Monthly Maintenance: Selected Stories from Blushing Books Authors

by Blushing Books

  "I’m hoping you may have learned your lesson," he said quietly. "So this is what we’re going to do. You’re getting twenty more right now, as hard as I can make them. The remaining ones I’ll defer to next year. If you don’t do better, you can expect to get them- plus interest - along with anything else I have to do. But if you meet your new goal, we’ll forget about them. Fair enough?"

  "Yes, oh yes!" Although his final volley made her want to scream, she got through it, rejoicing when he uttered the final number.

  He sat down and pulled her into a sitting position in his arms, hugging her closely. "You did very well, darling, for your first time. We have a few more minutes until midnight. Why don’t you put on something appropriate and meet me downstairs?"

  "All right," she mumbled, wondering what she had in her closet which wouldn’t aggravate her backside. After he left, she decided on her satin robe, tying it loosely around her waist. Usually she wore something under it, but tonight it seemed appropriate she remain naked.

  Rob already had the champagne open as she came into the living room. He grinned as she pursed her lips. "Are you sure you haven’t had enough bubbles for tonight?"

  "Yes." Although even brushing her teeth hadn’t restored her taste to normal. Still she took the glass and returned his smile as the ball began to drop on their television screen. The crowd chanting the final seconds reminded her what she’d gone through with the paddle.

  "Happy New Year, darling," Rob whispered as they completed the toast, his hand slipping under her robe. As his fingers found their favorite spot, the second fire building below overwhelmed her. She set down the flute and pulled him to her, kissing him deeply. He grimaced slightly as his tongue roamed her mouth, and she could tell he’d gotten the remnants of the shampoo. Yet he accepted it as he did her, drawing her down on top of him on the couch as they made love, their bodies responding with more intensity than ever before.

  Not just a new year, but a new way of making love, she marveled as waves of pleasure rippled through her. And in some ways, a new husband. One who would set and enforce limits in the way she’d secretly wanted her entire life.

  Obviously he’d been thinking the same thing. "We still need to finish your resolutions, but let me tell you mine. Continue working out at the gym. Get the taxes in at least as early. Organize the garage, so next time I can find the paintbrush. At least once a week, meet you for lunch at that salad bar Penny told me about. But most importantly - pay attention to your progress." He cupped her swollen backside. "I think you’d do a lot better if we had these discussions each week, instead of once a year. So unless you want to be sitting gingerly on Mondays, you’d better keep up."

  Andrea buried her head in his chest so he couldn’t see her grin. Before, New Year’s resolutions depressed her because she knew how quickly they’d be discarded. Now she knew she’d actually be keeping them. Or at least most of the time.

  And either way, it would be a wonderful year.

  Groundhog Spanking

  By Monica Vale

  Groundhog Spanking by Monica Vale

  “Rise and shine…just the way my hand is rising and these lovely young ladies will soon have shining red backsides as their gift for Groundhog Day. That’s right…your hot host is sitting in his spanking chair!”

  Ginger Delaney groaned as she reached over to shut off the alarm radio as quickly as she could. Even so, she was not fast enough to avoid hearing the first resounding smacks, followed by the shrieks of his all-too-willing victim: OUCH! OUCH! OUCH!

  And to think that this disgusting degenerate was paid more than anyone else in radio history, while she had to drag herself out of bed each morning to sell houses. She sighed at the unfairness of it all.

  Of course, looking on the bright side, she was a top selling Realtor…or, rather, the Delaney Duo had always been a top-selling team. Despite everything, she and Herb still worked very well together.

  For one thing, she looked the way people expected a lady Realtor to appear…with her blond hair piled carefully on her head in a seemingly carefree, tousled style, above her high, hollow cheekbones, while wearing her agency’s trademark royal blue velvet blazer.

  To be fair, Herb was their image of a male professional…windblown brown hair over a square jaw and equally square fists that were always clenched at the side of his tweed sweater.

  That look always appealed to the lady clients, just as it had attracted Ginger Nelson herself, when they had met at a sales awards ceremony during their first year in the business. When they had tied for the honors as Rookie of the Year, it had seemed a sign that they were fated to be together.

  She shook her head to drive the thought away, as she hastily pulled on her new red turtleneck jersey. He was coming over this morning to help prepare the house for sale, using all the tricks of their trade to make it look better than new.

  He would be sure to paint the front door, for one thing, because prospective buyers spent so much time staring at it while their own agents took the key from the lockbox. In this “down” market, and especially in wintertime, sales agents had to use all the tricks of their trade. Now she was using them to sell her own property.

  They had a contract with a landscaper for their one-acre lot, but that still left plenty of work to do inside.

  She would begin by clearing the cluttered living room of all the things that did not belong there. He would never help her remove them, since he had put them there himself and stubbornly insisted on keeping them. So she would have to drag them to the basement before he got there.

