Dark Favors

by Sophie Stern

  She’d look even better sprawled across my desk with that skirt bunched up around her waist. I longed to slide those panties down and reach between her legs. I wanted to stroke her there, touch her. I wanted to make Paige come apart and scream my name. I knew that doing so would be very, very wrong. I was her landlord, after all. I already had some power in our relationship. I didn’t need to do anything else that would cause her pain or discomfort, but damn, if I didn’t want to feel her soft pussy and make her drip with pleasure.

  “Sorry seems to be a word you’re very familiar with,” I said coldly. “You still haven’t explained how you lost my money.”

  “Does it matter?” She asked. “I’m here now.”

  “Give me your phone,” I said.

  “What?” That wasn’t what she expected me to say.

  “Your phone. Hand it over.”

  “Why?”

  I sighed and shook my head.

  “Strike one, Miss Key. Phone.”

  She had her phone in one hand and her car keys in the other. She wasn’t carrying a purse, so she couldn’t pretend like she didn’t have a phone with her. I could see it. More importantly: I didn’t want her to be using it during our time together. She didn’t need to be secretly recording our conversations. She didn’t need to be taking pictures. Most of all, she didn’t need to be distracted.

  Paige looked at me like she was trying to figure out my end game. Pity for her that I was in real estate for a reason. I was good at my job. People always had this idea that being in real estate meant you had to dress in a suit and talk about architecture. The truth was that you had to be good with people. I could tell within minutes of meeting someone whether they were serious about a property. I could pick out who had money and who didn’t, and it very rarely had anything to do with the words that came out of their mouth.

  No, there was much more to selling properties than just people talking about how much cash they had. The truth was that most millionaires were the quiet type. They lived simple lives. They might have worn-out clothing or cars that were a few years old, but they were serious when they toured a property as to whether or not they’d buy it.

  The people who came in flashing new watches or their latest phones were the ones who were faking it. They were pretending to have more cash than they did, and they were trying their very best to waste my time. Maybe it was to look good for other people. Who knew? Some people just liked the feeling of power that came with looking at a million-dollar property.

  To make the money I made, I had to read people, and I had to do it fast to avoid wasting my time and getting screwed over. Paige was different, though. She was hard to read. She was curious, but she was cautious, and sometimes, like right now, she was just downright sexy as hell.

  She bit her bottom lip and looked at her phone.

  Then she shook her head.

  “Strike two.”

  “Locke, will you shut the fuck up about the strike?” She snapped suddenly, looking up at me. Her eyes were blazing, and she was pissed. Good. I was glad she got all worked up. It made me happy and satisfied that I’d gotten under her skin, even a little.

  “And that’s three,” I said calmly. I held out my hand, and even though she probably didn’t know why she was doing it, she slapped her phone in my hand. Then she took her keys and tossed them onto the area rug in the center of the room. They hit the floor, and she raised an eyebrow, challenging me, silently asking me what I was going to do about it.

  I slid her phone into my phone and took her hand. Then I guided her to the desk.

  “What are you doing?” She asked.

  This time, her words held no bark. No bite. This time, she sounded nervous. For the first time since Paige walked into my office, it seemed as though she felt uncomfortable. Apparently, she finally realized who was in control and in charge: it wasn’t her.

  “Place your hands on the desk,” I told her. Something changed between us then: a subtle shift in the air, a sudden shift in the dynamic between us. My cock was hard, then, and I wondered if I reached between her legs if she’d be wet for me.

  “Why?” She whispered.

  I moved behind her, pressing my chest against her back.

  “Don’t make this harder on yourself,” I whispered into her ear. “Obey me, Paige.”

  She reached out and placed her hands on the desk. I pressed my own hands to her hips, and I held them there for a minute.

  “Paige, I demand complete respect.”

  “I know,” she whispered. “You tell me that every time I see you.”

  “And yet you so often fail to give me the respect I ask of you,” I tell her.

  “You ask a lot of me,” she said.

  “Not so much,” I started moving my hands up and down her hips. “I don’t ask more than you can give.”

  “How do you know how much I can give?”

  “I know a lot about you.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you’re very strong,” I told her. “And that you’ve had to be strong for a very long time.”

  I know more about her than I should: more than I’m supposed to know. As far as Paige knows, she’s my tenant and nothing more. The reality is very different. She’s my tenant, yes, but she’s so much more than that. Paige has been through hell. She’s had to learn to survive on her own. She doesn’t know that I know perfectly well what happened to her mother. She doesn’t know that I’ve been trying to find her.

  She definitely doesn’t know about her connection to my sister.

  I’ve gotten to know Paige for a few months, but always from afar. It wasn’t until just this week that things began to change between us. It wasn’t until this week when I decided it was time to move things forward to find the answers that we both need so very desperately.

  “How could you know that I’m strong?” She whispered.

  “You take care of yourself,” I say simply. “You don’t depend on anyone.”

  “That’s true,” she whispered.

  “But right now, we have another problem,” I told her.

