by Thianna D
“Because that’s the way they have it set up,” his father replied.
“I want to go fishing with Mr. Carmichael,” Michael said. “One whole weekend of fishing and swimming.” He chortled over his macaroni. “I can’t wait.”
“I don’t want to go,” Buddy said, dropping back down to kneel on his chair.
Marcus glanced up from his plate in surprise. “I thought you wanted to do the Wild West camp? Cowboys and Indians, riding real horses and learning how to lasso the wily stray log.”
“I did,” the six-year-old admitted. “Now I want to stay here.”
Marcus studied him a moment. “Are you sure? I think summer camp will be a lot of fun.”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
Poking at her own plate, Cadence listened to them go back and forth, but didn’t say anything. At least, not until Buddy swiveled on his chair and asked, “Did you ever go to summer camp, Cadence?”
Glancing from child to father, Cadence then poked at her plate again. “Yes, I did. And your father’s right. It was a lot of fun. You might be sorry you missed it if you don’t go.”
Buddy wasn’t convinced. “What did you do?”
“Swimming and hiking, mostly. It was a long time ago, but I remember eating s’mores by firelight at night and playing in the woods during the day. Sometimes we hiked down to the beach and we’d climb on the rocks and look at tide pools.”
“We don’t have a beach,” Daniel commented.
“That was when I lived in Florida,” she told him. “You might not have beaches, but Colorado does have some nice features that Florida doesn’t.”
“Like what?” Michael scoffed.
“Mountains,” Cadence pointed out. “Awesome skiing. Humidity that doesn’t try to suffocate you with every breath you take.”
“Florida has Disney World,” Daniel pointed out.
“I want to go camping at Disney World,” Buddy piped up, rising on his knees again. “Can we go to Disney World, Dad?”
“Maybe next summer, Buddy,” Marcus said. “Definitely not this one, though.”
“It’s very expensive,” Cadence told him.
“You’ve been?” Buddy asked, as crushed as if she’d gone only that morning and simply hadn’t invited him along.
“It was a long time ago,” she assured him. “And all I really remember about it…well, apart from the lady who wigged out in the middle of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride…is that it was very, very expensive.”
“Maybe we could afford to go if we didn’t have Cadence,” Michael said, poking at his food.
Daniel thumped him in the ribs with his elbow. “That was mean.”
Dropping his fork on his plate, Marcus wiped his mouth with his napkin and then fixed his eldest with a hard stare. “That doesn’t fly here and you know it. Apologize for your rudeness or leave my table.”
“That’s okay,” Cadence said, trying to keep the mood from souring any more than it already had. “I’m not offended.”
“I am,” Marcus countered. He pointed to Michael, who sat poking silently at his supper, his mouth sullenly shut. “Leave my table.”
His abruptly abandoned fork clattered loudly on the table as Michael hopped down out of his chair and marched himself off to his room.
Dropping his napkin on the table now too, Marcus stood up. “Cadence, I will see you in my office now.”
“What did I do?” she protested.
“Now,” he repeated, his tone just as calm as calm could be and yet so stern as to be unignorable.
Her exit felt every bit as sullen as Michael’s had when she shoved back her chair and, glaring at Marcus, limped for the front of the house.
“Cane,” Marcus reminded, and she promptly came back to the table long enough to grab it. She limped down the short hallway carrying it in her hand, but she’d be damned if she leaned on it.
Moving far enough ahead of her to catch his office door, he held it open for her, letting her enter first. She hadn’t done anything wrong. Why did it suddenly feel like she was in trouble?
I would take you into my study…take you across my knee…bare your bottom…
She shivered.
…then I would spank you…
Cane held tight in her hand, Cadence folded her arms across her chest. She struck a defensive pose, absolutely refusing to feel like a little girl about to be scolded in the den by her father. She barely remembered her father, but she knew for a fact Marcus wasn’t him. Regardless of what he might think. Maybe someone ought to remind him of that fact. She squared her shoulders, gearing herself up to be that someone, but she never got the chance.
Coming into the room behind her, Marcus closed and then locked the door. Without a word, he took the cane away from her, laying it down upon his desk before clamping his warm hand onto the back of her neck. Careful not to propel any faster than she could move, he marched her into the nearest corner. Or rather, because the actual corner was taken up by a coat rack, he parked her next to it with her nose positioned not two inches from the anatomy poster hanging on the wall. She was so startled, all she could do was stare in shock at the musculature of the human body, while behind her, in soft and serious tones, Marcus said, “You are their nanny, but I am their father. Don’t ever countermand my authority in front of them again, is that clear?”
“I wasn’t—” She stopped with a start when he shifted his grip from her neck to her shoulder.
“Do you want to get your bag and return to Venia’s?” he asked, his question every bit as firm as a demand.
Although he didn’t actually say it, Cadence knew what he was really asking. An explosion of phantom sensations shot up the backs of her thighs and spread out like a wave across her bottom.
