Seoul Spankings by Anastasia Vitsky

 
     
     
Prologue
     
     
    “Say my name,” she demanded, startling me with her fierceness. Korean For Foreigners had told me saying someone’s name was rude.
    “Hee-yon,” I stammered, unable to form the alien syllables. “Huh…huh-yawn.”
    She pursed her lips, circling my chair. “Indi Go,” she enunciated in the odd, separated manner seeming to order me from her presence. “Here, I am not Ee Sajahng. I am Hyunkyung Han, and you will call me by name.”
    “Ee,” I faltered. Some of her employees had said something familiar. “Ee?” I latched onto the only sound I could replicate.
    “Ee Sajahng,” she repeated. “Founder. Investor. A title, not a name. Call me Hyunkyung.” This time, as she walked around me, her knee brushed against mine. A tiny gymnast vaulted somewhere underneath my ribs, and I spoke without thinking.
    “Can’t I say HK?” After all, her staff called me Miss Go. Why insult her by butchering the sounds I couldn’t form?
    She paused behind me, delaying long enough to highlight the ludicrous nature of my request. Yo, Barack ol’ buddy. I can call you BO, right?
    “Sorry,” I mumbled.
    “Americans are so familiar,” she said, in an undertone.
    “Koreans are so formal!” I protested.
    “Yes,” she answered, tapping one manicured finger against another. “Let’s show you how formal.”
    The tiny gymnast saluted the judges before pummeling her feet on the runway toward the springboard.
    “Stand,” she ordered. I obeyed instantly, scooting the chair backward. Would she lecture me on comportment or inspect my fingernails? “Hold the back of the chair.”
    Confused, I turned around to rest my forearms on the rounded leather top.
    “Like this?”
    From the other side, she drew my hands over the back of the chair to grip the corners. She slid a hand underneath my torso to pat my stomach. I flinched, thankful my long hours at the gym had melted away the extra layers brought on by the pints of ice cream I’d devoured after leaving Greg.
    Greg. I’d tried so hard to forget him, but, in this new environment, I could hear his voice.
    Let it go, Indi. You’d be more fun if you weren’t uptight. Be loose, like me. It’s less stress .
    I stiffened and pulled away from her touch, but she held on. “Who is it? Greg?”
    I’d mentioned him in a thoughtless moment, when she’d tipped me over her knee and spanked while standing ankle-deep in the moonlit water.
    Could she read minds? I didn’t want to think of Greg now. I’d flown halfway around the world, but he still filled my thoughts. I wanted his morning stubble against my cheek, his biceps curling around my shoulder. “No,” I lied. But she knew the truth, and I turned away.
    “Hyunkyung,” she insisted, but I couldn’t respond. The tiny gymnast slipped on a faulty coil and flew through the air to crash-land into the judges’ table. Hyunkyung cupped my cheek in her palm, stroking away a tear I had not felt fall. “You are with me now. Hyun. Kyung. Say my name.”
    She might as well have asked me to fly home across the Pacific Ocean, Icarus style. Soaring through the clouds, ever higher, until the heat from the sun melted the wax on my wings. Plunging into the frigid ocean below, broken wings flying every which way.
    Her hand caressed my bottom with more confidence and ownership than Greg had showed during our entire five years together. I struggled to shut down the unwanted memories, but the quickening of my breath brought back images of the last time he fucked me. I couldn’t call it making love or having sex, but an insertion of one body part into another in less time than a commercial break. When I said no, he called me frigid. I made him go to Tiffany, he told me. If I didn’t give him sex, other girls would. Girls with bigger houses, bigger bank accounts, and bigger boobs.
    “Indi Go,” Hyunkyung murmured. “Say my name.”
    She tried to call me to her, but the room melted away, and Greg’s breath filled my