The Wager

The party had been loud for an hour, and Claire had spent all of it in the kitchen, the only room with any air left in it, one shoulder to the wall, a beer in her hand she kept forgetting to drink. She had dressed for it: a black top cut close to the throat and closer to everything under it, dark high-waisted jeans that hugged her bottom and legs tightly. Her platinum hair was scraped back into a knot tight enough to pull at her temples. She had spent half an hour building a look meant to read as no effort at all.

A man she had clocked when she walked in had drifted to the same stretch of counter, just close enough to talk under the music without standing together. Colton. She had gotten the name an hour ago. He was tall and put together the easy way, not the gym way, sleeves shoved up over his forearms, a bottle held loose in a hand she had caught herself watching more than once. Good jaw, a couple of days off clean-shaven. A mouth that sat a half-step ahead of a smile and never quite spent it.

"You don't like parties," he said. He kept his voice low enough that she had to tip toward him to catch it.

"I like this one fine."

"You've held this same square foot of wall since you walked in. Somebody could light the rest of the house on fire and you'd finish your drink first."

"I like this square foot." She turned her bottle a slow quarter-turn on the counter and kept her eyes off him while she did it. "Anything worth having comes to me. Saves the walk."

His mouth did the half-step short of a smile again. "And has it. Come to you."

"You walked over."

Score! She felt the victory of being looked at by the one man in the room she would have picked herself. Her pulse had picked up under the counter.

The party was loud in the way these got loud once the sober edge wore off, music turned up past talking volume. Somebody's playlist, cheap beer and warm vodka and a bottle of something better going around. Bodies packed the front room. Two girls were dancing close, hips touching, arms sliding around their sides, and a third was filming them. They got their stares and they knew it.

Veronica passed through with a fresh bottle. Veronica was the host and queen bee, surrounded by both adoring boys and girls. Veronica was always the center of attention, clearly enjoying it, her elegant short dress, high heels and sensual motion clearly designed for this.

"You hear they're doing another casting call?" a girl said, close enough that Claire caught it over the music. "For the show. My roommate's sister actually applied."

"She did not."

"She did. You sign the papers and they put you on live and the whole city watches you get, you know." The girl mimed something with her hand, a swat, and cackled. "On camera. Forever."

"Would you, though? Actually?"

"For that attention I'd bend over on the news. Show them everything they want to see." She made a fluid movement of briefly bending over, rubbing her hand over the low-cut denim shorts of her bottom, giving it a light slap, only to be up again a second later. She grinned at Claire, her eyes flashing. "You too shy?"

Claire made a small sound through her nose. "I don't get those volunteers," she said, to no one, to Colton, to the beer. "They line up. They must need the attention that badly."

Colton looked at her, as if undressing her in front of his mental eye, and his mouth twitched. "You scoff them now."

* * *

The trouble started with Elly.

Elly Dixon came through the kitchen loud, already laughing, a drink in each hand. She was short and built, big firm breasts under a white top cut low enough to show the top of both, hips in a skirt that stopped high on her thighs. Two boys came in behind her and stayed behind her.

"There she is," Elly said, arms open, and kissed the host on the mouth. Within a minute she was holding court against the far counter, three people deep, a boy's hand flat on the small of her back and her leaning into it.

"She had me in tears," a girl was saying, sitting on a guy's knee with her skirt hitched up. "Actual tears. I couldn't sit right for two days."

"Show us, then."

"I'm not showing you in the kitchen."

"You showed everybody last time."

"That paddle," a guy said, and whistled.

Claire checked her top, her jeans, the knot at the back of her head. Her nipples were up under the black cotton. She let them be. Then Elly's eyes came across the kitchen and found her, and stayed.

"You're quiet," Elly called over the music. "Down here in the corner with your little beer. You got opinions on your face."

"I have opinions everywhere," Claire said. "The face is just where you can see them."

The room went ohh.

"Go on then," Elly said, grinning, spreading her hands. "Say it."

"I think," Claire said, "that this is a lot of theater for people who need an audience to feel things. And I think," and somebody turned the music down, "that you're all bark and no bite. You couldn't spank me hard enough to get a sound out of me. Not one. You'd tire out first."

Her sex clenched when she heard it out loud. Her face stayed where she had put it.

Elly's whole face lit.

