“Won’t he move it now that you’ve seen it? Or shred it?”
“I don’t think he knows that’s what I was in there for. I waited until he went out to lunch. I saw Valerie’s car in the lot so I knew he’d be gone for some time.”
“Valerie James? He has lunch with her?”
“Well, it’s not in the nature of the Stone family to kiss and tell, but, of all the assets we’re involved in, she’s the one who gets the most personal attention or with whom he… ah… makes the ‘deposits’. Anyway with those two at lunch, it gave me time. I called a nearby florist and had them bring over a dozen roses from a secret admirer to Rona, Blake’s’ assistant. I figured she would be so curious and awestruck she would stay downstairs long enough for me to look around.”
“So, Valerie and Blake, sitting in a tree. F-U-C-K-I—”
“That’s enough! Anyway, I got in there and the place is a wreck. How he even manages to make evil schemes work is beyond me. Papers everywhere! Then I realized he wouldn’t hide something as private as this where anyone could find it. I remembered when we were kids, Blake went through a brief and odd sort of kleptomania as a child.”
“So he’s been stealing people’s things for a long time?”
“No, not things, exactly. Pictures. As a small child he would take people’s pictures from their homes or school or whatever. If someone had a picture sitting in a drawer or in a frame easily opened he would nab it and hide it. He would always keep them behind the bookshelf in his room. He would pull out the books, put the pictures against the back of the shelf, and replace the books. It was the perfect hiding place.”
“Not if you knew about it,” I scoffed.
“I found out by accident. We were wrestling and tussling around. Our mother came in to tell us to stop and right as she was walking the door I lost balance and fell into the bookshelf, knocking it over and all the pictures came out. There were so many. Some showed people my mother didn’t even know.”
“Okay, you know this story just moved your brother from the evil bastard category to the totally psycho group?”
“It wasn’t really that odd. All the pictures showed smiling adults and families doing happy things. Some were magazine clippings and advertisements. Our parents were busy, stoic and somewhat jaded. I think Blake was trying to steal a little happiness and once he got caught, it never happened again. But, he continued to use the back of the bookshelf to hide things. Porn, condoms, report cards - anything that needed to be kept private.”
“So he’s stealing my happiness, so he can get laid by Valerie James?”
“No, I think he’s getting that already. But I did discover a folder, behind a set of tax law books, that has ledgers, printouts and things. I’m sure it’s Lynx. I thumbed through it but before I could get all the books out to get it, Rona was back. I guess she’s getting a divorce and assumed the flowers were from her soon-to-be ex. Instead of trying to get the name out of the florist, she threw a fit, shredded the roses in front of him and told him to tell the jerk he could ‘sit on the thorns’. Then she rushed back upstairs so I had to leave the folder where it was.”
“Did she figure out what you were doing there?”
“No, I told her I needed a transfer document and couldn’t find it in Blake’s mess. Later he came into my office and asked why I was rooting around his desk. I told him I needed a transfer document to wrap up a file, and mentioned that with the new regulations we should go over all recent transfers, including Lynx, to make sure everything was audited and right. He got pissy and said ‘Of course everything is right!’ and stomped out of the office.”
“Well, good. I have the T-list for Valerie. I’ll give it to Janice and she can turn it over, although I can’t imagine why she would want a source list so bad.”
“She doesn’t,” he replies confidently and stands, holding out his hand. I rise and take it as he walks me to the “playroom” we used before. There’s just a box of Kleenex and a hairbrush.
“Then why am I giving it to her?” I ask nervously as he sits on the bed and pats the mattress for me to sit down too.
“Because you aren’t willing to give her whatever you have that she really wants. You’re no better a liar than Blake is, my dear. I know you’re hiding something from Valerie, and you’re hiding it from me too. I don’t know what it is, or care. But we need to give her something.”
“Mark, I’m not...” I look in his eyes, so beautiful, so solid. I can’t lie to him. “I’m not ready to tell you what it is. I’m not ready to let it go. It’s not you, really, it’s just that—”
“Don’t worry about it. That’s not why we’re here anyway.”
I look around the room again and point out the large wooden hairbrush on the dresser.
“We’re here to change hairstyles?” I ask jokingly. He laughs, thank goodness.
“We’re here to change lifestyles, or at least how you deal with life.” His voice is stern again.
“With a hairbrush? How on earth are—” A blinding picture flashes through my imagination. The Kleenex, the hairbrush, the bed. “Oh, no, you’re not serious.”
“This time, I’m very serious,” Mark says as he rolls up his shirt sleeve, one and then the other. He adjusts his position on the bed and looks at me with a slight grin.
“You’re going to spank me? With a hairbrush? Like a little kid getting punished?” I can’t tell if I’m giggling because this is so silly or trembling because I’m a little scared but my voice is shaking.
“I’m going to spank you, with my hands, and then maybe the brush, like you are a grown woman who needs some release. You bottle everything up inside you, Julia. Your fear, your doubt, your guilt. This is one of the quickest and best ways I know to strip off the armor and get to the soul of the problem.”
