“So do you not want coffee then?” Lainie asked uncertainly.
Cadence hesitated, her gaze wavering between the empty cup and her sleeping baby.
“It’s your butt,” Venia told her.
Cadence sighed. “I better not,” she said regretfully. “Marcus doesn’t want me having caffeine while I’m still nursing.”
Lainie nodded. “Unfortunately, I don’t have much to offer you. I have water and ilk.”
“Water is fine,” Cadence said, still looking longingly at the coffee pot. “Why do men have to be so unreasonable about pregnancy?” she asked. “Women have been having babies for hundreds of years. If we were half as fragile as they act like we are, the species would have never survived.”
“I hear you,” Julie said. “Matt was the same way, all three times. You’d think it would get better after the first child, but it really doesn’t.”
“It brings out their protective instincts,” Venia said. “My husband was the same when Cecily was born, and of course you know our men are going to be worse about it than your average guy on the street. They already have stronger than usual protective instincts.”
“They do?” Lainie asked curiously. She passed Cadence a glass of water and sat down with them, taking a scone from the plate and breaking it open. It was true that Grant was the protective type. He always had been, but he was a cop. She’d always thought that just came with the territory.
“Oh yes,” Venia said. “In my experience, men who are drawn to this type of relationship tend to be very protective. I would imagine many of them would tell you that satisfying that protective instinct is one of the things that draws them to it, at least for those on the HoH side of things.” Both Julie and Cadence were nodding in agreement.
That was a novel thought. Lainie had always assumed it was about control. Grant wasn’t happy with the way that things were going in their household so he had decided to step in and take charge. At the time, she had been exhausted and more than willing to let someone else take over. Besides, if he thought he could do a better job, he was welcome to it. Had Grant actually been trying to protect her in some way?
Part of her bristled at the thought, she wasn’t a child in need of an adult to protect her. She was a grown woman and more than capable of handling herself. Another far deeper and quieter part of her liked the idea though. She’d had precious little protection and care in her life, having had to fend for herself for nearly as long as she could remember. That quiet hidden part of her would like nothing better than to let someone else take care of her for a while, but could she do that without sacrificing her independence.
She realized abruptly that the conversation around the table had gone quiet and the other women were watching her closely. She scrambled through the various tangled thoughts in her head, searching for something – anything – she could say. Finally, she grasped onto the most urgent question in her mind, blurting it out without thought. “Were you serious?” she asked Cadence. “Your husband would spank you for drinking coffee?” In the moment of silence that followed, Lainie realized suddenly that she had asked a virtual stranger an intensely personal question. “I’m sorry,” she stammered, face flaming with embarrassment. “I shouldn’t have said that. It’s none of my business.”
“No, it’s fine,” Cadence assured her. “We’re pretty open with each other. That’s one of the advantages of living here, being able to talk openly about your relationship with people who understand. You don’t have to worry about what people might think. To answer your question, yes, he would.”
“For coffee?” Lainie repeated incredulously. It seemed like such a small and insignificant thing to be in trouble for. Even the language was bizarre. In trouble was something she associated with her students and her children, not with grown women, yet the three women around the table talked openly about it as though it were perfectly normal.
“Technically it would be for endangering my health and Anna’s by drinking caffeine while I’m nursing,” Cadence said in a tone that suggested she had heard those exact words more than once before, “but yes, the coffee would likely get me spanked. Marcus gets serious about anything health related.”
Venia snorted. “You married the doctor, honey. What did you expect?”
“She has a point,” Julie agreed, eyes glinting with amusement. “Although, from what I hear, all the HoH’s take health and safety pretty seriously, Matt included. It’s one of those basic cardinal rules. You seem surprised,” she added, studying Lainie. “Is that not something that is part of your agreement?”
“Grant wouldn’t get upset about coffee,” Lainie said slowly, “but we do have a rule about not doing anything dangerous.” In her opinion, it was a totally unnecessary rule. She was a fully competent adult. It wasn’t like she was deliberately going to put herself into danger. Thankfully, Grant didn’t interpret it as strictly as Cadence’s husband did.
“Matt either,” Julie replied, “at least now that I’m not pregnant or nursing, but there are other things that are his hot buttons. I’m sure your husband has them too.”
Lainie nodded. “We’re kind of new at this still. We discussed it, and we have rules, but we haven’t actually –” She trailed off unsure how to explain. How did you tell women who clearly lived this every day that you didn’t, at least not in the way that they did? Sure they had talked about it, and they had made the rules. Well, Grant had made the rules, but that was all. That conversation had been months ago and not much had changed. Grant hadn’t actually tried to enforce them. Sure, there had been a few times during the move when she had gotten stressed out and downright bitchy when Grant had insisted that she stop and calm down, including once or twice when he had accompanied that instruction with a firm swat, but that seemed altogether different than what these women were talking about. For them, it was quite clear that the rules and the threat of punishment were real, real enough to make Cadence turn down coffee when she clearly really wanted it.
“Haven’t actually what?” Venia pressed.
