by Jade Cary
“Nope. I never minded this.”
“No, you never did.” He stared at me for a moment. “What did you need in town?”
“Bag Balm.” I picked and tossed, tossed and picked.
“Can’t find it in the big city?”
“Not easily.”
“Add extra bedding to this stall. Dolittle’s a layer.” The horses that lay down a lot did require more bedding so they didn’t get sores. “Mugsy, too.”
“All right. Collin’s got the Azteca saddled already.”
“Yep.”
“Thought I’d take him for a spin, like a new car. Collin was the sane voice of reason who put a stop to that.”
“I should hope so.” Jed shook his head as his phone went off. He walked away to answer.
“Y’ello…hey, Ryder.”
I froze. Oh shit. Oh fucking hell.
“Yeah, she’s here…” He looked over at me. “Yeah, she’s fine, Ry.” His eyebrows shot up, the one slashed with the white scar rose a little higher than the other. “Really. When was that?” Now they came together in one dark line. “Uh huh…uh huh…how much?”
I set the pick against a wall and headed toward an exit. “Hold it right there,” Jed growled, his hand over the phone. “Do not move.” His face was hard as granite. “Go on, Ryder.”
And Ryder did. On and on and on, Jed’s only contribution to the conversation was a lot of uh-huhs and I-sees. After what felt like an eternity, he closed with, “Thanks, Ry. I’ll see to it.” He disconnected and slipped the phone into his pocket. Hands on hips, he stared.
“Bag Balm…” I gulped. “is what I needed.” Oh shit.
“Uh huh. What else?”
“You’re sleeping with Brenda.” Anger laced my words.
“You think hard on that while you go inside and get out of those boots. We’re going for a ride.”
I stared at him until he jerked his dark head in the direction of the house. I did as I was told and met Jed at his truck. As soon as I got in, he took off.
“Are you?” I asked, cutting through the deafening silence as he barreled down the road, face set, lips pressed into a thin line.
“No. And you could have come home and asked me, but instead you felt you needed a few shots of liquid courage then you got behind the wheel of a car. What the hell is wrong with you, Chandler?”
“I don’t know.”
“Uh huh. Well, that’s a problem.” He drove to one of the far entrances to the ranch, the one you took if you were going to take the highway north. When we got to the gate, he stopped.
“You see that white cross there on the side of the highway?”
“Yes.”
“I’m going to drive into town, forty-five miles. I want you to count every cross you see, on both sides of the highway. Do you understand?”
I nodded. Town was south and he was taking the long way. As Jed drove and I counted white crosses, his message was clear. Each cross represented a fatality—the reasons behind them were unknown, yet I knew what he was thinking. Many were clustered in twos and threes. I could not imagine the pain a family endured at the loss of a loved-one through another’s negligence. I knew better. It didn’t matter that I passed less than six cars on my way home. I allowed a silly, manipulative woman to get under my skin and I reacted like a jealous teenager. Shame filled me at the disappointment on Jed’s face. This wasn’t me; so much of what I’d done since coming home wasn’t anything like me. I stopped answering to anyone the day my father sent me away, and I’d gotten away with it, until now. When we got to the edge of town, Jed pulled the truck over.
“How many did you count?”
“Sixty-three.” I stared out my open window.
“Wrong. Seventy. You weren’t paying attention.” He huffed out a frustrated breath. “How many?”
“Seventy,” I said to the hands clasped in my lap. I slammed my eyes shut willing the tears not to fall.
“Crosses just like these line every highway in this state for miles. Some fatalities happen because someone passes someone else at the wrong time and gets hit head on. Others happened because someone was drunk behind the wheel.”
Seventy deaths on a forty-five mile stretch of road. I turned to face him. “I know. That was stupid.”
“You let a jealous, manipulative brat get under your skin, and instead of coming home and talking to me about it, you went into a bar and knocked a few back then drove home. And when I asked if you’d been drinking, you lied to me.”
