Stevie and Emma

Gareth looked at Emma, then at Stevie: "I don't think you have fractured anything, but you may have given yourself a nasty sprain. Do you have transport close by?"

Stevie explained that Emma's flat was only a short distance away and agreed that the best thing would be to get her home, get her foot elevated and have a look at the damage. Despite Gareth's offer to call a paramedic, Stevie, ever the good judge of people, had already decided that he fitted the 'OK bloke' profile and that he would probably be the best person to deal with Emma.

Half an hour later, Emma was leaning back on her sofa, well supported with cushions, with her right leg elevated and resting on a pillow that had been placed on the footstool, a pack of frozen peas positioned securely underneath her ankle, wrapped in a tea towel.

By the time Gareth had returned from his car, which just happened to have been in a nearby car park, carrying his work-bag with him, Emma was a little more comfortable and relaxed, particularly since the painkillers had begun to take effect. Stevie was sitting at her side and keeping Emma's chuckle muscles in good form by cracking a variety of extremely corny jokes that obviously came from a very old Christmas cracker.

Within an hour and a half of the accident, Emma's foot and ankle had been examined thoroughly, with accompanying gasps of pain, before being bandaged securely. Gareth smiled as he learned that the two ladies worked for FirstCall, an organisation that provided certain local healthcare services, and realised that there was no need to tell either of them what to do in the immediate future unless the situation changed for the worse.

Having declined the offer of tea or coffee, Gareth left his business card and went on his way.

"Call me if you need me rather than a paramedic. Please let me know how it progresses. You should be able to start mobilising again fairly soon, but seek professional advice first."

By Friday morning, the pain had subsided considerably and Emma was managing reasonably well around the flat, with quite a lot of support from Stevie and a surprising visit from Marianne, a young member of her team whom she had been 'mothering' to a degree at work following the loss of her father in April.

Emma had taken a liking to the 30-year old nurse, who had come to work part-time for FirstCall. Since her regular day job was as a part-time Staff Nurse at the Department of Orthopaedics at St Vincent's University Hospital, she had shown a particular interest in Emma's progress after her Team Leader had been reported as unfit for work for a week. Marianne was the embodiment of kindness from head to toe and was prone, if anything, to excessive zeal in looking after people entrusted to her care in a professional capacity and people who had found their way into her 'Contacts' list.

It was on the following Wednesday, whilst Stevie was paying an evening call to Greenhill House, where Emma lived, that the Senior Supervisor reminded Emma that she had been asked to keep Gareth informed of her progress. Dismissing Emma's protests that he was probably far too busy to concern himself with her since she was no longer in real need, Stevie pointed out that it was only common courtesy, adopting the facial expression and tone of voice that she was wont to adopt in the workplace to signal that the time for debate had come to an end.

Whilst Emma's claim that Gareth would be far too busy certainly reflected part of the story, it was certainly not the only reason. In fact, she had been both astonished and, to some extent, relieved that she had, for the first time in nearly a year, felt a sense of attraction, and not just socially, towards a member of the opposite sex.

Gareth was not exactly the sort of man people see in glossy magazines or on-screen, but he exhibited a strong personality, matching a strong physique, rooted in care and competence. His manner towards Emma at the time when she was on the point of losing control of herself had been at once professional and compassionate, but Emma had felt almost immediately that there was more to this man than met the eye. She had felt a sense of trustworthiness as she had looked into Gareth's eyes on that day when their paths had crossed, literally! True, she was not a great fan of men with pony-tail hairstyles, but she had told herself that he might only have had his thick fair hair tied back whilst out exercising.

Previous experience can be a very rigid teacher and it had, in fact, been fear of further emotional injury that had won the day, initially. Nonetheless, Emma knew when not to prolong a debate with Stevie, more out of realisation that it would be a waste of energy than out of fear of retribution, so she undertook to send a text to her Knight in Shining Armour and let him know as soon as she was ready to go back to work.

By the following Saturday, Emma had made further progress and was walking around quite comfortably, her only residual problem being some stiffness and a low-grade, irritating ache in her injured ankle. She had stopped taking medication to help her to sleep and was determined to get back into form with the minimum of delay. After discussing her injury with Marianne, she had decided to return to work the following Monday and see how things progressed.

