By the time Monday morning finally came and went, that entirely all too familiar sense of looming dread and panic had started to settle in along the bottom of Rhen’s stomach once again. She’d had every intention of finishing off her web design homework the day before, but somehow she’d wound up going to bed having still just barely touched it. Now it was noon at the start of a brand new school week, and her assignment was due by nine o’clock that evening.
Shit. Why the hell does this keep happening to me?
Rhen knew that she needed to start buckling down as she sat at the kitchen table with her aunt and the rest of the daycare kids eating lunch.
And as she occupied herself with pushing around the carrot sticks on her plate, trying to scrape up the few remaining dollops of tangy ranch dressing, she made a promise to herself that she’d get to work right away after she and the others had been dismissed to go play.
Then again…
As she sat there mulling the problem over, chewing thoughtfully on the end of a ranch-covered carrot stick, she started to think that maybe she might have been overreacting just a little bit. Now that she had a full stomach to think things through on, she was pretty sure that she still had more than enough time to take care of her assignment. After all, it was just dumb old web design, right? She’d been fiddling with server-side development as a hobby for years now. She could handle it. There was no way she wouldn’t be able to easily throw together an elegant little algorithm for whatever the assignment decided to throw her way.
She had plenty of time for at least one or two games of tag first.
I’ll just run around for a little bit outside to clear my head and work off some of the food I just ate, she told herself, feeling her old sense of fly-by-night confidence starting to slide back into place as she did her best to suppress the gnawing worry in the pit of her stomach. That way I’ll be at peak performance when I actually sit down to work later on. In fact, now that I think about it, it would be silly not to take a quick exercise break!
With her decision made, Rhen bussed her dishes over to the sink with the rest of her friends (she’d begrudgingly accepted that she rather liked them, and they seemed to think she was cool and interesting despite having seen her bright red bare bottom on display last week) and joined them as they spilled out into her aunt’s backyard to run, scream, and generally make a ruckus while the sun still shined high overhead.
It would be fine.
—
Or… maybe not.
By the time the last of her fellow daycare kids had been picked up by either their parents or older siblings, and it was just about time to eat dinner judging by the smells wafting up from downstairs, Rhen knew that she was in trouble. Deep trouble. Her homework was due in less than an hour now, and it had become readily apparent that she’d made a grave miscalculation about how long it was going to take her to complete it.
As she scrolled her way through the PDF outlining the details for her assignment and finally got a proper look at the full list of things that she still needed to do for it, she could feel her heart rate skyrocketing as her stomach twisted and roiled.
“Crap, crap, crap… shit!”
Oh yes, she was royally screwed.
“Rhen,” Dana called from the foot of the stairs on the floor below, drawing out her name as she made her voice loud enough to be heard all the way up in her bedroom with the door only slightly ajar. “It’s time for dinner. Put down the games and come on, cutie pie.”
“Shit, shit, shitty shit, shit on a shit sandwich!”
If she hadn’t been so busy freaking out, Rhen probably would have been very grateful to know that her aunt hadn’t heard the torrent of curse words pouring out of her mouth at that particular moment.
“Did you hear me, young lady?”
“Uh… yeah!” she managed to yell back a moment later, only half paying attention as she frantically ran her eyes over the grading rubric for her homework. “Hold on just a sec. I’ll be down in a minute.”
“Now means, now, kiddo,” was her aunt’s only response, and Rhen knew that she was rapidly crossing into dangerous territory with her delays.
“Alright. I said I’ll be there in just a second!”
“Don’t make me come up there, little girl…”
Rhen winced, cheeks clenching reflexively beneath her at the warning tone in the older woman’s voice.
If there was one thing that her newfound aunt couldn’t stand, it was being deliberately disobeyed when she gave someone a direct order. And not doing as she was told as soon as soon as she was told to do it most definitely counted as deliberate disobedience in her book.
She’d learned that lesson the hard way more than enough times by now.
“Okay, okay, I’m coming! Geez . ”
At least everyone else has already gone home by now…
Hoping that things weren’t nearly as bad as they seemed to be just then, Rhen did her best to ignore the thin ice that she was waltzing across with her aunt as she continued to remain seated at her desk, panicking. In a last ditch effort to mitigate an impending academic disaster, she pulled up her course syllabus and double-checked it for any signs of a way out of the hole that she’d managed to dig for herself. But rather than ease her worries, it instead just made them much, much worse.
Of fucking course the majority of her final grade would be based on how well she did on her homework assignments. Which she begrudgingly had to admit at least made some small amount of sense given that they made up the lion’s share of her workload in that class. Unfortunately though, that also meant that there would be no catching a break by having this one not count for anything major.
“Shit!”
