Venia was already in the garage. Cecily could hear her banging around looking for her stepladder. Oh brother.
“I found it! Cecily, come out here and give me a hand.”
Her mother was already on her tiptoes, her hands wrapped across the front of one of six very large totes filled with her holiday decorations.
Cecily stood beside the ladder, peering up at her doubtfully. “I’m not sure this is a great idea, Mom.”
“Pish-posh. The two of us are just as capable.”
Ugh. Cecily recognized her mother’s tone. Her mind was made up, and there would be no reasoning with her. “Fine. Why don’t you get down, and trade me places. I’m taller than you, and I’ll feel better if you have both feet firmly planted on the ground.”
“Oh, shush. You’re about as bad as Jeffrey. I’ve got it just fine. Just stand there and get ready to grab it from me.”
It did go pretty quickly and easily, as most of the containers were actually pretty light. Cecily had finally stopped worrying, and joined Venia’s line of thinking about the men being ridiculous hypocrites, when the unthinkable happened. Venia reached for the last container, just as the rumble of Brent’s truck could be heard in the driveway. It happened so fast, Cecily wasn’t sure what had caused her to slip or lose her grip, but the next thing she knew, instead of looking up at her mother, she was looking down at her. Venia hit the concrete floor of the garage in a heap, with the stepladder and a million tiny strings of lights on top of her.
“Well, crap—I guess my goose is cooked.” Venia struggled to get up, then cried out, and fell back onto the floor, clutching her ankle. “Oh, this isn’t good.”
“No kidding. Now I see why Jeffrey was so adamant.”
“Well, hindsight is twenty-twenty, dear.” Venia’s face was strained with pain. “Can you get Carlton and Brent in here? I think I need to get to the clinic.”
“How exactly did you manage this?” Marcus Devon, Cadence’s husband, and Venia’s doctor looked as if he didn’t really want to know the answer.
“I was getting down the Christmas lights.”
“By yourself?”
“No, smarty-pants. With Cecily.”
“Uh-huh. Funny, I’m pretty sure I heard Jeff tell you expressly to wait for him.”
“Oh, shhh. I’ve already heard it plenty from these four.” Venia glared crankily, motioning at herself, Carlton, Brent and her husband. “All I need to hear from you is my diagnosis, what I can take for pain, and when I can go home.”
“You have a broken leg, and a cracked rib. I’m already giving you something for pain through your IV, but before you are able to go home tomorrow, I will make sure that you have a prescription for something else.”
“Tomorrow? Whelby, c’mon!” Venia whined, using the pet name she had given Marcus.
“Shh.” Jeffrey, who had been pretty quiet since arriving, looked none too pleased. “You will be quiet, and you will not give Dr. Devon any grief. If you had followed my instructions in the first place, you wouldn’t even be in this position. You’re in enough trouble as it is.” Venia had the grace to look sufficiently chastised, and they both nodded for Marcus to continue.
“As I was saying, I would like to keep you overnight for observation. We will be moving you into a room shortly. Recovery is going to be at least six weeks. You’ll need crutches to get around, and I suggest staying off your feet as much as possible. Right now, your leg is too swollen for a cast—we will hopefully be able to get that done after the weekend. Right now, ice and ace bandages. It was a clean break, so you’re lucky on that front. You’ll probably need some extra help around the house as you convalesce. I’ll work on putting together a list of possible sources.”
“Thank you, Dr. Devon.” It was Jeffrey who spoke. Venia was too busy glowering at the wall. Cecily would not want to be her later, nor would she want to be Jeffrey. Marcus and Brent left quickly, probably thinking the same thing. Cecily too found herself wanting to find the nearest exit. The air was thick in there.
Thankfully, Jeff was on the same wavelength. He gave them a house key and told them to make themselves comfortable.
The look on Carlton’s face told her that tonight she would be anything but comfortable. She had almost forgotten she was due a reckoning, but the look on his face was a quick reminder.
“How hard did you try to dissuade your mother from getting the decorations down herself?”
They had gone out for lunch at The Pit, but as soon as they had gotten home, Carlton had followed her to the bedroom and shut the door behind them. He was currently rolling up his sleeves. It was a gesture Cecily was developing a love/hate relationship with.
“Hard, Carlton. I knew you would be there soon. I told her to wait, but she pointed out that I was there, and that Jeffrey was older than she, and he was just being sexist, and I don’t know, she just made some really good points, and then she went ahead and started without me.”
“Hmmm. Regardless of whether or not Jeffrey was being sexist, he is the head of house, and she agreed to obey him.”
“This could have still happened if one of you had been there.”
“Very true, but it’s a moot point. If it had happened under our watch, nobody would be in trouble.”
“Carlton! I can’t be in trouble over this. I did everything I could to convince her to wait and our agreement only extends to lying.”
“Very true. And you are not in trouble over this. You have enough points racked up against you. I caught two more lies that came to light since we made our agreement.”
“Rats. I hoped you would forget.”
“I’m sure you did. Take your clothing off, down to your bra and panties, and go stand in that corner over there. Nose to the wall, hands behind your back.”
