by Selena Kitt
She was a trooper; he'd give her that. As a realtor, her hours were rarely ever set, but when she wasn't working, she was right at his side, painting walls, scrubbing floors, shoveling mud and condoms and broken floor tiles into five gallon buckets, which he'd then trudge up the stairs, out the side door, and out to the dumpster taking up all the extra parking space in his driveway. And she would have a new bucket full by the time he got back downstairs. She was, in a word, the sexiest woman he'd ever seen, streaked in dirt and sweat, dressed in her grubbiest grubbies, puffing and panting and swiping at her brow as she continued to shovel her way through the mud and the filth, with a smile and a joke never far from her lips.
Like now.
"Just remember," she quipped as she watched him mark the wall. "If a spider crawls on me and I wig out completely, I won't care if we're having the greatest sex on the planet. I don't do the nasty with spiders in the house. So, you were warned."
"Duly noted." He smirked, her fear of spiders having been very well established when, two days into their Daddy/Little girl relationship he'd awakened at one in the morning to find her not just in his house, but standing anxiously over him.
"There's a spider in my bed," she'd said, in full-blown worried Little mode, albeit one tinged by embarrassment.
Not a big fan of spiders himself, Nolan got out of bed, pulled his pants on and walked next door to deal with the crisis. While she waited on the front porch, he'd searched her bed until he found it. That he'd been dragged out of bed at 1:00 a.m. to deal with a baby Daddy Longlegs no bigger than his thumbnail never once crossed his lips. Neither did he recount the one time in Iraq when he awoke to the prickly sensation of all ten camel spider's legs clinging to the side of his head like a giant Alien Face-Hugger. He simply caught the Daddy Longlegs in the folds of a tissue, released it outside in her front flowerbed, and then firmly resisted the urge to invite her back to spend the rest of the night in Daddy's bed with him.
In a mood then to do anything but sleep, it had taken every ounce of self-control he'd had to tuck Tricia back into her bed with nothing more than a soft goodnight and even softer kiss upon her brow. It took the ardent attentions of Rosy Palm and her Four Sisters before he found sleep again and when he did, his dreams were haunted by big grey eyes and soft pink lips and the flush of Little cheeks that gave way to the deeper, rosier stain of Big desire as he bent her low over the footboard of his bed. He could all but feel the silken slide of his fingers invading her princess parts, winning that first mewling gasp and squirm as her body released a flood of such wanton feminine desire that, when he next awoke, he had a raging hard-on and could swear he still felt her cumming gush of heated liquid spilling over his fingers and taste the salty-sweetness of it still in his hungry mouth.
The slow thrum of heated arousal began to pulse low in his belly, stirring his cock. He did his best to squash the feeling before he ended up needing to excuse himself for a cold shower.
"I think we're ready." Eyeing the marks he'd put on the wall, Nolan stepped back from the wall. He aligned himself beside Tricia, careful not to touch her, not even accidentally. His jeans were already feeling too tight in the crotch.
She rubbed her hands together. "Let's do it."
"On three." Standing side-by-side, both he and Tricia grabbed their sledgehammers and drew them back. "One… two… three!"
They swung in unison. New windows all around the basement let in plenty of light as they slammed the ugly wood-panel that was their target. It was the only wall in the whole house that he intended to get rid of, but after so many years of flooding, the entire length along the bottom was rotted out and black with mold. He didn't even know why it had been built here. It wasn't load-bearing and unlike the perimeter walls, which were poured cement, this was the only wood-construction in the entire basement. Without doors, windows or vents of any kind, Nolan couldn't quite fathom its purpose apart from the obvious: to close off a space of roughly two-by-twelve feet.
Half-expecting to find a boarded-up fireplace, Nolan kept up a steady battery, knocking chunks and splinters out of the ugly wood paneling until it (made stronger by having been glued to the basement drywall) finally gave way, knocking a massive chunk of reinforced sheetrock into the hole they had doggedly created.
Breathing heavily, Tricia let her sledgehammer rest on the cement floor between her sneakers. Her eyebrows quirked as she stared at the open hole. "Wasn't there supposed to be a foundation wall back there?"
