Once at work John put all of that out of his mind. He had endured his spanking and was looking forward to a new attitude from Benton. John was disappointed when he finally saw his old teacher and the man greeted him formally. At first John thought that Benton was self-conscious about the spanking, but as the day wore on, Benton's attitude didn't change. Nor did it change the next day or the one after that. A week later, John was still mystified by Benton's aloofness and he had given up all hope of that promised second spanking. The welts from the first one were gone and John knew he was ready for the second round. He wanted to get all sixteen rounds over and done with. And that want had gained even more importance in the light of Benton's stiff formalities. John was sure that once all the spankings had been completed that Benton would treat him differently. Treat him like a colleague and not like some stranger he happened to pass in the halls of the hospital.
John stood at the admit desk, watching Benton quickly walk away from him without hardly a 'goodnight, Carter'. It wasn't right, John thought. Not right at all.
"I thought you said that the two of you worked things out?" Anna's voice broke through John's thoughts.
"I thought we had. Maybe something else is bothering him. I heard he's been staying with Carla and his baby all week," John replied. "It's hard adjusting to having a baby in the house."
"I suppose." Anna looked thoughtful. "He's been...standoffish all week though. With you, I mean."
"Really?" John asked as he grabbed a chart. "I hadn't noticed."
Anna grinned. "Right." She rolled her eyes. "You know you did so just admit it, Carter."
"I didn't," he insisted. "Well, maybe a little bit. But not much. He's been in a hurry to get to Carla's every night."
"Not tonight," Haleh said as she passed by him. "I heard him say he was sleeping in his own bed tonight and not on some lumpy couch."
"See," Anna said triumphantly. "He has a reason to be happy. Which still doesn't explain why he's practically ignoring you."
"He's always treated me that way, isn't that right, Haleh?" John said, hoping the nurse would agree with him and that the answer would end the conversation. He had no desire to talk to Anna about why he was disappointed.
"That's about right." Haleh walked past John again. "Sometimes I think a person has to get right in his face to just get his attention, he gets so focused on other things."
As Haleh walked away, John found himself thinking about what she had said. Maybe he needed to get in Benton's face once more. It had worked the previous week and, if John were lucky, it would work again. And he knew exactly where to find Benton once his shift ended. With that in mind, John headed off to find his patient, feeling a little better now that he had a plan of action.
Hours later, standing in the hallway outside of Benton's apartment, John took a deep breath. "Here goes nothing," he muttered as he knocked on the door and took a step back to wait for an answer.
John tensed as he heard the sound of a chain being moved and then the deadbolt clicking within the wooden door. When the door swung open to reveal the impassive face of Peter Benton, John was ready to face him.
"What do you want, Carter?" Benton asked, his tone neutral.
"We need to talk," John said, stepping forward into the doorway and making sure that Benton couldn't slam the door on him, shutting him out.
"We've talked, remember? Just last week." Benton didn't make any move to let John come further into the apartment.
"Well, I think we need to talk again because nothing's changed since then."
The two men regarded each other solemnly, neither backing down.
"You *owe* it to me to hear me out," John firmly said and he had the small satisfaction of seeing Benton's eyebrows rise.
"I don't think I *owe* you anything, Carter, but it's obvious that you plan to act the brat until you get your way." Benton stood aside, opening the door to give John room to enter.
John walked into the apartment. He'd never been there before and was surprised to see that it wasn't much bigger than his own place. He had expected Benton to have a larger place, although the apartment was nicely appointed. As he heard Benton close the door, John turned around. "You can call me names if you wish, but I refuse to be baited into getting into an argument with you, Dr. Benton," John said. "I thought that we had reached an agreement last week."
Benton walked past John and sat down on his couch but he didn't invite John to sit, so John stubbornly remained standing.
"All agreements are void," Benton calmly said.
"What?" John couldn't believe he was hearing that. After all he had endured -- the humiliation, the pain, the...excitement -- Benton was now calling the whole thing off? "You can't make that decision."
"I can and I did. I have no wish or desire to spank you again, so the deal is off." Benton replied. "I'm sorry if you don't like it, but I refuse to back down on this issue."