Stevie was out early that morning, dealing with the usual horrendous weekend workload. Emma was trying to make up her mind as to the best time to ring Gareth, for she was true to her word, no matter how difficult she might find it to be so.

Since she had always found exercise very helpful in clearing her head, she decided to take a taxi to the gym and do a couple of hours of exercises that would not put undue strain on her ankle. Her limp was barely perceptible to the untrained eye and she felt greatly in need of exertion.

On this occasion, Emma decided to save the swimming pool until the end of her session. After a quick shower in the changing rooms following her exercises, she donned her new one-piece royal blue swimsuit and headed out to the swimming pool with her towel.

Emma was not vain and was usually averse to looking at her full body in the mirror, but she suddenly realised that she was staring at her own image and liking what she saw. She felt a deep pang of affection for Stevie, who had brought her to this place, literally and figuratively.

She was on the final length of her planned swim when a familiar voice greeted her from the adjacent lane. She turned towards the source of the greeting and both smiled and blushed as she found herself alongside Gareth, who slowed his pace so that he could accompany Emma to the end of the lane.

Gareth was greatly relieved to learn that his assessment had been correct and that the patient had made such a good recovery. Emma, for her part, suddenly felt like a 16-year old schoolgirl meeting a boy on whom she has had a serious adolescent crush for ages, although this felt not in the least bit adolescent.

As they both climbed out of the pool and partially dried themselves off, Emma gave Gareth a brief history of events since the accident before realising that she had not actually thanked her Knight for intervening and for caring as he had done. She blushed slightly as she found herself wanting to go on talking to this man, whom she barely knew.

Enjoying a talent similar to that which made Stevie so perceptive, Gareth sensed hesitation in Emma and correctly interpreted it as a good point at which to intervene, once again, only socially on this occasion. Since Emma was in no hurry to go home, she accepted his invitation to share a bite and a drink with him at the bar, before they went on their separate ways.

Emma had occupied a disproportionate amount of Gareth's thought time since his brief encounter with her, 10 days previously. As they worked their way slowly through a light lunch at the balcony bar, Emma's nervousness was clearly evident at first, but Gareth simply listened attentively, smiled in a manner that had a paradoxical combination of effects on Emma, and slowly enveloped her in a cocoon of warmth and kindness that enabled her to relax and enjoy a freedom in her expression that she had not been able to manage for the best part of a year.

It was Rossini who interrupted their conversation, in the form of a couple of bars from the opening of the finale of the William Tell overture. Gareth picked his mobile 'phone up, excused himself and moved a short distance from the table on the balcony where the two of them had spent the previous three hours.

"Hello, Siân, beth sy'n bod, cariad?" he enquired, as it was his custom when talking to his older sister to enquire as to how she was faring.

Emma had no idea what Gareth was saying, but the voice at the other end of the 'phone was clear enough to show that the caller was probably a youngish woman. Her heart sank, but she reasoned with herself that since this was purely a social contact, she should not feel that she had been let down in any way. This was real progress. Instead of getting up and leaving, she sat and watched the activities in the gym below whilst Gareth continued his conversation with increasing enthusiasm. A few moments later, he returned to Emma and sat down again.

Emma looked at him curiously, then asked with uncustomary forthrightness if he had been speaking Welsh. Gareth's nod in confirmation prompted Emma to say how surprised she was to hear him speaking Welsh, as he did not have a trace of a Welsh accent when he was speaking English.

Gareth laughed warmly. "You haven't heard me when I'm out on the pitch with the funny-shaped ball, cariad", he quipped, in an accent that would have made Windsor Davies glow with Cambrian pride. Gareth then went on to explain that Siân was his sister and that she had been appointed to be the Information Centre in respect of the final stages of the pregnancy of Megan, his younger sister, who was now living in Western Australia, where the population, he proudly announced, had recently risen by one! He also explained that 'cariad' was simply a term of endearment for special people.

