by Maren Smith
“Let me up.” She grabbed his leg with clawing fingers. Twisting her hip to roll off onto the floor, her feet scrambled to find some sort of leverage on the floor.
“Hey!” He held her, but only just.
“I said, let go!” Teeth gritted, she snapped, “If you don’t want to spank me, fine! I’m not desperate. I didn’t call you, Have Paddle, Will Travel! I’m not one of your clients! Let me up, damn it!”
He was so startled by the sudden venom in her tone, he almost did let her go. But then she started to fight him. Not just struggle, not just kick or wriggle about, but actually fight. She got her fingers down under his pants leg and scratched furrows into his ankle, all the way up his shin. She slammed her elbow into his ribs. She probably would have bitten him if she could have wriggled around far enough, but he recovered from his shock first.
“Get your gigolo hands off me, horn dog!” she bellowed. “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t consent!”
“Oh my God, have I had enough of this!” he snapped back. He had no problem busting her ass after that. He even laughed a little while he did it, throwing his whole arm into peppering her backside with hard, fast swats. “Every single time I start to feel kindly toward you, you go and act like a nut!”
He wasn’t mad. Irritated, maybe. Even confused, but not mad. Not really. Not any more than he would have been mad at the orneriness of a bee that unexpectedly stings. And like that bee, he swatted the hell out of her.
Ettie howled, spitting the most creative string of curses at both him, his parentage, and his livelihood. He paused long enough to wrench his right leg out from under her, leaving her fighting to get up off his left thigh only, and then he clamped both her wildly kicking legs between his own. She reached back clawing at his face, but he caught her wrist—first one and then the other, and quickly pinned those as well.
“This is assault!” she yelled.
“It certainly is,” he replied, and let her have it. He spanked her until his hand burned and throbbed. As much as it was hurting him, it had to be hurting her more, but even when Ettie stopped fighting him, she lay stiff as a board, teeth gritted, making no sound at all apart from the raggedness of her breathing. He didn’t know whether he ought to admire her stubbornness, or give up.
He almost missed it, that telltale hiccup that meant a break and tears weren’t far behind. But even as that tiny twitch of breath escaped her, Ettie sucked it back in and stiffened herself even straighter. Her bottom was an angry red and swollen. He could spank her all day long at this point and she was probably just stubborn enough to outlast him.
Stopping, Vance tried to shake some of the sting out of his hand, before bringing it back to rest on the slope of her thigh just under the fiery hotness he’d created. “You want to tell me what’s going on in that head of yours?”
“You want to go to hell?” she countered, her voice thick and shaking so badly that he almost couldn’t make out her words.
“Not until you tell me what this is all about.” He almost lost his grip on her when she suddenly wrenched her body into another fit of dervish writhing.
“Let go-oh! Ow! OW!” She lost her composure when he resumed spanking. Avoiding her blazing hot bottom, this time he focused his hand and his attention on the backs of her tender thighs. Her yelps quickly turned to gasps and then wails. She went from fighting to escape him to fighting to escape the pain, and just as soon as that happened, Vance stopped spanking again.
“I’m waiting,” he said as calmly as he could, flexing to get the sting out of his fingers.
“Let g—no no no NO!”
“I can keep this up all night,” he lied, laying a whole new series of rapid-fire swats all over the backs of her thighs, the full fleshy curves of her bright red bottom, and particularly to that very sensitive strip where the two joined company and she couldn’t help but try to sit sometime later on.
“Bastard!” She wrenched at her trapped hands, her fingers trying desperately to get down far enough to protect herself from his avenging slaps. Until, finally, in an eruption of pleading sobs, she cried, “Stop! Please, Vance, stop!”
He did, glad for the rest. He gave her a moment to catch her breath, flexing his smarting fingers and silently vowing to use his hand more and his straps and paddles less. At least until he’d built up a nice, cushioning layer of callouses. “I’m waiting,” he said again.