Rhen stomped her feet and let out a frustrated moan as she glared at her laptop, her mind churning through possibilities and contingency plans.
She definitely didn’t want to fail the class that she’d so casually written off as being an easy A for her. That would be beyond humiliating, and probably more than a little painful once her new auntie found out about it.
Heh. Never mind what Dana would think, she mused to herself with a little shiver, smirking in spite of the roiling panic gripping her insides.
Grandma would totally hit the roof if that happened. Hell, she’d probably drive down here so the two of them could take turns whipping my ass raw.
Shaking her head to clear it before that particular scenario could fully manifest itself in her mind’s eye, Rhen redoubled her focus, staring hard at her computer screen.
“Come on, there’s got to be something I’m missing here…”
Scrolling back up to the grading rubric in her syllabus, she started doing some quick mental math, trying to figure out just what the bare minimum was that she’d need to do to avoid outright failing her assignment and severely damaging her grade in her web design class in the process. And as she did so, a plan began to form in the back of her mind.
Not a great one, but it was at least still something.
“Hmmm… I might just be able to pull this off if I hurry,” she murmured to herself, nibbling on the end of her thumbnail and feeling a small ember of hope starting to kindle within her chest. “It’s not going to be pretty, but it’ll at least be good enough to pass… probably.”
With her decision made, Rhen pushed her chair back from her desk and sprang to her feet, the slim chance of not failing (another) homework assignment because she’d forgotten about it or put it off until the very last minute lending her a burst of speed as she dashed out of her bedroom.
Sprinting as fast as she could to avoid having her aunt come looking for her, she took the stairs down two at a time, and managed by some small miracle to avoid slipping on the hardwood floor in her socks as she hurried.
“Whoa now, careful there, hon,” admonished a worried-sounding Dana with a hand over her heart as she came barreling into the kitchen.
Just as quickly as she’d entered, Rhen had come to an abrupt halt as she bonked hard into the side of the island in front of where the older woman had been standing, waiting for her.
“I know you’re hungry and all, but slow down, would you? I’ve already had to patch up one overeager beaver today, let’s not make it two, alright?”
Rhen couldn’t help but smirk a little bit at the light scolding her aunt was giving her. It was definitely nice to know that she cared, and part of her did have to admit that she had a point. Just that afternoon she’d seen one of the hotter-headed younger boys split his lip open after he’d ran face first into the edge of the island she’d just collided with. And after Dana had patched him up, he’d wound up getting a spanking and spending half an hour in the corner with his shorts and briefs around his ankles for playing tag inside the house.
It had been rather gratifying to watch him standing there with his nose pushed into the corner as he fought against the urge to rub his flaming bare bottom. But at the same time it had also been more than a little embarrassing to see that her bossy boots auntie really didn’t treat her all that differently from any of the other “kids” she looked after. Although Rhen was willing to bet that her tush saw a lot more of the woman’s displeasure than any of the others’ did.
To say nothing of where her fingers had been wandering last night while they’d been cuddling on the couch in front of the TV before bedtime.
“Can’t talk now, Aunt Dana, really busy,” Rhen panted as she straightened up with a wince from where the edge of the countertop had just jabbed in against her ribs. The blow hadn’t really hurt all that much though, and she’d already forgotten about it by the time she dusted herself off. “I’ll take my food to go, please.”
“You most certainly will not,” huffed the red-haired older woman, planting her hands on her hips and glaring at her in disbelief. “In this house we eat our dinner at the table, young lady. I’m not running a hotel, and I won’t have you getting your crumbs all over the carpet in your room.”
“But Aunt Dana, I’m busy,” whined Rhen, actually stomping a foot before she could stop herself.
Seeing the way that just caused her aunt’s right eyebrow to arch up dangerously however, she quickly decided to try a different tactic instead.
Hoping that appealing to her strict belief that school should come before anything else, she added in the same petulant tone as before.
“I’ve got homework to do still, and it’s due in an hour! Can’t you just make an exception this one time, please? Or maybe we could just eat later?”
Rather than being her ace in the hole however, all Rhen’s admission seemed to do was darken the glare on the other woman’s face into a full on scowl.
“And why weren’t you working on this assignment after we finished lunch today, or sometime yesterday during the afternoon?” she demanded coolly. “I know you’ve had more than enough time this weekend to do your homework, little girl.”
Rhen looked away from her aunt’s stern countenance as she suddenly found herself going on the defensive. Tracing a fingertip along the granite surface of the island beside her, she did her best to think of a way to soften the truth even as she spoke it aloud.
“I did, technically, start it a few days ago, but I kinda… sorta…
forgot to finish it.”
Her last few words came out all at once in a jumble as her face heated up. The admission hadn’t sounded any better coming out fast than it had in her head, and she could tell by the way Dana was frowning at her that she hadn’t liked what she’d heard one bit either.
