by Frost, E J
The bathroom’s gleamingly tiled and huge, nearly as big as the downstairs of my whole house. I pee and wash up, using the opportunity to soap off the film of travel and the slight stickiness between my legs, before I shrug into the fluffy, white bathrobe Logan’s given me.
When I emerge, I hear Logan rather than see him. He’s in yet another part of this huge suite, and he’s on the phone, although I can’t tell who he’s talking to.
I move to the couch and sit, looking out through the panoramic window at the dusk-draped city. He texted me a picture of this view this morning, while I was sitting in his kitchen having breakfast. That feels like a really long time ago now. It should be good to finally be here, with him, taking in this view, but everything’s so weird and strained that it doesn’t.
Maybe this was all a huge mistake.
Logan pads around the rippled glass partition and sits down across from me. He’s only wearing jeans. Barefoot and shirtless, he should be less intimidating, but he doesn’t need the armor of clothes to intimidate. His formidable will is more than enough. As he looks me up and down, he’s not smiling, but his eyes are hot and intent. That look makes me sit up straighter. He’s back. Just his dominant presence makes me want to kneel.
“Do you remember the things Mrs. Black said to me?” he asks.
I nod as I replay everything he told me about Mrs. Black in my mind. “Yes, Sir.”
“You’re Mrs. Black. You’re angry. You’re boiling with grief. You want someone to blame. Today, that someone is going to be me. We’ll go through the interview and when you begin ripping at me the way she did, I’m going to tell you to stand up and take off that robe. You refuse, repeatedly, and when I insist, you try to leave. I catch you, throw you over my shoulder and carry you back to the couch where I spank the ever-loving fuck out of you. Got it?”
I nod again, repeating what he’s told me in my head. This is much more along the lines of what I thought we were going to do, and I’m good with it, as long as there’s no more of that horrible, hollow sex. “Ready, Sir.”
I see tension flow out of him like the tide going out. He doesn’t slump—Logan never slumps—but some of the hideous tightness he’s been carrying drains away. I wasn’t conscious of it before, but maybe that’s why I kept rubbing his back; subconsciously, I could feel him carrying all that tension.
Logan stands and I follow suit. He holds his hand out to me. “Thank you for coming to meet me, Mrs. Black. I’m very sorry for your loss.”
Wrapping myself in grieving bitch, I give his hand a cursory shake before I sit and cross my ankles, the way a woman wearing heels would. Logan didn’t tell me what she was wearing, but I imagine her in a straight skirt and pumps.
“My lawyer advised me not to come today,” I say, regurgitating what Logan told me she’d said to him. “But you said you don’t believe my husband’s death was due to food poisoning. Why?”
Even as I repeat her words, they sting my mouth. She loaded each word with venom, seeking any little opening to spit her poison into. My chest begins to ache, not just from Mrs. Black’s grief, but with sympathy for what Logan must have felt, facing this woman.
“Pink Pearl is paying me to find out what really happened to your husband,” Logan responds, clasping his hands between his knees. His knuckles blanch with tension. “That’s what I do. Can you tell me about your husband? His lifestyle?”
“His lifestyle?” I gather as much venom into my mouth as I can, remembering that this was one of the things she said to wound him. “I think you know more about his lifestyle than I do. Are you part of it? Do you practice this, this lifestyle?”
Logan nods. “Yes.”
I can see how much that one word cost him to say to this woman. He didn’t describe her expressions during the interview, but if she was scornful, contemptuous, how did he endure it? It’s hard enough for me to talk about my kink with him, and he wants to live it with me.
“I never knew,” I say, repeating what Mrs. Black told Logan. “I was married to him for nine years and I never knew. He kept it a secret from me all that time. Do you keep it secret, too?”
“No, not anymore. But I certainly never told my parents while they were alive.”
He really did admit very personal things to her. My heartache for him swells to a burning, snarling thing behind my ribs.
“Can you tell me about your husband’s two assistants?” he asks. “What kind of relationships did they have with him?”
