forgotten to ask the lawyer. It was all right for Rod to take the moral high ground. He didn’t have to put up with Candy’s excesses. Somehow, she behaved for him. Zak almost wished he knew the secret but decided that, on balance, he didn’t want to know. When, and he hoped it was when and not if, they got home, he was gonna drop Violent Passions from his Agency. They’d had their second chance, and he wasn’t risking his life and livelihood with a third. ______________ “Hi, Rod,” Candace said when she was brought into the room where the three men waited. At the sight of his grim expression, her already dismal day took a dive. She felt goosebumps marching across her behind like an army of insects. Rod nodded by way of reply. He didn’t trust himself to speak. The sight of her shuffling between two guards, wearing Arabic robes and the guiltiest expression he’d ever seen on anyone, had his blood boiling. His first thought, that he was to blame, he’d brushed aside savagely. No one was to blame except Candace. His second thought that she’d blame him, he could see was also not true. Every part of her said how keenly she felt her failure.
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Zak signed the papers placed in front of him, followed by Candace. Their lawyer led the three subdued Westerners out of the office into the heat and light of a walled courtyard, where he reminded Candace and Zak of their need to be back in court on the following day. “We’ll be there,” Zak said. “We want this over with as quickly as possible. We’ve a plane to catch.” “You may want to re-arrange your schedule for the next two shows,” the lawyer said. “Justice is never quick, not here or anywhere else.” “You gotta hurry them along,” Zak pleaded. “It ain’t so easy to re-arrange gigs the size of these.” “I will do what I can,” the lawyer answered, “but I only work in the legal system, I don’t run it. And you should understand that if you force time limits on getting a settlement, you reduce your likelihood of leniency.” “And what would be the worst thing that could happen?” Rod asked, alarmed at the underlying suggestion. “As I explained to Miss Astor earlier,” the lawyer replied, “it could be a year in prison or a flogging. Maybe both, if they really choose to make a point.” Rod looked at Candace, who glanced back at him from out the corner of her eye. No wonder she was so subdued. They were on the brink of disaster. Candace’s glimpse of Rod’s horrified expression depressed her further. Screwing up her own life was bad enough, screwing up his was unforgivable. Sitting alone in the cell, there were remarkably few other female prisoners so far as she could tell, in the cold light of morning with a hangover, she’d charted her fall from grace, tracing each step from that night in L.A. to here. Looking back, she could see it was one long tantrum. She’d wanted him to
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stay. He hadn’t, so she’d set out to teach him a lesson. Maybe she hadn’t done it consciously, but that’s what she’d been doing. Like a spoiled kid who’d been crossed, she’d thrown herself on the floor and made a public scene. Incredibly, a year in jail and a flogging paled in comparison to how she felt about letting him down this way. They climbed into the limo in dejected silence and barely spoke throughout the drive to the hotel, where they stepped out under the canopy and faced each other. “You’d better get cleaned up, Candy,” Zak said. “The press will find out you’re here soon enough, and we need to be ready.” Candace nodded. She felt numb. Rod hadn’t spoken a word to her, hadn’t held her, and barely acknowledged her presence. She couldn’t blame him, but why had he come if he all he was going to do was make her feel worse than she already did. She turned to go, tears prickling her eyes. She wouldn’t mind even if he shouted at her, but his silence was louder than any raised voice, and it felt like a knife in her heart. She stopped and faced Rod. “I’m sorry,” she said. Rod nodded and put is arm around her shoulder. “Come on,” he said, “let’s get you showered and out of those clothes. You’ll feel much better, then.” Candace allowed him to lead her away, relief making her feel better already. He hadn’t given up on her, after all. They waited for the elevator in companionable silence, and she felt confident enough to give him a wan smile. “That’s better,” Rod said as they entered the elevator and the doors closed, shutting them off from the world.
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“Can I have one of your old-fashioned remedies for a hangover before the press arrives?” Candace asked. Rod gave her a hug. “Sure you can,” he replied sadly. It felt like shutting the barn door after the horse had gone, but it couldn’t do any harm. If only he could have got here yesterday. “Right after you’ve showered and made yourself presentable.” “I am a bit stinky, aren’t I?” Candace agreed. “There were very limited facilities at the jail, and I was a mess.” Rod let her enter her room ahead of him, and he closed the door behind them. “Shower,” he said slapping her butt, “and quick about it. Then we’ll talk.” Candace scooted off to the bathroom with a light heart and tingling behind. Things would be okay. The lawyer would get her off, celebrities always got off, and Rod wouldn’t let her out of his sight for the future. The only thing that could make the world better was that ‘talking to’ she still had coming. Rod sprawled on the couch, letting the aches and pains from the flight ease themselves out of his back and legs. He was too old for this, and Candace, though he loved her dearly, was too much of a handful. This escapade demonstrated, if demonstration was needed, that she required proper help. Her ‘coaching’ idea was sound enough, maybe, for everyday life, where a man might keep his girlfriend in line with regular spankings, but it wasn’t up to the stresses of a high-powered celebrity life. Only how was he to make Candace see that? The question still wasn’t answered when she returned, wearing a robe and slippers and toweling her hair dry.
