Lily felt her mind start to swim in reaction to his words, a muddle of confused emotions darting through her brain. On the one hand, she realised glumly that there had been a legitimate reason for his actions, but on the other hand she just couldn’t shake off the lingering resentment at his high handedness.
“Do you understand, sweetheart?” he asked, still speaking softly to her.
Hesitantly, she nodded. She did understand, even if she couldn’t control the turmoil in her mind.
“So where do we go from here?” she asked, knowing that they had to somehow break through the impasse of polite emotional distance they were in.
“Where do you think we should go?” he asked.
For a few moments, she said nothing. Then, she said quietly, “You want to spank me.”
He sighed. “Is that a question or a statement?”
She shrugged.
“If it’s a question, then no I don’t particularly want to spank you. I want you to understand properly why I feel the need to keep you safe, and how different that is from treating you like you a child, and I think that will only come through us talking, but you don’t seem to want to do that either. If it’s a statement of fact, that I will spank you, then yes, I intend to, provided you’ll let me, given the way you behaved tonight. Will you let me?”
She shrugged again.
He sighed again. “Do think that how you acted tonight deserves a spanking?”
Silence.
“Answer me, sweetheart.” His tone brooked no argument.
Hesitantly, she raised her eyes to his and nodded.
“What is it you’re nodding at, love?”
“My... my actions... I know it was wrong the way I was with Luke. He didn’t deserve that.”
“You’re right, he didn’t.”
“And I know I deserve the spanking.”
“I hear a “but” in there somewhere?”
She shrugged again, but tried to explain to him. “I feel so confused,” she said, so softly he struggled to hear her. “I know I acted so badly, and I know I deserve it, but my brain keeps getting twisted up with resentment at being ordered about, even if that’s not what you meant to do.”
“Okay,” he said, his voice sad. “I can accept that and we can work on it, that is if you want to work on it?”
Her head shot up, “Yes!” she gasped quickly, “Of course I do! I’m sorry, I really am. I’m just trying to explain how I feel.”
He hugged her to him. “I know, love, and that’s fine. You know I’d always rather you were honest with me. We’ll work through it, I promise.”
Mutely, she nodded and let him hold her close.
After a few minutes, he asked, “Do you want to get your spanking over now, or later?”
She sighed. She knew she deserved the spanking, but her heart was heavy.
“Now, I guess.”
“You’re sure?” he responded to the weariness in her voice.
She nodded. “I know I deserve it, that I behaved awfully. I can’t even begin to think over in my head the things I said to Luke. I hurt him, Tom.”
“I know you did, love. But he’ll forgive you, I promise.”
She nodded, knowing he was right, even if she didn’t know quite how she was going to face Luke.
“Wait here,” he said, as he got up.
A minute later, he returned and her eyes widened slightly to see that he was holding the dreaded hairbrush in one hand. She gulped, although she knew she shouldn’t be surprised.
“Here?” she whispered, nervously.
“Yes, love. I know it’s usually something we’ve kept for the bedroom, but somehow, tonight, I get the feeling you’re going to want your bedroom to be more of a sanctuary. So let’s do this here.”
A single tear trickled down her cheek at his words, realising that he had understood that part of her tonight that she didn’t fully understand herself, her tumultuous feelings, her mixed up emotions.
Knowing what he expected of her, and what she expected of herself, she rose to her feet and slipped off the grey tunic dress she had worn to work that day and stood in front of him in her dainty panties and bra, moving to position herself over his knees when he sat upright.
He ran his fingers through her hair, moving it over one shoulder before pulling her panties down to catch around her knees.
“I’m not going to warm you up with my hand tonight,” he warned her softly. “It will just be the hairbrush.”
Mutely again, she nodded, knowing it would hurt more but also feeling numb to the thought of that hurt.
With a whoosh, the brush descended on her vulnerable bottom and she flinched and bit her lip as the smooth wood bit into her.
Again and again, the brush smacked her, alternating between one pink cheek and the other, and not neglecting the tops of her thighs. Tom was practically clinical in the lesson he gave her, not quite striking the same spot twice, but making sure not a centimetre went untouched and unpunished. She knew he wanted her to remember this, and she was certain she would. Without the warm up spanking from his hand that he usually used to introduce her to what was to come, the pain was so much sharper, more pronounced than anything she had felt before.
But, despite the pain and hurt of the awful brush on her bottom, Lily couldn’t bring herself to cry out through it all. Usually, she would be sobbing and wailing by now, pleading with Tom to stop and crying out how sorry she was. But tonight, her mind was somehow detached, and although she felt the pain, and although tears were sliding silently down her face and her finger nails were driving into Tom’s leg as if pushing against the pain, she couldn’t reach the place in her head she had reached in the past where she accepted the spanking and used it as a means of forgiving herself.
After long minutes of feeling the punishing descent of the brush on her now red bottom, long minutes that had been accompanied not by any feeling of absolution or resolution but by increased tension in her mind and body, she heard Tom throw the brush to one side and, instead of leaving her to rest over his knees as he usually did, drew her straight back up into his arms and cuddled her to him with a long sigh.
