He almost caressed her hair, but stopped himself just in time. He took hold of her arm instead, and because the time for backing out had passed, he let his grip above her elbow tell her there would be no further reprieve. Not that she asked for one. She stumbled a little over her own feet, but she followed him, letting him lead her to the nearest chair. He pulled it away from the stove, turned it around, and thunked it down in the middle of the floor to give them both plenty of room. His arm was only so long. He wasn’t in any danger of bumping into anything, but the room was just small enough that she might. He wanted to make sure the only injury she sustained was the one he delivered to her bottom. He didn’t want her accidentally kicking the stove or banging her head or hands on the table. Both a very real possibility. Though she’d held herself admirably still during even the worst of her switching, this time he wasn’t going to be gentle.
Sitting, he pulled her to stand between his knees. Her legs stiffened only once, just before she took that half step that brought her to stand directly before him. Her breathing quickened when he unfastened her jeans. He’d already done this once before today, but he still felt that tiny electric thrill when the backs of his fingers made brushing contact with the smooth, unblemished skin of her belly. Pulling her jeans down revealed the perfect symmetry of her belly button, the curve of her hips, the thin strip of white and pink cotton panties. Boy cut. Cute as hell. It only seemed to amplify her feminine curves, and it inspired in him the most incredible desire to lean in and kiss her navel, or the swell of her hips where they rounded out from her waist and down to her thighs.
In the years since he’d moved to Corbin’s Bend, he couldn’t count the number of times he’d done this. Every single one of those women had been beautiful in her own way. Like Venia Varner, stately, graceful, fifty-years-old if she was a day and yet she hardly looked to be in her forties. Bernie, sharp witted and quick to laugh. Shy, quiet Irene, who thought those few extra pounds made her too big to go across his knee, but how quickly he had proved her wrong.
Ettie was just like them in many ways, but she was also nothing like them. What he had done with Venia, Bernie and Irene, to name just a few, had been fun. Satisfying in their own way, and yet it was only right now, with Ettie’s soft hips cupped between his hands, and her blue eyes watching him, anxious with anticipation and uncertainty, that he felt a deeper sense of satisfaction. More than anything he’d yet felt with anyone else.
He kept his gaze locked with hers while he hooked his thumbs in the elastic of her underwear and pulled them down. She caught a shaky breath when he gave his thigh a pat, but only uttered the softest whimper before lowering herself into position over his lap. Her pretty bottom was an inverted heart of soft, pale flesh, lined pink in two places where the final stroke of the switches had struck the most passionately. She had been so responsive during that spanking. But this wasn’t going to be like that had been and passion wasn’t what he was trying to evoke, from either one of them.
“Are you mad at me?” she asked, when his hand came to rest on the curve where her bottom met her thigh.
“No, I’m not.”
She braced her hands on the floor. She started to reach for him, as if needing to touch his knee, but then changed her mind. For the longest time, that’s how they stayed: her, in position; him, reluctant to start.
“What’s wrong?” she finally asked.
He’d never had this problem with any of the other women he’d spanked. Except maybe one. Her name had been Lisa and he’d dated her for thirteen months. Hell, if she hadn’t decided she wanted something different, he would have married her. But that had been a whole lifetime ago, before he’d moved to Corbin’s Bend.
“I really don’t want to do this,” he told her honestly.
She tried to get up then, but his arm across her back put a stop to that.
“Let me up.” She grabbed his leg with clawing fingers. Twisting her hip to roll off onto the floor, her feet scrambled to find some sort of leverage on the floor.
“Hey!” He held her, but only just.
“I said, let go!” Teeth gritted, she snapped, “If you don’t want to spank me, fine! I’m not desperate. I didn’t call you, Have Paddle, Will Travel! I’m not one of your clients! Let me up, damn it!”
