You Can Go Home Again

by You Can Go Home Again [DaD] (mobi)

  The sound that Becky voiced at the contact was part hunger, part pain, but there was no mistaking her arousal. A small, similar sound parted her lips as she slept.

  “You are mine,” Tucker was gruffly telling her, whispering the fiercely spoken words into the shell of her ear, as he guided her up and down his hard length. “Don’t you ever forget that.”

  Becky nodded her head in agreement, gasping when Tucker’s hand made sharp contact with her backside, as she rode him. “Say it, Red. I need to hear you say it.”

  Becky looked him in the eyes and pushed her bottom out for another hard smack, as she slid ever so slowly down his shaft, pushing his buttons just for a moment. A naughty grin took over her face. “Make me, cowboy,” she challenged.

  Tucker’s eyebrows crashed darkly over his eyes, though the pupils beneath them danced in recognition that she wanted to play.

  In her sleep, Becky thrashed with the sheets, as her dream self was slowly tortured with the agonizingly slow pace Tucker suddenly switched to in answer to her challenge.

  From somewhere on the bed near them, a small wooden paddle emerged, and Tucker snatched it up. As he continued to set the pace, watching Becky wiggle and writhe above him, he reached behind her and brought the paddle down rapidly on her already sore behind.

  “Say it, Red. Say it, or I’ll keep you here, wanting this orgasm, ‘till you think you’ll die from it.”

  She was so close, so wet and tight and God, if he would just touch her a certain way with his hand, or if they weren’t moving so damn slow, she’d be right there…

  She couldn’t stop herself anymore. He had her right where he wanted her, and it didn’t really matter anyway because what he wanted her to say was the truth.

  “I’m yours,” she whispered in his ear, as the paddle cracked against her skin again. “And I won’t ever forget it again.”

  His grin of victory was enough to make her want to smack him, if she didn’t love the big, arrogant lug so much.

  The orgasm he gave her in return for her words was long and hard and well worth the wait…

  * * * *

  When Tucker got up the next morning, he decided to let Becky sleep in. They hadn’t gotten to bed until nearly midnight as it was, and he was sure she hadn’t gone right to sleep with everything that was surely on her mind. Besides, he had the morning chores to finish at his place before he’d have time to leave with her for her mom’s.

  With Spirit on his heels, Tucker made his morning rounds outside, feeding the horses and checking them over, one by one. It would be time to breed again soon, and he didn’t want to take any chances on having a sick animal when the time came.

  When he was finished outside, he took a long shower, dressed, and looked inside the ‘fridge, trying to decide what to make for breakfast. He finally chose pancakes, remembering that they were a favorite of Becky’s. He had the batter ready in no time, and while they cooked on the stove, he threw a half-pound of bacon into the oven.

  When breakfast was ready, he placed everything into the still-warm oven, and jogged up the steps to wake Becky.

  When he stepped into the room, he at first thought she was having a nightmare, the way she was thrashing in the sheets and… wait, she was calling his name.

  Intrigued, Tucker swallowed the words he would have used to wake her up, and snuck more quietly into the room, listening to her unabashedly.

  “Tucker… God… I love you…”

  That sentence nearly caused him to trip over the shoes she’d left tucked just under the bed skirt. He might even have thought he was only hearing what he wanted to hear, except she said it again, a second later.

  “I love you, Tuck…”

  Shaking his head, sure he was dreaming, Tucker sank slowly, carefully, into a sitting position on the mattress right beside where Becky slept. Feeling guilty now over eavesdropping on her, he said her name softly and shook her shoulder to try to rouse her.

  Her eyes drifted open sleepily, and she gazed up at him. Tucker expected her to flush with embarrassment when she saw him, but she didn’t. Instead, she reached for him with one arm and pulled him down close to her. And before he really knew what was happening, she was kissing him.

  Tucker Rhodes was not a stupid man; he knew enough not to push a woman away when she kissed him.

