“Ow!” she cried again, as the space barbarian’s hard, huge hand struck again with all its force against her burning backside. Turning her head, she saw that his target was already flaming red, from the first ten times his palm had landed there.

Desperately, she tried to squirm away but his left arm was like a leaden bar across her waist, holding her firmly over his knee. His left leg was clamped over both of her lower limbs. Now she could not squirm an inch away, no matter how desperately she tried.

Thus her bottom was hopelessly exposed to both the merciless gaze of his blue eyes and the power of his muscle-knotted arm.

“Ow, ow, ow!” she cried, as she counted out ten more smacks. Each burned more fiercely than the one before, falling over flesh that was already hot and raw. Those blows could have lasted only ten seconds, but for her it was an eternity.

Then, mercifully, the spanking stopped. For a moment she reveled in the absence of agony, as it subsided into a searing, then a stinging and finally a throbbing pain. She waited for him to lower her skirt and set her back on her feet. When it did not happen, she looked back over her shoulder at him. Her relief soon turned to new terror, as she saw that he was pulling off his leather belt.

“No!” she cried. “Oh, no, please don’t hit me again! I am already so sore, I will not be able to sit down for a week!”

“For two weeks, I should think,” he replied with a brutal laugh. “But sit you will, on a wooden chair, for half an hour…after I have warmed your bottom again with my belt.”

For an instant, she desperately hoped that he was merely taunting her. That last hope vanished when the folded strap crashed onto her backside, bringing such a blinding pain that it filled the entire world.

“And that’s only the first,” he promised. Her cry of anguish turned into helpless sobs of despair as he added, “You will have 19 more.”

“But what have I done?” she managed to wail, as she gazed up at him again through her tears….

And that, of course, was always the big question. Left to her own devices, the author would have had him simply answer that he happened to enjoy spanking slave girls…or, alternatively, that he just wanted to show her who was boss...both of which would have been true.

Jeanette had learned long ago, though, that the master had to have some kind of disciplinary motive. The problem was, between a master and a slave girl, the slave always held the moral high ground. Hey, she had not asked to be abducted from her office/hospital/college campus and taken to a satellite stocked with Vikings/knights/sheiks/cowboys who shared an insatiable appetite for spanking their concubines. Who was he to stand in judgment on her?

She could not knock the formula, though. That was the entire basis of the series that had allowed her to support herself and her son in comfort for the 20 years since her divorce.

Her college writing teacher had always urged her to explain, explain, explain and she had taken that warning seriously as she had started to describe her first fictional spanking. Having been spanked only once as a child, she had to rely on other forms of research.

So whenever she was starting a new punishment scene, she went through logistics once again by lying on her black vinyl sofa, face down and skirt up, while imagining how someone would hold her down with one hand while pummeling with the other. Noting that her legs automatically sprang up to cover the target, she explained that the man was holding them imprisoned between his own.

Just acting it out that way, she almost came herself. Often she wound up rubbing her pubic bone against the rough but slick vinyl surface and sometimes even using her finger to help things along.

It was always more difficult to answer to the slave girl’s obvious question: “Why?” If her transgression was too serious to settle with a spanking…like, trying to kill her master…then he came off looking like a wimp. If it was too trivial…like cutting his meat too clumsily…then he looked like someone who just got off on spanking girls. Which, of course, he did, or he would have been punishing his slave boys in the same way, and then she would have needed another publisher.

Well, there was always the old standby explanation…He was punishing her for leaving his home to explore her new surroundings. The author had often been struck by the fact that that was exactly what women had been doing on Earth since the 1920s. Perhaps society secretly wanted them to suffer for it, even though any male would have gone off to explore his new planet no matter what kind of beasts lurked there.

She sighed. It really was a cliché. But “Vikings of the Savage Satellite” was due on her publisher’s desk three weeks hence, in time for the promotion drive in June. A lot of that time would be taken up preparing for her son’s August wedding. So Skag came up with the convenient if obvious answer:

“Did not I order you to stay here?” he demanded. Her heart sank further as she saw the fury in his blue eyes and the grim set of his lips, as he flung back the red-gold waves of hair from his high brow. “I paid too much for you to let you be devoured by the skivodni beast.”