“You go ahead and wa—no, wait, wait, WAIT!” She threw her head back, squirming and bucking, her bottom more leaping up into the vigorous claps of his hand. That mouth of hers. He had to fight not to smile then. He could spend a lifetime spanking her and probably still never teach her to mind what came spilling out of it.
“I’m sorry!” she brayed, even though by then he had stopped. “I’m sorry!”
Catching the back of her shirt, he loosened the vise of his legs enough to pull her upright. She tried to get her feet under her, but when he tugged, she plopped down to sit tensely on his right thigh. Sucking a sharp breath, she tried again to stand, but her struggle died the instant he said, “Do I have to spank you again?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Okay then.” Still gripping the back of her shirt because he didn’t for a second think she had given in, he leaned back and waited. Ettie stared fixedly at the floor, looking everywhere but back at him. “So, what made you change your mind, Ettie?”
Rebel tears filled her eyes, though she blinked to keep them back. By the jump in her jawline, he could tell she was biting the inside of her cheek. Anything to prevent them from falling.
Finally, the tiniest glimmer of fragility revealed itself when she asked, “Why don’t you want to spank me? You spank everyone else, why not me?”
Vance reeled. He could have bit his tongue. “That’s not what I meant, honey. You know that’s not.”
“How am I supposed to know what you meant?” She shot him an accusing glare. “You said—”
“Like this,” he clarified. “I don’t want to have to spank you like this. Ettie, I like to play. I like fun spankings, playful spankings, sexy spankings. I like what we did earlier, when it was something you both wanted and needed. Earlier was fun for me, even though you cried. This is different. This is me having to put you over my knee to correct a lack of judgment in a way that will really hurt. That’s not fun. I don’t enjoy that.”
She blinked, that naked fragility peeking through all over again. “Oh.”
“Oh.” He reached up to take her chin lightly between his fingers. “And for the record, I haven’t spanked everyone. I haven’t spanked Brent.” He grinned. “Yet.”
That won from her the most unladylike snort, followed by an equally reluctant smile. It didn’t last long though. “I misunderstood, then,” she admitted, picking invisible lint off her knees. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “It’s just so hard.”
“What’s so hard?” The way she looked at him said she wished she hadn’t said anything. She tried to shrug it away, but Vance wasn’t about to take that for an answer. His hand on her back dropped down to her bottom. He didn’t rub, he simply touched, applying nothing more than a warning tap of one finger.
She flushed all over again. “Being here,” she finally confessed.
“We’re going to get out of here,” he told her, his hand rising once more to caress her back. “I promise, someone will come looking for us. They’re going to find us.”
“I don’t mean here.” Ettie looked around the tiny cabin despondently. “Being here is as easy as having your truck fall through the ice.”
When she went back to picking at her fingers, it suddenly occurred to him what she was saying. “You mean Corbin’s Bend.”
She stared down at her hands, picking so she wouldn’t have to look at him. “I thought it was going to be easier. You know, life in a community full of people who either spank or are spanked. How could anybody move here and not find somebody after four years? You’ve been here less than I have and you’ve got people all ov
er the place. I don’t understand. I just—” She snapped her mouth shut, turning all the way away from him now. She even tried to get up off his knee, but he wasn’t about to let her go.
He pulled her back down to sit on his knee. “Ettie…” When she refused to look at him, he caught her chin between firm but gentle fingers and turned her until she had no choice but to face him. “Do you remember Benjamin’s last barbeque?”
“Yes,” she said listlessly. “I covered it for my paper.”
“And killed me in a horrible hot dog eating accident,” Vance agreed, but that was a different discussion for a different time. “Everybody was there. I can’t think of one person who didn’t come. People were talking, laughing, mingling, playing games…”
“Spanking,” Ettie added.
