BABY STEPS
Justine Elyot

It slipped through my fingers like lost dreams, pleasures I had forgotten. Silk, lace; even glossy, watery latex, giving my skin the sensual attention it had craved for too long.

The door banged downstairs and I slammed the suitcase lid and shoved it under the bed.

“Are you about, love?”

I picked up the baby and made my way to the top of the stairs, looking down at Ryan’s back as he took off his coat and scarf and hung them on the peg. Neat, tidy, ready for a kit inspection at all times. I guessed that was what ten years of navy training did for a man.

“Good day?”

He turned and smiled.

“Ach, you know. Something smells gorgeous.”

It wasn’t me he was talking about, not these days. I’d gone from citrus scents by big fashion houses to milky spit-up without passing Go.

“It’s a while since I made a steak and ale pie,” I said. “Thought you might be feeling deprived.”

Ryan bent to kiss Will’s head, then my cheek.

Will reached out and pulled his dad’s tie so hard he started coughing.

I prised off the tiny fingers and laughed.

“I’ll see if I can put him down. Keep an eye on the pie for me, will you? Don’t want a burnt crust.”

I’d been assiduous about wearing Will out with fresh air and nonstop play today and thank goodness my tactics paid off. He drifted into the land of Nod while the mobile was still pinging out “Hickory Dickory Dock.”

I don’t know why I was feeling so anxious. It was as if the zoo animals on the mobile were rotating inside me, the little tune twanging at my nerves.

I didn’t have to say anything. I could just leave it. The sex wasn’t so bad, anyway. It was just…quotidian. It reminded me of the phrase “on duty” and Ryan working nights at the dockyard. But quotidian wasn’t the same as rubbish, and the last thing I wanted to do was hurt him or make him feel inadequate.

I could just leave it. Eat the pie, eat the ice cream, drink a glass of wine, cuddle in front of the TV and then maybe…

No. I was going to go ahead with the plan. If it worked, I could get my red-hot sexy minx self back without saying anything about finding the post-baby sex boring. If it worked.

The steak pie was perfect and the bottle of red complemented it perfectly. Everything was perfect. Perfect husband, perfect baby, perfect house.

“I’ve been thinking,” I blurted after a blow-by-blow account of Will’s day.

Ryan looked wary. Perhaps those were the wrong words to choose.

“Don’t look so scared.” I laughed nervously. “It has been known to happen.”

“I’ve been thinking too,” he said, leaning forward. He smiled at me, but the smile was weirdly sympathetic. “We need a holiday.”

“Oh,” I said, temporarily derailed. “That would be lovely, but that wasn’t what I was thinking.”

“No? Okay, what then?”

I took a gulp of wine then a deep breath.

“Now Will’s a bit older and I’ve got the remnants of my brain back together, I thought I might get myself a little job.”

Ryan frowned. “You said you didn’t want to put him in nursery. The money’s okay, Jess, we’ve got it covered.”

“No, I wouldn’t need childcare. It’s something I could do from home. Flexible hours, whenever I like.”

“Not thinking of going on the game, are you?” he said, but I could tell he wasn’t quite joking.

“It would give me an interest in life outside toddler groups and Barney the bloody Dinosaur. God, I hate that purple bastard.”

Ryan sniggered and started singing the “I Love You” song.

“Shut up!” I made a threatening gesture with my fork.

“Ooh, someone’s feeling brave,” he said, with a look in his eye that made my stomach flip. It had been so long since I’d seen it, so long, and I used to live for it.

It made me smile and put down my fork.

“Yeah,” I said softly. “So what you gonna do about it, sailor boy?”

“Don’t rush me,” he said. “I’m thinking about it.” “Really?”

The silence stretched into unease.

“If…I mean…would you be okay?” he said.

“Ryan, I’m not made of glass.”

“It’s just, y’know, you’re the mother of my son now.”

“You see me differently.” I sounded sad. I felt sad. “But I’m the same person.”

“I know you are. I know.” But he was trying to convince himself.

He needed a more practical form of persuasion. I pressed on.

“Ryan, this job I’m thinking of.”

