"I just wish you would try to get along, that's all," Andrew Utley exclaimed. "Couldn't you do that? For me?"
Matthew's heart shattered under his lover's verbal hammers. "I was defending you," he protested. "I was doing it for you. I thought you'd be grateful."
"I am, sweetie," Drew sighed, desperately longing to put an end to the unpleasant conversation. "But I've told you before, you can't take everything Barthold says seriously. He's a bitter man. Now behave yourself, do you hear me? You promised me. All right?"
Matthew scowled and gradually nodded, but hadn't he done this before? Not even Drew was convinced there was any strength of conviction in Matthew's succinct nod, but Matt had risen from the sofa and walked away.
Drew had sensed trouble from day one when Professor Barthold arrived to take up residence in the guestroom of the house he shared with Matt. But he had merely brushed off Matt's feelings. In its simplest analysis, the way Matt felt for Bathold was an adolescent jealousy toward having to share living space with a third person. In its more complex, it was primal instinct to protect one's territory.
But for Matt, the problem was more complicated than just the feeling that his space and zones of comfort were being invaded. Matt simply had had enough of his new roommate.
Professor Balthazar Barthold was Drew's superior at the university and had been living in the house for the last six months. Matt had not liked the idea from the start. For this matter, Matt had not liked Barthold from the start. In addition to that insufferable holier-than-thou displays of disapproval Barthold held for anything and everything about the house and the owners' management of it, he was the meanest man living. Barthold had nothing nice to say about anyone, not even Drew, whose fault was fulfilling his subordinate noblesse oblige to aid his senior colleague at his time of need.
And Matt didn't even want to begin to talk about how bad Barthold always seemed to smell. It wasn't that he never bathed or washed, but his pores seemed to reek of garlic or something a lot less recognizable.
And of course, Barthold was consistently ready with his criticism of Matt whenever they ran into each other. Running into one another was unavoidable for the house was not particularly big, built in the manner of all the tenement houses of the Brooklyn area.
It was the last straw for Matt when Barthold uttered those unnecessarily unkind words about Drew the night before. Well, that's gratitude for you, Matt had thought to himself, and, no sooner thought than reacted, immediately let fly. The tirade had been a long time in the offing. Of course Drew had made Matt promise not to devise any evil machination toward the Associate Dean, saying he, Matt, didn't understand anything and there could be dire consequences if he made unfounded and unqualified statements about the man.
Matt had remembered the promise. He always remembered the promise for it was not only love but also respect that he felt for Drew. However he had already arrived at his wits' end. Matt's tirade had been with words that were meaner and less kind than Barthold had heretofore shown any capacity or talent for. Indeed, when called for, Matthew Inder could rise to any criticism, mockery and raconteur's tale, for after all, he was an English Lit. major, aspiring to be much more than a dime store pulp fiction writer some day. And so, by the time Matt finished, he had made some rather wicked, damaging remarks about Barthold.
All this summed up to the fact that Matt had broken his promise to Drew and this was not something Drew took lightly.
Which was the reason for the tete-a-tete Matt had with Drew five minutes ago. Drew had been visibly chagrined and indignant, as much toward the things Matt had said to his colleague as for the broken promise. But always willing to forgive his passionate and impetuous lover, Drew had put a rein on his anger. Besides, Matt was the most important person in his life and on the side of sensitive, so he knew which landmines to avoid when dealing with him.
Except for the following day, that is. Drew didn't like having to do it but he had seen no other way.
Drew came home from the university later than usual. The neighborhood children had seen how cross he was and had not ventured to greet him in the usual gleeful way.
Matt was in the bathroom soaking in the bubbles but that didn't stop Drew from yanking him out of the tub. Thereafter, acerbic words and belligerent looks of the scale not heard from and seen in Drew ensued. Drew was also holding Matt's wrists in so tight a grip that it hurt Matt. This notwithstanding, what hurt much more were the things Drew said to Matt. Simply put, they were seething.
Not long after, Matt would hear it told that the things he had said to the professor the day before had had much more damaging consequences than either he or Drew had foreseen. Barthold, it appeared, had been unable to face up to Matt's tirade although he knew every word therein was the truth: it was true that Barthold was a home wrecker. Three times wedded, Barthold had not once been able to sustain a marriage because of his philandering ways and penchant for brothel visitations. It was also true that he was no good with his kids; his seven hated him and had not visited him since his divorce from their mothers.
Now, Barthold was also a reforming alcoholic but Matt had not known about this. Or of the fact that he was responsible for sending Barthold back to the bottle.
Until now.
