Holiday Heat: Heartwarming and Bottomwarming Stories for the Festive Season

by April Hill

  He heard sounds from inside. The TV went off. Then, muffled footsteps, a tired groan, and the single word, “Shit!”

  “Who the hell is it?” Jess asked. Irritable, and tired. So much for a pleasant, civilized discussion.

  “It’s me,” he said quietly.

  For a long moment, nothing.

  “It’s freezing out here, Jess,” he said. “And I left my coat in the car. Open the door.”

  “Go away. I told you not to come up here, and I meant it.”

  “I just drove three hours in a snowstorm.”

  “So, if you leave now, you’ll be home by morning,” she said caustically. “Drive carefully.”

  Jim sighed, pulled the cabin keys from his pants pocket, and found the one for the side entrance. When he unlocked the door and opened it, Jess was standing at the old wooden kitchen table, glaring at him. She was wrapped in the red tartan blanket, and wearing a pair of old flannel pajamas.

  “If you had the damned key, why did you bother to fucking knock?” she demanded.

  “I didn’t want to just barge in.”

  “Well, you just did,” she shot back. “Now, what the hell do you want?”

  Jim looked at her for, and tried not to smile. He’d bought the pajamas for her the first winter they spent in the cabin. Light blue flannel with penguins, and big white snowflakes—the sexiest thing the hardware store in the village had stocked. She looked small, and tired, and as though she might have been crying, earlier.

  Jim came inside, and sat down on the edge of the antique table they’d dragged home from the used furniture store in the village. Banged up, with peeling blue paint, but sturdy. “Not banged up,” Jess had laughed, that day. “Quaint.” After the long drive he was stiff and sore, but he got as comfortable as he could, with his knees slightly apart, and his long legs stretched out between them.

  “We need to talk,” he began.

  “Aren’t you the one that told me you were tired of talking?” she inquired, with a barely disguised sneer.

  “I said I was tired of arguing,” he said wearily. “Not of talking.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Go home and have yourself a merry little Christmas, Jim. I’m going to bed.”

  He shook his head. “Not yet.”

  “Why? Have you changed your mind about Cancun?”

  “No, I haven’t changed my mind. We’re not going. We can’t afford it.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Of course, we can afford it. I just got my damned bonus, for God’s sake. And what am I supposed to tell the Niemans?”

  “Tell them the truth. We just signed a contract on a new apartment. We can’t afford another cruise this year, and we’re not going.”

  “I’m not about to tell them something like that, for God’s sake,” she said angrily. “It’s embarrassing, and it’s not even true. You’re just too fucking cheap. And on top of everything else, I had to sell my soul to get the time off work. Be honest, for a change. You don’t want to go because–”

  “We’re not going, Jess,” he said quietly. “That’s it. The argument’s over.”

  “Like hell, it is.” she shot back. “I’m not going to have the Niemans think we’re–

  She stopped because Jim had reached out and taken her by the elbow. His grip was firm, and something in his tone of voice seemed out of character.

  Jess tried to pull away. “There’s a new motel in the village. You can stay there if you don’t want to drive home, tonight. I’m going to bed, now.”

  “Not yet.” With his left hand, Jim opened the small utensil drawer in the side of the table, and pulled something out. He didn’t let go of her while he did it, but slipped one arm around her waist and pulled her even closer, until she was standing between his knees. Trapped.

  Jess was surprised, maybe even slightly concerned, but certainly not intimidated. For a moment, in fact, she was sure he was going to kiss her—or try to—and that made her smile. She had won, again. Not much of a victory, maybe, since she’d never really wanted to spend another boring week in Cancun with Harve Nieman and his newest trophy wife, but a victory, nonetheless.

  With the prospect of triumph imminent, Jess was caught off guard. But even if her defenses hadn’t been down, she could never have foreseen what was about to happen.

  There was nothing violent about it. Or even rough. Just Jim’s strong, sure hands, pulling her down. Guiding her, almost gently—across his raised thigh.

