Return to Corbin's Bend
Page 22
“You sure this will be okay?” she asked as they walked over. “I should have made pumpkin pie or something shouldn’t I?”
“It will be fine,” said Logan. “Don’t worry. It’s nice that you made something English for Thanksgiving. They’ll love it.”
“Thanks. This is my first Thanksgiving. I have no idea what to expect. Do I have to think of things to be thankful for?”
“Yes, you do.”
“What do we do there? Is it just everyone eating?”
“Usually. Then the men folk will watch the game and the women go off to the kitchen to do the dishes.”
“That’s a bit sexist, isn’t it?”
“You want to watch the game?”
“American Football? Fuck, no. I’d rather do the dishes.”
“Well there you are then. And Kirsty?” He laid his hand on her arm and stopped walking. She stopped walking too. “What did we agree about swearing?”
Kirsty blew out a puff of air exasperatedly causing her hair to fly up in front of her face. “I can’t believe it. I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. Now you’re trying to take my bad language away from me. I won’t even recognize myself.”
“I didn’t say you had to stop swearing altogether. Just when we’re out in company. You can swear as much as you like in my house or yours.”
“What if I forget? What if something just slips out?”
Logan stuck his hand up Kirsty’s skirt and slipped it under her thick woolen tights and into her panties. He squeezed hard on one of her butt cheeks. “If I were you, Kirsty, I’d make certain that nothing does just ‘slip out’. Otherwise you’re going to be punished. And we’re not talking good girl spankings here. It’ll be a bad girl spanking. With the paddle.”
Kirsty sighed. “You’re stifling my right to express myself, you brute. I won’t have anything to say.”
“I don’t think dropping a few swearwords is going to leave you short of conversational topics,” said Logan, squeezing her butt one more time before removing his hand and resuming walking. “Anyone who can swear so inventively when they burn the toast is not lacking in imagination.”
As they approached the Stevens’ front door, Kirsty turned to Logan. “Thank you,” she said.
“What for?” asked Logan, frowning slightly. “For threatening you with a spanking? Or for feeling you up when your hands were full of trifle and you and no chance to fight back? I’m not sure either or those things deserve thanks to be honest.”
Kirsty laughed. “Oh I think they do. But that wasn’t want I meant. If I’m going to be thankful for anything, I should be thankful for you. You’ve stood by me all the time I’ve been here. Even when I’ve messed up thoroughly. I’m lucky to have you. You’re the perfect boyfriend really.”
“Oh, I’m a long way from being perfect but thanks. I love you, you know.”
“I love you too. I really do.” Kirsty stared happily into Logan’s gorgeous chocolate-brown eyes.
“That’s something we both have to be thankful for then,” he replied.
“Oh yes. That and moving to this place. I can’t believe how much I love Corbin’s Bend now.”
“I’m glad you gave it a chance.”
“It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I never had much in the way of family and when my mum died, well, I didn’t feel like I had any family at all. My dad didn’t count. But I really feel like I have the great big family I always wanted now. I’ve got you, obviously. And there’s the Stevens and Lorelei, and Erin and Carol and Brent Carmichael. Even Charles Robinson. Is that silly?”
“Not at all. You belong here. People care about you very much.” Logan rang the doorbell. “Let’s go spend some time with them.”
The End
Etta Stark
Etta Stark is an enthusiastic writer and reader of romantic spanking fiction. She writes the kinds of books that she enjoys reading herself - spanking romances with strong characters and proper plotlines in between all the delicious discipline. She lives near London and is happiest when cuddled up with a contented cat and a nice cup of tea.
Visit Etta’s website here:
http://ettastark.blogspot.co.uk/
Don’t miss these exciting titles by Etta Stark and Blushing Books!
His Lordship’s Apprentice
Lady Westbrook’s Discovery
Lord Westbrook’s Muse
East End Girl: Corbin’s Bend, Season Two
The Perfect Housewife
Don’t miss the entire Corbin’s Bend Series!
Welcome to Corbin’s Bend
Return to Corbin’s Bend
At Home in Corbin’s Bend
Corbin’s Bend Homecoming
Love in the Rockies
Have Paddle, Will Travel
Maren Smith
All rights reserved.
No part of the book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Smith, Maren
Have Paddle, Will Travel
eBook ISBN: 978-1-62750-665-6
Cover Design by Anthony Walsh
This book is intended for adults only. Spanking and other sexual activities represented in this book are fantasies only, intended for adults. Nothing in this book should be interpreted as Blushing Books' or the author's advocating any non-consensual spanking activity or the spanking of minors.
Chapter 1
It’s another beautiful day in Corbin’s Bend, Ettie wrote, if, by ‘beautiful’, one considers 20-degrees balmy, shorts-wearing weather. I do not. It’s flipping cold.
