Maid for Spanking

by Paige Tyler

  He flushed beneath his tan. “I really am sorry about that. I don’t know what came over me. I promise I won’t do it again.”

  “Why would you want to hire your maid to do this when there are loads of companies out there that do this stuff?”

  “Because there are also loads of people out there who would just as soon steal my game as look me in the eye.” He paused. “I trust you.”

  She frowned. “You don’t even know me.”

  He shrugged. “Ed Fulton doesn’t know you, either. That’s good enough for me.”

  That name again.

  “I appreciate the offer, but I already have a full-time job. I’m not interested in spending my nights or weekends programming. I’ve done that before and I hated it.”

  Hughes considered that. After a moment, he nodded. “Okay, I can work with you on that. I know that the cleaning company offers flexible hours to their employees. One of the other maids I had told me she only worked half days because she wanted her afternoons free. You could clean in the morning and debug game code in the afternoon.”

  She lifted a brow. “You seem to have given this a lot of thought.”

  His only reply was a grin that was way too damn sexy.

  Colleen said nothing. She couldn’t deny she was intrigued by his offer. She hadn’t realized how much she missed programing until she was in front of all those computer monitors yesterday. If nothing else, this would give her something to round out her resume for the next programming job.

  “Okay,” she finally said. “On one condition.”

  “Name it.”

  “No more spankings.”

  He didn’t even hesitate. “Done.”

  Colleen was a little surprised at how quickly he’d acquiesced. The situation was only going to work if Hughes kept his hands to himself, but she had to admit there was a tiny part of her that was a little disappointed he’d capitulated so easily. Which made no sense at all. It wasn’t as if she wanted another spanking.

  “It might take me a couple of days to start my new schedule,” she said.

  He nodded. “I don’t want anyone to know about the video game, so I’d like to keep the fact that you’re working for me just between us. Any chance you can go back to cleaning my house again? That way you’re right there and can get started on debugging as soon as you’re finished.”

  That made sense, though she had no doubt Brenda was probably going to think she was crazy when she said she wanted to go back to cleaning Hughes’ house, especially since she’d already told the woman they didn’t get along. She’d come up with something, she supposed.

  Colleen closed the door behind him, then leaned back against it with a sigh. Had she seriously just agreed to working alongside Steven Hughes? The other times she’d done something he hadn’t liked, he’d spanked her. Sure, he’d promised he wouldn’t do it again, but could she believe him?

  Chapter Four

  Working with Hughes—Steve—was actually more fun than Colleen had thought it would be. It was a little awkward the first couple of days, but the more time she spent with him, the more she realized he wasn’t such a bad guy. A little paranoid about security and obsessive about cleaning, but not the jerk she’d originally believed him to be.

  And since she’d started working with, he hadn’t spanked her once. Not even when she’d forgotten his no-food-allowed rule and brought the nonfat latte and yogurt she’d gotten at Starbuck’s into the computer room.

  “But I used to eat at my desk all the time at my old programming job,” she protested when he made her go sit at the kitchen table.

  He folded his arms and leaned back against the island. “And I’ll bet you got crumbs all over the keyboard.”

  “Maybe.” Colleen formed her lips into a pout as she dipped her spoon into her yogurt. “You’re no fun at all, do you know that?”

  His mouth quirked. “You’d be surprised.”

  Something in his voice made her pulse skip a beat, and she paused, her spoon halfway to her mouth. She thought Steve was gorgeous the first time she’d seen him. Working side by side with him every day had only intensified her attraction to him. Which made sense, she supposed. If she had a type, he’d be it. Not only was he good looking, but he was funny and smart, too.

  He was also a contradiction. Not many men could be sensitive and intellectual one minute, then go all caveman the next. It seemed crazy, but she was beginning to think the reason she was so attracted to him was because he was that unique mix of sensitivity and strength. And she was attracted to him, she admitted to herself. Worse, she was starting to like him.

  And, yes, that had been wreaking havoc on her concentration in the two weeks she’d been working with him. If it was simple sexual attraction, it would have been one thing. But there was the whole spanking thing.

  Every time he leaned close to show her something or read the string of code she was working on, all she could think about was how big his biceps were, or how good his cologne smelled, or how strong his hands looked. Which invariably led to thoughts of him putting her over his knee and spanking her.

