The office was empty when they entered. Melissa turned her attention to the racks of colourful brochures, trying to pretend she was there for some quite different, innocent reason. Gary boldly rang the bell on the counter.

The wife of the management company's on-site host came through the door at the rear from their living quarters. Lynn Armitage was a pleasant but competent woman in her early forties - a big person, not especially tall, but broad and big. She'd had years of coping with the unbelievable variety of problems brought to the resort's office by unit owners from all walks of life. It always seemed to take a lot to surprise her. Not a thread of grey showed in her wavy blonde hair. The questioning gaze that met them was friendly.

'Hullo, Gary, Melissa, what can we for you on this lovely day?'

Gary nudged Melissa forward. 'Um . . . yes, isn't it?' she replied. 'I was just looking at your leaflets but we seem to have done all these things. . .'

'I expect you have, dear. Not that we aren't pleased to see you two again, but perhaps you should try a timeshare exchange.'

Gary intervened to put the conversation back on track. 'Just what we were talking about. We were saying how disappointed we'd been with exchange. Then Melissa had her accident.'

'Oh dear, nothing serious, I hope,' Lynn Armitage said.

Melissa took a deep breath. She would end up looking sillier still if she didn't come to the point right now. She said in a rush, 'I threw a cushion at Gary but it missed and broke the set of cut-glass on the sideboard.'

'Hmm, that is bad news. It's usually the owners with kids who have breakages. Last time the crystal got smashed, we had to charge the unit owner ninety-two pounds ninety-five pence to replace it, and a naughty young person had their backside smacked. The kid got such a hiding from his father I don't think he could sit down for the rest of the week!'

Gary was shocked by the size of the bill he faced, but he managed a laugh. 'There you are, Melissa - now I really do think you, too, must get a spanking!'

He turned to the manageress. 'I'm afraid exchange hasn't worked for us in the past, Mrs Armitage, but a good bottom-warming might give the holiday the whole new outlook Melissa's been looking for.'

Lynn Armitage met his laughing eyes with a level look from her own. 'Absolutely,' she said only half-humorously. 'Strangely enough, if you were minded to go through with it, and both of you approved of the results, I might be able to produce a better option for your next holiday exchange.'

'What on earth do you mean?' Melissa asked. Her surprise made her tone rudely forthright.

Lynn was not fazed. 'Ah, that depends on you two, and if your natures are truly as I think. See me about it tomorrow, but only if Melissa has taken her punishment.'

With that, and as Melissa began to blush, she left them. ''Bye for now then. I expect you've got an important decision to make before the day's over.'

Melissa and Gary turned to one another bewildered by the odd turn the interview had taken and her abrupt departure. Melissa tried to muster some indignation.

'Gary!' she hissed. 'Why did you have to make such an embarrassing joke with a near stranger?'

'She brought the subject up and it coincided with my previous views. Anyway, I don't think she thought it was a joke. Let's go back to our apartment.'

They hurriedly acted on the suggestion, both happy to regain the shelter of their privacy.

From wondering, Melissa was beginning to feel certain Gary was hankering to tan her bum. And the important decision Lynn Armitage meant had to be about the form of her chastisement. To spank or not to spank, wasn't that the question?

The possibility filled her not with fear and loathing, but an unfamiliar inner buzz of anticipation.

'Look here, Gary,' she said. 'That conversation back there was ridiculous. You weren't talking about some nameless kid's bottom but mine.'

'We were, M'liss, though I don't see why you're acting so prim about it. If I know you, I'd say you were warming to the idea.'

Melissa didn't choose to go there just yet. A faint reminder lingered in her derrière of the sharp smack Gary had already administered. It stirred her imagination in dramatic new directions. Get a grip, girl, she told herself silently, or you might find yourself literally begging for it!

She coloured up again. 'Aaah . . . you're impossible, Gary Langwood! Tell me, what did you think about that virtual promise Lynn Armitage made us?'

Gary put on his considering frown. 'Worth investigation if you're keen on finding out about a different sort of holiday exchange. After all, she's in the business and ought to know what's up for grabs.'

'So what's our next step? We ask her again tomorrow?'

'You're forgetting something. Before we do, you have to submit to the spanking. Somehow I think Armitage will know if you haven't, and it seems to have some bearing on whether we qualify to be let in on her secret opportunity.'

'I'll have to think about it,' Melissa said, trying to sound noncommittal.

Gary showed commendable delicacy. He refrained from persuasive argument and nothing more was said on the subject.

But all through the day, Melissa's thoughts were pestered by disturbing images and speculations. Would he put her across his knee? Across a table or chair? Would she receive her deservings through the protection of clothing? Panties? Nightdress? Or would he want to inflict the punishment directly on the bare flesh?

The conjectures were distracting. In an effort to still the provoking chain of thought on a visit to the bathroom, she took down her panties a second time after she'd finished peeing and pointed her bottom to the huge mirror for inspection.

'It's just an ordinary butt, M'liss,' she lectured herself as she looked over her shoulder. 'Nothing in it to inspire lurid fantasies at all.'

The tactic didn't work. She had generous, rounded cheeks unblemished except for the faint, residual imprint of Gary's hand. Though she thought it herself, it was a pretty sight from any angle she studied it. A girl could be comfortable with this self-image. But perhaps her pose, looking at it largely side on, wasn't blatant enough to show off an arse in all its mundanity.

The narcissism had to be stopped in its tracks. She'd give herself a really repulsive sight.

She stepped out of her panties completely, spread her legs and looked between them into the mirror so she could see both buttocks in a full-on, mooning pose.

It was another mistake. She found the rear view of a bending woman, though it was herself, vivid and explicit. Yet it was in no way ugly like she'd expected. With her feet well apart, the globes of her bottom were parted to display the puckers of anus and the pink slash of vulva framed by a fuzz of pussy hair. The flagrancy, particularly of the brown star, should have brought her to earth. These were body parts with ordinary functions, not all beautiful.

Melissa's intention failed. Contemplating the reflection produced a fluttering in her belly. An incipient moistness lower down had nothing to do with prior urination. The tableau was suggestive of an invitation for penetration of both bottom holes, in one of which she was still virgin. Her fingers strayed to her groin. She stopped them.

This was insane! To address the situation into which she and Gary had put themselves, her overactive imagination needed less stimulation, not more.