by Maren Smith
“Run away, how? That doesn’t make sense,” she said, bewildered.
Sneaking past them, he returned her briefcase where he’d found it.
“Doesn’t it?” Eric replied, following with his eyes as Reeve snuck back to the door. “Are you saying your passions didn’t run away with you while I was spanking you? Before you answer, you might want to remember that your skirts were up, your ass was bare, and I had an excellent view of all that glistening liquid trickling down between your pussy lips. Spanking made you horny.”
Slugging his chest, Sandy bolted upright on his lap. Her already flushed face turned an even darker shade of red. “No, it did not!”
“Liars get spanked,” he told her. “So do submissives who hit their doms. Do I need to send you to get the hairbrush?”
She squirmed. “No, but I wasn’t lying. It wasn’t the spanking that… that m-made me… horny.” Her voice lowered to a whisper, as if that somehow made the admission easier to get out. “It was afterward.”
Eric was fighting back a smile, and Reeve understood why. Admissions like that were priceless… when they were genuine. God, she was good. He could almost believe her. The blush, the way she twisted at her fingers, the way she couldn’t hold his gaze as Eric made her spell it out. “Afterward? When I held you?”
“No, well, yes. But not the holding part, the…” Her breath caught and she whispered again, “…the burning part. When it got all hot… and throbbing. All over. Including, um, down there.”
God help him, she even pointed. Reeve moved closer, drinking in the sight of her confiding something so intimate and obviously embarrassing.
“You mean when Master Reeve spanked you,” Eric was only too happy to help explain, something that hit him both in the chest and below the belt. It stole Reeve’s breath when she nodded, the lying little deceiver. What the hell kind of game was she playing now? What could she possibly hope to gain by feigning… whatever she thought she was feigning for him?
“I’ve never experienced that before.” It was the cruelest trick that she seemed so honestly perplexed.
Maybe she expected Eric to carry tales—which he absolutely would—as a kind of manipulation from afar? Not that it mattered. Reeve frowned. Like it or not, he was stuck with her and this assignment, and that meant finding some way of keeping her occupied until her time ran up.
What exactly (twice underlined) are Littles?
Hands on hips, Reeve met Eric’s gaze over the top of her bowed head. He couldn’t stop Sandy from writing. Apart from a court injunction, nobody could. She was here for a story, what she thought she was going to find he could well guess. In his experience, people who preferred the vanilla world rarely saw anything in his that made sense to them. Few were outright hostile toward those things they didn’t understand, but fewer still were tolerant. Most vanillas fell somewhere in between, and there simply was no guessing where on the spectrum Sandy might fall unless…
Unless he exposed her to his world. Maybe he was looking at this the wrong way. Instead of being pissed at her judgmental intrusion, perhaps he should look on this as a teaching opportunity. If he stayed on his toes, controlling the flow of information and turning it into something that she could understand, perhaps this didn’t have to be a bad thing. He harbored absolutely no illusions that when she left here, she was going to write something. This wasn’t a den of drug-pushers and sex-traffickers, and he could show her that. The question was, what kind of person was Sandy Ebelson? The sort who would accept the truth of what he showed her, perhaps change the story she was intent on writing from something salacious to something positive? God knew, they could use a good review or two, although a local paper wasn’t likely to give it. Not in this small-minded town. Or was she the kind of person who took one look at the truth and twisted it to fit a story designed to destroy this place?
If that was who she was, he was taking a huge risk in showing her anything at all.
If that was who she was, a tiny voice in the depths of his soul promised, he knew how to deal with that. Enemies were like snakes; the only good one was a dead one. In Afghanistan, killing his enemies had been a matter of group survival. Here, the solution would need to be more figurative than literal, but the end result would be the same. She was the one who’d declared herself the enemy. She was the one who’d fired the first shot, coming into his home, a place that he loved, filled with people he prized as highly as his own family. If she left here in peace, so be it. But if at any point he suspected she meant his home and family harm, then he had no problem whatsoever in returning the favor.
