I remember what you said to Brian, Kelly... Stephanie thought in dismay, a weak smile plastered across her features, but, isn’t this in so many ways so much worse?!
“Okay! We have now securely bound our lovely little victim’s wrists to each other,” Chrissy-Cat announced into the microphone, while Kelly took a dramatic step away from Stephanie, flourishing her hands towards their furiously blushing volunteer with a theatrical sweep.
“Using the most basic kind of restraint in bondage, the quintessential method and using common material available to everyone!” Chrissy continued. “Would anyone within the audience care to guess what it is that we’ve used?”
“Handcuffs?” A shout sounded from the back.
“Raise your hands up a little higher so they can all see, Miss Stephanie,” Kelly instructed.
“A hair tie?” A girl’s voice sounded on one side of the room.
“A hair-tie!” Another voice called in agreement.
“Nothing? Air?”
“Rubber bands?”
“Ooh, so close,” Chrissy-Cat sighed into the mic, shaking her head. “What we’ve used to restrain our lovely pet here is… a promise.”
A few groans were audible from the crowd, and those visible in the nearby front rows didn’t look impressed.
“So—imaginary invisible handcuffs,” one of the voices who’d called out earlier sounded again.
“Not true, not true!” Kelly drawled in her slow, irresistible voice. “Look, watch this.” For a moment she tucked the microphone under her arm and took hold of Stephanie’s arms, trying to pull them apart. Remembering what she’d been told, Stephanie didn’t let them budge apart at all, even after Kelly exerted a little bit of force.
“You see? The promise isn’t invisible, or imaginary, you can clearly see it, can’t you? She promised not to separate her hands; so her hands are bound, and cannot move,” Chrissy explained.
“It’s just pretending, though,” a guy in the front row scoffed. “That’s not like, real bondage.”
“Au contraire, mister skeptic,” Chrissy-Cat disagreed, shaking her head. “A promise is not pretend; it’s a pledge, an oath, an understanding between partners! A threat, an offering, an agreement and an exchange all in one, all of the basic tenets of communication from one thinking being to another.”
“Is a wedding ring like a shackle that physically prevents spouses from, you know, cheating and philandering? Hah—well obviously, not at all! A wedding band is a promise, it symbolizes a vow between partners. It’s the promise that’s important, the ring is just a band of metal! Likewise, in bondage play between lovers, each bond can be a visible, mmm, tangible representation of a promise that they share. If one were to engage in restraining their lover without any deeper understanding of why, without looking into the meaning of what they’re doing… well then it’s not real bondage at all, it’s just dangerous and stupid! Questions?”
“Okay, what does their promise mean here?”
“Well naturally, that’s not for me to say,” Chrissy covered her lips with her hand coquettishly. “A promise between them is between them, it’s like, you know—a personal thing. Miss Kelly, do you want to field a question?”
“Yes, you, the charming young lady with the headband,” Kelly pointed out another of the raised hands.
“Uh, okay, you said that in bondage the restraints actually represented some form of a promise, so why didn’t you actually use something to bind her hands? Something to symbolize the promise?”
“An excellent question, young Miss,” Kelly nodded in approval and raised Stephanie’s hands up for everyone to see again. “For us… right now, a promise alone is enough. But in fact, it was important for me to show all of you an invisible bond, because it brings us to our next point.”
“Our next point?” Chrissy glanced up to her in surprise, but didn’t stop her from continuing. Another evil smile began to spread across Kelly’s gorgeous face.
“Chrissy, you’re as bad as Brian, trying to push your psychobabble ideas that all of this is some complicated mind-game bullshit,” Stephanie heard Kelly mutter under her breath at the volume of a whisper. She winked at Stephanie. “You geeks think you know mind-games? Well then, allow me to show you my PHD in improvised bullshitting...”
“Tell me, everyone—what do you see here?” Kelly lowered Stephanie’s hands and tenderly brushed aside tufts of pink hair to expose the lovely lines of friend’s pale throat.
“Nothing?”
“The girl of my dreams?” Some scattered laughter followed that one.
“Invisible promises?” Another guessed.
“An invisible collar!”
