by Jenna Barton
I shook a little. My teeth vibrated against my lips, pressed together tight so I wouldn’t say it again. I’d dropped this thing between us into the open while we were too close for any more rational discussion, and not entirely sure we’d remembered to close my front door. And I could see it in his eyes. He was deciding.
“You ready for that spanking?” His breath fell in short, soft bursts against my cheek.
I forced myself to look past his shoulder, promising myself it was the last logical decision I’d make for the rest of the night, and checked the front door. Closed. Locked. As my eyes inched back to his, the wire-swung, slow motion feeling greeted me, and dangled me before him. I took a shallow, silent breath, and nodded, watching his mouth for my next direction.
“Yes…I am.”
His hands skimmed over my arms, connecting my wrists behind me. One of his closed tidily around both of mine. Leaning down, Walt whispered, his lips skimming my ear, “Let’s go.” It ran over my spine like icy water. My hips wagged against his, so close behind me, and his hand wrenched my wrists against my back. “Do that again and you’ll get fucked, not spanked.”
My house’s familiar, dim rooms ticked by us as he guided me toward my bedroom. Some distant Monday morning I might pass the short passage to the kitchen and remember Walt like this, a ravaging force behind me, made of solid bone and heavy muscle, directing me to my once-solitary bedroom. So he could. So we could. “I want both,” I heard myself say into the turn of his jaw. “Please.”
“Stay here,” he said. His hand didn’t leave my hip as he pulled a couple of pillows to the middle of my bed then nodded toward them.
It was happening. Right there, on my bed. Not attached to a wobbly, wooden bench with Head Like a Hole screaming in my ears and not with an angry, diffident pseudo-Dom doing me a favor.
I swallowed at a swell of panic in my throat. Fettuccine. Cream sauce. Tiramisu. This was happening now.
“IT ass” was something I once overheard at work, and in the years since, I was certain I’d developed it. He expected me to lie on those pillows. My backside would be pushed—thrust, really—up with every extra inch exposed to him.
Not my best angle.
“You’re…this has to be with all of the lights on, right?”
His cheek twitched and rose with his smile, and he snorted a little. “I have to see what I’m spanking.” He swept the pad of his thumb over my nipple. “No, I don’t have to have all of them on. But I sure as hell want to watch you.”
Walt brought her in for another kiss. The little clench of breath in her throat didn’t help his straining cock, but damn sure cemented his idea of just what to do with Miss Reboot. If she squirmed while she was laid over his lap, it would all be over. Not over the knee tonight, but next time…that ass, that close. So close he could lean over and bite and suck and taste her as much as he wanted.
He tugged at the waistband of her pink gingham pajama pants. Gingham? Damn-near killing him, this woman with her sharp brains and inexperience and curving body made for dirty, drawn-out fucking.
“Get rid of these. Now.” Before his mouth could go rogue and bark another order at her, Walt passed his tongue over his lip so he’d occupy it with something besides making words.
She was a little rattled. It was there in her wide eyes and underneath the authoritative lift in her chin. And behind those fucking glasses, which were cute five minutes ago when she’d answered the front door but now just looked like another barrier between him and the gasping, whimpering, dozy-eyed Erin he needed to get to.
He stretched his thumb, then his index finger along her jawline, and clasped the cool, thin metal between his fingers.
“These too.” Walt swallowed hard over the hitch in her breath, and dropped his head toward her cheek. This was the first critical moment. Too much and she’d bolt. He’d never see the uncovered Erin again, never have her past the first wall, have her a little off-kilter and still hot and willing for him to take over. That one little break, the uncertain but willing reaction she had to him, made a bloom of purpose and control fire up from Walt’s guts. “Be still, Erin.”
She flicked a quick glance at him. Hardness threatened, her body tensed up right along with her eyes. A few wisps of her pale hair fell over her cheek as he lifted her glasses away. Before he could reason with the urge to do it, Walt eased in to her temple and brushed his lips against the skin there. Her pulse thumped against his lip. She knew it too and flinched, locking down her shoulders just a bit more.