“Um, sorry?”
“Uh-huh,” her aunt grunted skeptically, clearly unimpressed with her meandering admission of wrongdoing and her halfhearted apology.
Crossing her arms over her ample chest, she eyed her with that same look she always used whenever she was attempting to sniff out the rest of a half-truth one of her kids was attempting to sell her.
“And this wouldn’t happen to be that same ‘bit of homework’ you said you were ‘working on’ when I came to get you on Friday, now would it?”
Uh-oh… I don’t think I like where this is headed…
Rhen grimaced and tried to think of some excuse or explanation that might help cast things in a better light for her. For a brief moment she considered just outright telling her aunt that it wasn’t the same assignment, but she knew that that would most likely only make things much worse for her. Even if she did believe her, she’d still be upset about her letting things lapse until the very last minute, again, anyway. But if she happened to figure out that she was lying, and Rhen was almost certain that she would (she had a terrible poker face and she knew it), then there would be hell to pay.
Unfortunately, honesty really was the best policy in this situation.
And so, heaving out a sigh and quietly hoping that things wouldn’t be too bad for her, she nodded.
“Um, yes ma’am, it is.”
Dana closed her eyes and let out a long, slow sigh of her own at hearing this, though hers was laced with far more exasperation and strained patience than Rhen’s had been. When she at last opened her eyes again, they were hard and unyielding. Her back was straight and her lips were pursed into a tight line. She had once more fully slipped into disciplinarian mode.
“Bend over the counter, Rhen. Now.”
“But Aunt Dana,” the younger girl immediately began to protest, balling her hands into indignant little fists at her sides as her whining ratcheted up an octave or two.
“One…”
Her aunt held up a finger, her face set into a mask of grim determination as she stared her down, silently daring her to see what would happen if she kept defying her.
“I still need to do my homework!”
“Two…”
“Can’t this wait until later?”
“Two and a half…”
Not at all wanting to find out what would happen if and when the stern older woman at last reached “three”, Rhen turned and all but dove across the island beside her.
“Okay, okay, geez! I’m sorry, alright?”
“Humph, we’ll just see about that,” sniffed Dana in annoyance, rolling her eyes as she turned her back on her. “Now you just wait right there while I find something appropriate to deal with your attitude, missy.”
Rhen watched with a mounting sense of dread as the now smirking older woman sashayed her way confidently over to the stove, and in one fluid motion plucked up a very sturdy looking, long-handled wooden spoon from the ceramic crock she kept beside it.
Oh crap. That’s definitely not going to feel nice.
“The procrastination ends now. Do you hear me, Rhen?” demanded Dana as she rounded on her once again and stalked over to her side, all traces of her earlier self-satisfied levity gone from her hard eyes.
“Yes ma’am!” squeaked Rhen, her cheeks clenching and unclenching nervously beneath her skirt as she caught sight of the storm brewing behind the older woman’s stormy gaze.
She’d known full well just what kind of danger she’d been putting her caboose into by not doing her homework all weekend, and she felt a shiver run down her spine now as she tried not to imagine how that scary looking spoon was going to feel against her bare bottom in only a few
moments. At the same time, she also felt her face heating up as the realization that she wouldn’t have been in this mess in the first place if she’d just done her homework like she was supposed hit her like a ton of bricks. And while that was certainly more than a little humiliating to come to terms with, in a much bigger way it was also oddly comforting.
She’d been naughty, and now she was going to be punished for it.
Well what do you know? I guess these spankings are actually teaching me something, after all, she thought to herself with a bemused smirk as she shifted around in a vain attempt to find a more comfortable position across the cold granite countertop beneath her. I just wish I didn’t have to experience the whole thing now that I’ve clearly learned my lesson.
Dammit.
“It’s high time that you learned how to manage your time better, little girl,” her aunt barked, snapping her out of her musings as she smacked the wooden spoon down beside her on the counter with a hard clatter that made her jump. “Because if you don’t, you’re going to end up with a lot more unpleasant things to deal with than just a sore bottom, believe you me.”
There was no arguing there, Rhen knew, and so she just nodded.
“Yes ma’am, you’re right. I’m sorry.”
“I’m really glad to hear you say that, dear, but you know that being sorry doesn’t mean that you get to escape your punishment, don’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” sighed Rhen again as she tried to ignore the butterflies inside her stomach that having to answer that last question aloud had stirred to life.
As she continued to lecture, Dana ran a hand along the curve of her niece’s bent waist, searching for the hidden clasp that held her pink skirt in place around her hips. Half a heartbeat later she found it, and her practiced fingers made quick work of the button and zipper there.
