What did come was the reunion. It was a tacky affair, only being 10 years removed from graduation. I’d never heard of a 10-year reunion. My high college didn’t get back together until our 20th, and by then we’d all grown older and wiser and no one was still living in the 12th grade.

The 10th reunion of the Charlotte Christian Academy’s class of ’91 was different. It was if everyone was still in high college. The guys all hung out in corners of the gym, sipping from hip flasks. The faint smell of pot hung in the air.

A band played 90s music, badly, and every few minutes a platinum blonde, presumably the class president, would make some cheesy announcement or urge more dancers to get off their butts and dance.

Mel and I walked in about an hour after it started, fashionably late, and she was immediately ambushed by old friends, mostly girls. We joined another couple, Cathy and John or Cindy and Jimmy, I don’t remember, and let the girls walk down memory lane.

My wife was animated, but also wary of something or someone. She would listen to Cathy or Cindy, but she was constantly looking around the gym with an odd look on her face. I mostly watched her, smiled and nodded when prompted or introduced to all the people who stopped to talk to Mel.

She was quite trendy, and I think she was having a good time, but her mood was a mixture of joy and caution. I asked if she’d like to dance, and she didn’t even hear me. But then her friend convinced to take to the dance floor, them not me.

I shrugged and watched them walk to the middle of the basketball court and join the dancers in the electric slide. Again, I could sense some apprehension in Mel’s demeanor, checking her back every time the lines moved. At some point, the husband I’d been left with said something and I turned to hear what he said. I’m, not sure what he was talking about, because I couldn’t hear him over the music.

When I turned back around to watch Mel, she was gone. Her girlfriend was still dancing, but there was an opening in the line where my wife had been 15 seconds earlier. I scanned the dance floor, then the line at the punch table, the dark corners where the shy or non-dancers mingled. She was nowhere to be found.

I assumed she’d gone to the bathroom or something, so I didn’t worry until 10 minutes had passed. I excused myself from the table and went looking for Mel,

I left the gym and walked into a dim hallway where I noticed a guy arguing with a woman in the shadows. He was gesturing wildly with his arms and the woman seemed to cower. Then I realized it was my wife.

I walked briskly toward them, some 20 or 30 yards away, neither of them noticing me until I was a few feet away when the man grabbed Mel’s arm and she pulled away, looking up in time to see my fist fly into the guy’s face, knocking him out cold with one punch.

He crumpled onto the floor, blood pouring from his nose as I hugged my crying wife.

“Get me out of here,” she said.

The ride home was quiet for several minutes before Mel tried to talk. She was still upset, tears falling as she struggled to explain what I’d just seen.

“Tha, um, that was my old, um, boyfriend,” she stuttered. “It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got all night,” I said, reaching over the touch her. It was as if I’d shocked her. She jumped and then apologized.

“It’s not easy talking about this,” she said. “I had no idea he’d be there. He moved out of state a few years ago. But once I got there, I don’t know, I could just feel his presence. Didn’t you see him pull me away?”

“No,” I said. “I was listening to your girlfriend’s husband babbling. What happened?”

She shook her head and put her hands over her eyes.

“James, I am so sorry this happened.”

She looked out the window into the darkness. I considered touching her again to reassure her, but she seemed to coil into a ball, her arms holding her knees tightly to her chest as she stared out the window.

A minute or so passed before she mumbled “where are we?”

I shook my head and shrugged.

“I don’t know, South Carolina maybe.”

Another long silence…

“Where did you learn to fight like that?”

I chortled.

“That was no fight, babe. That was a punch.”

“A punch?” she asked, finally turning to face me.

“A straight right,” I said. “I’m not sorry. What was he trying to do? Why were you with him?”

She shuddered again.

“I’m so sorry.”

“You keep saying that. What are you sorry for?”

“Him. That. Everything!”

I sighed heavily.

“OK, start at the beginning. We’ll be in Georgia before long.”

She turned to the window again.

“You’re going to hate me,” she said.

“That’s not the beginning,” I said. “Who, exactly, is he? If I see him again, I’ll kill him. Will that help?”

She shook her head.

“He’s just a guy. We dated for a while. He’s a real bastard.”

“And when was that?” I asked,

“Right before I met you.”

