by Maren Smith
And, of course, there was also the on-going story in the very back of Ettie’s Paper. It was a romance. To be more specific, it was a spanking romance, and although he never would have imagined that at his most bored he’d find one of those things interesting, Ettie’s stories usually were. With herself listed as the author under the title heading and chapter section, it wasn’t hard to imagine Ettie as the heroine, especially when misbehaviors were being addressed. He’d never confess it aloud, but her stories were the section he always flipped to first. He liked to put himself in the hero’s place, although his willingness to follow the ‘script’ was in direct proportion with how many times he was featured in the rest of the issue’s articles and how many times he’d died.
Vance shook his head. He couldn’t begin to count the number of ways in which she delighted in killing him off. Like her serial stories, some of them were actually quite funny. Most were annoying. One or two had actually pissed him off to the point where he could barely keep from charging across the street, throwing Ettie Thomas across his knee and blistering her backside until she couldn’t do anything but write her paper standing up!
Maybe that was what she wanted. With one hand on the driver’s door handle, Vance frowned at her window, but like a little blonde Whack-A-Mole hyped up on mischief pills, she never did pop her head back out so he could get a good bead on her. From what he’d seen though, no one had gotten a good ‘bead’ on her in years. Pretty as she was with that long blonde hair and naughty librarian glasses, he couldn’t remember ever seeing anyone pick her up for a date. No one stayed for late dinners or spent the night, either. Nobody moved to a community like this unless they were interested in living the lifestyle, but from what he’d seen, like so many other single submissives in Corbin’s Bend, Ettie Thomas wasn’t because she had no one to live it with. Unlike many other single submissives, however, Ettie hadn’t called him.
Not that he’d have gone over there if she had. Vance didn’t have a single masochistic bone in his body. He wasn’t about to offer himself up as more fodder for her paper.
She could use a good spanking, though. Boy, could she ever.
Jenny was waiting for him.
His palm itching, Vance yanked open the driver’s door and hopped up into his truck. He gave her window one last glare as he slipped the key into the ignition and brought the engine rumbling to life. Yeah, his palm was itching all right, but not for Ettie. For years she had made no effort to hide the fact that she disliked him, and she hadn’t done one thing to evoke in him the slightest feeling of fondness for her. Which was probably best for the both of them. If she was his and behaving this badly, she’d be across his knee every single night with her bare bottom blazing so hot it damn near glowed…and knowing her, every single night he’d probably be in jail.
It was a good thing for her that he had such a healthy aversion to prison. She might not know it, but some days that was the only thing that kept her sitting down.
CHAPTER THREE
Jordan faced the corner, her fiery bottom throbbing from all the attention Levi’s hand had paid it. His bare hand was worse than almost any implement she could think of. And that had only been the beginning. Her ears perked, her every sense in tune with the faint rustle of movement as Levi rearranged the foot of their bed.
Why, oh why had she been so stubborn? It’s not as if she hadn’t known the penalty her actions would bring.
Behind her, the closet door opened, a whisper of wood brushing the short carpet fibers. The unmistakable clatter of the paddle being taken down off the hook in the very back made her whole bottom crawl. It was a sensation as overwhelmingly dreadful as the surge of guilt that followed, filling her up inside until it felt as if she might drown in it.
“All right, honey,” Levi sighed, sounding every bit as unhappy as she now felt. He didn’t like using the paddle any more than she liked being on the receiving end of it. That he reached for it at all meant she had screwed up in his estimation every bit as much as she had in her own. “Let’s get this over with.”
Her hands drifted down off the top of her head. Jordan rested them lightly upon the walls, trying to work up the courage to turn around. When she finally did, one look at Levi’s steely resolve nearly broke her into tears all over again. She covered her bottom with both hands. She couldn’t help it. She already hurt so much, but at the same time she knew the price she had paid didn’t come close to balancing out the deed that had brought her here. The paddle in Levi’s hand would.