“Oh Lily,” he said, pain in his eyes and he looked down at her and wiped the tears from her face, “don’t worry, love, we’ll get through this, I promise.”
She buried her nose in his shoulder, trying but failing to relax against him, knowing that he understood that, although the spanking had worked to punish her for her behaviour that night, it hadn’t brought her the peace she’d come to associate with his discipline.
Slowly, he picked her up and carried her through to the bedroom, undressing and wrapping them both up in the soft duvet. Although she knew that probably neither of them would sleep much that night, both being caught up in their own thoughts and worries, the fact that she was close to him, wrapped up by him, reassured her that no matter what else happened she could rely on him to look after them.
CHAPTER SIX
She couldn’t concentrate. All day, she’d tried but her brain kept playing back its own internal home movie of how badly she’d treated both Luke and Tom last night. She knew she needed to apologise properly to both of them, and fast.
Overnight, her head and heart had caught up with each other and she was truly ashamed of herself. Never before had she faced such an internal struggle with herself and she realised now that it was probably because she’d never really had to justify her own decisions or choices to anyone before in the face of disapproval, and she’d reacted to Isabelle’s comments at the weekend as if it had been disapproval. Now, in the cold light of day and after a couple of days to think things over rationally, she knew that her sister hadn’t really been disapproving, just wrapped up in her own problems, but in the meantime Lily had done her best to drive people away.
Miserably, she sorted through the stack of essays she had to read and mark, checking that she had one from each student and, with a sigh, stuffed them into her over-sized shoulder bag. It was only late mor
ning but her Year 7 and 8s were all away for the day on a school trip, meaning she had a few hours before her next class. Instead of sitting in her classroom staring at the walls, she thought she’d take the essays home and make a head start on marking them. Idly, she wondered whether she should go into the City and pop by Luke’s office to apologise to him. She desperately wanted to apologise in person, rather than by phone, and soon, but doubted she had time to get there and back quickly enough. Maybe she’d give Tom a call and ask him whether they could pop over to Luke and Megan’s tonight. She knew that she and Tom needed to have their own long, separate conversation, but even when she’d pushed Tom away emotionally since the weekend, she’d never had any reason to doubt his love for her. He’d tried to give her the mental space he thought she needed, but hadn’t let her run away from him either emotionally or physically. He’d stayed as a solid, secure constant for her, and Lily blinked back tears at how gentle he’d been with her.
Taking her phone from her bag, she switched it on, thinking that there was no time like the present, and hit Tom’s number on her speed dial list. She frowned slightly to herself as the phone rang and then went through to voicemail. It wasn’t like Tom not to answer his cell phone. Resigned, she left him a message saying that she was going to do her marking from home for a couple of hours before coming back for her late afternoon class, and asking him if he’d mind if they visited Luke and Megan that evening so she could tell Luke how sorry she was.
Hanging up the phone, she shoved it back in her bag and wandered out to the school gates. She didn’t have her car with her; Tom had vetoed that for the time being until they knew more about what was going on with their informant from the local estate, so she walked towards the street gate thinking that she’d pick up a cab that would get her home quickly enough.
Usually, at that time of the morning – not yet lunchtime – the streets outside the school were relatively quiet, but as Lily turned out of the gates her instincts went onto high alert and her nerves jangled as she saw the group of five or six hefty looking teenage boys gathered on one side of the gates.
As she exited the gates, they looked up and one of them, recognition in his eyes, straightened up and approached her with what could only be described as a swagger.
Instinctively, Lily backed away, looking out from the corner of her eye for a cab – or any car – that would usually pass by the school every so often, but there was nothing in sight.
She told herself that they were only teenagers – the same as the children she dealt with every day in her classes – but her instincts told her that these youths were nothing like the students in her classes. Everything about them looked hard and ruthless and calculating as they approached her.
Fumbling in her bag, she tried to reach for her phone, desperately thinking to call Tom, but before she could even get a grip on it, the bag was torn from her body and thrown to one side and the boy towered over her, his hand gripping her arm in a punishing manacle, twisting it painfully, his eyes gleaming with malevolent pleasure at her gasp of pain.
“Thinking of calling your boyfriend?” He laughed, but there was no humour in it, just a menacing coldness that chilled Lily to the bone as she felt true fear settle down her spine.
“We know who you are, lady. You and that interfering boyfriend of yours.”
“I don’t know what you mean. Who are you?” Lily gasped, nausea welling up in her stomach as her arm continued to be twisted cruelly. She felt rather than saw one of the other youths from the group move behind her, his breath on her neck as they closed in.
“Ha!” the entire group laughed in her face as their eyes narrowed at her, “Don’t pretend you don’t recognise us, bitch. You interfered with us the last time we were here. It ain’t gonna happen again,” and with a blow to her head she was on the ground before them and she realised too late that these were the youths she had seen in the grounds of the school when she’d waded into that fight that fateful evening.
“What do you want?” she cried out, as pain clouded her vision.
“She’s asking us what we want!” one of them mocked.