He was so startled by the sudden venom in her tone, he almost did let her go. But then she started to fight him. Not just struggle, not just kick or wriggle about, but actually fight. She got her fingers down under his pants leg and scratched furrows into his ankle, all the way up his shin. She slammed her elbow into his ribs. She probably would have bitten him if she could have wriggled around far enough, but he recovered from his shock first.
“Get your gigolo hands off me, horn dog!” she bellowed. “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t consent!”
“Oh my God, have I had enough of this!” he snapped back. He had no problem busting her ass after that. He even laughed a little while he did it, throwing his whole arm into peppering her backside with hard, fast swats. “Every single time I start to feel kindly toward you, you go and act like a nut!”
He wasn’t mad. Irritated, maybe. Even confused, but not mad. Not really. Not any more than he would have been mad at the orneriness of a bee that unexpectedly stings. And like that bee, he swatted the hell out of her.
Ettie howled, spitting the most creative string of curses at both him, his parentage, and his livelihood. He paused long enough to wrench his right leg out from under her, leaving her fighting to get up off his left thigh only, and then he clamped both her wildly kicking legs between his own. She reached back clawing at his face, but he caught her wrist—first one and then the other, and quickly pinned those as well.
“This is assault!” she yelled.
“It certainly is,” he replied, and let her have it. He spanked her until his hand burned and throbbed. As much as it was hurting him, it had to be hurting her more, but even when Ettie stopped fighting him, she lay stiff as a board, teeth gritted, making no sound at all apart from the raggedness of her breathing. He didn’t know whether he ought to admire her stubbornness, or give up.
He almost missed it, that telltale hiccup that meant a break and tears weren’t far behind. But even as that tiny twitch of breath escaped her, Ettie sucked it back in and stiffened herself even straighter. Her bottom was an angry red and swollen. He could spank her all day long at this point and she was probably just stubborn enough to outlast him.
Stopping, Vance tried to shake some of the sting out of his hand, before bringing it back to rest on the slope of her thigh just under the fiery hotness he’d created. “You want to tell me what’s going on in that head of yours?”
“You want to go to hell?” she countered, her voice thick and shaking so badly that he almost couldn’t make out her words.
“Not until you tell me what this is all about.” He almost lost his grip on her when she suddenly wrenched her body into another fit of dervish writhing.
“Let go-oh! Ow! OW!” She lost her composure when he resumed spanking. Avoiding her blazing hot bottom, this time he focused his hand and his attention on the backs of her tender thighs. Her yelps quickly turned to gasps and then wails. She went from fighting to escape him to fighting to escape the pain, and just as soon as that happened, Vance stopped spanking again.
“I’m waiting,” he said as calmly as he could, flexing to get the sting out of his fingers.
“Let g—no no no NO!”
“I can keep this up all night,” he lied, laying a whole new series of rapid-fire swats all over the backs of her thighs, the full fleshy curves of her bright red bottom, and particularly to that very sensitive strip where the two joined company and she couldn’t help but try to sit sometime later on.
“Bastard!” She wrenched at her trapped hands, her fingers trying desperately to get down far enough to protect herself from his avenging slaps. Until, finally, in an eruption of pleading sobs, she cried, “Stop! Please, Vance, stop!”
He did, gla
d for the rest. He gave her a moment to catch her breath, flexing his smarting fingers and silently vowing to use his hand more and his straps and paddles less. At least until he’d built up a nice, cushioning layer of callouses. “I’m waiting,” he said again.
“You go ahead and wa—no, wait, wait, WAIT!” She threw her head back, squirming and bucking, her bottom more leaping up into the vigorous claps of his hand. That mouth of hers. He had to fight not to smile then. He could spend a lifetime spanking her and probably still never teach her to mind what came spilling out of it.
“I’m sorry!” she brayed, even though by then he had stopped. “I’m sorry!”