Fishing a thin LED flashlight out of his back pocket, Nolan stepped up to the hole to peer inside. "Huh," he said.
"What do you see?"
"A whole 'nother room," Nolan answered in surprise.
"Closet-sized or 'room' room-sized?"
A small hand touched his shoulder and Nolan stepped back, relinquishing his flashlight so she could take a look.
"Holy Hannah!" Tricia declared, sticking her head and one arm in as far as she could, angling in all directions to better see the dark, window-less interior. "What'd they do, bury a body back here?"
"Ha!" Nolan laughed, his chuckle not quite matching the warning in the look he gave her. "Somebody just landed herself some serious TV restrictions."
"Only until I go home."
He swatted her.
"Ow!" Only half withdrawing from the hole, she perked and leaned back in again. "Hey, I can see something. There's a chair in the corner and… Oh my God, it's got eyeballs on it!" She slammed full into him when she jumped back, her whole body erupting into a shuddering dance. "There's eyeballs in there! I always thought this was the creepiest freakin' house! And those Smith sisters—" Tricia stopped freaking out long enough to point at him. "I always knew there was something off with them. Always!"
He gave her a Look. "I distinctly remember you saying this was a good house with good bones, and how it was a pity it had been left derelict for so long—"
"Hey," she cut him off, still trying to flick the creepiness off her hands. "I work off commission."
Taking his flashlight back, Nolan nudged her out of the way to take his second peek. He spotted the chair in the far corner. The bright shine of his flashlight reflected back at him off the curve of a dirty, quart-sized jar, resting on the hard-wood seat. He peered as close as he could without actually crawling into the hole, which would have to wait until he'd enlarged it. His shoulders were too broad. He could barely squeeze his head and the flashlight through at the same time.
"It's marbles, not eyeballs," he said, retreating back out of the wall again. "Seriously. No more horror movies for you."
Moving her well out of the way, he picked up the sledgehammer again. Knocking the rotted sections out of a wall this size should only have taken ten minutes. Strength re-enforced by the glued paneling, it took Nolan twice that to take it down to nothing but studs. One look at the black mold saturating the lower portions of every board and he knew the whole wall would have to go, but at least now he could squeeze through into the small bedroom-sized space that had been fully enclosed for who only knew how long or why. The broken concrete floor turned to crumbles just a few steps in. Cement and rock crunched under his boots until he stepped off into the soft mud beyond, leaving footsteps in what was otherwise a pristine dirt floor. The chair was the only piece of furniture, with a couple of empty antique liquor bottles and the jar of marbles making up the sum and total of hidden treasures waiting to be re-discovered.
Picking up the jar of marbles, he carefully wiped away decades of dust and brought it back out into the light. "Watch out for broken glass," he cautioned as Tricia slipped through the studs to explore the tiny room behind him.
"This is Depression Era," she said, bending to pick up an empty liquor bottle. Wiping it clean against the denim of her thigh, she turned it over in her hands. "The glass is blue! Look at this, how pretty. And how creepy. Why would anyone wall this up?"
"Probably so he wouldn't have to fix the floor before selling the property," Nolan guessed. Great, now he was going to have
to. He toed the broken floor, seeing nothing but a lot of dollar signs flying straight out of his wallet.
"Or maybe," Tricia countered, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "Maybe he walled it up because he pick-axed through the floor and put a body under there. I saw this movie once. I'll bet if we dig down a few feet—"
"No."
"Oh, but—"
"I said no, and I suggest you drop it." He gave her another warning look. "Tricia, you are one more gruesome suggestion away from a hot butt, a grilled cheese sandwich, and an early bedtime." Very early. It wasn't even noon yet.
Huffing, Tricia took the marbles from him. "Grumpy butt," she muttered, rolling the jar between her hands and peeking at him from out beneath the bright pink swath of her bangs. The sparkle of a Little gearing herself up to push buttons was very much alive and well in her calculating eyes. "You don't have to get short with me, you know. It's not my fault you've a body in your basement. Kinda shines a new light on the whole Dungeon thing."