Lainie swallowed hard, heat rising in her cheeks again. “We haven’t actually –” She tried again only to stop and stammer. How did they talk about this so easily? How did you say it without feeling completely absurd? She saw Julie and Venia exchange a look. They probably thought she was ridiculous.
“Has he spanked you yet?” Julie asked bluntly.
Caught between being mortified and relieved to have it out on the table, Lainie shook her head.
“Have you ever been spanked before?” Julie questioned, her tone gentle yet matter-of-fact.
“No, never,” Lainie admitted.
“Do you want to be?” she wondered.
“Of course not!” Lainie blurted. “Why in the world would I want him to hit me?”
“It’s not hitting; it’s spanking,” Julie corrected, as though there were actually a difference, “and under certain circumstances, it can be quite pleasurable, at least for most of us.”
That was such a bizarre thought Lainie couldn’t even formulate an answer. Cadence started to laugh. “What?” Lainie demanded.
“You just look so shocked,” she replied. “I remember how that felt. I was vanilla when I met Marcus. I didn’t even know Corbin’s Bend was a spanking community. Someone neglected to tell me,” she added, giving Venia a significant look.
“Just how was I supposed to explain that,” Venia countered, thoroughly unrepentant.
“Marcus and Brent seemed to manage well enough,” Cadence told her.
“That’s why I let them tell you,” Venia shot back.
This time it was Julie who started to laugh. Before long both Cadence and Venia had followed suit.
“Seriously?” Lainie said.
Candace nodded. “I moved into the community with no idea. I thought it was just like any other gated community. I didn’t know a thing about the lifestyle until after I moved here.”
Lainie was absolutely flabbergasted. It was hard enough adjusting even with knowing what she
was getting into. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like for someone who had no idea. “Oh my God!” Lainie spluttered. “What did you think when you found out? You must have been completely shocked.”
“I was,” she admitted, “but I was also intrigued, far more intrigued than shocked, and that only got stronger after I met Marcus and discovered how good it could be.”
“See?” Venia retorted. “It turned out all right in the end. You managed.” Turning to Lainie she added, “You will too you, honey, don’t worry. We were all new once, and Cady is right. It can be really good.” Dusting the crumbs from the scone she had eaten off her hands, she continued, “Now, how can we help you? Put us to work.”
It didn’t take long for them to form a surprisingly efficient system. Venia and Cadence unpacked boxes and entertained Anna, who woke from her nap shortly after they started unpacking while Julie and Lainie put things away. The kitchen was set to rights in no time at all, and they moved from room to room in the downstairs area using the same method.
While they worked, the conversation continued. Lainie learned a great deal about the community as a whole, how things worked and the more colorful personalities within it. She learned that Cadence had four children, three boys from her husband’s first marriage whom she loved like her own in addition to Anna, and that Julie had three. They explained about the daycare and Disney movie room, where the older children had been dropped off today. Lainie thought it was a brilliant idea. There had often been days when Lainie could’ve used a system like that when her own children were small.
As they talked and worked together, Lainie was surprised at how much she was enjoying their company. If she were completely honest, she had expected the women here to be old-fashioned, subdued, and cowed. She was rapidly discovering that was anything but the truth. Her new neighbors were sassy and smart and a lot of fun. Julie had them all dissolving into fits of laughter describing her epic battle with a smoke detector. “Oh sure, laugh it up,” she said dryly, grinning at them. “It’s all fun and games until someone puts an eye out.”
“Or your husband finds out,” Venia quipped.
“Tell me about it,” Julie said. “Matt takes a pretty dim view of me destroying things in a temper. I’ve tried to tell him the damn thing deserved it, but he just won’t listen.”
That sent them into laughter again. However, as she began to calm down, Lainie felt her mental gears grind to a halt again as it dawned on her what Julie was implying. “Wait a minute, you mean he spanked you over the smoke detector?”
“Yep,” Julie said without the slightest hint of hesitation or embarrassment, as though such a thing were perfectly normal. Although, she supposed in Corbin’s Bend it was. “I knew he would,” Julie went on. “It’s a bad habit, and I don’t want to pass my destructive tendencies down to my kids. We’ve been working on it for a long time.”
In a way, that made sense, and Julie was clearly comfortable with her choice. In fact, both Julie and Cadence seemed to be very happy in their relationships. Thinking about it, Lainie realized that even though they had been talking and working together for quite some time now, there had been none of the bad mouthing men and complaining about relationships that she had come to expect that almost universal with any gathering of women. Sure, there was some good-natured teasing and complaining, but it was of a totally different tone than what she had come to expect. Maybe there was something to Grant’s insistence that implementing this lifestyle would transform their relationship after all.
“I admit,” Julie was saying, “I’ve vastly prefer fun, sexy spankings to the punishment kind, but there’s something to be said for both of them.”
“What do you mean fun?” Lainie asked. “I thought punishment was the whole point.”
“Sometimes it is,” Venia put in, “but not always. Like Julie said, a lot of us find spanking pleasurable. It can be really erotic, under the right circumstances.”
“It’s great foreplay,” Julie said. “It’s amazing how heating you up back there can get you hot and bothered all over.” She exchanged a knowing look with Venia and Candace, both of whom clearly agreed.