“Carla Methon and Cadence did butt heads rather vocally, and Kieran and the good Doctor did take them both in hand to sort it out, but I wouldn’t say that spankings abounded. All in all, it was a fun and peaceable event. My point in bringing it up, however, is to ask you this.” He gave the tip of her chin a gentle pinch. “Do you remember what you were doing while everyone else was laughing and talking, mingling and playing games?”
Her eyebrows quirked together. “I was right there with them,” she said, perplexed. “I was talking…”
“You were writing in that notepad you bring with you to every community event. You were writing articles while everyone else was having fun. Ettie, sweetie, you hide behind your paper.”
She scoffed, trying to pull back out of his hand.
“Yes, you do. Maybe you don’t mean to, but that’s what you’ve been doing ever since I’ve been here, at least. You’re a very beautiful young woman. You’re smart, you’re driven.” He couldn’t stop himself from smiling just a bit. “You’re stubborn and you’ve got a mouth that just won’t quit. I can’t help but think there are men all over this community who—if they only knew you were available—would love the chance to take you in hand.”
She remained dubious. “Like who?”
“Me,” Vance said simply. In that moment, not only did it seem the right thing to say, but it also felt true. Admitting it didn’t bother him anywhere near as much as it did to imagine some other man holding Ettie the way he was right now—his hand resting lightly on her bottom, feeling the heat radiating from her flesh, his palm prints marking her as his. That had no right to bother him, but it did. It bothered him a lot.
Ettie stared at him, those blue eyes of hers at first startled and then sad all over again. “So I can be another travel destination?” she countered, and then shook her head. “No. I can’t do that.”
Vance had no right to be bothered by that, either. He swallowed back the surge of disappointment he hadn’t been prepared to feel and tried to cover it with a smile. “That’s okay, sweetie.” He patted her hip. “Let’s finish this up then. Back in position.”
She startled all over again. “B-but…you already spanked me. Why…”
“I spanked you because you threw a fit over my knee and I had to get your attention. You weren’t listening to me and you would not have received your spanking in the proper frame of mind. But, you’re listening to me now, so now we can proceed. I’m actually very sorry about this, in a way. As sore as your bottom was when we first started, I imagine it’s going to be even worse now.”
Her eyes were huge. Other than to blink, she didn’t move.
“Sweetheart,” Vance said, every bit as gentle and as firm as his fingers upon her chin. “I may not enjoy having to give this kind of spanking, but it’s important that you know I will. Any time I have to. Every time I have to. I also want you to know, I don’t do this kind of spanking for anyone else in Corbin’s Bend. I never have, and I never will.”
He let go of her chin and patted his left leg. It might have been wishful thinking, a trick of his imagination, but for just a second he thought he saw a flicker of relief moving through her disbelief. She quickly dropped her gaze though, hiding it away. She had spent way too many years learning how to hide her true self. After this was over, once they were out of this cabin and back in the safety and security of their homes, one way or another, he was going to make sure Ettie’s ‘hiding’ years were done.
Slowly, Ettie lay her hands upon his left leg. She bent over it, putting herself back into position across his lap. When he tightened the vise of his strong thighs around hers to control the kicking and the inadvertent struggles he knew would follow, she gave him back her hand to hold. He took it, weaving their fingers together, offering all the support he could to help her get through this.
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
“I know.”
Warm ups were for good girl spankings, playtime and sex. This didn’t qualify as any of those, so he didn’t give her one. He ignored the sting in his hand. Paying attention only to the writhing of her body and the sound of her cries, Vance did what he did best. He spanked her, hard, slow, steady as a metronome, and he did not stop until he had given her exactly what she needed.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The room was dark, lit only by the flickering amber glow of the fire behind the stove grate. Outside, the wind was howling. Every now and then, the rush through the eaves made the eeriest whistling sound. The sort that normally would have kept Ettie up all night, curled in a chair in her living room, with a cup of hot chocolate in her hands and a pile of warm puppies in her lap. Maybe with every light in the house turned on. She hated storms. Scary sounds like this weren’t on her list of favorite things, either, but right now, the last thing Ettie felt was scared.