  Jess was sleepy, and groggy. She’d downed three glasses of wine before nodding off on the couch. Now, everything seemed to be happening in slow motion, and by the time she understood what was happening, it was too late. She was pinned across Jim’s lap, facedown, with his left arm tightening around her waist. She still wasn’t frightened, though. Why would she be? This was Jim. Acting a little weird, maybe, but still Jim. Quiet, reasonable, mild-mannered Jim. So, she wasn’t alarmed, just annoyed. And damned uncomfortable.

  It wasn’t until he slipped his fingers under the waistband of the blue pajama bottoms that she felt the first pang of something approximating alarm. And when he tugged them down even lower, over her behind, Jess felt her face flush with embarrassment, and a nervous knot began to form in her stomach. As his fingers trailed across her bared buttocks, though, and down her thighs, dragging the pajamas all the way down to her chilled knees, something odd happened. The sensation became almost … erotic! Jess made a valiant effort not to giggle—and failed.

  She was trying to assess whether he’d noticed the giggle when something hard and smooth tapped her rear end—very lightly, on the right cheek. And at that exact moment, she knew what he’d taken from the drawer.

  Jess had always enjoyed a good fight. She liked the adrenaline rush she got in the heat of battle. She relished the sense of power and control that came over her when she “won” an argument. And she almost always won the fights she had with Jim. Because she knew how to make the best use of the weapons she had. Words.

  But suddenly, she realized that this fight—or whatever it was—was going to be different. A fight in which she wasn’t holding the best weapons.

  Jim was.

  The long-handled wooden cooking spoon in her husband’s right hand was the biggest spoon Jess had ever seen—of any kind. When they bought it (at that same, charming hardware store in the village) Jim had joked that it looked more like a kid’s sand shovel than a cooking utensil. They’d always used it to baste their holiday turkeys. And plant flowers.

  The damned spoon was the only weapon Jim would really need, but he had a few others, as well—like excellent upper arm strength, well-developed biceps, and a grim determination he’d never shown before.

  Jess groaned. She had let her gym membership lapse three months ago. Too busy to go, she’d told herself. She was three inches over five feet tall, mildly plump, and seriously out of condition. Jim was lean, hard, six feet five inches tall, and about as fit as a man could get. There was no chance in hell she was coming out of this fight the winner.

  Time to negotiate.

  “All right,” she conceded, throwing one hand back to cover as much of her exposed behind as she could reach. “If you’re so determined to talk, damn it, we’ll talk! Just let me up.”

  Jim shook his head. “Later.”

  Jess began to feel slightly nervous. “Later, when?”

  “After we’re finished, here.”

  In the enclosed quietness of the small kitchen, the impact of the spoon was astonishingly loud, and sounded exactly like Jess would have expected. Like she might have described it when she was still writing advertising copy instead of kissing up to ungrateful clients. Like a rifle shot on TV, maybe. A sharp, horrendously loud CRACK. Then, before she could catch her breath, a volley of harder, louder cracks. Scalding, lightning quick blows that seemed to explode on contact, and leave in their blazing wake more heat and pain than seemed logically possible.

  Jess hadn’t wanted to make a sound. If she couldn’t win this fight, she could at least k
eep the upper hand, and deprive him of the satisfaction of hearing her yell. Or beg.

  A dignified loss. With honor.

  When he started on the backs of her thighs, Jess went wild. Her ass already felt scalded, and she’d been absolutely convinced that it couldn’t get any worse. How is that fucking possible? she had reasoned. It’s nothing but a damned spoon! A big, stupid oval of worn wood attached to a long handle. But still just a spoon! (Jess’s area of expertise was in advertising and public relations—obviously, not in anatomy.) As each whack from the spoon found a fresh spot in which to ignite another small fire, she kicked and howled, and squirmed so vigorously that she almost slipped off his lap. Almost. He paused long enough to rearrange her, at an even more uncomfortable angle, finished with a flurry of agonizing penalty swats, then dumped her on her feet.

