She thought he had spank-me eyelashes.

He reminded her of the summer she was eight, when she had played house with a boy who had the same kind of pale, delicate lashes. Eric, that had been his name. So full of sass. And fart jokes. It was almost as if, when they played, he was always teasing her into the role of the mother, the Disciplinarian.

When he did, she gave him what for the way her own mother did, by yanking down Eric's pants and planting the ten hardest swats she could on his naked behind. Sometimes, she even had to do it more than once in a day.

Looking at the man with such similar eyelashes, she had the sudden urge to do the same to him. Only now that she was older, she doubted such a spanking would end the same way those innocent childhood games had.

"What are you smiling about?" the stranger asked.

"You remind me," she said, "of someone I played with when I was little."

"Somehow, I think that mischievous little look you had wasn't about playing house."

She laughed. "That's exactly what we did. Only, he was a naughty little boy, and I was the mother. He got spanked a lot."

A pause. Long enough to make her think she had said too much.

Then, "I could be a naughty little boy."

Oh. How those words gave her an odd little feeling. What was that?

Which was how she ended up with that man, pants down around his ankles, in her living room, his eyes lowered demurely under those lovely eyelashes, her hand stinging from delivering so many smacks to that clenching behind. It was awkward at first, with a sprinkling of nervous chuckles, but it got serious quickly enough, when they realized that this grown up game was hot. For both of them.

"Taking a break?" he asked during a pause.

She squeezed a butt cheek. "Just checking to see if you're ripe."

He laughed at that. She came to love that best, those odd moments of humor.

"You hit hard," he said.

Uncertainly, "Too hard?"

"You'd need a belt for that."

"You really are a naughty boy."

Yes, yes he was.

She had no belts without studs or beads, so that first time, to save her hand, she finally resorted to a slipper.

How secretly kinky she felt when she went shopping the next day. How nicely he blushed on their second date, because he had a shiny new belt, too. Turned out, he liked leather best. By the time he moved in, they had an astonishing variety.

And who would have thought a spanking could make a man so--so pretty?

"I'd like to thank that fellow," he said once, out of the blue.

"Who?"

"That boy you played house with."

"You know, me, too."

Because, really, it was all because of Eric.