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“Have you cleaned your teeth?” Rod asked. It was like having kids again, kids who couldn’t wait to watch TV and weren’t about to let a little thing like personal hygiene stand in their way. Candace pouted and headed back to the bathroom, her treat delayed. He was doing this deliberately, making her wait. A flash of irritation at his lack of sensitivity was ruthlessly put down. She wasn’t falling into that trap already. He was in charge, and she’d learn to accept that – if she died in the attempt. Brushing her teeth slowly and making herself wait meant she discovered that he was right. They did need brushing and so did something else. She could barely stand still with the anticipation. She mopped her mouth with the towel and unclipped the hair dryer from the wall. Her brain screamed in frustration, and she grinned at herself in the mirror, daring the devil side of her mind to stop her. It couldn’t, but it kept her twitching with suppressed excitement. She returned the dryer to its holder and brushed the last strands of hair away from her face. The brush, her favorite brush since Rod had come along, felt heavier than ever. She examined its flat shiny back under the garish makeup lights and stroked the varnished surface with her fingertips. It was a wicked instrument with a searing sting. She should leave it in the bathroom. For a moment she hesitated, toying with the idea of leaving it behind then, with a shrug, she began brushing her hair again and walked out to meet her fate. Her fate was already organized. Rod was sitting on a straight-backed chair in the center of the room waiting for her. Grimacing, now the time had
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arrived, Candace approached him. He held out his hand, and she gave him the brush. “Before we begin,” Rod said, “I’ve a few things I want said.” He was holding the brush right where Candace could see it, and it both fascinated and repulsed her. She’d brought it to him for just this purpose, and she should have been pleased. She wasn’t. She was scared. A brush in her hands was exciting and sexy. The same brush in his hands was frightening. “Are you listening?” she heard Rod ask and realized that she’d forgotten this part of her training along with all the rest. She’d been miles away, thinking about hairbrushes and bare bottoms. “Sorry,” she said penitently, “I’m still a bit groggy, I think.” It wasn’t true, but considering her situation, a small white lie like that couldn’t do any harm. “Maybe we should talk about it later,” Rod said. He was relieved. She wouldn’t respond well, anyway, not at this time. Things were just too overwhelming. He’d broach the subject when she was free and out of this country, or any country that disapproved of people behaving badly in public. Grasping her wrist, he pulled her across his lap. “Meantime, I’ll knock some of that grogginess out of you right now, and the rest you can sleep away with an early night tonight.” Candace wanted to object; spanking was one thing, but being sent to bed early like a kid was something quite different. However, she was too busy being hauled under his arm and placed properly on his knee to find the right words. A sudden coolness around her cheeks told her that her robe was gathered up out of the way, and she could expect to feel the brush any moment. She
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grabbed the chair with both hands and clung on tight. It was the only way she ever got through these painful minutes. Rod patted her tush with the brush, smiling when her feet kicked up in anticipation of what came next. “What do you think the band would say if they could see you now?” Rod asked. “They’d say I deserved it,” Candace answered truthfully. “And they’d be right, young lady,” Rod continued. “Unfortunately, this may be the least of your worries.” He patted her cheeks some more, reluctant to start. She wanted this, needed it, but it wouldn’t solve anything, and he felt like a traitor keeping up the pretence. He should tell her straight. “Rod,” Candace said, when more moments passed without anything happening. “I’ve got to be ready for the press…” Rod came out of his reverie. Maybe he was still groggy, too. He raised the brush up high and slapped it down on one trembling cheek, pancaking the rounded flesh. Candace shrieked and kicked. The brush landed on the other cheek, and she gritted her teeth in anguish. Every time was like she’d forgotten how much it hurt, except she hadn’t. Each POCK was followed a moment later by tooth-tingling pain that only just seemed to reach a crescendo when another POCK started the cycle repeating itself. Fortunately, he had a tight grip around her waist, or she’d fly off his knee like a scalded cat. Unfortunately, he had a tight hold around her waist, and while every part of her seemed to be in agitated motion, her bottom was always where the brush landed.
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“I’m sorry,” she cried at last, unable to imagine another spank landing on her aching behind. “I’m sure you are,” Rod replied, “but you can be a bit sorrier yet.” He continued spanking until she burst into tears. “That’s better,” he said as she tentatively reached back and ran her fingertips over her fiery buttocks. When she was calm enough, he helped her up and cuddled her to his chest. This was dangerous. He’d always been careful to keep her at a distance after her punishments, and he was nervous about how she’d respond to this change. Candace laid her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes, partly because she couldn’t bring herself yet to look him in the eye after letting him down so badly, and partly because she was suddenly overwhelmingly tired. It was a moment before Rod realized she was asleep. When he did, he picked her up and walked back to the couch. Softly, so as not to disturb her, he lay down and laid her on top of his body, pulling her robe around her and settling in for a long stay. ______________ The phone rang, and Candace jumped awake. Rod reached for it and handed it to her. “Hello,” Candace said. “The press conference is set up for seven,” she heard Zak say. “Okay,” she answered dreamily, “What time is it now?” She peered around the room, hoping for enlightenment. “You aren’t drunk, are you?” Zak asked in alarm.