"Oh," she said, soft. "Oh, honey. You want to bet?"

* * *

"Twelve," Elly said. She rolled her shoulder and grinned at the crowd closing in, glasses up, phones staying in pockets because the host had said pockets. "Twelve on that skinny little ass of yours. You don't make a sound, you win, and I'll tell this whole room you broke me. You do make a sound, you lose, and you're mine for the rest of the night. My bitch. Whatever I say."

"And how do I make it stop," Claire said.

"You say I lose. Two words. Bet's over, everybody goes home happy." Elly's grin widened. "And if it ever goes further than you want, you say red, and everything stops, no game, no argument. That's the house rule, not mine. But you won't need it. You're going to say I lose about swat number three."

"I'm going to say nothing at all," Claire said, "and watch your arm give out."

"Say it back to me. All of it."

Claire came off the wall and stood straight, jeans tight over her hip bones, nipples still up under the cotton. "Twelve. No sound. I don't say a word and you tire out."

"And?"

"And red stops it."

"Good girl. Remember you asked for this."

A girl with a drink had worked her way to Claire's elbow. "You don't have to prove anything to these people, you know. Nobody's keeping score but her."

"I'm keeping score," Claire said, with her eyes on Elly. The girl shrugged and stepped back with her hands up.

Claire walked to the kitchen chair by the wall, turned it, set her hands on the back and bent. The jeans pulled tight over her bottom. Her platinum knot slid forward off her neck. The room made a noise. Somebody whistled.

"Look at that," Elly said to the room. "Six foot of girl and an ass I could cover with one hand. Give me a minute, I'll find it."

"Come on," Claire said over her shoulder, flat. "Do your worst."

Someone stepped out of the crowd and put a paddle in Elly's hand.

Claire had pictured a palm. The paddle was wood, wide, a foot of it, worn dark at the end. Her stomach dropped. Colton stood at the counter, to her left, and from there he had the whole length of her, bent, the seam of the jeans pulled up into her crease. Let him. Heat came up her chest.

"Count for me," Elly told the room.

* * *

The crack reached her ear a half second before the pain did, a hard flat sound that cut the murmur dead, and then the sting arrived, wide and hot across both cheeks even through the denim, and spread, and sank in, until both cheeks were one hot ache that beat with her pulse. Both hands wanted to go back and cover it. She kept them on the chair.

"One," said the room.

"Denim's taking half of that," a guy said. "Wait till it's skin."

The second landed lower, on the crease where her bottom met her thighs, and that one she felt in her teeth. Her toes curled inside her shoes. She gave them the flat bored face over her shoulder. The girl on the guy's knee had stopped smiling.

"Two."

"Fuck, that's loud," somebody said. "That's the wood. She didn't give you shit."

The third came in high across the top of both cheeks where the denim pulled tightest, a dry hard smack, and she rocked forward onto her arms with it.

"Three."

The fourth landed dead where the third had. Her knees went soft for half a second before she caught them, and her breath hissed out through her teeth.

"Four. She's holding."

Elly was breathing a little now. "Well, look at her. Ice cold. Not a peep." She laid the flat of the paddle against the seat of Claire's jeans, cool wood on the burn, and Claire hated the shiver it pulled up her spine. "You know what I think, though? I think those jeans are doing you a favor."

"Take 'em down," someone said from the crowd. "Jeans down."

"Yeah, down, come on, let's see it."

"Down, down."

Claire opened her mouth. Before she could say anything, Elly's fingers were hooked in her waistband, no asking, no waiting for a nod, and she peeled the denim down off her hips and over the swell of her bottom and left it bunched at the top of her thighs.

"Oh, now look at this." Elly stepped back and gave it to the room, loud. "Black, and about the size of a bus ticket. Nothing to it back here at all, and this little bit up front still pretending it's polite." She hooked the string with one finger where it disappeared between Claire's cheeks and let it snap back against her skin. "That is not underwear for a Tuesday. That is underwear for being looked at."

"Four stripes on her already. White ass, pink stripes."

"She's going pink."

"That's not the paddle, that's her face."

"Both," Elly said. "Look at her ears."

Cool air on the backs of her legs and the whole bare curve of both cheeks. Claire's ears burned, then her face. From behind she was bare bottom, pink on white, the black string down her crease, the thin front of the thong showing between her thighs where the jeans held them apart. Colton set his bottle down and came around the counter, two steps to the left, until he had a clear line to her bare bottom, and looked. Her lips went slick against the thong. She squeezed her thighs together on it.

