by Thianna D
Looking at once both miserable and embarrassed, she shook her head. “I’m stuck,” she whispered. “When I try to get up, my knees feel like they’re trying to bend the wrong way. I can’t get up by myself.”
“Okay.” Reaching in to the tub, Marcus flipped the drain and the water, now quite cool, began to siphon away. He picked up the towel before gently robbing her of the shower curtain, pushing it to the other side of the tub and out of his way. “We’re going to do this in two parts.” He lay the towel over the edge of the tub and then got another out of the cupboard. “I’m going to help you up and sit you down here. Then, if you can get up on your own, great. If not, I’m going to carry you out to bed. Are you ready?”
She nodded, reaching up to grab onto his shoulders when he squatted. He gripped the edge of the tub for balance, sliding his other arm underneath her to wrap around her waist.
“On three,” he said. “One…two…lift…”
She didn’t make a sound, not even when he heard her right knee pop. He hauled her out of the retreating water and set her down to sit on the tub. She sucked air, though, and clutched at both legs, rocking in her pain until it faded back to manageable levels. She probably didn’t realize yet that there were tears flowing freely down her face when she finally opened her eyes and looked at him.
“Thank you,” she said hoarsely.
He disregarded that, too. “I’m going to pick you up.”
“I can manage from here.”
“No, you can’t. And I’m not going to let you try.” Wrapping her in the second towel, he patted her dry enough not to create an uncomfortable wet spot once he got her to the bed. Sliding his arms around her back and under her swollen knees and, hoping that by doing it fast, he wouldn’t hurt her quite so much, Marcus picked her up.
She shouted, but only once. After that, teeth gritted, she barely did more than grunt and whimper as he carried her to her bed. He sat her on the edge long enough to peel the blankets back and prop up the pillows. After that, it was a careful juggling act to help bring her legs up onto the mattress without hurting her any more than he absolutely had to. He had to scour both the guest closet and his personal closet upstairs to find enough pillows to elevate her knees, and by the time he returned to her room with all those pillows in hand, she had rolled onto her side to face the far wall, tucking only a single pillow between her thighs to keep her knees from resting directly on one another. Half lying on the blankets, she’d also tried to cover as much of herself as she could reach.
“That’s not going to work,” he told her flatly, but she stayed as she was and didn’t move. “Cadence,” he warned. “Roll over.”
“I’ll go back to Mama Venia’s tomorrow,” she said, her soft voice flat and dull. “Do you think Brent will give me a day or two to get my car fixed before he makes me leave?”
“Sweetheart.” Marcus shook his head incredulously. “You’re not going anywhere tomorrow. You’re not going anywhere the day after tomorrow. In fact, you can consider yourself incredibly lucky if I let you out of this bed a week from tomorrow. Baby, you’re grounded.”
She snorted and moved for the first time, albeit only just enough to fold her arms across her chest.
Oh, the stubbornness.
Dropping the pillows where he stood, Marcus circled the bed so she could see by his face just how serious he was. He even lay down beside her, pillowing his head on his own arm as he brought himself face to face and eye to eye with her.
“You have a date with my hairbrush,” he told her bluntly. “Now, this has delayed that for at least a few days, but if you continue to push me tonight, you are going to find out that spankings aren’t my only method of discipline. Hasn’t your stubbornness hurt you enough for one night? Do you really want a serious punishment on top of all this?”
“You don’t have to punish me. You’ve already won. I’m leaving whether you let me or not.”
Now it was his turn to snort, albeit more from annoyed surprise than the show of derision she had given him. “How have I won? And how exactly do you plan to leave when your car isn’t working any better than your legs?”
And there went her chin, squaring with determination, followed by that flash of temper that chased the shadow of depression from her eyes. Mad, he decided, was a much better look for her.
“I’ll walk,” she said stubbornly.
He wondered if mad was as good a look for him as it was for her. He could actually feel it, that slow thump of real anger welling up in his chest and spreading out until there wasn’t an inch of him that couldn’t feel it branching through him. “Do you want to revise your answer?”
It wasn’t enough to cow her. “If I don’t work for you anymore, then you haven’t got a say about whether I walk or not. I could hitchhike to Denver if I wanted. Ass, grass or gas, right? At least I have options.”
Rolling out of bed, Marcus stalked from the room. He left the door wide open behind him so she would know and perhaps even dread his inevitable return. On his way through the kitchen, he picked up the prepared ginger root. And here he’d thought he wouldn’t get to use it tonight after all. Funny, how things sometimes worked out. He had to go all the way to his attic, spending nearly ten minutes digging through boxes before he found his restraints. Taking cuffs and a spreader bar, he headed back downstairs to his office next, snagging a box of prophylactic gloves from the cupboard and a container of heating liniment he used with only a select few of his elderly or arthritic patients. It had only taken one time of applying this without gloves for him to learn just how deeply this particular ointment penetrated, heated and throbbed. While well known to help ease the pain in swollen joints and overworked muscles, when applied to places where the pain receptors weren’t already stimulated, the stuff could only be classified as Hell on Earth. His hands had hurt for three days. Right now, he was willing to bet applying this to her swollen knees was going to feel unbelievably good, but when he got around to applying it to her bottom…Cadence was about to discover the wisdom in not pushing a Dom already at his snapping point.