“For how long?” I asked, prodding for information,

“How long what? Did we date? I don’t know. A year? Maybe not quite a year.”

She turned completely around to face me.

“He was a mistake that I couldn’t rid, real possessive and jealous. He thought he owned me. He could get violent. He fought guys for just talking to me. He’d push me against walls, He hit me once.”

I slowed the car and turned off on a exit ramp.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Home,”

She talked the rest of the way home, telling a story that sounded like a bad movie. Her life was hell on earth for their entire relationship, and she was powerless to walk away.

“At first, I thought he was a tough guy who would protect me,” she said. “I felt so loved, you know? But then, I mean, who beats people up because they look at someone or say something or laugh at something he didn’t hear? It went downhill so fast I didn’t even notice.”

I’d at all times seen Mel as a flower, a delicate daisy smiling in the sunshine, swaying with the breeze and gorgeous in her shyness. But as she described her year with “Jack,” (she said his name only once) it became apparent that she was fragile, possibly broken.

“Why did he hit you?” I asked.

“Because…” she hesitated and took a deep breath. “Because I wouldn’t sleep with him.”

She exhaled loudly.

“He tried to rape me one night at a party. He had a lot to drink, and he was bragging to his friends that I was great in bed, or he was great in bed or something. I heard him say it and I started screaming at him. He was so embarrassed he had his friends follow him while he dragged me into a bedroom and threw me on a bed and started trying to choke me, tearing my dress off and telling me he was going to fuck me and teach me a lesson or something. One of his friends pulled him off, and there was this big fight.

“After that, I don’t know, something changed for me. I broke up with him but I

was damaged somehow. I blamed myself, and so did my father. They were tight, because Dad wondered I was being protected.

“I can’t shake the memory of that. I felt like my dad abandoned me when I needed him most. I still feel that way.”

“What way,” I asked.

“That I brought all on myself. That I need guidance. I need discipline. I need to be punished. I crave it, I hope I didn’t scare you the last few days. It’s not the violence I crave. It’s the pain. It all came to a head last week when I decided I needed to go to the reunion for closure. But I couldn’t go until I submitted to you entirely.

“Does any of this make sense?”

Somehow it did.

“Yes, baby,” I whispered.

I pulled her to my lap and caressed her hair as she wept in silence. As we neared the house, I tried to calm her.

“We’re almost home baby.”

She nodded in my lap. As we pulled into the garage, I felt her unbuckling my belt and sliding it off. As I turned the car off, she handed it to me. She walked into the house in front of me, her head bowed. She walked to the couch and leaned over the arm, pulling her dress up over her bare ass. She wasn’t wearing panties.

I stood above her holding the belt.

Mel turned her head toward me and smiled. Then she buried her face into a pillow

and spread her legs apart. I heard her saying something muffled in the pillow, so I leaned down to hear what she was saying.

“Do it!” she said. “Spank me hard, Daddy.”

SMACK!

SMACK!

The groan was the most seductive and enticing sound I’ve ever heard, a deep groan of complete pleasure. She raised her ass higher, submitting totally to my belt.

SMACK!

She raised her head from the pillow and screamed in pain and rapture.

“FUCK YEAH! Make it hurt, Daddy. Make me your slave. Make me your slut.”

A pool of liquid poured onto the arm of the couch as she squealed in a passionate plea..

“MORE! I NEED MORE!”

I leaned down and opened her mouth, sliding the belt between her teeth. Then I let my pants drop, grabbing her raw ass cheeks and spreading them apart. My cock slid against her quivering hole

“Fuck me,” she hissed. “Fuck me in the ass. I want it to hurt. Fuck the hurt out of me, James. Fuck your slut’s ass.”

I unloaded inside her while she bucked madly and cried for more. When I pulled out, a white, creamy rivulet of cum ran down her legs. A soaking wet spot was on the arm of the couch where Mel had come over and over as my cock rammed her asshole.

As I stepped back, she knelt in front of me with her hands behind her back.

“Thank you, Sir,” she said.

I pulled her up and held her tight, kissing on the forehead.

“Don’t ever be afraid again,” I said. “I will at all times protect you.”

The next morning when I opened my eyes, she was kneeling beside the bed, her eyes closed with her hands behind her back. My belt was collared around her neck.