“Jordan,” he said, when she only stood there, frozen in the corner, staring back at him in teary-eyed dismay. “If I have to come and get you, you’re going to get double what you’ve already got coming. And what you’ve got coming is going to be hard enough on the both of us. Come on now. Front and center. Don’t make this any worse than it has to be.”
Hearing him say that didn’t make her obedience any easier, but in the end, Jordan really didn’t have a choice. She loved Levi. She loved his dominance. She loved how right it felt when he made her his. She didn’t love the paddle or the unpleasantness of what was yet to come, but this was the price for loving a disciplinarian. Step after reluctant step, Jordan went to him, prostrated herself across his waiting lap and, gripping the coverlet in both hands to prevent herself from reaching back when the hurt became too great, she braced herself to pay it.
Ettie sat back with a groan and stretched her back again. She stared at that last line for a quite a while before checking the word count. It was a little short this week, but she added ‘To Be Continued…’ at the bottom of the page and called it good. It was almost two o’clock. If she hurried, she could get the paper printed out, stapled, addressed and popped into the mail just in time to send it out one day early. That would give her an extra day to rest and relax before she had to start all over again for next week’s issue.
“I’ll take it,” she said, pulling her glasses off to rub at her eyes and then putting them back on again. She ran a final edit on this week’s segment of her running spanking romance, and then did a last and final spell check just in case she missed something. Hitting print, she picked up her coffee cup and headed for the kitchen to re-energize while the printer revved itself out of sleep mode.
As she passed through the living room, she glanced across the street, but Vance’s garage was still shut up tight and his truck was gone. He was either enjoying the hell out of his original booty call or he’d been summoned out on another. The gigolo. People like that really ought to be ashamed of themselves.
Heading back into her office, Ettie lost her smirk to annoyance. The printer lights were flashing: no toner. “Oh, not now!”
Popping open the front, she took out the cartridge, indulged in a brisk but furious Emergency Repair Procedure #3 (she shook the hell out of it) and then shoved it back in again. Snapping the printer shut, she tapped out the error light, but no. No sooner had the motor started whirring up again, than did the no-toner light blink on and off.
“Damn.” These things were so expensive! Going to the closet, Ettie slid back the door and searched the shelves until she found what she was looking for. Sort of. “Crap,” she said again, picking up the empty toner box and the post-it note she’d left for her future self. It read: Get more toner.
Fine. There was no help for it. She was going to have to go out tonight and get toner, probably another ream of paper too, and maybe something for dinner. Something from Amore’s would be nice. So would cheesecake. Preferably chocolate and raspberry. Mm, her mouth was already watering.
Grabbing her purse, keys and a winter coat, Ettie headed for the store. The wind bit at her the moment she opened her front door. Everything stopped until she got her coat zipped and buttoned, and her hands shoved deep into the soft warm fleece of her sheepskin gloves. Wow, it was getting cold. It wasn’t even Halloween yet, but welcome to Colorado mountain living. Already the air smelled like snow. If that happened, it would be the first of the season. Ettie made a mental note to pic
k up a few extra winter stores, just in case the first snowfall was also a bad one. At this elevation, it was never a poor idea to be prepared. Jim O’Brien was always so good about getting the roads sanded and plowed as fast as possible, but snowstorms in these mountains were infamous for their unpredictable severity. They could get an inch or they could get eight feet. This definitely wasn’t Texas.
Her breath steaming the air, she hurried down the cobblestone path and past the two bushy evergreens that stood sentry between the house and her detached garage. As soon as she was around the corner, she popped the door with her key fob and had the automatic engine started and the heater going by the time she reached her car. Holy Hannah, it was cold. A quick check of the temperature revealed the pertinent numbers to be twenty-eight degrees, but that wind chill must have put it at right about zero.