Except that he wouldn’t just harm her, Reeve decided. He would break her.
Chapter 5
I feel very silly,” Sandy said.
“You look very pretty,” Eric corrected, but since he was half responsible for how she currently looked, she wasn’t sure how much stock she ought to put in his opinion. “Don’t you agree, Daddy Reeve?”
“Stunning,” Reeve said, adjusting the cuff of his nineteen-twenties formal coat. He hadn’t looked at her, so she wasn’t sure how much stock to put in his opinion, either.
Standing outside a room headed by a gigantic wooden plaque that read “Nursery” in scrolling letters, she gave the incredibly high hem of her white babydoll dress in lacy pink trim a tug, but it was hopeless. There simply was not enough material to extend from her shoulders to her butt, and cover it all too. Her underpants were showing. Scratch that, her pale pink underpants with their fluffy multitude of lace-ruffles were showing. She looked like an overgrown toddler to first time parents, ready to snap a family Christmas photo. It wasn’t even a salacious outfit, and that’s what confused Sandy the most. She’d seen sexy babydoll costumes. Hell, the internet was full of them, especially around Halloween, pacifiers and all. But this? When Reeve and Eric had taken her to Wardrobe to transfer her out of her princess garb and into this one, Sandy had stared at herself in the mirrors in absolute bewilderment. Maybe a little embarrassment, too, but mostly it was all bewilderment.
The neckline was high; her boobs beneath the frilly pink bib could barely be glimpsed. Her bottom showed, but so long as she didn’t let her panties crawl into places they shouldn’t, then really all that could be seen of that were the lace ruffles. A giant pink sash around her waist tied at the back in a massive bow, and that did give her figure a bit of a shapely outline, but that was the only attempt at sexifying her that she could see. Where were the garters and thigh-high stockings to draw wandering eyes to her legs? She had great legs. They’d have been spectacular in garter stockings.
Where were the high heel shoes, for that matter? She had neither. Instead, what they’d provided her were un-sexy plain white knee socks and shiny black Mary Jane shoes that buckled on the sides and had little pink bows on the heels. The pink play bib meant to “protect” the front of her white dress while she “played” was dotted with bath-time rubber duckies. Her hair wasn’t even sexy. It was pulled into pigtails that stuck out on either side of her head and curled beautifully thanks to the Wardrobe attendant’s skill with a curling iron, but her makeup? They’d scrubbed it completely off her. She wasn’t even allowed lip gloss and a little mascara. She didn’t even like to look at herself without makeup on.
She was confused.
“Do you want a stuffy to carry with you?” Eric had asked as he pinned a pink and white pacifier to the front of her bib.
Sandy looked into the giant box of children’s stuffed animals. “Not particularly.”
“Pick a damn stuffy,” Reeve told her.
She took a two-tone blue stegosaurus out of the box. She even hugged it a little, as if it were a shield between her and the impatient and slightly-mean Reeve. She hugged it even tighter when he stepped in close enough to pluck up her pacifier and stick it in her mouth.
“From here on,” he told her, “I am Daddy Reeve and he is Daddy Eric, and your ass is toast if you give me the slightest provocation. Understand? Suck once for yes, and twice if y
ou need me to spell it out via a dozen or so short, sharp swats.”
It was an odd sensation, feeling that intimidated and that ridiculous all at once. She’d sucked her pacifier one time.
“Good girl,” he’d told her. Those were quite possibly the two most powerful words in the whole of the English language. When he said them, it didn’t matter how mean he’d just been or that she was starting to think he might not like her very much, she melted just a little bit anyway.
And now they were here, standing outside the Castle’s Nursery and she no longer felt melty anymore. All that was left was the utter ridiculousness, like she was trying to pass herself off as something she absolutely was not. Which was true. She was absolutely sure she did not belong in this nursery or any other, and sure she didn’t belong in this dress. She wasn’t sucking her pacifier anymore, either, but she was still hugging this stupid dinosaur.
“I feel stupid,” she said out loud, and jumped a half-second later when they both swatted her. Tender as her bottom was, they both left stinging palm-prints under the ruffles of her panties.