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Chapter Ten Candace laughed. “No,” she replied, “only sleepy. You woke me up.” “We need to talk before the conference,” Zak continued, “to set out a strategy.” And so I can see you’re sober, he thought sourly to himself. “I’ve got Terri lined up for a meeting at six. You have an hour to be ready.” Candace handed Rod the phone, and he returned it to its cradle. “Did you hear that?” she asked. Rod nodded. “You and I need to talk before we talk to them. What ‘strategy’ do you want to go with? It may not be the one Terri likes.” “I thought of that too,” Candace agreed. “They’ll want full punk war paint, Wild Child Candy Ass, which will piss off the local people, and I don’t think I want to make matters worse.” “Exactly,” Rod said. “So what do you want to do?” “Plead guilty and get the lightest sentence,” Candace replied feelingly. “I don’t know, do charity works among the poor, if they have poor people, do a charity concert, whatever gets me out of here with the least harm, I guess.” “And how do you achieve that?” “How the fu…” she paused, remembering it was Rod she was speaking to, “how should I know?” “Call that lawyer and ask,” he said, “and do it now. You need advice before you meet Zak and Terri.” She found the lawyer’s card in her bag and punched his cell numbers into the phone. There seemed an agonizingly long wait before he answered, but his advice, when he’d heard her out,
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was blunt – be humble, don’t admit fault, don’t say anything that could be construed as criticizing the police or justice system, and don’t attend the press conference without him. “He’s coming to the meeting,” Candace said when she hung up. “Good, let him do the talking,” Rod answered. “What did he suggest about appearance?” “Smart, casual, and covered,” Candace said. “No playing to the gallery with robes and veils or setting folks’ backs up with skanky Western costumes. Right down the middle, he said. I guess he’s a golfer.” “What have you got like that?” “The clothes I have for when we go out together,” Candace replied. “You and the local culture seem to have similar tastes.” “Don’t be ridiculous,” Rod said sharply. “Just kidding,” she said with a mischievous grin. She’d discovered another subject for teasing; Life was good. His next words put her gloating right out of her mind. “Glad to hear it. My taste in clothes may be almost as dull as theirs, but locking people away for years, or flogging them for minor offences isn’t how I see me having some excitement.” “The lawyer will sort it, won’t he?” she asked hesitantly, without expecting or receiving a satisfactory answer. ______________ “My client,” the lawyer said, answering before Candace could say a word, “has no comment to make on that subject.” The media were in full cry. They sensed blood and were here to see it. Violent Passions’ tour had
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started off as an event, thanks to Rod’s assistance, then, from the media’s point-of-view, run out of steam. Even Candy Ass’s deteriorating behavior wasn’t that newsworthy, except to the Entertainment Editor and the critics. Now, thanks to Candy’s stupidity, the group was on both the entertainment page and the front page. The evening news would lead with the titillating possibility of a young Western pop princess getting an oldfashioned whipping, and the media wanted to be there when it happened. Candace looked out from the raised dais on which she, Zak, Terri and the lawyer sat, at the hungry expressions on the journalists’ faces. It wasn’t attractive; the term feeding-frenzy came to mind. Worse, this was where she’d been ten years ago when she’d quit. Ten years to get her life together, and she’d unraveled it in about six months. That had to be some kind of record. She doubted any Rehab Clinic anywhere could find a faster collapse. “So, Candy,” one particularly smug reporter said, “how do you think you’ll like taking a real whipping rather than the pretend ones you punksters like to play with?” There was general laughter and then silence as they waited to see how Candace would react. She felt sick. They were miserable creatures, like vultures feasting on dead creatures; only they wanted this not-yet-dead creature, Candy Ass, to feel their talons and beaks tearing its flesh. They disgusted her. “I see the presumption of innocence until proven guilty has disappeared from your outlook,” Candace replied as evenly as she could. She glanced at Rod,
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standing silently at the back of the room, and was cheered by his quick smile. “Are you seriously going to plead innocent?” the man jeered by way of reply. “My client’s reply to the charge will be heard by the court,” the lawyer interjected. “It’s too soon to say what that will be.” The grilling continued, Candace answering as honestly and seriously as she could, fully aware of the sullen silences interspersed by pointed remarks from Terri and, less often, Zak seated alongside of her. They’d been furious she wasn’t going to come out fighting. As Rod had predicted, they wanted as much noise as they could get for the tour’s publicity. This boring display of middle-class virtue served no one’s purpose in their view. It would lose Candy Ass fans without getting her the support from the Western public that a martyr’s stance might have generated. “Screw you,” was Candace’s final response before the conference. She might pay for such a remark later when she and Rod were alone, but sometimes, she felt, it was worth paying the wages of sin. Rod, however, had seemed relaxed about her language on this occasion. The reporters left frustrated, but they too were relaxed. There’d been no histrionics from Candy Ass, and no big cause to be made, but they only had to wait. Tomorrow, or soon, justice would be served, and they didn’t doubt Candy Ass would be begging for their help to raise support, or she’d be flying out after a deal that would give them a story of justice perverted by the rich on which they could dine out for weeks. “I did okay, didn’t I?” Candace asked Rod when they were finally alone.
