Return to Corbin's Bend

by Corinne Alexander

  “Okay.” She rubbed her hands upon her knees. “In a completely non-bitchy, non-judgmental, and non-close-minded way, I’m wondering if you’re going to be able to get this truck pointed back down toward the bottom of the mountain.”

  It still wasn’t funny, but he couldn’t help laughing. Chuckling, really. A very dry ‘ha-ha’. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I can.”

  “Just curious.”

  “I got this.” He started to crank the wheel back the way he’d come.

  “Because I think we’re very close to falling off the mountain on this side.”

  “I said, I’ve got it.”

  She held up her hands in wordless surrender. “I was just asking.”

  “And I was just saying.”

  This was going to be a long, long…long ride down the mountain.

  Chapter 5

  The flurries were gone. What could only be called a blizzard had taken its place with fast, fat snowflakes and blisteringly cold winds that all but obscured the trees to either side of them. Ettie couldn’t imagine how Vance kept the truck on the road. Both his hands were on the wheel, and it hadn’t escaped her notice just how tightly he gripped it. For the last twenty miles, neither one of them had said a word. Not that she missed the man-slut’s conversation, but she wasn’t blind to what was most concerning here. These were white-out conditions. The snow build up was incredible and although the temperature hadn’t warmed up enough to melt the snow and create ice, exactly where the edge of that drop-off to their right began was becoming seriously obscured. She could only see it in snowy bits and shadows if she looked out her side window. She couldn’t see anything out ahead of them. Vance probably couldn’t either, which was why they were crawling down the mountain at mileage that barely even registered as a digital number on the speedometer.

  “I don’t think we’re going to make this,” Vance said, and not for the first time. “If I can find a widening in the road, I think we’re going to turn around.”

  Also not for the first time, Ettie protested, “But we’re almost halfway there!”

  “No we’re not. We’re not even close to halfway, and at this rate, we’ll be lucky to be there by midnight.”

  “So long as there’s no ice, I don’t see the problem. You said you could drive this thing.”

  “I can drive this thing,” Vance said dryly. “Any minute now I’m afraid you might see me drive this thing right off the side of the mountain. It’s almost a foot deep out there already. I can barely see where the road is. And newsflash, but we don’t need ice to slide. All we need is a lack of traction. This isn’t safe.”

  “I think it’s slowing down.” She tried to see the sky through the snow, then the road out ahead of them. No matter where she looked, everything was blanketed in swirling gusts of snow. “People are depending on us to bring back water, food, gas, generators—”

  “Toner?” he added, even more drily.

  “My paper is just as important to the people of Corbin’s Bend as anything else on Brent’s list. We’re a township of neighbors first and foremost. If someone runs out of something, all they have to do is ask. My paper brings something you can’t buy in stores!”

  “Local gossip, while fanciful and imaginatively presented, doesn’t quench thirst—”

  “Oh please, like there’s even one of us who’s never melted snow on the stove before.”

  “—or fill bellies—” he drawled.

  Her cheeks flushed angrily. “I happen to know for a fact Kelli Stevens has canned enough out of her garden to feed everybody for weeks!”

  “—or heat a house, unless of course it’s used as fire starter.”

  She snapped around on the seat so fast she nearly cracked her head against the window. “How dare you even suggest burning my paper, you—you—you…loathsome, detestable…ignoramus!”

  “Good word usage,” he snorted.

  Her face flared even hotter. “They’d get more heat out of burning your paddles!”

  He snorted again. “My paddles have been known to provide some much needed heat upon occasion.” He looked at her. “Especially when it’s warranted.”

  “It would last longer too!”

  “All night long in some cases, and believe you me, yours would definitely be one of them.”

  She glared, her eyes narrowing sharply when she suddenly got it. “Oh, ha ha. All the cars I could have ended up in and I get stuck with the playboy comedian.”

  Vance shook his head. “We’re supposed to be starting over, remember?”

