Mary and Daphne #22 (Patreon)

Ever listen to someone else eat? It’s amazing how you never notice the little sounds like a fork scraping against a plate or the click of the tines against the ceramic. In a completely otherwise silent kitchen, when that’s all you have to focus, it seems very loud.

Though I guess I did actually have other things to focus on. I was standing in the corner, so I had not one but two walls to look at (lucky me!), my butt hurt (lucky me!), and I knew in another few minutes I’d be getting a much worse than the swats I collected on the way to the corner. So I could focus on the possibility that Mary wasn’t done with my bottom yet (lucky her!).

The day didn’t start out auspiciously. My feet hit the floor in a bad mood, and not just any bad mood but a mood directed at Mary. She didn’t know that. If she did, she probably would’ve stayed out of my way for a while.

I stepped out of the shower, and there she was in her impossibly cheery morning mood getting dressed, and on the bed was an outfit for me. Nothing about it I didn’t like. It was actually the most grown up thing she’d picked for me in a while. The panties were actually a solid color, and that color was black. I mean, she doesn’t lay out clothes for me everyday, but when she does, hardly ever does she lay out age-appropriate panties. She’s still laying out a pull-up for me on weekdays. I didn’t want one of those. I just didn’t want to wear anything she picked out for me. I guess I was maybe a little too vocal in my non-verbal grunts and opening and closing drawers because by the time I was done dressing myself and putting away what Mary had gotten out, she was leaning against her dresser with her arms folded.

“Nope,” she said.

“I just didn’t wanna wear that,” I said, not really with attitude but maybe a little bit with some weariness in my voice. Despite some people’s misimpression, being Daphne can be a seriously tiring affair.

“Which is fine by me,” she said, “but we’re not starting our day with you in a ‘tude.” She sat down on the bed and waved me over.

“Mary,” I whined (like, really whined), but walked (foot-dragged) my way over. She grabbed me by the waistband of my skirt, and I let myself be bent over the end of the bed next to her. She started giving me a firm hand spanking over my shorts.

“It’s Saturday. (SPANK SWAT SMACK) We’re not starting it with you in a bad mood. (SPANK SPANK SPANK)” She kept that up for maybe thirty swats. A wakeup call is all she intended. “If something is bothering you, we can talk about it. If it’s just a general not-happy-with-the-world mood, you know how to handle that maturely. You’re gonna pout your way into trouble before the morning’s over at this rate.”

She gave me ten more and let me up. It was just a warning, an attention getter. It hurt a little but not much. She’s given me much worse without even taking me off my feet. She gave me a hug I didn’t fully return; she smiled at me and brushed my hair our of my face and kissed me. I tried to smile back and didn’t succeed, and I think she resolved to be extra sweet to me. Well, I wasn’t gonna let her.

Second Saturday of every month is deep clean day. No one likes cleaning; I especially hate it. Most months, it’s not that bad between the two of us. We do a decent job keeping up with the basics, so divided between us, it’s at most a morning’s work. Or it is if you get keep working at it. Mary had Adele blasting away on our speaker upstairs, the windows were open, it was a nice spring day, and I had exactly one of those windows cleaned before sitting down on the couch and getting lost in my phone.

“Daphne!” She scared the crap outta me. “Thought I’d lost you there.”

“Sorry,” I said as I got up with my paper towels and bottle of Windex.

“No worries; I’ll help. Where should I start?”

“This one,” I said as I tore off a paper towel for her.

“You’ve only gotten one done?”

“It’s only been like …”

“An hour. I got all three bathrooms done.” Mary didn’t exactly reproach me with that statement. She wasn’t mad or even irritated. She might have even meant it in an inspirational ‘if I can, you can too, cowgirl’ way. Didn’t matter.