Oh, boy. “I don‘t know what I was thinking, Jed. I wasn’t thinking.”
“And that’s the problem, right there. How long were you at the bar? How long did it take you to drink all that before you got into the car?”
“I don’t know.”
Silence filled the truck, except for Jed’s quickening breath. It wasn’t arousal this time; it was anger and frustration. “Think. Hard.”
“Thirty…” I swallowed hard. “Thirty minutes.”
“Right. How much did you have, and before you answer me, take some time and think about your answer. You will not lie to me again.”
“A beer and…and four shots of tequila.”
Jed sighed. “Chandler, that is unacceptable. I don’t think I’d be comfortable driving if I’d consumed that much in a couple of hours, and I certainly wouldn’t be comfortable seeing you do it. You’re thirty years old, darlin’. You’re way above this kind of behavior. Brenda isn’t. Why do you think we’re not together anymore?”
I just shook my head.
“You know what you need?”
The question was rhetorical, but I looked up at him anyway. His eyes blazed with disappointment, his lips white against each other. He wanted a grown woman, not a child. This small town harlot was a child, nothing more—and I’d fallen into her small town trap. I had no one to blame but myself. Silence filled the truck except for a few vehicles that rolled by. Clouds passed over the sun and the world went dark, then light again. The field that meandered down toward the Madison on the other side of the highway was brown and dotted with end of season wild flowers. Two horses grazed at her banks; a metal bottomed boat passed on the light current with two men inside, their poles raised toward the sky. I didn’t answer, since I was pretty sure of what I needed; by the look on his face, he was downright positive.
“A old-fashioned licking. That’ll set you right.”
Aw shit.
Conventional Wisdom
Jed put the truck in gear, drove through town and down the highway. The first time I received that licking he seemed so fond of dishing out, it was happening and then over before I could do anything about it except admit wrongdoing and apologize. In the end, being upended across his lap was where I needed to be that day. This time I got to think about what was to come for several agonizing miles. My stomach ached, my heart raced. How was this going to work? What was he going to do? I went into a small panic.
He turned left down an unmarked road that shaved twenty minutes off the drive to town. The uneven dirt road cut through miles of rangeland, over rolling hills, across streams and past stands of pine, aspen and cedar. An ache started low in my belly and drifted up to my chest, while a tingle began lower and spread through my legs to my feet. My mind and my body went to war with each other over what was to come.
Would it hurt?
Would I cry?
Would he take me beyond my endurance?
Would he…gulp…
Make me do that again and I’ll have your delicates dancing around your ankles.
Oh, dear God. My heart yammered and that flight or fight instinct went into full gear. I put my hand on the door handle wondering how badly I’d get hurt if I opened the door and hurled myself out onto the dirt and weeds. He pressed a button and the lock clicked, as if he were reading my thoughts.
“Get your hand off that door.”
“Jed…”
“I’ve said all I’m going to.”
We passed through a large portion
of the Asher property that was wilderness, and when we came to a fork in the road that went through county land in one direction and the Asher Ranch in another, Jed steered the truck through an unmarked log arch with a red neon sign nailed to an upright which read PRIVATE PROPERTY. He took the slight incline for a few miles up to a small bridge over a swift moving tributary of the Madison, and pulled into a grassy meadow at the edge of a mature stand of Aspens, yellow in their fall dress, leaves shimmering in the breeze. He killed the engine.
There was no hesitation with what came next. Jed opened the driver’s side door, then mine, and scooted to the center of the front bench seat. In one swift movement, he lifted me off my rear and yanked me across his lap. I landed with an oomph across his hard thighs. He tipped me sideways and went for the front of my pants.
“No, please…you can’t!” I grunted. He proved me wrong by working my jeans loose like a seasoned pro. When he got them open, he turned me facedown and tugged them to my knees. He took hold of the waistband of my panties.