  “Screw starting over! I’m not one of your smack-happy floozies, and if you think you’re being charming, you can think again.”

  “Smack…happy…floozies…” Vance echoed. Somehow he managed to make it sound like a warning, but Ettie was too upset to pay it much attention.

  “Oh, like they’re not, considering who they keep calling to get their fix!”

  “Are you this snotty with everyone, or do I get special treatment because we’re such good friends?”

  She laughed at him. “You’re contemptible, you really are! How do people stand to be anywhere near you—”

  “I was just wondering the same thing.”

  “—when it’s everything I can do just to stay in this truck!” No words in the English language could have come close to expressing her frustration at that point. She was shaking, her disappointment and anger as hard to contain as her hand. Unable to stop herself, it just flew out and punched him in the arm.

  Ettie had never in her life hit another human being. It was not her finest moment, and she knew it. What was it about this man that could rub her this raw? Just having to be in the same enclosed space with him was making every inch of every nerve in her body cringe!

  For the second time that trip, Vance stopped the truck. Looking first at his arm, he then looked at her. “Miss Thomas, you just hit me.”

  “Mr. Foster,” she countered, with as much saccharine sweetness as she could muster, “you’re lucky I stopped at just one. What’s the matter? Surely a big man like you can take it as well as he can dish it out.”

  Cocking his head, Vance stared at her. For almost a full minute, all she could hear was the wind rocking against the truck, the heater blowing hot air on her feet and her own angry breathing. Then Vance tsked.

  Taking the keys out of the ignition, he unhooked his seatbelt. A blast of icy wind roared into the truck in just the short time it took him to muscle the door open and get out. She didn’t know if he slammed it deliberately or if the wind caught it, but the whole vehicle rocked from the force.

  “Oh my God, that’s cold!” Ettie hugged into her coat, fighting a full body shudder. She watched the dark shape of Vance trudge through the snow around the front of the truck, coming straight for her door. She was tempted to lock it, except he had the keys in his pocket, so that wouldn’t be a long-lived show of defiance. Well, let him come. If he wanted to have it out, she was in just the right mood for a good old fashioned verbal knock-down drag-out. She even got the first lick in. When he opened her door, letting in another blast of icy cold and flying snow, she snapped, “If you think for one second you can make me walk back in this, think again. I’m staying right here. So, deal with it!”

  “Believe me, I have every intention of doing just that.” He reached across her lap to unfasten her seatbelt. Which was exactly how long it took for her to realize what he intended.

  “Like hell!” she snapped, grabbing first at the seatbelt and then at the door, and still he pulled her from the cab out into the cutting wind and storm.

  “What’s the matter, Miss Thomas? You can dish it out, but you can’t take it?”

  His strength was incredible. Though intellectually she knew, as a man, of course he was stronger than she was, but she was still unprepared for how easily he lifted her, kicking and slapping at him, right off her feet.

  “I do not consent!” she bellowed, even as he propped his foot up on the runner and tossed her face down across hi
s thigh. “I said, I don’t consent!”

  “You consented the minute you hit me. All I’m doing is returning the favor!” His hand came down full across her upturned backside and it didn’t even matter that there were layers of cloth—pants, underwear, the bottom portion of her winter-heavy coat—between her heart-shaped flesh and his hand. She sucked air and snow, as startled by the unbelievable clap of impact as she was by the sharp pain. He made paddles? This man did not need paddles. His hand was a paddle all on its own, and it hurt!

  A fury of rapid-fire smacks cracked all over her bottom, spurring her out of the shock of immobility that that first swat had generated. It threw her whole body into the fight to break away. She yelled and kicked, grabbing the edge of the seat and his leg. She tried to twist, but his arm across the breadth of her back kept her pinned. Not all the bucking and hip rolling that her meager leverage could manage did one bit of good until, as suddenly as the whole thing started, it was done.

