like it must have been tough on her, he thought to himself. There was no way he could have
raised a kid, worked a job, and gone to college at that age. He couldn’t help but admire her for
what she had done.
Austin stayed silent for most of the conversation. He could tell she needed to talk to
someone, and he suddenly realized he didn’t mind being that person. Every once in a while he
would throw in a supportive comment, but mostly he just listened
As she finished her second drink, Taylor glanced at her watch. She couldn’t believe
they’d been sitting there talking so long. She had really needed someone to talk to though, and
while Austin wouldn’t have necessarily been her first choice, she was surprised at how easy
opening up to him had been.
The corner of her lips curved into a small smile as she looked up at Austin. “Wow, I
haven’t talked that much with anyone in awhile,” she said. “I’m sure it’s been boring, but thanks
for listening anyway.”
He smiled. “It wasn’t boring,” he said. “I enjoyed it.”
Her head had been spinning when they had left the wedding chapel earlier that evening.
She couldn’t deny it anymore. Her sister had gone off and gotten married without telling her.
Even worse, it seemed like Tiffany had a whole separate life that Taylor didn’t know anything
about. Learning that her sister had obviously stopped confiding in her was more than simply
painful; it felt like her heart had been ripped out.
Taylor had spent the entirety of her adult life making every decision based on what would
be good for her sister. And now it seemed that Tiffany didn’t need her anymore. Though she
knew it was silly, Taylor felt lost.
She didn’t even remember walking back to the hotel, but when they gotten there, she’d
realized she didn’t want to go upstairs to the loneliness of her room. She had needed to talk. And
Austin had been there to listen. Even more than that, he had gotten her to talk about things she’d
never talked to anyone about, not even Tiffany. She hadn’t realized how bitter she had been
about her father leaving until she had told Austin about it.
But Austin hadn’t judged her, not even when she complained about feeling like her sister
had taken her granted. He had just nodded in understanding, which had encouraged her to
confide in him even more.
With Austin being so nice, Taylor couldn’t help but see him in a different light. She had
always thought he was good looking, but his brusque, arrogant manner had completely turned
her off. Now that he wasn’t acting all brusque and arrogant though, she was starting to notice
some of his other more attractive qualities. Like his mouth, she thought. It was wide and sensual,
and she found herself gazing at it as he talked. Then there were his hands. She had never thought
hands could be considered sexy, but somehow his were. Of course, she couldn’t look at them
without remembering what they had felt like on her bottom when he had spanked her.
But for some reason, thoughts of the spankings he’d given her didn’t prompt the
righteous indignation she had felt before, much to Taylor’s surprise. Instead, she was starting to
feel little tingles of arousal warm her body.
Which didn’t make sense, she told herself. There must be something else making her feel
that way. But very time she tried to think of what that something else was, her mind kept coming
back to the spankings. Maybe it was the two drinks she’d had, she decided. Or maybe it was
simply that Austin was being nicer to her than any man had been in a very long time. After a
moment, she stopped analyzing why she was feeling those warm, little tingles, and simply
decided to enjoy them. It had been a very long time since she’d even felt that way. Then another
thought came to her; maybe she should do something more than simply spend the night talking to
the handsome man across from her.
“You know,” she said, toying with her glass as she looked up at him from beneath her
lashes. “You’re actually a pretty nice guy.”
Austin lifted a brow. “Is that so hard to believe?”
She laughed. “Well, considering you have this habit of spanking women all the time,
yeah.”
He looked a little surprised at the direction their conversation had taken, but quickly
recovered. “It’s not like I spank every woman I meet, you know.”
She considered that a moment, and then leaned forward to rest her forearms on the table.
“Should I infer from that that you’ve spanked other women, then?”
Taylor couldn’t believe she had just asked that. She wasn’t used to playing the seduction
game, but it was coming more naturally to her than she would have thought. She should probably
thank the two drinks for that.
As for Austin, he seemed completely caught off guard, she noticed. The look on his face
almost made her smile.
He regarded her thoughtfully. “I have spanked a few other women, though I must admit
you’re the only one I’ve ever spanked simply for being so infuriating.”
Austin said the words hesitantly, as if worried he would offend her, but Taylor wasn’t
offended in the slightest.
“I supposed I can be infuriating, that’s true.” She ran her fingers up and down the length
of her glass as she considered what to say next. Though she hadn’t meant for the gesture to be
sexy, she couldn’t help but notice that Austin’s eyes followed her fingers as they moved. Was he
imagining her touching him like that? she wondered. Hmm...maybe she was better at this
seduction thing than she’d thought.
“So, if you didn’t spank those other women for being infuriating, why did you spank
them?” she asked.