“Don’t, Jed, please,” I cried. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sure you are.” He skimmed my panties down my legs. “I guarantee that by the time I’m through with you, sorry will take on a whole new meaning.” He pulled me tight against his body. The dashboard and all its accouterments prevented any upper body movement, and my feet bobbed out the open passenger door. My situation was so hopelessly dire that all I could do was cry. So I did. Before he laid one hand on me, I was crying like a baby.
“You need seeing to, Chandler, and I’m just the man to do it.”
“Please—ahhh!” I screamed as his hand came down hard across both cheeks. I saw a white light and then my world turn red. He spanked hard and fast, and with every connection, I knew that I could not endure another.
“Oh, God, Jed, stop! Please! I can’t take it.” Swat number ten and I was done. This was nothing like the spanking he delivered over clothing after I’d slapped him. I would not survive this unless he stopped immediately. I tried to catch my breath between each connection, only to have it taken from me again. He’d taken up a rhythm now, quick slaps alternating sides, then going lower to catch the underside of my butt. My legs scissored with each connection, the sounds of flesh striking flesh competing with the dull thud of my feet hitting the open truck door.
“A few of these over the last thirty years just might have prevented this one.” He spanked on. “I doubt it, though.”
I flailed my body from side to side in an attempt to break free, or at least stop him for a second. He was lighting a fire and I intended to put it out before my entire body went up in flames.
“You’ll learn a lesson here today, and I hope it is one I will never have to repeat.” He spanked hard and steady, ignoring my cries and pleas.
“You will never do this again. Ever!” The steady cadence of his hand was like a jackhammer in my ears, and like a swarm of angry hornets on my defenseless bum.
“You’re going to think before you act, Chandler. You hear me?”
“Yes! Ow! Owwwww!”
I managed to get my right arm out from under the steering wheel, and threw my hand over my punished backside. He wasted no time in repositioning it to the small of my back. I’d learned that lesson the first time. I’d never get away with it this time, or any other time, and I knew it.
“Listen to me now. You can fight until you wear yourself out, but I am going to paddle your bare ass until I am sure that from now on, every single time you sit in a bar, your lower half will tingle if perfect strangers so much as think about getting behind the wheel of a car after too much to drink. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Jed,” I sobbed. “Please…”
Obviously he believed more was due because his hand took up an invigorating pace once again, alternating from one side to the other and down each side to the tops of my thighs and back up again. I couldn’t turn away, so I bucked up and down in an attempt to escape that stinging hand that felt like an oak paddle. All that maneuver accomplished was the equivalent of serving my butt on a silver platter for chastisement with every upswing of my hips. I’d never felt anything so painful and so mortifying. Jed had seen me in all my glory, explored every inch of me, tasted and felt parts of me I wasn’t so familiar with, yet I felt shy and embarrassed lying over his knee getting spanked with my pants down. I tried to kick, to wiggle, to move. It was like I was tied down. I arched my back, kicked my legs, tried to elbow him in the ribs. All that got me was a pause, and then five slow hard spanks that sent me into coughing sobs.
“Elbow me again, Chandler Elise, and I will take off my belt. Do you understand me?”
Little men danced a tarantella in my stomach, even as my behind was being toasted to a crisp. “Yes! Yes, Jed, please, honey. No more!” I begged, of course to no avail.
With one bump of his knee, my bottom was raised high, my upper body pushed further down into the seat, trapped so that I couldn’t even put a hand back and put a stop to all this. He resumed and I ow’d and oh’d and yelled and cursed. Nothing worked; nothing stopped his bloody-fucking hand from connecting with my ass, which I was convinced had fallen off my hips and raced to the creek to cool off long ago. There was no way in fucking hell I was making this mistake again.
I emitted a growl from deep down as he thrashed me relentlessly. My left arm dangled over my head, my left side pinned tight against his body, and my right hand remained pinned across my lower back. I reached for the door handle, the steering wheel, the seatbelt, the gearshift—anything to give me some leverage so I could get away. This was an incomprehensible nightmare. I had nowhere to go with this. I was done. I was overcooked. Was it possible to die from crying?