“I can’t see w—”
“I know.” Walt inched his head back, enough to catch her line of sight on him and nothing else around her. “You don’t need to.”
There was a little twitch at the corner of her mouth. “I guess I don’t really need to see during this, right?”
“No,” Walt said. “I’m here. I’ve got you, Erin.”
Whatever that was, saying it didn’t make much sense. Still, she inhaled, deep and long, and returned the gesture with a little brave-girl smile. “I’m fine.”
The come-what-may set of her shoulders and that smile was the tipping point. The veneers of responsible Walt, friendly Walt, safe Walt, turned soft. The Dominant inside pushed forward, a long-caged beast who accepted captivity because it was safer that way. He couldn’t stay a reluctant, distant observer when that part of him was too enticed with exactly what he craved.
Walt pressed his fingers into the taut white cotton at her hip again and let his thumb graze over the waistband of her panties. It was just enough to get her focus out of her head and back to him.
With a slow rise of her chin, Erin’s eyes came up to his. She’d made her decision.
The robe dropped to the floor, near those ugly, too-big and too-dark pants she’d worn at dinner. Later, Walt promised himself, he’d put them in the trash where they belonged.
“Lay down across the bed.”
“Erin?”
He was waiting for me to move. Some day he might expect more, or faster, or even in some predetermined configuration. Did he do that? Was he about lists of expectations and protocols and rituals I would come to know as surely as booting up my machine or typing goto when I started a new script?
Eyeing my bed, I traveled mentally to the causeway I’d imagined between us, not with the certainty of details, but the feeling—what he expected, what he wanted, what pleased him—I knew that, even if I didn’t understand the hows and whats of a spanking.
A spanking. From Walt.
It thrummed against my ears as I clambered to my knees and stretched over the ridge of pillows Walt had set in the middle of my bed. He was going to spank me.
Cool, smooth cotton sheets met my hips seconds before my cheek. I sensed him moving behind me and felt the mattress depress with his body. When his hand came to me, it wasn’t with the force I anticipated.
“Hey,” he said. I opened my eyes and found him stretched beside me, his jaw resting over his folded hand. “You doing okay?”
I blinked heavily. The slow buzz in my bones made it hard to do much more than nod. He smiled a little and brushed his fingers over my skin again, trailing the tips over the fullest, fleshiest part of my behind. Tickling between my thighs. Like that, he touched me, for hours or seconds, likely minutes. And he watched me, giving me his slow half-grin when I shivered and gasped under his hand.
His palm made lazy circles, turning my skin warm under his. I shook over a hasty breath and took another one right after it.
“Shhhhhhh,” he said, still circling, still kneading, still watching me. “Got you.”
“Mmmmm.” I nodded again. The causeway opened, clear. His.
His hand left and came back, before I’d completely realized it was gone. It cracked hard against my warmed skin, bowing my back with the force of it. I whimpered and hissed, gritting my teeth at the sting. Four more times—same intensity, same measured pace.
“Breathe, Erin.”
I did, gasping for it.
“Yo
u’re fine.”
I was. My hips rose, tilted toward him.
Walt slanted himself toward me and brushed his lips over mine. He was behind me then, a solid presence I couldn’t see, but was the monolith I was tethered to.
It hurt. His hands were hard and hot, and the force of them drove my cheek against the damp sheets underneath. I heard my breath turn throaty, my whines turn to hoarse grunts. There was an apparent cadence about what he did, but the throb and singe spreading across my backside distracted me from following it. I told myself I could catch the rhythm of his hands, and if I did, I could drag myself back to the surety I was synced with him. My thighs shook, my fists curled around the sheets. How many times? Which side now? But it hurt and I lost track of the count and the burn was so much, so good, even better than good when I reminded myself it was Walt’s hand—Sir’s hand—and this was what I gave him. What I took from him. For him.