  She tried to banish those thoughts, but the harder she tried, the more vivid her fantasies got. A month ago, she never would have thought about getting spanked, and now, it was all she could think about. What did that say about her? No matter how long she wrestled with that question, she couldn’t come up with an answer. She just knew that the more time she spent with Steve, the stronger the urge to get spanked again became.

  That afternoon was no different, especially since Steve spent most of it leaning over her shoulder as she worked. With his breath stirring her hair and his arm brushing hers, it took all of her willpower to focus on what she was doing. When it took her several attempts to get a string of code working, she cringed, hoping he hadn’t noticed. If he had, he didn’t say anything.

  “I was going to order take-out for dinner. Or delivery, I guess I should say,” he said as they finished up later that afternoon. “Want to stay? Unless you have other plans,” he added when she said nothing.

  Colleen shook her head, for the first time glad she didn’t have a date on a Friday night. “I mean, yes, I’d love to stay for dinner.”

  “Pizza okay?”

  She’d expected him to suggest something more exotic, like Thai, and almost smiled. The man was indeed a contradiction. “That’s fine.”

  Colleen hurriedly finished up what she was doing, then went into the kitchen. Steve was opening a bottle of wine, and he looked up at the sound of her footsteps.

  “Can you grab a couple plates?” he asked. “They’re in the cabinet above the dishwasher.”

  As she set the table, Colleen slid Steve a sidelong glance. He was wearing jeans and an old college T-shirt, the letters MIT worn and faded. The material stretched across his chest, emphasizing his muscles and showing off his spectacular arms. Computer nerds weren’t supposed to be so hot, dang it.

  “So.” He carried the glasses over to the table, then sat across from her. “Why is a programmer with your talent cleaning houses for a living?”

  She gave him a teasing look. “You mean Kristy didn’t tell you that, too?”

  As soon as Steve had left her apartment that night, Colleen had called her friend all set to chew her out. She probably would have if Kristy hadn’t been so upset about the whole thing.

  On the other side of the table, Steve chuckled as he reached for a slice of pizza. “Getting your address out of her was hard enough.”

  Colleen sipped her wine. “Call it burn-out, I guess. I took the job thinking I was going to write programs, and all they wanted me to do was debug them.”

  He winced. “Which is exactly what I’m asking you to do, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, but it’s not the same. You’re not asking me to work fourteen-hour days and weekends.” She gave him a sheepish look as she picked up her pizza. “I’m not as lazy as that sounds. I promise.”

  “You just hated the work. I’ve been there, so I can rela
te. “There are other programming jobs out there, though. Why work as maid?”

  “Kristy talked me into it. I needed to make money while I waited for my dream job, and when she told me how much she made, I just about fell off my chair.” She shrugged. “I don’t see myself doing it much longer, though. I don’t think I’m really cut out for it.”

  Steve chuckled, the sound soft and sexy. “I don’t know about that. Other than vacuuming while I’m trying to work, I don’t have any complaints.”

  Remembering the spanking that had gotten her, Colleen blushed. She took a sip of wine to hide it, then studied him over the rim of the glass.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Go for it.”

  “Why do you have your house cleaned every day? Most of the other clients only have theirs done once a week.”

  Steve didn’t answer, but instead stared down at his plate, his brow furrowed.

  Crap, she’d offended him. She set down her glass. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that it was…”

  “Weird?” He gave her a small smile. “You’re right. It is weird.”

  Silence filled the kitchen, and Colleen wondered if she should apologize again. But he spoke before she could come up with something that didn’t sound inane or patronizing.

  “I grew up in foster care back east. I stayed with a lot of different people in a lot of different places. Way too many to count. Which is why I don’t remember much about most of them. But the one thing I do remember is that every house I lived in was a pig sty.” He shook his head. “Maybe it wasn’t their fault, you know? I mean there were a lot of kids living in any one house at any one time.” He sighed as if locking the memories away. “Anyway, I promised myself that when I got out on my own, I’d never let any house of mine look like that.”

  Colleen wanted to point out that having his house cleaned once a week would ensure that, but at the look on his face, she couldn’t seem to make herself say the words.

  “So, how did you become interested in computer programming?” she asked, changing the subject.

  His mouth quirked. “Math was the one thing I was good at in school. And the one thing that got me a scholarship. I wouldn't have been able to pay for college otherwise.”