“Sexual relationships, you mean? That’s what you’re implying, aren’t you? That my husband was having deviant sex with his assistants—” I go off-script a little because other than saying she’d snapped at him when he’d suggested her husband might be having an affair with one, or both, of his assistants, Logan didn’t tell me about this part in detail. But I don’t think it matters. From the bunching of the muscles in his forearms, I think we’re about to hit the tipping point. He kept his cool during the real interview, but he’s about to unleash the beast in our role-play.
“I wasn’t implying anything and you need a lesson in manners. Stand up and take your robe off.”
I curl my lip at him, the way I imagine an indignant woman would. A woman who didn’t feel his tone reach down inside her and squeeze. “Have you lost your mind? This interview is over.”
He sits back and rubs his palms on his denim-covered thighs. “The interview is over when I say it’s over. Stand up and take your clothes off.”
“No,” I spit at him. “We’re done here.” I bounce to my feet, brushing off my imaginary skirt, and turn on my heel, preparing for a dramatic exit.
Logan allows me to take two steps, then I hear him move behind me. And when he moves, he really moves. I know he was in the military and he keeps himself in serious shape, but damn is he fast. A man that big shouldn’t be so nimble. He catches me before I take another step, slinging me up over his shoulder. I end up with my ass in the air, his forearm an iron bar across my thighs. My instinct is to relax, to drape myself over his shoulder and let him do what he wants to me. But that’s not what Mrs. Black would do. She’d rage. I pummel his back and spit invectives at him, careful not to swear. We may be role-playing, but that doesn’t mean I can break his rules.
He carries me to the couch, bouncing me a little on his shoulder, knocking the breath out of me. I expect him to sit down, toss me over his knee and start the spanking. Instead, he sets me on my feet.
“Take off your robe,” he growls, looming over me.
I want to. I want to obey so desperately. But Mrs. Black wouldn’t. She’d resist.
“Get bent,” I snarl back. “Oh, right, you already are.”
Logan twitches like I’ve slapped him. Then his mouth hardens. “Take off your clothes. Do it now, last chance.”
“No!”
He picks me up again, grabbing me around the waist and holding me off the ground with my ass in the air. With his free hand, he pulls up the robe and gives me two hard swats. I react the way I imagine she’d react, kicking, twisting, howling. He holds me as though I weigh nothing and hits me twice more. He’s not holding back and my ass burns and this is just the start.
He sets me back on my feet. “Take off your clothes.”
I glare up at him, and then do something I’d never, ever do.
I slap him across the face.
Logan doesn’t flinch. He snorts, like a pissed-off bull, and narrows his eyes. I’m shaking out my hand, because his jaw is like freaking granite, when he grabs me around the waist again, lifts me off my feet and carries me to the other side of the couch. He sits, drawing me across his lap. With one leg, he pins mine. With a hard hand, he pushes my cheek against the couch. He pulls up my robe with the other.
“I’m going to spank you until you thank me. Do you understand?”
“Let me go! Have you lost your mind?”
“I’m going to start with ten on your left side.” He fists one hand in my hair and rubs his other hand over my left ass cheek. “I�
��ll count these. You’ll count the next ten.”
I thrash wordlessly. He tightens his hand and leg before he brings his palm down on the top of my cheek.
“Oof.” The strike’s not overly painful, particularly through my panties, but being held over his knee like this, the impact forces the air out of me.
“One,” Logan says evenly. He immediately hits me again, just a half-inch down. In some part of my brain, I know what he’s doing. He’s maximizing the number of strokes he can give me without hitting the same spot over and over. He’s minimizing the bruising. He’s caring for me even while he hurts me. That knowledge seeps deep into me, warms that part of me that went cold during that horrible sex. The rest of my brain’s overtaken by the sensation of the next hit, and the next.
He gives me ten rapidly, leaving my ass warm and tingling, but not hurting, not yet.
For the next ten, he pulls down my panties and makes me count. These are rapid, harder, on the same cheek, eye-watering.