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“You did well,” Rod agreed, giving her a hug. “Now, you’ve got to keep your cool with the court.” ______________ The court may have been impressed by Candace’s mature demeanor, but if they were, they didn’t let it go to their heads. They reserved judgment, and would deliver a verdict in a day or so. “They need to consult the government,” the lawyer said. “This has all the makings of a diplomatic incident.” Candace found the waiting intolerable. The hotel, modern and lavishly appointed, seemed as much a prison as the small cell she’d been held in, and her irritation with the lack of progress was likely soon to get her into trouble with Rod, who’d had cause to lecture her the very next day. “I don’t see what they’re so scared of,” Candace said the next evening as they were watching the TV news and learning that the court still didn’t have a verdict. “It’s not like we’d invade them for a harsh sentence. The Ambassador may be called in to make a deal, but that wouldn’t hurt them much.” “It would hurt them a lot,” Rod answered calmly and not for the first time. “The wilder segments of their society would say they caved in to imperialist oppression, and the moderates would say there was one law for foreigners and a different one for their own citizens. Our own governments wouldn’t be willing to do that kind of deal.” “But they have to make a decision,” Candace persisted, like a dog worrying a bone. “Delaying like this makes them look weak, anyhow.” “They’ll have the Ambassador on side before they make a decision,” Rod said, “and our
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government won’t want to be seen leaving a prominent citizen, however infamous, hanging out to dry.” “But Zak’s right,” Candace said. “We have to get back to the tour. Do you think my lawyer’s pushing them hard enough?” “I hope so,” he replied, and then asked, “Do you think his story of them cracking down on Westerners is true, or just an angle to get a bigger fee?” “How should I know,” Candace replied. “Is that what you think?” “I can’t decide,” Rod admitted. “I think we need to talk to some of his earlier clients to see if they got the same line, and if they paid more.” “I’ll call our lawyer back home and get him to check it out with the guys who got away with it. Though it would be just my luck I get charged when they’ve decided to make an example of someone.” “Being a woman doesn’t help, either,” Rod said gloomily. “They still have different expectations of women, so your being publicly drunk is that much more shocking to them.” “It’s good to know somebody’s still shocked by what I do,” she said wryly. “We’re all so sophisticated we’ve no real feelings left.” “Isn’t that what we wanted?” “I thought it was, once,” Candace replied. “Now I’ve grown up, I realize how dangerous that is. We need standards, all of us, people like me most of all.” “But it’s people like you, the young you anyhow, who destroyed the standards we had,” Rod reminded her. “You wouldn’t accept our standards, and we weren’t about to lower them to force you
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into line. We’d rather have no standards than fall below the ones we set.” “You mean you’d all rather be trampled on than stand up for what you believed in,” Candace replied. “Well, I won’t make that mistake. If I ever have kids, they won’t behave like I did, or they’ll wish they’d never been born.” “They say there’s no prude like a reformed whore,” Rod said tartly. “However, let’s get out of this mess before you start working on the next one.” “There isn’t going to be a next mess,” she exclaimed. “From now on, no one’s going to be more orthodox than me.” “This a bit of an over-reaction, don’t you think?” “I’m not reacting to anything. I’ve been working my way to this for some years. These last days have just helped me see it, that’s all.” “If you say so,” Rod said, placating, but without real conviction. ______________ “The thing is, Miss Astor,” the lawyer said when Candace, Zak and Rod reacted badly to the news the authorities had decided on a year in prison, “the people here get very annoyed with Westerners behaving badly when they visit and then complaining when the laws are applied to them. They feel that, if they have to abide by your laws when they’re over in your countries, then you folks should show the same respect to the laws we have here. We don’t make them up just to deal with you when you visit. It’s the same for everyone.” Candace bit her lip, frowning, deep in thought. She looked at Rod, hoping for some guidance.
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“Our laws don’t have people caned or flogged for getting drunk,” Rod objected, “so, while we can accept it’s galling for your citizens to feel we don’t treat their laws with respect, there’s such a disparity between the punishments, it isn’t fair to us when you say we should each accept the others’ laws.” The lawyer shrugged. “My experience from visits to the West,” he said dryly, “is you should introduce our laws over there as quickly as possible. You’d cut the number of road deaths and violent deaths in half. And if you followed our custom with drug dealing, you’d do away with the other half. However,” he continued, “we are straying into politics and cultural norms, neither of which will solve our immediate problem.” “Quite,” Rod said, “but we have to do something. Candace can’t spend a year or more in prison over here, and you say they won’t accept our offer of a large contribution to a charity of the state’s choice, so I’ve another suggestion.” “And that is?” the lawyer asked. “Candace accepts a caning instead of prison, but it’s administered by me.” The lawyer looked from Rod to Candace, then seeing no dissent, back to Rod. “They would have to be convinced it was real,” he said. “I would follow the process used here, so far as I was able,” Rod said, “and there could be an official witness to verify the sentence was carried out.” “Is this your wish also, Miss Astor?” the lawyer asked. Candace nodded, unable to speak. She’d found it intensely uncomfortable having the men talking about her punishment in front of her, but having to suddenly take part was more shaming still.
