by Loki Renard
“About what?”
“I’m sorry about what just happened,” Steven said, making her heart sink. “That wasn’t appropriate.”
“Appropriate?”
“I’m in a position of authority. I shouldn’t have taken advantage of you.”
Annika decided to stay playful. “What’s the point of authority if you cannot take advantage of it?”
Steven snorted and shook his head at her. “That’s not how I like to behave.”
“You are attracted to me, yes?”
“Of course.”
“And I am attracted to you. So there is no problem. No taking of advantage.”
“Annika, you’re vulnerable at the moment. You’d probably be attracted to any man who was kind to you.”
Annika understood his moral issue. He didn’t think she was able to consent because she wasn’t in control of her sexual impulses. “You think I’m a slut!”
“No,” he said quickly. “I don’t think that at all. I think you’re not used to a man being nice to you for reasons other than wanting your body…”
“So you think I’m a slut,” she repeated.
“I do not think that, and please don’t use that language.”
“You think I can’t tell what I like. You think I don’t have a good brain.”
“I think you have a very good brain,” he reassured her.
“If my brain is good and I know what I like, then there is no advantage. And I know if a man wants me for my body. He does not take me to his home and have me meet his friends and look after me.” Annika was insulted. Steven thought she was pretty, but too mindless to know what she wanted, or to say no if she didn’t want something. “I agreed to marry a man. He was a bad man. I left. And now you think you take advantage. That I have no brain to know what I want.”
“Annika…”
Annika had heard enough. So condescending. He thought she was a mindless girl who could just be taken advantage of because he was nice. He didn’t even give her credit for liking him. Which probably meant he didn’t really like her.
She went to her room. The room that suddenly didn’t feel like hers, if it ever had. It was a charity room, for a charity case. She rolled herself up in the comforter and closed her eyes, feeling tears prickle at her lashes. Just when she thought she might have met someone special, it turned out she was just a project for a man who preferred to remain a single martyr.
She must have drifted off to sleep, for the next thing she knew the light was fading and Mary’s voice was intruding on her sleepy misery.
“Annika? Are you sleeping?”
“If I was, I am not now.”
“Sorry.” Mary came in anyway. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Annika said.
The bed dipped as Mary sat on it, crossed her legs, and started eating gummy candies out of a plastic bag. She extended the bag toward Annika.
“No, thank you.” Annika curled up on her side.
Mary cocked her head to the side, her pretty blond hair swaying as she did. “Did you get into trouble?”
“No.”
“So why are you sad?”
“I’m not sad.”
“You’re curled up in bed at four o’clock in the afternoon. If you’re not sad… oh, do you want a heating pad?”
“A heating pad?”
“For the cramps.”
“No cramps,” Annika sighed.
“Then what are you doing?”
“I can’t take a nap without interrogation?”
“Sorry,” Mary said, her face crumpling. “You just seemed sad.”
“With a blanket over my face?”
“There was sadness in the room,” Mary replied. “And you’re grumpy. It’s okay, you don’t have to tell me why. You had a fight with Steven, right?”
“How did you know?”
“Because he’s writing his sermon very loudly,” Mary said. “He types louder when he’s annoyed.” She smiled and bit the head off of a gummy bear. “What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything,” Annika said. “We just had a disagreement.”
“Oh, a lovers’ quarrel.”
“We’re not lovers.”
“You’d like to be,” Mary beamed wider. “And he would too, I bet.”
“No. He doesn’t want to be intimate with anyone.”
“He’s a pastor,” Mary said. “They like to wait for marriage.”
“They don’t wait for marriage to spank,” Annika complained. “They did not mention the spanking in any of the books I read about America—or the movies.”
“Well, it’s sort of a local tradition,” Mary explained. “I mean, in Sweetville especially.”
“Why in Sweetville?”
“Because it’s just a part of the culture. Sweetville is a nice place to live because it’s a well-disciplined place. That’s what John tells me anyway.”
“John spanks you a lot?”
“Yes,” Mary admitted ruefully. “When he thinks it’s necessary.”
“Steven has done it many times already,” Annika said. “But I find it… exciting.”
Mary bit her lower lip and grinned conspiratorially. “I know what you mean.”
“Steven doesn’t like me getting excited.”
Mary giggled. “Probably because it means you’re enjoying it a little too much.”
“Or because he is.”
“Possible,” Mary agreed.
“He is old-fashioned. Too old-fashioned. You don’t need to be married to enjoy someone.”
“No, but would you really expect a pastor to be any other way?”
Annika scowled. Mary was not helping with her infernal logic. She was only serving to annoy Annika more. Annika didn’t need to be told that Steven was a pastor. She knew he was a pastor. She knew he was an uptight disciplinarian who couldn’t allow himself to enjoy anything his instincts told him to. And that meant she was missing out on what was between them.
“Want to help me make dinner?” Mary changed the subject with all the diplomacy and tact of a hyperactive golden retriever.
