Learning to Live Again (Corbin's Bend, Season Two Book 9)

by Ruth Staunton

  Okay, pull it together, Grant. It’s just a spanking. You have been on the receiving end often enough. Maybe not in 20 years, but you understand the mechanics of things. You’re the one that wanted to institute domestic discipline. Now it’s time to make good on it. He swallowed hard. How was he going to do this? Obviously, the simplest thing would be to just put her over his knee and take his hand to her backside, but something in him hesitated. He could still hear his grandfather clearly saying, “Hands are for loving, son. Sure, I’m not above a quick swat in a pinch, but I don’t ever want you or any of the others to fear my hands.” It was probably silly. He knew enough about DD to know that plenty of people spanked barehanded, and his grandfather’s sentiment didn’t necessarily hold true, but it was so ingrained that it violated his sense of rightness to go against it. He couldn’t do it.

  The trouble was, they were so new to this he didn’t have a lot of options. He had belts, of course, but that seemed unnecessarily harsh, not to mention he wasn’t at all sure he could control a belt to his satisfaction. Lainie’s hair brush? A wooden spoon? Both were available, but neither one felt right. Lainie’s brush was a flimsy modern plastic thing that didn’t look like it would hold up against a hard fall much less the kind of spanking Lainie needed. Dammit, he needed a paddle. Wait a minute...

  He stepped into the closet and dug around until he found the welcome basket Brent had given him when they moved in. It had included an official Corbin’s Bend paddle. Grant picked it up and gripped it, considering. It was solid and hefty, though fairly small, rectangular shaped, perhaps a foot long and three quarters of an inch thick. It was clearly meant to pack a punch. He swung it lightly against his leg and winced, surprised at the intensity of the sting. No, it would do nicely for a serious punishment, but it was too heavy for what he needed now. He had suspected it would be. It was thicker and heavier than the one Grant’s father had used throughout his childhood.

  That thought stopped him in his tracks. He dropped the paddle back into the basket and headed for the garage. He was an idiot... a complete idiot. Flipping a switch and blinking in the harsh glare of the overhead light, he weaved his way through the boxes stacked in the garage. Thankfully, he had moved these particular boxes himself and knew exactly where the ones he needed were. Years ago, when his mother had moved to her current retirement community in Florida, she had boxed up some of his father’s things that she thought Grant might want and given them to him. Much to Grant’s amusement, she had included his father’s paddle, assuming that he, like his father and grandfather before him, was the Head of Household and disciplinarian for his family. Since at the time he was not and had no use for it, Grant had never taken the paddle out of the box. He had simply kept it in storage along with the other things as family heirlooms, never dreaming he might one day have a use for it. It took rummaging through two of the boxes, but he located the paddle, still wrapped carefully in one of his mother’s dishtowels. He took it out and carried it into the house, snapping off lights and closing doors behind him as he went.

  Yes, this was perfect for what he needed. It was roughly the same size and shape as the Corbin’s Bend paddle but thinner and much lighter weight. He knew from considerable experience that this particular paddle, while it stung like blazes, relied much more on repetition than the weight of the paddle itself for its impact. He himself had endured more than one long hard spanking with this paddle without ever having more than a very red sore rear and the very occasional light bruise left behind. Part of that was undoubtedly due to his father’s skill on the subject, but at least he didn’t have to fear doing true damage this way. Besides, if he were really honest, the sentimental part of him that he didn’t like to think about much less really admit existed, thought it was appropriate that when he spanked his wife for the first time it would be with his father’s paddle. He was still incredibly nervous, but it helped.

  Lainie was waiting for him perched on the edge of the couch in the office. She looked as scared as he felt, wide-eyed and pale, chewing on her bottom lip. His old T-shirt hung to her knees and had fallen partway off one shoulder. She looked like nothing so much as a scared little girl. Part of him would have liked nothing better than to gather her in his arms and reassure her that she was forgiven and everything would be okay, but he’d been telling her that for hours now, and it hadn’t helped. He needed to help her forgive herself. Grant took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. He could do this.