  The kiss wasn’t innocent and sweet like he’d expected it to be; Becky’s mouth roamed his hungrily, her tiny tongue mating with his own with quick darts and flicks. He felt her small hands on his chest through his flannel work shirt and a tiny sound, something like a moan, fell from her throat. Tucker matched the sound with his own, and apparently that was what finally made Becky wake fully up…

  The next thing he knew, Becky was pushing him away, a look of shock on her sleep-mussed features. “What are you… what are you doing?” she demanded accusingly, though a touch of self-doubt colored her tone.

  “I came in here to wake you up for breakfast,” Tucker said, “and you kissed me.”

  “I did not!!”

  Tucker snorted. “You sure the hell did!”

  “Well, I… I don’t know why… I was just waking up… I must have been… I must have thought you were someone else!”

  Tucker rolled his eyes and shook his head at the way she was nodding her head, as if she were trying to convince herself of her own words as much as him. “No, darlin’, you were surely thinking of me because when I walked in here, you were calling out my name.” He paused to let that knowledge sink in, watching as her face flamed. “And more than that, you were saying that you loved me.”

  Becky was mortified; there was no way to miss that. And, apparently, she was speechless; too, if the way she sat there sputtering at him was any indicator.

  “So, Rebecca Marie Atlee, I’ve got a question for you,” he said, his eyes darkening. “If you’re having dreams about me in which you’re telling me you love me, then why in hell did you break up with me when you moved to New York? Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t you try to tell me back then that you didn’t ‘feel the same way’ about me that I feel about you? Didn’t you basically say that you didn’t love me?”

  Becky wiped a shaky hand through her tousled hair. Slowly, she nodded.

  “Well,” Tucker prompted when she continued to sit there in silence. “I’m waiting. If you said that to me then, how do you explain saying you love me in your dream just now?”

  Becky lifted one shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. Tucker noticed that she was carefully avoiding his eyes. “I don’t know. I guess it was being in this place again, being here in your bed again… being in such a vulnerable emotional state…”

  Tucker shook his head and grabbed her chin to force her gaze to meet his own. “No. I don’t buy that for one second. And you, little girl, had best stop lying to me.”

  Becky swallowed hard; she continued to meet his eyes, but she offered no other explanation for herself.

  “Do you have any idea how much it has hurt me all these past months, thinking that you never loved me that way? That you never really loved me as anything more than a friend all those years? And now I find out… Rebecca Marie, you owe me the truth.”

  She sniffled and briefly closed her eyes.

  “Answer me, for God’s sake! Why did you make me stay behind when you went to New York? I would have followed you anywhere. You had to have known that!”

  “I did,” Becky agreed quietly. “I didn’t want you to follow me, though.”

  Tucker felt his control slipping degree by degree. “Becky, if you don’t just spell it out, real soon, I swear…”

  She held up a restraining hand. “I didn’t want you to come with me, Tucker. Because I knew you would have been miserable in New York.”

  He blinked at her stupidly. Sweet Jesus, he’d thought it might have been something like that. “You what?!?” He shook his head as if jarring the words she’d spoken around inside would somehow make them make sense. He’d been miserable back here, without her! How could s
he have thought he would have been miserable in New York? He would have been with her! Obviously, there would have been kinks in the plan, such as running his farm, which would have required frequent trips back to Pennsylvania, but that was what planes were invented for! It just didn’t make sense to him how she could think he would have been happier alone back home instead of being with her anywhere else.

  “I knew you would be miserable there. In all that dirty city air, a cramped little apartment, all those unfriendly faces and that fast city pace. I didn’t want you to have to put up with all of that, and make yourself miserable, just for me.”

  Tucker felt like his eyes were going to fall out of his face, they felt so big in his head, yet he still couldn’t believe that he was seeing her sitting there all calm and collected in front of him, telling him this like it had been no big deal at all to her.