  That barely left time for her morning coffee, before she heard his key in the lock. The sight of him standing in the hallway, with his fists against his hips, made her heart stop as it always did. At once, she shook her head again. They had good reasons for going through with this divorce, and a surge of hormones was no reason for canceling it.

  “Have you had your coffee yet?” she asked him, as he hung his coat in the closet. With a faint smile touching her thin lips, she went on, “You could never start the day without Starbucks Café Verona, any more than I could.”

  “It smells great, but I have had some already.”

  With one of the new female rookies at the agency? The thought made her grin grow narrower beneath her clear red gloss.

  “Well, then, let’s get to work,” Ginger said.

  Turning towards the living room on his right, Herb said resentfully, “I see that you have already started it. You took out my favorite leather easy chair and my Western paperbacks.”

  “I dragged them both down to the basement, yes,” she told him. “In case you haven’t noticed, this is a Colonial house. We bought it because it is always the easiest style to sell, in case you didn’t remember. That means everything must be elegant and formal…especially in the dining and living rooms, which are the first thing that the buyer sees, on either side of the entrance hall.”

  “Yes, I remember how you kept saying that,” he muttered. “I happened to like Western ranch houses. I also notice that they are getting more popular now, because more elderly empty nesters are looking for places with no stairs to climb.”

  “Well, we did not buy a Western ranch house,” she went on, with a great show of patience, putting her hands on her hips “And that cracked leather chair and those paperback Westerns do not fit in a Colonial home. As you see, my new Queen Anne clawfoot chair with the white brocade upholstery looks just right next to the marble fireplace, and so do the leather-bound classic novels. You can take your things to your apartment, where anything will fit right in.”

  “Thanks, I’ll do that tonight,” he said. “Now don’t we have a few more things to do?”

  “Lots of them. Just to start with, we’ve got to replace all the bulbs in the dining room chandelier.”

  “You mean, I’ve got to do it.”

  “Well, I’m just not tall enough, unless I stand on a chair. That could be dangerous, if there’s no one here to catch me when I fall.” Fearing that
that made her sound too helpless and needy, she went hastily on, “I will help you, though. I can stand next to the fixture handing you up the bulbs.”

  As she stood gazing up at him, where he stood on top of the ladder, she could not help noticing how tight his backside was and how strong and square his hands appeared. Even worse, she could not fight her own strange sense of satisfaction at standing beneath him, as his helpmeet.

  Now she shook her head harder than ever. They had been completely equal partners, just as they should be, even if she sometimes had to repeat her opinions more than once before he agreed to them.

  On that basis, they had been a great success…to the point where their careers had taken up all their time. Realtors had to work on evenings and weekends, when clients were free to shop for homes.

  And, she feared, they had spent too much of their free time talking about their work…deciding how much they should ask for each house, for instance. Sometimes, their discussions turned into something more like debates, although she usually won them.

  The last disagreement had become so heated, he had wound up walking out of the office right in front of the client, and she had been too proud to try to stop him. Instead, she had just made some excuse for him and gone right on making the sale. Funny, she could no longer even remember which fight it had been. There had been so many in the last few years.

  “All done now.” This time she almost jumped, because his words seemed to fit their situation so well. He meant, of course, that he was done changing the light bulb, but the phrase also described their relationship.

  After eleven years of marriage, they were, indeed, all done. It was just lucky that they had never had children. Still, she could not help sighing at the thought of the coming divorce.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked her.

  “No, nothing at all,” she answered quickly. “Now we should go back to the kitchen and change the bulbs in the overhead fixture there, too. Two of the six have burned out.”

  There were enough chores to keep them both busy until dinnertime. As he finished painting the front door and started walking towards the garage, she found herself wondering if she just might ask him casually whether he wanted her to throw something together for their dinner. Before she could do it, he told her he had to go.

  “Are you having company?” she asked, too casually.

  “I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” he answered sharply.

  “You are right,” she assured him. “It certainly is not.”

  So she ate a frozen dinner alone that night and hoped he was doing the same.

  * * *

  “Rise and shine…just the way my hand is rising and these lovely young ladies will soon have shining red backsides as their gift for Groundhog Day. That’s right…your hot host is sitting in his spanking chair!”

  Ginger groaned even more loudly this time. Hadn’t that idiot radio host been bad enough the day before, without playing the same so-called comedy routine all over again? And it wasn’t even Groundhog Day any more.

  Throwing her red dress over her head and hastily pinning her hair up, she marched down to the kitchen. She would call the station about their annoying mistake, as soon as she had made her coffee.

  Reaching for the lamp switch, she froze in her tracks. Only four of the lights went on, even though Herb had replaced the two burned-out bulbs the morning before.

  Forgetting her coffee for once, she raced to the dining room and tried switching on the chandelier. The bulbs were burned out there again, too.

  Turning to the living room, she saw that something was wrong there as well and soon realized what it was. That hateful, awful, out-of-place cracked leather easy chair and those tacky paperback novels were right back in their previous places, next to her own brocade Queen Anne furniture and hardbound classic books. Despite the cold, she pulled the front door open long enough to see that it was soiled and scraped again.