Was he going to spank her? Right now? She was a grown woman. This could not be happening! And why did this feel like excitement rather than anger or dread? She wasn’t excited by this, the prospect of his hand clapping hard down across her bottom. Surely not!
“No,” she said, her throat so tight that it came out raspy and hoarse.
He swatted her, sending an entirely different and anything but phantom explosion of sensation biting into the round curve of her right buttock. The impact jolted out her hips and buckled her knees. She caught the wall at the same time Marcus caught her.
“Steady,” he said, soft and calm, a tone that was at complete odds with the force that had been behind that breath-taking swat.
Cadence hugged the wall, holding herself as steady as she could, her legs shaking under her in a way that had absolutely nothing—nothing at all—to do with her messed up knees. And it wasn’t over yet. How could it not be over? Her brain scrambled to make sense of it when he shifted his hold on her, wrapping one strong arm around her waist to help hold her, positioning his body to bolster her own before continuing. His hand clapped hard across her left bottom cheek, not once now but twice. She lost her composure to a yelp, more startlement than pain, when the fourth and last spank bounced back off her right side, and suddenly everything fell very silent and very still.
Her heart was a thundering storm inside her chest.
His heart was steady and calm. She knew because she could feel its heady beat where her shoulder pressed against his chest. It was like being hugged by a furnace. Everywhere he touched her burned.
His spanking hand came to rest at the small of her back. She had never been so intensely aware of how close a man was to touching her bottom, not ever before in her life.
In that calm, no-nonsense voice of his, Marcus said, “Don’t ever countermand my authority in front of my children again, is that clear?”
“Yes, sir.” The response was as instantaneous as it was startling to hear. Those servile words simply fell right out of her mouth, as if she said them all the time. Up until this exact moment, she hadn’t thought once about giving Marcus that kind of deference. But it came out so naturally and filled up the situation between them with such earth-shaking significance that she di
dn’t know if it were even possible to take them back again.
“Can you hold yourself up?”
She nodded, but she honestly didn’t know what would happen when he let her go. “I’m fine,” she whispered. “I’m fine.”
His fingers trailed right up her spine, and a long, slow shiver followed with it. When he reached her shoulder, he gave it a comforting squeeze. She didn’t know how to reconcile that kind of comfort with what he’d just done. There were a lot of things she didn’t know just then.
Marcus let her go. Assuming he was going to leave her there, she didn’t turn around. But a half second later, she startled all over again when she heard the soft thump and felt the slight bump of a wooden chair tucking right up behind her.
“Hold still,” he said, as he reached around her waist. And Cadence did. She held perfectly still, even as the incredible shock of what he was doing bounced through her mind all over again. She felt the button at her pants release, heard the metal teeth of her zipper clicking down its track and still she couldn’t believe he was stripping her out of her jeans even when he tugged, shucking them straight down her thighs. Her underwear followed, leaving her entire backend chilling in the very sudden, breezy absence of cover.
“Sit,” he told her.
Her knees buckled when she tried, and Cadence more collapsed onto the chair he’d positioned behind her.
“Naughty bottom on the seat,” he said, before tapping an invisible spot on the wall directly in front of her. “Nose right here.”
Did he mean that figuratively or…?
Cadence bent uncertainly, but he didn’t correct her, not even when she touched the tip of her nose to the off-white paint of the wall.
“You have five minutes of timeout. I’ll come and get you when you’re done. If you come out of this corner before then, I will put you over my knee and I will spank you for real.”
That hadn’t been real?
“Did you hear me?”
“Yes, sir,” she said again.
He walked out of his office then, leaving her with her nose on the wall and her bare bottom on that chair and suffocating under the most incredible sensation of utter chastisement that she had ever felt. The wall began to blur before her.
She wouldn’t cry. She refused to cry. Cadence never, ever cried, not even with a freshly spanked bottom and her nose as close to being in the corner as that stupid coat rack would allow. She blinked furiously and willed the heat in her face to die back and the sting in her eyes to go away. The sting in her southern cheeks was a little slower in complying, but maybe that was only because sitting in this chair of shame made the contrition of needing to be spanked feel all that much worse.
Never had five minutes taken so long to pass her by. She heard his footsteps come up the hall, but it passed right by her door and carried him steadily upstairs instead. Silence filled the house, punctuated by her own soft breaths and the whisper-soft ticks of an unseen clock somewhere behind her.
Heavy footsteps and the sound of father and son conversing announced Marcus’s steady descent back downstairs.
“All of them, please. I want the kitchen spic and span,” was all she heard him say, and that only happened because he’d opened his office door at the same time he’d said it.
“I know,” Michael grumbled, but she could tell he was already halfway down the short hall, retreating toward the kitchen.
Cadence kept her nose on the wall even after the doctor came inside and closed the door behind him.
“You may turn around now.”
She sat back from the wall, but made no effort at all to turn around until he came up behind her, took hold of the chair and pulled just a little further back from the wall. He stepped in between her and the coat rack, once more catching her chin between his fingers, physically lifting her face so he could see her. Cadence hadn’t realized until that exact moment just how angry she was. She’d never hated anyone before, but right there in that brittle space in time, she was sure she hated Marcus.