With a whisper of fabric on skin, Rhen gritted her teeth against the far too familiar embarrassment that welled up within her as she felt her skirt slide free of her hips and slip down her legs to pool limply around her ankles. She squirmed in place as the wafting air from the kitchen caressed along the backs of her exposed thighs, and flexed her cheeks beneath the taut material of her panties, savoring the feel of them before they too were taken away from her. There was no way her aunt wouldn’t be pulling them down in just a moment, she knew, and despite how little protection the ruffles on the back of them would have actually afforded her, she was still going to miss them. If for no other reason than that they at least preserved some small sliver of her dignity.
At least everyone else has already gone home for the day…
“By all rights I should be sending you off to cut me a handful of switches so I can really show you what happens to naughty little girls who don’t do their homework,” Dana continued to scold as she took hold of the waistband of her panties on either side of her hips, and then whisked them down to join her skirt around her ankles. “But since we’re on a bit of a time crunch here, we’ll just have to make do with the wooden spoon, I suppose.”
Rhen moaned and chewed on her lower lip as molten heat rushed up her neck to the tips of her ears. She fought hard against the urge to try asking if her aunt could just let her go as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other and back again, the movements making her naked cheeks bounce and wobble with each step, as if they were just begging the scowling older woman to punish them thoroughly.
Traitors!
“Please, Aunt Dana, I’ll be good!”
Although Rhen didn’t actually have any firsthand experience with what being switched actually felt like, her grandma had threatened her enough times with one while growing up to know that it was something that she most certainly wanted to avoid at all costs. And she definitely counted narrowly escaping finding out what one was like, from multiple switches no less, because they were pressed for time as a good thing. Even if the situation she found herself in just then was still all sorts of humiliating for her.
This isn’t that bad, she tried telling herself while at the same time doing her best to not think about the fact that she could feel cool air tickling her between her partially parted cheeks and thighs. Just how much of herself was she showing off to Dana right then? Well at least that damn
“haircut” of hers is being put to good use. I might as well actually look the part of the bratty young teen if I’m going to get spanked for not doing my homework like one.
“After we’re done here, I want you to get your laptop from your room and bring it down here to the kitchen. You can finish your homework at the table, and then you and I are going to have a nice long talk about how you’re going to be doing things differently from now on when it comes to managing your time. Is that understood, young lady?”
Rhen shivered as she felt the hard, smooth back of the wooden spoon being tap, tap, tapped against her bare right cheek, patiently waiting for her to reply. She let out a resigned sigh, accepting that this was just how things were going to go whether she liked it or not, and then reached out to grip the edges of the countertop on either side of her as she grimaced.
“Yes ma’am.”
The words had barely left her lips, when the wooden spoon started falling against her upturned tush. And fast.
THWAP! THWAP! THWAP! THWAP! THWAP! THWAP!
In the interest of not taking up too much time from her niece’s homework and its rapidly approaching deadline, Dana kept her pace brisk and relentless.
Usually she liked to pace herself when delivering a spanking. She’d make sure to spread the individual swats out evenly across both bouncing bare bottom cheeks and thighs to ensure that they all got full and equal coverage. And as she did that, she’d also make little adjustments here and there to her speed and strength based on the reactions she was getting from the brat she happened to be punishing at the time.
But not this time.
Instead she focused on dishing out as many spanks with her wooden spoon to Rhen’s frantically gyrating bare bottom just as fast as she possibly could within the next two minutes. Going for a quantity over quality approach, knowing that in the end the results would be close enough to not matter all that much, she kept her aim zeroed in exclusively on the delicate undercurves of the squealing girl’s chubby cheeks. She was intent on whipping up a highly-concentrated, fiery inferno directly over where she knew she’d be resting most of her weight when she sat down to do her homework after they were finished. Taking solace in the fact that while this wasn’t nearly so severe spanking a spanking as the girl actually deserved, what she had in mind for her next would make sure that the silly little thing remembered this particular lesson for a very long time to come.
She would learn to do her homework on time, or else they’d be having this discussion again out in the back yard with some switches from her crepe myrtle.
THWAP! THWAP! THWAP! THWAP! THWAP! THWAP!
Exactly two minutes, and around nearly one hundred and fifty rapid-fire swats, later, Dana came to a sudden stop.
Setting her spoon down on the countertop next to her gasping and groaning niece, who hadn’t even started properly sniffing yet (the little minx!), she gripped her by the scruff of her shirt and hauled her back up to her feet.
“Laptop, now,” she ordered, pointing toward the stairs before sending her scrambling out of the kitchen with a hard swat to her sizzling right sit-spot.
“Okay, okay, okay!” squealed Rhen.
With all thoughts of modesty and dignity cast aside for the moment, she hopped forward and then started making a beeline for her bedroom.