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“You don’t seem sure,” the man said. “I’m sure,” Candace replied as firmly as she could. When she’d talked this over with Rod, she’d assumed she’d just have to go along with things without being asked to take part. Somehow, that powerlessness was more palatable than this involvement. “Very well,” the lawyer said, nodding, “I’ll put this to the court, and we’ll see. It may work. They will want to publicize the punishment, of course, as a warning to others. I presume that will be acceptable?” Candace thought wryly of the new songs the band was working on, possibly even as they sat negotiating, and was tempted to say it was more than acceptable; it was required. Terri would tell the world, if no one else did. “We’d rather not,” Rod replied, “but if it has to be, then we will accept. Try to get some control over the form of the publicity.” The lawyer agreed and left them together in the holding cell behind the court where they’d been brought to hear the verdict. “We’re running out of options,” Rod said. “If they don’t accept this, I don’t know where we go from here.” “He’s the country’s hotshot lawyer,” Candace said. “He’ll figure something out.” ______________ Candace was re-starting her ongoing complaint about the time being lost when the cell door opened, and the lawyer re-entered. “I think we’re getting somewhere,” he said, in reply to the questioning looks from Candace and Rod. “They have to consult.”
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“How long will that take?” Rod asked. “I don’t know,” the lawyer replied, “maybe a day or two.” “A day or two!” Candace cried. “It wouldn’t be any faster in your legal system,” the lawyer said coldly, “so don’t tell me it would. The law moves slowly everywhere, in these matters.” “I’m sure you’re right,” Rod said. “It’s just a long time to wait, particularly if they come back wanting to negotiate some more.” “I think Ms. Astor will wish they’d taken even longer, if she gets her wish,” the lawyer responded. “Being caned isn’t a pleasant experience.” “It’s better than a year in jail,” Candace retorted. His assumption she couldn’t take physical pain rankled, and she found herself wanting to fire him out of spite. She also found she was biting her tongue on her words because she knew Rod wouldn’t approve, which was both comforting and galling. Comforting because it meant she was genuinely modifying her behavior to match good standards and galling because some part of her found that frustrating as hell. “I’ll return when I have news,” the lawyer said, signaling to the guard to lock up. “You’re a good influence on me,” Candace said to Rod, when the man had left. “I think you should know that.” “In what way?” Rod asked, puzzled at this seemingly out of the blue comment. “Just in general,” Candace replied, smiling and kissing his cheek, “nothing particular.” ______________
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The ‘day or two’ became three, but the news when it arrived was a relief. Their offer was accepted, and the time for the caning set as the following morning -- early. Candace grimaced. She didn’t like doing much of anything early in the morning, and a caning in the cold light of dawn was a long way down her list of ‘much of anything.’ The good news was after an unpleasant half hour, early in the day, she could be flying home tomorrow, and home had never looked so attractive. Sure it was boring, nothing much happened there, but boring, she’d decided, was underrated. ______________ Rod flexed the cane uneasily. It was heavy, much heavier than he’d expected, and they’d made it plain that if his wielding of it wasn’t up to their standards, the deal was off and Candace would be caned again by one of their own. The door opened, and Candace was escorted in by two female guards. Rod tried to give her a reassuring smile, but she avoided his gaze, her attention seeming to be wholly taken up by the bench in front of her. The bench was a wooden affair, higher in the middle than at the ends and Candace could picture herself, bare bottom uppermost, lying along it. She didn’t know if she was supposed to do that herself or if her escorts were supposed to put her on it. That was the problem with not speaking the language; you looked and acted like an idiot. Probably, she’d been given instructions; certainly people had talked at her since she’d been awakened less than an hour ago. The old phrase of ‘the prisoner ate a hearty breakfast’ ironically churned in her mind. She hadn’t eaten any breakfast and
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wondered now if she should have done. She felt definitely nauseous. Rod spanking her in the privacy of his or her home was one thing; being beaten with a stick in front of witnesses was something quite different again. She glanced quickly around the room and found that, contrary to her first impression, the room wasn’t filled with ogling observers. There was Rod, who looked more nervous than she felt, the two guards who’d escorted her through the dark and surprisingly cold corridors, her lawyer, here to see fair play, plus one man and one woman from the court officials to see the court also got fair play. Not a cast of thousands, but still more staring closely at her bare butt than she’d normally care to have. One of the guards took her by the arm and led her to the bench, which Candace discovered was too high for her to easily climb onto, and a step had been thoughtfully provided. Candace wondered if someone had sized her up and prepared this especially for her, then realized it was probably usual for women. The guard signaled her to get on the bench, and Candace stepped forward, her insides doing cartwheels. She climbed onto the step, cursing the all-enveloping dress they’d provided for her to wear, which threatened to trip her and send her headlong over the bench sideways instead of along its length. She hitched up the skirt and knelt on the bench, its leather cold against her knees. She reached forward and settled over the raised center, shuffling a little to get comfortable. The leather was cold against her face, but that wasn’t what was making her shiver. The silent watchers circled around her, their hungry eyes greedily taking in every nuance of her humiliation, chilled her to the core.