  Jim sat patiently for a while, listening to the stream of invective pouring out of his wife’s mouth. Jess had always had an extensive and colorful collection of obscenities to call upon, and now, she used them all.

  “So, that’s how you win an argument, is it?” she shrieked.

  “Not win it, Jess,” he said. “Just end it.”

  “Go to hell,” she said coldly. “Or go home. I don’t care which. If you won’t leave, then I will.”

  She was still spewing insults when he picked her cell up phone from the counter, and took her car keys from the hook by the kitchen door.

  Jess stopped swearing long enough to watch, hardly believing her eyes as he opened the back door and hurled her keys and her phone over the porch rail, and into the deepening snow.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she shrieked, stumbling to the door and trying to pull up her pajama bottoms at the same time.

  “Eliminating distractions,” he said grimly. “You’re not going anywhere. Pull up your pants, and sit down.” He pulled a folded sheet of paper from his shirt pocket. “And read this.”

  “Go to…”

  “One more word,” he interrupted, “and we start all over again.” When he smacked the spoon against his own thigh, Jess flinched at the sound, fumbled for a few moments getting the pajama bottoms partly up, and sat down on the nearest chair, perching carefully on one hip.

  He pointed to the paper in her hand. “Read it all the way through before you say anything. If you have any questions, I’ll answer them. Once.”

  She read the first few lines. “Rules?” she repeated, rolling her eyes.

  “Read the rest of it, Jess.”

  “I don’t need to read it,” she growled. “I get the drift.” She dropped the paper on the floor, and began to get to her feet. “You know what you can do with your fucking rules, right?”

  She had barely cleared the chair when Jim put one hand on her shoulder, turned her around, and laid two swift blows across her partially covered rear end. Jess screamed, and grabbed both already scorched cheeks with both hands.

  He picked up the paper and handed it to her. “Now, read it,” he ordered. Perhaps as an added incentive, he used the tip of the spoon to point to the top of the page. “All of it.”

  Jess read the entire page, but she still wasn’t ready to capitulate. She ran her eyes down the page, scanning rather than reading through the several simple paragraphs. “You’re kidding with this crap, right?”

  “I’m not kidding.”

  “As we used to say in junior high, who died and made you king?”

  “It was a hostile takeover, or maybe a bloodless coup. You were the reigning monarch, and now you’re not. I just deposed you.”

  “Oh, is that what you call what you just did?” she asked smugly.

  “No, I’d call what I just did blistering your ass. And try to think of me as a benevolent dictator, not king.”

  “What’s benevolent about abusing your damned wife?”

  “I didn’t abuse my wife. I spanked her. Pretty damned hard, but–”

  Jess’s face went red. “Stop saying that!” she hissed. “That word! It sounds … silly.”

  He smiled. “Does it feel silly?

  She glared at him, but said nothing, obviously searching for the right words.

  “Do you really think I’ll agree to something like that? “ she asked finally. “A set of stupid rules?”

  He shook his head. “That’s your decision, Jess. At this point, though, there’s only one other option.”

  “Like?”

  “You can leave me.”

  Jess’s face fell. “What do you mean?”

  “You can file for divorce. I won’t fight it, and I’ll agree to any settlement you ask for. You can have the apartment, the bank accounts, and whatever else you want. I figured I’d move in with my brother until I find a place I can afford.”

  “Now, you’re blackmailing me?”

  “No, what I’m asking you to do is agree to a list of reasonable rules, with some disagreeable penalties attached— for noncompliance.”

  She rolled her eyes. “How disagreeable?”

  “Tonight was a kind of preview.”

  “You’d do a thing like that, again?” she asked, disbelieving.

  “If things don’t change between us, yes, I will.”