"For a girl who isn't here for attention," Elly said, "you sure dressed for it. Go on. Tell me that's not true."

Claire said nothing.

"Five," Elly said, and swung.

The paddle cracked on bare skin, flat across the right cheek, with the thong a string in her crease and all of both cheeks open to it. The sting arrived half a second behind the sound and spread from the crease to the top of the cheek. Her hips jerked into the chair and her jaw locked shut on the gasp.

"Six."

The crease of the left cheek. The sting went in narrow and deep and beat there with her heartbeat.

"Seven." Both cheeks at once. The flesh jumped and settled, two red ovals on white skin, one each side of the string.

"She's shaking."

"She's not shaking, she's holding on."

"Look at her hands."

Elly bent to her ear, loud enough for the room. "Look at you. Hard as anything up top. That's not the paddle doing that, sweetheart." She straightened. "Nipples through the shirt, everybody. Gone pink all the way down her neck. And she's squeezing her thighs together like that's subtle."

Her nipples stood up through the thin top in two points, hard enough to ache. She squeezed her thighs tighter. The insides were slick, and the string of the thong was wet through between her lips.

"Eight," said the room.

The paddle cracked across the sitting spots, low, and the heat ran up and joined the rest. Her bottom was red all over from the thighs up, darker where five and six had been.

The girl at the front sniffed, twice, and laughed out loud.

"Oh my God. You can smell her."

Somebody shoved forward to check. "No, she's right. She's actually wet."

"From a paddle? From a paddle?"

Claire shook her head, once, hard, over her shoulder, her face hot to the ears.

"No?" Elly crouched and looked up at her. "You want to tell me she's wrong? Go on. Say it out loud." She waited two full seconds, smiling. "Oh, that's right. That would be a word, wouldn't it. That would be a sound. So we'll all just take it as read, then, and you can shake your head as much as you like."

"She can't deny it. Look at her."

"That's the best part."

Her inner lips had swelled around the string, the wet had run past it onto her thighs, and thirty people had smelled it.

"Panties," somebody said. "All the way off."

"Take 'em down, let's see what she's really working with."

"Quiet ones always want it the most. Always."

Elly hooked a finger in the string at each hip and pulled the thong down slow, peeling it out from between Claire's lips and down to her knees. Air went over her sex and into the split of her bottom.

"There it is," Elly said. "Look at that. All done up neat, and shining wet, and she stood in the kitchen an hour ago and told us she wasn't here for attention. Who grooms like that for a Tuesday?"

"She knew," the girl said.

"She knew when she got dressed," Elly agreed.

The strip was trimmed to a narrow line. Under it her outer lips had come open with the swelling, the inner lips shining between them, and a wet track ran down her left thigh.

"Not like this," Elly decided. "Last three, I want you really showing. Bend all the way down. Hands behind your knees. Grab on."

Claire did it.

She folded down over the chair and took hold behind her own knees. Her bottom tipped up, her cheeks pulled apart, and her sex hung open under them. Upside down between her own thighs she saw Colton's shoes step left of the chair. He stood with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on her sex. She wanted him looking there, and would have denied it to anyone. A bead of wet ran out of her toward her clitoris.

"Now that," Elly said, "is a picture. Everybody see that? She did that herself."

"Nobody's even holding her."

"She's holding herself open. Look at her hands."

"You could let go any time, sweetheart," Elly said pleasantly. "Nobody's tied you to anything. Nobody's touching you but me, and only when I swing."

Claire's fingers dug in behind her knees, and thirty people looked at her red bottom and the pink split between the cheeks.

"Nine," said the room, before Elly had swung.

Elly laid the paddle flat on Claire's bottom and held it there. Claire's thighs trembled in her grip, and more wet ran down her thigh where Colton could see it.

"Nine," Elly said, and swung.

The crack was louder on stretched skin. It landed full across both cheeks, and the sting covered her bottom from hip to hip and went in deeper than any before it. Her body bucked over the seat. A small catch clicked in her throat and stopped there.

"That was close. That was so close."

"Doesn't count. Keep going."

"Ten." Tears spilled over and ran down her face and dripped off her nose onto the floor. "She's crying."