Leaning back from her computer, Ettie stretched her arms and then her back, all the while re-reading what she’d done so far. How long had she been at it today? Five hours, maybe six? It wasn’t even noon yet, and already she was hard at work on her third cup of coffee and her fifth article of the morning. Two beagle-mix pups squabbled ferociously over who was going to kill the purple pom-pom on the hat at her feet. Another was pulling at her shoelaces. In less than two days, her paper (All the News – That is News in Corbin’s Bend!) was scheduled to hit the printer and distribution. Well, okay…the printer was actually her printer, and she had a grand total of fifty-seven subscribers, but every paper started somewhere. If Corbin’s Bend was ever to hold its collective head high among the other small towns that dotted the highways between Boulder and Denver, then by golly, it had to have some form of media coverage. Ettie was determined to be it.
Culture. Practically from the moment she had moved in, that was what Ettie had brought to this small community. For some of them, it was on a ‘whether they liked it or not’ basis, but she brought them culture anyway.
Or gossip, as Brent Carmichael, the community leader, liked to call it. Well, he could be forgiven for that. He wasn’t a steady subscriber after all, so he probably hadn’t read all those articles that showed the true range of Ettie’s journalistic talents.
Rag mag, Marcus Devon liked to call her paper. He could probably be forgiven too. Busy as he was—what with a new wife, three boys and a new baby on the way, not to mention a thriving practice as the only doctor in town—she’d be seriously surprised if he had enough time in any one day to read his own prescriptions, much less her humble paper. Still, ‘rag mag’ hurt, so who could blame her really if, upon the very rare occasion, she retaliated with an article or two about him?
Menace to polite society, Vance Foster, her neighbor across the street was often reported as having said, referring not just to her paper, but to her as well!
As if he could talk.
Stealing another sip of coffee, Ettie opened up a new file and typed in her next headliner:
Tragic Accident Disfigures Local Resident.
While creating new chains with which to decorate his draconian home dungeon, local craftsman and owner/operator of W&C Leather and Chainmail—better known to some of the more desperate of Corbin’s Bend’s female residents as Have Paddle, Will Travel—Vance Foster fumbled his blowtorch and suffered a hideous disfigurement.
“Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy,” one neighbor is reported to have said.
His nipples are scheduled to be buried in Blodgett Cemetery at noon this coming Saturday. In lieu of flowers, please make donations to the Corbin’s Bend Nipple Rehabilitation Center.
That might be a little over the top, but Ettie could hardly be blamed. Vance Foster was a total man-slut. A horn dog. The absolute scourge on what was otherwise a very nice little spanking community.
Pushing her glasses up higher on her nose, her gaze drifted across the street again, pulled as if against her will toward the ripple of all those military trim muscles. Dark hair, gorgeous brown eyes. The man barely bothered to shave, as if he knew just how disgustingly well he rocked that scruffy facial-hair look. And if he did know, then that was just one more strike against him, because that right there was arrogance!
“Oh, here we go,” she muttered, completely unimpressed. Trying to get a closer look, she got up from her computer, tripping over puppies and dragging all three by their teeth and her shoelaces as far as the window. He couldn’t possibly see her from this far away even if he should happen to glance her way, but Ettie still hid herself behind the floor-length curtains.
No longer working, Vance held his cellphone pressed to his ear while making notes in that little black book he carried in his front shirt pocket.
“Booty call,” she said, disgusted. Who was it this time? Not that it mattered to her which misguided woman in this community felt she had no other choice but to illicit that gigolo’s services. Have Paddle, Will Travel—ha! For all that everyone called him that behind his back, he ought to have a plaque advertising that service in his front yard.
She folded her arms across her chest, heartily offended on behalf of all his ‘clients’. Brent should have tossed the man out on his ear the very first time Vance handed out one of his ‘special’ visits. The leatherworking…okay, she could see a need for that. He made very nice—and by all accounts lethal—paddles and straps. The chainmail, she could even see that usefulness. More than one community member delved further into the kinkier realms of BDSM than she did, some preferring master and submissive relationships over that of domestic discipline. But that was okay, too. Different strokes (no pun intended) and all that. But still, a person would have to be blind not to see how offensive that was.
Spank-happy Cassanova. Blight of the neighborhood. One rung up from amoeba on the man-slut scale.
Not that she knew him well enough to make any moral judgments. He’d lived across the street from her for years now, and from the moment she’d found out what his hobbies entailed, she’d not said more than a handful of words to him in all that time. Most days, he worked in his garage. Most nights, he took his phone calls, right out in the open where anybody could spy on…er, watch him. And then he’d shoot his tight little ass out the door, hop in his spank mobile and head out to whatever booty craved his undivided attention. What kind of person did that?
Ettie folded her arms across her chest, frowning and trying hard to pretend as if her own bottom wasn’t tingling with the deeply ingrained need to suffer a little of that kind of attention. As if she’d ever let a man like Vance and one of his grungy garage-made paddles anywhere near her butt. What self-respecting woman would?
A desperate one, that’s what. If forced to be honest, Ettie did understand that kind of desperation. How long had it been (four years, seven months, thirteen days…not that she was counting) since her last spanking? Oh yes, Ettie understood desperation. But she wasn’t that desperate. She’d never be that desperate.