"I do not," Nolan frowned, "have a body in my basement, and if you say that one more time, I will not warn you. I will simply spank you. A real spanking. Not the threat you got at breakfast or the two light swats I gave you yesterday; the real deal. Pants and panties down, bottom bare while I paddle your backside to the kind of hot cherry-red that Martians will be able to see from space. And if you say, 'With or without a telescope', I promise I'll paddle you twice."
"All right, fine. There's no body." Rolling the marbles between her hands again, she sniffed as she looked them over. "But I still think the potential is there."
Nolan turned on her, but she was already walking away, jar tucked up under her arm as she headed for the stairs. "Bring my black bag down with you when you return," he called, stopping her midway up to the first landing that ultimately fed out into the garage.
"Why?" she shot back over her shoulder, flashing him a look that said she knew exactly why but wasn't yet ready to stop pushing.
Well, he had a surefire cure for that. His palm itched.
"Because when Daddy says not one more word, he means it." Nolan glared sternly. "Martians from space," he reminded. "I warned you. Now you've got one minute, then I go get my bag myself and you get into even more trouble. How much worse do you want to make this?"
"Mm," Tricia growled, lips pressed tight in a way that didn't quite muffle the sound. She eyed him, no doubt wondering how much further she could test this particular boundary before apparently deciding she'd pushed far enough. She turned, stomping the rest of the way upstairs.
He tried not to, but the minute she disappeared around the corner of the first landing, he lost his sternness to an inappropriate smile. He didn't know what it was, but something about her fit of temper struck his 'cute' bone. He followed her progress, the corners of his mouth twitching, as she deliberately goose-stomped hard through the kitchen to living room and all the way over to the barricade of boxes he kept piled in the corner of the room. Tempted though he was to laugh, he knew better than to let this kind of deliberate 'testing' slide. When given the choice, she'd opted to push. A Little never made to mind when Daddy put his foot down was an unhappy Little who thought she ran the show. When ignored long enough, that's when ordinarily good Littles turned into Brats. He really wasn't about to put up with that.
Wiping his hands on the seat of his jeans, Nolan decided to wait by hefting the sledgehammer and going back to work on the framework of that wall. Two strong whacks knocked the first board free and after that, the framework came down like a poorly stacked deck of rotting cards. Unlike the grand production she had made stomping up the stairs, when Tricia came back downstairs, she did so with quiet meekness. Unaware that she was standing behind him, it wasn't until he turned to set the sledgehammer aside that he noticed her.
"I'm very sorry," she said, holding out his heavy, black duffel bag with both hands. "I was being a smartass."
"I noticed." Taking the bag from her, he found a semi-clean corner away from the demolition in which to place it. As he unzipped the flap, Nolan found himself pausing, taking a breath, enjoying that moment of heightened anticipation just before he laid bare the tools and implements of a past he hadn't indulged in years.
It's been way too long, he thought as he gazed without really seeing them. He saw Jesse instead, remembering how close he had come (when he'd packed his playbag away) to dumping everything into the nearest dumpster. Being on-base at the time and knowing any one of his fellow soldiers could have found it was the only reason he hadn't. None of these floggers, anal plugs, clamps or restraints were anything he'd wanted either to explain or live down.
So yeah, it had been a bad breakup. Jesse had been guilt-ridden, he'd been less than understanding, and within a year, he'd signed up for yet another tour just so he wouldn't have to think about what he'd lost.
And yet, a soft voice whispered, if he hadn't gone through that, he wouldn't now be standing here, with Tricia picking at her fingers and trying so hard to pretend she wasn't at all concerned that she was about to be corrected. Apart from sporadic Time Outs on the Naughty Stool, this would be their first as Daddy and misbehaving Little. He would be gentle.
Relatively.