Boneless. That came closer to fitting what she was, wrapped in the bearskin rugs, the length of her pressed up snugly next to Vance, who lay on his back with his arm around her shoulders. Her head was pillowed on his chest while he held her hand on his stomach. He was fully dressed. She still wore her shirt, but her pants and panties lay on the floor where her kicking had finally discarded them and where, in the tear-filled, runny-nosed, sniffling and hiccupping aftermath of the spanking he’d delivered, it just never seemed important enough to put them back on.
He’d held her on his lap for what felt like hours, caressing her back. Sometimes caressing her hot, achy bottom too. Drying her tears from her face one wet track at a time until at last they ceased to fall. He’d kissed her forehead. That kiss made her lips ache, but he never tried to take it any further than that. Not even one time. Not even after he nudged her hip, wordlessly directing her to stand, before taking her hand and leading her on shaky legs to come to bed. For some reason, lying here with him now, with all these clothes between them, the intimacy seemed so much more unbearable than it had the first night when they’d both been naked. She didn’t know why it should be that way, all she knew was she had to keep stopping herself from brushing kisses of her own upon his chest, or the hard muscle of his shoulder, or the line of his neck leading up to his jaw. His very lips themselves. She wanted so badly for him to roll her onto her back, where the pressure of their combined weight would make her sore bottom throb all the hotter.
She wanted him to peel her shirt up over her head and toss it away, leaving all the rest of her bare to the exploration of his hands. Her breasts were swollen, throbbing in time with the heady pulse between her legs. She wanted to feel the heat of his mouth cover each of her nipples in turn, suckle them, nip at them, brand them for his own while his fingers parted her down below. She could feel it, that first phantom thrust of his hips as he sank into the comforting cradle of hers, sliding into her, filling her up so full inside that all she could do was gasp and arch and grind her wounded bottom into the furs beneath them.
She wanted, but she never quite got brave enough to lay that first tender kiss upon his chest and he, Lothario that he was, never stole the initiative from her.
So there they lay, entwined like lovers without really being such. It was a miserable night.
* * * * *
Vance stared up at the ceiling without really s
eeing it. He held Ettie, the hot heat of her lithesome body pressed up against him, burning into him in all the right places. He was hard, so damned hard it hurt. All she had to do was give him one little sign. One hint that she needed her comfort to take a more intimate turn and he’d have been all over her.
He wanted to bury his face in her hair and just breathe her into him. He wanted to fill his hands with her bottom, cup her and squeeze her until she moaned from both pleasure and pain. He wanted to let his mouth travel her body, exploring every wanton inch with his lips and his tongue. Every secret shadow filled with the muskiness of the arousal he could smell wafting from her. He could already feel himself pressing his fingers into the wet heart of her. He could practically hear her cries, feel the grinding of her hips, the arching of her back, the pull of her fingers locked in his hair as he suckled and lashed her clit. And only when she had come so hard and so often that she just couldn’t bear it, then would he rise up above her and take that last unknown part of her. He would sink into her so deep and hard that neither one of them ever recovered.
But she never did make that one tiny come-hither overture, and so here he lay, a prisoner in the confines of extremely ill-fitting jeans, throbbing with the pain of carnal deprivation.
He really was a horn dog.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“God, I want a cheeseburger,” Ettie said, elbow on the table, chin propped in the palm of her hand while she watched him chisel a chessboard grid into the wood between them with the no longer quite-so sharp end of the first-aid scissors.
Trying his best to make the squares even, Vance hardly looked up. “So you’ve said. Twice now. Say it again and I’ll put you back over my knee. I’m hungry too, you know.”
A corner of her mouth twitched. “God, I want a cheeseburger.” Ettie burst out laughing and immediately threw both hands up in surrender when he thunked the scissors down and stood up. “Okay, okay! I’m sorry.”