“Oh, yeah. That. Go on.”

“It’s hosting parties in people’s homes. An evening or two a week.”

“You’re going to be an Avon lady? Ding dong.”

“That kind of thing but…different.”

I bit my lip and looked up at him from under lowered eyelashes, the way I used to in the pre-baby days when a spanking was on the cards.

He took in a sharp breath.

“Naughty knickers?”

I nodded.

“Jess! Seriously? You want to do that?”

“I want to do it, Ryan. I get my adult social life back, I get to be a taxpaying member of society again, I make a bit of pin money and a lot of commission.”

“Commission?” He liked the idea. His eyes had gone from hooded to wide and bright. “As in…”

“Anything I like from the catalogue.”

“And, er, would you happen to have a copy of that catalogue lying around, by any chance?”

“Oh, I can do better than that, sailor boy. Come upstairs and I’ll show you. Actually—no! Don’t. Wait there and I’ll come to you.”

I pushed back my chair and ran, giggling, to the stairs.

My heart was beating ten to the dozen, just the way it used to when I saw him turn the corner of my street, full of swagger and wicked intentions for me.

I pulled out the suitcase and sorted through it with trembling hands, trying to decide whether to go for the red satin corset and thong or the bottomless PVC dress.

Oh god, I was so tempted by the PVC, but was it too much too soon? The red corset would be playing it safe. It was sexy but vanilla—“come hither” but not “spank me.”

I wanted a spanking, though.

I put the corset back.

This PVC dress would be a severe test of my post-baby body. I was pretty sure it was back to normal, but did the mirror lie? The PVC would not.

I took off my jeans and sweater, then the big knickers and maternity bra I still wore as a kind of safety net, despite the fact I was no longer breastfeeding. I had been loath to get rid of them, perhaps unready to move on from Will’s tiny baby days. He was growing up too quickly and I didn’t want to acknowledge it.

But it was definitely time to dump the frumpy bra. I threw it into the bedroom bin, blinking hard to make the wrench more bearable, then I went to the full-length mirror and took a long, hard look.

Stretch marks, but they weren’t a problem—Ryan loved them. Wish I could have kept my stunning panto-dairymaid tits, but nature wouldn’t oblige—all the same, they were good, high and firm and rosy-nippled. My pubic hair was neatly trimmed, something I’d come to enjoy doing after months of not being able to see below my stomach. My waist was smaller than my hips again, thank god, and my legs had never really changed. I could do this. I could carry off this naughty PVC number, just as I’d swanned around the house in corsets and thigh-highs not so long ago.

It was a bit of a struggle to get the thing on, but I’d been expecting that. It was a basic sleeveless shift design, cut low at the bust and tight around the ribs so my breasts were lifted high, two bouncy balls in close captivity. The most radical design feature was the complete lack of bottom coverage—there was a shiny black strip of material above and another below, at thigh level, but in between my perky cheeks peeked out, begging for attention.

I looked in the mirror again, front and back, and felt myself get wet without even touching. The dress felt so snug, so cold, so cruelly tight, and I was so exposed. I was on display, and I might as well have been wearing a big placard around my neck saying SPANK ME.

Well, just in case that message wasn’t perfectly clear…

I went back to the suitcase and bent—not without some loss of breath—over it. If my bottom had been covered, I was pretty sure a seam would have split. That was how tight it was. I was feeling a bit hot already, but that just added to the gathering tension between my legs.

Underneath the lube gift-packs and massage-oil burners, way beneath the leopard-print bodysuit and the ribbon-bondage ties, was the thing I sought. I laid my fingers on the handle and pulled it out. It was a ruler paddle, in bright red flexible plastic with cutout letters forming the word SLUT. At the end, as if in apology, was a cutout heart shape.

Here I was, then, ready for my spanking.

I just hoped Ryan was too.

“Are you okay up there?” he called.

“Ssh,” I hissed from the top of the stairs. “You’ll wake Will.” I had on a pair of heels I hadn’t worn in eighteen months and I had to take the stairs carefully, holding on to the banister. So much for a grand entrance—but at least Ryan was in the dining area and couldn’t see me.