“That’s right, a collar,” Kelly answered in her unhurried, almost hypnotic voice. “In fact many collars, my thing’s poor little neck is buried beneath collars and chains. Leather pet collars, pulled all too tight—choker belts, digging deep into her skin—heavy iron slave collars, with their thick locks weighing down upon her.”
Kelly indicated each imaginary one with her fingers, and the audience grew quiet in anticipation.
“...I did not put these here,” Kelly gave a cute pout for her captive audience. “These are her fears, her self-doubt, and her worries, invisible until one learns to look closely enough. Why, when I met this little beauty, she was struggling to even speak around the mouthpiece of a gag bit—a gag some might recognize as anxiety.”
Stephanie couldn’t help but turn and blink her blue eyes in surprise at Kelly.
“You see, I wanted to show you all that bondage play isn’t just a shallow game of simple leather straps…” Kelly’s purring voice, her carefully enunciated every word drew the crowd within the panel room into another hushed silence as she drew closer to Stephanie’s exposed neck. “Bondage really is a connection between lovers, one that explores deeper than spoken words can ever reach. Each bond I place on her is a kind of promise we’ll share... and all of these other, useless ones around her neck? Well, I learn how to take them off. One. By. One.”
Kelly lowered the microphone and planted a slow and savory trail of kisses up Stephanie’s neck, her lips gently smacking and her tongue flashing out as though determined to pick each and every imagined lock.
Stephanie shivered, giving them a tremulous undulation that arched her back in surprise. The girl’s slender hands, still squeezed together at the wrists by nothing but a promise, stretched outwards and her fingertips danced.
What’s happening to me, Stephanie wondered in a daze, afraid she was going to fall off the table. Simply being on an impromptu stage in front of all of these people had, in her mind, surpassed notions like scary and exhilarating. If not for Kelly’s brazenly public affection for her, she would have been able to clam up and gone numb to a lot of this. As it was, Stephanie felt like her little heart was beating faster than she’d ever felt it before. Will people think that I’m, well… that kind of girl? That Kelly and I are… lovers?
...Are we?
“Shall we move on? Chair, please,” Kelly beckoned carelessly towards the first row, and within seconds a guy hopped up and passed her up the very seat he’d been sitting in. Setting the folding chair carefully in the center of the table they were standing on, Kelly arranged her skirts and sat down with the graceful poise of a dark princess .
“Perfect, thank you. Stephanie?”
“Y-yes?” Stephanie stammered out, unsure of exactly what was happening but painfully aware that every set of eyes in the room was upon her. There’s no way this is happening. This is impossible. Completely impossible. She can’t just—
“Weren’t you ever spanked as a child?” Kelly asked, smirking up at her from the chair. “C’mon now, over my knee.”
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She... can’t be serious, Stephanie thought with a nervous smile. Any second now she’s going to say she was just joking. Any second now. She’s just kidding around for the audience. It’s a joke. I should just—
“Stephanie, now,” Kelly commanded, a stern note of disapproval sounding in her voice, as she tapped her knee impatiently.
Before she even realized what she was doing, Stephanie’s mind went blank and she was clambering obediently over the other girl’s lap. The attendees filling the panel room roared, whooping, hollering, and cheering, and Stephanie felt her cheeks burning red in absolute humiliation. Every one of them was making that ruckus for her.
What am I thinking?! Stephanie felt cool air on her bottom as the hem of her pink-and-red dress rode up, but her hand fumbling to fix it was neatly slapped away by Kelly. A moment later, the skirt of her sundress was flipped up, exposing her shapely behind to the room full of people. Her panties clung to every perfect curve like a second skin.
I don’t like this. I don’t like this I don’t like this, Stephanie found herself repeating in her head, and though she opened her mouth to say it, the words were stuck in her throat, paralyzed with terror. The frantic, frightened energy that had been nervously nibbling at her earlier swallowed her up, and she made a small noise.
“Steph?” Kelly asked. “...Steph?”
“I-c-can’t,” Stephanie quailed out in a harsh whisper, slapping both hands over her face. “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t do this. I c-can’t.”
“Steph, you’re already doing this, and you’re doing great!” Kelly whispered back softly, fingers patiently combing through Stephanie’s bright pink tresses of hair. “You’re doing such a good job, that’s my girl. You hear all of those people? They’re that noisy because you’re so lovely, and the idea that they’ll get to see you spanked is that exciting.”
