by Maren Smith
“Mirrors,” he called back over his shoulder. “I saw that.”
Damn it.
And there were mirrors, too. Three in fact, evenly spaced on the walls down the hallway in which he was leaving.
Growling aggravation, Chelsea flopped back on the bench, folded her arms across her chest and waited. Jackson disappeared down the hall and around a corner. A few people walked by. She subconsciously counted out three more strokes—one accompanying yelp, two heart-wrenching moans—and then silence from within.
In the few minutes of stillness that followed, a group of chatting women walked by, all of them dressed like Little Maids. Some looked at her, but most were too wrapped up in the excitement of wherever they were going to pay her any mind. Still, Chelsea felt conspicuous. She didn’t want to be here. Why couldn’t she have found an all-expenses-paid vacation to Disneyland? That would have been fun. She could be getting a princess make-over right now, or hanging out with Goofy. Goofy never spanked anyone.
For some reason, her thoughts turned to Kade, to being pinned up against that wall before she’d even known his name. The big bad wolf, Selena had called him. Her thighs pressed together, trying to stop that insidious lick of heat that bloomed low down in her belly when she remembered that wolfish smile of his, the way he liked to lean in to her, the way his voice rumbled a little, the sexiest of growls when he talked.
The office door swung open.
“Be good,” Master Marshall warned the woman who exited.
She looked flushed, dazed a little, and despite the tender way she was walking, happy. “Not if I can help it,” she giggled, and off she went down the hall. Practically skipping. She had to be forty if she was a day, and she was skipping. Chelsea stared after her until she heard Marshall clear his throat.
“Next,” he said, standing in his open office doorway and looking right at her.
She was the only one there.
Standing, her fingers twisting nervously in the long folds of her skirt, Chelsea walked into his office. There was a very lethal-looking cane lying on his desk. She promptly turned around and would have walked right back out again, except that Master Marshall had already closed the door and now was standing between her and her only avenue of escape.
“Take a seat,” he said generously, waving the way back to his desk.
She looked at the cane. Making her way to his desk, she selected the chair farthest from that thin whip of bamboo and sat. Following just behind her, Master Marshall circled his desk, picking up the cane as he went and dropping it into a floor stand with two or three other implements just like it.
“How have you enjoyed your stay thus far?” he asked, dropping into his own throne-like chair. Giving his vest an adjusting tug, he folded his hands in his lap and fixed all of his attention squarely on her.
“It’s been fine,” she hedged, guardedly.
“I notice you’ve spent quite a lot of time in the garden this morning.”
“It’s nice outside today.”
“Very nice,” he agreed.
“I wasn’t the only one out there either, so if the maze is off-limits—”
“It’s not,” Master Marshall interrupted, holding up a quieting hand. “You aren’t in any trouble, Beth. The garden is open any time of the day or night for anyone who cares to make use of it. But, I confess I am a little confused.”
That made two of them. Shifting in her seat, Chelsea waited to hear what she’d done to make herself stand out now.
“I opened this resort—oh, it’s been almost four years now. In all that time, you are the only person I have ever seen sit in the garden and read.”
“I bought the book in your gift shop,” she protested, feeling cornered.
“We sell anatomically correct cake pans too, but no one buys one and then runs to the kitchen to bake a cake. Beth—” Master Marshall came around to her side of his desk. He sat on the corner closest to her, folded his hands in his lap again, lowered his tone to something more soothing and less accusing and said, “If reading is how you want to spend your vacation, if that’s what makes you happiest, then read. I have books in my personal library that you can’t find anywhere else. Some date back hundreds of years and are the earliest examples of BDSM literature in existence. I have section after section of how-to books and the best damn Naughty Librarian program you could imagine. Look at me, Beth.”
She did, terribly afraid that he might be able to see right into her with those piercing blue eyes of his and know, just know, why she wasn’t fitting in.
“You spend a lot of time in your room. You haven’t been to the dungeon once, not even on one of the tours. You haven’t been back to the Nursery.”
“I went to the media room,” she offered guiltily.
“Yes, I know. You sent off a few emails and then played Candy Crush for three hours. You aren’t having a good time, and that concerns me.”
“I am hav—”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have a partner for the rest of your stay? If Travis and Trevor were not to your liking, there are many other experienced Tops who would love the opportunity to show you around, introduce you to new and interesting scenes. Things you can only find in the real world from the pages of that book you’re reading. Take advantage of what the Castle offers, try out a few of those fantasies you keep locked down deep inside you for fear no one else would understand or accept them. Let yourself live a little. Let me help you find someone to bring out the passionate submissive you are fighting so hard to keep secret.”
She thought about Kade—about being held captive by him in the garden bushes, dirt and leaves in her hair, his arm like a band of steel around her waist while she straddled his thighs, his cock pressing hard and hot against her mons.
“Beth?”
Her breathing was coming a little faster; she looked at Master Marshall, trying hard to slow it back down again. “I’m fine,” she quavered. “I am.”
He didn’t look convinced. His eyes narrowed slightly. She thought he was going to press, but in the end, he didn’t. “As you wish,” he said, with a diplomatic nod. “I am here to serve you, not the other way around.”