I was obliterated with the two things I knew. His hand, my burn. I swung between them, tipping forward with his hand, rocking back to meet the next touch. And it went on that way, until there was no more connection. His hand was gone, and the swing ceased. My cheek was on something softer, warmer, more solid. His chest. Once more, his hand was on me, still hot, but not on my ass. Stroking over my shoulders, heaving and shaking with my breath. His fingers, not grasping the spread of my thigh but pushing wet strands of hair from my eyes.
“Erin,” he whispered. “You’re okay. It’s over.”
“No, not yet,” I said and clenched his T-shirt in my hands. The old fabric groaned, wrenching apart as I tugged him toward me. “Fuck me.”
Erin didn’t hold back once she let go. Since they’d met, Walt had wondered more than once how it would turn out, their first time, and he’d considered she might fall apart so readily. It was still a huge wave to ride when it happened, right under his hands.
Her damp hair and cheeks pressed into his jaw set up the battle inside him. Protector or predator. Good, sensible Top rules told him to calm her, take her breath and endorphins down. But the thought of easing her back made Walt grind his teeth together at the countering impulse to push her harder, asking for more from her body. Both of them were sweat-slick and breathy, arms and legs wrapped together. It could have been enough. Could have been. Before she said it.
No, not yet. Fuck me.
So-fucking-much for sensible.
He fumbled and pulled at a condom stashed in the ragged waistband on his old sweats, grateful he’d lost the confines of his boxer briefs before he drove over. Erin was under him in seconds, whining as his hips ground against hers. When her legs fell open, offering a core warm and wet and waiting for him, he didn’t need to guide himself into her. She was so damn ready, and Walt plunged in.
He heard himself moan into the delicate skin at her temple, felt her mussed, damp hair against his cheek. Pushing himself back on his hands, he looked down, found her wide-eyed and watching underneath him. He saw Mel there, and then Holly.
More, Walt, please.
Erin. That was Erin’s voice, not poor Holly. Not lost Melissa. He shook his head slowly, so she wouldn’t see the afterimages of the before-women in his eyes. Don’t spook her. Don’t scare her.
Easing back to his knees, he cupped her ass and brought her up with him. Gritted his teeth at the swish of her long thighs straddling his. His hand glided over her hip and found the right place to hold on, angling her around him as he thundered forward to meet her.
Damn, he was going to hate himself tomorrow by the third hike up to the falls.
Or not. Not if he distracted himself with the memory of Erin, balanced across his lap, her hair a wild, silvery snarl around her shoulders, swaying in time with her tits to distract him.
“Oh damn,” he mumbled and lifted one to his mouth. “Can’t forget these.”
“Forgot wha—Ohhh.” Her question answered, she shivered and clenched her thighs around his hips.
Over and over, her voice cracked on his name. Her fingers wound through his hair and her head bent to his, seeking his mouth. A low, raspy moan came from deep in her chest as her body caved forward, pushing him to his back. Erin kissed him again and came, spasming hard around his cock. A torrent of shudders deep inside her body took him along with her, flooding his senses with her sounds and her scent and the far-away, pleading tilt of her head. Walt planted his feet on her bed and thrust, a final time. He shouted, his eyes fixed on hers, and everything within him drew down to a single compressed point before it exploded, rushing out from his gut and driving his ass from the bed.
Above him, Erin wobbled. He caught her arms as she collapsed to his chest, shaking. A half-second more of silence than was comfortable followed.
Walt drew his hand along her spine. “Erin?”
She still shook, harder, and his throat went arid. Once more, he stroked her skin, fingers riding the long slope of her back. “Hey…Erin?”
He wasn’t prepared to see her rising from his chest, her hair falling forward in a blond curtain around them. And giggling. Her cheeks were pink, damp blooms, ripe with the widest, most relaxed smile he’d seen from her. Heaving a heavy, relieved breath, Walt felt his own body begin to quake with hers, and heard his laugh mingling with Erin’s.
“Oh…ohm,” she gasped. “Oh my God.” She tumbled to the sheets beside him, still nuzzling into his cheek. “Wow.”
“Wow?” He chuckled, twisting to face her. “Wow?”
“Can’t think. Just wow.”
