Leading Her Home (Lessons From Nick's Firm Hand Book 2)

by Ashlynn Kenzie

  Nick picked up the soft coverlet she always kept lying on the futon, unfolded it, and draped it around her shoulders.

  "I want you, Andee Carlisle. I can't remember ever wanting anyone as much as I want you. Right this minute. It is taking every ounce of willpower I have not to show you just how much and to claim you completely."

  She smiled lazily at him and reached to unbutton his shirt, but he captured her hands and brought them to his face instead, kissing each finger tenderly.

  "On the night we are married, I will make you my wife, in every sense of the word, and I will worship you with my body. Everything I have is already yours. I am yours, completely, and if you will wait patiently with me, I'll show you what that can mean when the right time comes."

  Her eyes clouded with tears as she realized he was going to deny her once again.

  "I owe you an explanation. I know that. It isn't easy, and I haven't known exactly how to say it. But here it is; probably badly put, but as honestly as I can." He drew a deep breath and made himself look into her eyes.

  "My mother trusted the man she loved to love her in return, just as deeply and as faithfully. He took her trust and used it as a means to satisfy himself for a few moments. When the natural result was clear to both of them, he left her, and he never looked back. She would not tell me his name, only that he was not a bad man. I suppose she meant that he was the kind of guy who always came to a complete stop at stop signs and paid his taxes on time and never gave his boss problems at work. He probably gave his mom a nice card on Mother's Day, too.

  "But he left my mother to raise me alone. She could have made other choices. I am grateful she didn't. Still, it wasn't the life I desperately wanted when I was a boy—the only boy I knew without a father.

  "It was only after my mother died, soon after I finished college, that my aunt told me more of the story. Mom had fallen in love while she was at the university, at your alma mater, in fact. Aunt Susan swore none of my family ever met my father or even knew his name. She said all my mother would tell her was that she had loved him too much to say no, and they had done everything they could to avoid complications. When those methods failed, he could not accept the results. He could not accept me, or my mother, so he turned his back on both of us.

  "I have never been willing to take a chance that I might create a life I dreaded being responsible for because I didn't want a future with that child's mother. I know there are no guarantees that marriage will provide a stable and loving family, but those are the only odds I'm willing to gamble with.

  "Please, baby, try to understand. I love you so much it's agony not being able to show you exactly how I feel. But I can hold on just a little while longer, until I can offer you as much assurance as any of us ever have in this world that I will always be there for you. I won't do what, to me, would be dishonoring you by treating you as anything other than the most precious part of my life. And I won't take the risk that we might create a child who could possibly grow up without a legal and moral claim on me.

  "No, no. Hush now. I know what you're going to say. You have to know by now that I will never willingly leave you. Not after we are married. Not before we are married. But something might happen to take me away from you before that time. An accident. A sudden illness. I don't know, and it doesn't matter what it might be. All that matters is that, however old-fashioned and puritanical it may sound, I won't take chances with you or with our children, when all it costs me is a few more days of physical restraint. If I can't manage that, I'm not really man enough for you, sweetheart."

  Twin tears trailed down her cheeks and her hands trembled in his.

  "I didn't think I could love you any more than I already do," she said, "but, then, I've never felt as loved as I do this minute. Or so horny." She sighed. "Though if you can wait, I can, too. After all, I can't argue with your fear that something unexpected might separate us before we dot all the I's and cross all the T's. Look how different my life would be if such accidents didn't happen. I just can't bear to think of anything ever separating us," she said and scrambled to throw her arms around him and hang on for dear life.

  *****

  His drive home, after he had tucked Andee safely in and locked her door once more, was agonizing physically. He knew how to deal with that issue, though. It was a minor inconvenience compared to the emotional burden of shame and loss he had carried all his life. Thank God, he thought, he had finally been able to share it with the woman he loved and feel secure in her understanding and acceptance.

  It was that weight lifted, his own secret having been revealed and his own code of conduct having been respected, that made him want to sing. And so he did. All the way home.

  Chapter Twelve

  Her co-workers put it down to pre-wedding jitters and did their best to humor her. Her friends accused her of going 'bridezilla', but they, too, forgave her. Even Nick walked softly, although she fully expected him to produce a big stick and apply it forcefully where he considered it would do the most good, at some point.

  She began each new day with promises to herself that she would put the past behind her and move on with peace and joy. After all, she was to be married in only two weeks to a man she adored. They planned to begin a new life together—one that would eventually take them to his home in Tennessee, where she could put the new degree she was earning to work in one of several universities or colleges in the area. And they could begin a family of their own. A family headed by two people who loved each other devotedly and wanted to enlarge that circle to include children they would cherish, as well.

  Everything should have been perfect, far more perfect than anything she had ever known before.

  Yet, sometimes before she even left her apartment, a gray cloud would descend and she would find herself fighting gloom and bitter thoughts. No one and no thing suited her from then on, and everyone around her noticed.

  The nearer the time for the wedding drew, the more difficult it was for her to be pleasant, it seemed.