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The guards strapped her hands and legs to the bench without a word. The clink of buckles being fixed seemed obscenely loud in the small, quiet room. When one guard flipped a strap over her waist and the other pulled apart the dress, leaving her butt exposed and vulnerable, Candace closed her eyes, so she couldn’t see the witnesses. Their gloating would have been too much to bear. She understood only too well she was paying for the sins of others as well as her own, seeing that message in the observers’ expressions wasn’t what she needed to get through this. Rod watched the two guards stand back, leaving Candace securely fastened in front of him, face down and bottom uppermost, awaiting his attention. When she’d suggested all those months ago that he apply some corporal discipline to curb her wayward behavior, he’d never dreamed it would come to this. The steps that had brought them both here flitted through his mind like a slideshow, each one taking him far beyond where he’d imagined he could go. Even this step, he’d only offered because he’d expected it to be rejected by the authorities. But here he was, committed to caning the woman he loved, supposedly to save her from a worse fate. Only, Rod knew, if he didn’t do a good job, Candace would simply be caned again or imprisoned as sentenced. His offer hadn’t saved Candace from anything; it had just included him in her punishment. They were both suffering for a host of previous ill-behaved, ill -mannered Westerners who’d offended local sensibilities. He stepped forward at a signal from the court official, tapped the cane across Candace’s shapely buttocks and jumped in alarm himself when he saw them flinch.
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He cursed himself inwardly. He had to show more fortitude than that, for both their sakes. Candace relaxed a little as the cane patted her butt. It was oddly comforting, now the initial shock was gone, to feel the rod and know it was being held at the other end by Rod. They had only twelve quick strokes to get through, and then they could fly home. She hoped he could do it, wouldn’t let himself down. The nervousness she’d seen in his expression as she’d entered the room didn’t bode well, and the locals would despise him for any weakness. She wanted to tell him to be strong, only that would sound like she was ordering him about, and the witnesses might decide the two of them were again mocking local values. There was a swooshing sound, and the cane landed squarely across her behind. Candace screeched in surprise and pain. God that hurt, and there were eleven more to go. Another swooshing sound, and Candace braced herself, scrunching her fists into balls. “Jesus,” she shrieked. She kicked her feet, the only free parts she could move, and ground her teeth together. The cane whistled though the air, and Candace took a deep breath, which was knocked right back out of her when the cane landed, and what felt like a fireball rippled through her body. That was only three, she thought desperately, and there were nine more to go. She’d never make it. It felt like her skin was being cut into shreds back there. She swiveled round to see for herself just as the cane landed again, and her buttocks nicely silhouetted against the white wall splatted flat before bouncing back into shape. Amazingly, so far as she could tell, her butt was still
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in one piece, but that didn’t stop her cursing Rod fluently. “Stop!” ______________ Candace jumped in alarm at the court official’s harsh cry. She prayed he wasn’t going to add more to her sentence for her swearing. The two officials began talking in their own language to her lawyer, quickly, angrily, and Candace’s heart sank. She was going to get more; she had no doubt of it. That’s what happened to naughty girls who didn’t take their punishment properly. The dispute between her lawyer and the officials continued, and Candace was pleased to see her man was holding his ground. Finally, after what seemed like an age, her lawyer turned to Candace and said, “You must behave with more dignity, or the court will insist on adding additional strokes. You are not showing an appropriate degree of acceptance or contrition. It is important that you understand this is for your own good, that it is for your improvement, and not something imposed. You volunteered for this, they say, now you must show you have accepted it.” Candace blinked away her tears. She wanted to answer indignantly ‘they could try it and see how well they managed’, but she bit her tongue because they were right. She wasn’t taking this as well as she’d thought she would, and it upset her, too. She’d thought her ‘training’ over Rod’s knee these past months would have made this easy -- only it didn’t. Whatever she and Rod did for the future, it wasn’t going to include canes. “I understand,” she said at last. “It’s just it hurts more than anything I’ve ever experienced.”
