“Hey, Tyler!” she called drunkenly from a couple of tables away.
By the time he turned to her and smiled, she was nearly at their table.
“I thoughts of what we can celebrate…” She tried to make it to her chair, but tripped and fell into his lap. “Finding old friendsh.”
“Yeah. Let’sh celebrate that. To old friendsh and hope.” Tyler held her snugly on his lap. He’d wanted to have her this close for so long. His inhibitions finally squashed with the alcohol, he did what he’d always wanted to do. Their eyes locked and he knew this was his chance. As he ran his hand down her long hair, he leaned in for the first passionate kiss they’d ever shared.
* * *
A buzz saw ground through Whitney’s very soul and she winced in her sleep. Lights, lots of bright lights flashed past. It was like a movie playing, but there were no voices, no sound. Lots of bright colors and splotches of white. The hand. There was large hand holding hers as she walked towards something. A building. A hotel. Larger than the hotel she’d stayed in. Nicer. More colorful, and loud. She turned her head and smiled. It wasn’t Mark. She narrowed her eyes to clear her blurry vision. It couldn’t be. It was! It was Tyler!
Visions swirled and she saw him again, sitting at the bar opposite her. They’d had drinks. LOTS of drinks.
The white again. It was in front of her. White lace and roses. They weren’t hers. They belonged to someone else. It wasn’t her turn. Her turn? Oh, God, her turn. Their turn! They’d been waiting in the chapel for their turn!
Whitney sat bolt upright and looked down at the occupant in the bed beside her. Her hand loomed before her eyes waiting to confirm the vision that was now clear in her mind. There it was. It hadn’t been a dream and the ring on her finger was ugly but real. Somewhere, somehow last night, she had married the best friend she’d ever had, Tyler Jackson. The piece of paper on the floor next to the bed made the situation even clearer. She bent to pick it up and examine it more closely. It was as she suspected—a marriage certificate.
She tapped the shoulder of the man next to her with a tentative finger. Nothing. “Tyler,” she said in gravelly voice. “Tyler.”
“Huh?” Tyler croaked. His eyes widened. “Oh. Ah, Whit.” he said with a tone that she almost thought held some small hint of relief. “I thought it was a dream.”
“Nope. It’s true,” she said, holding up her finger and then the marriage certificate she’d just found. “We’re hitched. We must have been really hammered.”
He took the certificate from her and tried to examine it through bleary eyes. “My eyes won’t focus.”
“I sort of remember the chapel. They sold us the ring. I didn’t do it on purpose. You know I wouldn’t trap you like that, Tyler,” she said. “Honest.”
“I know,” he said. “I don’t know why I thought it was such a great idea to drink so much. I’m really not much of a drinker.”
“Do you think we, you know…?”
“Consummated?”
She giggled. “Such a formal word for two drunks who barely remember the night before.”
He almost laughed himself, but his head hurt. “It is, a bit.” he said. “What were we thinking?”
Whitney pushed back the hurt that bubbled up into her throat. “I don’t expect you to stay married to me, even if we did do it.”
“I doubt that we did,” Tyler said. “I doubt whether, I don’t think it would have happened anyway. Not that that would be terrible. I mean, it would be way better than terrible.”
“Of course not.” She nodded. “I’ll have a shower and get my things together and then we’ll see what we have to do to get you out of this.”
* * *
Whitney closed the bathroom door and leaned against it, a smile creeping onto her face. She couldn’t help it. She never would have planned this and there was no telling what would happen now. Maybe Tyler didn’t want to be married to her. For now though, even if it was only for an hour or a week, she was married to Tyler. It made her shiver with anticipation of what that meant.
The almost scalding water coursed overhead and down her back taking with it all the old makeup and stress. She could hear Tyler in the next room and the sound of him was so familiar. He was always so bossy. It was interesting, but what she found bossy back then, she found positively titillating now. What if her mindset had been different back then? She was suddenly thrown back into the past to an earlier occasion when Tyler had actually threatened to SPANK her…
“Are you really only eighteen years old, Tyler? ‘Cause sometimes I feel like you’re like forty or something. You are NOT my Daddy!”