"You're right that I don't like it. You've strung me along for this whole week, knowing that I was expecting you to either say something about the next...encounter, or to just show up at my door, and you kept quiet? I thought you had more honor than that, Dr. Benton. The spanking was humiliating, but this, well, this is just cruel and you had no right to treat me this way."
Benton quickly got to his feet. "I think you should leave now, Carter, before each of us says something we'll regret."
"So, I'm back to where I was when we spoke at the El station? Just another intern to you and nothing more? The past three years have no meaning at all?" John demanded.
"Exactly," Benton snapped back. "I'm not your teacher any longer, Carter. You threw that away when you slapped me in the face by turning your back on surgery and running to Anspaugh about it."
"I knew you'd go back to *that*," John said, shaking his head. "You claimed last week that it wasn't your ego but about all the people who had sacrificed to help you get where you are now, yet you keep harping on the fact that I didn't come to you to talk it over. Maybe I did try to come to you. Did you ever once think of that? Maybe that night I showed up at Carla's place, bringing you files from the hospital for you, maybe I wanted to talk to you. And what did you do? You practically slammed the door in my face."
"You never said anything about it," Benton shot back. "You just stood there with one of those stupid grins on your face at finding me there with Carla, as if we were some kind of private entertainment for your amusement."
"That's not true and you know it." John shook his head. "I had thought...Hell, it doesn't matter what I had thought. When I needed you, you weren't there. You were never there when I needed you, for one reason or another. I know it wasn't your fault that Reese was premature, but that doesn't change the fact that I needed to talk with you and you weren't there. So, yeah, I went to Anspaugh. I begged and pleaded with him to let me switch and he finally relented." John laughed, "God, you would think that all the times you tried to convince me that I wasn't cut out for surgery that you would be jumping for joy over my switching residencies. Doesn't it prove you were right all along?"
Benton slowly shook his head. "I never wanted to be proved right, Carter. But that's something you probably refuse to believe."
"That's because past experience has shown me that you glory in being proved right," John snapped. "You live for it and you know it. So, you should be rejoicing now, shouldn't you? And instead you're treating me like...well, like scum because I went to someone else and not to you."
Benton's lips were set in a tight line as he shook his head. "You are wrong...as usual."
"And what's that supposed to mean?" John demanded to know.
Benton shrugged. "You make up whatever stories you find appealing without regard to the truth. You have an irritating tendency to broadcast your emotions and logic on others. Well, I don't think the same way you do, Carter, so get over it. I told you why I was upset, and, as usual, you're choosing to ignore me."
John rolled his eyes and looked away. "Yeah, right. I should have known that you'd deny it all." John then looked directly into Benton's eyes. "Isn't it lonely being such a sanctimonious bastard all the time?"
Benton's eyes blazed with anger. "You know, my Daddy would have washed your mouth out for using such language. He never was one to shy away from doling out needed discipline...unlike your family."
"Shame his son didn't learn how to do that, isn't it?" John shot back. "As for my family, they might not have taken a belt to me, but they had their own methods of making us toe the line."
"There's nothing as memorable as a lesson learned the hard way," Benton replied. He was now regretting the fact that he had decided to take the noble route and call off the spankings. Carter was being the perfect brat tonight and definitely needed some kind of comeuppance.
"Guess you didn't learn it then, did you? Because from the way you talk, your father wasn't a wuss. Wonder how it was that you turned out that way?" John couldn't resist taunting. He was growing tired of always being the one 'in the wrong' and having to defend his family and their actions. It was about time that Benton had to defend his family or his own actions -- or in this case, inaction.
"Wuss? You're calling me a wuss? Where in the world did you learn to talk, Carter? Prep school?" Benton scoffed. "And I can guarantee you one thing -- you would have never lasted one minute while my Daddy spanked your bratty butt."
"Yeah, right. I lasted quite long enough last week, didn't I?" John questioned.
"That wasn't a 'real' spanking, Carter. I let you keep your pants on. You don't know what it's like to feel a hard and callused hand slapping hard on your skin, or a leather belt hitting your bare bottom. You'd be a crying blob in seconds."