  She sighed heavily, and she stilled. I wondered if she realized she’d been wiggling her ass against my cock. Maybe she did. Probably, she didn’t. My body was reacting to her like she was fire and I was ice. I wanted to melt, covering her. I wanted more.

  “What?” She finally whispered.

  “Tell me what the problem is,” I said. She wasn’t an idiot. She was no dummy. She was clever and shrewd, and she could tell me herself exactly what was wrong. I trusted her to do that for me. I believed in her to tell me what the issue was. This was also a sort of test, though. Was she going to play coy? Was she going to act dumb? She wasn’t dumb. Not at all. I needed her to show me that. I needed her to show me that she could be a good girl when she needed to be.

  “I was disrespectful,” she said.

  “Tell me how.”

  “I questioned you.”

  “You questioned me in a way that was rude,” I said, correcting her. She was allowed to question me. That was part of how we learned and grew. What she wasn’t allowed to do was be rude when she did it. She wasn’t permitted to be impolite. I didn’t let my employees act that way. I didn’t permit my tenants to act that way. I certainly wasn’t going to let Paige act that way. Not when I needed her.

  “I know you care about respect,” she said slowly.

  “It’s the most important thing in the world,” I said.

  “I think love is the most important thing.”

  “It’s a close second,” I said dryly.

  I wasn’t really sure if I believed that though. Arguing about love wasn’t going to get us anywhere, though. The only person I’d ever loved before was dead. Talking about love wasn’t going to make me feel any better. It wasn’t going to get us any answers or help us figure anything out.

  “What do you want?” She whispered, her voice husky and aroused.

  “I want your respect,” I told her.

  “And ho
w are you going to get that?” She asked boldly.

  “Well, I’m going to start by punishing you.”

  “Punishing me?” She half-laughed, half-snorted, but that only lasted until I pulled her skirt up and bunched it around her waist. She started to move. “What are you doing?”

  I grabbed her by the hips and held her in place.

  “Hands on the desk,” I said.

  She complied.

  “Paige, where I come from, there are certain rules that need to be followed. If you break those rules, you pay the consequences.”

  “So you’re...what? You’re going to spank me?”

  “Yes.”

  “What?” She said, shocked.

  “I’m going to spank you.”

  “But I don’t want a spanking.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have been rude.”

  She held perfectly still, not moving. I looked down at her tight little panties. Pink. Of course, they were pink. They matched her bright spirit, and I kind of hated that a little bit. Why did everything about Paige have to be so damn perfect and sweet? She really was an innocent sort of person. She really was sort of wild and wonderful.

  “Paige, I’m going to spank you now.”

  Silence.

  “I’m going to spank you, and you’re going to stand there like a good girl until I’m finished. You aren’t going to cry, and you aren’t going to yell, and you aren’t going to holler. Do you understand?”

  “I don’t think-“

  I reached out and grabbed the nape of her neck, gripping it tightly. I didn’t hold her hard enough to leave a bruise, but I gripped her hard enough to make a point.

  “Do you understand?” I snapped.

  “Yes,” she said, biting her bottom lip.

  “You can end this at any time,” I told her. “You can get up now and walk out of here and leave, but you owe me, Paige, and I’m not the kind of person who forgets a debt.”

  It’s a sort of veiled threat, but it’s not one I would actually follow through on. Not that I’m not being a complete prick to her. I know she doesn’t have the money. I don’t know why she doesn’t have it. She probably gave it to Fawn or donated it to someone. Who knows? Paige has a heard of gold. She’s also craving discipline, and punishment, and she’s the kind of person who needs to be put in her place from time to time.

  She grew up without a dad. She grew up with a mother who was always working. She never had anyone to take care of her. Yeah, I knew all about little Paige Key. I also knew a lot more than she thought I did. Right now, though, it all started with this.

  “Tell me yes.”

  “Yes,” she whispered, and then I smacked her.

  My hand hit her ass hard: first on the right cheek, and then on the left. The sound resonated throughout the room, but as commanded, she was silent. She was perfectly quiet, in fact. If I wasn’t wrong, she didn’t even flinch when I smacked her. Strange. Most of the time, new submissives were a little bit uncomfortable when they got spanked for the first time. I’d never had anyone who actually obeyed me when I asked them to be quiet.

  I was intrigued.

  “You were rude three times,” I told her. “So you’ll receive three times the normal punishment.”

  “What’s a normal punishment?” She whispered.

  “Ten swats.”

  She sighed, but I saw her head move, nodding.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “So thirty total,” I explained carefully. “Fifteen on each side.”

  “Okay,” she said again.

  “Do you want me to stop between each smack, like this time?” I asked. “Or do you want them all in a row?” I didn’t know why I was giving her the option. I never gave anyone the option. Ever. I was a devil for a reason, and it had nothing to do with her. The girls I fooled around with were the kind of girls who liked a little bit of pain and a tiny bit of degradation and a little bit of roughness. I wasn’t about to give them a choice, but Paige?