“Ten more,” he tells me. “Count.”
I protest, but he’s already hitting me, and the rhythm and sting suck down my brain. I’ve fallen into this vortex a few times before, mostly with Lew when it was all new to me and the simplest things could turn me inside out. It’s not subspace. I still feel every sting, burn and ache. But I don’t mind as long as my hateful internal monologue is silent and the pain keeps tripping that crossed wire in my brain that turns it into the need that’s blossoming in my belly.
He finishes the set and pauses. He doesn’t rub my flaming ass and I clench my hands as I fight my instinct to reach back and rub. I know from years of being spanked how big a mistake that is.
“Before I start on the other cheek, I’m going to ask you a question. Did you love your husband?”
“Yes,” I say, with a little snuffle. I didn’t feel the tears building until he stopped, and the stinging really started.
“Do you feel betrayed?” he asks, stroking my unspanked cheek.
“Yes.”
“Good. Ten more. Count.”
I expect him to hit the cheek he’s stroking, to start evening me out, but he goes back to my left cheek and hits me right on the round apple. This is a hard thud with his flat palm and I yelp, “One!”
By ten, I’m not just sniffling, I’m crying. My left cheek is on fire, all the more so because of the contrast with my untouched right cheek. I hate being unbalanced and Logan must intuit it. I’ve stopped spitting bile at him and started begging him to stop.
After another fast, hard ten, he presses his palm against my ass, which both soothes and intensifies the sensation. “Tell me again, did you love your husband?”
“Yes,” I whimper.
“Good. Do you feel betrayed?”
“Yes, I feel betrayed.”
“Good. Ten more. Count.”
He returns to the left cheek with a hard smack and I wail and thrash in protest. “Not that one!”
“That’s not for you to decide, Mrs. Black. Count.”
Thank goodness we’re in role-play, or telling him what to do, denying him the right to use me the way he wants, would probably earn me a real punishment. But we’re in role-play, and Mrs. Black would not sit still for any of this. “No!”
“Yes. Every time you tell me no, it’s an additional thank you I’ll need to hear. Count.”
I howl and argue the way I think Mrs. Black would, but that just makes him start over with the two questions. After starting over five times, I give up and count the ten, hoping that after this, he’ll switch cheeks.
At the end of the set, he rearranges his hold on me, shifting me so my ass is higher in the air, over both of his knees, my feet off the floor. He asks me the two questions again and this time I shout at him, “I’ve told you the answers! They’re not going to change!”
“I don’t think you’ve learned any manners yet, Mrs. Black. Answer my questions politely.”
“Get off me! Get off me!” I kick my legs up, trying to break his hold, but he’s got me firmly over his knees, my head pinned to the couch by his grip in my hair.
“Answer my questions.”
“Yes, I loved him, and yes, I feel betrayed.”
He wallops my left cheek. “Again.”
“Yes, I loved him, and yes, I feel betrayed.”
Another wallop that has me wailing. “Again.”
“Yes, I loved him, and yes, I feel betrayed!”
Somewhere in the heavy slaps and the snuffling tears and the repeated questions, I forget this is about the Blacks and it becomes about me and Ashley. I did love him once. He was my first real love. The man I gave my life to. My Prince Charming. My forever man. Every time we had cold, passionless sex, it singed my heart. Every time he gave me a cool brush of his lips, instead of a real kiss, it made my soul curl up a little more. Death by a million cuts. Despite dying inside a little every day, I never said a word. It was my marriage; I was supposed to make it work.
To sit in my doctor’s office and have her explain to me that the pain in my belly and the blood in my pee wasn’t a bladder infection, or the terrible fear I’d lived with silently for days, cancer, but rather chlamydia, broke me. I felt beyond betrayed. I was destroyed. Futureless and completely adrift in a world I was never comfortable in anyway. Ashley made me feel a part of something. Of us. Even if us wasn’t perfect, I was still part of it.
Without him, I was part of nothing. Not even myself.
