"All dressed for work, I see," he said as he stepped onto the concrete apron just outside her apartment and took in her curvy form and the riot of dark curls falling from her high ponytail.
"All dressed for you, big boy," she growled and went up on tiptoe to offer him her sugar-coated lips. "Have a lick," she offered with a gleam in her eye.
Nick scooped her up in a bear hug and stepped inside the apartment, taking full advantage of the sweetness of her mouth. "And here's a lick back for you," he smirked when the kiss was finished, connecting his palm to the seat of her blue yoga pants.
She yelped but then snuggled in closer and claimed his mouth again.
"I can play this game all day," she purred, and he knew she probably could. It was temptation at its finest and he was more than pleased to find himself rising to the occasion, a reaction that she became aware of immediately.
"There's time," she whispered. "I don't have to be at work for four hours."
"Our time is coming. But it's not here yet, missy, so behave yourself and feed me. Oh, I almost forgot, I brought breakfast, just in case, and it looks like it's a good thing I did. The very idea. Here, take my keys and run out and get the sack in the front seat while I wash this chocolate off."
She sighed dramatically, but nothing could dim her joy, so she followed his instructions and was rinsing the strawberries in a colander when he came out of the bathroom.
He found cereal bowls, glasses and spoons and expressed his relief that there was a fresh carton of milk in the refrigerator, although it was surrounded by soft drink cans.
"I see you're working on at least one of your terrible eating habits," he said as he waggled the carton in her direction.
Andee paused in her task of capping the berries and turned to smile sweetly at him. "Actually, it's for my cat."
"You don't have a cat. You don't like cats," he said with surprise.
"Oh, well, I suppose that's why the carton's still full, then. But I do have a pu—,"
"Hush your mouth right now, you bad girl. Have you forgotten what soap tastes like?" he demanded as he covered her soft lips with his fingers and pressed her back against the sink.
In answer, she ran the tip of her tongue across his hand and then took a tiny nip at his finger, her eyes dancing.
Dessert preceded breakfast, then, and took considerably longer to enjoy than the meal, although he strictly enforced the limits of their exploration. For her part, Andee was prepared to insist on more, until he showed her how wonderfully talented he could be with his hands and mouth.
By the time he deposited her in her chair and scooted it under the edge of the table once more, she was too sated to demand anything else. They fed each other strawberries and spooned up the milk-dampened granola, washing it down with the tangy orange juice.
*****
He followed her to work that day, claiming a spot where he could spread out his laptop and his notebook of ideas scratched in longhand but abbreviated so often and crisscrossed by arrows so frequently she could not begin to make sense of any of it, although she tried repeatedly.
"You don't even have the 'S' word in your notes," she whispered to him on one of the many small visits she arranged to make to his work area throughout the day.
She had been amazed when he announced after breakfast that he was planning to write at the library to be near her. Then she had taken such shameless advantage of his proximity so often that Mrs. Jameson had begun to peer at her strangely over her horn- rims. Still, she could not resist walking past his table and occasionally stopping to chat or just to smile at him. What an amazing difference a day could make, she thought, her heart doing a delighted little skip as she ran a finger over the lined page he seemed to be referring to for guidance as he wrote.
"What 'S' word?" he demanded, frowning at the computer screen while his mind searched for the illusive synonym he needed to describe a wayward nymph's interplay with the stern hero in his new book. As delighted as he was to be seeing Andee on a regular basis throughout her workday, he was also faintly irritated to be interrupted when he felt his brain was just about to supply the word he sought, if only he could sit patiently and quietly and wait for it.
"You know," she whispered coyly, hoping he would take the hint and lower his voice to the library-appropriate level she was modeling.
"You mean spanking? Like the one I'm going to give you, if you don't stop interrupting my train of thought?"
The stack of books in her arms tumbled to the floor when she gasped and tried to scurry away, lest some other library worker or student pop around the corner and realize he had made his full-voiced threat to her.
Nick bent out of his chair to help her pick them up, but she tried to slap his hands away, blushing furiously. "I can't believe you did that," she hissed in his ear.
"I didn't do anything yet, young lady, but you're certainly pushing me in that direction. Now, unless you want to see a little less talk and a lot more action, go on about your job and let me get on with mine. It's only thirty minutes until your dinner break. Surely you can behave until then." He added the last book he had retrieved to the top of the pile in her arms as they both straightened up. Then he pointed to the check-out desk. "Get on with it. Or I will."
With a toss of her head and a less than ladylike stomp to express her indignation at his threat, she headed back to the worktable just beyond the circulation area. But she was smiling broadly before she had gone three steps.
Her work week and his writing progressed with fewer interruptions once he convinced her he actually would dispense discipline if she did not exercise a higher level of restraint when they were both supposed to be busy.
She believed him when he told her, with a crisp smack to her backside as she was getting into his car that evening, that he would put her to bed with a very sore bottom, indeed, and would then begin to work from his own apartment if she failed to control her actions. It was the latter part of the threat that actually made her decide to change her ways, however. She craved his presence and was unwilling to do anything that might create an additional separation.