Emma smiled, both from relief and from her usual custom of entering into the delight of others, to share it with them: "Congratulations to your Aussie sister, then, Chris, and to all your family."

Gareth, now temporarily reverting to being a son of the Dragon to the core, winked at Emma and assured her that whilst a Rolls-Royce could be kept in a garage belonging to a marque of lesser prestige, it was still a Rolls. His Megan may well live with Aussies, but she was still 100% Welsh!

Emma felt a real connection with this very caring and proud man, but not an arrogant one:

"Quite right too!" at which point she returned the wink, wrapped in a beaming smile.

Over a latte for Emma and an espresso for Gareth, the conversation was resumed and lasted for a good hour (and at least one more coffee) before Gareth's diary beckoned and he was obliged to take his leave of her. By that time, Emma had filled in a number of the gaping gaps in her knowledge of this welcome, if uninvited, intruder into her life and had further boosted her confidence by realising that her initial impressions had been right where her new friend was concerned. She also knew that he was a divorcee, although neither of them had gone into much detail about the circumstances that had surrounded their respective break-ups. Lastly, she noted, with just a slight smirk of self-satisfaction, that her misgivings concerning ponytails in male coiffure had been unfounded, for her diagnosis had been correct.

Before they went on their separate ways, Emma scribbled her telephone number and e-mail address onto a post-it note and passed it to Gareth, who immediately tucked it away in a safe place in his wallet, promising to contact her again in the next few days.

Despite her best efforts, Emma could not conceal her feelings from Stevie when her friend rang her late that afternoon to find out how she had managed at the gym. For her part, Stevie was overjoyed at the news, both of Emma's progress and of the time that she had spent with Gareth. Since Ollie was busy at his parents' home that evening, the two of them decided to get together and try a recently-discovered, extremely palatable and robust Chilean red wine, as an accompaniment to one of Emma's curries.

It was well past midnight by the time both of the young women realised how tired they were, so once the crockery had been stowed in the dishwasher, they headed off to get ready for bed, as Stevie had sensibly decided that it would be far more prudent to spend the night at Emma's place. It had been decided several weeks previously that each woman would leave a toothbrush and set of nightwear at the other's home.

Emma was aglow with contentment as she undressed slowly and reflected on everything that had made that day so very special. She slipped her favourite light cotton culottes and top on, then headed for the bathroom. As she emerged from her room, Stevie was just emerging from the bathroom, dressed only in Ollie's T-shirt and wearing pale blue knickers underneath. For no reason at all other than shared happiness, the two women hugged one another with the usual warmth.

Normally, it was Stevie who was given to impulse, but to add to the surprises of the day, it was Emma who sent a ripple of bravado across the normally tranquil waters of their friendship.

"Stevie?"

Her friend looked at her with just a hint of a frown.

"What's up, Emma?", she asked, out of genuine curiosity rather than anxiety.

Emma was flushing slightly.

"Will you sleep in my bed tonight, please, Stevie?"

Her friend beamed, reached up and hugged her very warmly.

"Of course I will, Em! I'd love to."

When Emma returned to her bedroom, Stevie was already under the sheet, for this was not duvet weather.

As Emma walked slowly towards the bed, Stevie folded the sheet back for her friend.

Emma sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at Stevie. She reached out and stroked her face softly, as she had done many times before. She giggled almost imperceptibly, but sufficiently to catch Stevie's attention.

"Penny for them, Em", she said, wondering what had triggered this almost unheard giggle.

Emma giggled again and adopted a very unconvincing authoritative tone.

"Roll over onto your tummy, Stevie."

Without a second's hesitation, Stevie rolled over, never allowing Emma out of her sight. She propped herself up on her elbows and looked enquiringly at her friend.

Emma moved closer to Stevie and bent her legs, resting her feet near the pillows. Slowly, she slid her left hand across Stevie's shoulders, over Ollie's T-shirt, a smile of pure contentment spreading across her face. For several minutes, Emma massaged Stevie's strong shoulders, kneading gently, caressing softly, as she told her how much she owed to the friend who had really turned her life around.