No, no no no I can’t. I can’t I can’t I can’t.
“Hey, d’you remember last night, when you asked Brian if you were pretty? Do you remember what he said to you?”
I asked him if I was pretty. What did he say then? Stephanie’s mind went blank, and she couldn’t recall his words. She stared down at the tabletop, the upper half of her body leaning down off of Kelly’s lap, trying to focus, trying to gather her thoughts—but she couldn’t. The cacophony of voices sounding throughout the panel room, the bizarre and uncomfortable position she was in, this mortifying scene seemed to be whirling around in her mind, completely out of her control. This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening. This isn’t—
“Do you remember? Your hair was all pink, and you asked him if you were pretty now, and he said... he said—‘Steph, you’re beautiful.’”
The sense of being overwhelmed by everything all at once fell out of focus and drifted away at Kelly’s words, dispelled like smoke in a refreshing breeze. Steph, you’re beautiful. Of course, that was it. He did say that. He put his face right into my private parts, and licked me some thousand times, and made me go crazy. When he was done, he wasn’t even disgusted or annoyed or impatient at all. And then he smiled, and told me I’m beautiful. He thinks I’m beautiful.
“Steph?”
“Sorry,” Steph breathed out slowly. “I remember. I’m okay now. Thank you. Sorry.” She looked up at the audience of Fetish 101 laughing and cheering for the first time and gave them all a meek, helpless smile. That was… I was having a panic attack? And, it’s over already?
The situation was still awfully embarrassing—humiliating, even, but... that was it. I can do this?
“Now, let’s begin,” Kelly decided, once again speaking into the microphone, and there was raucous applause. “For your convenience, my little lovely here will be counting out each strike as I grace her blushing behind with attention… everyone please listen closely.”
The first smack stunned Stephanie, that clap of Kelly’s palm sounding out across the smooth curve of her bottom instantly sparking an explosion of chaotic cheers and victory cries from within the panel room. She flinched up in surprise at the sheer tumult of the audience rather than the strike itself, and it wasn’t until several unsteady breaths later that she remembered what she’d been instructed to do.
“O-one?” Hearing her own meek voice reverberating clearly through the room’s speakers, Stephanie blinked her eyes open to discover Kelly’s microphone poised right in front of her face, patiently waiting for her count. Staring blankly now at the mic, she could feel next spank coming, could sense it in the subtle shifting of Kelly’s knee which she found herself draped over, in the hush that fell over the jubilant noise of the crowd. They’re all watching me.
“Me, I get really excited when I’m about to be spanked,” Chrissy began speaking into her microphone to add her commentary. “That’s the best part of it for me, the anticipation right before each hit. When you’re sittin’ there with your bottom exposed, just waiting in anticipation, knowing that it’s going to land—but not knowing exactly when.
Then the second spank sang out, much more loudly than it actually felt because of the way Kelly had cupped her hand. Able to focus on the sensation now, Stephanie was surprised at how little it hurt—barely at all, it was rather a strange but not entirely unpleasant sting; a feeling of being touched in an intimate place unused to contact, coupled with a fleshy jiggle of movement.
“Two,” Stephanie counted out in her sweet voice.
“Your muscles tense up in anticipation for the blow, and then, it happens!” Stephanie heard Chrissy exclaim in an excited voice. “There’s that quick little delicious sharp feeling to the slap that really gets you going, gets your blood flowing, you know? You can get aroused so fast when you’re getting spanked. Your eyes go wide, your mouth opens in surprise, you can feel the flesh of your butt move with the impact and all of that tension you built up relaxes all at once… only to start all over again as you start to get ready for the next blow…”
When the next spank followed, Stephanie began to feel warmth blooming across her buttocks, and she felt her glasses slip partway down her face. Stephanie was smiling now, a strained but giddy smile of mixed exasperation and good humor at the sheer absurdity of the situation she was finding herself in. This... really isn’t so bad. I just can’t believe it’s happening! And to me!
“Three—ahh!” Stephanie gave out a startled yelp as Kelly followed up her third with another immediate open-handed slap across her left cheek, and then another across her right.