“So I’m not Martha Stewart’s maid. Here,” I said held out a paper towel. You may have noticed I’m not the kind of person who can be in a bad mood without others knowing it or be mad at someone without it being obvious. I guess I wear my emotions on my sleeve. Mary certainly knows this even if she is intent on helping me learn to not wear my grumpy on the outside. I sometimes know when I’m doing it, and sometimes I don’t, and I confess that I did know then. Almost certainly did not help that as she crossed her arms and looked at with me with her lips pulled all the way to one side in a little scrunch that said she was not at all impressed, I held out that paper towel and had the very bad sense to jiggle it, my way of saying, ‘hurry up and take it already.’

She executed a perfect Marine Corp about face and walked out of the room. I cursed myself silently for being so stupid, but I didn’t really feel sorry about it. I knew I should’ve, but I didn’t.

I was kneeling on the sofa to get the middle window behind it when Mary marched back into the room, her heels striking the floor hard enough to be audible. I started to get off the couch to face the music and didn’t even get one foot on the floor.

“Stay.” I huffed and waited. I mean, it’s hard to even be bothered sometimes. So I was going to get the day’s second spanking. Viewed in its own light, you could argue I deserved it. I wasn’t feeling so interested in learning lessons and was just impatient: get the spanking over with, get the cleaning over with, and then I could find some space, preferably with a glass of wine for lunch.

“Hands on the back of the couch,” she ordered me. She reached for my skirt and undid it so it fell around my knees. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but you do not talk like that to me or anyone,” she said before giving me a wedgie and letting fly with the paddle she (recently) hung on the back of our pantry door. At least it’s on the inside, not that we have many people over who don’t know that Mary, at a minimum, has a paddle in her purse in the kitchen at all times.

I only got some testing spanks with the new kitchen paddle before. It’s light, but it packs a heckuva sting that starts feeling like a burn pretty quickly. Good thing we live at the end of the street; less of a chance of people waking by seeing me in the window with my eyes squinched shut and a grimace on my face and the unmistakable sound of wood-on-butt through the open windows. I clenched the back of the couch and tried to keep my knees from wobbling. She wasn’t giving it her all, but she was putting a zing on it and getting me at a funny angle that made flat WHAP! sound on the fleshiest part of my butt.

I was partly fed up and partly in such a rotten mood I wanted to cry, but I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction. I rubbed just a little dampness from my eyes when she was done and waited for her to finish lecturing me.

“Do you have something to say to me,” she asked.

“I’m sorry.” Meant-didn’t-mean-it. I shouldn’t have said what I said or slacked off on my part of the chores, but I still was mad at her. I tried to actually sound sorry, and I’d say I managed to sound about eighty percent sorry. That’s a lot of sorry. That’s worth something. She agreed, so it seemed, because she put the paddle down.

“Stand up.” I did. “Step out.” I did, and she took my skirt. “You can stay like that until dinner time. Any more sass or attitude, and you’ll be sitting on a bruised butt for a few days. Understood?”

“Yes.”

She didn’t help with the windows, but she did do the kitchen, which should’ve been mine. I think she was trying to be nice, or maybe just get stuff done so we could get on with our day.

She’s not dense. She left to go run errands, and she didn’t ask if I wanted to come. She knew I needed some space and maybe some time to just chill. That paddle packed a burn that lingered for an hour and made my butt feel clammy. I wish I could say I was in a much better mood when she got home, but I wasn’t. I was a little better at hiding it though. We made dinner together and made small talk while we did. A little stilted, but not frosty or anything. So how did I end up in the corner?

“Try your Brussels sprouts.”

That’s how. I didn’t want Brussels sprouts. I was going to eat them anyway because we all need fiber and iron and vitamins and minerals, but then she told me to. Well, just on principle I had to not eat them now. I just ignored her.

“Daffy, you gotta eat some veggies,” she said when she noticed I hadn’t touched them.

“I don’t want any.”

“You like Brussels sprouts. I’ve seen you eat them. I’ve seen you make them.”

