Blackberries

Note: Ok, I’m trying to reformat everything here before I get too invested in the “comic” theme, so this is all getting put in one post. Full text of the story (minus images) is below the pages. Please let me know if you stumble on any mistakes or dead links, I’m trying to redirect everything that’s been posted so far.

#spankostoryseasonalchallenge

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Xen’s phone buzzed just as she walked through the sliding doors of the grocery store. She paused by the carts, one hand on the red plastic handle, and thumbed her phone to unlock it. [Please remember to get my deodorant!] read Jareth’s text. Xen snickered guiltily. For the last two weeks Jareth had been stuck using her deodorant, going to work smelling of lavender and tea tree; she somehow kept forgetting to buy his. Not teasing him had been a struggle. She had enough self preservation to avoid poking her top for something caused by her own lapse… even if it was funny as hell. Jerking the cart loose from the line, she texted back hastily. [Getting it now!] The health aisle was close to the front of the store, just past produce. She closed messaging and opened the grocery list, scrolling down to “deodorant” and marking it off before turning the cart in that direction. 

Blackberries were on sale. They were shiny and firm and she could smell their ripe juice from a few feet away as her cart slowed. Berries were a weakness for Xen, any kind really, but blackberries stood in their own category. She’d spent many late summer afternoons in her childhood plucking blackberries from the dangerously long thorned brambles that quickly overtook any untended area in the Pacific Northwest.

She remembered visiting a friend who’s mother grew all kinds of berries in the backyard… small jewel-like strawberries, cloudy skinned blueberries and giant mild tasting marionberries. Her friend’s mother sent the girls out with baskets and they walked right past the painstakingly cultivated plants, sprinting down the block to an abandoned field where labyrinthine walls of blackberries 20 feet high loomed over them, wild and rich and tempting. They came back scratched, purple-stained and satisfied, baskets overflowing. 

For Xen, blackberries always seemed alien in a grocery store. But they didn’t grow so readily in the midwest, scorched and mildewed by the long humid summers. Xen stopped her cart at the display, carefully tilting the plastic containers this way and that to be sure she was picking the freshest sweetest berries. She picked out four containers and stacked them 2 by 2 in the cart before moving on to pick out greenbeans.

Grocery shopping was not Xen’s favorite chore, and she wasn’t the best shopper. She always tried to move with efficiency, checking off items from each section before moving to the next, but inevitably she’d miss something, or remember something not on her list, and ended up floating around the store like a dandelion seed caught in an updraft. Finding another sale, she stood in front of pasta sauce for 15 minutes, trying to decide between the garlic and the basil with herbs, eventually grabbing 5 of each. She forgot to buy pasta.

The second text vibrated in her back pocket after she’d unloaded most of her cart onto the belt in the checkout lane. [Get the deodorant?] Jareth’s text asked, once she finished unloading the cart and checked her phone. Whoops. She’d been snagged by the blackberries and forgot all about the deodorant.  Again. [Yup.] She texted back. She’d stop at the drugstore. 

She drove right past the drug store, belting out Hamilton lyrics with the stereo. 

At home her daughter pushed under her, looking into the fridge while Xen unpacked the grocery bags. “Did you get any strawberries?”

“Nope, I got blackberries.”

“I don’t like blackberries!” said Xen’s son from the other room. 

“Me either,” agreed the girl. 

Xen pulled out the plastic containers, and started stacking them in the fridge, reaching around her daughter. “More for me.”

Jareth rustled around in the bags behind Xen. “Which bag has my deodorant?”

“Oh.” Xen paused, holding the last container of berries. She looked away and tried to shoo their daughter out of the kitchen.

Jareth looked at her, eyebrows raised. “You didn’t get it.”

Xen’s daughter ducked back out of the fridge. “Next time get strawberries!” She shouted, running off to play with her dinosaurs. Xen tried to avoid Jareth’s eye, until he moved directly in front of her, so that she couldn’t pretend he wasn’t there.

“Want a blackberry?” Xen offered, with her most disarming grin. He smirked silently and her smile turned to a grimace. “I’m really sorry about-“

She broke off as Jareth moved closer and put his hand on the back of her neck. He bent down, putting his cheek next to hers. “We’ll talk about the deodorant tonight,” he breathed into her ear.

Her stomach lurched and her heart sped up. “Ok,” she said in a subdued voice. His implied promise was a surprise; he normally wouldn’t spank her for something they hadn’t already discussed and agreed on. With a jolt of dread, she realized after two weeks of increasingly weak excuses, punishment was both well deserved and long overdue. He hugged her and started unpacking a bag of cereal. She swallowed, winced inwardly, and put the last container of blackberries in the fridge. 