His eyes nearly fell out of his head when I did my best heel-to-toe Marilyn wiggle into the room.

“Fuck,” he said.

“Good idea.”

“Whoa.”

Reduced to inarticulacy—always a good sign.

Spurred on by this initial success, I went to kneel in front of him.

He looked down at my breasts, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He hadn’t even seen the back of the dress yet.

“What’ve you got there?” he said, pointing at the paddle.

I held it up for him.

“I’ve been a bad girl, Sir,” I said.

He took it from me. I didn’t know what he thought. He was breathing fast, looking a little tormented.

“Can we?” he said, looking over at the baby monitor. “Turn it off,” I suggested. “If he starts bawling we’ll hear him.”

“Yeah, but will he hear us?”

“He’s asleep, Ryan. He’s upstairs, through two shut doors. And we’ll keep it down.”

“Really? You’ve changed, then.”

“Gag me,” I said urgently. “Get a drying-up cloth and gag me.”

He sprang up, almost knocking me back on my heels, and took a cloth from the drawer. He took the opportunity to knock the monitor off the counter and into that same drawer, closing it with a flourish.

“Okay,” he said. “You’ve got it. And you’re going to get it. I want to see you on your feet, hands flat on the chair, bum in the air, girl.”

I was only too happy to obey, trying to stifle giggles. I was a terrible giggler and had been spanked for it more times than I could remember.

He came behind me with the cloth, but instead of bending to tie it around my head, he stopped dead and said, “Jesus Christ, Jess. You really need this, don’t you?”

“It’s been so long,” I whispered.

His hand landed on my bare cheeks, caressing them slowly until my clit was itching and soaked.

“You need it,” he repeated, hooking a finger into the buckled strap that crossed my thighs and pulling at it. “So, so badly.”

“Yes.”

“Say it.”

“I need a spanking, really, really badly.”

He paused, prior to gagging me.

“You’re sure?” he said.

“It’ll be fine,” I said. He was the one in need of reassurance, not me. “Lots of kids have kinky parents. It doesn’t mean they have to know about it. Will sleeps like a top these days; those broken nights seem to be over, thank god.”

“I’m going to build a shed,” said Ryan, and it seemed like such a non sequitur that I burst out laughing, but after a moment, I caught on.

“A woodshed?”

“Exactly. Then we can leave him asleep with the patio doors open and the monitor on, creep down the garden and…”

“Splinters,” I said, grimacing.

He laughed.

“I wouldn’t worry about splinters, love. Not with what you’ve got coming to you.”

The tea towel was folded and pressed to my mouth, then tied behind. We’d never invested in a proper gag, because Ryan loved to hear my cries and sometimes carry on cruel little conversations in the process of thrashing me. Gags just weren’t our kind of fun.

But tonight it was probably for the best.

“You won’t be able to safeword,” he realized, finishing his knot. “So we’d better have a safe gesture. Kick off your shoes if you want to stop, yeah?”

I nodded. Actually, I wouldn’t mind kicking them off right now. My ankles were starting to complain at their unaccustomed usage.

“Okay,” whispered Ryan, and I could feel him bending over me, feel his shadow and sense what he held in his hand. There was a long, long pause, then he said, “Shit. I don’t know if I

can.”

I wiggled my bottom desperately, growling through the folded linen map of some Greek island we’d visited on holiday.

Oh! The stroke rung out, a fat, obscene slapping sound that seemed to carry along the street. How it stung! I’d completely forgotten that spankings actually hurt.

“That was too hard, wasn’t it?” said Ryan, sounding agitated. “I’ve gone in too hard. I should have warmed up.”

I shook my head and stuck out my bum for more, despite the bar of pain and the heat that radiated from it. I didn’t care if it hurt—it was meant to hurt. What I cared about was my husband getting his dominant confidence back and ripping off the “fragile” sticker he’d apparently mentally stamped all over me.

“You’re sure?”

“Nurghr!”