  In all likelihood, he probably only gave her fifteen or twenty good smacks, but when he dumped her back on her feet in the snow between himself and the open door of the truck, for the few seconds that followed, Ettie could have sworn she felt each and every one of those swats in their smarting accumulative. Maybe it was the cold. Maybe that made it worse because as she stood there, grabbing her ass in both hands and staring up at him in warring shock and outrage…maybe even just a smidgen of—oh my God, was that relief?—the most amazing blaze of warmth blossomed into being under her splayed fingers. It grew up under her denim pockets, spreading out across the surface of her bottom before shooting down, like a bolt of molten lightning, to seat itself in throbbing, burning heat right between her legs.

  Folding his arms across his chest, Vance stared back at her, his dark eyes full of daring. Go ahead, they said. Hit me again. See what happens.

  Her hand itched. Her bottom burned and her pussy throbbed. For the horn dog. Oh, that just was not right. No way could that be right. Not for him!

  No, not for him, she had to tell herself. Because of him. Because he had spanked her and she hadn’t been spanked in such a very, very long time. Four years, seven months, thirteen unbearable days…but who was counting, right?

  When she only stood there, unmoving, not speaking, the daring in his eyes turned to victory. He stepped back and gestured for her to get in the truck.

  She had the most insane urge to slap him just to see if he might spank her again. Take her pants and panties down. Do it right. The pulse between her legs intensified. Her nipples tightened, stroking the sandpaper roughness inside her bra cups with every shaky breath of outrage that burned the back of her throat and lungs with cold.

  Cocking his head, Vance even had the nerve to smile. It was an odd combination of gentle and smug, and as he did it, he leaned into her. He braced one hand on the side of his truck and the other upon the door frame, and just as effortlessly as she’d been pinned across his knee mere seconds before, she was now trapped between his open arms, with the truck at her back and nothing but him eating up her sight.

  “Well?” he drawled. “It’s not getting any warmer out here, and we’re not getting any closer to Brenton.”

  “You just assaulted me.” She was surprised as hell that her voice (although shaky) wasn’t anywhere near as unsteady as the rest of her felt.

  “No, ma’am. You assaulted me. All I did was give you a little attitude adjustment, and considering what I’ve had to endure these last few hours, it was long overdue. Now, the way I see it, we can do one of two things. The first: You sit quietly on that seat and keep your hands to yourself while I look for a place safe enough to try turning around. Or we can do the second, which is a great deal more risky for you since if you chose anything but the first option, the consequences will involve my dragging you back out of this truck and taking off my belt.”

  The whole of her traitorous body throbbed at the thought. Her knees shook, but not from the bitter cold. Her hands shook too, but that wasn’t from the cold either. It was from the near overwhelming urge to just plant her hand in the middle of his broad chest and shove, or maybe to ball up her fist and hit him again, in his arm or maybe right smack in the middle of his handsome nose or too-damned perfect and smugly smiling mouth, and see if maybe—just maybe—he was the sort of man who followed through with threats like that. Because men—especially Corbin’s Bend men—should never make threats they had no intention of carrying out, and in particular, never threats like that! Did he even know how unbearable it was to be on the wrong end of a promise not carried through?

  Ettie rallied her anger, pulling it in around her like a shield. It was the only shield she had. “When we get back to Corbin’s Bend, I’m going to call the police and have you arrested for what you just did.”

  She wouldn’t though. She already knew that, even if he didn’t.

  Arching his eyebrow, neither surprised nor concerned, Vance only acknowledged her threat and then dismissed it. “That’s your right, Miss Thomas. However, I think you should know, you’re going to be extremely lucky if, when we get back to Corbin’s Bend, I don’t haul your skinny ass before the Disciplinary Committee. I’m pretty sure there’s a lot of people who would be very interested in knowing what their favorite journalist really thinks about the people she supposedly calls her friends. You have no right to pass moral judgment on anyone but yourself. This community was founded on acceptance, and you’ve just shown you’re every bit as hostile towards the very way of life you’re supposed to embrace as the people we’ve moved here to escape.”