“No, I’m not,” Tyler said. “Someone has to look out for you, though. I’m just trying to get you to understand. You’re seventeen years old and you want to mark your body with something that you’re probably going to hate in a few years’ time.”
“You just said it. MY body. Stop being such a busybody old man. Why don’t you come with us and get one too? Live a little, be a teenager instead of a boring stuffed shirt.”
“No. This is my last week here before I go away to school. My money isn’t for wasting on an expensive and useless tattoo. Yours shouldn’t be either. You should be saving for your education as well.”
“Um, do you even know me? School and me don’t mix. We’re like oil and water.”
“You shouldn’t be wasting your time roaming around with that idiot Jock. It’s like talking to a wall sometimes, you know?”
“Yeah, I do know. You’re just no fun.”
“Maybe, but I will be able to have fun one day when I finish school and get a good job.”
“You’re saying the same stuff again, but all I hear is blah, blah, blah.”
“You’re a brat.”
“Maybe, but I’m a brat who likes a good time, not a boring time.”
Whitney’s soapy fingers skimmed her beaded nipples. She could almost hear Tyler’s stern voice as he called her a brat. Her bottom tingled as she imagined his mouth again, forming the words. “You’re a brat.”
She hadn’t listened, just for something completely different, and she’d gone with Jock anyway. As Tyler had predicted, it hadn’t ended well.
When the deputy handed her his phone to call someone to come get her after he’d arrested Jock for driving under the influence, there was only one number etched in her mind. Her hand shook as she punched in the numbers. “Can you pick me up at the station? I need you.”
After his initial gasp of shock, he’d asked. ”Are you ok?”
“Jock is kind of in trouble.” Tyler had said nothing. He didn’t have to; he’d be on his way. She knew he was pissed at her and she knew he’d come anyway. He was her rock.
What if he’d acted on those feelings? What if he HAD actually spanked her? Her pussy twitched with excitement at the thought. The thought, the word. The boy Tyler spanking her hadn’t made her hot back then, but the thought of the man in the other room tossing her over his knee was certainly having an effect. Her hands soaped her belly and slipped down over the neatly trimmed line of curls as the memory of that night filled her mind…
“Will you just say something?”
“What exactly would you like me to say? Did you have a good time?”
“Not in the end.”
Tyler gritted his teeth. “I don’t really want to talk about this anymore. It’s useless. You just don’t listen and you just don’t care. You are honestly the most selfish, disrespectful brat that I’ve ever met.”
“Why do you think I should respect you? You’re not even that much older than me.”
“I don’t know, Whitney, let me think. Oh, yes. I just got dragged out of my bed when I have to go to work in four hours, to pick you up from the station because YET AGAIN you made a thoughtless choice.”
“Here we go; another lecture.”
“No lecture, there’s no point. I feel like hauling you out of this car and bending you over the hood. You don’t listen to words. Maybe a good old-fash
ioned spanking would open your ears.”
There it was… the threat. An exquisite burst of pleasure opened her eyes and the rhythmic throbbing that followed forced her fingers between her swollen lips to find relief.
She said nothing the rest of the way home. Tears stung her eyes and she felt like her face was on fire. “Do you want to come in?”
“No.”
“I’ll get to see you before you leave…?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, if you’re gonna be like that, I don’t want to see you anyway.”
She’d jumped out of the car and slammed the door behind her. She didn’t see him again until just last night when she met him in the bar. When he’d been gone a month, she finally had to give in to the thought that he’d actually done it; he’d gone away and left her all alone. Well, alone with her grandparents, but without him. She’d been so hurt and angry that she’d finally done what she’d been on her way to doing the night it had all gone wrong. The butterfly she’d planned hadn’t happened, but there was another design in its place.
Whitney glided her hand back over the silky wet skin of her ass cheek. What if things had gone differently that night? What if Tyler had followed through with his threat?