Holy crap. He was making her stand in the corner. She wasn’t sure who Carlton had been talking to, or what he had been reading, but after only forty-eight hours in Corbin’s Bend, he had this HoH thing down. It was a good thing they were only going to be here until Monday.
She rushed to follow his instructions, not oblivious to the fact that her panties were already moist with arousal from his dominance. Damn.
Standing in the corner, knowing that he was watching her, and knowing that she would once again be over his knee for a spanking was a near out-of-body experience. As far as Corbin’s Bend and this lifestyle was concerned, her mind changed from one minute to the next. One minute she was irate, thinking they were all being brainwashed by a bunch of egotistical, power-hungry sadists, and the next minute she was dripping wet and convinced they had to be the luckiest women on the planet.
She hadn’t looked at Carlton the same since they had set foot in Corbin’s Bend. She was always one second away from a spanking or an orgasm. It was the most insane feeling to have as she went about her normal day.
She could hear Carlton rustling around in their luggage, and wondered what he was up to with a morbid curiosity. She hoped it wasn’t the brush. She wasn’t sure she could take that again so soon.
In a few minutes, he stopped, and she heard the creak of the bedsprings as he sat down.
“Cecily, come over here please.”
She stood in front of him, eyes downcast, not sure where to look or what to do. Relief flooded her, when two strong arms wrapped around her and pulled her onto his lap.
“Two more lies, Cecily. What am I going to do with you?”
“I thought that was pretty obvious,” she quipped.
“Beyond tonight, beyond next week, beyond Corbin’s Bend. You can’t keep lying, sweetheart. It’s not healthy, and it’s a very bad habit to get into. Nobody expects you or your life to be perfect. You have to stop trying to make things seem different than they are. The reality isn’t that bad, and sometimes it could get better, if you would just tell the truth about it in the first place.”
“Yes, Sir.” She buried her face in his chest, glad to be in his lap and not over his knee during this part of the proceedings.
<
br /> “You told everyone that we eloped?”
“Technically I only told my mom. She told everyone else.”
“Even still. Why did you do that?”
“What was I supposed to tell them, Carlton? That I had a drunken pity party in Vegas on my birthday, and just happened to run into a guy from my college study group who I hadn’t seen in years, so I married him?”
“Why not? Cecily, I love you.”
“I love you too, but, you know, now.”
“I loved you then. Maybe not the way I do now, but enough to marry you, and enough to stay married to you, even when it would have been just as easy to have it annulled. It may have worked out conveniently with our current circumstances, but if I hadn’t had feelings for you, it wouldn’t have mattered. We would have stayed married for the first year, like we agreed, and then I would have given you some money and sent you on your way. I didn’t want that, and you didn’t either. We made the arrangement, and neither of us ever brought it up again. I assumed that, even though our relationship was mostly long distance, you had developed the same kind of strong feelings that I had for you. I love having you in my life, Cecily. The way this started, it may not have been ideal, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t meant to be. I hope you feel the same.”
“I do, Carlton! I do!” She grabbed his face in her hands and kissed him deeply. “I love you, and I feel the same way about everything. I couldn’t agree more. Telling everybody we had eloped was a mistake, but I was young, and confused, and I didn’t want to have to defend my decisions, or have my mom worried about me. It just seemed easier at the time.”
“Did you really have a wedding notebook? Did you want a big wedding?”
“What young girl doesn’t? I know that doesn’t matter now. A wedding is just one day, we have the rest of our lives.”
“Still, you deserve to have everything you wanted, and it would have been nice to have gotten a decent picture at the very least.”
“Eh, what are we going to do now? Maybe when we’ve been married for twenty-five years, we can have a wedding. Renew our vows or some such thing.”
“Maybe.” Carlton didn’t look appeased.
“Are we done being all serious and sentimental now? Are you going to get this show on the road and spank me, or can I get dressed? It’s kind of chilly in here.”
“Oh, anxious are we? Well then, I suppose we better get started. Get into position please,” he said as he helped her do just that.
She waited for him to hand down the exact sentence, as he had last time, but he never did. He just locked her into position, securing her arms and legs, and began to spank. He started lightly, with what could only be described as a warm-up, keeping a steady pace until he had covered the entirety of the fleshiest part of her ass.
“No more lies for any reason!” he lectured as he worked over her sit spots, spanking harder now, his hand flattened and as hard as any paddle.
Having her sit spots and upper thighs roasted was always the worst, and she was squirming up a storm by the time he finally moved on, after about thirty swats.
Her ass was feeling it now, and she knew she would be feeling it tomorrow as well. Damn, but this man could spank. He paused, letting her catch her breath, to rub her aching bottom.
“Are you going to lie again?”
She held in a groan. Questioning like this could only mean he was gearing up for more.
“No, Sir.”
“Good.” She braced herself for more, but it never came. Carlton scooped her up and back into his lap, holding her close.
“I understand why you lied, but please don’t do it again.”
“Yes, Sir.” A nearly reverent whisper was her only response.
“I would really like it if you could eventually come clean to your mother about the circumstances of our wedding.”
“Errm,” she groaned into his chest.