Walt swallowed hard, disbelief and wonder thick in his throat. She was still laughing, reaching to him as she pushed at the damp hair on his forehead, eyes turned up to his. Her chest rose and fell with her breath.
“Wow.”
Door two.
Once she slept, he watched her for a couple of hours, dozing a little when he could, but too strung up over the realization to get comfortable in her bed. She was what he’d always thought of as a good sleeper. Curled into him, her body lined up at the right places, her pearly blond hair a tumble over his forearm. It didn’t make him want to push it away or scratch at his skin.
Being a good sleeper had been one of Holly’s sweetest attractions. She fit against him and liked being there, too. But right away, she needed to be there, all the time, and that seemed too quick. If he didn’t know in his gut Holly was just a lost heart looking for a place to be, Walt might have suspected she worked her way in, planning to make him comfortable enough to give herself a hold on him to dig into and latch on. She always called him Sir, even though he never asked it from her.
Walt started to turn his back to Erin, but she mumbled another one of her meandering questions. Instead, he tucked her head under his chin and settled into her pillows.
Hurting over someone’s hurt, wanting to make it better, wasn’t the same thing as love. At least the kind you can rely on at four a.m., twenty years in the future, when a kid’s in the hospital or the water heater’s blown and a storm is dumping down two new inches of snow an hour…My only and forever, like Hailey’d said the day at Coronado, when she turned down his lame-handed proposal. Like Brady and Hailey. That was where Walt figured he really wanted to end up, even though he’d never admitted it to himself, and even though he’d never found the right mix of partner and bottom to make him go after it.
His heart, a heavy, sure beat, drummed in his ears. Walt listened to it and the sound of Erin’s breath passing over her lips. Together, the sounds lulled him. His eyelids drooped heavily, and he forced them open again and again, blinking at scratchy, sleep-hazed eyes so he could look at her face as she slept. Erin was more interesting than kink, more comfortable and sexier than it, too. She was the possibility of more than a friend with kinky benefits.
Walt’s last thought before the heavy nothing of sleep took him away was Erin.
I’ll be her boyfriend. Haven’t been that in years.
“How hard?”
Mel’s jaw jutted forward, just like it did when she got into one of those nasty sc
raps on the basketball court. And her eyes, a soft brown that always reminded him of a doe, narrowed over tears, threatening to spill.
“I don’t know, Walt. Hard. Just…I really, um…care about you. I don’t want you to treat me like I’m breakable. I want to feel it. How you…y’know…feel. About me.”
His hand slipping into her messy, tempting ponytail and pulling, just a little more than he normally would when they horsed around during the dull part of a movie or when one of their friends got too serious. The second her eyes darkened and her breath caught, he knew she knew too. Hard and sweaty and dirty and rough wasn’t so bad, maybe. If Mel said okay, then it was okay.
“More?” he asked, not even sure if it his own voice.
“Yeah, more. Please, Walt, harder.”
Can’t be a bad thing, making a girl come like that, make those sounds, raise her hips and claw at your skin…
“Melissa will be right down,” he said. “Come out here for a minute, son.”
Following, bile surging in his throat. No excuses, never would turn the blame on Mel. If her parents knew…
“Have a seat over there.”
Look expectant, unaware, serious. “Yes, sir?”
“Walt, Missy’s mama and I like you an awful lot. You treat her good, don’t keep her out all night, and she cares for you more than any other of these boys she’s brung home.”
“Thank you, sir.” Picking at a hangnail. Couldn’t look in the man’s eyes.
“Now you and Missy are both big kids, and I know when you’re playin’ around at your age…” He cleared his throat. “Well, I remember wrasslin’ Missy’s mama, tickle fights, all of them things you do…”
Oh. God.
“The two of you are big, strong kids.”
“Um…yes, sir?”
“Son, I saw a handprint on Missy’s leg. Ain’t many kids with hands that big. Now she’s told me you two got a little wound up playfightin’, and you gave her a little pop on the rear and she gave you that scratch there on your arm and that was that.”