Red

Red is the color of his cheeks, just below the dirty-white waistband of his jock.

Not red. There has to be some more precise shade than that word, to describe the deep flush that spreads across his buttocks. Perhaps it’s the color of roses, pinkening at their edges. Maybe it’s crimson, deep as the blush that spreads across the boy’s face when I whisper dirty words into his ears. It could be more orange than either, like an astringent persimmon dripping with juice. Or raspberry—like him, a sweet morsel to be consumed. Lava red, hot and ceaselessly writhing. Fire engine, the color of urgency and heat. Scarlet, the color of sin.

Perhaps the rainbow of reds spreading across his butt are all those colors, or some wondrous shades of their own creation. My hand cups again and rises into the air, and pauses momentarily. Hesitating. Then it descends without remorse to collide with the left buttock. The boy gasps, and shudders, and jerks in my lap; his round, meaty ass quivers like gelatin from the aftershock.

Where I’ve struck flesh, more colors appear, deeper and redder than before.

I raise my hand again, slowly. Deliberately. Scruffy has had his face buried in the pillow; his pelvis weighs down my lap. The pillows muffles his gasps and his whimpers. Wearing a T-shirt and with his jeans still tangled around his ankles, he looks like a little boy poised over my knees for a retributive spanking. Only he’s no little boy, and most kids aren’t rock-hard and grinding into me, getting their bare-assed hand-paddling while they’re wearing a jock.

I know what he’s experiencing. In my youth, when I received similar spankings, I was told the experience arrived in stages. First the blush, then the budding pain, and finally the blossoming. The blush of color arrives after the first few slaps to the ass, when the sensation is still novel. The buds of pain arrive shortly after that, when each additional blow brings the boy closer to tears. It’s the worst stage, but also the shortest. Because after the boy pushes through the pain, the blossom begins. The cheeks take on a deep color, and the tingle blooms—a sensation of prickling and fire that spreads from the point of impact to the base of the spine, and tickles the body throughout. Every short moment of pain is worth the delicious prickle that follows.

From then, the hard edges of the spanking disappear. Nothing matters save the blossom as it reddens the cheeks and spreads and prickles across the skin. A boy will do anything to have that sensation continue, and only more slaps and spanks will suffice. It’s pain that brings a pleasure that lingers, and lingers.

Scruffy says something that’s inaudible into the pillows. I ask him to repeat it, more clearly. “Please don’t stop,” he manages to say. There’s moisture at the corners of his eyes, but he’s obviously, deliriously, happy.

I smile to myself. Those aren’t the words he’d uttered only a few moments before, before the bloom of pleasure began. So I raise my hand, bring it sharply down onto his ass, and listen to the sound of my flesh striking his. It’s followed by a gasp, and then a groan as he relaxes and enjoys the sensations.

And as I run the flat of my palm over his skin to soothe him, I watch the colors of red that blossom underneath. Carnelian. Flame. Maroon. Ruby. Apple-red, and vermillion. A hundred shades with and without names, for a pleasure my boy never knew he wanted.