“If you say one more derogatory thing today,” Eric told her sternly from the right side, “not only will I spank you again—”
“Right here in the middle of this public hallway,” Reeve added from her other side.
“—for anyone passing by to witness,” Eric resumed, “but you can kiss this pair of panties goodbye, too. Got it?”
Every tender nerve in her body reawakened. She stepped back from both. Though she wasn’t so naïve as to think she was out of reach, she felt safer so long as she could see where both their hands were.
Eric arched an eyebrow. One finger tapped ominously against his bicep. “Got it?” he growled again.
Apparently, that question was not rhetorical. “Yes, sir,” she said hastily.
“Yes, sir, what?” he demanded, finger tapping again.
“Yes, sir—” Her lips fumbled. “M-Master Eric.”
“Do you want me to spank you?” he returned. “Because I can. I will, in fact, happily turn your bottom the same shade of pink as your apron.”
Her tingling bottom believed his warning. So did the rest of her. She clutched her hands in the folds of her bib, her palms sweating. “Yes, sir, Master Eric.”
Eric stiffened, drawing a deep breath as if he were struggling for patience. He exchanged looks with Reeve.
“I think,” Reeve suggested, “our miscommunication might hail from our time at Wardrobe. Apparently, she doesn’t remember our conversation there.”
“Or she wasn’t paying attention,” Eric suggested, more to her than to Reeve. “Or maybe she thinks she doesn’t have to listen, because she doesn’t think we mean what we say.”
What the hell was she doing wron—oh. She could have kicked herself. “I’m sorry, Daddy Eric.” Her face flamed as she said it. Her whole body flamed, but the change in title, silly as it seemed, appeased his rising temper.
“Little girls do not have Masters,” he explained, no longer quite as threatening as before. “They have Daddies who love and care for them, both when they’re good girls, and when they are—”
“Bad,” she guessed, not at all sure why her tummy flip-flopped when she said it.
“No.” Reeve frowned, and her stomach flip-flopped even harder.
“Littles are always good,” Eric explained. “Just with dips into naughtiness from time to time. Fortunately for everyone, naughtiness can be corrected.”
“So keep that in mind,” Reeve told her as he caught the door and heaved it open. “Stay close, do as you’re told, and don’t make me sorry I brought you here.”
She followed Eric in, her skin jumping in expectation when Reeve gave her butt a pat as she squeaked in past him. Her bottom tried to interpret it as a swat, but it wasn’t anywhere near hard enough to be that, and although parts of her were still tender to the touch from her spanking earlier, he didn’t touch those places. Still, a tingling-buzzing sensation hummed through her, growing in awareness as he fell into relaxed step behind her. Behind her felt like a very dangerous place for him to be, but it was only a few steps through the stone archway that separated the room from the door, and then they spread out again as they stepped out of the shadows and into the brightly lit nursery. Here the walls were painted with hill and meadow landscapes, dotted with fawns and bunnies and happy baby birds. Sandy’s sense of direction wasn’t great, but even she knew the nursery was too far into the Castle interior to have exterior-facing windows. And yet, there were three windows—giant stained glass works of art that one could not look through, but which shone as if sunlight were pouring in from the other side.
“Oh wow,” she said, taking in the cheery lights, the painted walls, the adult-sized cribs and playpens, and then the grown man standing up in one of them. He was dressed in nothing but a diaper and blue-knit booties. “Oh wow,” she said again. She’d tried to be neutral, but something must have leaked into her tone. The flat of Reeve’s hand caught her again, and this time it wasn’t a pat. It was back to being a swat.
“If you can’t say something nice,” he warned.
She stuck her pacifier back in her mouth and sucked once, pulling it flush up against her lips.
His look reinforced his warning, but he let it go, especially when a shriek of laughter erupted from a blonde in a yellow duckling onesie. She had to be thirty, if she was a day, but she jumped up from her blanket and her building blocks and ran to Eric with her arms outstretched as if she were five. “Daddy Eric!”