“I will not allow you to self-destruct, Chandler. You’ve never been taken in hand for your behavior, you’ve never had to answer to anyone with any serious conviction,” he growled, spanking the tender crease between my butt and the tops of my thighs. “That stops right now. I will spank you with your pants down every time you test me. Do you understand me?”
Fuck. Did I ever. He punctuated every syllable with a solid crack to my ass. “Yeeeees! Ugh, goddammit, Jed! Stop! I’m going to die!”
He swatted a few more times before his hand stilled. He gathered me up and pulled me against his chest, my right hip nestled in his crotch. “You’re not going to die.”
I gasped, I sobbed, I growled, I screamed out. “Yes I am! How could you?” I bleated, when I could speak again. I beat his chest with my fists.
“Very easily.” He held me tight and rubbed my back as I threw my arms around him. “Shhhh. Hush, now. It’s over.” He rubbed my back and let me sob and snot on him until I settled some.
“Your legacy will not be a goddamned cross on a highway, Chandler.” He spoke softly, as if to an overwrought child—which I now felt like. “That,” he continued, “I will not allow. And I won’t allow you to lie to me, either.” I felt half-conscious as my ass throbbed in synch with my heart. Fat tears soaked his shirt, my breath leaving me in gasps. I jiggled in his lap, hoping the sting would subside. It only grew in intensity.
“That fucking hurt, goddammit,” I growled into his ear, gasping with every word.
“Good. It was meant to.” He brushed his hand over my bottom. The same hand that scorched my backside now soothed the burn, caressing my skin as if it were a delicate butterfly wing. I sobbed into his neck. “You are my heart, baby. My beating heart.” I cried harder. “I’ll do this when you need it.”
“You won’t. You won’t.” God, what a wuss.
“Shhhh. Come on, now.” He rubbed and soothed, soothed and rubbed.
“I should have you tarred and feathered.” The gentle rumble of his laugh angered, and then soothed me just as quick.
“You’d be hard to spank then.”
“Well, isn’t that…hic…just too bad.”
“Shhhh. It’s all right now.” He kissed my hair and my forehead, working his way down until he found my mouth.
>
“I’m dying,” I whispered.
He laughed. “You’re not dying.”
“Don‘t laugh! And stop kissing me. I don’t like you anymore.”
“Yes, you do. In fact, you love me. You said so.”
“I’ve changed my mind. You tried to kill me.” Good lord, the dramatics. I was appalled at myself.
“No, I didn’t, but I spanked you pretty hard. Why did I do that? Hmmm? Can you tell me why I spanked you?”
“Because you’re awful.”
“I know; I’m awful. I’m mean and nasty and awful.”
“Good,” I sniffed. “I’m glad you see it. The road to change is paved in self-recognition.”
“You’re very sassy.”
“Yes, well…”
He rubbed my backside and held me in his arms as if he’d never let me go. God, he was good at this part. A moment ago, I wanted to kill him, and now I wanted his love and his forgiveness, his admiration and his pride so badly I believed not having it would kill me. That would kill me, not a sore ass—an incredibly stinging, painfully sore ass.
“You shouldn’t be sassing after a spanking, honey,” he said, his voice tender, his caress like a balm soothing the hurt that buried itself deep in my chest, and on my backside.
“And I suppose you just made that up.”
“I guess I did. Are you feeling better?”
“No. I’ll never feel better again.”
“How’s this?” he asked, caressing my scorched skin with his still hot and still over-large hand. I managed to nod. I’d give him that, because it really did help.
“You’ve never been spanked like this before, never had anyone in your life brave enough to sort you out when you need it.” I tightened my hold around him. “I suppose it can be a little unsettling. I’m sorry about that, sweetheart. Being on your end of it isn’t fun. Not supposed to be.”
“Isn’t that wonderful…for you.”
“If you did not enjoy this, then I suggest you never repeat the mistake that got you here. Two things that’ll get you here quick is driving after too much to drink, and lying to me.”