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Her lawyer spoke to the officials and they glared at Candace, but nodded, apparently satisfied with her reply. The male official nodded to Rod, and Candace braced herself again. The throbbing in her buttocks was sending out a pulse of pain with every heartbeat, and the idea of multiplying that pain by four was inconceivable, until the cane whistled through the air, and she watched it land. Candace screeched in agony but without using any understandable oaths or names. Her bottom shook with the impact, and, as the cane rose up, she decided not watching was her best strategy. The next stroke broke her resistance, and she began to cry, which seemed to make things better. The cane rose and fell as before, but now she lay still and compliant, and it didn’t hurt so much. She was even surprised when it stopped. The voices around her, people talking, hardly impinged on her consciousness. The searing heat in her tush consumed all her attention. The guards unfastened the straps holding her in place, but Candace lay unmoving, still weeping until two women took hold of her arms to help her up. Galvanized into action by this final indignity, Candace shook them off and rolled off the bench onto her feet. No way was she having these people think she was beaten into helpless submission. Rod watched Candace leave the room between the two guards. He felt sick. Candace hadn’t even glanced at him as she left, and he saw a long, separate flight home. The thought of never seeing her again made him shiver. His Knight Errant attempt hadn’t saved the girl from her fate or won her heart, either. This time, the dragon won, as he suspected it usually did. The witnesses filed out, leaving Rod with the lawyer.
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“So tell me again what happens now,” Rod asked. “Ms Astor will be held until the paperwork is complete, later today or maybe early tomorrow,” the lawyer replied, “then she can leave. You will be called at your hotel when it’s time.” “And the arrangements for the decoy are still on?” Rod asked. “Yes, as agreed, a decoy will be escorted out at the appropriate time. You and Ms. Astor will be able to escape the press, not that we have a lot of that here. It’s more your press you need to be concerned about.” Rod thanked the man for his efforts on their behalf and headed out for the hotel. He had to be there when the call came. His only hope of salvaging something from all this was the short ride from the prison to their new lodgings. If he couldn’t convince her in that time he was her man, he was sure he’d lose her. ______________ Candace gently ran her fingertips over the welts that crossed her tush. They felt huge. She twisted impatiently to see the damage, but without a mirror, she saw only where the ridges extended onto her flanks. Contrary to her impression during the caning, there was no split skin and no bleeding, only grayish stripes, for which she was profoundly grateful. That would have been too gross for words. Surprisingly, even though her butt ached more than it ever had before, the pain still intense an hour after, her biggest concern was Rod. When she’d left the punishment room, her quick glance at Rod’s ashen face, from the corner of her eye, so the witnesses wouldn’t have an excuse to start again,
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had shown her that, of the two of them, he was the one who’d come off worst. It really had hurt him more than it hurt her, just like folks used to say. She giggled nervously; only it wasn’t funny. She’d led him down this path, step by step over the past months, and landed him in a place he’d never have wanted to be. She could only hope he’d be there when she called. The short journey to their temporary lodgings might be all the time she had to stop him dumping her for good. Candace dressed carefully in loose fitting clothes (underpants would have to wait!) as she prepared what she was going to say. It had to be something that would convince him nothing like this would happen again. From now on, she was a reformed character and would never give him a moment’s concern. She followed this train of thought for only a few minutes before she realized it was what she always said when she was being spanked, and yet she was all too often spanked. He wouldn’t believe a word of it. He’d see it as the same old empty promises, made only to get out of her present predicament and allow her to continue misbehaving the moment she was forgiven. If only he truly believed in what he was doing, she thought bitterly, she wouldn’t be stuck like this. He’d take control and her life would be fine. Only he didn’t, and he was about to dump her, and she was terrified she was losing him. Whether she liked it or not, she was still in charge of her own life, and she’d have to make the best of it. That meant having Rod as a partner in it -- a closer partner than he was now. His objection to the age difference had to go, along with her pretence he was her ‘mentor.’ She finished dressing and lay on her side, on the cell’s hard single bed to wait.