“Especially if he goes all dominant with it,” Candace added, cheeks flushed and eyes shining. “Is there anything sexier?”
That part at least Lainie understood. Years ago, back when she was in college and Grant was a rookie cop, she’d had a few too many one night and admitted that she rather liked it when he took charge in the bedroom. If she liked that, would she like spanking too? Cadence seemed to think that they went hand-in-hand. Could they?
In that context, thinking about spanking as sexy didn’t seem so foreign. After all, there were dozens of magazine articles in all sorts of women’s magazines claiming that adding a little kink could do wonders for spicing up your sex life. She knew the truth of that from her own experience with Grant occasionally taking charge in bed. Could spanking be the same way?
All of a sudden, she very much wanted to find out. One way or the other, she was going to find a way to bring it up with her husband. Soon.
Chapter 3
How did it go this morning?” Grant asked, late that evening as they were changing for bed.
“It was good,” Lainie admitted. “We got a lot done.”
“I can see that,” Grant replied, looking around the room. “We could barely move without stepping over boxes this morning, and now there’s hardly a box in sight.”
“You should see the recycling bin,” Lainie told him. “It’s overflowing.”
Grant quirked an eyebrow. “We have a recycling bin?”
“We do, a garbage container too,” Lainie confirmed. “It’s not quite as full as the recycling bin, yet, but that’s probably because we had no groceries in the house.” She had finally made it into Denver for groceries this afternoon after Grant had come home from his orientation and the others had gone home. Natalie had, on Cadence’s invitation, gone over to her house to meet her eldest son, Michael, who was around the same age. Lainie had been nervous about leaving Grant and Kathleen alone at home. The two of them seemed to butt heads on the best of days, but on the other hand, there was a part of her that thought it served him right. After all, he was the one who had grounded Kathleen over her misgivings so maybe it served him right to have to put up with her. Miraculously, they had both survived her three hour trip without bloodshed.
“I’m glad it wasn’t as bad as you thought,” Grant said.
“It wasn’t bad at all,” Lainie told him. “I actually had a lot of fun. The girls are great, nothing at all like I had expected.”
“Nat certainly seemed taken with Cadence, or at least with her kids,” Grant commented. Natalie had regaled them at dinner with details of her visit. She’d come home chattering about how much fun she had and how cute the baby was. She was also begging to join an art class Everleigh Harris taught at the community center. That had been a surprise. Natalie tended to be more outdoorsy than artistic, but apparently Michael had introduced her to several of the neighborhood kids around their age. One of the girls, Jordan somebody, had told Natalie about the class, and now Nat simply had to join it.
“I’m glad she’s making friends,” Lainie said.
“I’m glad you’re making friends too,” Grant said, coming up behind her and wrapping his arms around her.
“Me too,” Lainie agreed. “It’s a little weird though.”
“How so?” Grant asked, dropping a kiss in the juncture between her neck and shoulder.
“They talk about being spanked like they were talking about going to the grocery store,” she said. “As if it’s the most normal thing in the world.”
“It is normal here,” Grant replied. “You know that.”
“I know,” Lainie sighed. “It’s not that I have a problem with it. I don’t at all. It’s just still new to me. It’s going to take some getting used to. For you, this is going back to what you knew. For me it’s a whole new world.”
“I sometimes forget h
ow new it is to you,” Grant admitted. He sat down on the bed and pulled her down beside him. “We had talked about it though. You’ve always known.”
“Knowing it and living it are two different things,” Lainie told him, “and yes, we had talked about the discipline thing, but for some of them, I’m not sure that’s what they’re talking about.”
Grant nodded. “It might not be. People here live all sorts of different types of relationships. They all involve spanking, of course, but they may not necessarily all be DD, though a lot of them will be.”
“The way they talked about it I got the impression that they liked it. That it was somehow a turn on,” Lainie admitted reluctantly.
“It is for some people,” Grant said.
“Is it for you?” Lainie asked, eyeing him curiously. He had never said so explicitly, but after this afternoon she’d wondered if that might have been part of his motivation for moving here.
Grant nodded again. He was half in the shadows, lit only by the dim light of the lamps on either side of the bed. “Yes, it is.”
Lainie twisted around to face him, shocked. “It is? Why didn’t you ever tell me? For God’s sake, Grant, we’ve been married sixteen years. You could’ve said something.”
“Some fantasies are better left as fantasies,” Grant explained. “It never seemed to be something you were interested in. I tried hinting around about it a few times, and you didn’t really react or pick up the signals in the way somebody who shared this interest would, and I love you so I let it go. I didn’t want to take the chance of offending you or worse having you try to do something you hated just for me. Some people just aren’t wired this way, and that’s fine.”
“How am I supposed to know what I like or don’t like if you don’t even tell me? Don’t I even get the courtesy of being able to decide for myself?” Lainie demanded. “What else have you been keeping secret?”
“I’m not keeping anything secret,” Grant shot back. “I’m sure you haven’t told me every fantasy you’ve ever had, and I don’t expect you to. Some things are just better left unsaid.”
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