“Well, I like them the way I make them.” That earned me a dirty look.

“Just have a couple, for me.” She took her fork and rolled one toward me on my plate. “Or no dessert,” she said in a faux sweet way to tempt me into not being a bitch.

“I’ll eat what I want.” Gauntlet, thrown. Test of wills, commenced. I choose what goes in my body. She can’t take that away. She also couldn’t back down now. I backed her into a corner; funny, since I ended up in the actual corner less than a minute later.

“Daphne Ann, I’m gonna count to three.”

“I am not eating the damn Brussels sprouts, and I am not five years old!”

She stood up so fast she almost knocked her chair over as she grabbed me by my upper arm and propelled me toward the corner with all the force she could pack into an underhand spank. “You’ve been acting like one all day!”

“Ow! Ow! I don’t want any stupid Brussels sprouts!”

“Good thing you’re done with dinner then (SMACK SMACK SMACK!). You can keep your nose in the corner until I’m done, and think about what you have coming.”

Okay, so I may have chosen a stupid hill to die on, but the vegetables really weren’t the problem, obviously. The problem is Mary has been dropping all these new things on me for months without even asking, and she’s been talking to Sandy and Lisa and probably Nana behind my back. It’s been bugging me since our anniversary last week when Mary told Nana she could change me. I didn’t even want to be in the stupid diaper, and Mary knows that or damn well ought to, and the more I ruminated on it, the more pissed off I got until I hopped out of bed this morning ready to fight.

So I stood there and listened to Mary finish her dinner and could only imagine how much she was looking forward to beating my butt. I may have been in a terrible mood and pissed at Mary, but I wasn’t about to leave the corner and tell her no. I asked for domestic discipline; she decides when I get spanked; I don’t want to change that. The nuclear option? Refuse? I wasn’t pissed enough to court those long term consequences. I heard her glass clink as she set it back on our table; I think maybe ten minutes had passed.

“Alright,” she said, “let’s go.” I walked ahead of her trying very hard not to stomp and thinking of everything I was going to say when she was done lighting my ass on fire. I kept my mouth shut. I stepped out of the doorway into our bedroom and just stood there waiting for her to tell me how she wanted me. She walked around me without a word and went straight to her nightstand and got the hairbrush out.

“Is this enough,” she asked me, brandishing it. “Or should I go get the bathbrush? ... That was an actual question,” she added when I stood there silently pouting.

“Yes, it’s enough. Geez.” Her eyes lit up as she tightened her lips, drew in a sharp breath, and pushed it out hard through her nose. If she wasn’t pissed before ...

Instead of the bed, she sat down on the ottoman in front of the arm chair in our bedroom. It’s a little bit easier to control me on that since it’s lower to the floor. Mary only uses it for spanking when she’s really going to lay into me. I walked over with my hands at my sides, and she yanked my skirt and panties down at once without popping the buttons.

“Shouldn’t have even let you put this back on. Like I didn’t know we were going to end up here tonight,” she said to herself as I stepped out of them. “Over,” she said, and I lowered myself over her lap. He put her right leg around both of mine, leaving a clear target for her. “You do not do this, Daphne,” she said to me. “When you are upset about something, we talk about it. When you are made at me, you tell me like an adult. You do not sulk. You do not sass. You do not talk back, stomp around, and act how you acted today. Do you understand me, little girl?”

“Yes,” I said and didn’t bother to hide that I was as pissed as she was.

“I shouldn’t have to give you three spankings in one day. I shouldn’t have to give you any spankings because you can’t control your temper or talk to me like a mature person would. You say you’re not a five year old? You are acting just like a five year old. If there’s a next time, if you let yourself get so wound up without coming to me to talk about it, we won’t need to bother hanging the bathbrush back up when we’re done with it. We’ll be using it far too often. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” Just do it already! Geez!

“I am going to spank your bottom until it glows, missy.”

