Welcome Home!

Last Thursday, I got up in the morning after having hardly slept at all. I'd gone to sleep at my bedtime  like a good girl, but I found myself just lying there, unable to relax into the sleep I knew that I needed. When I got up, it was going to be a busy day, and I needed the energy, but I was pulsating with excitement and could hardly lay in one position very long. The next time I went to bed, it would be with Paul. How could I possibly sleep when I knew that it was down to the HOURS before I'd see him? It's annoying, the way that my body responds to excitement. If I could have just slept, the ten hours I ended up staying in my bed for would have flown by. My boyfriend from High School used to describe sleep as "Time Travel." He'd intentionally sleep as much as he could leading up to things he was looking forward to. Me? I tied my covers in knots with my tossing and turning and looked at my phone to see what time it was every five minutes. Finally, around 7 AM, I fell asleep.

When I woke up at 10:30, I had the worst sleep-eyes I'd ever experienced, and hardly even looked like a human. This called for some teabags soaked in ice water resting on my closed eyes for fifteen minutes. Now, I'm someone who has stood in corners for long periods of time rather habitually, and I've waited in other boring, unpleasant ways, too. This time passed impossibly slowly, though.  I thought that my timer was broken about eight times. In about the twelfth minute, there was a knock on the door. I was expecting mail, so I answered it. It turns out that it was a couple of people wanting to talk religion. They asked if my parents were home, and I told them they were not (in fact, they're very far away!) so they left. I suppose the teabags must have worked, if I was being back to being mistaken as a child.

After this, I got to work doing housecleaning. I'd been preparing for Paul to come back in various ways ever since he left. I had set up a garden area in the back yard, complete with plants, yard chairs, a small table and a little outdoor fireplace (inspired by the fact that Paul had mentioned several times that he missed sitting by a fire in the evening, since few homes in Los Angeles have fireplaces, it seems). I had done lots of cleaning and organizing in the house, adding little touches here and there to make it feel more put together. And for the past month, I'd been coloring a "Welcome Home" sign for him, working on it a little bit each day. I'm not really "good" at arts and crafts (the thing I'm best at making is a mess!) but it came out very cute. It's quite obvious that I drew it, and I think that's what counts. Anyway, I wanted the house to be as spotless as possible, so there was tidying done, laundry and dishes washed and put away, floors scrubbed, the bathroom cleaned and so on. When it was finally done, I cut some flowers that were growing in an area that I consider to be part of my yard (there has since been some debate as to whether these were technically not mine) and filled vases with them. I set the sign on the bed. Things looked perfect, and I was very pleased.

Next, it was time to make myself presentable, since I pretty much looked like some kind of cleaning wench at this point. I ran myself a bath, where I quickly washed my hair and face, then put a hair mask on my hair, wrapped it up in a towel to sit, coated my face with a delicious smelling treatment from Skinfood (mmmm, strawberries!) and added a fancy bathbomb to the water. To make thing more interesting, I added a Crayola tablet which turns the bath water colors, so I was soaking in floral scented, pink water. This, my friends, is the life.

Now, months and months ago, Paul and I had been in the drugstore looking for something else when I had come across these water coloring tablets. We had the following conversation:

Me: Paul, may I have this?
Paul: No, you can't have that. It's likely to stain the bathtub.

I'm sure I then whined quite a bit about how unfair this was, but Paul held his ground. A couple of weeks ago, I had been in the grocery store looking at bath products (they're one of my obsessions, as bath-taking is borderline fetishistic for me) when I rediscovered these colored tablets. I was already buying more bath stuff than I needed (milk-bath mixture, chamomile bubble bath AND scented sea salts) but they looked just as appealing as they had the first time I had seen them. Who doesn't want to take a bath in brightly colored water? How fun! (Un)fortunately, this time, I was all alone and unsupervised in the store. Somehow, I managed to convince myself that Paul had meant that I couldn't have any bath colors THEN, not that I couldn't have them EVER. Clearly, that's what he meant. In fact, I was sure that he said "Not today" somewhere in that conversation, which meant that since it wasn't that day anymore, it would be just fine for me to buy them. Besides, I had been very good recently. There would be no consequences to this action. Of course not. Just fun, colored water.

So, yesterday, I soaked in the pink water happily until it was time to get out. I spent a while getting ready and making myself look as cute as I could:

Happy face!

Then, I went out to my car. It was only 5:45, and Paul's flight wasn't scheduled to land until 7:15 and then he had to go through immigration, but I wanted to be there early. I wanted to find the door that he would have to come through to get to baggage claim and pounce him with the biggest hug ever. I didn't want to waste one possible minute that we could be being together upon his arrival. In fact, thinking about seeing him again in the airport had temporarily replaced spanking scenarios as my night time, pre-sleep fantasy. So, I would get there very early and have time to prepare for this.

When I got out to my car, it had a mostly flat tire, probably caused by the fact that I had recently sort of scraped against a wall while reversing through a tight space. Fortunately, I had time to go to the gas station and put air in, which I did very carefully as I was wearing a short skirt and had just spent about an hour in the bath, but I then had to return home to wash my hands and knees off from kneeling on the ground and touching the wheel. Soon, I was back in the car and I entered the airport into my GPS. I was reminded that portions of the 405 are currently closed or seriously delayed. The 405 would have been my best route to the airport, but I chose to take a more complicated route instead to avoid the 405. Unfortunately, it seems, so did everyone else. It took me an hour and a half to travel a distance which usually takes me about 40 minutes, and the whole time I was worrying that I'd done the tire pressure wrong and my car was going to exploded, or that Paul would get through customs and not have anyone to greet him.