  She knew Nick, trying to be patient with what he described as pre-wedding jitters, was ignoring much of what she did and said that he would otherwise have taken her to task over. Perversely, that knowledge only served to increase her frustration and irritation with the world in general and the people closest to her, in particular.

  He probed gently, trying to help her release the things that were bothering her. She resisted for all she was worth, and then was angry that he hadn't been able to figure it out on his own. She knew she wasn't playing fair, but she was helpless to stop it, or so it seemed.

  He did all he could to make her feel loved and cherished, seeing to her sexual needs with a tenderness and skill that did, indeed, remind her how blessed she was to have a multi-talented lover. That realization also kept her giddy in anticipation of their first night as husband and wife. But that giddiness came after he had given her boundless pleasure and tucked her into bed each night. By morning, the euphoria was fast fading as the realities of a new day closed in.

  She wondered that he continued to humor her and made repeated promises to herself that he wouldn't have to again. She would behave herself in seemly fashion, she promised the face in her bathroom mirror each morning.

  The promises were made in good faith, but they shattered as soon as her conscience kicked in.

  For conscience was the problem. She knew it well. But she had silenced that inconvenient voice in her mind and spirit for so long—the voice that prompted her to give Richmond Carlisle a chance—that she could not face what else she might hear if she adjusted the volume. The vague whispers were disturbing enough, the ones that reminded her she had always assumed the worst of him and never thought to question the whys and wherefores.

  She was certain the darker mutterings, the ones that seemed to grow a little more insistent about being heard every day, would leave her with no defense for her behavior in the past. And especially not in the present.

  She had grown comfortable hating a man she
never really knew, a man who had never deserved the contempt she had heaped upon him for years, it seemed. And now she had to make a choice about their future, a choice that was going to force her to take a most unpleasant look at herself, whatever her final decision.

  It was the last thing in the world she wanted to do. She told herself it was because admitting she had been wrong about Richmond would, of necessity, mean she had been wrong about her mother, as well. And she could not bear being angry at her mother, no matter what she had done. It was far easier to hold on to her anger at the man who still wanted to be her father.

  Easier, but so very unfair and unkind. So, why couldn't she simply force herself to do the right thing, she wondered, day after day. She knew Richmond would welcome her with open arms. He had made that clear. She knew Nick would be proud of her.

  Even her mother would have wanted it, she was certain. Sara's heart might always have belonged to Brant Carlisle, but Andee realized now her mother had always respected the brother she had ended up spending her life with, and had encouraged Andee to love him, even when she could not do that herself. It was only when illness weakened Sara emotionally as well as physically that she had given up all pretense and turned so completely to the memory of the man she could not have.

  If she were honest, she knew her mother would have been deeply ashamed and saddened by the way Andee had treated Richmond Carlisle for years. Just as she was deeply ashamed of herself.

  It was that shame, she finally realized, that was haunting her every waking moment. The shame no one else would acknowledge she should feel. Indeed, the two people who should have been closer to her than anyone else in her life—Nick and Richmond—seemed intent on shielding her from facing that shame; seemed determined to absolve her of all responsibility for her actions and reactions; appeared to be dedicated to easing her through what they both clearly hoped would be a change in her thinking.

  But she didn't need to be shielded or absolved or eased or excused, she realized finally. She needed to be forgiven. She needed, quite desperately, the cycle to which Nick's loving discipline had introduced her.

  Not a feel-good glossing over of her wrongdoing, however well-intentioned it might be.

  No, she needed to acknowledge her misunderstanding and mistakes and the bitter, angry, hurtful deeds that grown out of them. And she need to pay a price for each one. A heavy price.

  *****

  The trickiest part was slipping away from Nick. She found the opportunity when he decided to accept another reading assignment with Buckley Resources that would occupy his afternoon.

  Tucking the address she had found on the Internet into her bag, she reached into it a little deeper and pulled out a soft, floppy-brimmed sun hat. With her curls tamed into a ponytail she could stuff inside the head covering, she added an overlarge pair of sunglasses to the disguise and draped a multicolored woolen poncho over the conservative tan slacks and olive green sweater she had chosen for work that day.

  Hers was not the first disguise the owner of Tamed by Choyz had spotted in his unique store.

  Hugh Choyz had once made a game of imagining what such shoppers might actually look like, but after a few years he had grown bored with the whole thing. Now he simply concentrated on trying to make them feel comfortable and normal amid the products he offered. Such customers frequently made return visits. In fact, he could almost guarantee they would become regular purchasers of his handmade items if he could make their first encounter as stress-free as possible.

  Andee was intrigued by the store, which occupied a spot halfway down a carefully contrived curved alleyway in a Victorian-themed shopping area across town from the university. The neighboring stores sold homemade pretzels and handcrafted stringed musical instruments, and there was one small boutique and another shop selling imported teas, all on the same side of the narrow cobble-stoned street. The stores faced the long three-story brick wall that only had openings onto the main thoroughfares crossing the alley at either end.