“Do we need to have a discussion about it?” Carlton’s tone of voice made it painfully obvious that by discussion, he meant ass roasting.
“No!” Cecily was getting more frustrated by the minute, but it wasn’t because of the conversation. Her ass ached and so did her pussy. She had taken her spanking, and now she wanted to move onto the good stuff, but Carlton wouldn’t stop talking.
Growing desperate, she shifted in his lap, to grab his cock, squeezing lightly through his slacks. It worked. He looked up with a salacious smile.
“Just what do you think you are doing, young lady?”
She returned his smile, licked her lips, and stood, unbuttoning his pants to watch with delight as he sprang free of the constricting fabric.
Dropping to her knees, she wrapped her hand around his member and took him in her mouth.
Chapter 5
It was around mid-afternoon the next day when Venia hobbled in on crutches with Jeff right behind her. Cecily and Carlton had been hard at work, getting the decorations up so Venia wouldn’t have to worry, and the house now looked like a Christmas wonderland. The tree was up, decorated with colorful bulbs and meaningful ornaments from top to bottom, and the rest of the house had gotten the same treatment. Venia had Christmas decorations for every room in the house, even the bathrooms.
In Carlton’s opinion, the time alone could have been much better spent, but the smile on Venia’s face was worth it.
“Oh, this looks wonderful. Thank you so much. I was so upset thinking I wouldn’t be able to enjoy all my pretty decorations this year.”
Jeffrey smiled too, but it was a tight smile, as he worked on getting Venia settled on the couch in the living room, making sure she had everything she might need so she wouldn’t be tempted to get up unless it was absolutely necessary.
“Cecily, Carlton, could I talk to you guys in the other room for a moment?”
They followed Jeffrey into the kitchen.
“I don’t have the slightest clue how I am going to get your mother to behave and take it easy for six weeks.” He was speaking in hushed tones so Venia wouldn’t hear him. “Short of taking six weeks off from the lab to watch over her like a hawk, I mean. I’m not fooling myself. I know that just because I give an order for her to take it easy doesn’t mean she will obey it, or that her version of taking it easy will look anything like mine. I told her this would be a great excuse for her to focus on her writing for a while, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She spent all night fretting about Christmas. Baking, shopping, all these traditions she has. I told her I would hire someone to help her, and that I would do as much as I could whenever I was home, but she isn’t having it.” Jeffrey paused, and sighed, looking utterly exhausted by the situation. “I really hate to ask you this, but if I don’t, she is going to, and she won’t be as diplomatic as me. Is there any way you guys can stay longer? Maybe until Christmas? I know you’re staying in a hotel. We can go out today, get the rest of your stuff, check out, and most house-hunting can be done online these days. The city is just an hour away if you need to go look at a place or anything. I would have asked if you could just come out more often, once or twice a week, but the truth is, the winter storms are going to be starting any day, and then you wouldn’t be able to get back and forth. I know it’s asking a lot, but I’m desperate. I don’t know what else to do.”
“Absolutely. It’s no problem really. We’re happy to do it.” Carlton didn’t hesitate. Cecily, on the other hand, stood there looking shell-shocked, before finally nodding her agreement.
“Oh, thank you. I’m so relieved. I’ll give you a few minutes to discuss amongst yourselves, but Carlton, I can take you to get the rest of your stuff any time.” Jeffrey left the room, and Cecily whirled on him.
“What in the heck was that? Carlton, we can’t stay here for a month!”
“Why not? Your mom needs us, neither of us have to work until after the New Year, and it’s going to save us a ton of money not paying for a hotel room.”
“Carlton, we don’t have to worry about money! We can afford the hotel room!”
“We can, but it doesn’t matter. I gave my word. We’re staying.”
“Ugh!” Cecily stomped her foot in exasperation. “I can’t stay here for a month, Carlton! Five days in Corbin’s Bend is more than enough.”
“Corbin’s Bend is a great place. You would know that if you had bothered talking to anyone besides your mother and Cadence. Give it a chance, Cecily.”
“I don’t want to!” Again with the foot stomp, and Carlton had had enough. He grabbed, her and in one swift move, bent her over his knee, right there in the kitchen, and delivered three hard swats to her jean-clad backside.
“We are going to, and if you keep arguing, we can continue this discussion in the bedroom with your hairbrush. What’s more, you’ll do well to remember that our arrangement was for the entire length of our stay here. For the next month, I am your HoH, and you’ll do well to remember that.”
He let her up and kissed her forehead, even though she was fuming and glaring daggers at him. “I’m going to go tell Jeff we can go whenever he is ready. It will take a few hours I’m sure. When I get back, your attitude better have taken a drastic turn, or you are not going to be sitting comfortably for a while, understand?”
She didn’t say anything, but nodded her agreement sullenly.
At a loss for words, and in need of space—peace and quiet to get his head together—Carlton left the kitchen, amazed at how quickly he had gone into full-on HoH mode. The transformation had been almost instant once he realized he wouldn’t be leaving Corbin’s Bend anytime soon. He was surprised at how quickly it had come on, and how natural it had felt. He was also worried, because it didn’t seem like Cecily felt the same way.
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