Finally, around 7:40, I pulled into the parking lot at the International Terminal. I raced down, but went in the wrong door and ended up in a part of the airport which primarily had its signage in Japanese. As I was semi-frantically running around, I got a text from Paul saying that he was outside. I had no idea where that was.

For a second, "MISSION FAILED" appeared across my vision, but I managed to keep from falling apart. I felt really, really sad that he had gone all the way through baggage claim without being intercepted by my giant hug. I found a doorway to the outside world, and was attempting to text and walk at the same time when a familiar voice said "Boo!"

Then Paul was standing in front of me, and I fell into some kind of confused trance, overwhelmed with feelings. I fell into aforementioned giant hug, which turned into a long, passionate kiss. After this, I sort of bounced around, talking about many things that didn't really relate to each other. I was in a state of giddy, hyperactive derealization. This has always been sort of a "problem" for me in my relationship with Paul (I say "problem" in quotation marks because there's nothing actually bad about it, but I don't know what else to call it). I sometimes interact with him in a daze because it's difficult for me to believe that he's really here, that a person as wonderful as him is real and that I'm actually loved the way that I am. It leaves me in a perpetual state of wonder and gleeful amazement, but then, the world felt almost unreal.

But it was real. This is my life.

I apologized for not having been at the very first door I could have been, and explained what had happened and Paul didn't seem too disappointed. In between my talking a mile a minute about whatever was popping into my head at that moment, I asked if it was alright for us to grab some groceries before going home. When I had cleaned the kitchen, I realized that the cupboards were primarily bare except for candy. File that under "the dangers of leaving me unsupervised."

As we drove to the grocery store, I chatted about all the things I had done that day to get ready for his arrival. When I got to the part of the story about my bath, there was an awkward little pause. We were stopped at a red light, which seemed as good a time as any to bring this up.
"Paul?" I asked, my voice sounding quiet and vulnerable.
"Yes?" he responded, obviously aware of what usually came out of my mouth when my voice sounded this way (either a request for something I feel shy to ask for or a confession of some sort of bad behavior).
"Do you remember the day that we were in the store and we saw those bath tablets which change color?" Paul confirmed that he remembered. "You told me that I couldn't have any, but you didn't actually mean that, right?"
Paul's face was a mixture of annoyance and confusion, with traces of amusement showing through under the stern. "Why would I have not meant it?"
"Maybe you meant that I couldn't have any just then, but I could have it another day?" I explained.
"No. I told you you could never have any, because they'll stain the tub," he told me, shaking his head.
"But they didn't stain the tub! It's fine now!" I rebutted. I reeled back for a moment, realizing that I had admitted my disobedience. Paul gave me a serious look. "Am I in trouble?" I asked very meekly.
"Yes," Paul said, leaning in close to me. "I'm going to have to spank you for this when we get home."
Being spoken to this way, by him, in person, for the first time in ages sent my mind spinning off into a happy place and I had to focus on driving very intentionally when the light changed again.

We got groceries and then went to an all-night diner for some food, where we both ate breakfast. We sat together on the same side of the booth and cuddled. By then, I was getting sleepy from my lack of sleep the night before, and I can't imagine how tired Paul was after his long day of international travel. We returned home, where I showed him my series of surprises: the garden area, the little touches I'd added to the kitchen and living room, the way that I'd finally gotten the study set up (as it had previously doubled as a storage room until I had tackled it recently) and then my sign. He was thrilled by everything, but especially pleased with the sign. After looking at all of this, he carefully unbuttoned my dress and pulled it off.
"You did something that I told you not to while I was away, didn't you?" he asked me, his voice a mixture of sternness and affection. I played with my hair and looked down.
"Yes, Paul," I whispered. He scolded me about the bath tablets (although he ultimately agreed that I could keep them, since they don't actually stain anything) for a moment before turning me over his lap.
I know that there have been many times in my life when I needed to be spanked very badly. There have been long spells where I was strongly desiring play and just not getting it. There were also the first eighteen years of my life before spanking became a reality and when it had only been a fantasy. Still, it was hard for me to think of a time when I wanted to be spanked more. There was none of the anxious apprehension which had surrounded my first spanking adventures, and none of the guilty hangups that had come into play when I was not getting spanked due to relationship problems in the past. Everything about this was right, and I lingered in each moment.

I was shocked by how hard the first smack was. It echoed in the room and made me gasp. I was aware that my bottom was probably extremely sensitive, considering that I had been playing much less frequently while he had been away, yet all I felt were endorphins. Within a few smacks, I dived directly into a place which has often been illusive to me in my years as a spankee: the floaty, subspacey place where spanking just feels good. Everything felt amazing, and my response was to gasp and push my bottom up to meet Paul's hand as it descended again and again and again. I didn't wiggle: I writhed happily. After some amount of time had passed (I have no idea how long it actually was, since it felt like both an age and a moment) he pulled me up onto his lap for another kiss, an we spent a while kissing, cuddling and enjoying each other. After a bit of this, he turned to me and said "I'm not done spanking you yet" and directed me back over his lap, where he continued to spank me very hard and I continued to offer absolutely no resistance: I had nothing to resist. It was the greatest feeling ever. I cooed and purred. Eventually, he paused and talked to me, rubbing my bottom gently.

"You belong to me, Alex," he affirmed me, "and I'll smack your bottom until it's red and sore whenever it pleases me."

I shivered with delight. There was no part of me that was focused on anything but the fact that I belong to him and love him. By the time the spanking was finished, my bottom felt hot and swollen, and as I calmed down and caught my breath I became aware of how stingy it was. I changed into pajamas (new ones that I'd been saving for his homecoming) and became suddenly very aware of how tired I was. Soon, we were curled up in our bed together, and the world was a place where everything was right and good. ♥