There he went, hanging up his phone and shutting up his garage before heading inside, all long legs, lean hips and lazy sauntering steps. Six-pack abs leading the way, and that gorgeous butt of his rocking those worn denim jeans…oops!
When Vance glanced her way, Ettie flattened herself to the wall. She held her breath, trying not to move (apart from a few involuntary jerks) while the puppies at her feet did their rambunctious best to eat her right out of her shoes. It was a long minute or two before she dared look back out the window. By then, Vance had vanished into his house.
Horn dog.
No, she’d never be as so desperate as to call a man like that. Somebody had to stand up in defense of those who were.
A corner of her mouth curled into a smug little smile and she went back to her computer. Flipping over to the For Sale or Trade section, she whipped up a new ad: Fully furnished Spank Mobile! New whips! New Chains! Blood completely scrubbed out of the back! Take your fun on the road. Multiple compartments hold all necessary tools of the trade, including one extra-long drawer in the back. Perfect for housing all the shovels you’ll ever need to bury the bodies when fun-time is done! Only 70k highway miles and priced to sell!
She snickered. It had been a while since she last sold the Spank Mobile, as she liked to term his work vehicle. Truck, really—a massive extended cab pickup with a shell topper on the back. She’d never seen the inside, but the exterior was lined with doors and drawers and had cubbyholes all over it. Except for the deep blue paint job, it reminded her a lot of the Schwann’s truck that came through the neighborhood twice a month, every month. Only instead of ‘Schwann’s’ in big bold letters, Vance’s vehicle read: ‘W&C. Custom Fit! Special Orders! For All Your Leather and Chainmail Needs.’
Ettie would willingly bet three months’ pay there were chains hanging from the walls inside the back of that truck. It might look like a work truck on the outside, but she was not at all fooled by his mild-mannered Clark Kent like every day display. Oh no. The entire interior of that truck just had to be decked out in full-blown serial killer décor. She just knew it. And still that man scored phone call after phone call from women all over Corbin’s Bend.
Maybe she should call him, whispered a traitorous voice inside her head.
As if! She had principles, damn it! And pride! And no matter how hard up she was or how long it had been since her last spanking, she would never—ever—stoop to calling someone like Vance for help.
Chapter 2
Stepping out of the shower, Vance hooked a towel off the rack and quickly patted down. He scrubbed his hair until it was mostly dry, then ran a brush through his short dark locks. He needed a haircut. Right now he was in that awkward in-between stage where most of it was too heavy to do anything but just lie there and yet he could probably go another month or so before it became completely unmanageable. It wasn’t military regulation that was for sure. But then, neither was the beard.
He paused to rub his face, examining the three-day old scruff that covered his lip and chin. This wasn’t a beard. It was his ‘winter is coming and that makes a great excuse not to shave every day’ growth. His commanding officer would have had him chopping onions in the mess hall at first sight, but here, not just in Corbin’s Bend, but out in the real world in general, the ladies honestly seemed to like the stubbly look. Irene Harris said it gave him a ‘bad boy’ vibe. Melody Parker said when he wore his leathers, he looked dark and dangerous—like a master out of one of those silly romance
novels she liked to read. Or a biker. In her mind there, apparently, wasn’t a lot of difference between the two. And Bernie…ha! Bernie didn’t care how he showed up, just so long as he did show up. She was without a doubt the feistiest sixty-year-old widow he’d ever had the pleasure of putting across his knee. Take twenty years from her or add that to him, and Vance could easily see himself going for Bernie. He loved her spirited playfulness.
Donning a splash of cologne and deodorant, Vance left his towel in the bathroom and walked naked into his bedroom to dress. Jeans, long-sleeved blue and black checkered flannel shirt (maybe he’d look like a scruffy, dangerous biker/lumberjack today) and his work boots. Just before he tucked his dog tags into his shirt, he kissed the back of the one with the bullet hole and then patted it down against his skin. He’d been out of the army now for almost three years, but he still hadn’t taken them off. He probably never would. It was his reminder that life was fleeting and every moment should be made the most of.
Which was what he was doing now. It was one of his reasons for moving to Corbin’s Bend in the first place. Life was too precious to spend hiding in plain sight. It was also too short to waste among people who didn’t feel like he did, think like he did, or believe what he did. He was a dominant man. He wanted a submissive woman, and after years of searching, he knew his best chance of finding that special someone was right here in this community.
He slipped his wallet into his back pocket, his keys in his front right and his little black book full of names and addresses into his left breast pocket. Last of all, he picked up his play bag. Technically, it was an old gym duffel bag, but its days of carrying extra shoes and sweaty clothing was over. These days, everything he needed for his very special—he didn’t get paid for it, but dare he call them ‘customers’?—was neatly packed inside. Two paddles, one large and one small, a wide leather strop, two floggers, a set of restraints, even a collar for those select few ladies who liked the surrender of wearing one. Every last item had been made in his workshop with his own hands. He was good with his hands.