  “So, that’s all you wanted to do by coming up here?” Jess demanded. “To … to hurt me?” It was the only word she could come up with, quickly, to avoid the more embarrassing word—spank.

  “Well, that’s not all I wanted. I wanted you to listen to me, as well. And here you are, listening to me.”

  “What you’re telling me is that whenever we disagree, you get the final word, right?”

  “It’s not that simple. When something comes up that we can’t agree on, we’ll talk it over, and try to come to a decision. That’s what normal people do. But after a certain amount of time, there’ll be no more discussion. No more arguing. And yes, when that happens, I get the final word. You can have your say, and express your opinion. But when I say it’s over, it’s over.”

  “That’s not fair,” she said sullenly.

  “This discussion is over,” he said quietly. “If you say another word, you’re going back over my knee. And this time, you’re going to be there a lot longer. It’s Christmas Eve, Jess. I don’t want to spank you, again. But I will. Please believe me.”

  “So, this is like some kind of stupid test?” she growled. “Of this idiot plan of yours?”

  Jim shook his head, a bit sadly. The line in the sand had been crossed.

  This time, using only his hand, he spanked her until she cried. Great gasping sobs that welled up in her chest and hurt when they finally came from her lips. She hadn’t wanted to cry. It wasn’t the pain, because the second spanking wasn’t as hard as the first had been. For someone as proud and stubborn as Jess, crying was equivalent to capitulation—an admission that she had lost. And that he had won—by making her do something she didn’t want to do, and by showing him something she didn’t want to show him. A double defeat, because they both knew that she was crying from something much deeper, and much more painful.

  And when she finally did give up, and sagged across his knee, sobbing helplessly, he stopped.

  Very gently, he pulled her onto her feet, and drew her into his arms. Jess stiffened almost instinctively, and tried to pull away, but he tightened his hold. He slipped one hand behind her head, and pressed her face against his shoulder until her sobs began to diminish, and his shirt was wet with her tears.

  “I don’t know what to do, Jim,” she wept. “I know I’ve been awful, but you’re going to have to tell me what you want from me! I can’t–”

  “All I really want is for the fighting to stop, Jess,” he said softly. “Your job is eating you alive. I know that, but if you can’t share your anger with me, and let me try to help, then you need to leave that anger at work, where it belongs. I’m not the enemy. I’m the guy who loves you, and the guy you want at your back in a fight.”

  For several moments, Jess just stood in his arms, saying nothing. Then, an exhausted
sigh. “Well,” she sniffled. “If you think you’re getting a really great Christmas present after what you did, you can think again. I’m taking what I bought back to the store, the day after Christmas.”

  Jim closed his eyes, enormously relieved and grateful. Jess’s sense of humor had always been the best way to gauge her emotional state. He chuckled. “What was it?”

  “I’m not going to tell you, but it was a really terrific present. The best one ever. Even better than that Daisy air rifle you always wanted when you were a kid, and never got. Like that kid in A Christmas Story? The kid with the glasses?”

  “Ralphie,” he said.

  “Yeah, Ralphie.”

  “But, in the end, Ralphie got what he really wanted for Christmas, “ he pointed out.

  She made a face. “And what you want is for me to do exactly what you say—all the time,” she suggested. “And I’m not arguing,” she added quickly. “Just observing.”

  He shook his head. “No, Jess. What I want is for both of us to be happy, and glad we got married. I want to wake up in the morning smiling, remembering how wonderful it was the night before, when we made love. I don’t want my first thought of the day be about the quarrel we had before we went to bed. I don’t want to start and end every day fighting over things that don’t matter, when it leaves both of us exhausted, and miserable.”

  “And what about things that do matter?” she asked.

  “We’ll do what normal couples do. Happy couples, anyway. We’ll discuss, and argue, and finally come to a decision that may not make either one of us completely happy. We’ll compromise. I read once that the way a good judge knows he’s made a fair decision in a case is when neither party is entirely satisfied.”