He caught a breath. “Right. Right. I’m on it. I’m…”

The paddle fell again, not quite as hard, but beautifully parallel to the first stroke, just below.

“On it!” he said triumphantly.

I purred, low down in my throat. This was the touch I remembered.

The strokes came in blissful succession, just hard enough to set that sweet burn into motion but not so hard that I’d bruise. I remembered the word on the paddle and longed to see it, especially when he started covering his previous strokes.

Not only was that painful, it made me worry he’d blur the lettering. I did so want to read the writing on the rear. Mind you, it would be backward, since I’d have to do it in the mirror. Unless he took a photo.

My train of thought stuttered, interrupted as it frequently was by another flash of plastic pain.

In between strokes, I pictured my bottom, framed by the tight, shiny dress, bright red and adorned with the word SLUT in a cascade from the crest of my buttocks to the buckle strap across my thighs.

My groaning was more lust than pain by the time he put the paddle aside and untied my gag.

“You should see yourself,” he said, freeing my mouth for a rough grabbing and tongue-probing. After a long, hungry kiss, he repeated his words, then added, “You should see your bum.”

“Show me then. Take a picture,” I urged.

He went to the coat pegs and got his phone. I felt the flash light everything around me, then smiled and purred when he put the result in front of my face.

My bottom was deep red, except for the crisply outlined white letters. Ryan had laid the strokes perfectly, turning me into a living advertisement for what I was, and what I wanted to be for him tonight.

He had moved well beyond worrying about mishandling me. He unbuckled the strap that held my thighs together and patted them apart, his intention clear.

I chuckled and pushed my bottom out farther, feeling the sticky heat at the tops of my thighs and in the space between. This fuck, this thrusting of him into me, took us back to what we had been, and changed what we had become.

Inside my head, I was in a hundred places, a hundred past memories. I was bent over that pile of tarry rope in the darkened dockyard, my jeans around my knees, looking out all the time for the security patrol. I was tied to a chair with my legs wide, watching Ryan’s face as he teased my clit with a vibrator, taking me away from the edge so many times before allowing me to tumble over it. I was lying on my stomach while he poured lube onto my spread bottom cheeks, after a long campaign of persuasion to try anal. I wondered afterward what I’d been so afraid of. I wanted to do it again, wanted to do everything now, wanted Ryan to know that nothing was off limits.

“Do what you want,” I panted while he jolted me over and over the bench. “Don’t hold back.”

He responded by wetting his fingers in my juices and twisting them slowly into my anus while he fucked my pussy even harder. He held them there like an anchor, using his penetration of my tight hole to keep me in position.

I was heading right out of control, a dizzy, delirious mess of sex and need.

“Got what you wanted, didn’t you?” he gasped into my ear. “Getting it now.”

“Mmm,” was all I could say. The old us was leaking into the new us, mixing up the pieces of the jigsaw and rearranging the picture.

I was bent over, spanked, sore, filled in both holes, only allowed to make a sound because he’d removed the gag, and I was Me the slut as well as Me the mother. I was those things and more things and all the things bled together, but right now I wanted nothing but my orgasm.

I clenched all the muscles I had, tightening my grip on him, wanting him to feel as big as possible inside me. The friction burned and pushed me higher. I thrust my hips upward, making his moves even stronger and deeper.

“Fuck,” he said, sounding awestruck. “You gorgeous slut.”

Here it was. The blending was complete and the time had come.

I sucked him in, sucked his orgasm into mine, two separate climaxes flowing into one, just as our two bodies were joined at the roots. This was how we had made our baby, but it was also how we had made us.

I lay slumped over the table for some time, accepting his kisses on my damp hair and salty skin.

“That was good?” he asked, as if he needed to.

“Exactly what I needed,” I said.

“Me too.”

After he pulled out, he went to check that the baby monitor was still working. It was.

“Not a peep out of His Lordship either.”

“I told you he was sleeping well these days.”

“I’m going to take a shower, then I’m going online to shop for a woodshed.”

“I’ll join you.”

I took off the latex dress and put the slut paddle back in the suitcase. I was going to have to buy them now. Looked like my new career was on.