Welp, no more waiting because HOLY SHIT she has never spanked me that hard or that fast with that thing. I couldn’t have held still even if I wanted to, and I didn’t want to just hold still for her. With my legs trapped and her arm around my waist, I arched my back while she flailed me with that damn brush. That didn’t get me anywhere, and I practically grabbed onto the carpet fibers trying to get away. There’s no leg on the ottoman to hold onto. I couldn’t even hold onto Mary’s legs. She didn’t slow down or ease up, and I ended up pounding my fists into the carpet a time or five and bawling.

Anything approaching a spanking like that o e never lasts more than twenty or thirty seconds. That’s long enough for her to pepper my backside sixty times. We went right past thirty seconds. A minute. Maybe more. I couldn’t even hear the brush over my own crying and sobbing. She was in complete control of herself and that brush, and I had no control over myself.

Different implements get used in different ways. If she made a habit of using the hairbrush that way, I’d have happily thrown it away again and embraced the bathbrush. The thudding slap of that thing couldn’t be worse than this. The hairbrush always feels like a swarm of bees. She was putting enough force behind it to make it a swarm of killer bees or wasps or pterodactyls or something.

She stopped spanking and held me there. I did not stop bawling. Carrying on, really. I even pounded the floor a few more times, I think just in frustration. My ass burned as mush as it ever had before. She waited patiently until I had exhausted myself.

“You feel better,” she asked me. I nodded my head. I was ready to fall asleep (I had no dinner, hence no energy; I needed every Brussels sprout calorie I could get). She lifted more than helped me up, I crawled onto the bed, and I curled into an almost-ball. She crawled up behind me and put her arm over me. I was still crying, but I wasn’t angry anymore. We spankos are weird; how is it being spanked by the person I was mad at could take away the anger?

I think I fell asleep for a few minutes. Mary’s fingers tracing up and down my arm woke me or else enough sensation returned to my butt that the searing heat was turning into duller ache. Worse, in some ways.

“You ready to talk now,” Mary asked me. “What’s going on?”

You’d think with my ability to snap at Mary and anyone else that when I actually had something of substance to say I’d be better at saying it. Clever, articulate (more so in writing) am I, but terrible at broaching hard topics.

“I ...” That’s as far as I got in ten seconds.

“Can I tell you what I think?”

“No. I mean, me first.” I swallowed. Didn’t help that I had a seriously full nose and my sinuses were stuffed to the top. “Everything happened too fast.”

“What’s that?”

“I ... You made me wear pull-ups and then diapers and you make me pee in them and all our friends know and Nana knows and you didn’t even ask me,” I whined with one those thick I’ve-just-been-crying voices. Mary rubbed my arm again and didn’t say anything for a few seconds.

“Do you remember the first time I put a pull-up on you?”

“Mhmm.”

“I gave you a chance for a red light. Remember? You didn’t take it.”

“I ...” So this was my fault? I started to get a more upset. I was not to blame. I was sure of that.

Mary sensed me getting upset again and said softly, “Say it calmly, baby.”

I breathed out. “I didn’t want to red light then. I thought it wouldn’t become a thing, and now you make me pee in them. I only did that the first time because I thought you’d think it was gross and stop.”

“It’s been months, honey. You never said red light or a safe word. You know you don’t have to wait for me to ask of you want to use a safe word.”

I did say no a bunch of times, but I say that over a lot of things I love and she knows it. That’s what any power exchange relationship is. It’s the difference between, “Please don’t! Stop!” and “Please don’t stop!”

“How come you haven’t used a safe word,” she asked me.

Complicated question that I wasn’t prepared to answer. “How come you started doing this,” I asked instead.

She kissed my shoulder. “Because I think you’re adorable in them and you get off on being humiliated. They seemed perfect for that. You squirm so adorably in them and it looks like you enjoy that. I thought was why you never safe worded.”

“I don’t like disappointing you.” Well, that was about half an honest answer.