Stevie was never one for flattery, but she knew that Emma needed to say these things and that, in fact, they bore no resemblance to empty flattery. Relishing the sensuous touch of her friend's hand, she lowered her upper body onto her folded arms and simply watched.

There were tears in Emma's eyes as she concluded her eulogy, but her hand continued to caress the younger woman's body, gradually moving down her spine until it reached the small of her back.

Emma was on the point of asking Stevie to lift her hips when, unprompted, the latter brought her knees forward until she was on all fours, then moved into a kneeling position. Emma leaned back as a moment of uncertainty distracted her.

Stevie's smile, now just a little mischievous, never wavered as she took hold of the hem of the T-shirt, lifted it over her head and dropped it over the side of the bed.

Slowly, she reverted to her initial prone position and settled her head back down over her folded arms.

"All yours, Em!"

Emma felt a shiver of pure lust as uncontrollable curiosity combined with a very genuine and deep affection to overcome what vestige of inhibition was left after the alcohol had previously started to anaesthetise it. She climbed off the bed and slowly took off her top and culottes, before returning to Stevie's side wearing just a simple pair of white high-cut Sloggi knickers.

Emma's hand returned to the small of Stevie's back, where it slid across the warm skin, barely making contact with it, in a manner that made the recipient shiver with pleasure. Stevie now turned her head to face downwards as Emma's hand slid slowly onto the seat of her knickers. The caressing hand moved vertically and horizontally over the enticingly-filled undergarment, reaching out to her hips and down to her thigh tops. Both women remained totally silent as Emma continued to explore the curves that she had so often admired and envied. Stevie turned her head briefly towards her and whispered, as she raised her hips again:

"Take them off, love, you know what to do".

Emma did indeed know what to do, for she and Stevie had spoken often about how they felt about and reacted to spanking and being spanked. Emma now knew for herself how it felt to be the spankee and nothing would have induced her to turn the clock back. As for the way forward, Stevie had made one or two remarks that now fell into place in the context of the recent instruction.

Straddling Stevie's thighs, Emma leaned forward, kissed Stevie lightly in the small of her back, then slipped her hands down inside her friend's knickers. Slowly, she eased them over the hips and down the thighs, manoeuvring herself carefully backwards, towards Stevie's feet.

There was an audible gasp as Emma saw that the four stripes from Stevie's recent caning were still quite easily discernible.

"Stevie.... I hadn't realised..."

Her expression of concern was curtailed by a second injunction from her friend:

"Don't stop now, Em, please. Just do it, love."

Emma slid the small, soft blue garment over Stevie's feet and threw it on top of the T-shirt on the carpet. She turned to her dressing table and picked up the wooden hairbrush that Stevie had given her as a present not long after the first occasion when she had felt it.

Emma walked back to the bed, climbed onto it and kneeled at Stevie's side, just below her hips. She placed the hairbrush on the bed and moved her hand back to Stevie's bottom, slowly caressing the two beautiful mounds, separated by a deep cleft. With gentle stroking and caressing, she expressed her admiration for Stevie's figure.

It was Stevie who was next to gasp, as Emma's hand landed firmly in the centre of her left cheek. Emma flinched slightly, then repeated the gesture on the right cheek.

Instead of trying to avoid the surprisingly firm series of smacks, Stevie reached across to Emma's side of the bed, took hold of a pillow and deftly slid it under her tummy, before lowering her body onto it.

To say that this was a 'first' for both women, the results were convincing. Stevie was genuinely squirming and clutching on to her pillows as the twelve swats ignited her entire bottom, leaving it a deep red colour and leaving her skin stinging, gradually changing to deep warmth within.

Emma was astonished at how easily she had fallen into the role. In soothing and caressing mode, her hand had returned to Stevie's bottom, which she cared for in a tender manner that few people could emulate. Stevie was deep in a state of comfort, despite the raging stinging in her cheeks. Her breathing was slow and deep and her body was alive. As Emma's hands caressed the base of her cheeks, Stevie's thighs moved slightly apart. Emma did not pause on this occasion, despite her surprise at what she was seeing. She continued to caress down onto the thigh tops, her hands folded to the firm shapes, contrasting with the softness of the skin.