  Lainie’s eyes fixed on the paddle in his hand and her breathing quickened. Her tongue darted out to moisten her lips. “Where did that come from?” she blurted.

  “It was Dad’s,” he answered, coming to sit beside her. He laid the paddle on the couch cushion beside him in easy reach and took Lainie’s hands in his own. She was trembling slightly, and he rubbed his hands up her arms, hoping to soothe her. “Mom sent it to me when she moved to Florida, but I’ve never had occasion to use it until now.”

  “You don’t need to use it now either,” Lainie replied. “I’m fine, really. I can deal with this. You don’t need to...do...that.”

  “I think I do.” Though he wouldn’t have dared show it, Grant was amused that, for all Lainie’s protests, she hadn’t once tried to get up or leave. She needed this whether she would admit it or not. “You’re wallowing in guilt and beating yourself up. That can hurt you just as much as doing something dangerous that would get you hurt physically.” Lainie’s eyes flicked to the cork board leaning against the far wall waiting to be hung where their handwritten list of rules was posted. The prohibition against doing anything dangerous or otherwise not taking care of herself featured prominently on the list.

  “But that’s not a rule,” Lainie whined.

  “Logically, I’m not going to allow one and not the other,” Grant said. “I’m not going to stand for anything that hurts you, Lainie, physically or mentally.” Hoping to forestall any further arguments, he pulled her to her feet and around to his right side.

  “How can you say that when you’re going to hurt me?” Lainie argued.

  “I’m not,” Grant told her, “and I never will, at least not intentionally. A spanking may hurt, but I’m ultimately doing it to help you, not hurt you.”

  “It’s still going to hurt,” Lainie muttered.

  Grant ignored her, focusing instead on reaching beneath her T-shirt to hook his thumbs in the waistband of her panties and pull them down.

  “Nooooo!” Lainie screeched. “It’s bad enough as it is, not bare!”

  “That’s what you can always expect. If it’s sufficient enough to warrant a full spanking, it will always be on your bare bottom. You’re not a child who might be corrected by a few swats over her clothes.”

  “But...” Lainie spluttered.

  “Besides, I tried that earlier and it wasn’t enough, remember?”

  “Yes, it is,” she insisted. “I keep trying to tell you I’m fine.”

  Grant paid no heed to her protests. Situating himself well back on the couch, he took her firmly by the arm and guided her over his knees so that her head and upper body rested on the couch cushion. Owing to the difference in their heights, this also left her feet dangling off the floor. He wrapped his left arm around her waist to steady her and pushing the end of her T-shirt out of the way, picked up the paddle.

  * * * * *

  Even as it was happening, some part of Lainie’s brain couldn’t believe Grant was actually going to do this. It couldn’t really be real, could it? Except that she was pretty sure any minute now she was going to start hyperventilating and throwing up was a serious possibility. She was horribly aware of the cool air on her bare backside and every nerve in her body seemed to have flared simultaneously into intense awareness. Those sensations were far too real to be imagined. How could this have possibly happened? She’d never been spanked in her life before today, and now, suddenly, she had managed to get spanked twice in the space of a few hours. What the hell?

  She tensed involuntarily as t
he cool wood of the paddle touched her bottom. It tapped once, twice. Then it was gone and she heard the brief movement of the air a second before it landed with a shocking crack. For a moment there was nothing but the sensation of impact and then a sudden sting bloomed, sharp enough to make her yelp involuntarily. Before she could even fully register this first swat, there was another and another and another, stealing her breath and covering her bottom with a burning heat. The sheer amount of sting was surprising. It made the earlier swats he had given her seem like child’s play. That had been nothing compared to this. That stung. This hurt. Before long, Lainie was twisting and squirming and making involuntary little pained noises, desperate to do anything she could to get away from that blasted paddle. Then, without warning, it stopped.

  “Why are we here?” Grant asked quietly from above her.

  For one confused moment, Lainie didn’t register the question. She heard the words, but they slipped away like sand through her fingers. Her mind couldn’t grasp the meaning. She felt as much as heard Grant sigh, the muscles of his abdomen moving against her side. He tapped the paddle against her thigh, warning.