Feeling dismissed, Chelsea stood to go. Her knees were shaky, unsteady. She felt disappointed somehow, though she couldn’t understand why.
“One moment. You’re forgetting something.”
Pausing just a few feet shy of the door and escape, Chelsea braced herself. “What?”
“Your spanking, of course.”
She turned. Unbidden, her gaze went straight to the floor stand of canes. A sickly tightness tangled in the pit of her stomach while a slow flush of heat prickled up the backs of her thighs and spread hot across her bottom. Arousal and dread; it was an odd combination she just didn’t know how to deal with. Curiosity, too. The longer she stared at those canes, the more she found herself wondering what a stroke from one would feel like. Her stomach tangled even tighter, but it no longer felt sickly.
“I don’t need those,” Master Marshall said as he came to her. “Look at me, Beth.” He waited until she had complied, catching her chin lightly between two fingers and lifting her face to his, making it harder for her to withdraw. “I want you to enjoy your stay. That’s it. That’s everything to me. If there is anything I can do to help ensure this, please let me know. Can you do that?”
Chelsea nodded, her mind racing, her legs anything but steady as she waited for the inevitable.
“All right.” He turned her to face the door and delivered his swat—a single smack, the same as before, harder than a pat and yet nowhere near hard enough to really hurt. It was just enough to set her skin to buzzing and her nerves to humming. Her bottom tingled, a sensation that drifted down between her thighs until she could feel the heady pulse of her heartbeat throbbing in her sex.
He opened his office door, freeing the way for her to escape. “Be good,” he said as she edged past him to stand once more in the relative safety of the public hall outside.
<
br /> Two princesses and a butler were waiting on the benches now. All three looked up with the same guilty expression on their faces.
“Next,” Master Marshall beckoned.
A woman stood. Nervously fiddling with her pink bracelet, she gave Chelsea an uncertain look before slipping past both her and the Master of the Castle. Marshall winked at Chelsea, and then he closed the door.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Standing outside Master Marshall’s office, her bottom and sex both aching for more of the attention he had already given her, Chelsea stared at the carpet for a long time in silence. She didn’t think she could handle getting sent up here again, not one more time. Reluctant as she was to admit it—her stomach gave a tiny leap; something that felt a lot like excitement, although she tried to make it feel like dismay—she was going to have to start participating.
But how? What could she do to convince Master Marshall that she was enjoying herself, and yet that wouldn’t get her lost so deep in a—her stomach flip-flopped—a scene that she wound up chained to a dungeon wall being tickled by feathers or locked in an oubliette with a man in a leather mask or…or…or back out in the garden, the cog pin of a daisy-chain orgy. She did not want to end up in an orgy!
Maybe she should start…exploring. Definitely she shouldn’t keep standing here. On the other side of his closed office door, Master Marshall was already delivering his spanking. Not the cane this time. It sounded crisp, sharp, still muffled by the enclosed room, but all Chelsea could match in her mind to make a sound like that was a bare hand on an equally bare bottom. Admittedly, her experiences in this area were limited, but her imagination was more than capable of pulling up images that corresponded exactly with the sounds coming from that room. He wasn’t giving the princess one spank, like he had given her. Oh no, she was getting a lot of them. Chelsea’s bottom grew tenser with each crisp sound. There was yelping now, too. Lots of shrill gasps and cries and probably bare-bottom squirming to dodge his undodgeable palm.
If she was still standing out here when Master Marshall and his latest penitent re-emerged, he’d definitely think something was wrong. He’d probably drag her right back into his office. And then what? What could she say to explain why she was just standing here, listening to him deliver one heck of a thorough spanking while her bottom clenched in sympathy and her stomach performed more acrobatics than a circus trapeze artist. And it certainly wasn’t because she was curious, because she wasn’t that crazy either.
So why hadn’t she left?
Did she want to go back in there? Did she want to get spanked, not just one swat, but like what was happening now? Did she really want Master Marshall to do that…or did she want Kade?
Her breath hitched in her chest, choking her.
“Are you okay?” the butler on the bench behind her asked.
It was the spur Chelsea needed to get moving. That and the shock of sudden silence as the spanking abruptly ceased in the room behind her. Except that it wasn’t really silent at all. The princess was crying, high-pitched gasps and breathy sobs that slowly began to dissolve away beneath the low, soothing tones of masculine comfort being offered. The erotic throb pumped harder, not just in her clit now but in her nipples too. Chelsea didn’t answer the butler. She just started walking.
Where was she going? Back to her room? Back to her showerhead?
How pathetic.
She touched her hands to her burning face and walked faster, with no idea of where she was heading. She twisted sideways, trying to avoid running into other guests.
Maybe she should ask Master Marshall to assign her someone. Maybe if she got spanked like that, that hard, crisp, bare hand to bare bottom smack-smack-smacking like she had just heard, then that would take some of the erotic mystery out of it so she could finally just stop obsessing!