“Mark, I know I’ve been a bitch lately, but really,” I begin but I know the look in his eyes, it’s the ‘I’m patiently waiting for you to stop talking so we can go on’ look.
“I can’t promise you’ll like it. But what I can promise is that when I’m done you’ll have one red backside and one happy inside because you’re going to cry out all the stuff that’s blocking you from thinking, laughing and loving.”
“And if I don’t feel happy and joyous after your little spanking fiasco is done?”
“Then I’ll happily refund your money, and enjoy your red backside anyway,” he says with a wink and a sexy smile. “Look, Julia, this can be ‘win-win’ or it can just be ‘I win’ but, either way, you’re getting a spanking. Now stand over there and pull your pants off. You can leave the rest on for now.”
I feel like such a fool. Standing here in front of Mark, with his sleeves rolled up in a very no-nonsense fashion. My parents didn’t believe in spanking and I was raised in the era when it had been voted out of schools. I had to do extra chores or be grounded a few times, but I’ve never had anything like this. So here I am, a grown woman, about to go through a silly childhood ritual.
Mark instructs me to lie over his lap. He puts a pillow on his legs so it raises my bottom slightly in the air. I put my head down on the bed and stare at the wall. Maybe if I act entirely uninterested in this nonsense, he will cut this short and we can get down to some lovin’.
He begins by rubbing my bottom in circles, my mound instantly alive at his touch. He rubs and grasps my rear, even leaning over and giving one of my cheeks a little kiss. His hand slips underneath my panties and I feel his finger flit against my lips. Then his left arm goes around my waist and his right hand gives my rear a series of short swats. They pop against my skin like little jolts. Not entirely unpleasant at all. After a couple of volleys, he rubs me again and I feel some warmth rising on my pinkish globes.
“This is just the warm up. Warming you up slowly will help you endure when the real challenge begins.”
“We could just stop here,” I joke, and earn another volley of short smacks on my rear. Then his hands continue rubbing and press against me. I wish I would have
volunteered to take my panties off, because my wetness is sure to be apparent any moment. He shifts his legs under me, raising my bottom a little higher and gives me about twenty quick smacks, one right after the other. I feel the heat rising on my globes.
“Deep transformation,” he says as he is rubbing my warmed rear and running his fingers under the waistband of my panties, “takes time and you must remove your outside shell to release what’s hidden in your soul.”
Mark slowly pulls my panties down. I feel the cooling sensation of the air on my rear and it gives me delicious goose bumps. At the same time, I feel him peeling off my defenses, cutting through my hard-ass demeanor and exposing me.
“Sometimes,” Mark continues, speaking slowly and deliberately, as if to a child. “We need someone else to remove that shell for us.”
SMACK! SMACK! SMACK!
Mark starts spanking me harder, his hand unrelenting, the warmness I felt before is turning into a consistent hot presence. I put my head down and try to endure. I’m not going to end up like some kicking screaming three-year-old no matter how much he thinks that should happen. I steel myself and grit my teeth but the stinging hits just keep coming and coming.
I discover I am moving back and forth across his lap, subconsciously trying to dodge his hand even though it seems to hit the target every time. This last volley is hard and sharp, the pain and heat radiating from my behind throughout my whole body. My legs give in and start kicking back and forth in the air. He pauses for a moment to let me catch my breath while he rubs my sore behind in a soothing, arousing manner. Then, just when I am ready for him to turn me over and take me, the spanking starts again.
“How long do we have to do this,” I sputter between spanks. My gosh, why isn’t his hand ready to fall off? My bottom is becoming an inferno and he’s still smacking it.
“Until you’re finished,” he replies, giving me three good hard smacks on each cheek making me lurch forward. Amazingly, I purposely slide myself back on his lap and lift my bottom for him to continue.
“Am I somewhere near done?” I ask over some smacks, each word revealing the strain in my voice as I try not to let it show this is getting to me. “I feel pretty roasted.”
“Oh trust me, Julia,” Mark says cordially then lays another eight or ten wallops right on the soft spot. “When you’re done, you’ll know. We’ll both know.”
He stops for a second and gives me more mercy rubbing, his hand managing to wander into my cleft and feel the wetness there as well. He leans over and picks up the wooden hair brush from the nightstand. Taking some Kleenex out of the box, he places them near my hands.
“No, please,” I whimper. I already have a painful stinging blaze back there and I can’t imagine the unforgiving flat surface of that brush is going to make it feel better. He just pats my rump.
“This will speed things up a bit,” he says in a soft kind voice. I want to sit in his lap and hug him. “The best I advice I can give you is to feel it, and then when you’re ready, let it go. Let everything go.”
I have no idea what that really means. He starts with small little pops on each cheek and I can already feel the difference. The swats increase, faster and harder. I give up trying to control my bottom or legs; they are both swinging and moving. I grip the bedspread and put my head down, feeling the first tears start to form. I can’t fight this anymore; I let them roll down my cheek gasping as the fire burns.