  It was all too easy to see exactly what had happened. As soon as she heard Herb’s key in the lock, she started telling him exactly what she thought of his little trick.

  “You must believe you’re very clever!” she shouted. “You snuck in here, dirtied up the door again, took out the new light bulbs and carried your old books and furniture back up to the living room.”

  “What in the hell are you talking about?” he yelled back, glaring down at her from his six feet of height. “Why would I do a thing like that, after I worked all day making the place look good? Someone else must have snuck in and done it.”

  “Just who could that have been?”

  “Well, it certainly could not have been me!” he exclaimed, glowering even more fiercely. “Since we plan to divide the profits from our home sale, why would I want to ruin our chances of selling it?”

  Why, indeed. She had to think about that one for a moment, before coming up with the obvious answer.

  “Just to hurt me!” she shouted up at him, angrily fighting back tears. “You hate me so much, you want to stop me from being happy any way you can…even if it means keeping us both from making any money on our home sale.”

  “We earn enough money as it is,” he reminded her.

  Once again, she was silent…but only for a moment, before she thought of a logical reply.

  “Exactly!” she crowed, shaking one long red fingernail up at his burly chest. “You could afford to get revenge this way.”

  “Why would I want revenge on you? You told me that there have not been any other men, even after we separated.”

  “If I had tried to get one,” she snarled slowly, “I would not have failed. I am still a damned attractive woman, even if you stopped noticing years ago.”

  “I never stopped noticing you,” he mumbled. “You were the one who got too busy to notice ME, whenever we weren’t arguing. But that still isn’t a reason to do myself out of seven hundred thousand dollars or more. You still haven’t told me why I would do such a thing.”

  “Because you hate the house so much! You wanted a Western ranch style, but I talked you into getting this Colonial instead.”

  “If I hated it,” he answered slowly, “I would be very eager to get rid of it, wouldn’t I? I just hated the way you pushed me into buying it.”

  This time, she had no convincing argument in return.

  “Then I’m not sure why you did it,” she admitted. “But there is one thing I do know for sure…no one else had any reason to ruin all the work you had done.”

  “If you believe that, then I can’t think of anything else to say, and I might as well go.”

  “You are right about that, at least!”

  As she saw him stalking towards the garage, she strode back to the kitchen, looking for her list of handymen. Luckily, the first one she called was available.

  Jose did the work much faster than she and Herb had accomplished it together. What’s more, he smiled cheerfully while he did it, rather than arguing with her. That alone made him worth the expense.

  * * *

  “Rise and shine…just the way my hand is rising and these lovely young ladies will soon have shining red backsides as their gift for Groundhog Day. That’s right…your hot host is sitting in his spanking chair!”

  This time she came awake slowly. As she did, she realized that that stupid script was growing on her. In fact, the whole idea was starting to turn her on. This time, she listened to the entire first spanking…every smack and shriek…stroking herself as she did.

  Perhaps he did deserve his sky-high salary, after all. He was trying to earn it, since he changed the message for all the holidays and not just…

  Groundhog Day!

  This time, she raced to meet Herb as soon as she heard his key in the lock.

  “I know you didn’t put the burned-out bulbs back in again or throw dirt at the door,” she assured him, as soon as he entered the hall.

  “You do?” he answered sarcastically. “Well, that’s nice of you. So who do you think was guilty?”


  “No one!” she crowed. “It all started on Groundhog Day. Don’t you see, it’s like that old movie. Bill Murray has to keep living through the same Groundhog Day over and over again, until he gets it right. Obviously, that’s what we’re doing now.”

  “Obviously,” he told her.

  “Now you must really think I’m crazy.”

  “Not at all,” he assured her. “You must have just dreamed the whole thing.”

  “I certainly did not! There really is something weird about this neighborhood…it is not your average upscale Washington suburb. When I asked my friend Georgia Bailey how she was doing, she smiled in a really strange way and told me it’s a wonderful life. It sounded as though she were talking about an old movie too, and she and Marv had lived through it together.

  “When I told her so, she leaned forward and whispered that she really had made a wish that had turned out badly…just like Jimmy Stewart in the movie…and she was very glad to be able to change things back again. And you know how sensible she has always been.”

  “Well, she was not even being rational this time. She was obviously nuts on the subject.” But Herb sounded so uncertain, Ginger decided to press her advantage.

  “Anyway, it’s worth a try,” she insisted. “We’ll do our best to get this day right this time. Otherwise, we could spend the rest of our lives living through it…and none of our days have been that great recently.”

  With a sigh, she added, “I left all your furniture and books up here in the parlor. I know they don’t belong here…they don’t go at all with the décor…but I’ll keep them, just so we won’t have to keep doing the same things forever.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to see who…or what…is doing it to us?” he asked, as he changed those light bulbs for the third time.