  “Don’t you think that was my decision to make?” he thundered at her, and a moment later there was the sound of Spirit’s nails clicking rapidly down the hall, as he ran from the room at the displeasure in his master’s tone. “Jesus, Becky, how dare you just go and decide that for me?”

  Becky had closed her eyes again, though this time tears were leaking out from beneath her lashes where they lay against her cheek.

  “I didn’t know how long I would be there. And I didn’t want you to go with me and wind up hating me for it later down the road because I knew you would.”

  “No, little girl. You don’t know me as well as you think. What I hate is the time we didn’t have together because of this decision you made for the both of us. What I hate is the nights I cried myself to sleep alone in this bed, wondering how I’d thought all those years had meant something to you, when apparently they hadn’t. What I hate is that none of that time can ever be brought back to us. And what I hate the most is that you had such little faith in me that you didn’t trust me to weigh all of the factors, and make the decision myself.”

  “I’m sorry, Tucker,” Becky said miserably. “I did it only because I thought it was the best thing for both of us.”

  “No, I don’t think that’s true. Maybe you thought that’s why you were doing it. But really, you have to realize now that it wasn’t the best thing for us… it was only the best thing for you. It was the safest thing for you, to not have to worry that one day I was going to leave you. It was easier for you to leave me behind instead.”

  Becky blinked at him. “It was never easy for me to leave you behind,” she insisted softly.

  “Stand up.” Tucker’s voice was resolved, though weary.

  “W-w-what? Why?”

  On his own feet already, Tucker had already undone his belt buckle and was about to slide the length of leather from the loops in his jeans. “Stand up and bend over the side of the bed.”

  “What? No! I’m not going to submit to a spanking now, not for this! I did it for you!”

  “Don’t you dare say that to me again,” he hissed at her, and from the look in her eyes, Becky realized then, for the first time, just how angry and hurt he really was. “Stand up and bend over the side of the bed.”

  Becky told him what he could do with his order in no uncertain terms and attempted to scramble away from him. But Tucker was faster and stronger, and he had her easily pinned to the mattress before she could even make it to the other side of the bed.

  He wrestled with her for a few moments, until he had her effectively pinned, both her legs beneath one of his own, both her arms held down by his left hand. With his right hand, he easily rucked down her baggy pajama bottoms and the panties beneath them, and then finished pulling his belt free.

  When the first stripe of that doubled-over length of leather bit into her skin, Becky let out a scream that surely would have brought neighbors running, had there been any nearby. Tucker watched as a purple line rose on her bare skin just before he added a twin line of color just beside it.

  She was crying from the second lick, but Tucker wasn’t finished. He brought another lash down, crisscrossing the first two, and that was when the begging started.

  “Please, Tucker, stop…”

  Becky never had been good at taking a whipping. It had always been an ordeal for both of them because of that. But Tucker wasn’t through with his point yet.

  “The choice to go with you to New York was mine to make, Rebecca Marie,” he told her, punctuating his displeasure with another hard lash. “And if you ever try to take something like that away from me again, I’ll give you a whipping like this every day for the rest of your life. Do you hear me, young lady?”

  “Yes. Oh, God, please, Tucker, no more.”

  Tucker chuckled darkly, as he indeed did give her another hard lick. “No, no, darlin’, you still aren’t getting it. This licking here, it’s up to me when it ends. It’s my decision to make, you see. Just like New York should have been.” CRACK!!

  He stopped talking then. He let the length of leather do his talking for him, snapping down on her upturned bottom in hard WHAPs that made Becky sob and clutch at the bed sheets in misery. Later, he would look back and know he shouldn’t have spanked her right then, when he was so upset and angry. But by then it was too late. Even with as hard as he’d been on her, the pain from the fifteen lashes he’d dealt her would fade and eventually disappear. The time he’d lost with her, though, he could never get back.

  When he was finally finished, he flung the belt aside. “Are you ever going to presume to make a decision that big for me again, missy?” he demanded, using his hand now to enforce his personal hurt.