It was frustrating enough to have him tuck her in, read her into a drowsy state, and kiss her chastely goodnight each evening before he walked out the door.
By the weekend, she was wild to be with him on her own terms.
"Will you take me to the places you did before?" she asked, just before he turned out the light and slipped through the door as Friday bled into the early hours of Saturday.
He hesitated, his finger on the switch.
"Sure. Wherever you want to go. Sleep in tomorrow and we'll start with lunch. You call the shots."
"A picnic then. At the beach where you took me before. And wear something you can get wet in."
"Don't worry. I'm on to your tricks, and you won't drench me again unless I'm good and ready for it. Sleep tight, sweetie. See you tomorrow," he said and pulled the door closed behind him, but not before he got a glimpse of her Cheshire cat grin.
It worried him all the way home.
Chapter Three
He showed up at eleven o'clock with a cooler, a picnic basket and a ragged quilt. Andee took careful inventory as she threw her own canvas bag into the back seat of his car.
"No beach umbrella?" she asked.
He grimaced. "I knew I was forgetting something."
"Never mind. There's one in my car. I'll get it."
He watched idly in his rear view mirror as Andee crossed the space to her vehicle, parked behind his own in the shade, and unlocked the hatch. With the top raised, she leaned in to paw through the accumulated junk in the car's rear end, and displayed the contours of that part of her own anatomy most appealingly in the drawstring, low riding pants she was wearing over her bathing suit. He couldn't wait to see her in that suit, he thought with a grin, remembering the hint he had already enjoyed of her firm young breasts, cupped in hot pink fabric, beneath her thin abbreviated T-shirt.
His smile of anticipation,
however, turned to a scowl when the mirror gave back an image he was not at all pleased to see.
"Andee!" His voice was louder than he had intended as he swung open his car door and stepped onto the pavement, clearing the distance between them before she was able to finish wrestling the umbrella out.
"What's the matter?" she demanded, whirling to face him with a flash of alarm chasing across her face.
"The matter is this," he said, swinging her around so that her back was to him and running a hand into the top of her pants. "I thought I made my opinion of thong bathing suits very clear," he said through clenched teeth as his fingers encountered the telltale rolled strip of fabric that passed for a waistband. He stretched the elastic in her pants far enough away from her hips to satisfy himself she really was wearing the offensive item and then grabbed her arm, slammed the hatch back, and hustled her toward the apartment.
"Wait! Stop it, Nick!" she demanded, trying unsuccessfully to dig in her feet in the unforgiving parking lot pavement. "Let go of me."
He unlocked her front door before she could protest further and shoved her inside. Hands fisted on his hips, he glared into her sunglasses.
"I am not about to take you out in public wearing those things. Did you really think I would be happy to know you were parading your round, naked little charms around to all those testosterone driven boys on the beach?"
"Those kind of boys don't go there," she protested, rubbing her arm indignantly. "You told me yourself it was a family type beach."
"And you thought that was a better place to show off your bare heinie?" he demanded, throwing his arms up in horror.
"Everybody wears them," she frowned.
"You're not everybody. You're someone special and you're going to behave like it.
"I don't have another bathing suit," she said, but his fib detector was on high alert and he was confident of the falsity of that statement.
The next thing she knew, she was across his lap on the futon and he was pulling the knot loose in her pants and pushing them down to her knees.
"No! You can't!" she wailed, throwing a protective hand back as her sunglasses clattered to the floor.
"Wanna bet?" He caught her fingers and used them to deftly twist her arm up on her back and out of the way. "You couldn't wait to show off your little snow white rear end. Why should you mind if it's hot pink instead?"
The flurry of sharp spanks he rained down on her unprotected bottom made any response but a high-pitched squeal impossible.
"You're mean," she gasped, when she was able to get a word out. "I hate you!"
"Want to go for fire engine red? I can make it happen, I promise you, little girl." The smacks were coming so fast and were scattered so indiscriminately across her wobbling cheeks she had no way to anticipate where the sting might erupt next.
She had forgotten just how impressive his hand could be, and Andee was rapidly reassessing her plan for gaining the kind of attention she craved. Surely it had never hurt this much before, she thought, trying to twist away from his punishing palm.
"I'm sorry," she screeched, relieved to have remembered the magic word just in time.
"Not as sorry as you're going to be," he promised and kept up the steady barrage of smacks.
She found herself reduced to helpless swimming motions with her free arm and legs, trying vainly to escape the punishment she had so sadly miscalculated.
He must have taken pity on her when she was blind, she thought frantically as he shifted her over just enough to fully reveal the tender space where her buttocks melded into her thighs. He concentrated his attention there.
"When I'm through, you are going to take those Nasty! Trampy! Vulgar! Thongs! Off! And you are Never! Going! to Wear! Anything! Like! That! Again! Do! You! Understand! Me?" he asked with especially painful emphasis to virtually every word of his speech.
She nodded frantically.