  I didn’t really understand why I wanted her to feel she had a say in what I was going to do to her. Paige was someone I was going to use. I needed her, and she needed me. She might not know it yet, but I had something she would want to know about. I had something important.

  “Just in a row,” she whispered. “Get it over with.”

  “Close your eyes,” I said.

  I didn’t know whether she listened or not, but her hands tightened on my desk, and I spanked her. Fourteen more swats on each side for a total of thirty. Her bottom bounced with each smack, and by the time I finished, my hand was a little sore. Even though she was wearing those pink little panties, I could tell that her cheeks had started to turn a bright pink. I tugged on her skirt, pulling it back down, and then I pulled her up to a standing position.

  When Paige turned around, I was surprised to see that her face was stained with tears.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Locke,” she whispered. “I know you said not to cry.”

  “I didn’t even hear you,” I said, surprised. She had been crying and I hadn’t known. That was like a punch to the gut right there. I was hard on submissives, sure, but I didn’t consider myself to be calloused. Not all of the time, anyway. Not when it came to things that were important.

  “I’m very quiet,” she whispered. For the first time, her eyes met mine, and there was so much there that I wanted to unpack. I wanted to ask her how she learned to cry silently. I wanted to ask her what she was thinking. Most of all, I wanted to know what she thought about her spanking. Some people loved getting spanked as a way to do penance, so to speak. They liked knowing that after a punishment, they were square. They didn’t owe the other person.

  Paige and I were even when it came to the disrespect, but there was something else we had to deal with.

  She had my money, and I was asking for it back.

  “Sit down, Paige,” I said, gesturing toward one of the chairs in front of my desk. She looked at the chairs nervously, and I knew exactly why. She was wondering just how much they were going to hurt her bottom when she sat down. The answer? Probably quite a bit. She decided not to argue, though, and she sat down. She grimaced only a little.

  Paige was silent as I moved to the fridge in the corner of my office and pulled out a bottle of water and a piece of chocolate. I brought both over to her and handed them to her. Paige stared at me.

  “Take them,” I said.

  She reached for the water bottle and eyed the chocolate nervously, as though it was going to bite her.

  “Take both,” I commanded.

  She took the chocolate.

  “Now drink the water,” I said. “And eat your chocolate.”

  It was like talking to an infant on some level. She just looked at me like I was crazy, and that made me uneasy.

  “Paige, it’s not poisonous.”

  “But you just spanked me,” she said. “Why are you giving me this?”

  “Because you were a good girl, Paige,” I said. “Is that what you want to hear? You took your spanking like a good girl, and good girls get chocolate. Now eat it.”

  Without anymore protesting, she drank the water and nibbled at her chocolate, and then she set everything down on my desk. Satisfied, I finally moved around to the other side, and I took a seat.

  “Now, for the real reason for your visit,” I said.

  “It wasn’t just so you could beat me?” She rolled her eyes.

  “Getting mouthy so soon? I’ll have to spank you harder next time so you remember your manners,” I said.

  She slammed her lips shut.

  Better.

  “Paige, you owe me money.”

  “I told you,” she said. “I don’t have it anymore.”

  “I understand that,” I said carefully. “But I would like it back. I’ve decided that you can work for me until your debt is settled.”

  “Work...for you?” She said, looking around the room. Then she looked back at me quickly. “Like, as a hooker?” She whispered nervously.
r />   “No.”

  “Oh, like as a prostitute?”

  “No.”

  “Lady of the night?”

  “Paige, no matter how many times you say it, no. I do not expect you to fuck me to settle your debt.”

  “Oh.”

  “Not that I wouldn’t love that,” I told her. I didn’t know why I was telling her that. It was just that she looked so damn nervous and a little bit scared. “But that’s not what I have in mind for you and I.”

  “Then what?” She said.

  “Consider yourself a sort of personal assistant,” I said.

  “So I’ll be doing paperwork?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Mr. Locke....forgive the question, but why don’t you just wait until next week? I get paid from my regular job, and I can pay you back.”

  “I think you’ll enjoy working with me this week,” I told her. “Besides, I can sweeten the deal,” I said.

  “What?”

  “I’ll make it worth your time,” I said. “You’re interesting to me.”

  “Am I?” She raised an eyebrow.

  “Quite.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re an unusual sort of person, Paige. Not a lot of people interest me.”

  “That’s not very believable.”

  “No?”

  “You’re rich,” she shrugged. She gestured at the space. “Look at all of this. You can have anything you want. Why do you want me to be around you so much?”

  “I think we can help each other out, Paige.”

  “Yeah, you said that,” she said, standing up. She started pacing nervously in the center of the room. “But you didn’t say what you’d be doing for me. You want me to be some sort of glorified secretary. Not,” she added sharply, pointing a finger. “A hooker. Okay. I get it. What’s in it for me?”

  “Besides wiping your debt clean?”

  “Besides that,” she nodded.

  It was time to show her some of my cards. Not all of them, of course, but a few. It was time to let Paige know exactly why she should be working with me.

  “I know who your father is,” I said simply, and Paige turned white.