"Cry all you want, sweetheart," Elly said. "Tears are free." The middle of her bottom had gone a darker red, with the paddle's edge printed pale at each end.

"Eleven."

The paddle caught her low across the sitting spots, and the sound tore out of her, loud and ragged, a cry that broke in the middle and dropped into a low note at the end. The room went quiet for a second, and then someone at the back whooped.

"There it is!" Elly crowed. "There it is, oh, that's not a pain sound, sweetheart, I know a pain sound, that was a whole other noise." She was laughing. "You lose. You lose, and every single person in this room heard exactly why."

"She moaned. She straight up moaned."

"The ice queen. Oh my God."

"Do the last one again, make her do it again."

"Well?" Elly said, and tapped the flat of the paddle against the wet inside of Claire's thigh. "You can talk now. Bet's done. Tell the room I'm wrong."

"It was the pain," Claire said. Her voice came out cracked and wet.

"Mm. And the smell? Was that the pain too?"

"Twenty minutes ago she was too good for all of us," the girl said, right at the front. "Not so tough now, is she."

"She's not tough, she's desperate."

"That's what she came here for. She just didn't know it yet."

"I knew it," Elly said. "I knew it in the kitchen."

Claire stayed folded over with her hands behind her knees, bottom up and red, sex open and shining to the room. Her clitoris stood out of its hood and she wanted a hand on it, anyone's hand, and kept her own where they were.

Elly gave her the twelfth anyway, her full set. It landed light, a flat slap across the middle of both cheeks, and Claire made another sound, smaller, and let it out.

* * *

"So," Elly said, to the room, spreading her arms wide, the paddle loose in one hand. "She's mine."

The crowd cheered. Claire, bent double, felt her sex clench at the word, wet and open to all of them, and wanted it said again.

"Stay just like that," Elly told her. Claire stayed. "Somebody get me something good."

Colton pushed off the counter. She saw him from the corner of her eye, walking behind her to the host's drawer, and heard it slide open and shut. He put something into Elly's free hand and stepped back to the counter, behind her and to the left, where he had her red cheeks, her open sex and the shine on the inside of her thighs in full view. Her inner lips twitched and a fresh bead of wetness slid out of her and down toward her clitoris. Her face burned hotter than her bottom. She wanted him to keep looking.

Her view was the floor and her own knees. Elly thumbed a switch and it started a low steady hum, and both of Claire's cheeks pulled tight at the sound, the red on them going darker along the crease.

"Now," Elly said, crouching behind her, loud enough for the back row. "Let's find out what the ice queen sounds like when somebody's actually nice to her."

"Look at her holding herself open like that."

"She's not going anywhere."

"Go on. Wreck her."

Elly laid the head of the wand against her from behind, low, and dragged it up over her outer lips. They were swollen and slick and the hum went through them into the bone. Then she settled the head on Claire's clitoris and held it there.

A moan came out of Claire, loud and broken in the middle, and she let it. The buzz sat on her clitoris and spread, into her inner lips, up into her belly, back into the hot skin of her bottom, where it met the burn of twelve swats. The burn was a deep steady ache that throbbed with her heartbeat. The wand was a sharp climbing tingle that made her belly pull in. Her hips rocked back onto it. Her thighs strained against her own grip on her knees and her back arched, tilting her bottom higher.

"Oh, she likes that," Elly said, moving the head in slow circles. "Look at her go. Grinding right back on it. Where'd all that ice go, huh? Where'd it go?" She looked up at the room without lifting the wand. "Somebody remind me how she wasn't here for attention."

"She's gonna come. Look at her."

"Right here in front of everybody."

She was. Her thighs shook and the wet ran out of her onto the head of the wand and around it, and she pushed back for more, bare bottom in the air in front of thirty people, and heard herself begging. "Please. Please." Her voice came out high and cracked, and she was asking for more of it.

Elly kept the wand on her sex and turned the power up one notch.

"There we are," she said, and pressed the head flatter. "Let the room have it."

The pressure sat on her clitoris, swollen so wide the head covered all of it. Wetness ran out of her and went cool where the air touched it. Her inner lips, closed and tidy when she had walked in, hung open and heavy and glazed, and she knew what they looked like from behind, dark and shining and spread. She wanted everyone behind her to see them.