“What we want is what we should have had months ago, before you got in our way and fucking Collins turned on us!”
“Yeah,” another one of them added, “but now we’ve got his sister, he ain’t gonna be refusing us no more!”
“Shut up!” another one snarled, “you’re talking too much.”
“What do you mean, you’ve got his sister? Ricky and Mike’s sister? What for? You’ll never get away with it, I promise you!” Even through her pain, Lily tried to stand up to her attackers. She kicked her foot out at one of them, even though she knew in her sinking heart that it was probably futile. She was outnumbered and they were all easily twice her size.
“See! I told you, you're talking too much. You’re gonna have to shut the bitch up now!” one of them growled, and Lily felt all the blood drain away from her face as one of the group hauled her to her feet. He held her captive, twisting her arms behind her back as another one closed in on her. She saw the now familiar glint of a knife in his hand.
“Maybe we can carve a pretty pattern on you for your boyfriend, huh? Reckon he’d like that?”
“You’ll never get away with this, you know that?” Lily gasped. Desperately, she twisted back and forth trying to free herself from their grip, using every trick she could think of – arms, legs and head – to manoeuvre her way out of their grasp and away from the knife.
Then, from nowhere, there was a shout behind her and Ricky and Mike Collins, surrounded by a group of others she didn’t recognise, sprang on the group.
“Get your hands off her. She’s nothing to do with this,” Ricky Collins shouted as he pulled his own knife out.
Instantly, she was thrust to one side, hitting the ground sharply, as the groups circled each other ready to launch themselves into full attack.
“Where’s our sister?” she recognised Mike Collins voice, but it held a lethal threat she had never heard before. It wasn’t the voice of the teenage boy she knew from her classes, but that of a furious young man not even bothering to conceal his deadly rage.
“You’re sister will be just fine, Collins, once you decide where your loyalties lie. It doesn’t look to us like they’re in the right place,” one of them sneered.
There was a flash of flying metal, and Lily screamed as she saw one of the boys - she couldn’t tell who it was - sink to his knees, blood pooling on the ground.
Suddenly, there was a wail of sirens and half a dozen police cars screeched to a halt, surrounding the entire group. Ricky Collins was bending over his brother, frantically trying to halt the flow of blood from his side. Crawling over, Lily tried to help but before she could get there strong arms lifted her up and away from the scene and she felt Tom’s protective embrace before she even saw him.
Twisting round in his grasp, she flung her arms round his neck, gasping through her pain as she did so, making no attempt to hide the tears that flowed down her face.
“Tom, Tom,” she cried out, her hands frantically touching his face to make sure he was really there, as the reality of the situation hit her. She shook uncontrollably.
“It’s okay, love. I’ve got you. You’re safe now. Tell me, where are you hurt?” he demanded.
“I’m okay, I’m not hurt, they didn’t hurt me,” she reassured him through her tears.
Lily felt herself be carried away from the scene and then, gently, lowered to the ground, with Tom crouching down in front of her.
In the distance, she could see police officers surrounding the gang of youths that had hurt her, and saw ambulance staff surrounding the Collins’ twins.
“Mike? He’s hurt, Tom.”
“I know love, the medics are with him now. They’ll do everything they can.”
He stroked her arm tenderly where the bruises were already rising to the surface, and saw‑ and felt – her flinch.
Reaching out, she touched his face a
gain, needing the comfort of physical touch. “They have the twins’ sister. They told me. I don’t know why. They knew who I was, Tom.”
“I know, love. I know. God, Lily,” he groaned, pulling her to him and holding her tightly to his chest, taking care not to squeeze her arm, “I was terrified, terrified I’d lost you. I’m so sorry; we had no idea they were planning this today until the last minute. I thought you were safe from it. We’d never imagined they would strike in plain daylight. I thought I wouldn’t get here in time, that I’d lose you.”
“No, never,” Lily cried, wanting to reassure him. “I love you, Tom. I love you so much. I’m so sorry I’ve acted badly these last few days, so sorry you were worried.”
“Love, love,” he groaned, “this isn’t your fault. You weren’t to know that the Maddox gang would choose today, during the day.”
“The Maddox gang?”
He nodded. “They’re a gang from one of the local estates. Mike and Ricky Collins were part of it until around six months ago, when they distanced themselves from it. Seems they didn’t like the way some of the gang took out their anger on some of the young girls in the estate. But the gang didn’t like them leaving, and have been threatening the twins’ kid sister. We got a call an hour or so ago, which is why I didn’t pick up when you called, to say that the gang had taken the sister and were holding her ready to use against the twins. We figured they’d come to the school first, and when I got your message my heart sank.”
Lily wrapped herself up again in his arms, tears still flowing down her face as she realised how close they had come to losing each other. He pressed a kiss to her lips, needing to reassure himself that she was safe. That he’d gotten to her in time.
After a few long minutes, there was a discreet cough from behind them and a uniformed officer came up to them, “Erm... sir?”
Reluctantly, Tom released Lily and glanced towards the officer. Getting up, he nodded at him. “What news?”
Lily's Story, A Bentley Sisters Novel Page 10