Dinner was a quiet affair. The occasional scraping of cutlery on plates was the dominant sound as Steven kept his eyes largely on his food. Annika did the same. Mary glanced from one to the other in between mouthfuls.
“How long are you two going to sulk for?”
“I am not sulking, Mary,” Steven informed her. “I am enjoying my dinner.”
“In absolute silence?”
“Mary…” He lowered his tone into a serious ‘don’t push it’ timbre.
“You’re more fun when you’re not sulking,” Mary said. “Why don’t you just kiss and make up already? Or just make up, you don’t have to kiss.”
“You could kiss and then regret it,” Annika said. “And claim that the person you kissed doesn’t know if she wants to be kissed or not.”
“Annika…”
“Are you just going to say our names like that all night?”
“I’ll spank the pair of you if you don’t stop pushing it,” he said, putting his knife and fork down. “I think we’re finished with dinner.”
“No dessert?” Mary asked the question while Annika silently rose and collected the plates.
“Do you think you deserve dessert?”
“I haven’t done anything wrong,” Mary pointed out. “I’m getting ice cream.”
“I’m going to finish my sermon,” Steven said. “You two behave.”
Annika had no intention of behaving. She needed something to take the edge off. Mary had her ice cream. Annika needed a drink.
Once Steven was safely ensconced in his office, she went to the liquor cabinet and picked her poison. Vodka, naturally. It mixed into orange juice without leaving any odoriferous traces. While Annika pilfered alcohol, Mary sat down in front of the television, watching some facile reality television show about a group of strangers living in a house and performing challenges while being under 24/7 camera surveillance.
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Mary seemed to find it very interesting. Annika found it tolerable once she’d drunk the better part of her juice. It ran out all too quickly though, and soon she felt the need for a top up. Mary watched in horror as Annika stole another slug or three, then covered her crime with more orange juice.
“You are going to get in trouble if you get caught,” she hissed when Annika returned to the couch.
“I’ve been drinking for years,” Annika whispered back. “I can handle it. Don’t say anything and there won’t be any trouble. He’ll never know.”
Mary looked uncomfortable, but didn’t say anything else. The housemates were answering questions about one another in a small interview booth. It was apparently very interesting. Annika wasn’t paying attention. She sipped her drink and felt progressively better about life and everything in it.
Down the hall, Steven’s office door opened. Erring on the side of caution, Annika downed the rest of the drink like a champion and sat staring at the television, ignoring the pastor and his handsome, buttoned-down appearance as he came into the room. The man could make even the drabbest shirt look sinful with the hard, broad lines of his shoulders, the bulges where his pecs made the fabric flow out and around the slabs of muscle.
“What are you staring at, young lady?”
“Nothing.” Annika realized she had not been doing a terribly good job of ignoring Steven. She’d actually been staring at him as if he were a curiosity in the zoo.
Steven frowned slightly and drew closer. “What trouble are you two getting into?”
“None,” Mary said quickly. “We were just watching television.”
“You haven’t been sneaking onto the computer to play your chicken game?”
“No, sir,” Mary reassured him.
“Someone has been up to something,” Steven said. “I can feel it.”
“What, you can feel when someone breaks the rules?” Annika asked the question.
His dark eyes settled on her. “Yes.”
Annika snorted. “Ridiculous. You are trying to trick us.”
He looked at her for a long moment, then crouched down next to the arm of the couch. He was close enough to kiss, and she almost did.
“You’ve been drinking,” he accused.
“No.”
“I can smell it on your breath.”
“Vodka doesn’t smell.”
Mary snorted in horror at the unintentional confession.
“So you drank vodka.” Steven sighed. “Go to bed, Annika. We will talk about this in the morning.”
“No, we won’t,” Annika said. “Tomorrow, I will tell you was terrible mistake and we will never speak of again.”
“Go to bed.” He stood over her, his arm extended, finger pointing toward the bedroom.
“No.”
He bent down, put his shoulder to her hip, and scooped her up from the floor. The room went whirling around as Annika more or less flipped over his back and was carried like a sack of potatoes through the house.
“Let go!”
He sat on the bed and let her roll onto it. The world somersaulted for a second time, then came to a halt the right way up.
“You’re going to bed,” he said. “Enjoy tonight. Tomorrow your bottom is going to be very sore.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Good night, Annika.” He pulled the door shut.
Chapter Four
Annika woke up in a bad mood. At first, she didn’t remember why, then the memories came flooding back. Steven with his ridiculous rules and promises of punishment. She almost didn’t bother to get up at all, but her stomach was growling. She needed to eat.
“Morning,” Steven said. He was sitting at the kitchen table looking all stupid and handsome with his neatly pressed shirt and his clean-shaven face. He gave her a smile that seemed to be genuine. For a moment, Annika’s heart leaped at the idea he might have forgotten about the events of the previous evening. He dashed that hope fairly quickly.
“You look tired,” he said. “Hangover?”
“I only had two drinks.” Annika sat down and poured some cereal into a bowl, followed by a generous dollop of milk.
“That’s two more drinks than you were allowed.”