She called me on that, saying, “That’s not how safe words get used, and you know it. C’mon, honey. What’s really going on? I know you were wet when I first put you in them, and I know how turned on you were when I took you out in public diapered. I do think they make a good punishment for you, too, but that’s not why I have you in pull-ups so much or diapers sometimes.”

“They do,” I said.

“They do what?”

“They do turn me on a little. Or it’s more when you’re ... with me when I’m in them or even Lisa. It’s just ... It’s different.”

“How is it different? Different like not the good kind of humiliation? Too much of the wrong kind?”

“I ... Nana found out. I ... I felt so ... ashamed.” I choked on that word. Shame is a much more powerful emotion than humiliation. It’s a toxic emotion.

“O, honey. That is your feeling, and it is valid, but I don’t think you ever need to be ashamed with Nana. You never need to be ashamed with me or our kinky friends, either.”

“I know. I just felt it anyway. She must think I’m such a ... she said I was a ... she sees me like I’m not a grown up. She didn’t do that before the pull-ups.”

“She does, too, see you like an adult. She said so. That’s why she was okay with you deciding whether to change that day.”

True. She did say that. “But she still doesn’t see me like she sees you. She thinks I need looking after, and I don’t really. I’m not ...” I trailed off.

“Not what? You can tell me anything.”

“Defective or something.”

She adjusted herself she could get her other arm around me and hold me. “You are not defective. You never have been, and no one sees you that way. Nana does not see you that way.”

“I didn’t want her to see me like that.”

“She doesn’t.”

“I mean wet. Peed on myself. She didn’t know I do that.”

“Why don’t we go see her together tomorrow? We can talk through these things.”

“Okay. But have you been talking to her without me, too?”

“We’ve had a couple conversations over the years and few since you started spending so much time with her.”

“Why?”

“She wants to understand. She wants to make sure you’re okay, and she wants to understand so she doesn’t say the wrong thing.”

“You didn’t tell her to babysit me?”

“Of course not, Daphne. You know I’d never ask someone outside the lifestyle to do that.”

“Then why does she?”

“She isn’t.”

“She was gonna change my diaper.” That’s definitely a babysitter’s job or a grandma’s job. That’s not something even very understanding friends do.

“She just ... she sees you as an adult, okay? She just also sees you as needing a little extra TLC, just like I do. That’s all. She just sees you like I do because that’s who we told her you are. And that is who you are, and she likes that so much.”

“It’s happening too fast.” It still seemed too fast. It had only been a few months from Sandy bringing up pull-ups for the first time to what happened with Nana. Why did it happen so fast? And how? I should’ve said something sooner, but I didn’t. I’ll take the wrap for that, but Mary could’ve been a little more attentive and been a little slower.

“When do you think it started,” she asked me.

“With Sandy that time you had your office party and I didn’t go.”

“Why then?”

“That’s when she tried to get me wear a pull-up for the first time.”

“Daphne, I think the pull-ups and diapers are just a thing. That’s not when this started.”

Okay, so apparently we have different understandings of what ‘this’ was. To me, ‘this’ was pull-ups and diapers.

“You’ve been becoming a little for a while,” she said. O. I’d been wondering when our domestic discipline relationship took on so much of an ageplay flavor, so I guess that’s what she saw ‘this’ as. I guess I did, too, somewhat.

“I am not a little,” I almost shouted. “I am not a little girl.”

“Okay, baby, okay. Don’t get upset again. You’re not a little, but you have gotten littler over the years, haven’t you?”

Well, maybe. I’ll concede that. “A bit, I guess.” More than that, I knew, but why should I carry the burden of truth alone? I’m not that big, either.

“And there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with being littler.”

“Littles are needy and bratty and don’t always know when to turn it off. And I don’t even like doing little things. I don’t color or have toys or any of that.” It’s important to focus more on the coloring and toy part of that statement when considering whether I’m a little or middle or anything. Of course, Mary didn’t do that, which led her to, well, a conclusion different than I would’ve drawn.