"Oh, yeah? Prove it." John said, taking a step toward Benton. He knew he was treading on thin ice, but he couldn't help himself. The mental imagery alone was making him aroused and at that moment he wanted nothing more than to feel Benton's hand against his bare skin -- and to prove the man wrong.
The two men stared at each other and then Benton subtlety nodded. He walked over to the dining room table and pulled a chair out. Setting it in the middle of the floor, Benton sat down. "Drop your pants, Carter. I want you over my lap with a bare ass by the time I count to five or your whipping will be even worse."
John felt his mouth drop open over Benton's casual acceptance of his challenge. But when Benton said "one" and John still hadn't begun to undo his pants he knew the man was taking this seriously. While Benton's voice calmly announced "two", John's hands were fumbling with the button on his pants, then the zipper. He was trying to push them down when Benton said "three" and then John realized that he still had his suspenders on over his shoulders -- and he was wearing a sweater and a jacket. "Four" echoed through the living room as John shrugged out of the jacket and then yanked the sweater over his head. He was only three steps away from Benton and John crossed those few feet as he lowered his suspenders. Just as Benton said "five", John was making contact with Benton's thighs.
"You barely made it in time, Carter. You got lucky." Benton said, his mouth dry as he saw that Carter's pale ass looked as perfect naked as he had imagined.
"That's me, Mr. Lucky. Can we just get this over with?" John asked. His fear at not making it to Benton's lap in time had done a lot to kill his earlier semi-erection, but with his body spread across Benton's lap and his butt exposed, John felt his cock hardening again.
"I would have thought that, being the quick learner you are, you would have remembered to position yourself correctly." Benton grasped Carter's hips and moved him to the left, so that Carter's ass was rounded over Benton's right thigh. Feeling Benton's hands on his bare skin sent a shiver through John's body and he could feel his cock pressing against Benton's thigh -- and wishing that Benton's pants weren't in the way.
John gasped as Benton wrapped his left arm over Carter's back and to his belly, firmly grabbing him at the base of his cock. A silent acknowledgement that Benton knew Carter was hard and didn't care. That it didn't matter to him at all that this had excited Carter. The hard cock was nothing more than a convenient handhold for Benton. In the back of John's mind, he thought that the shame alone would be enough to kill his erection, but being firmly trapped in Benton's hand, his cock seemed quite happy. His face hot with shame and embarrassment, John steeled himself for the first of many blows, hoping that the pain would do to his errant member what his mind could not and that his erection would quickly disappear.
*************************
When Peter had felt Carter's hard cock, he had initially been angered. How dare Carter have feelings like that for him? He was heterosexual, not gay. And he had thought that Carter was heterosexual as well. But when Peter touched Carter's hips to move him, he felt his own cock harden and his anger spread to include himself. It didn't matter that none of this was planned, that he had worked with Carter for three years now without ever having an untoward thought about him other than the wish to be able to spank some sense into the young man.
But now, now this was happening. He was straight. Carter was straight. Yet they were both hard. And Carter was half-naked and draped over his thighs. And even as Peter raised his hand up so he could hit those perfect ass cheeks as hard as he could, he realized with a start that he wanted so much to just touch them. Gently and tenderly. He wanted to caress them and hear Carter moan.
Peter's hand did descend upon Carter's skin, but not to hit, not to punish. Instead Peter gave in to his desires and he softly stroked the silky smooth skin, feeling Carter trembling beneath his touch.
"Dr. Benton?" Carter's voice sound shaky and unsure.
"Yes, Carter?" Peter absently replied as his fingers drew patterns over Carter's butt.
"The spanking?"
"Can wait. This can't. You're so incredibly pale, Carter. So...white." Peter chuckled.
"Yeah, us Caucasians tend to have that problem," Carter's wryly replied.