Unfortunately for her though, the panties still tangled up around her ankles slowed her progress considerably, and she lost precious time dancing around and stumbling as she tried to kick her way free of them.
Eventually however she managed to fling them off of her left foot and in the general direction of where her skirt had fallen, and then bolted her way up the stairs, hands clamped to her stinging backside as she ran.
Time was ticking away, and she knew that she couldn’t afford to waste any of it. Not if she wanted to save her grade, or her poor boiling bottom.
“Oh that sweet and sassy cutie pie of mine,” sighed Dana wistfully once she was all alone again, her hands planted on her hips as she stared off toward where Rhen had just disappeared. “One of these days she’ll figure out how to channel some of that energy of hers into something productive.”
She smirked.
“Though hopefully not too soon.”
—
After spending about as much time as she dared to ogling her swollen backside in the full-length mirror beside her closet door, Rhen snatched up her laptop and wireless mouse from her desk and hightailed it back toward the kitchen just as her aunt was starting to call for her again.
“Time’s a-wastin’, Rhen. Get your butt back in here right now, young lady!”
Not wanting to risk dropping her precious laptop on the stairs, especially since there was no way that she could afford to replace it anytime soon, Rhen took them one at a time and at a far more reasonable pace than she had coming up them just a couple minutes earlier.
Thankfully though, her aunt had heard her and didn’t come looking for her as she carefully padded her way down the stairs at a frantic speed-walk.
She was already in enough trouble as it was, and she sure as heck didn’t need any more just then.
But as she stepped back into the kitchen, using her closed laptop as a temporary means to hide her naked front from view, she found herself stopping short.
“Uh… what’s that for, Aunt Dana?” she asked tentatively, approaching the chair that the tightly-smiling older woman already had pulled out and waiting for her at their broad, wooden table.
It wasn’t the chair itself that had given her pause as her stomach roiled with a fresh wave of butterflies, but rather what she found laid out across its seat. For some reason, Dana had placed a welcome mat right where she was supposed to sit.
Uh-oh…
Rhen had never seen the mat before, but judging by the way it was lying along the seat, only bending a little at the edges, she could only assume that it was brand new. And if the smug grin that was on open display on her aunt’s face right then was any indication, she’d been waiting for just the right moment to spring it on her for a while now.
Taking a couple of hesitant steps forward toward the ominously innocuous looking mat, she saw that it was made from some sort of rough brown fiber with stiff rubber bristles for scraping off mud and dirt from shoes poking up all across the entirety of its surface. Whatever her aunt had in mind for her with it being there, it did not look pleasant at all.
Which Rhen suspected was probably the point.
“It’s called a punishment mat, dear,” Dana explained far too casually for her liking as she sauntered over to her side and slipped her laptop from her grasp.
She set it down gently on the table in front of the chair she’d prepared for her, before plucking the mouse from her grip as well and setting it beside it.
“Like I said earlier, I should have taken you out back and worn out some switches on that dilly-dallying little derriere of yours after the way you’ve been letting your homework slide,” she continued in that coolly casual disciplinarian way of hers. “As far as I’m concerned, you fully deserve to not be able to sit down for the rest of the night, but right now that would just be counterproductive. So instead we’re going to use an alternative approach to make sitting down for you almost impossible for the next little while until I think that the lesson has, shall we say… sunk in.”
And here I was thinking I’d gotten off relatively easy all things considered, thought Rhen with a grimace, barely managing to suppress a snort at the notion of how naïve she’d been.
Not giving the younger girl a chance to argue, Dana gripped her firmly by the shoulders and spun her around so that her back was facing the waiting chair. Then with a squeeze, she pushed her gently, yet undeniably firmly, down until she was sitting with the full weight of her freshly spanked bare bottom and thighs resting against the coarse and pointed surface of the mat beneath her.
Rhen immediately saw just why her aunt had called it a punishment mat then.
After less than ten seconds sitting on the stupid thing, her bottom felt like it was being rubbed raw by its prickly and scratchy woven fibers, while at the same time the stiff rubber bristles standing at attention in a tight grid pattern across its surface dug in mercilessly against her tender thighs and sit-spots. It was definitely not a pleasant experience to say the least, and at that moment she found the evil, evil mat anything but welcoming.
“Ah! Oh! Oof,” she hissed, fighting hard against every instinct she had to spring back up and clutch her aching caboose. “Aunt Dana, come on! This is way too mean. I’m sorry I kept putting off my homework, but there’s no way I can focus with this thing digging into me, please.”
She was half a breath away from offering to let her spank her again later if she’d just let her up off of that awful mat now, but the throbbing heat that was being reignited and fanned into a whole new level of unpleasantness below her kept her from making that mistake.