"Y-yes. I wi-will."
"The very idea!" The spanks stopped and he bent over her back, talking in the direction of her head. "Are there any more of these in your drawer or your closet? Underwear or bathing suit, I don't care what the manufacturer calls it; I care about how it's made."
"N-not m-many," she gasped.
"How many is ‘not many'?"
"I don't know," she huffed. "I don't count the darn things every morning."
That was a mistake. She knew it as soon as the words were out of her mouth.
This time the smacks were a constant background noise rather than punctuation. "When I need you to be sarcastic, I'll let you know. Until then, consider it one of those things that I find really irritating. And irritating things put me in a spanking mood where you are concerned, young lady."
She wanted to tell him she had learned her lesson, but when she opened her mouth again to try, she began sobbing instead, and then she collapsed over his lap, all the fight gone out of her.
She registered with deep regret the sting of the final dozen smacks, but she was past struggling. She could only wail louder as she silently berated herself for taunting him with the offensive beachwear.
"Count yourself lucky I found out about this before we got to the beach," he muttered, his warm palm resting on her stinging right cheek for a moment. She prayed it would do no more damage to flesh that felt as though it might already have swollen to its limits. "If you think I wouldn't have spanked you all the way back to the car and brought you home to finish the job, you're wrong."
She believed him and promised herself she would put aside all her ideas about the titillating nature of public punishment. In fact, she was prepared to abandon all future need for chastisement in any form. There was nothing fun or sexy or tempting at all about what had just happened to her.
It hurt and it was humiliating and she never wanted it to happen again.
"Now, go put on a real bathing suit and get in the car," he ordered.
She shimmied off his lap backwards, landing on her knees and frantically rubbing her swollen nether cheeks with both hands. "I c-can't," she hiccupped, while she took a quick swipe at her drippy nose with her forearm.
"You can. Unless you need more persuasion."
Andee scrambled to her feet and scooted to the far corner of the room, sniffing pitifully as she dug into the depths of her closet, her shiny red cheeks winking at him. She emerged finally with what appeared to be a far more modest one-piece suit and clutched it to her bosom as she made for the bathroom.
Nick went to the kitchen and held his palm under a stream of cool water in the sink, shaking his head in disbelief. He had forgotten to what lengths Andee would go when the need overtook her.
Well, at least the hard part was over; now he could offer her something else.
He was in the wide, deep chair when she finally shuffled out of the bathroom, still sniffing and swiping at her nose.
"Much better," he said gently of the black and white suit that displayed her charms to perfection without vulgarity. "Come here, baby." He held out his arms.
She wanted to snub him, but she needed what he had to offer far too badly, and she stumbled into his comforting arms instead, curling up in his lap, even though the initial effort cost her a most uncomfortable scrape of material across her tender backside.
"I'm s-sorry," she whispered into his shoulder as she circled his neck with both arms and held on for dear life.
"I know you are, sweetie. It's okay now. It's all over. Clean slate. Just be quiet with me until you're ready to face the day, and then we'll go enjoy ourselves. I promise. You can even take a pillow to put in the car seat," he teased gently.
"I don't know why…"
"It doesn't matter why. It's just who you are and what you need. And however much it hurts at the time, we both know what's on the other side of it, and I'll help you get there. Promise. Because you're more than worth it."
She hadn't thought she could ever smile again, but that, too, had been a very mistaken assumption, she thought as the corners of her mouth lifted, jus
t before she pressed her lips into his neck, right where the hair always started to curl first.
Chapter Four
"2—Capones"
Andee glanced at the phone screen and smiled. She heard, as clearly as though he had uttered it in her ear, Nick's reaction to the invitation in text form from her best friend: Never trust anyone who ignores apostrophes.
He had never voiced his assessment of someone careless enough to misuse a comma. She suspected it was a crime exceeding a misdemeanor in his estimation. Nevertheless, she was trusting, at least enough to meet Leila for a late lunch, though the path their conversation might take could possibly jangle her nerves.
Nick had picked up on that tension at once when she told him her plans over the breakfast they were now in the habit of sharing, provided eight days entitled her to call it such. She had read somewhere it took an average of sixty-six days to establish a positive habit. She was pinning her hopes on a lifetime of sixty-six-day cycles with him, even if he insisted she alter the junk food menu she had enjoyed for years as part of that effort.
"I've always told Leila everything," she had said, crinkling her nose as she tore her whole-wheat toast into a pile of buttery bits. It was his first hint that Andee was nervous about the afternoon's lunch date with her best friend at their favorite restaurant.
"So she knows all about us?"
She took a moment to answer him, using the time to thoroughly appreciate the crisp red and blue plaid shirt he had shown up in on her doorstep that morning and the way it emphasized the color of his eyes. "Well, no. Not exactly. Not everything," she said, finally. "But she knows I'm in lo… I mean, she knows what I went through when you left, and I think she picked up on the fact that you were more than just my reader even before that."
Leading Her Home (Lessons From Nick's Firm Hand Book 2) Page 3