  She stood there, her skin stinging from the cold, fat snowflakes building up in her hair and on her eyelashes, shaking and glaring, deeply ashamed and yet raging inside every bit as violently as the storm surrounding them.

  “Is that what you want?” Vance asked, soft and steady. Neither angry nor accusing. “Are you really as bitter and shrewish as you’ve worked so very hard to make yourself out to be, or do you just need someone to look you in the eyes and say, ‘Enough. You don’t get to behave this way anymore’?”

  A caress of needle-like prickling moved up the backs of her thighs and across the stinging surface of her bottom. It was a fight to keep from doing something stupid then, and she hated herself for that—for her sudden inability to give him that one good reason he seemed to be asking her for, to close the inches between them and just blister her. She hated herself even more because of all the people she should want standing this close to her, threatening her in this ominous and yet oh-so intimate way, why oh why did it have to be this…this…this self-appointed spank-happy studmeister?

  Vance tipped his head, studying her with dark eyes that saw way too deeply and understood way too much. “Why, Miss Thomas,” he said, his breath pure warmth against her cheeks, and his tone as silky as it was smug. “Can it be that you might actually want me to take off my belt?”

  “Yes,” Ettie said, in an instant as shocked as he was by the honesty she couldn’t keep locked behind her lips. She went on and quickly buried that awkward truth under the first lie she could come up with. “Go ahead. Take off your belt. Come at me again, and I promise I’ll strangle you with it.”

  Climbing back into the truck, Ettie grabbed the door out of his hand and slammed it shut between them. Keys in his pocket or not, she locked it and then folded her arms across her chest. She refused to look at him after that. She wasn’t sulking. She wasn’t. Already the stinging heat in her bottom was fading, but that only made the pulse of heat between her legs—like Vance himself—harder to ignore.

  His breath fogging the air outside her window, he laughed, and that low throaty sound went right up her spine. It burrowed under the back of her skull where it then sat, itching at her, pricking her with the knowledge that the one thing she never imagined she would ever want, she now wanted with all her being. That’s what four awful years, seven months and thirteen miserable days of neglect had done to her. It made her want a gigolo. Not Vance. Oh hell, no. Not him. Not exact
ly. She just wanted someone who spanked like him. At least, that’s what she told herself.

  Chapter 6

  It was another twenty miles and more than an hour of uneasy driving before the downward grade of the mountain evened out. By then, the road was completely gone and one foot of snow had multiplied wildly into what looked like two-foot drifts piled up all around them. The wind was still blowing fitfully and the storm showed no signs of abating any time soon.

  “Oh, here we go,” Vance said, spotting what looked like a turn-off onto another forestry service road.

  “We’ve got to be at least halfway there,” Ettie said, the first words she’d offered since he’d dusted the seat of her britches and she’d threatened to strangle him with his own belt. One had to admire a woman with that kind of sass. She wasn’t any less a pain in his ass, but he had to admit, he was a sucker for spirited women. “Maybe the storm will be over soon. It might even be over before we get back to Corbin’s Bend. Then we’ll both feel like idiots!”

  “We’ll be safe idiots. That’s all that matters.”

  One glance at her pretty much told him that was cold comfort, but she had to know better than what she was saying. One only had to live through one Colorado winter to know storms like this could last a couple hours or a couple days. Without access to a good weather station, they had no way of knowing exactly what they were in for, and on these mountain roads, his radio wasn’t picking up anything but static.

  “It can’t last forever,” she insisted. “People are depending on us. We can’t just go back!”

  “It won’t do anyone any good if we get stranded out here.” Now that he’d found a space big enough to turn around though, he was having second thoughts about taking the same road up that they’d taken down. It was just too narrow, the drop-off too severe, and there was so much snow now hiding the edges of the road, it felt like suicide to try. He rubbed his mouth, wishing he were more familiar with these old service roads. He’d been hunting back here only a handful of times, but if this turn off was the road he thought it was, then it would take him to the second of three accesses that led all the way back up to the main gate.