Free Deep in the Woods by Annabel Joseph

clicks as if in a dream, as she looked up at the sky, the pattern of the branches against the blue, cloudy backdrop.
    “Are you okay, baby?” he asked, lowering the camera.
    “Yes.” She hugged herself and narrowed her eyes in confusion. “It’s just… I know this place. But I don’t know how.”
    “Maybe you came here as a child.”
    “Maybe.” But she’d never gone hiking as a child. She turned around once more, trying to clear the confusion in her mind. She looked down the steep slope before them. “I don’t know. It’s so weird. Oh well.”
    “It’s pretty here, isn’t it?
    “Yes, it’s beautiful with the clearing and that slope.” She looked downward at the rock-pocked, eroded pathway flanked with dense trees. “It feels special here, I guess. Almost as if that path could go anywhere.”
    Dave smiled and took her hand again. “I know exactly what you mean.”
    They continued down, slip-sliding when the path grew steepest. Cerberus blew by both of them, waiting at the foot until they finally caught up, laughing from the exertion of not tumbling down in a heap. On the main trail again, as the trees cleared and the sun reached its zenith, Sophie smiled up at Dave. He winked at her and strolled a few more yards before he dropped her hand and made his way over to a tree. He flipped a few of the smaller branches back and forth. It only took a moment for Sophie to realize his intent and start to flush crimson. Don’t make me cut a switch, girl. Because I will. When he returned, he was holding a thin whippy branch. He sheared the leaves from it with casual movements as they continued on their way back to his car. When he finished stripping it bare, he handed it over to her.
    “Hold this until we get home.”
    “Yes Sir.” Sophie accepted the switch with shaking fingers. Cerberus ran ahead, jubilant and oblivious, until Dave called him back to snap on his leash. Then Dave took her other hand, squeezed it, and whistled a bright tune as they made their way out of the forest into the city park.
    She blushed as they walked through the parking lot. Did anyone wonder why she was carrying what was obviously a switch? Dave opened the door for her, ushering her into the car. Sophie held the switch on her lap, hot and scared and aroused and joyous, the entire drive home.
    * * * * *
     
    Dave tried not to smile like an idiot. It wouldn’t be conducive to the scene he was trying to develop. But he couldn’t stifle the grin that lurked just around the corners of his mouth. There was nothing on earth like a midmorning hike into a forest to photograph your beautiful sub, and then making her drive home with a switch on her lap. A switch she very well knew was going to be applied to her gorgeous, heart-shaped bottom as soon as they arrived home. He was looking forward to bending her over and cuffing her to the bed. Maybe even making her stand facing the wall. And then he would mark her lovely ass with the switch, watch her cry out and fidget as he disciplined her—
    He cleared his throat and shifted in his seat. His jeans were growing tight in the groin region. But God, he loved her. He reached out for her hand and she had to move the switch to her other hand to take it. Nice sweaty palms. Well, he wouldn’t really hurt her. Not too much.
    No, just enough. He was finally getting to the point of feeling comfortable with just how much she could take and not going any further. At first, it was always a tentative dance. Giving out pain, gauging reactions, the guilt of going too far, or the disappointment of not going far enough.
    The intensity of pain play had never mattered to him. All he really needed was reaction. The gasps, the sobs, the tumble down into subspace and the freeing of sexual and emotional energy. That was all he needed to feel a scene was a success. He’d been with girls who’d given him complete surrender after a light spanking over his lap, and he’d been with girls for whom no less than outright