She very nearly collided into two people as they cut across her path to duck into an open room, an assembly of some sort. There were rows of chairs, a two-step-high dais at the front of the room, and people gathering in the audience. It looked like a lecture or a press conference. There were Littles in the audience, sitting on the laps of Mommies or Daddies. There were princesses in pink and princes in blue and nobles of both genders in purple bracelets just like hers. There was even a maid in a very skimpy outfit, and of course, the two slave girls who had ducked past her, giggling, “Here he comes. Quick, quick!”
She didn’t know who they were referring to, but when she glanced up - Oh Lord! - there was Kade, strolling down the hallway, coming right towards her. He hadn’t noticed her yet, and Chelsea didn’t stop to think. She ducked into the lecture hall and quickly closed the door.
Crap.
“Chelsea!”
She turned and there, sitting in the middle of the third row of chairs from the front, was Selena. She waved.
Cra-a-ap.
Briefly resting her forehead against the door, Chelsea debated, but then—figuring Kade would definitely be long gone by the time she got out of here—she made her way to the chair beside Selena. “I would have thought you’d be on your honeymoon by now.”
“I was bad,” Selena said with an exaggerated pout. “I have to sit here and think about what I’ve done. And volunteer if no one else does, although I doubt that’ll be a problem, considering the Master who’ll be instructing today.”
“Who—” Chelsea started, but then jumped along with everyone else in the room when the door burst open and Kade strode in.
“The big bad wolf, of course,” Selena whispered in her ear.
Crap in a hat, with a muffin on top.
Looking neither left nor right, Kade marched to the head of the room, snapping out a damn fine impersonation of J.K. Rowling’s Severus Snape. “There will be no foolish wand-waving or silly incantations in this class.” Hopping the two steps onto the dais, he planted his hand on the podium before swiveling to face them all. “For those select few who possess the predisposition, I can teach you how to bewitch the mind…ensnare the senses. I can tell you how to bottle fame, brew glory…and even put a stopper…in death.”
The audience was absolutely silent until he began to smile.
“Just kidding,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to say that. Welcome to Spanking 101. I—” His gaze came to rest on her and then his smile blossomed into something truly wolfish. “Oh, baby…I am so going to need a volunteer from the audience.”
Hands shot up all around the room. Trying to hide behind hers, Chelsea slunk down in her chair and did her best to be unselectable. Women were bouncing in their seats—for a change, Selena wasn’t one of them—making eager grunting noises in their anxiousness to be chosen.
A plump blonde directly behind Chelsea was louder than most. “Oh please, please… Master Kade!”
Ignoring everyone else, Kade came down amongst the audience once more and directly to Chelsea’s aisle. Two empty seats were all that separated them now.
She shifted hands to cover that side of her face, slinking down even lower. Any further and she was going to fall completely out of her chair. “Please don’t,” she moaned, but he pointed at her anyway.
“You,” he said, and beckoned. “Come on.”
All around her, hands went down with a collective slap and multi-voiced groans of disappointment.
He beckoned again. “Don’t be shy, Red. This is going to be a wonderful experience. You might even enjoy it as well.”
Reluctantly, Chelsea stood up, speechless. Of all the activities this place had, of all the gardens, pools, food venues, playrooms, and shops, how did she manage to get stuck in a Spanking 101 lecture given by the one person she was trying to avoid? Moments before, she had been all but desperate for this very thing and now, all she wanted to do was run. Be careful what you ask for was right. That prickling, tingling sensation was alive all over her skin. When he held out his hand to take hers, guiding her out from the row of chairs to stand mere inches before him, that sensation escalated into the most intensely self-preserving need to
get away. It burst inside her like a firecracker. Run. Now. Before it was too—
The door to the lecture room opened and Master Marshall slipped quietly inside. He stopped, mild surprise etching his features when he saw her there.
Great. Just great.
Fate, that fickle bitch, had just robbed her of all choice. If she fled the room now, she might as well run straight back to Master Marshall’s office and confess all, because there was no way she’d ever escape his suspicions after that. Oh, but not to leave…She looked at Kade, whose smile had gentled.
“Are you afraid of me?” he asked, reaching up to twine a lock of red hair around his finger and gently tug.
“No,” she whispered. Right now, she feared herself a whole lot more.
He gave her hair another soft tug, and then he let her go. “Good girl. Follow me.”
If looks could kill, there were members of that audience—that plump blonde, for instance, arms folded sulkily across her chest—who would cheerfully have murdered her right then and there. Chelsea tried not to look at any of them as she walked with Kade to the dais.
He sidestepped the podium, pulling a single chair away from the back wall and setting it in the center of the stage.
“What is spanking?” he announced, his warm hand capturing hers and pulling her those last few reluctant inches until she was standing right next to him. “Spanking is pleasure. It’s fun, playful, erotic, but can also be used for punishment. It’s many things and varies wildly from person to person. Being dominant or submissive doesn’t matter. Some use it only for fun, enhancing their sex life. Others view it only as punishment, offering the gift of their dominance or submission when it’s required. Used correctly, it can bring two people together in a relationship and bond them stronger than cement. Used incorrectly, a dominant can land himself in jail. What about you?” he asked, turning everyone’s attention right to her. “How are you spanked?”
“I-I-I…” She flushed, glancing out across all those people seated throughout the room.