“Sorry.” She crunched her cereal and gazed at the back of the paper he was reading. There was no reason to be in trouble. No real reason. Some stupid law, maybe, but that wasn’t a real reason.
“Annika, look at me,” he said over the top of the sports pages.
She looked up at him.
“After breakfast, I want to see you in my office. If I have to come and find you, it’s going to be worse.”
She held his disciplinary gaze. “What are you going to do? Touch me and then panic?”
His brows rose and his jaw hardened. “This is not the time to get smart. You’re in trouble.”
“I’ve been in trouble since I landed in this country,” Annika shrugged.
“Not the kind of trouble that’s going to see you standing to eat your dinner.”
Annika shrugged again, seeing that it irritated him and enjoying the fact that it did. She was feeling very antagonistic. Who was he to tell her that two little drinks had earned her punishment? It wasn’t as if she had been drunk. Tipsy, maybe. But that was hardly cause for discipline, even in the most rigid cultures. If she was to be spanked, then she would earn every single swat.
He shook his head curtly and returned his attention to the paper.
It was a special kind of torture, waiting for Steven to be ready to punish her. Annika sat at the table a while longer, squirming in frustration. Finally, she threw a piece of toast at the paper.
Steven lowered it. “You’re in a hurry to be spanked?”
“If you’re going to do it, do it,” she said, grumpy. “Don’t make me wait.”
“You’ll wait as long as I decide,” he said. “And if you can’t behave yourself, you’ll wait in the corner.”
“Why would I do that?”
Steven sighed. “You have so much to learn, my girl.” He folded the paper. “I don’t think you have it in you to wait much longer without pitching a fit, do you?”
She shrugged. He beckoned.
“Come on then.”
Annika followed him down the hall. When she got to his office, she saw that there was a paddle on the desk. She noticed it immediately, because it was fairly large and fairly intimidating.
“This is what I use on girls who drink before the legal age,” Steven said. “It seems to work.”
“You’ve paddled other women?”
“The funny thing about young ladies,” Steven said, “is that they tend to get themselves into all sorts of trouble, especially where alcohol is concerned. Yes, I have paddled others. And now it’s your turn.”
“No,” Annika scowled. She didn’t know why it made it worse that he’d paddled other people, but it did. Maybe it was because the revelation further eroded the idea that they had something special. She was just another badly behaved girl to him, someone else to put over his desk and paddle. Someone not to kiss or to touch intimately. Just someone to punish.
“I told you that staying here meant following rules and being subject to discipline.”
“Da.”
“And you broke the rules about drinking, hence you will be disciplined. Bend over the desk.”
She looked at the desk, having less than no intention of doing as she was told.
Steven slid his hand up the back of her neck, gripped at the base of her head, and pressed her forward. She found herself bending to his will as surely as a marionette, her cheek coming into contact with the cool wood as he held her in place.
“Is this how it’s going to be? You want to be manhandled every time you deserve a spanking?”
Annika made a growling noise. He popped her bottom with the paddle hard enough to cut the growling short with a sharp squeak.
“None of that, young lady. You will stay in position and you will take your paddling.�
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“Why?”
“Because you need to know there are limits, Annika. If you get away with two drinks today, tomorrow it will be twenty.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do.” The paddle settled against her bottom. “Whether you want to obey or not, I will enforce the rules. It will be easier for you if you obey them without needing the enforcement, but I can work either way.”
“Asshole,” Annika swore. She was feeling hot and tingly all over, something like embarrassment but more powerful than that, and more pleasant. In spite of the outrage of being paddled, part of her was enjoying his firmness. It made her feel safe, even when the paddle started falling with swift, sharp swats.
“Name calling will only get you deeper into trouble,” he said calmly, sliding his hand down from her neck to her lower back and pinning her there. The paddle fell over and over, sharp whacking sounds filling the room as her bottom turned to a stinging mass of soreness. Even over her skirt, it was devastatingly effective. If not for his palm settled heavily against her back, she would have popped up like a jack in the box with each and every stroke.
Annika had her pride though, she clamped her lips together and gritted her teeth and did her best not to give Steven the satisfaction of seeing that his paddling was actually having an effect. And it truly was. She was already inwardly swearing that she’d not break any of his stupid rules. It wasn’t worth it. She knew he wasn’t just punishing her for the specific rule broken; he was punishing her for having dared to break any of his rules at all.
“If you’d just been a good girl, I would have stopped this at a dozen swats,” he said conversationally, rubbing the paddle against her hot bottom. “But your attitude, your resistance, and your rudeness means that we’ll stop at four dozen. Any idea how many you have to go?”
“Twelve,” she mumbled against the desk.
He brought the paddle down once more. “Eleven now,” he said, “but good counting. You’re paying attention.”
There was praise in his tone, praise she reacted to with a smile even though she was far from done being paddled. Steven wasn’t cruel with the paddle, but he was making his point, and his point was that she had no choice but to do as he was told.
“I’m sorry,” she sniffled.
