Caught Peeping

Another fortnight-and-a-bit, another new picture. I'm not being too tardy, am I?

By the way, if I seem to have developed a bit of a lingerie fetish recently, well - there's actually nothing recent about it! All I can say in my defence is, it's hot work thrashing a deserving young man on a summer's day.

I've noticed that while I quite like the stronger, darker colours I've used here, Blogger's image compression doesn't like them one bit - hence all the ugly 'noise' on the large version. I'll see what I can do to make a nice, clean copy available to everyone.

Are You Sitting Comfortably?

Then I'll tell you a story that I wrote a while back to accompany this picture (yes, that picture again!)

It's not new to the web, but I hope it is to some of you....

LATE HOME
Even before the wedding, there had been signs. Jim already knew that Alice's delicate looks disguised a strong-willed, no-nonsense fiancee - she'd been raised that way by her mother Harriet, whose own husband had died soon after Alice was born. And it was typical of the older woman that she'd stood up to make a speech at the reception dinner, delighting the guests by declaring that she was "not losing a daughter, but gaining a son - and a seriously spankable one at that!"

Two months later, with Jim on a short leash and Harriet Beyer a frequent occupant of the couple's spare room, the young husband made his first serious mistake. Having overrun his curfew by several hours, he had hoped to creep into the house and slip into bed beside his sleeping wife - but Harriet had been waiting for him at the top of the stairs.

The ensuing lecture brought a bleary-eyed Alice to the bedroom door. In one hand she held the alarm clock from the bedside table: in the other was the heavy, polished walnut hairbrush that Jim recognised as a gift from her mother, famously handed down through generations of the family's women.

"What time is it, Jim?", Alice purred with a dangerous smile, directing the clock face towards his as if daring him to deny his guilt.

"Um. It's ten to four, sweetheart. I got..."

"...so what is it time FOR... SWEETHEART?"

Harriet Beyer provided the answer to that one: "A little lesson in responsibility, I think."

The three of them filed back into the bedroom, Harriet pressing rather too close behind her son-in-law as though to discourage any thoughts of escape - "in my own damned house", thought Jim bitterly, although he made no attempt to resist. He saw that Alice had already dragged the big round pouffe from its usual place under the dressing table to the foot of the bed. Now she made herself comfortable upon it, and in spite of himself Jim felt a twinge of arousal as the thin yellow nightdress rode up her spreading thighs. If she was aware of this distraction, Alice did not acknowledge it. "Shoes. Socks. Jeans. Right now."

His face burning, Jim removed each item in turn under the unabashed gaze of both women. Then he stood before them shifting his feet, his hands fluttering vaguely in front of his crotch.

"I think we'll have those off too", said Harriet matter-of-factly. Jim stared at her dumbly for a moment. "Your UNDERPANTS, little man; I'll take care of them for you. When we're done here you can ask me nicely for them back, and if I think you're sorry enough then maybe I'll let you have them." Jim shot a pleading look at his wife, but got only a smirk of approval in response. With a strange sense of detachment, he slid his briefs down and off, and placed them in Harriet's outstretched hand.

"Now that", said Alice, almost merrily, "looks like a young man ready for his spanking. Over you go."

As Jim lowered himself awkwardly across the soft, warm lap of his beautiful wife, he felt more miserable than at any other time he could remember. If only he'd come home early. He should have been pressed up against Alice in bed right now, instead of draped half naked and humiliated across her knee with the gloating Harriet looking on and offering direction: "Further forward, Jiminy, and up on your tippy toes. I think you've done enough backsliding today already, don't you? Let's have that bare little bottom nice and high - a lady can't blister what she can't see. Alice, shall I position him properly?" And to his horror Jim felt firm hands groping beneath his hips, uncomfortably close to his groin, as he was guided into place.

"There", said Harriet, stepping back to admire the scene. "That's the perfect position for any man who needs to learn respect for a woman."

"If you're quite done, mother", Alice smiled with mock impatience, "may I discipline my husband now? I'm itching to put this hairbrush to use."

"Just one second more, darling", replied Harriet, re-positioning herself at Jim's head and firmly gripping his chin to lift his face towards hers. "If you don't mind, I think I'd like to watch the lesson sinking in."

And so, for ten long minutes the disgraced husband was forced to look into his mother-in-law's shining eyes while the hot bite of the hairbrush made him gasp and twitch and squirm. For her part, Alice loved Jim dearly - but did not, and never would, hold back from delivering a full-force spanking to remind him of his place in the world. She continued to pepper the reddening skin, laying bruise upon bruise, long after Jim's tears had begun to run down his face and over her mother's hand.

Jim did not get his underwear back that night. Once Alice had become tired and returned to bed alone, Harriet had escorted him back to her own room - "for a nice intimate chat, just the two of us" - where he would learn that his wife, despite being a formidable disciplinarian, was not the most severe of the Beyer women. Harriet had firmly shut the door behind them, and sat upon the bed coolly regarding the fidgeting young man as he tried in vain to stretch the hem of his t-shirt low enough to recover some dignity. "I don't need to tell you how proud I am of my little girl. She's grown into a proper Beyer wife. But still, she doesn't have QUITE the stamina yet to deliver the kind of incentive you so obviously need, and I'm going to start addressing that now." She eyed him patiently until his gaze met hers. "Oh, and let's not have any distractions. Take off that shirt."