“No, but you are littler in some ways. And, honey, you can’t always stop yourself from being bratty either. You just threw a fit over eating your veggies, and you did it because you were mad about something else entirely and didn’t use your words to tell me.”

O, sure. Throw that back in my face. That was, like, over a thousand seconds ago.

“It’s hard to talk about this stuff sometimes. You’ve been ...” I do have a hard time talking about the things Mary doesn’t get quite right. It’s not always easy to tell where the line is between questioning her but still trusting her to decide and questioning her and not having that trust. You have to have that trust in a domestic discipline relationship.

“For heaven’s sake, Daphne, just tell me,” she said gently.

“Making so many decisions. These are all big decisions. Making me wear a diaper for eight hours is a big decision, and I don’t think you get that.”

I felt the warmth of her sigh against the back of my neck. “You’re right. That’s a bigger decision that I thought. I did apologize, but I should’ve walked it back more after last week.”

“And the rule about using them and making me wear them in public, too, at the party.”

“I should’ve asked like I did with the pull-ups. I’m sorry.”

“And I didn’t mean to get myself so worked up. I just ... I can’t help it sometimes ... I did warn you when we started dating, ya know.”

“Hehe. I do remember that. I’m still okay with it, but I’m not ever gonna stop trying to break your naughty habits.”

“So what now,” I asked.

“How do you feel?”

“Better.”

“I mean, do you want to safe word anything? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

Ya know what I think? I think I just wanted to want to safe word something. Sorta planting the flag just so I wouldn’t be giving in so much. I wanted to slow down, get Mary to give me more time to adjust with these new things she was adding. Underneath it all, I do want her to decide. Just decide with a little more input from me and time to get used to stuff. I don’t like the diapers, and I don’t like pee, but I do like how I feel when wear them and do that. I feel submissive, and I like that, and sometimes I feel humiliated, and I like that, too. It just happened too fast. First in front of all our friends at that party when I was too high on endorphins to mind until I thought about it later and then last week in front of Nana. It was too much too soon. It tipped the humiliation scale too far in the wrong direction.

So, “No. I’m not saying that. I want you decide those things. I just need more time to get used to it.”

“What are you still not used to?”

“Other people knowing. I mean, it’s fine with the people who do know now, but I don’t want anyone else to for a while at least.” Although between the pool party and Nana, that took care of most of the people we know besides vanilla friends and family, who we wouldn’t tell anyway.

“We can do that. I’m sorry again for making you go too fast.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you and was mean today.”

“I don’t like it when you’re mean. You’re supposed to be my submissive little girl.”

“I am your submissive girl. Otherwise I wouldn’t have let you spank me tonight.”

“I know.”

“And I’m sorry about the Brussels sprouts. You make good ones.”

“I should make you have them for breakfast. That’s what my parents would’ve done.”

“No way.”

“You want something to eat?”

“Ice cream.”

“Ice cream!” She reached down and swatted my butt, and damn was it a swollen, bruised throb. “She gets three spankings in one day, doesn’t finish her dinner, and has the nerve to ask for dessert. That’s definitely not something someone a bit littler than other girls your age would try to get away with.”

“Okay,” I whined.

“We’re out of ice cream, but we do have some pudding and vanilla wafers. How’s that sound?”

“Yummy.”

“Okay. Then after, I think we can get in bed earlier tonight. Been a rough day, hasn’t it?”

“Mhmm.”

“I don’t like having to give those kinds of spankings. It’d be nice not to have to for a long while.”

Notice how she didn’t say ever. Mary is a realist. “I’ll try really hard.”

“Good girl. Let’s go get that dessert.”

Well, I felt better, but I was honestly a little more confused having said it all out loud. I’m pretty sure I was angry at Mary before, but not just Mary. I had a lot more of my own feelings still to work out.