A corner of his mouth quirked as he began to pick through the contents of his playbag. A tidy man by nature, fifteen years in the military had amplified that side of him and this bag was the perfect example of that. Everything was neatly packed. All wax play items were gathered in a single two-gallon Ziploc baggy. His ropes were individually tied and packed in another. His canes and crops were secreted in a plain black bag with a pull-string top, and his floggers, each stored in its own cut-off nylon stocking to keep the falls immaculate and straight, were bundled in the bottom. So was his sensation kit: a 10x10-inch Tupperware box filled with everything from Wartenberg wheels to toothpicks, feathers and faux fur sample swatches and even sandpaper. It was this that he ultimately withdrew.
Popping the top, he tried to gauge her reaction while he opened it. Stubbornly playing with her fingers, Tricia pretended not to care what he was doing. And yet, those stolen glances she kept throwing his way betrayed her. So did her fingers. She'd already picked one thumbnail raw all around the cuticle.
"Stop that," he admonished. After studying his options, he dug out his sensation kit, unlocking the lid to pluck out the Crown Royal bag that held his assorted clips, clamps and clothespins.
She frowned when he removed a single unpainted clothespin, but that was all, leaving him to wonder if she'd never before experienced the exquisite bite of so innocuously devilish an implement.
"Tongue," he said, holding it up to her lips.
She made a face, clapping one hand over her mouth. An action meant more to prevent him from proceeding than one of defiance. "I'm not going to put that in my mouth. I don't know where it's been."
"You've still got a spanking coming. How badly do you want to make it two?"
Her shoulders slumped. She didn't want two, that much was obvious. Faced with deepening consequences, she grudgingly took her hands from her mouth.
He held the clothespin level with her lips. "Say ah, baby girl."
She whined. "Can't I just drop and give you twenty?"
"If I have to count to three, I'll be dropping your pants and giving you twenty, and that'll be extra on top of what you've already got coming."
"Mm!" She bounced, stomping her foot once, but sensing she might have pushed too far, she opened her mouth and extended her tongue. She winced from the moment the jaws of the clamp bit down on the tip of her tongue, but he'd played with these long enough to know, apart from a pinch and a little awkward humiliation, there was no real discomfort in what he was doing. Not yet, anyway.
Giving her a gentle tap on top of the head right between her pigtails, Nolan waited until she opened her eyes before counting off on his fingers. "I told you no, I told you enough, and I told you not one more word. I told you three times." He waggled his fingers at her, letting the harshness of
his look tell her how serious he was. "Under any other circumstance, I would not have bothered telling you twice. Now you're going to find out what happens when Baby Girl pushes Daddy's buttons."
She whimpered, tongue extended, trying hard not to drool but finding swallowing difficult around that clothespin. "I'm thorry," she managed, the apology lisped around a tongue that could not recede.
"I don't doubt it." He twirled his finger, indicating how he wanted her to move. "Turn around. Take your pants down."
Not many Littles in his experience would have dared pout with a clothespin hanging off their tongue, but Tricia did. Whoever her last Daddy had been, if this was an example of his effectiveness as a Dom, Nolan wasn't impressed.
Giving him a sour look, she turned around, putting her back to him before bowing her head and unfastening her jeans. She pushed them off her hips, lowering them only far enough to bare the absolute summits of her panty-clad bottom—soft black cotton emblazoned with bright red cherries polka-dotted across her seat.
"Nice," he said. "Very apropos. That's exactly the shade I'm going to go for. However, I didn't say hold your pants up around your thighs. I said drop them."
Shoulders slumping, she let go and gravity did the rest. Her jeans collapsed into a puddle of faded blue denim around her sneakers.
"Underwear too."
That made her pause. Her saw her fingers twitch and knew what she was thinking, because frankly he was thinking the same thing. A lot could be said for the magic of two people getting to know one another. Relationships were hard; BDSM relationships were even harder. He didn't want to move too fast, make a mistake, shake the trust or fuck things up beyond all revocation, and especially he didn't want to do any of that once his heart—or hers—became irrevocably involved. He was probably one movie and a cuddle on his sofa, one goodnight story before tucking her into her bed, and one middle of the night 'Daddy, there's another spider' call too late for that, and maybe it wasn't the right thing to do, but Jesse had damn near killed him and he never wanted to go through that again.