It took everything she had to keep that hatred off her face.
“You may come out of the corner,” Marcus softly repeated, “if you think you can be civil.”
One more word. Just one more. She’d show him civil.
When she still didn’t move, Marcus said, “I’m going to hug you now…”
Go ahead and try it, buster. Her mouth ached to tell him exactly what he could do with his hugs.
“…and then you will be forgiven…”
She was going to tell him what to do with his forgiveness too.
“…and then it’s done, do you understand?”
He waited, as if to give her a chance to either argue or comply. Cadence couldn’t make herself do either. She said nothing and she didn’t move, not even when he hooked his hand under her elbow. When he prodded, she stood, stiff and wooden, with her pants sliding down her legs into a puddle of useless denim around her shins.
His arms came around her, drawing her in, pulling her right up until she had no choice but to lay her head upon his shoulder. He smelled good, just like his aftershave. His arms felt good too, strong and comforting, folding in around her as if he had no clue whatsoever just how much she hated him. Despised him. Wished he were dead, even, buried under all these Colorado mountains, just one gigantic and flat bloody smear with the weight of the rocks crushing his bones into dust.
“It’s all right,” Marcus murmured, stroking her hair. “It’s all right, Cadence.”
But it wasn’t.
She felt the brush of his hand as he gently rubbed her back and something deep inside her, something so thin and fragile that she hadn’t even known it existed way down in the deeps of her flesh and soul, snapped. She felt it, the crispness and cruel irrevocability of that break. And Cadence, who never, ever cried, felt it when he folded his arms just that much tighter around her, as if he too had felt that brittle snap, and totally fell apart.
Chapter 9
The next morning with her legs screaming in protest the instant she started to move, Cadence rolled out of bed. It wasn’t even six o’clock yet, which was comforting in a way. It reminded her of her dancing days, back when practice routines started long before the sun put in an appearance. There would be no dancing today, though. If her knees had anything to say about it, there wasn’t going to be much walking, either. It was sheer force of will that got her onto her feet. If it weren’t for the wall, she never would have made it to the bathroom. Once she was moving, however, she limbered up and walking became easier. Not any less painful really, but easier. Digging the aspirin out of her bag, she took four and then she took a shower.
Marcus was waiting for her in the family room, already dressed for the day in comfortable beige trousers and a white, button-up shirt with the sleeves already rolled up past his elbows.
“Where’s your cane?” he said before she even set foot in the family room. She had to go back to her room and get it, but when she again entered the family room a few minutes later, she did so with the cane held stubbornly in her fist. She didn’t lean on it once and if he said one word about it, she was going to clock him one.
Marcus made absolutely no comments, but what he did say when she was at last standing before him was delivered with a certain degree of censure and a mildly aggravating twist of a smile. “I’m very serious about your having a cane with you at all times. That cane goes with you wherever you go. Forget it again, and I’m going to spank you. Agreed?”
“I’m perfectly aware of what my capabilities are,” she said testily.
“I’m glad to hear that. But until you start heeding what your body is telling you regarding those capabilities, I guess I’m going to have to heed them for you.”
“You can make me carry it, but you can’t make me use it.”
“Of course, I can. I’m simply picking my battles. Still, I want you to know I brought a few implements down to my office this morning, one being a wood-backed hairbrush. The first time you fall beca
use you stubbornly insist on carrying your cane instead of using it, I am going to spank you with that hairbrush.”
It was a convincing threat, one that was delivered with a smile. How he managed to do that and still be so very believable she didn’t know. She did, however, put the end of the cane on the ground. She refused to lean on it, but she did hold it the way it was meant to be held. And she glared at him the entire time she did it. It was hard to hold onto the intensity of her irritation when all she felt inside was so completely, thoroughly chastened.
“Good girl,” he said, deepening that feeling to depths of uncomfortable humiliation the likes of which she hadn’t known existed. Her stomach squirmed, knotting up in an instant, although maybe that had more to do with the fact that he had reached for her, cupping her elbow while he took her cane away to lay it on the coffee table a short distance away. His hand was firm on her arm. “Can you lay down on the floor?”
“Why?” she asked suspiciously.
“I’m going to massage your legs to start and then we’re going to do some gentle stretching exercises. Once I show you how, you’ll be able to do these on your own throughout the day if you feel your legs begin to get tight. It should help with the muscle cramps.”
She barely heard him, her brain having locked in on the first of two major problems: He was going to touch her? The other was more immediate. “I have to get down on the floor?”
He braced his foot directly in front of both of hers, shifting his grip on her from her arm to her hands. “Hold onto me,” he assured. “I’ll help you. Lean back.”
“No.” She stiffened, refusing to move, even when both his hands took hold of hers.
“Lean back,” he encouraged. “I won’t drop you, I promise.” His smile turned dazzling, teasing. She didn’t know what was worse: his Jekyll or his Hyde. How could this be the same man who had spanked her last night and threatened again to spank her this morning? With a hairbrush, no less.