Halfway down the hall, he thought he heard the soft breathy gasps and sniffles of poorly muffled tears. Sure enough, he found Cadence lying pretty much as he’d left her, but now with one hand pressed over her eyes and the other over her mouth. Plucking two tissues from the box on her nightstand, he pressed them both into her hands.
“Wipe your eyes,” he said. “Blow your nose.”
If she thought for one second he would abandon her over an argument as petty as this one, then she could think again. He didn’t give up either.
“I thought you’d left,” she said, sniffling again as she scrubbed the tissue across her eyes.
“In a minute you’re going to wish I had. Blow.” Once she’d complied, he robbed her of both tissues, tossing them onto the nightstand. “Give me your hand,” he said, holding out his. “I’m going to cuff you to the headboard.”
She caught herself midway to complying and quickly withdrew her arm out of his reach. “Why?”
“I’m going to put something on your skin that, if you touch it, is going to hurt your hands. So, I’m going to bind them together.” He showed her the fur-lined leather restraints he’d brought with him first, then the spreader bar. “And then I’m going to put this on your knees.”
“Why?” She stared at it, eying the leather straps that dangled from each end.
“Because I’m going to use this on you.” He showed her the ointment next. “I don’t want you to accidentally hurt yourself because you’re incapable of holding still. Ultimately, it’s going to make you feel better. When I’m done, however, I’m going to discipline you. Nobody on Earth needs a spanking right now more than you do. But, in the condition you’re in, I think to do so would be cruel. So, I am putting your spanking on hold until you’re well enough to take it, but you’re definitely not going to get off scot-free tonight. Do you know what this is?” He unwrapped the ginger root he’d peeled from its plastic sack so s
he could see it.
“No.” She was coming out of her momentary depression enough to look a little concerned. “What is it?”
“Ginger, and what I’m going to use it for is called figging. Have you heard of that before?”
She was definitely wary now. “No.”
“Then you’re in for a treat,” he said flatly, and with all the sarcasm he could muster. He held up the jar of ointment again. “Trust me, the figging won’t be comfortable, but it’s not going to hurt half as much as this will.”
“You said that was going to feel good.” Her breathing had grown quicker, shallower, and her eyes betrayed her nervousness.
“It will…on your knees. The heat will penetrate down through the swollen layers of tissue, nullifying all those pain receptors that keep telling your brain just how wounded you are. It’s a masking effect. You’re still injured, but, temporarily at least, you won’t feel it the way you’re feeling it right now. However—” He almost hated to say that, because she had just started to relax. Her eyes flicked back to him, instantly wary all over again. “—when applied to an area that isn’t already hurt…your bottom, let’s just hypothetically say…the heat will have a different effect. Instead of feeling good, it’s going to stimulate the pain receptors into thinking you are hurt. It is, in effect, going to feel as if I’ve just spanked the very devil out of you. You won’t be able to hold still, sweetheart, and that is the only reason I am not going to apply it to you tonight. You’ll have to be content with the ginger root and with knowing that as soon as I deem you well enough, you’ve got a date with the hairbrush coming that is going to make this ointment feel like heaven in comparison. So tell me again how much you hate your cane and refuse to use it because you don’t like how people look at you when you do. Tell me again how you can get stuck in your own tub and then, with the water still wet on your skin, threaten to walk all the way back to Denver. Worse, tell me how you’re going to hitchhike! And then, Cadence, sweetheart, you look me in the eye and tell me how your giving up makes me a winner, and see just how quickly you can make me change my mind.”
A flash of anger cut through her now palpable trepidation. “I never give up.”
“No?” he countered harshly. “Then what was all that you just said?”
“I was making it easy for you to give up on me.”
Maybe it was a good thing she was in so much pain right now, because otherwise Marcus didn’t think he could have controlled the sudden urge to upend her across his knee and just blister her. He smothered the inclination, swallowing it back, and only when he was absolutely sure that he could control himself, did he approach her bedside. He bent down low over her, letting her get a good, hard look at his face.
“Can you hear me?” he asked softly.
He both heard and saw the convulsion in her throat when she swallowed hard. “Yes.”
“Good. Because I’m only going to say this once: I don’t give up either. You want to quit, you pull up your big girl panties and quit. You want to get fired, then do something worth getting fired over, but stop trying to manipulate me into being the bad guy because it’s the most convenient thing for you.”
She glared at him, but he didn’t blink. He held her stare until, by slow degrees, the anger in her faded first into rebellious confusion and then into guilt.
He put down everything except the cuffs and then held out his hand, palm up, waiting. Giving her all the choice in the world despite the authority with which he demanded, “Give me your hand.”
Considering what he was about to do, what he’d told her quite bluntly that he was going to do, and especially considering how this argument had gone thus far, he was a little surprised when she suddenly looked away, then offered up her arm. He buckled her wrist, the right one first, and then the left. The bed frame was a solid piece of wood but for two decorative, hand-hold type gaps at each corner post. Clipping a short length of chain to the D ring on one cuff, he looped the length through that hand-hold before attaching it to her other wrist and secured her to the post.