She heard more rustling behind her. “Xen. What the fuck.” 

“What’s wrong?” Heart jumping again, she froze, hand on the milk. 

“What is all this pasta sauce for?” Jareth asked incredulously. 

“Oh.” Xen said again. She began laughing. “It doesn’t go bad!” she protested, “It was on sale.”

Jareth glared. “Where am I supposed to put…” he counted, “Six, seven,… EIGHT jars of pasta sauce?” 

“There are ten,” she said, still giggling. “You must have missed a bag.” She continued to laugh at his menacing look, until finally he hmphed, and bent down to find a space for 10 jars of pasta sauce.

That night Xen sang their daughter a song, tucked her in, and blew her a kiss before closing the door softly behind her. She walked downstairs and waited in the bedroom for Jareth as he tucked in their son. Belatedly, it occurred to her that she could have run back out to the drugstore earlier, but now she could hear the door closing and Jareth’s feet on the steps. He poked his head into their room. “I’ll be in in a few minutes,” he told her. She nodded, and she heard him working in the office and the kitchen as the kids settled into quiet upstairs. Xen nervously tried to distract herself with stupid puzzle games on her phone, flipping between them without attending, eyes glancing up at the door. Ten or fifteen minutes later Jareth walked into the room. Xen peered up at him without moving her head. He didn’t say anything- there was no need. They both knew the drill. He locked the door, and put his hand out for Xen’s phone. She handed it to him silently, watching as he put it on the dresser and exchanged it for the long, narrow wooden clothes brush. He set the brush on the bed, and stood in front of her, holding out his hand once again. 

Xen took his hand reluctantly and stood from her place on the bed when he gently tugged her towards him. He squeezed her and kissed the top of her head, then pulled her around as he sat where she’d been sitting a second ago. She crawled awkwardly over his lap, and allowed him to reposition her so she was more firmly on the edge of the bed. He slipped down her pants and underwear, while she wrapped her arms around her head. 

The first slap shook her, the noise as upsetting as the pain, and she clamped her hands over her ears to drown it out. He continued steadily and with the sharp sounds muffled, the pain of it filled her. She grunted, winced and gasped, already tense. It always filled her with a kind of horrified awe, how much pain his hand alone was able to inflict. He spanked rapidly with unrelenting force, after only a few seconds Xen was beginning to squirm and squeak with dismay. 

“Warmup!” She squealed, half demand, half question. 

He didn’t pause, but held her more firmly as his hand rained down. “This IS your warmup,” he informed her calmly, and she grimaced, trying to be still. She breathed deeply through her nose, clutching her ears against both the onslaught of sound and the mental crash that came with each smack. Xen held herself stiffly against the spanking, twitching when his hand caught her lower, or in a spot that was already starting to get sorer than the rest. 

Jareth paused briefly, and the next swing brought a new level of searing focused sting. Warm up over, he’d switched to the brush. She gasped, then yelped, and writhed around, instinctively trying to move her bottom out of range. Her efforts were rewarded with harder strikes as Jareth wrestled her. Squealing and groaning, Xen simultaneously fought him, and fought herself to keep her body from wiggling. The brush continued its unyielding fire, and she clenched her body into a quivering line of rigid energy, knowing he wouldn’t stop while she continued to thrash around. When the pain built up too much she screamed into the mattress. 

Once she mastered her resistance, Jareth slowed to steady, even blows. “Two weeks ago,” he began, “I asked you to pick me up some deodorant. Did you do that?”

Xen pulled her hands away from her ears and growled in response to the question. She barely managed to keep from wrenching away again. “NO,” she half shouted, embarrassed and annoyed at having to answer him.

He ignored her tone, except to land a slightly harder swat on her upper thigh. She yelped and he continued, “I asked you to stop at the store on your way home from Starbucks a few days later. Did you get it then?”

“NO,” she growled again. SWAT. SWAT. SWAT. She squealed at each one, the resentment burning out of her like dying coals.

“Wednesday,” said Jareth. “You were at the drugstore, picking up a prescription. I asked you again, to please remember my deodorant. Did you?” 

“Nooo,” she said, more whine than growl. She whimpered. The brush hammered her bottom with several more swats, prompting desperate howls.

“And finally today.” SWAT. “After many, MANY chances, I asked you once again.” SWAT. “To please.” SWAT. SWAT. “Remember.” SWAT. SWAT. “To buy.” SWAT. SWAT. “My deodorant.” SWAT SWAT SWAT SWAT SWAT. Xen briefly lost her battle to stay static and wiggled franticly, wailing in pained barks. 