As those words appeared on her computer screen, she sighed again. Now she would have to describe the animal in question…just when she thought she had already come up with every possible combination of giant alligator, hippo and ape, for “Slaves of the Savage Satellite,” “Centurions of the Savage Satellite,” “Barons of the Savage Satellite,” “Sheiks of the Savage Satellite” and “Rangers of the Savage Satellite.”

Judging by her mail, the fans did like the fights with the wild animals, if not as much as the spanking scenes. The love scenes probably came in a poor third. For that reason, she did not waste too much time on the moment when the master confessed his feelings for his captive, while admitting that they were the real reason why he kept smacking her.

So she could hardly blame her fans for describing the books as the “Spanking Satellite Series.” She might even have adopted that title herself, except that she did not want to lose the few readers who really cared about the exotic animals and swordfights, or at least assured themselves that they did.

Logically, the people who could make routine round trips in space ships should also have owned weapons that would have blasted those beasts into oblivion. But Jeanette knew she could always rely on that willing suspension of disbelief.

The readers would only suspend it for the big things, though…like, why a satellite where the most modern weapon was the Ranger’s Colt .45, would be abducting women from the planet that was bristling with new-kew-lar bombs.

When it came to the smaller things, however, the devil was in the details again. She had received her share of angry letters, telling her that the Norman baron could not have taken down his prisoner’s panties, because women did not wear them until the late 1800s.

So, now that she had brought up the hard wooden chair where poor Ginevra would have to writhe on her bruised and battered backside, she reached for the bookcase beside her computer table to see what it would have looked like.

The children’s books, with their lavish illustrations, were often the most useful source. “Meet the Vikings” did, indeed, include a picture of a throne-like wooden seat adorned with carved dragons. She could describe it vividly while poor Ginevra squirmed on it.

But glancing up over her shoulder at the clock beside the microwave, she saw it was time to switch to her other assignment, a feminist children’s book about Flora MacDonald, “The Maiden Who Rescued the Prince.”

Naturally, no one was going to spank the Highland heroine who had rescued Bonnie Prince Charlie. No one was going to purchase many copies, either. But she had been able to read these inspiring works to her son while explaining that other people actually paid for them.

She saw no reason to add that there were a lot more buyers for “Savage Satellite.” On the contrary, its success had helped convince the educational publisher to buy “Victoria: The Woman Who Ruled the World” and “Edith Wilson: The Wife Who Ran the Country.” But hopefully her son did not even know that the Savage Satellite existed, and she hoped to keep it that way.

All of her heroine’s portraits adorned her condo’s vanilla walls. Needless to say, there were no pictures of Roman centurions, Arab sheiks, medieval barons, Texas Rangers or any other transplanted inhabitants of the Savage Satellite.

After toiling for two hours on Flora’s story, she saw it was time to knock off for the day and get ready to meet her son’s future father-in-law. Having produced such a nice daughter, she could only assume that he was a fine man. And since his wife had recently filed for divorce, he was also a very real prospect. It was hard for her to get out and meet many of those.

Her son confided that Mrs. MacLeod had left because her husband was too boring for her. But Jeanette found enough excitement in writing her fantasies. For real life, a solid, stable man sounded just fine.

In honor of their first meeting, she had gone to Evanston’s finest beauty salon to get her hair done for $125 and felt it was well worth it. Thanks to Ylenia’s expert ministrations, she could still wear her blond tresses down to her shoulders, framing her high cheekbones. What’s more, she was also able to give her bosom a similarly youthful appearance, with a padded uplift bra.

To set off all of her good features, she had chosen to wear a clinging jersey navy turtleneck with a matching swirling skirt that night. The look was dramatic enough to convey her image as a creative artist…but still sufficiently conservative to please an economics professor’s taste.

So it would not seem too stodgy, she added a handcrafted Native American necklace of blue lapis and silver. Her guest would have no way of knowing that she had purchased it to help provide inspiration for next year’s novel, “Tribes of the Savage Satellite.”

