One of the through-lines in my holiday stories is that of Sarah, the main character of Shell Game. Sarah undergoes a significant loss in her life, and spends about two years alone. Finally, in one of the stories, she feels confident enough with a new friend to get spanked again. Here’s what that looks like:

And that was how she ended up over Steve’s lap on the couch, her jeans off, covered only by her t-shirt and a pair of plain black brief-style panties. His hand was warm, and it felt strange, being touched like that by anyone other than Michael. Her late husband had had a way of touching Sarah that electrified her; Steve wasn’t doing that. He was just gently rubbing her backside.

“I’m going to start now,” he said. “Are you ready?”

“I’m… I’m ready.” Sarah closed her eyes.

The first whap! jolted Sarah to her core, and she felt tears starting to rise. Not from the pain — Steve wasn’t whap! actually hitting her whap! that hard — but because she felt whap! like she was cheating whap! on Michael.

Steve gave her six more swats, and then rested his hand on her bottom. “How are you doing?”

“Fine,” she managed to say. She hoped she didn’t sound like she was on the verge of crying. “You can keep going.”

So he did, spanking the seat of her panties with firm, crisp smacks. They felt different than what she was used to, partly because she knew she’d lost weight since her last spanking and her backside wasn’t as curvy as it used to be, but mostly because it was someone new doing it. She wanted to jump off Steve’s lap, wanted to run and hide in the office, but she fought down those urges, staying in position, taking her first spanking in two years.

Steve was surprisingly kind about the whole thing, despite what he was doing to Sarah’s bottom. He checked in, he didn’t go too hard, he kept his aim on her ass and didn’t stray to her thighs. Before too long Sarah’s entire backside was warm and tingling.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“I’m okay,” Sarah said, and she heard the confidence in her voice. “I’m really okay.”

My goal with this through-line is to get Sarah to a place where she’s happy again, engaging in social activities and kinky activities. With over 60 characters to write about, I’m not sure how detailed her through-line is going to get, but one of my goals is to write a holiday stories follow-up book in 2024 (to be published in 2025) that contains one story for each through-line, so we’ll get to know how everyone is doing after a year of celebrating weird and wonderful holidays.