“That’s why it’s called a punishment mat, cutie pie,” countered Dana breezily, leaning in to tap the tip of the blushing girl’s nose playfully with a finger before straightening up and surveying her handiwork with smug satisfaction.
She smiled at the little hisses and moans that bubbled up from Rhen as she tried desperately to shift her weight around to find some small semblance of relief from the non-stop discomfort that she was now in, all the while knowing full well that it was a futile endeavor that would only make things worse for her in the long run. All she’d accomplish by trying to shift her weight around would be to dig another area of her punished hindquarters in even harder against the cruel expanse beneath her. There was no escaping this punishment, and definitely no minimizing it either.
Which was exactly why she’d chosen it.
Still grinning, she stepped around behind her whining niece, and with a firm grip on either side of her chair’s laddered back, slid her forward until her squirming thighs were hidden beneath the table in front of her and she was directly facing her laptop.
“Now get to work,” she ordered sternly.
Rhen immediately nodded her head, if for no other reason than to avoid making her current situation any worse by showing even the faintest hint of defiance, as she leaned forward to flip open the lid of her computer.
She winced and pouted as the movements dug the tips of the bristles in harder against her sit-spots, as if to taunt her and the areas where she’d gotten so many swats just a few minutes earlier.
“Yes ma’am, I’m starting now,” she hastened to assure her.
“Good.”
All the while she was scrambling to obey, Dana continued to hover just behind her shoulder, watching her movements with a critical eye and taking note of every wince and grimace. She was beyond pleased with the results she was getting so far from her repurposed welcome mat, and was silently congratulating herself on the stroke of creative genius that had given her the idea to make use of it in the first place. And based on the dramatic shift in attitude it was producing in her niece, who as far as she was concerned had barely gotten a spanking at all, she would definitely be making use of it again in the future.
It was no public corner time, but it certainly had its merits.
“Oh, and Rhen,” she decided to add with a low purr against the squirming girl’s ear after she’d snatched up the wooden spoon from where she’d left it on the island, setting it down beside her laptop with a hard clack. “If I catch you doing anything other than working on your homework, young lady, you’re going to find yourself standing for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the rest of the week. Is that understood?”
“Yes ma’am!” squeaked Rhen again, meaning it with every ounce of her being as her fingers flew across her keyboard, punching in her password at top speed as her laptop awoke from its hibernation.
“Good, then I’ll leave you to it,” cooed Dana, giving her shoulder one more quick squeeze as she kissed her cheek.
Straightening up, she made a show of checking the small watch she wore around her left wrist.
“You’ve got about fifty minutes before that assignment is due, and if I were you, I’d make the most of them.”
Rhen didn’t bother to answer her this time as she moved off. She was far, far too busy doing exactly as she’d been told to waste any time on idle promises to be good.
—
The better part of the next hour flew by in a blur of wildly unpleasant discomfort and hyper-focus for Rhen as she did her best to ignore the sensation of the punishment mat beneath her cheeks as she wriggled her aching bare bottom again and again atop its cruel surface.
As she lost herself in database layouts and backend APIs, the stiff bristles of the mat continued to work themselves in against her tender flesh.
Urged ever deeper thanks to her naturally short legs, which made it impossible for her not to rest her full weight against the rasping fibers and protruding points beneath her. With her diminutive height, the balls of her feet barely grazed the tile floor underneath the kitchen table in front of her where she sat, and as a result she was unable to use them to try and possibly leverage some of her weight up and off of the horrible mat.
She was stuck both literally and figuratively, and it sucked.
And so Rhen was left hissing and fidgeting constantly as she worked, attempting off and on to try to find a more comfortable position to sit in as she toiled away at her homework. Unfortunately though nothing she did ever seemed to provide any real relief for her exposed skin, and she was forced to endure the sensation of her bottom and thighs being scrubbed raw non-stop, the heat of it almost akin to a never ending barrage of light spanks. It was never enough to really push her past the point of being unable to endure it, but it was always just far enough out of her comfort zone to make ignoring it or tuning it out for more than half a minute at a time impossible.
In short, it was awful.
But at the same time, Rhen’s focus seemed to experience a miraculous improvement as well. Spurred on (literally) by the punishment mat beneath her naked caboose and the ever-present threat of wooden spoon looming just off to the side, she quickly fell into a hypnotic work rhythm. Blocking out the world around her, save for the feel of the stiff bristles and coarse fibers relentlessly shifting beneath her squirming thighs, her fingers danced across her keyboard as her mind swirled with ideas and algorithmic solutions.
And much to her own surprise, she actually finished her assignment in its entirety with time to spare, submitting it a whole five minutes before the deadline passed.
“And… done!”