  She had spied only one other shopper in the lane when she stepped into the cool shadows created by the buildings. He turned in to what she later learned was the tea store, leaving her all alone and able to make her entrance into the specialty shop with no one the wiser.

  And then she stood in a narrow room with an antique breakfront console that served as the business center positioned down one side, leaving just enough room for the owner to slip behind it and accept payment for his wares.

  Across the aisle, there was a cherry dining table, strewn with drawing pads, ceramic containers holding pencils and markers and various straight and curved-edged drawing utensils, and tastefully bound books that she assumed, when she glanced at one that was lying open, were catalogues.

  Choyz confirmed her suspicion after he had offered her a friendly hello.

  "Sometimes people don't find exactly what they're looking for already made up," he said, gesturing toward the back of the room. Beyond the intricately carved pocket doors which were slid back half way—a concession to privacy, she supposed—Andee could tell there was a wider and even deeper display area. The items she could see from her vantage point caused a hitch in her breath, but the owner appeared not to notice. "I often design and custom make the things my clients want. Keep that in mind while you're browsing."

  Thirty minutes later she left the store, a package wrapped in light blue paper securely taped and then tied with navy blue braid just peeking out of the edge of her bag.

  Hugh Choyz invited her to return any time as she slipped the crisp greenbacks he handed her in change back into her billfold and gave him a trembly smile.

  "Good luck," he said with a friendly smile when she eased open the door.

  She stepped into the narrow lane and glanced quickly left and right, but, once again, she was the only shopper in sight. When she emerged onto the light-filled main street at the end of the alleyway, she felt sure no one could possibly imagine what her mission had involved.

  Now came the hard part.

  *****

  "I need this," she said simply. After two days of rehearsing exactly what to say and how to say it, she abandoned all her careful explanations and simply trusted Nick to understand.

  He took what she held out to him, standing quietly in the middle of her small apartment, and examined it carefully, giving himself time to think as he rubbed his palm over the smooth ash wood that had been carved into a slight oval shape and detailed with carefully beveled pea-sized holes laid out in a cross shape on the surface. The leather-bound handle fit his hand perfectly.

  He sighed and shook his head a bit, then looked into her pleading eyes. "Yes, you do," he agreed. "I've let you hurt too long. I'm sorry."

  Andee managed a wry grin. "Strange conversation, isn't it? I think you're speaking some of my lines with that apology. And that 'hurt' thing would really confuse a lot of people."

  He pulled her into his arms and squeezed her tight, the beautifully made paddle she had urged him to accept lying gently across the swell of her bottom.

  "It isn't going to be a game, you know. You won't like me very much at all before it's over."

  "But I'll love you," she whispered. "And I'll trust you. No matter what I say or do. Just get me past this—this awful guilt. I can't stay stuck here anymore, but I can't get out by myself."

  "Have you forgiven them?" he asked and she knew he was referring to her parents. "Really forgiven all of them?"

  "I believe I have. It's me I can't forgive."

  "But you understand why?"

  "I think so. I need to pay a price, and unless you help me, I'm going to keep punishing myself inside. Except, it doesn't stay there. All that ugliness keeps spilling out and hurting the people I love. Part of me hates the thought of how hard this is going to be. But the other part of me is desperate for it. What kind of sense does that make?"

  "Not much to some people. But their opinion doesn't matter. The only thing we have to worry about is whether it makes sense to us." He ga
ve her a final squeeze and then stepped back from the embrace, tilting her chin up and forcing her to look him in the eye. "All right, little girl. Let's get this over with."

  *****

  Despite all her best intentions, she did not make it easy for him.

  She managed to skim her jeans down to her ankles when he had seated himself in the middle of the futon. She even bent to step out of them and then folded them carefully and tossed them across the arm chair before dread got the better of her.

  She stepped to his side and was taking a deep breath to steel herself for lying across his lap when he set his hands on either side of her hips and nudged her to stand between his parted legs instead. He shifted slightly and then, instead of drawing her down over his thighs, he bent her over his left leg with her upper body supported fully by the couch. The position enabled him to lock her in place with his right leg stretched across the back of her knees. It also blocked her from any future effort to reach back with her left arm.

  She clasped her hands and set her chin in the small platform she created with them on the soft futon cover.

  She expected him to begin as he meant to finish, with a sharp smack of the ash wood across her bottom.

  Instead, he issued a quick, stinging spank with his palm and fingers to each bare thigh, territory he seldom visited.

  She jumped a little, but kept quiet. Before he abandoned that target and moved up to the crown of her cheeks, she was more than uncomfortable. Her thin panties did not afford much protection, but she was still grateful they were in place, for modesty's sake, if nothing else.

  By the time he decided to change tactics again, she was almost relieved, except she knew she was drawing closer and closer to her first experience with the paddle she had so carefully selected. The one Mr. Choyz had told her customers recommended for its exquisite sting and visual effect, courtesy of the perforations in its surface.