She was still wearing her long bright-striped cotton lounging robe, as she prepared her best (if not only) recipe, for chicken with wine. Despite its unglamorous origin in a bargain-price mail-order catalog, that garment had been the model for the slave girls’ gowns. With its inch-wide stripes of navy, red, yellow, lavender and turquoise, it looked like just the kind of thing that a futuristic slave girl would wear. It was also a great aid to logistics.

Just by standing up in it, she had realized that no slave master, no matter how athletic, could have easily lifted it from her feet to her waist in one sweeping motion. It would take two at least: the first from ankles to knees and the second the rest of the way. As always, the devil was definitely in the details. Or, for this book, Thor.

Now, it would serve a more humble task as an apron. After she had sautéed the skinless boneless chicken, she took it from the pan and replaced it with the wine, canned onions and dried herbs. Their fragrance filled the open room, with the sweet but spicy sage aroma rising above the others.

She had made the dessert that morning, after hoarding the pre-formed batter for Nestle’s ready-to-bake holiday cookies during the three months since Valentine’s Day. Those little red and white hard-candy hearts on top would sound just the right note for this romantic occasion.

Putting it all together, she decided that she was getting the maximum effect from the minimum effort…something that a working mother had to do, especially when she was writing in two different genres.

Her robot carpet sweeper had barely finished spinning around the second bedroom, which was reserved for Henry’s visits, when the doorbell rang downstairs and she buzzed him into the building.

“I see where Jennifer got her good looks,” she said, with her brightest smile, as she shook Louis MacLeod’s outstretched hand. In that instant, she also saw where the details would come from in describing Skag. A square, dimpled chin and light blue eyes distinguished his ruddy face beneath ginger-colored hair. It ended in white sideburns, but she could cut them out of the story.

His broad shoulders left her wondering what he looked like beneath that navy suit, white shirt and maroon silk tie. They ended in a strong, square hands that even a Viking might have envied, as she realized from his firm handshake.

Now more than ever, she was glad that she had paid so much attention to the Clinique demonstrator, had bought most of her recommended products and had even gone to the trouble tonight of adding the glittery lip gloss over the coral color stick.

“Mother!” her son exclaimed, blushing to the roots of his blond crew cut, as his hands fell in embarrassment from his sweetheart’s shoulders. But his prospective father-in-law chose to be flattered instead.

“Thank you, Ms. Gorasek,” the older man said, with a shy smile that would have had the Earth women climbing all over themselves to abduct him. “And I see where your son got his good looks, too. But I seem to think I have met you somewhere before.”

“Call me Jeanette, please,” she said with an even wider smile. “If I had ever met you, I am sure I would remember it. And thank you for this, too.” As she said this last, she took the bottle of chilled grand cru white Bordeaux that he was holding out to her. Her son must have told him that the dinner would be chicken with wine, she realized, and her visitor had gone out of his way to make the right choice.

It all made her glad that she had gone to so much trouble tonight.

At least she would have no difficulty finding a topic of conversation. As they took their seats around the dining table adjoining the kitchen, she was already asking the bride if she had chosen the color scheme.

“The bridesmaids will wear full-length turquoise,” Jennifer said, warming to the topic. Her face fell briefly as she added, “My mother is planning to wear a darker shade, but street length.”

“Then I will do the same,” said Jeanette, deliberately avoiding the topic of the absent and soon to be former Mrs. MacLeod. “And you have made up your minds about my gift?”

They smiled at each other, to show their complete agreement

“We can earn a down payment for a house,” Henry said. Considering that they were both opticians, that sounded like a realistic prospect to her. “But that honeymoon cruise is something we would not buy for ourselves.”

“And we will remember it forever,” his bride sighed romantically. But then, anything she said would have sounded romantic, coming from her delicate ivory face with its pale sprinkling of freckles, framed by her waves of red-gold hair.

Even though Jeanette was always looking for models in real life, she decided that her prospective daughter-in-law was much too fragile for a spanking story. The readers would only hate the hero for hurting her. Besides, she would have had to cast her son as the slavemaster wielding the strap, and she cringed at the thought. She never even wanted him to know that she wrote about such things, let alone putting him into the action.