Catching the back of her shirt, he loosened the vise of his legs enough to pull her upright. She tried to get her feet under her, but when he tugged, she plopped down to sit tensely on his right thigh. Sucking a sharp breath, she tried again to stand, but her struggle died the instant he said, “Do I have to spank you again?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Okay then.” Still gripping the back of her shirt because he didn’t for a second think she had given in, he leaned back and waited. Ettie stared fixedly at the floor, looking everywhere but back at him. “So, what made you change your mind, Ettie?”
Rebel tears filled her eyes, though she blinked to keep them back. By the jump in her jawline, he could tell she was biting the inside of her cheek. Anything to prevent them from falling.
Finally, the tiniest glimmer of fragility revealed itself when she asked, “Why don’t you want to spank me? You spank everyone else, why not me?”
Vance reeled. He could have bit his tongue. “That’s not what I meant, honey. You know that’s not.”
“How am I supposed to know what you meant?” She shot him an accusing glare. “You said—”
“Like this,” he clarified. “I don’t want to have to spank you like this. Ettie, I like to play. I like fun spankings, playful spankings, sexy spankings. I like what we did earlier, when it was something you both wanted and needed. Earlier was fun for me, even though you cried. This is different. This is me having to put you over my knee to correct a lack of judgment in a way that will really hurt. That’s not fun. I don’t enjoy that.”
She blinked, that naked fragility peeking through all over again. “Oh.”
“Oh.” He reached up to take her chin lightly between his fingers. “And for the record, I haven’t spanked everyone. I haven’t spanked Brent.” He grinned. “Yet.”
That won from her the most unladylike snort, followed by an equally reluctant smile. It didn’t last long though. “I misunderstood, then,” she admitted, picking invisible lint off her knees. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “It’s just so hard.”
“What’s so hard?” The way she looked at him said she wished she hadn’t said anything. She tried to shrug it away, but Vance wasn’t about to take that for an answer. His hand on her back dropped down to her bottom. He didn’t rub, he simply touched, applying nothing more than a warning tap of one finger.
She flushed all over again. “Being here,” she finally confessed.
“We’re going to get out of here,” he told her, his hand rising once more to caress her back. “I promise, someone will come looking for us. They’re going to find us.”
“I don’t mean here.” Ettie looked around the tiny cabin despondently. “Being here is as easy as having your truck fall through the ice.”
When she went back to picking at her fingers, it suddenly occurred to him what she was saying. “You mean Corbin’s Bend.”
She stared down at her hands, picking so she wouldn’t have to look at him. “I thought it was going to be easier. You know, life in a community full of people who either spank or are spanked. How could anybody move here and not find somebody after four years? You’ve been here less than I have and you’ve got people all over the place. I don’t understand. I just—” She snapped her mouth shut, turning all the way away from him now. She even tried to get up off his knee, but he wasn’t about to let her go.
He pulled her back down to sit on his knee. “Ettie…” When she refused to look at him, he caught her chin between firm but gentle fingers and turned her until she had no choice but to face him. “Do you remember Benjamin’s last barbeque?”
“Yes,” she said listlessly. “I covered it for my paper.”
“And killed me in a horrible hot dog eating accident,” Vance agreed, but that was a different discussion for a different time. “Everybody was there. I can’t think of one person who didn’t come. People were talking, laughing, mingling, playing games…”
“Spanking,” Ettie added.
“Carla Methon and Cadence did butt heads rather vocally, and Kieran and the good Doctor did take them both in hand to sort it out, but I wouldn’t say that spankings abounded. All in all, it was a fun and peaceable event. My point in bringing it up, however, is to ask you this.” He gave the tip of her chin a gentle pinch. “Do you remember what you were doing while everyone else was laughing and talking, mingling and playing games?”
Her eyebrows quirked together. “I was right there with them,” she said, perplexed. “I was talking…”
“You were writing in that notepad you bring with you to every community event. You were writing articles while everyone else was having fun. Ettie, sweetie, you hide behind your paper.”
She scoffed, trying to pull back out of his hand.