Clicking the submit button and seeing that it went through successfully, she sighed with relief and leaned back in her chair, exhausted.
After spending a few moments basking in the afterglow of a job well done, she wiped a forearm across her sweaty brow and tried not to wince too much as her movements pulled free some of the bristles near the tops of her thighs, only to dig in still others around her cheeks even harder.
“Phew.”
That had been way too close for comfort, but in the end it had been some of her finest work… somehow.
“I think you mean ‘finished’, dear,” teased Dana as she swooped in beside her with a plate of steaming food fresh from the microwave.
Closing the lid on her niece’s laptop for her and pushing it and its mouse aside, she set the plate in front of Rhen, along with a fork and knife, and then pulled out a chair beside her to sit down in.
“Now eat up, and while you do that, you and I are going to have a nice long chat about the importance of not procrastinating.”
“Oh goody…” deadpanned Rhen with an impudent smirk as she picked up her utensils and dove into her meal.
All of the running around earlier that afternoon along with the intense thinking she’d just been doing had worked up quite the appetite for her, and she did her best to ignore the glare her aunt gave her for that last bit of sass as she speared a piece of broccoli on the end of her fork and started chewing.
“Go on, I’m listening,” she said around a mouthful of vegetables a moment later.
She waved her fork dismissively at the older woman as she chewed, before swallowing hard and shifting uncomfortably as it became clear that her patience was starting to wear thin.
“Uh, ma’am.”
“Careful, cutie pie,” purred Dana, resting the side of her face against her cupped palm as she smirked and watched the younger girl spear another mouthful of broccoli. “We’ve got all the time in the world for another spanking now, you know.”
“Eep!”
Snickering quietly at the worried squeak that last remark of hers elicited, she went on.
“Now then, let’s talk about your homework schedule, shall we?”
—
“Thanks for dinner, Aunt Dana, and I’m sorry again about letting my homework go to the last minute like that,” apologized Rhen after she’d finished eating and Dana’s lecturing had finally wound down to a close.
She had to admit that the older woman had definitely had more than a few good points to make about how irresponsible it had been of her to let her work pile up unfinished like she had. And when she’d pointed out how her near-catastrophic housing crisis had been largely caused by her dragging her feet on finding a job and not taking it seriously once she had one, Rhen’s face had glowed about as red as her bottom beneath her. But even so, she’d somehow managed to power through it all without sniffling too much, and while her aunt had been frank and honest in her assessments of how poorly she’d been behaving, she’d never been unkind about any of it, and when it was all over she’d wrapped her arms around her in a big hug and told her that she was still proud of her.
That had meant a lot to Rhen. Far more than she thought it would.
She just wished that she hadn’t kept her perched atop her punishment mat throughout it all.
Well, I guess it certainly helped to drive her points home, she thought to herself with a wry smirk.
Aloud though she said, “I’ll just go ahead and take care of these…”
Gathering up their dishes with one hand and pushing her chair back from the table with the other, she kept her face polite and helpful despite the flash of pain it produced in her as she slid far enough back to expose her bare legs and everything in between to the kitchen at large once again.
Then, with a grimace, she mentally prepared herself for the herculean task of standing up. Ostensibly so that she could bus their plates to the sink like she was supposed to do whenever dinner was over, but in reality she was prepared to seize upon any excuse she could find to escape that god awful punishment mat for even a moment.
The lecture was over now, so it would probably be fine, she assumed.
Or, at least she hoped.
Apparently though, it wasn’t.
“Uh-uh,” said Dana with a firm shake of her head, snatching the plates away from her niece before she had a chance to rise, and flashing her a knowing smirk. “Nice try, cutie pie, but you’re going to keep that caboose of yours parked right where it is until I say otherwise. You hear me?”
“Ugh, fine,” conceded Rhen with a good-natured, though rather petulant, pout as she crossed her arms in front of the minimal swell of her breasts. “But you can’t blame me for trying.”
“No,” agreed the older woman with a laugh as she whisked their plates off to the sink and gave them a quick rinse before placing them inside the dishwasher. “But I can most certainly spank you if you try doing anything like that again, little girl.”
Rhen couldn’t resist sticking her tongue out at that playful threat, doing her best to ignore the surge of butterflies and the throbbing ache between her legs that those words and her impetuous actions stirred up inside of her.
“Meanie.”
“You know,” snorted Dana, beaming in open amusement at her bratty antics as she dried her hands off with a dish towel. “You’re very lucky that you’re cute, missy.”
That made Rhen blush anew, and coaxed another gratified snort from the older woman as she returned to her seat beside her at the table.
“Alright, hon. Let’s take a look at that schedule, shall we?”