The hard pebbles of her nipples tingled and she could feel the pressure building between her legs as her imagination ran wild. Her body may have been on hyper alert, but her mind wasn’t; it was back there in the car with Tyler. This time, she was writing her own ending. She closed her eyes, barely aware of the hot water that ran off her shivering body.
“Here we go; another lecture.”
“No lecture. There’s no point.” Her bottom clenched with anticipation as the car suddenly pulled off the road.
“Wha, what are you doing?”
“Out.”
“No. I don’t want to.”
“I didn’t ask you what you wanted, Whitney. I asked you to get out of the car.”
“Are you going to leave me here?” She knew he would never do that, but it was better than asking him flat out if he was going to spank her.
“Come on! Do you really think I came out here at this time of night to pick you up so I could dump you by the side of the road?”
“I guess not.”
“You guess not? You KNOW that I’d never do that. That just proves to me that you DO need a wake-up call. I care about you, Whitney, and I care what happens to you.”
She tried to tug out of his grasp but he was too strong. He undid her seatbelt and tugged her out of the car. “Stop!” she hissed. Before she knew what was happening, she was bent over the hood of the car.
“This skirt barely even covers your panties.”
Her eyes were wide with disbelief as the short skirt was raised, leaving her skimpy panties on display for anyone who might drive past. “Stop, Tyler! Someone will see!” Her only answer was a hard smack that exploded in the center of her right cheek. She yelped with surprise at the sudden sting, but Tyler ignored her and slapped the other side just as hard.
“You’re worried about someone seeing your panties?”
“Yes, yes.” She danced up and down trying to dodge the sharp spanks that were landing without warning wherever Tyler’s hand connected with the wriggling target. The pain stopped, there was silence for a second, and she took a deep breath, only to splutter it back out again in outrage when she felt the cool breeze float across her bare bottom as her panties were yanked to her knees.
“Now no one can see them,” Tyler said. His hard hand smacked her poor naked bottom over and over as she desperately searched up and down the road for cars through tear-filled eyes.
Whitney’s hand moved rapidly, spreading her pouty lips and rubbing circles on her swollen clit. She could feel her own imagined embarrassment and it thrilled her.
“I’m sorry, Tyler.” She tried to turn around, but he placed a hand between her shoulder blades and pushed her firmly back over the hood. She could feel the warm metal beneath her unprotected belly. So much heat. The warmth from the car, the hot pain from the spanking, and the warmth that was building deep inside her.
Intense energy pumped through Whitney and she pressed herself against the tiles. They felt so warm from being pelted with the hot shower spray. A rush of scalding heat pulsed through her and she had to clamp her lips together to keep from yelling out as her body stiffened and rocked with pleasure.
When she opened her eyes, she was back to reality with Tyler in the next room and she realized she had never really ended the altered memory. As she toweled her sated body dry, she wondered if both their reactions would have changed history…
She said nothing the rest of the way home, too embarrassed for the way she’d reacted and from the unusual act of intimacy. Tyler had spanked her bare bottom and she’d kind of deserved it, so it was pretty hard to be mad. Tears stung her eyes and she felt like her face was on fire. She didn’t want Tyler to be mad. “Do you want to come in?”
“No. I have work early.”
“I’ll get to see you before you leave…?”
“Of course.”
“I’m gonna miss you, Tyler. Promise me you’ll come back?”
“I promise.”
Then he would have kissed her. Not one of the sloppy kisses where the boy shoves his tongue awkwardly down the girl’s throat while his hand fumbles for the catch on her bra. A real kiss like she meant something. That’s how she’d like to think that it would end anyway. She brushed away an annoying tear. Maybe she wouldn’t have ended up making so many mistakes.
* * *
Tyler picked up the marriage certificate that Whitney had dropped on the bed. There it was on the bottom, the county clerk’s signature and seal. Whitney Jackson. He couldn’t help but smile. Maybe this was fate. Though they hadn’t chosen it with a clear mind, it was what he at least had always wanted. The bathroom door opened and he jumped.