Her hands were still locked behind her knees.

"You don't even need to tie her. Look at her hands."

"Bet she'd like that too. Cuffs or not, she's holding on."

Her thighs went first, shaking against her grip. Then the muscles inside her started to clench in hard slow pulls, her sex closing and opening on air. Her back arched down and her bottom tilted higher and offered the wand more, and someone said, "She's doing that herself."

The orgasm hit her and kept hitting. Her sex clenched and a hot rush gushed out of her, over the wand and over Elly's hand, and ran down the inside of both thighs and dripped off her knees onto the boards under the chair. She shook and made a long ragged noise that went on.

"She's squirting. She is actually squirting on the floor."

"Look at it run down her legs."

"Louder than the music. Somebody warn the neighbours before they call it in."

"That's the carpet edge, that is. That's somebody's deposit."

She heard every word while it was still coming out of her. Thirty people were watching her sex clench and open and pour, and telling each other what it looked like over the noise she was making, and each line sent another pull through her and another spurt down her legs, and she came harder for it.

"Told you I could smell her," a girl said, close by. "Twenty minutes ago. Nobody believed me."

"Ice queen," somebody else said. "In her own puddle."

Elly held the wand on her until the last of it had shaken out, then lifted it and crouched down to Claire's eye level, her cheeks flushed and her chest rising fast.

"Good girl," she said. "Was that so hard?"

"No," Claire said.

She wanted Elly to ask her again.

Elly stood and turned to the room with her arms out.

"She came in here thinking she was better than all of you," she said. "And she's leaving with her own mess on the floor and my paddle marks on her arse, and she thanked me for it. Somebody remind me how she wasn't here for attention."

The room roared. Claire stayed folded over the chair with her hands on the backs of her own knees, wet to the knee, red from her waist to her thighs, her sex still open and dripping into the puddle under her, and let them look.

"And she never said red," the host said, from the doorway. "Not once. I was listening for it."

Colton's eyes went from the puddle on the boards to her open sex and stayed there.

* * *

They let her up eventually.

She got her hands off her knees and straightened, and her legs shook under her. The girl who had offered her the way out brought a throw blanket off the couch and put it round her shoulders. Somebody by the sink held up her jeans. The music came back up. A boy at the fridge did the noise she had made at the end, loud, and got his laugh, and a girl walking past with a drink said, "You'll want to mop that, babe," and nodded at the floor.

Claire pulled the thong up under the blanket. It was soaked through and cold now, and it sat wet against her sex. She got the jeans up over her thighs and the denim closed tight on her bottom, hot from her waist to the tops of her thighs, each cheek beating with her pulse against the seat. Her thighs were tacky where it had run down them. The inside of her knees was wet.

"Somebody give her a towel," a boy called. "She can clean up her own mess."

A dish towel landed on the boards by her foot. Claire got down on her knees in the blanket, her bottom tight in the jeans and burning where the denim pressed, and wiped up her own wet off the floor while the ones nearest watched her do it.

"Missed a bit."

"For what it's worth," the girl said, "you did break her arm a bit."

"Thank you," Claire said.

She went back to her corner and held the blanket closed at her chest. She stood a hand's width off the counter, because the edge of it would sit right on her bottom. Colton came over with two beers, leaned on the counter beside her and held one out. She took it.

"You didn't tap out," he said. "You could have, any time. You didn't."

"No."

He drank. Across the room two girls were on the couch with their hands in each other's hair, and the girl in the denim shorts was on somebody's lap, and every few seconds somebody looked over at Claire and then back.

"You should go on the show," he said.

She turned to look at him.

"I'm serious." He looked at her. "You saw how you were up there. The whole room did. Some people would've died. You. You lit up. You'd be made for it."

She opened her mouth to sneer and shut it again. She stood there with her bottom hot inside her jeans and her thong wet against her sex, and she saw the cameras. She saw the whole city watching her bend over and go red and run down her legs. She saw her own hand signing her name.

"Maybe," she said.

Colton's eyes went down the blanket to her hips and came back up. "You're thinking about it right now."

"Where do they do the casting?"

"I'll send you the link." He tipped his bottle at her and drank.

She let the blanket fall open and reached back and pressed her palm flat on her own bottom, the heat coming through the denim into her hand, and kept it there, and watched him watch her do it.