"I'm sorry," Matt cried at this stage of Drew's diatribe, "I didn't know."
Drew ignored the young man's apology. "I love you, Matt, but you've gone too far this time," he scolded instead. "I warned you, didn't I? I've told you many times that you didn't understand anything. I've told you to be careful you didn't say anything to Barthold that you have no knowledge its ramifications. You never listen, do you? So now the man is a wreck, and under the influence, went and molested a student. He'd never be able to teach again."
And then Drew did the seemingly unthinkable. He had not even thought about it; there had not been time. It had just seemed to him the only right thing to do. Matt had to be punished.
But Drew appreciated that Matt was an adult with rights and grounding him was not his right to impose. Matt was his equal lover and partner, besides. Just the same Matt had behaved like a disobedient child and the older Drew felt it justified to spank Matt like a child.
It was opportune too that Matt was already naked and perhaps that had motivated the spanking. Matt resembled a little boy without his clothes on and dripping wet from the soap suds. In some hazy future, when the two men looked back on this eventful moment, Drew would maintain that, naked and guilty, Matt had looked like he was asking to be spanked.
Pulling Matt along without a word, Drew sat down on the edge of their bed and forced the younger man to lie facedown across his knees. Matt's bottom was totally bared for the onslaught of Drew's hand.
"What the hell are you doing," Matt protested, snarling. He was unable to believe this was happening to him. He had never been spanked in his life, not even when as a little boy, he had pulled his sister's braids and pinched his baby brother's arms black and blue and they had squealed on him. The worst type of punishment he had ever received growing up was a two months' grounding for his role in setting off a smoke bomb in the boys' john back at elementary school.
But Matt's protest was answered by a painful tug in his groin area. Drew had reached under him to pull out his penis and trap it between his thighs. Matt squirmed and wiggled on Drew's lap. So then his pubic hair got pulled this way and that and the ache he felt under him forced him to be more cooperative.
Cooperating, however, did not save Matt for he was soon to feel a slap delivered to his bottom. The slap drove his bottom cheeks and legs into a wild spasm of convulsing muscles. But even this was cute and erotic to Drew.
Similarly erotic were Matt's squeals while tears were released immediately as a wet cambric down his facial cheeks. Drew's penis enlarged from all the ocular stimulation but he painstakingly stowed away his desire to make love to his beautiful boy on his lap.
"Stop it, Drew," Matt pleaded, blubbering and ranting at every one of the fifty-five smacks that were applied to the same sore spot on both his bottom cheeks. "Please stop. For God's sake, I'm sorry. I'm really sorry."
"You will be when I'm finished spanking you, baby," Drew answered while the spanking continued.
That seemed to go on forever. As soon as Drew was done reddening Matt's buttocks, he went on to force Matt's thighs apart to reach his anus, spanking this at a frenetic pace. Matt felt at the same time an orgasm and fart on the way. Neither came in the end, thankfully.
Matt's thighs were assailed afterward, the claps that resonated between Drew's hand and Matt's pliant flesh needing to compete with the latter's howls.
In the course, Matt's nether landscape would change colors a few times - first it was an uneven pink, and then it was red and purple before it finally turned a fiery crimson all over.
Equally mutable was Matt's response to his maiden spanking. First he had decried it, and then he had pleaded for mercy and forgiveness before finally promising to behave and be a good boy, Drew's good little boy.
This final plea was enough to make Drew stop. Besides, Matt was starting to choke between sobs.
Relaxing his arms, Drew quickly and forcibly lifted his crying boy up and then gathered him feverishly into his bosom. Between soothing his penitent boy and pledging his undying love and support in spite of having just spanked him, he heard Matt whisper: "When did you learn to spank like that? I never knew ... "
"I was spanked a lot as a boy," Drew replied, earnestly kissing the wet and pretty face burrowed under his chin. "Did me a lot of good."
"Doing me plenty of good now, too," Matt admitted, his tears drying and his emotions calming.
"Weren't you ever as a boy ... ?" Drew asked.
"No," Matt said, now curling himself up into a tight little ball against Drew.
"Well, that's probably part of the problem," the older man said, "but you're going to get a lot more of this from me, I promise you. Looks like we're going to have to set some new house rules, but we'll worry about this tomorrow."
Of course there was no trace of Matt's embracing Drew's words with any alacrity. But neither was he minding them for the pain on his buttocks was his immediate concern.
Drew conveyed his lover to the protective comforter and as they both lay under it, began to caress his boy's sore bottom. The caresses worked like an alchemy for the pain and humiliation of a punishment spanking, for Matt soon lulled into a warm and comfortable sleep on his man's chest.