Austin regarded her for a long time in silence. Taylor met his gaze and let her tongue slip
out to slowly wet her lips.
“They asked me to spank them,” he said after a moment.
Taylor’s blue eyes went wide. She hadn’t expected that. “They asked you?” she said in
surprise. “And why would they do that?”
Austin went back to rubbing his thumb up and down the label on the beer bottle. “Some
women find spanking very arousing.”
Taylor blinked. It was nice to know she wasn’t the only one who found the thought of
spanking arousing. Though she couldn’t imagine ever having the nerve to actually come right out
and ask for one. Just the thought of doing so made her pussy begin to purr.
“They do, do they?” she said, hoping he picked up on the suggestive tone of her voice.
He studied her thoughtfully, as if he didn’t quite know where she was going with all of
this. “Definitely,” he said after a moment. “If done a certain way, a spanking can be a very erotic
experience.”
She let a slow smile play across her lips. Just hearing him say the words was enough to
make her wonder what a spanking like that would be like. “I’m not sure I would consider the
spankings you gave me to be an erotic experience.”
“The spankings I gave you weren’t meant to be erotic,” he said. “If I had intended them
to be sensual, the spanks wouldn’t have been as hard and there would have been a lot of slow,
gentle caresses in between. It would be form of foreplay, not punishment.”
Taylor caught her breath at the
thought of him caressing her bottom. “Oh, I see,” she said.
“I suppose that would be quite different then.”
She fell silent after that, caught up in a fantasy about Austin giving her one of those kinds
of spankings. She couldn’t picture actually ever doing it for real, but for some reason the image
wouldn’t seem to go away. She barely even noticed he had finished his beer until he announced
that it was getting late and suggested they go back to the room. She was still lost in her daydream
as they rode up in the elevator a few minutes later.
“You can have the bed,” he told Taylor when they were back in the room. “I’ll take the
couch.”
She chewed on her lower lip. “Are you sure you don’t mind? I mean, this is your room...”
The corner of his mouth edged up. “It’s fine,” he said. “You can have the bed.”
Taylor nodded, but she made no move toward the bed. Downstairs, she had purposely
steered the conversation toward something sexual in the hopes of seducing Austin, something
she’d never done with a man before. It had made her feel in control, powerful somehow.
Now that they were back in the room however, she hesitated for a moment. Could she
really go through with it? she wondered. It definitely wasn’t like her to proposition a guy, and
yet that’s what she was considering doing. If she simply dropped the idea, then she could always
tell herself later that she had wisely stopped herself from doing something she’d probably only
regret anyway. But as she watched him walk over to the couch, regret was the furthest thing from
her mind. For the first time since her sister had disappeared, she felt like she was in control of
things again. More than that though, she wanted to do something purely for herself. It had been a
long time since she’d given any thought to her own wants and needs.
Besides, the conversation downstairs had gotten her more aroused than she’d been in a
very long time, and even if she tried to go to bed now, she had no doubt those fantasies of Austin
spanking and touching her in the way he’d described would keep her awake all night anyway.
Taking a deep breath, Taylor spoke before she could change her mind. “Austin,” she said
softly.
At the sound of his name, he turned to give her a questioning look.
She hesitated for a moment, her pulse suddenly racing. “If I asked you to, would you
spank me?”
Chapter Four
Austin stared at Taylor, stunned into silence for a moment by the question, not sure he’d
heard her right. Somehow, he managed to find his voice. “What was that?”
She gave him a coy smile. “I asked if you would give me a spanking,” she repeated. “You
know, like the kind you told me about downstairs.”
Where the hell had that come from? Austin wondered. Sure, the conversation downstairs
had been sexually charged, but he didn’t think she’d be the type of woman to actually act on
what they had talked about. She was too reserved for that, and her request had his alarm bells
going off.
“I’m not sure that would be a good idea,” he said.
Her brow furrowed, something resembling disappointment in her eyes. “Why not?” she
asked.
Because if I gave you one of those spankings, I’m not sure I could trust myself to stop
there, Austin thought. And he had no idea where she intended this to go. But he couldn’t very
well admit that to her, so instead, he answered her question with one of his own. “Why would
you want a spanking?”
Taylor slowly walked over to him and ran her finger down the front of his shirt toy with
one of the buttons. “Because I want to see if it can be as enjoyable and as sensual an experience
as you say.”
He inhaled sharply at her touch. “Are you sure this isn’t the drink you had talking?”
Taylor stopped fingering the button to look up at him. “I’m not drunk, if that’s what you
mean,” she said. “I had two drinks, that’s all. I’m relaxed, but not drunk by any means.”