“Yes, you do. Maybe you don’t mean to, but that’s what you’ve been doing ever since I’ve been here, at least. You’re a very beautiful young woman. You’re smart, you’re driven.” He couldn’t stop himself from smiling just a bit. “You’re stubborn and you’ve got a mouth that just won’t quit. I can’t help but think there are men all over this community who—if they only knew you were available—would love the chance to take you in hand.”
She remained dubious. “Like who?”
“Me,” Vance said simply. In that moment, not only did it seem the right thing to say, but it also felt true. Admitting it didn’t bother him anywhere near as much as it did to imagine some other man holding Ettie the way he was right now—his hand resting lightly on her bottom, feeling the heat radiating from her flesh, his palm prints marking her as his. That had no right to bother him, but it did. It bothered him a lot.
Ettie stared at him, those blue eyes of hers at first startled and then sad all over again. “So I can be another travel destination?” she countered, and then shook her head. “No. I can’t do that.”
Vance had no right to be bothered by that, either. He swallowed back the surge of disappointment he hadn’t been prepared to feel and tried to cover it with a smile. “That’s okay, sweetie.” He patted her hip. “Let’s finish this up then. Back in position.”
She startled all over again. “B-but…you already spanked me. Why…”
“I spanked you because you threw a fit over my knee and I had to get your attention. You weren’t listening to me and you would not have received your spanking in the proper frame of mind. But, you’re listening to me now, so now we can proceed. I’m actually very sorry about this, in a way. As sore as your bottom was when we first started, I imagine it’s going to be even worse now.”
Her eyes were huge. Other than to blink, she didn’t move.
“Sweetheart,” Vance said, every bit as gentle and as firm as his fingers upon her chin. “I may not enjoy having to give this kind of spanking, but it’s important that you know I will. Any time I have to. Every time I have to. I also want you to know, I don’t do this kind of spanking for anyone else in Corbin’s Bend. I never have, and I never will.”
He let go of her chin and patted his left leg. It might have been wishful thinking, a trick of his imagination, but for just a second he thought he saw a flicker of relief moving through her disbelief. She quickly dropped her gaze though, hiding it away. She had spent way too many years learning how to hide her true self. After this was over, once they were out of this cabin and back in the safety and security of the
ir homes, one way or another, he was going to make sure Ettie’s ‘hiding’ years were done.
Slowly, Ettie lay her hands upon his left leg. She bent over it, putting herself back into position across his lap. When he tightened the vise of his strong thighs around hers to control the kicking and the inadvertent struggles he knew would follow, she gave him back her hand to hold. He took it, weaving their fingers together, offering all the support he could to help her get through this.
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
“I know.”
Warm ups were for good girl spankings, playtime and sex. This didn’t qualify as any of those, so he didn’t give her one. He ignored the sting in his hand. Paying attention only to the writhing of her body and the sound of her cries, Vance did what he did best. He spanked her, hard, slow, steady as a metronome, and he did not stop until he had given her exactly what she needed.
Chapter 12
The room was dark, lit only by the flickering amber glow of the fire behind the stove grate. Outside, the wind was howling. Every now and then, the rush through the eaves made the eeriest whistling sound. The sort that normally would have kept Ettie up all night, curled in a chair in her living room, with a cup of hot chocolate in her hands and a pile of warm puppies in her lap. Maybe with every light in the house turned on. She hated storms. Scary sounds like this weren’t on her list of favorite things, either, but right now, the last thing Ettie felt was scared.
Boneless. That came closer to fitting what she was, wrapped in the bearskin rugs, the length of her pressed up snugly next to Vance, who lay on his back with his arm around her shoulders. Her head was pillowed on his chest while he held her hand on his stomach. He was fully dressed. She still wore her shirt, but her pants and panties lay on the floor where her kicking had finally discarded them and where, in the tear-filled, runny-nosed, sniffling and hiccupping aftermath of the spanking he’d delivered, it just never seemed important enough to put them back on.
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