“Hi,” he said with a smile. This was the closest to HIS Whitney that he’d seen so far. Her face was scrubbed free of makeup and she wore a pair of his sweatpants and a T-shirt. Her long red hair looked darker and longer now that it was wet. She wasn’t making eye contact though; her face was flushed and he could have sworn she’d been crying. “Whit?”
“I’ll see if I can get my suitcase back today and then I’ll return your clothes.”
“No need, he said. “We have to figure things out though. Why don’t we spend the day together?”
Whitney smiled. “I’d like that, but the only clothes I have are those,” she said, pointing to the small untidy pile of discarded clothes and the red shoes. “And to tell you the truth, I couldn’t walk far in those shoes unless I was too drunk to feel my feet.”
“I bet,” Tyler said. He had no idea how women balanced on those things.
“We don’t have to go out. We can order in and spend the day in here.”
“Figuring out how to get free of each other,” she said sadly.
“I’ll order breakfast,” Tyler said, picking up the phone. He didn’t know why, but getting free of her was the last thing on his mind at that moment.
* * *
Whitney flopped onto the bed and closed her eyes. What if she really were to stay Mrs. Whitney Jackson? This would technically be her honeymoon. Her heart skipped a beat and her tummy flipped. Tyler was still so much like her old Tyler and yet so much more. In some ways he was the same caring friend she’d known since childhood, but he was also a mature man. His once untamed curls were now short-cropped and tidy. His face was the same, but bigger and older. His five o’clock shadow was darker than she remembered. Everything about him seemed to be on a larger scale, and firmer. He obviously worked out.
Images of Mark drifted through her mind. What HAD she been thinking? How could she have even let marriage and Mark share the same thought in her mind? He was nothing but an overgrown child. Not once in the last two years had he ever opened her door as Tyler had done. Pulling out her chair for her? She scoffed aloud to the empty room. Never. H
e didn’t even know when her birthday was and she had never bothered to tell him. He celebrated his own birthday by having her wait on him and his buddies while they watched a game and drank beer. He had been a man of simple tastes. If she were to be honest, he had been just plain simple. A carbon copy of nearly all the men she’d been with since she’d started dating.
She twisted the ring around on her finger and her tummy flipped again. She was actually married. This could be a mistake, especially for Tyler, He had it together and he didn’t really deserve to be saddled with a fuck-up. There was no way to explain her feelings, except to say she was confused but happy, really happy.
Chapter Two
Tyler dropped the bag on the bed and drew a panicked Whitney into his arms. “I told you on the phone I didn’t mind,” he said.
“But it’s just another one of my mistakes you had to clean up, Tyler.” She buried her face into the warmth of his chest. “I should have gone on my own. When the hotel rang to say Mark had left my stuff at the desk, I didn’t dream that he would have also left the account for his room service. I wasn’t even there long enough to order anything and I maxed out my card to pay for the room.”
“You had nothing to wear, remember? Lucky I did go, Whit,” he said. “Hotels don’t take very kindly to people who skip without paying. I don’t think they just would have handed you your bag.”
“I know. You shouldn’t have had to pay though.”
“It’s done,” he said. “Why don’t you get changed into something comfortable and we’ll go downstairs and get something to eat. I think they have a pretty decent buffet.”
“I’ll pay you back, I promise.”
“Lunch? Come on,” he said. “Go get changed.”
“Bossy, aren’t ya?” she said, pulling some jeans out of the bag and heading to the bathroom to get changed. She couldn’t help but think how weird this whole thing was. They’d known each other forever, they were MARRIED, for God’s sake, and yet she was changing in the bathroom because it didn’t feel quite right to get changed out there in front of Tyler. No, that wasn’t right; she would have been just fine removing her clothes in the other room. She just didn’t want to look like she was acting like she was really his wife when it was probably the last thing he wanted. They’d been together for one night after years of being apart and he already had to bail her out of financial trouble. He didn’t know the half of it.
His Firm Guidance Page 2