Backing out of the driveway, she drove to the biggest of Corbin’s Bend grocery markets. Unfortunately, everyone else in the community must have had the same idea. An unusual number of cars crowded the parking lot considering it was 2:30 and a workday. Inside, thinly veiled tension and organized chaos walked the aisles. The first shelves just inside the automatic doors were empty and tiny tickle of premonition told Ettie to grab a cart instead of a basket. She hit her survival priorities list first, snagging two cans of coffee from the shelves, along with enough creamer to help keep a small army caffeinated for however long it might take a snowplow to dig her out again.
She hit the water aisle next, scavenging the last package of bottled water off the shelves. There were no jugs left, but then she wasn’t the only person in the community who heard ‘snow’ and instantly thought of the Great Water Pipe Burst a few years back, when all of Corbin’s Bend had been not only cut off from the rest of the world under twenty feet of snowfall, but without fresh water for almost three weeks. Thank God for the tireless efforts of Brent and Jim and so many of the others who had manned every snow vehicle that would run, and shot off to every neighboring town, store and gas station within range to bring back enough supplies to get them through the worst.
This was the first time since then that she had seen the store shelves this empty, but then, while snow in October was fairly common, storms like what they were predicting weren’t the norm either. As far as food went, she was pretty well stocked at home, but she did pick up some cans of tuna and macaroni, just in case she had to really rough it. Then she headed into the school aisle to get what she’d really come here for. Few people in Corbin’s Bend would see snow in the forecast and run to the store in a panic to fetch printer paper. And yet, when Ettie rounded the corner to her utter dismay she saw only one ream left and no toner on the shelves at all.
“Crap!” she said out loud. She quickly searched the entire aisle, looking up on top and in all the surrounding hiding places just in case someone had taken a cartridge of black, changed their mind, and put it back in the wrong place. But no, there really was no toner. Maybe in the back of the store someplace.
Ettie wheeled her cart to the front of the store. The place was not empty, not by any means. She passed Libby and her husband, their cart piled high with not just supplies for them but enough diapers to get their baby through should things get rough. She saw Cadence Devon, Doctor Marcus’s brand new wife, already pregnant out to there and leaning heavily on her cart while she negotiated her way to the checkout lanes. She must have hit the water aisle before Ettie because her cart was full of it, along with jugs of milk and juice, bread and sandwich meat, as well as all the hamburger she could stack in the child basket along with her cane.
“Just how bad is this going to be?” she overheard Charmagne ask one of the checkout girls.
“They’re saying up to two feet,” Lacey replied, sliding pop bottles across her scanner.
Two feet? Ettie stifled a rude snort. All this panic over two measly feet. People please. By Christmas time, they’d be wishing it were only two feet deep. This was nothing to get in a twist over. No toner in the store, however, that was serious!
She pushed up to the customer service desk, pulling her cart up behind Brent and fellow board member Calbert Jolly, who were standing shoulder to shoulder while Alex, who owned the store, manned both phone and phonebook.
“Thanks, Barry,” he said, nodding to Brent. “Yeah, whatever you can do…I’ve got shipments on order, but they’re just not here yet…That would be wonderful. I appreciate this, you have no idea…like I said, I owe you a big one.” Alex spotted her toward the end of his call. He lifted his head, arching his eyebrows by way of greeting, which made both Brent and Calbert glance back over their shoulders at her. She held up her hand, mouthing ‘Hi’, and they made room for her at the counter. “Thanks, Barry. We’ll be there as fast as we can.”
“What’s up?” Ettie asked, leaning in next to Brent while she waited for Alex to hang up.
“Supply run. Looks like we’re about to get caught unprepared.”
“Hey,” Alex protested, hanging up the phone. “I have trucks on order. They’re just not here yet. It’s not my fault we’re getting bad weather.”
Holding up a hand in apology, Brent conceded the argument before hurt feelings could start. “So, how many does that give us?”
“Three. The Apple Mart in Rose Hill, the Food Saver in Calvary and Barry’s in Brenton.”