“Four, five,” she continued in a breathy voice, and then quickly adding “...s-six,” as the clap resounded out through the panel room again. At some point the convention-goers had begun counting along with her, and she dared a peek over towards the seats. Dozens, what felt like hundreds of faces were all turned her way, all of them caught up in the thrill of watching this adorable pink-haired girl bent over the dark beauty’s lap in an erotic display of punishment and pleasure.
“And we’re not even touching on all the psychological aspects!” the panel’s hostess laughed. “The stuff you can’t see just by watching! Reading into all that can just go on forever. For some people, it’s just that naughty feeling, that they’re doing something, as grown adults, that is outside the ‘norm’. You’re also enacting roles between yourself and your partner—one person is in full control of the activity, while the other is surrendering their control—so you could say that spanking is the very essence of BDSM!
“The aspects of restraining and disciplining a partner, the exploration of the dominant and submissive relationship, and the method of communicating with your lover by the means of physically imposing and expressing both pain and humiliation… all of the BDSM fundamentals are right there at your fingertips, so to speak!”
“Alright, everyone,” Kelly raised her own microphone back up, effortlessly drawing them all back in with her magnetic voice. “I won’t show any of you, because it would be terribly improper, but her cute little bottom is turning the most lovely shade of red—and even more importantly, my palm is starting to sting!”
Laughter and cheers sounded back out at Kelly’s cute pout, along with rising applause, but Kelly wasn’t finished.
“...So, we’ll just have one last spank, we’ll get a really good one, and then we’ll be finished.”
The response was even more enthusiastic, and with a quiver of anticipation Stephanie listened as the raucous noise of their captive audience hurriedly dwindled down to a hushed silence. She found the sudden drop in volume just like the swash of saltwater after a crested wave on the beach, that roil of foam that quickly recedes into sudden backwash just before the next—
The final spank slapped down hard, hard enough to hurt. Hard enough to rock her entire body forward, even, but already Stephanie would agree with Chrissy’s statement that she’d overheard earlier—it was somehow more satisfying than painful. Blushing fiercely, she quickly discovered that Kelly’s hand lingered after the strike, gently stroking back and forth across her supple buttocks to help alleviate the sting. That feels—that feels—
“Se—ven,” she managed.
It felt amazing. Better than she could have imagined, and it was all she could do to keep from whimpering as the hand withdrew and she felt the fabric of her skirt being flipped back down to cover her tender tush. Everyone was still cheering and applauding, she distantly realized, and there were some whistling or crying for an encore as well.
All of that for us, Stephanie realized as Kelly carefully took her hand and guided her back up onto her shaky feet. The table upon which they stood didn’t seem nearly as sturdy as it had before. Our stage. For once in my life, I was the one up here, I felt like more than the wallflower in the background.
Of course, she was also so embarrassed that she could die—she wanted to hide her face, but her hands in their long gloves were firmly clamped behind her. Why do I feel so raw? She only spanked... seven times, Stephanie wondered, before realizing she had no way to gauge how many spankings might be considered typical.
“Goodness, look at you,” Kelly chided playfully in her gothic lolita persona voice, helping fix her glasses that had come askew. Someone from the front row of seats had come up to pass them her rabbit-eared headband—When did that come off? and Stephanie squeaked out a thank-you as she fidgeted and smoothed her dress against her thighs awkwardly.
“Wow! That was just awesome,” The panel host, Chrissy-Cat boomed into her microphone with a beaming smile. “I know you guys haven’t even stopped yet but can we have one more round of applause for Kelly and Stephanie?! WHOOOO!”
Everyone eagerly obliged, filling the room with an uncomfortably loud racket, and Stephanie didn’t dare to look up at them, her weak smile frozen in place as she struggled simply to not faint and fall off the table.
“Thank you… thank you. We’re undeserving of your praise. However, it looks like our fair Amanda is ready to be billed, and so it’s time we take our leave.,” Kelly answered out graciously, gesturing towards the couple waiting below their impromptu stage, each holding sections of rope.
“Besides, if our Master finds out where we’ve been, then both of our bottoms will wind up red, won’t they?” Kelly finished, flashing Stephanie a grin as she passed her microphone down to Bill.
“N-nah wai,” Stephanie blustered with a meek smile.