Moments later, a fully naked Jim was bottom up across Harriet's lap on the guest bed, and the antique hairbrush was back at work with even greater vigour than before. The older woman showed no sympathy or concern for the already ravaged state of his bottom - in fact, she seemed to relish the bucking and squealing that the brush produced when it found a particularly tender spot. "Oh, is that super-sore, little boy? Then perhaps another... few.... swats.... right... there!"

The punishment continued for a good quarter hour before Jim was allowed a brief respite. "Perhaps I shouldn't have taken that afternoon nap", mused Harriet, who had paused to trace a fingernail across her son-in-law's scorched behind, "because now I don't feel the least bit sleepy." Jim only groaned into the tear-soaked pillow gripped between his teeth - Harriet had warned him against any yelling that might reawaken his wife. He tensed as the probing finger stroked inside his upper thigh and then followed a path back up between his swollen, trembling cheeks. "Alice and I had quite a chat while you were out for so many hours, young man. It's becoming clear that you can't be trusted by yourself, so I've offered to move in here while she's on that business trip next month."

Jim's anguished expletive was deadened by the pillow, but made Harriet smile mildly.

"I KNEW you'd be pleased. Won't it be fun playing house for two weeks, just you and I? We are going to get to know each other much, much better; you can depend on that. I'm afraid you're going to have to cancel any plans you might have had outside of work - you're going to be spending your evenings and weekends either completing the chores that Alice tells me you've been neglecting, or right here across my knee learning to be the husband my daughter deserves. Alice's father, rest his soul, was twice the man you are - but even so, he was no stranger to the business side of the brush. David's discipline was the key to a loving, happy marriage and you can count on Alice to do the same for yours. Still", mused the older woman, "that's for the future. Right now", she said, once more picking up the hairbrush, "we have the rest of the night ahead of us." Briefly, she stroked the back of the brush in circles over Jim's bottom, and the cool touch of the wood was almost soothing - but she soon tired of this tease, and again raised the wicked implement above her head.

Across the landing, Alice smiled in her sleep as a muffled, rhythmic tattoo gently invaded her dreams. The soothing beat seemed to signal that all was well with the world: and it went on, and on, and on, carrying her towards the new day.

After The Spanking

Here's the new picture I promised last week - only one day and one post late, so please don't spank me too hard :).

This one's a custom drawing for ajr, since he won the challenge way back in April to correctly identify the change I'd made to this picture. His spec left plenty to my imagination, but I really liked some of the ideas - her satisfied smile; his exhausted sobbing; the proprietary hand resting on his bottom.

Hope you like it, ajr!

I Start Counting

I finally got around to adding a visit counter.

Now, I've never been the type to crave attention - but like most bloggers, I guess, I occasionally worry that I may just be posting into a vaccum; that Underling's Humblings is off the beaten track; that when I'm not looking, cyber tumbleweeds blow across the screen. Of course polls help, and I'm almost embarrassingly grateful for every comment that appears. But judging from my own surfing habits, I'd guess that only a tiny fraction of people who drop by actually get around to casting a vote or saying hello.

Anyway, I just wanted to point out the fact - before you all go 'Hur-hur, Underling's only had like 3 visitors EVER' - that I've just added the counter today. And while I was given the option to start the tally at whatever value I wanted, I've resisted the (terribly tempting!) urge to award myself 10 squillion hits up front.

I'm not doing any kind of fancy analysis, by the way - I don't care so much where in the world people live, or which link they followed, or what keywords they used to search for the site. I'm only keen to reassure myself that there are actual people, and not just tumbleweeds, blowing through here. :)

Drawn Out Musings On Drawn-In Bruisings

Thanks for all your contributions to my last post ('What Is It About Spanking Art?'). Some really interesting stuff there.

Consensus seems to be that abstraction is a big part of the appeal. By removing the real models from a scene, we allow the viewers to put themselves into it or to build their own landscape around it. I think in that sense artwork has more in common with writing than it does with film.

BOB suggested that since the artist's work is so personal, its erotic appeal for him or her also transfers to the observer. I think that's very true - what's on the page is as close as the artist can get to the fantasy in his or her head - every element has meaning.

And I loved jm's description of the artist meeting the audience halfway, with both contributing equally to the overall experience.

I think all of your comments ring true. Much as I love spanking photos and videos, I'm distracted by the knowledge that there are cameras and light stands just out of shot (when they're not carelessly left IN shot!) I know that once the shoot is complete everyone will drop their roles, and sit around joking and drinking tea. Oddly, for me the characters in drawings are MORE real. None of them are playing a part, or following a script or a director's instructions. It's as though you're spying on a parallel world that, when you close your browser, happily carries on regardless!

I think the other thing about artwork, for me at least, is that it has nostalgia value. I guess many of us first noticed our strange little obsessions in response to illustrations in books or comics, so they continue to have a special kind of power.

OK, that's more than enough waffle from me. Next time, pictures!