“Did you get the deoderant, Xen?” He asked her softly. 

“Nooo,” she moaned again, and added quickly, “Please stop!” Her hands were balled tightly into fists, hovering on either side of her head. 

He ignored her plea, following with a barrage of hard swats. They continued until she found herself squirming away again and hurriedly wresting herself back in position, to show she wasn’t trying to fight him, and kicked her legs into the air.

After a few more strikes, Jareth stopped, resting his hand by his side. Eyes squeezed tight, Xen wondered hopefully if he might be done. It was less than she expected, but she was never sure what to expect when she hadn’t explicitly broken a rule. Spankings were never over quickly, because Xen seemed to shrug them off almost immediately if they weren’t appropriately devastating, but when he punished her for something they hadn’t mutually agreed upon, he usually erred on the side of leniency. 

That hope was dashed when the brush came back to rest over her sore skin and she tensed again. 

Jareth’s voice was still quiet, but had a hard edge to it. “Xen, what did you tell me when I asked you if you had the deodorant?”

Xen’s stomach dropped. “No, no no no no!” She fought in earnest, but he grabbed her tightly and held her down, smashing the brush down in a rapid fire volley. Xen thrashed wildly, “OW! Stopstopstop! Fuuuuuck!” She wailed. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry! Please stop!” The bombardment continued until she attempted again to cooperate, howling her frustration into the bed. 

He paused to ask again, “What did you tell me, Xen?”

She whimpered, but answered quietly. “Yes.” Jareth snapped the brush down twice quickly in succession, and she amended hurriedly, “I said I had it!”  

He repeated it back to her with grim satisfaction, hitting her hard and steadily. “You lied to me, and said you had it.” Xen let out a shrill unending whine. “You said you had it, but you didn’t have it.” 

Then his hand crashed down, somehow shocking her again with the ferocity and a level of pain that rivaled the brush. 

He spanked so much more quickly with his hand than the brush, and the sting built unbearably. When he focused on a single spot, she tried to twist around, but his hand followed her, until she gave up her struggle and allowed herself to fight him, and lose, and suffer under the continued torrent of swats.  

Jareth switched back to the brush, and Xen couldn’t stop herself; she threw back her hand, hoping for a moment’s pause. 

He moved his strikes to her thighs. “OW FUCK!” Jareth grabbed her wrist, they wrestled for control of her hand, while she continued to try to yank herself away from the torment. “Please stop please stop please please!” she repeated, bucking and wiggling furiously. After a few seconds agonized struggle, she surrendered. He pinned her hand to the small of her back. Xen tried to force herself still again, releasing her energy and anguish into screams. All the fight left her. The spanking went on, and she continued to scream, biting the blankets, occasionally pausing to beg, and kicking her legs against the bedding.

He slowed, and paused and said, “Ten more.” Xen whimpered, and pulled at her hand. Jareth released her wrist. She clamped her hands back over her ears, though the the sound of the brush was not jarring or loud.

He didn’t count out loud, but Xen tracked each thunderous swing, punctuating it with another scream. The strokes were slow and deliberate. Harder, but she felt the relief of an end in sight. Six. Seven. Eight. The blinding pain washed over her, not quite receding before the next one came. Nine. Almost finished. And Ten. The pain lingered, but the fear and tension dissipated. 

Xen stayed taut for a moment, waiting for reassurance that he was really finished. Jareth leaned sideways to set down the brush back on the dresser and stroked her back. She slowly relaxed into ragged breathing. 

she remained in that indignant position for a minute or two, until she recovered enough to push up. Jareth helped her roll up against him. She winced as her still smarting bottom slid over the covers. Curled against his chest. He held her silently.

After some time, Jareth kissed her, and she let him slide out from under her. “I’ll be right back,” he told her gently, helping her lean against some pillows. 

He left the room, and returned a few seconds later carrying two small white bowls full of blackberries. Xen laughed and took her bowl. She snuggled up next to him as settled in bed, and they feasted on blackberries. 

“Good berries,” he observed. 

“Mmm,” agreed Xen. “You have to give me blackberries every time you beat me.” 

Jareth looked down and met her twinkling eyes with an evil grin. “Deal,” he said, and she laughed again, snuggling closer. 

“I don’t know why you were upset.” She told him smugly. “You smell good in lavender.” She laughed at his glare, then squealed in protest when he reached down and squeezed her tender backside.  

#spankostoryseasonalchallenge