« Spanking Stories

Nina twisted in her black Humanscale executive chair and dragged it closer to the desk. She slumped her head in her hands and dropped her elbows on the charcoal-black wooden surface.

The white carpet which swept the length of the office was firm enough to slide her chair over and still comfortable in her socks. At the other end, Adam was behind his matching desk. In between, Alison's neat desk sat against the floor to ceiling windows overlooking the shimmering pool and rear garden.

It had thrilled Nina when Adam had shown her the workspace. The enormous desk held both her laptops and left acres of room for her thoughts. Back-lit shelves, built into the end walls behind the desks, contained concealed charcoal-black matching cupboards for her bags and accessories.

She'd had the luxurious home office to herself for most of the last two weeks. She raised her head off the desk to find Adam's gaze on her. "It's been two whole days," she said.

To him, it didn't look good. She'd appeared hopeful after her first investor presentation, but days had turned into a week and he'd watched as she'd realized the financiers would not call, or even email.

It had pleased him when her first failure hadn't knocked her off her game. She'd gone into the second meeting full of passion. But now that didn't look good either.

"Maybe they're still discussing it," he said, testing her judgment.

"I don't know. It feels like I'm stuck trying to get people to understand what's obvious."

He kept his smile to himself and rose from his desk. The proposal to invest in kettle manufacturing was easy to leave behind. He sauntered down the room. This office had sold him on the house. It was a stunning place to work. He'd imagined it might be the venue for his next big idea, but was discovering it may well not be his.

"Do you want to show me your presentation?"

Already sure she'd blown it, she said, "Yes, please. I don't know if I'll ever get another chance to present, but I need to know why it isn't knocking them sideways."

He rolled Alison's chair over to Nina's desk and sat opposite. She pushed her programming laptop aside, turned her admin laptop so they could both see the screen, and stepped through her ten slides.

He let her present, leaning back, taking it in and asking only sporadic questions. When she'd finished twenty minutes later, he asked, "Would you trust you with millions of dollars?"

"Yes," she said, her mind as emphatic as her voice.

"Okay. Now turn your laptop away and sit back in your chair."

She obeyed, relieved to be managed for a moment.

"What's it all about?"

In twenty seconds, she outlined the period of calm at the end of each week in the game and how players had to learn to use the respite with ingenuity to win.

"Why is that better than any other game?"

In succinct sentences, she described how a psychology report, which she'd failed to mention in the presentation, had alerted her to the pressure of constant gameplay which prevented players reaching their potential and how she'd designed a game with pauses, a heinous idea in the industry, to allow players to reach a higher potential for longer, delivering epic levels of euphoria and a dopamine high far out-reaching any other game.

"Your investor presentation didn't convey any of that."

"I constructed it according to all the advice online."

"Investors aren't creative. They don't understand originality. They follow trends because it's safe, hoping for a hit product."

"I have a hit product."

"They're judging you first. Let's go through your presentation, slide by slide."

She pushed her chair into the desk, turned the laptop back between them and flicked through the slides.

"Stop there," he said, on the slide about competitors.

"Existing games lack passion," he quoted from the screen. "Investors knows that's untrue. Millions of people play them, so you're wrong. It's arrogant to underestimate the competition and conveys a complete lack of understanding of the market."

"Shall I move on?" she said, her tone sharp.

"Yes, but kill the attitude. You won't like what I'm saying, but you wanted to hear it."

"Sorry," she said, her tone meek. He'd made her humble with one sharp scolding. She wanted his help, but it hadn't been easy to hear how she'd failed so early in her presentation.

"Pause," he said, on the business model slide. "What is RPG?"

"Role-playing game."

"You made me feel stupid by having to ask. Most investors won't. RPG also stands for rocket-propelled grenade. Abbreviations are lazy. Don't use them. And what's this?" he pointed to the date underneath the players count.

"I don't understand."

"The stats are three months old. Investors want something shiny and new. You have current player numbers, don't you?"

"Yes," she said.

"That's just lazy."

He saw how dispirited she was and threw her a bone. "Look, it only takes a tiny thing to throw an investor's confidence off. They're looking for a reason to turn you down, not to invest. It's a minefield."

She flicked the slides forward as he read each and signaled with his finger.

As the end, he said, "You just asked for $3m dollars."

She nodded.

"It's a good ask, but you never said what you'd do with it. Do you have a plan?"

"Yes," she said.

"What's the biggest cost in it?"

"Marketing, by far."

"That sounds right. It's what anyone would expect to see."

"It's obvious."

"But you still need to show that you know it. If I asked to borrow a hundred bucks from you, you'd ask why. It's as simple as that. Leaving out your spending plan was careless."

He sat back. "You dismiss the competition, which at this moment is better than you. That's arrogant." He ticked it off on his fingers. "You use abbreviations and stale stats. Plain lazy." Another finger went up. "And you forget to explain how you'll spend three million dollars. Careless," he said, as his third finger rose. "So, I ask you again. Would you trust you with millions of dollars?"

"No," she said. Heartbroken, she slumped on the desk. "I screwed myself."

"While I'm sure you projected confidence, your presentation read arrogant, lazy, and careless. I know you're none of those things, but they don't."

"I wrote that presentation," she said. "At least for a few moments I was arrogant, lazy, and careless."

He toughened his tone. "You've let yourself down. It would do you good to take stock of your mistakes and face them, otherwise you'll repeat them."

She understood, looked across at him and nodded. Wrong attitudes had driven her glaring mistakes.

"Will you let me decide how to deal with you?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. She'd blown her only two chances to build her game into a business. It called for severe punishment. She wanted him to be harder on her than anyone had ever been. She wanted a thrashing so hard she couldn't bear it. Whatever his decision was, she'd accept it.

"You need caning, Nina. When I come back, I'll deal with each of the three attitudes which afflicted you. I'm going downstairs to tell Alison I'm about to cane you. Do you want her to be present?"

"No," she blurted. "It's embarrassing enough without an audience."

While he was downstairs, disappointment washed over her. She ignored her laptops and let her mind range. She was about to be caned. It was a relief. As he'd ripped her presentation apart, what she'd produced had appalled her. Building a world-class game was far easier than convincing anyone she had.

Walking back in, a three foot golden cane in hand, he closed the door, and said, "Alison says 'Good Luck'."

"It's fortitude I'm about to need, not luck," she said with a grimace, standing up and coming around her desk to meet him. Her black sweatpants hung over her curves while her black vest top hugged them.

"Is there anything you want to ask before I cane you?" he asked.

"No. I'm sorry. Even though this is about to be embarrassing and painful, I'm grateful to you for pointing out my failings and for being willing to deal with them."

"I'm glad to hear that, but I will still be hard on you. For each poor attitude, you'll get six strokes of the cane."

She sucked in her breath and let it out, processing the news. Eighteen strokes on her bottom was severe, but there was no escaping the epic size of her failure.