“Maggie Pie!” he declared and with equal enthusiasm, he caught her in his arms and spun her around. Planting a noisy kiss on her forehead, he set her back on her feet at arms’ length. Almost at once, his expression of welcome became one of censure. “Maggie, I’m not your daddy this visit, remember?”
Ducking her head, she picked at her fingers before she nodded. “I ‘member.”
“You have another daddy, don’t you?”
If anyone had talked to her in that patronizing tone, Sandy… well, she didn’t know what she would have done, but she wouldn’t be standing like a well-scolded Maggie, soaking up the reprimand as if she couldn’t get enough.
“Daddy Duncan,” she confirmed. “He’s very nice, even if he does spank me with the hairbrush. I don’t like the hairbrush.”
“Who do you think told him what you like and what you don’t like?” Eric countered.
She stopped picking at her fingers and stomped her foot. Her bottom lip was protruding as she began picking at her onesie buttons instead.
“Do you want to meet my new babygirl?” Eric offered.
Blonde lashes lifted far enough for Maggie to glare Sandy up and down. Sandy didn’t even have time to wave before she dropped them again. “No.”
“Okay then.” Turning her around, Eric gave her bottom a swat. “Back to your blanket you go.”
Maggie stole another look at Sandy, a corner of her mouth twisting in a grimace. It seemed more an expression of something internal this time, rather than something hostile aimed at Sandy. Regret maybe, for the daddy she had, instead of the one she wanted.
Taking Sandy’s hand, Eric led the way across the nursery to where three ladies in the drab grey gowns of Victorian governesses stood talking. That conversation halted the moment they noticed Eric and Reeve, and one broke from the rest to meet them halfway across the room.
“I’m so sorry,” she told them. “No one told me to expect you.” Her gaze dipped to Sandy. “Here I thought we had everyone for today. You may call me Nanny Colleen, child. What’s your name?”
Sandy took the pacifier from her mouth. “I don’t belong here. I’m…” She looked from Eric to Reeve hopefully. “…just visiting?”
Eric and Reeve exchanged looks, and then Eric took Nanny Colleen’s arm and led her a short distance away so they could talk privately. Reeve stayed with her.
“This is not me,” she said, as he propped himself against the wall and folded his arms. No ‘li
ttle’ girls came running up to call him Daddy, she noticed. Probably because he was too grumpy. Not like Eric, who was quick and easy with a wink and smile, and yet it wasn’t Eric she felt pulled toward. She had no idea what it was about Reeve, but there was something and it called to her. Maybe it had something to do with his hands. “How did you get all those scars?”
“Don’t change the subject,” Reeve said. Like a Pit Bull on a soup bone, he stuck with the current conversation. “For someone who expressed such an interest on your admission paperwork, you seem awfully quick to dismiss it now.”
“I’m not dismissing anything,” she protested, heat churning through her stomach as he continued to study her. “It’s just… not what I thought it was.”
“How would you know? You haven’t even tried it.”
“I’m in the dress, aren’t I?” Stubbornly avoiding his gaze, she watched the man in his crib instead. He was whimpering at a passing Nanny, hands outstretched for the bottle she was carrying. A sharp contrast to that was Maggie on her blanket, building a vertical block tower that read “fuck off bitch” in between the sullen glances she sent Sandy. Not far from her, a plump red-head, dressed in nothing but frilly panties, slept face down on a blanket with a teddy in the crook of her arm and her thumb in her mouth. “I don’t think I need to be any more involved in this to know it’s not me.”
“No?” His tone turned the benign question into an audible trap. Try as she might, though, she couldn’t figure out exactly what that trap was or how to avoid springing it.
“No,” she said firmly.
“You had a lot of certainties on your admission form, too. What happened to those?” There was a trap there, too. She could feel it.
She didn’t want it to, but her defensiveness was growing. “Look around you.” Not wanting to offend anyone, she lowered her voice as she gestured with her eyes to the whole of the room.
“I’m looking,” he said, staring straight at her.