  “Answer me, Lainie. Why are we here?”

  Frantically, Lainie grasped for any sort of coherent answer. “I was awful to you,” she gasped out. “I called you a horrible name, but I didn’t mean it! I’m so, so sorry.”

  “I know you are, sweetheart,” Grant said. This close, pressed against his body, she could feel the vibration of his voice when he spoke. Somehow, that made it all the more horribly real. “I’ve forgiven you,” he went on, “but you know it was wrong of you to be so disrespectful, don’t you, sweetheart?” He let go with his left arm long enough to rub her back gently. The gentleness undid her. Her chest seized and her throat tightened painfully. She nodded helplessly, unable to speak but not daring not to answer. “That’s why you’re getting a spanking,” Grant continued. “This isn’t about punishing you so much as giving you the consequences you need to be able to forgive yourself.”

  That said, he wrapped his arm securely around her waist once more and lifted the paddle again, peppering already stung skin. It seemed to Lainie that each swat was harder than the one before. The burn built exponentially. A particularly sharp swat caught her low in the crease between bottom and thigh, and the dam broke. Tears flooded, and she was sobbing, crying out not only her guilt from today but what felt like years of exhaustion and frustration from trying to juggle everything on her own, pent up emotions she hadn’t even been aware she was holding in.

  At some point, she became aware that Grant had stopped spanking and was now rubbing her back in soothing circles, murmuring words she couldn’t make out in a soft soothing tone. She pushed herself up, wiping a hand over her face to clear away the worst of the mess. At the first sign of movement, Grant helped her up and settled her onto his lap, carefully shifting her so that the majority of her weight landed on her hip and not her extremely sore bottom.

  “Back with me?” he asked gently.

  Lainie nodded, drawing a deep, shuddering breath. “I’m sorry,” she said again.

  Grant pressed a finger to her lips, quieting her. “None of that now. It’s over, and you’re forgiven. Unless, of course, we’re not done yet, and you need more to be able to forgive yourself.”

  That was a truly horrifying thought. “No, no, there’s no need for that,” Lainie said hurriedly. “I’m good. I promise.”

  Grant, the jerk, had the nerve to laugh at her. He actually chuckled. “I thought you might say that. How are you feeling?”

  “Sore,” she said bluntly, glaring at the paddle still lying beside them on the sofa. “That thing is evil.”

  Grant shook his head. “It’s an inanimate object. It can’t be evil. It is, however, effective. I meant emotionally though.”

  “Better,” Lainie said, a bit shocked to realize that it was true. Her butt was hot and sore, but the crushing weight of guilt that had haunted her all day was gone along with a lot of other stress and emotion. She felt empty and limp and most of all, exhausted. As if in testament to her exhaustion, as soon as the thought crossed her mind, she yawned widely.

  “Think you can sleep now?” Grant asked. Lainie nodded. Grant moved to set her on her feet, but she whimpered in protest, snuggling deeper into his chest.

  Grant glanced down at her, amused, eyebrows raised. “Like that is that?” Lainie nodded again, grinning cheekily up at him. With a long-suffering sigh, he scooped her into his arms and stood up, carrying her across the hall to their bedroom. He deposited her gently on the bed. With a sharp intake of breath, she flipped over onto her stomach. Grant drew the sheet lightly up over her, brushing a hand over her hair and tucking her in like a child. Lainie smiled contentedly, turning her head to watch him as he moved around the bed and climbed in. He draped an arm over her back, drawing her in securely. That was the last thing Lainie remembered before sleep overtook her.

  * * * * *

  The consensus from most of the things Lainie had heard since moving here was that while punishment spankings seriously sucked, there were some significant upsides. The feeling of forgiveness and having truly paid for whatever had gone on was one. That one she believed. She’d experienced it herself last night, curled on Grant’s lap. She had never remembered feeling like that before in her life, that cherished and protected. The other supposed upside was that the makeup sex was amazing. That she had her doubts about. When Grant had tucked her into bed last night – on her stomach, as she couldn’t bear even the thought of her behind touching the bed – she had been appallingly sore. Her eyes had hurt; her face had been stiff and swollen from crying, and she had felt limp and drained. Sex had never even entered her mind.