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______________ Rod drove out of the prison gates slowly, scanning the streets for possible press who hadn’t fallen for the decoy. There were none. The street was busy, but no one was looking at their plain rental car with anything but indifference. He glanced at Candace, wrapped in robes and veiled, unsure of what to say. If it hadn’t been for the brief hug and greeting when he’d arrived at the prison, he wouldn’t even know for sure it was Candace. “Rod…” Candace began at exactly the same moment Rod said, “Candace…” They both stopped and laughed nervously. “Go ahead,” they said together and stopped again. “No…” they began and stopped. “Ladies first,” Rod said firmly. It was best she say what was on her mind, better all round. He’d always known this moment would come, the age difference, the lifestyle difference, and the corporal punishment fetish was bound to wear off eventually. No one would want to do that all their lives. It was fun when you were young and full of life, not so exciting after a few years, and people like Candace dived in and out of fads quicker than their clothes. “Will you marry me?” Candace blurted out before she could lose her nerve and before he could start on some torturous explanation as to why they should call it quits. Rod was so startled he stood on the brakes, throwing them both against their seatbelts. “What?” he asked. “You heard,” Candace replied, “and I think you should be more careful. You almost caused an
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accident.” The blaring of car horns from behind confirmed her statement. “Well, will you?” Rod used the time taken to get the car moving for thinking. Moments ago, he’d been certain she was going to dump him, and he’d been in agony. Now he found she wanted to marry him, all he could think of was how she was throwing her life away on an old man and how he had no right to take advantage of her by saying yes. “Yes,” he said. “I will. What this whole sorry incident has shown me is you need looking after, and apparently, I’m the lucky man who gets to do it.” Candace took his hand and squeezed it tightly. “That’s what I thought, too,” she said and then added, “It’s pathetic, really, a woman my age needing someone to keep her in line.” “How many people in this world are known world-wide, do you think?” Rod asked. Puzzled by this change of topic, she thought briefly before saying, “I dunno, thousands I guess.” “That would be my guess, too. Maybe a thousand or two, but not many more. Yet there are six billion people on the planet, which makes you one of some infinitesimally small percentage of incredibly successful people. How ‘pathetic’ is that?” Candace considered his suggestion carefully. She hadn’t looked at it that way. If she was honest, she’d always imagined her stardom was just dumb luck. “Put that way, it sounds quite impressive, doesn’t it?” she replied. “It is impressive,” he said. “None of us mature, capable people come close to what you’ve achieved, so give yourself a break. If you need help in some
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particular area of your life, so what, accept it and get on with the parts you do well.” Candace relaxed back into the car seat, not easy when her behind smarted as much as it did, and daydreamed. He was right, as always. She needed to focus on what she did best and let him focus on where she needed correction. Thankfully, she now knew that one thing she’d done really well was pick the right man for the right job.
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Epilogue Candace woke and found she was lying as she’d been when they’d gone to sleep. Her head was on his right arm, her body spooned into his, and his left arm was over her waist, his hand cupping her breast. Rod was still asleep, his chest rising and falling so gently she wondered if he was okay. He seemed okay, more okay than she was, anyhow. Her previous lovers had all been drawn from her world of music, and they’d been skin and bone, kept alive mainly by drink and drugs. Rod was lean but muscular; he said he worked out a lot. Running her hands across his body last night, she didn’t doubt him. With pleasantly erotic memories of the evening before, and pleasantly erotic thoughts of the future to come, Candace whiled away the time ‘till he woke. She wanted him to wake gently, so gently he wouldn’t realize what was happening until it was too late. It was still early and the city outside their apartment was quiet; only the clatter of delivery trucks occasionally intruded on the sound of Rod’s breathing. The hands on her bedside clock crept slowly around the face. Each minute felt like an hour, and Candace knew she couldn’t wait any longer. She stroked his hand -- it twitched and clasped her breast as she felt him waken. She smiled secretly and pretended to stretch, as though she’d also just woken. “Did I wake you?” Rod murmured apologetically. “Mmm,” Candace replied, leaving it to him to decide if it was yes or no. She pushed him gently onto his back and slid on top of him. She kissed his cheek, his chest, and then continued down, then sideways, so she was across his lap, her bottom
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uppermost, her feet hanging off the bed. She folded her arms and placed her head on them, gazing at him with a sly, sleepy smile. “Wake me up some more,” she whispered. “Right, young lady,” he said. “You asked for it, and you’re going to get it.” Candace laughed. His tone might be severe, but there was no mistaking the mischievous twinkle in his eye. His hand slapped and clipped her bottom, stinging her flesh and making her heart race, but it was all sound and fury signifying nothing more than a sexy wake up call. She wondered why alarm clock makers hadn’t developed a commercial system; it would be a sensation. “I’m awake,” she cried when her butt was growing too warm for comfort and she’d realized the neighbors might become suspicious of the steady slapping sounds. “Then you can wake me some more too.” Candace did as he asked, but rather than waking them, her efforts sent them both back to sleep right after. ______________ “Wake up,” Rod said, patting her bottom and inadvertently reminding himself why they’d fallen asleep. “Why?” Candace asked dreamily. “Because it’s midday, and we’ve a cat to feed.” “You do it. She’s your cat.” “I will, but you still have to get up.” Candace groaned and rolled over, which took her bottom out of the comforter and gave him yet another opportunity to slap it. He slapped it hard, and Candace began fighting to escape.
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“I’m going,” she cried, wriggling out from under his arm and scooting off to the bathroom. “Be quick or else!” Rod shouted warningly to her through the door. He swung his feet out of bed and began hunting for his clothes from the pile on the floor. They had to get back into everyday life, soon. The honeymoon was over, and he had work on Monday. Candace had a management meeting to talk about the band’s future, which looked surprisingly bright for a bunch of has-beens, and, in particular, the new CD that the company was calling “Candy Caned.” It was a ‘working’ title Rod thought would stick. The band was getting a lot of publicity; media pundits all over the western world wanted to discuss the record, particularly with the band members who’d been nowhere near the event. They were making up for their lack of support at the time by writing songs denouncing corporal punishment as a degrading injustice. Candace was writing a couple of songs for the album, too, which she hadn’t yet shared with the others. Rod thought with a sly grin, they’d be surprised when she did.
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