“But the down payment would be more practical,” her father responded, in a dubious tone that left his hostess wondering briefly if she could use him as the Viking, after all.

“So you are an economics professor at Midwestern University,” she said, as they reached for the platter that stood on the heated tray in the center of the table and spooned the entrée over the piles of rice on their plates. “Jennifer must be very proud of you. We are all proud to have such a great school in our community.”

“And Henry must be just as proud of his mother,” the girl responded eagerly, as her father reached out to pour the wine. “She is an author, Dad, you know. She writes children’s books about famous women, like Flora MacDonald. You remember how Grandma was always talking about her.”

The hostess looked across the table with a modest smile, waiting to hear the guest of honor tell her how impressed he was with her literary career. No doubt he would go on to say that he had always planned to write a book himself, about his own specialty, if he ever had the time, just as everyone else did.

Instead, she saw, to her dismay, that his bright blue eyes were narrowing with suspicion as he stared at her.

“An author,” he said slowly. “Did you ever write science fiction?”

With her heart sinking even further, she assured him that she wrote historical children’s books. And that was true, she reminded herself. And it was also true that she had never really written science fiction. She always described the Savage Satellite series as erotic-romantic-soft-core-BDSM-fantasy, even if her publishers chose to promote the BDSM aspect. In any case, a real sci fi writer would have explained how those Romans and Cowboys and Vikings and things could have flown to a satellite in the first place.

Unfortunately for her, the professor had a much broader interpretation. For him, a science fiction writer was anyone who had shown up to sign her books at a sci fi convention. Like the one, as she now remembered dismally, that had been held at Midwestern U. That had happened 15 years ago, when she was eager for any attention, but anyone who remembered so much economic theory was capable of recalling that.

And remember he did. His wrist emerged from his perfectly tailored navy suit jacket as he pointed at her indignantly.

“Jeanette Gorasek…Gina Skigor!” he accused. “You were signing all those books that the kids were snickering about. When I asked them what was so funny about Savage Satellite, they said that everyone really called it Spanking Satellite, and everyone except their parents and teachers knew it. I would have had the whole event banned from the campus if I had known in time.”

“Spanking Satellite?” Jennifer asked in confusion. “You mean, where parents spank their children all the time?”

“No,” her father answered coldly. “They were not about that at all. And what they were about is not fit for your ears. If you have never heard of them, I want to keep it that way. But then, Ms. Skigor or Gorasek, I suppose your son enjoys reading them with you.”

“He most certainly does not,” she gasped resentfully. “I never told him about those books, which I wrote to support him. I just hope you’ll have the decency not to tell him now.”

It was obviously much too late for that.

“Mo-ther!” he exclaimed, his blue eyes going wide with horror. “You wrote the Spanking Satellite series, which all the kids kept passing around at optician school? Mr. MacLeod, I swear I never knew that. And of course I would never have shown them to Jennifer.”

“I can tell that you did not,” the older man assured him. “I can’t blame you for your mother’s doings. But I hardly think that this is a fit place for my daughter…sitting at a pornographer’s dining table.”

Jeanette opened her mouth to insist, just as indignantly, that she wrote erotica, not porn. She closed it just as quickly. Only her fellow erotica authors ever seemed to see the difference, and she had never been able to describe it very convincingly to herself.

“If you feel that way,” she said instead, “perhaps you had better leave.” In the next moment she realized that her son was likely to depart with them, but it was too late to take back her words. Just as she feared, the three rose together, with a loud scraping of chairs on the hardwood floor.

“I will take you both to dinner, and then I will leave you at your apartments,” he said, his eyes flashing indignantly again. It seemed to her that he emphasized the plural of “apartment” to show that even she had not corrupted her son to the point where he and his fiancée were sharing one together.”

“I will talk to you later, mother,” her son promised, as he followed Jennifer and her father into the hall. There, they pulled their spring coats out of the closet as quickly as they could. Without answering, she started furiously conveying the dishes from the table to the work island, where she scraped them with vicious gestures into the garbage can.