She tried to roll onto her side at first, but Marcus stopped her. He adjusted the pillows under her head and shoulders, removing all but one of them. Her only protest came when he stripped the blanket and sheet from her, baring her completely to his ministrations. Try though he did to keep his thoughts impersonal, right from the very start when he began to strap the spreader bar to her thighs, he knew this was anything but a doctor and patient relationship. Her legs were in such bad condition and yet, when he touched her, all he felt was a yearning to comfort.
There would be time for that later. Right now, he had been as lenient as he dared to be. It obviously wasn’t what she needed.
He moved her carefully, adjusting her to lie diagonally across the mattress and packing the pillows in under and around her knees, keeping her comfortable at the width the spreader bar held her to. There would be no rolling over now, no closing her legs against him or kicking, or any other of a hundred tiny movements that she might accidentally make that would cause her more pain. He was a doctor, not a dirty old man, but that’s exactly how he felt when he found himself unable to avoid noticing all the sexual, sensual parts of her. Keeping her spread like this exposed her sex, the folds and shadows, the thin little strip of trimmed hair that pointed as neatly as an arrow to the very place he most wanted to go.
It wasn’t going to happen tonight.
It might not ever happen at all.
He had to get his mind where it needed to be: on her knees. Swollen, discolored, hurting.
He put on a pair of gloves and opened the liniment jar. The scent was similar to menthol, the strong, medicinal scent stinging his nose as he scooped a good tablespoon out with his fingers. He rubbed it over his hands first and then he went to work on her knees. As gentle as he was, she still sucked air and stiffened, arching as if trying to climb backwards up over the headboard, but without using her legs. He also knew the precise moment when the heat of the ointment began to ignite and sink in. Her stiffness eased, her facial show of strain and her rapid panting breaths ever so slightly relaxed.
“Better?” he asked.
She nodded, watching as he scooped more ointment onto his hands and braced herself to endure as he spread it first over his gloved fingers and then all over the swollen ball of her other knee. “Ah!”
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Marcus soothed, genuinely hating that he couldn’t do this without hurting her. Hurt her bottom, yes. Any day of the week and twice on Sundays, as his mother used to say. But he’d never hurt her broken legs. “It’ll be okay.”
The heat must have been permeating deep now, because already her expressive wince was easing, melting into something more bearable.
“That does feel better,” she admitted. “Very hot, though. It feels like I’ve got them close to a fire.”
He took his gloves off, careful not to touch the ointment as he tossed them into the trash. “Do you have any allergies to medication?”
Her eyes had drifted closed. When she shook her head, he left her long enough to snag two painkillers from his office and a glass of water from the kitchen. He held her head, helping lift her just enough to toss back the pills and drink, and then he eased her back down onto the pillows.
“Better?” he asked.
She nodded. “Getting there.”
“Don’t get used to it. I’m not in the habit of distributing painkillers right before a punishment.”
“Sweet talker,” she said, smiling faintly but not opening her eyes. Yeah, she was definitely feeling better.
Leaning over her, Marcus braced his hand against the mattress on the other side of her hip and for a moment just watched her. She was smiling so serenely, looked so relaxed, floating on a wave of heat just strong enough to kill the pain so long as she didn’t move. And she wasn’t. She only breathed slowly in and out, her damn-near perfect breasts rising and gently falling, those rosy little tips beckoning him to steal a taste. He could look at her all
night but, shaking his head at himself, he still had a punishment to deliver. He almost hated to do it, but she had backed him into a corner and if he failed to follow through now, then he may as well give up on her ever taking his ultimatums seriously.
Marcus let out a slow breath. He’d give her a few minutes for the ointment to really sink in and the painkillers to start working, but she had asked for this. Perhaps not in so many words, but she had asked and he was going to give it to her.
Chapter 16
Cadence couldn’t remember the last time she had felt this good. There was a fire in her knees, but it wasn’t quite hot enough to seriously burn her. If she didn’t move at all, she could almost make believe that nothing hurt. In fact, she could almost go to sleep right here.
It wasn’t until Marcus spoke that she remembered he was there at all. “Have you ever had anal sex?”
Her nipples peaked in spite of herself. What a question to ask someone, particularly… Oh, who was she trying to kid? Nothing they had done together qualified them as having a working relationship. Spankings, pizza, picking her up out of the tub as naked as the day she was born…at this point, why not talk about sex?
She didn’t even crack open her eyes. “I’ve dated a few assholes. Does that count?”
He snorted, then chuckled, then shook his head. “As much as it ought to, no.”
The bed jostled slightly when he moved and then she felt it when he lay something on her stomach. It was the ginger root, she saw, still mostly wrapped in plastic. It looked fresh, peeled and shiny from its own spicy juices. The strong scent of it filled her nose.
And then it hit her…Marcus had not asked that question out of mild curiosity. “You’re going to put that in my butt?”