  “No! No, I promise, Tuck. Please…”

  “Are you going to ever lie to me again about your feelings for me?” He dealt her another especially hard smack with his hand.

  “No, sir, I swear…”

  “Stand up, Rebecca Marie,” he demanded, and this time she scrambled immediately to her feet. “Bend over the bed.” Tucker watched, as she tearfully obeyed him, bracing herself shakily with her arms on the mattress. Her legs trembled, as she waited there, her bottom sticking out for further punishment, tears dropping from her chin to the mattress beneath her. She cried, and she trembled, but she didn’t try to run from his hand again.

  Instead of spanking her further, though, he leaned over her shoulder instead. “I just blistered your naughty, dishonest behind. I am this close…” he showed her a miniscule distance between his thumb and forefinger “from starting all over again with a switch from the back yard because I’m just that damn upset with you.” He studied her reaction to his words for a moment, observing her briefly closed eyes in silence. Then he surprised her with an unexpected question: “Do you still love me?”

  Her eyes popped open immediately and held fast to his own. “Yes,” she answered, the word trembling with emotions.

  “Would you love me still, if I were to go cut you a switch and then bring it back in here to put it to good use on your tail?” he pressed further.

  “Yes.”

  “What if I were to punish you daily, for the next fourteen months, for just as long as we’ve been apart? That would be fair retribution, I think. Would you still love me, if I decided to do that? If you had to bend over my lap and have your bottom smacked, every day, for the next fourteen months?”

  A sigh fell from her lips. It wasn’t a sigh of annoyance with him, but rather one of admitting something to herself. “Yes, Tuck, I would,” she told him, raising her chin a notch and turning her head, so she could look him squarely in the eye.

  He studied her a few moments longer, watching her squirm. Finally, he gave her one last smack in the center of her bottom. “Good. Now. Breakfast’s ready. Put your pajama bottoms back on and come down to eat.”

  “I’m not hungry,” she tried, as Tucker was walking out of the room.

  He poked his head back in the door and pinned her in place with a dark glare. “Don’t try that pouting stuff with me, Red. You deserved every lick of that spanking and more. You get dressed and get your butt downstairs, or I’ll be
right back up here with that switch, and we really will start all over again.”

  The way she grabbed her panties and pajama bottoms from the floor was enough to assure him that a trip out back for that switch wouldn’t be necessary. Not yet, at least…

  Chapter Four

  Becky slunk down the stairs and back to the kitchen, feeling the whole while as if her bottom was throbbing with each matching beat of her heart. She slid an uncertain look at Tucker’s back, where he was bent over, removing something from the oven, and then grimaced at the unwelcome site of the hardwood dining table and chairs.

  Spirit padded up to her and licked her hand in a sympathetic welcome. He sat at her feet and looked up at her with sad eyes, making a faint whining sound.

  Tucker deposited the pancakes and bacon in the center of the table and turned to look at her. His gaze was unreadable.

  “I don’t think I can sit down at that table right now,” she told him honestly.

  He blinked at her, and then crossed the distance between them in two fast strides. Before she had a moment to attempt to take a step away, he had seized her about the waist with one hard arm, and was cradling her face in the other large hand.

  “Don’t ever leave me behind like that again, Red,” he said, and the words were more of a plea than the demand he probably intended them to be. “I don’t know how I made it this first time without you; I couldn’t do it again.”

  Becky knew she should turn away from him. He saw things so easily; so black and white! If she hadn’t gone to New York on her own, if he’d gone with her, who would have watched over her mother for her while she was away, and her mother was here alone with Mark? And, of course, she would have to leave him again! She had to return to New York when this whole thing was over; she had a job there waiting for her – she had to finish out the rest of the school year, at the very least. He knew that as well as she did! She knew she should remind him of all those things, set him straight right here and now, so there would be no problems in the end…