Peter laughed. "Yes, you do." He splayed his hand on a firm cheek and marveled at the contrast of his black skin against Carter's white butt. The most simple contrast in the world. The most basic. Sometimes it was the most at odds. But tonight...tonight the contrast was beautiful and Peter had a sudden urge to compare other parts of their anatomies. Peter wanted to see all of John Carter. Wanted to touch his skin, taste his mouth and feel him trembling with desire beneath him.
But did Carter want that? Did Carter want to touch him? Did Carter even want to see him naked? Peter had no idea, but Carter's cock was still swollen within his hand. It felt like a strong cock. Firm and plentiful. When Carter had dropped his pants, Peter had averted his eyes, but now he wanted to see it. Oh, God, how he wanted to stroke it instead of just holding onto it. As he thought, Peter's hand began to knead the muscle of Carter's ass, and the sensations were obviously pleasurable as Carter began to moan and squirm.
Peter grinned. This was much nicer than burning his handprint onto Carter's butt. Much nicer, indeed. But then he remembered the way Carter had clung to him after the last spanking. The way Carter had accepted the comfort he gave. And Peter wanted that again. And again, and again.
Without warning, Peter tightly squeezed his left hand and then released his hold, making Carter gasp and then he brought his right hand down hard on the furthest white target. Peter let several slaps rain upon those white mounds until bright red patches glared up at him. Carter's trembles had ceased and his body had grown rigid. But that cock, oh, that cock had remained hard, Peter noted.
"How many was that, Carter?" Peter gruffly asked.
"Four," Carter said, his voice tight with emotion.
"Only six more to go then," Peter said. "And this time, I want you to count them out for me. I don't want to lose my place and give you too many...or too little." Peter said, grinning. He knew that Carter definitely didn't want too many, and he was determined to not give him any fewer smacks with his hand than he had given him the week before with his belt. "Ready to keep count?" Peter asked.
"No, but I know that won't...ah...man, uh, five," Carter said as Peter placed another blow to his backside.
Peter observed his handiwork. The pattern of red on white was nice, but not anywhere as beautiful as the mix of black and white had been. And it was obvious that Peter was leaving handprints behind. He was doing his best to make sure that that was noticeable. If Carter should be so foolish as to drop his pants in front of anyone within the next few days, Peter wanted everyone to be sure that a person had taken their hand to Carter's ass. Many times.
Another quick smack filled in a blank spot, leaving a recording of Peter's palm and fingers behind.
"Six," Carter replied, his voice strained and his body wriggled around a bit. Peter thought that Carter was most likely trying to get comfortable since his head and upper body were facing the floor. But all that wriggling really managed to do was to push Carter's cock into Peter's thigh.
It was time to bring this to an end, Peter thought, and then see what happened.
He went for the left cheek and was rewarded when Carter's voice called out "Seven." Back to the other side, but this time Peter aimed for the crease where Carter's pale thigh met his butt. "Eight," Carter's voice trembled.
Nine was the opposite thigh and Peter never heard the word 'ten' leave Carter's mouth because all that came out after that blow was a stifled sob.
As before, Peter lifted Carter's body, carefully turning him as he settled him in his lap, holding Carter against his body. Carter was crying, but not the sobs that the belt had brought forth. And looking down, Peter was rewarded with his first sight of Carter's cock, now semi-hard. But even in that state it was beautiful. Carter was cut, but Peter didn't mind that -- it was just another thing to highlight the difference between their bodies.
"Hush, Carter, you did well. Very well." Peter cradled Carter's head against his chest and rocked back and forth in the chair. Like before, Peter could feel Carter relax against him, but this time Carter didn't immediately stiffen and try to get away. This time he stayed relaxed and Peter took that as a good sign.
"Carter, look at me." Peter eased his hold on Carter's head and used his other hand to tip that chin up so he could look down into Carter's eyes. Those normally light brown eyes were dark now, and intense as they gazed up at him. "Carter..." Peter lowered his head and let his lips rest against Carter's for a moment. Then he pressed them harder, his tongue probing, asking for entrance. Carter's entire body stiffened in Peter's lap and for a moment Peter thought that Carter would run from him, but then Carter's body relaxed and those lips parted slightly. But it was enough to give him permission to enter, and Peter accepted the invitation with gusto.