I lose the count somewhere after two hundred. I’m sobbing blindly, barely able to answer the questions he asks over and over. He’s counting for me since I can’t speak, still all on my left cheek, which feels beyond burned, beyond bruised. Even the feather of his breath across it makes me flinch and whimper.
Logan puts his hand in the small of my back and tugs back on the hand he has in my hair. “Now let’s hear some thanks.”
I don’t know if Mrs. Black could endure any more, but I can’t. “Thank you, Sir.”
I don’t say “ta” because whatever it is we’re doing, I’m not his little girl right now and he is totally not my daddy.
“Good. You’ve told me ‘no’ six times, while you’ve been learning your lesson, so that will be ten for each and a ‘thank you’.”
He spanks my unmarked cheek sixty times while I sob uncontrollably. I’ve never been spanked this thoroughly. Not so hard and for so long. At the end of each ten, he has me thank him and answer the questions again. I’m not even sure what my answers are, I’m crying so hard.
After the sixth thank you, he stops, but doesn’t release me. “Do you still love Ashley?”
I blubber. “What?”
“Ten. Count.” He doesn’t even pause for breath before hitting me ten more times. I shudder and sob through each strike.
After the tenth, he says, “What do you say?”
“Thank you, Sir!” I’m not getting that wrong, no matter what Mrs. Black would fucking do.
“Answer me this time. Do you still love Ashley?”
Did I say his name? I must have. “Nuh-no, Sir.”
“Good girl. Do you still feel betrayed?”
“Yuh-yes, Sir. That never goes away.”
“Good girl, Emily.”
He’s calling me by my name again. Thank the Lord.
“I’m proud of how honest you are,” he says.
He leans over me, enclosing my body with his. He holds me like that for several minutes, until my shaking stops, although I can’t stop the tears. Then he whispers right in my ear. “I want to be honest with you, Emily. I want to be as honest with you as you’ve been with me. More honest than I’ve ever been with anyone, even though it might send you running. You’ve earned it.”
I nod. It’s all I can manage.
“Through all of this, I’ve been thinking about my sister. She was clumsy. She hurt herself more times than I could count when we were kids. Scraped knees and bruises and, once, a chipped tooth. I was her big brother. I was the one who picked her up and kissed away her te
ars and made it better. But she made me angry, too. I wanted to put her over my knee and spank the carelessness out of her. She’s the first girl I wanted to spank.” He rubs his hand over my fevered ass cheeks, and I can’t control a whimper. “I called her, after the interview was over, just to hear her voice. I wanted to hear her say I’m the best brother in the world. That’s what she always tells me. She’s told me thousands of times. But I don’t believe her. You know why?” When I shake my head, he takes a deep breath and says, “Because for years, I dreamed of spanking her until her ass was as red as yours is right now. I dreamed, fuck, I can’t believe I’m telling you this. I dreamed of pushing her down and fucking her between those bright red cheeks.”
He wanted to fuck his sister? Is that what this is about?
“D-did you?” I ask softly, praying he says no but bracing myself for a yes. If I’ve finally found Logan’s flaw, this is a monster-sized one. He’s right, this is what could send me running, no matter how wonderful he is otherwise.
“No, of course not,” he says, and my heart thuds back into a painful rhythm. “But I wanted to. I thought about it. Dreamed about it. And today, when I was interviewing Mrs. Black, it all came back. I haven’t thought about Lizbeth that way in years. But there it was again. As fresh as when I was a kid. It made me feel betrayed, by my own brain.”
Now his questions make sense.
“Sir, you are the best brother in the world.” I snuffle and wipe my face. “I wish I’d had a brother like you. You took care of her. You never did anything about those thoughts. They’re just thoughts.”
“Sweetheart.” He gathers my hair in his hand and smooths it away from my face. “You cannot understand how bad they make me feel.”
Oh, I can.
“They’re just thoughts,” I repeat. “You didn’t act on them. You didn’t hurt your little sister. You protected her, Sir. Even from yourself.”
“How in the ever-loving fuck can you be okay about this?”