Austin gazed down at her, searching her clear, blue eyes to find them as alert as always.
And with just the hint of challenge in them. No, she most definitely was not drunk, he decided.
But the drinks she’d had down in the bar had definitely loosened her inhibitions. Was this sexy
seductress the real Taylor Cavanaugh minus the wall of defenses she kept up around herself? he
wondered. Or maybe she was reeling from what she had learned about her sister and was just
acting out. It was an interesting dilemma because he had to admit, while his head was telling him
this was a bad idea, his body was already responding to her proposition.
When he didn’t say anything, Taylor stepped back and put her hands on her hips, giving
him a pout. “You spanked me when I didn’t want you to,” she pointed out. “Why won’t you
spank me now that I do want you to?”
Why indeed? he wondered. He had already decided that she wasn’t drunk, and since they
had discovered her sister’s whereabouts, it wasn’t like he would be working for her after tonight,
so there wasn’t the whole issue of it being unprofessional. And he definitely wouldn’t mind
having her over his knee again. It didn’t have to lead anywhere if she didn’t want it to.
“I just want you to be sure that a spanking is what you really want,” he finally said.
Her lips curved into the sexiest smile he’d ever seen. “A spanking is exactly what I
want,” she told him. “But one with all of those touches and caresses you mentioned.”
Without waiting for a reply, Taylor slipped past him to make her way over to the bed.
Austin stood where he was, trying to decide exactly how the whole thing was going to play out,
and was surprised when she unbuttoned her jeans and slowly began to push them down her curvy
hips to reveal the skimpy, black bikini panties she was wearing underneath. He stared at her,
transfixed by the way her hips rolled back and forth as she moved. Halfway down, she stopped to
give him a demure little look over her shoulder.
“Unless you’d rather that I leave them on,” she said, as if unsure she should be taking off
her jeans, and then added, “I just assumed from what you said downstairs that with this kind of
spanking, they’d be coming off anyway.”
Austin stifled a groan. Damn, this was a completely different woman than he’d met in his
office earlier that day. This Taylor exuded pure sexuality. Did she have any idea what she was
doing to him? He doubted she did, which only made it that much more arousing.
“Off is fine,” he managed to say.
At his words, Taylor wiggled her jeans the rest of the way down, and Austin caught his
breath as her bottom came completely into view. He was right, he thought. She did have a great
ass. Not to mention long, shapely legs. And standing there with her long, dark hair around her
shoulders and wearing nothing but a snug-fitting black T-shirt and skimpy, bikini panties, she
looked very, very spankable.
He was definitely going to regret this in the morning, Austin thought as he walked over to
her. She turned as he drew closer, and he saw a hint of hesitation in her eyes.
“Are you sure this is what you want?” he asked softly.
At Taylor’s nod, Austin took her hand and sitting down on the bed, guided her over his
knee in
the same way he had earlier that evening. This time, however, Taylor went willingly,
even wiggling into a position to make herself more comfortable. But when he placed his hand
gently on the small of her back a moment later, he felt her tense beneath his touch. She might
want this spanking, he thought, but that didn’t mean she still wasn’t a little nervous at the
prospect.
Wanting Taylor to relax, Austin gently ran his hand up and down the length of her back.
He moved her long hair aside and draped it over one shoulder so that he could skim his fingers
over the curve of her neck on the opposite side before running his hand down her back. Instead
of stopping at the small of her back however, this time he moved lower, running his hand over
her panty-covered bottom and down her bare thighs before moving back up again.
Taylor let out a soft sigh, obviously enjoying what he was doing, and Austin’s mouth
curved into a smile. It was difficult to believe this was the same woman who had kicked and
screamed and called him names when she’d been over his knee earlier that day, he thought as he
ran his hand lightly over her bottom again. He rather liked this side of Taylor Cavanaugh, he
decided.
But while he could caress her all night, she was over his knee because she wanted a
spanking, he reminded himself. Resting one hand on the small of her back, he lifted the other and
gave her a light smack on the ass. Compared to the spanks he had given her earlier, it was
nothing more than a love-pat, but Taylor let out a startled, little gasp all the same.
“Too hard?” Austin asked, rubbing the area of her bottom where he had just smacked.
Taylor shook her head. “No,” she said. “You surprised me, that’s all.”
Austin’s mouth quirked. Lifting his hand, he brought it down on the opposite cheek this
time. Taylor wasn’t surprised at this smack, but merely tightened her muscles a little in response.
Taking that to mean he wasn’t spanking her too hard, he fell into an easy rhythm, spanking first
one side and then the other. He covered her entire bottom with smacks, making sure he never let
his hand come down in the same place twice in a row. Just as her cheeks began to pinken, he
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