During the course of their meal and Dana’s scolding, the topic of Rhen’s fall semester school schedule had come up. Pursuing a hunch that had been itching at the back of her mind her ever since she’d pulled down the bratty girl’s panties over an hour ago, she’d pressed her about it, and Rhen had ended up confessing that she’d been putting off taking several of the required general education core classes that she needed to graduate.
This of course had not done her any favors with her aunt, and for a brief moment it seemed as if she might be taking another trip across her knee right there and then, but instead she’d just let out a long sigh through her nose and told her that they would be going over her schedule after dinner.
“You know, I’m not just here to dish out discipline and fondle your adorable backside,” she’d said with a mildly annoyed shake of her head.
“I’m also going to help you graduate on time and make sure that you learn how to behave like an actual adult.”
Rhen had bristled slightly at the implication that she wasn’t mature enough to handle her own life, but then a twinge of discomfort had made itself known right along her naked left sit-spot and she’d swallowed whatever it was that she’d been about to say. The unfortunate truth was that, yes, she was definitely still a child in a lot of ways, and as much as she hated to admit it, she did in fact need a firm hand to help keep her on track. That had been made abundantly clear to her that evening, if nothing else.
That didn’t mean that she had to like it though!
And now that the time had come to revise her schedule, she could definitely feel her heart starting to thud against her chest, hard. She’d just about run out of classes that she could reasonably justify to herself to take instead of her boring general education ones. And as her university’s schedule manager loaded up in her web browser, she had the distinct impression that she was about to get another earful from her aunt.
She was right.
“Rhen, honey, are you serious?” demanded the older woman a few moments later as she pinched the bridge of her nose in exasperation.
“You’re taking Intro to Bowling and the Historical Roots of Competitive Dodge Ball next semester? Aren’t you supposed to be a computer science major?”
“I mean…”
Rhen shrugged noncommittally and tried not to wince too much as the movement shifted her weight beneath her against the punishment mat, producing yet another sharp stinging sensation as if it too was expressing its outrage at the ridiculous schedule she’d concocted for herself.
“Um, yeah… I guess so.”
“No.”
Dana shook her head as she poured all of her disapproval into that single word. She then scrubbed a hand through her long red hair as she rolled her eyes skyward.
“No, no, no. This is totally unacceptable, little girl.”
Rhen swallowed hard at the other woman’s tone, and felt a nervous twinge in her stomach. Being called “little girl” like that tended to end in a very specific way for her, she’d found.
Shaking out her hair, Dana glared at the monitor display before her, running her eyes over her niece’s schedule one more time as she cross-referenced it with the very helpful graduation roadmap the website provided for students to see what they still needed to do before they finished school.
“It looks to me like you haven’t taken almost any of your general ed classes. You’re still missing credits for basic math, general science, and English. Is that really what I’m seeing here?”
“Maybe…” Rhen only half-confessed, not quite able to bring herself to fully admit just how much she’d been avoiding those classes.
As she stared down at the swirling wood grain of the table in front of her however, a faint trace of color warming her cheeks as she dragged a fingertip along its surface, she knew that her aunt already had the cold hard truth staring her right in the face.
“Well, um… Probably, yeah.”
There, I said it. Geez, that was way harder than it should have been. I freaking hate having to own up to stuff like this directly.
“Well this is just totally unacceptable, and we’re going to do something about it right now, young lady,” declared Dana with a huff, seizing the mouse beside her with a bit more force than was strictly necessary as she dragged the on-screen pointer over to the big green edit button and clicked it. “No niece of mine is going to while away her time in college avoiding taking the classes she needs to tak just because she doesn’t like them. No ma’am, uh-uh. Sometimes we have to do things we don’t like, and taking boring classes is just one of those things.”
Unable to deny that the older woman had hit the nail pretty much square on the head, Rhen just nodded and let out a quiet hiss through her gritted teeth as she scooted her chair in a bit closer so that she could get a better look at her laptop’s screen. And together the two of them spent the next half hour carefully pruning and rearranging her schedule for the upcoming fall semester until it at last met with Dana’s strict approval.
In the end it wasn’t exactly the course load that Rhen would have picked if she’d had her way, obviously. But she had to admit that her aunt had done a pretty good job of filling things out in a way that would definitely keep her busy, but wouldn’t crush her under the weight of too many assignments. Assuming of course, that she actually did them on time; which she very much intended to.
One time on the punishment mat was more than enough to drive that particular lesson home.
It was definitely going to be a much busier semester than she was accustomed to, that was for sure, but at least she’d be that much closer to graduating once it was all over. Plus she still had Mondays off along with most of Friday, and as a happy little bonus, she even got to keep her Intro to Bowling class.
All in all, Rhen found that it was a schedule that she could live with. And truth be told, it was long overdue.