As always when she needed comfort, she sought it at her word processor. It was just as well that they had left her alone, she assured herself. She could use the time for her work…even if she was no longer sure that part of the proceeds would pay for the honeymoon cruise.

If they refuse to invite me to the wedding, then I won’t have to pay for anything, she reminded herself. And if I am still invited, it shows that they still accept me anyway. It is a win-win situation all around. No need to be angry at all.

Soon, though, she realized that she was much too angry for Flora MacDonald or any other decent human being…especially one who boasted a last name starting with “Mac,” like, for instance, Louis MacLeod. With sharply jabbing fingers, she started to open the “VSS” file, for “Vikings of the Savage Satellite.”

To her own surprise, she found herself starting a new document instead. This was a new departure for her, too, in the form of a contemporary spanking book.

Even as she did so, she wondered why she was doing it. There was not much of a market for such stories, outside of Internet BDSM sites. Sci fi-fantasy had always flown under the censorship radar, but a contemporary spanking story would be noticed and denounced at once.

What’s more, it would almost have to be consensual, openly erotic spanking, since the law frowned so firmly on any other kind. As for the public paddling that provided the climax in more ways than one…once the girl had asked the guy to stop, the scene could be described as “committing a felony in front of witnesses.” Abduction and false imprisonment were seriously illegal, too, thus leaving the contemporary BDSM author always scrounging to answer the big basic question: Why doesn’t she just get the Hell out of there?

That was one reason why, as she often said, she and her colleagues had created so many slave planets, you’d think Jefferson Davis had conquered the galaxy.

Another reason was that you could have Romans, Cowboys, Vikings and all those other alpha types showing up in the same general location. Variety was the spice of spanking.

Still, her fingers kept doing the walking, almost against her will. As they created a stuffy, stodgy college professor…with bright blue eyes, ginger hair, a jutting dimpled chin and a habit of paddling his graduate students when they failed to meet his academic standards…she eventually realized why.

She just wished that she could have called this one “Revenge of the Savage Satellite.” But “Punishing Prof” would do almost as well. And she’d he sure he lived up to the name…

“Ow!” she cried again, as the college professor’s hard, huge hand struck again with all its force against her burning backside. Turning her head, she saw that his target was already flaming red, from the first ten times his paddle had landed there.

Desperately, she tried to squirm away but his left arm was like a leaden bar across her waist, holding her bent firmly over his desk. She could not squirm an inch away, no matter how desperately she tried.

Thus, her bottom was hopelessly exposed to both the merciless gaze of his bright blue eyes and the power of his muscle-knotted arm

“Ow, ow, ow!” she cried, as she counted out ten more smacks. Each burned more fiercely than the one before, falling over flesh that was already hot and raw. The blows could have lasted only ten seconds, but for her it was an eternity.

Then, mercifully, the paddling stopped. For a moment she reveled in the absence of agony, as it subsided into a searing, then a stinging and finally a throbbing pain. Those smacks could have taken only ten seconds, but for her it was an eternity that seemed to have lasted at least as long as her entire 21 years.

She waited for him to lower her skirt and let her stand again. When it did not happen, she looked back over her shoulder at him. Her relief soon turned to new terror, as she saw that he was pulling off his leather belt.

“No!” she cried. “Oh, no, please don’t hit me again! I am already so sore, I will not be able to sit down for a week!”

“For two weeks, I should think,” he replied with a brutal laugh, as his chin jutted forward, showing off its deep dimple, as he flung back his unruly mass of ginger hair. “But you will sit, on a wooden chair, for half an hour…after I have warmed your bottom again with my belt for failing to earn an A in my class, when you should have known all the answers by heart. I have worked with you too long and hard to let you fail the course.”

Now she was grinning broadly as her fingers flew across the keyboard. She could hardly wait for the moment when she would personally carry her author’s copies to every bookstore that would have them, within ten miles of the Midwestern campus. Smiling even more happily, she realized that she had even better ways promote it. They were sure to be very embarrassing for him, and that thought produced the broadest grin of all.



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