Calbert picked up his cell phone, not waiting for word from Brent before enacting the phone tree. Ettie always kept an updated version published on the front page of each and every issue of her newspaper.
Leaving Brent and Calbert to come up with three available runners with dependable four-wheel drive and without day jobs, Ettie separated herself out of the conversation. “Hey, Alex,” she said instead, attracting the store owner’s attention. “I don’t suppose you’ve got any toner in the back, do you?”
He grimaced apologetically. “Sorry, Ettie. Marcus got the last one when he ran his billing last week. Supposedly, there’s more coming in on next week’s truck.”
“There’s an office supply store next door to Barry’s though, right?” She tried to think. It had been almost a year since she’d last gone through Brenton.
Brent turned to give her a stern look. “I’m sending runners for necessary items only, Ettie. We’re going to be racing this storm as it is without adding time for side errands.”
“Could I go with?” When he frowned, Ettie quickly added, “I can help lift and haul.” She struck a pose, flexing every muscle she owned. If he was fooled by that, then the joke was on him. It was mostly air trapped inside her coat. “I don’t take up much room. Come on, Brent. Please!”
A tick of irritation leapt along his clenching jaw as he looked at her, but Ettie wasn’t offended. She knew his attention needed to be focused on getting whatever necessary items the community might lack before the storm hit. He might not like the fact that she was preoccupied with her paper, but he had nothing personal against her and she was offering an extra pair of helping hands.
“Help load,” he told her grudgingly.
Ettie snapped to attention. “Yes, sir!”
“Don’t hold the driver up.”
“I’ll be quick as a bunny,” she assured him.
“Cause so much as one problem and I’ll put you over my knee myself, and that is not a bluff.”
Her whole stomach somersaulted and her bottom clenched, an involuntary reaction that sparked a flame of rising heat that had absolutely nothing to do with the winter coat she was wearing.
“You got it.” Ettie snapped off a brisk salute and quickly got her cart to the checkout line before that heat rose as high as her face and Brent spotted her tell-tale blush. There were so many people standing in line ahead of her, but that was a good thing. By the time she reached the register, her hands had stopped shaking and her blush had died back down to a manageable level—or at least a level that could be blamed on her coat.
“You’re going to need a heavier coat,” Lacey told her, taking her money. “Better winter gloves and a
hat too if the weatherman can be believed.”
“What’s he saying?” Ettie asked, loading the water back into her cart.
“Knee deep at least and maybe more. As soon as everyone’s rung up, I get to go home early.” She grinned.
Ah, to still be young enough to look forward to snow days, Ettie thought.
“Make a snow angel or two for me,” she said, wheeling her cart for the door.
“If I was making them for you,” Lacey called after her, “they’d be snow devils!”
“Oh, someone’s cruising to get featured in my next issue.”
Lacey giggled, and Ettie took her water out to her car. Damn it was cold! It must have dropped another five degrees at least, just while she’d been inside. By the time she’d emptied her meager groceries into the car, Brent’s emergency supply runners were pulling into the store parking lot. She recognized Lelo in his cherry red jeep, Charles in his silver Outlander, and…crap in a hat…Vance, in his dark blue work truck. Ettie made a face, but she guessed it only stood to reason that a man-slut, unburdened by anything resembling a real job, would have plenty of time to answer Brent’s distress call.
She really hoped she didn’t have to ride with him. Anybody else would be fine, so long as it wasn’t Vance.
Locking her car, Ettie headed toward the circle of vehicles where the men were gathering and Brent was already passing out payment vouchers and a list of supplies.
“Lelo, I know you’re going to want to pick your mother up in Rose Hill, so you and Jon can head out to the Apple Mart. Charles, you and I will hit the Food Saver.” Turning to Vance, Brent handed him the last of the vouchers. “That leaves you and Ettie heading out to Barry’s in Brenton.”