  She was, therefore, completely shocked to wake in the early hours of this morning, still face down on the bed, to find Grant kneeling between her legs and kissing his way up her spine. They hadn’t woken like this in years, not since the earliest days of their marriage. It had been a very long time since he had taken the initiative like this, taking the matter into his own hands without waiting for her to decide or agree. Some part of her mind thought she ought to be annoyed, but frankly, most of her was so distracted by the trail of heat moving slowly up her spine in the wake of those butterfly kisses, that she didn’t really care.

  When he reached her neck, he planted a kiss at the base of her skull, blowing gently into the fine hairs there. Lainie shivered involuntarily and made a low humming sound deep in her throat. She felt his lips curl into a smile against the back of her neck. “Good morning,” he said softly. “Like that, do you?”

  “It’s nice,” she murmured.

  Grant apparently took that as consent to continue because he began to work his way back down, but this time the kisses were deeper, a little harder and more demanding. He stopped at the small of her back, just above the swell of her bottom. He ghosted a hand across both bottom cheeks, gentle and tentative. She sucked in an involuntary breath, wincing. Much of the horrible soreness from the night before had faded, but she was still extremely tender, as though she were nursing a particularly bad sunburn that was somehow localized only to her backside. “I’m sore,” she told him.

  “Shhh,” Grant said, with that peculiar deeper note in his tone that made any further protests flee without conscious permission. He stopped for a moment as he knelt up then he gripped her hips and pulled her back against him, pressing the tender flesh against his hard thighs. She whimpered and groaned involuntarily, unable not to struggle a little. Grant let go of one hip and reached around her to find her center, gently rubbing, thrusting and teasing. Her breath quickened and her whimpers and moans became more frantic and needier. Then, as suddenly as he had begun, he stopped. His hand moved back to her bottom, and he began kneading her skin like a cat, pressing and rubbing. This time, the soreness wasn’t unpleasant at all. If anything, it sent shockwaves through her, ratcheting up the fire that Grant had started. He kept this up for several more minutes alternating between thr
usting into her with his fingers and rubbing and pressing on her bottom. He drove her just to the edge, far beyond coherent thought, and then he pulled her up onto her knees and elbows, pushing her shoulders down toward the mattress and drawing her ass high into the air, using his own knees to push hers wide apart, leaving her open to him. Without warning, he thrust into her, hard and fast. He pummeled her sore skin, reigniting the fire from the night before, but she was far beyond caring, spiraling up higher and higher, rocking and keening, until she finally crashed over the edge, feeling Grant follow only moments later.

  Lainie woke again sometime later to find them still sprawled together on the mattress. One of them – she had no memory of which – had had the presence of mind to pull the comforter up over them before they fell asleep. She was still lying on her stomach, but at some point Grant had rolled over off of her and was curled on his side next to her. She felt pleasantly boneless and very sore, but in a very good way. Maybe there was something to all that talk about the upsides after all.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  By the time July rolled around, Lainie was feeling more settled in and at home in Corbin’s Bend than she could remember feeling in years. For the first time in a long time, she actually had time to relax and resurrect some of her own hobbies. She had returned to crafting and scrapbooking and met up with Julie frequently to work on their various projects. Julie was currently creating memory books for her three young children, and Lainie had started updating the ones she had started for her own girls when they were babies but had not been able to keep up with over the years. Julie had become a good friend as well. For all her initial reservations, Lainie found herself liking Julie’s spunky and funny nature.

  That wasn’t the only thing Lainie found herself unexpectedly liking. Since that first hesitant experiment, she had come to realize that she really liked spanking, at least the erotic kind. Since moving here, she and Grant had been using spanking as foreplay more and more often, and their sex life was better than it had been in years, maybe ever. It was like they were newlyweds again but without the newly married stress that had come along with being newlyweds. They couldn’t seem to keep their hands off each other, and as much as it both shamed and astonished her to admit it, the more demanding Grant was the more she liked it.