This is so embarrassing. At my age, lying over a man’s lap having my bare bottom spanked with a hairbrush like a small child. But, this is par for the course. I’ve been embarrassed about a lot of my behavior lately–screaming at Blake, lying to Mark, mistreating employees, ignoring my dad to get more articles by deadline, pushing myself to the point of exhaustion and pushing away anyone who couldn’t keep up with my pace. I’ve been such a bitch to so many people for so long.
Mark somehow senses my introspection. No more mercy rubs, he starts wailing away with that brush hitting the same spot over and over. My bottom is bouncing off his lap and I hear a sound, a wail before I realize it is coming out of me.
All the times I took people for granted. All the ways I fought and pushed against my mom and then she was gone. She was gone and I hadn’t even said goodbye. And now, what did I do with my dad? I put him in the specialty center and threw as much money as I could at it to save his life but I spent all my time at Lynx. It was all about me, my career, and my stubborn selfish way.
My sobbing grows loud as gobs of snot and tears run down my face. I don’t even bother with the Kleenex because the boiling on my bottom has released a flood out of me. Again and again that brush comes down and so many images start flooding my mind and I remember what Mark said. I stop fighting them and let them go, grasping, screaming and convulsing over his lap.
I think of my dad and all the times I put him off, and Greg. Greg cheated on me and I was right to break off the engagement. But I also treated him like a coin I could carry in my pocket. Everything in our relationship rotated around me, around my career. We ate at places I wanted to review. We saw movies of issues I wanted to write about. Me, me, me. And when he didn’t please me or when he needed me to please him–I was unavailable. I didn’t make him cheat but I sure as hell didn’t encourage him to stay.
As a writer, I have used the word “breakthrough” my entire career, but I never had any idea what that word really meant until this minute. I feel the pain, the grief, the regret and the pressure building inside of me. Under this relentless barrage of feelings, I emotionally explode over Mark’s lap. My sobs soak the bedspread. I let out a long howl that carries all the sound of all my pain. I go on in this state of suspended animation, crying and out of control, my body bouncing on the bed as I drive my fists down over and over into the mattress.
I feel something lifting me, almost like an angel, and the solidness of Mark’s arms as he puts my head on his chest and lets me cry into him. I slowly regain my ability to breathe and speak normally.
“You’re not spanking me anymore?” I say, unsure how he got from under me to holding me so quickly.
“I quit about ten minutes ago. This has all been you.”
“I… I… ”
“Shhh,” he consoles me. He whispers softly, “You did well, Julia. You did so well.”
I stay there in his arms for a while feeling spent, empty. Then longing takes the place of the pain and I begin kissing him. First I plant small kisses on his chest and then lean up to kiss him, my hand reaching down to find his member and rub it through his pants.
“I need you,” I say urgently. Suddenly the fire from my behind has moved between my legs and tripled.
“I’m here,” he says, still in his soothing, consoling tone.
“I need you in me,” I growl seductively. He smiles and begins to undo his pants, eventually standing up to remove them, knowing every second without his touch was like torture. I confessed, “I feel so empty.”
“You’ve just lost a lot of emotional weight,” he advises as he gets back into bed. I turned over to embrace him and land on my red, sore rear. He rubs my bottom and then turns me to the side. Kissing me and running his cock up and down the inside of my lips, he can see me trying to draw him into my body.
“Please,” I say again, kissing him deeply.
“There’s no way to do this that isn’t going to feel like I’m spanking you again,” he tells me, trying to gently enter.
“Then spank me, spank me hard and fast and… oh… just… do it!” I laugh, wrapping my arms around him. With that, he plunges into me like a wild caged animal, his cock diving into my ready and needing center. He pushes and surges in me, the spanking having prolonged his arousal as well.
At first his thrusts are measured, a gentle push in and quick pull out. But his lust overcomes his concern and soon his balls are slapping against my red backside. I remember the secure feeling of being over his lap, the thrusts repeating that experience only so much more intense and internal. My body g
rips and pulls at him urging him on, wanting him all the way in me.
His hand leaves my hip and travels between us, finding my clit and massaging it in rhythm with his thrusts. Suddenly every nerve ending in my body is unquenchable and overwhelmed at the same time. I move my hips with him, pulling and slamming my body down on him and the tension builds in my body. Soon I am ready and I dig my fingers into his back, letting go again.
This time it is pure pleasure instead of tears. I seem to be floating underneath him, awash in a sort of thick cloud of bliss when I feel his body tighten and his load fill me inside. I attempt to turn over, but as soon as the covers hit my bottom, I know it’s not the best idea.
“Lay on your tummy.” He gets some lotion and rubs it in, soothing and comforting me. He starts telling me about how I will feel better tomorrow and the sting won’t last and some other thing but I don’t really hear it. My muscles are loose, my body is well used and my soul feels clean and free. For the first time in years, I fall into a deep, satisfying sleep.
The Sandstone Affair (An Erotic Romance Novel) Page 12