  “And gaming? How’d you get into that?”

  “I wanted to write programs. I didn’t want to end up sitting in some cubicle debugging them.”

  She groaned. “Wish I’d thought of that.”

  “It’s not too late to join the dark side.” He grinned. “The industry is booming right now.”

  Colleen laughed. “Did you design video games right out of MIT.”

  He shook his head as he reached for another slice of pizza. “Nah. I worked for a small software company for a few years first. When I left there I started up my own company with my old roommate from college. Ed Fulton.”

  “I remember you mentioning him. From the things you said—or didn’t say—I get the feeling things didn’t work out between the two of you.”

  Steve snorted. “You could say that.”

  “Okay, now you’ve got me really curious.” She pushed her empty plate away and rested her forearms on the table. “What’s the deal with this Fulton guy?”

  Steve was silent, as if debating how much he wanted to say. “He’s a scumbag. We weren’t working together for more than a couple months before he started taking credit for my work. I shouldn’t have been surprised, I guess. The minute we hit a snag on a program, the bastard suggested we steal someone else’s code to make it work.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what the hell happened to him after college. I mean, he wasn’t going to win any programming awards, but he was good enough to get into MIT. Maybe he got lazy after we graduated. Or maybe he was stealing other people’s code in college and got away with it. Either way, once I figured out what he was up to, I dissolved our partnership.”

  His distrust for the man made sense now. “But what I don’t understand is why you thought I had something to do with him.”

  Steve wiped his hands on a napkin and sat back in his chair. “Good old-fashioned paranoia. When I came in and found you looking at my game, my first thought was that he’d hired you to steal it. I still wasn’t sure until I was wrong until I went to your apartment.”

  “What changed your mind?”

  “My gut, I guess.” The look he gave her made her breath hitch. Behind those glasses, he was really something else. “I mean, if you only got a job with the cleaning company so you could spy for Ed, it didn’t make sense you’d go back to cleaning houses after I threw you out.”

  Colleen felt her face heat as she thought back to the spanking he’d given her that day. Steve must have realized it, too, because he cleared his throat.

  “Enough about me,” he said. “What about you? Are you originally from California?”

  She smiled. “I am.”

  Though Steve laughed as she entertained him with stories about her big, extended family, the look that came into his eyes at times was almost a little sad, as if he was thinking about his own childhood. She wanted to ask if he’d ever known his parents, or had been put up for adoption when he was a baby, but she didn’t want to pry. She’d never known anyone who had grown up in foster care, so she’d never thought about it much. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like not to have a family to love, support and be there for her. But Steve had somehow succeeded and made something of himself despite that. It gave her a newfound respect for him.

  Steve told her not to worry about cleaning up, but Colleen helped him clear the table and load the dishwasher anyway.

  “Do you mind if I stay for a while and finish up what I was working on before we had dinner?” she asked as she dried her hands on a dishtowel.

  She could just as easily do it tomorrow, but she’d been meaning to get to that section of code the whole day and hadn’t.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “I’m going to do some more work anyway.”

  Once in the office, however, she had a difficult time concentrating with Steve sitting so close. No matter how hard she tried to focus, her gaze kept straying to his hands while he typed. She’d been right about his hands being so big. She bet when he’d spanked her one would cover her entire ass cheek with a single swat. Abruptly, all of the fantasies that had been playing through her mind over the past two weeks came rushing back. She stared hard at the string of code on the monitor, hoping to make them go away, but they wouldn’t. It didn’t help that there was a familiar purr between her legs. Oh God, not now.

  Why did she keep thinking thoughts like this? Did she really want him to spank her again? It had stung like crazy, so why was her pussy betraying her by getting excited? But if anything, thinking about how much it had stung only made her even more aroused. Her traitorous mind kept wondering what it would be like if Steve spanked her on the bare ass.

  That thought brought another rush of color to her cheeks, and she fidgeted in her seat as she realized her pussy had gone beyond the purring stage and was actually getting wet now. Dammit, why the heck had she had made him promise not spank her?

  Colleen’s fingers froze on the keyboard. What was she saying? She couldn’t honestly want Steve to spank her again. Fantasizing about it was one thing, but willingly letting him do it was something else entirely. And yet, as she gazed over at his strong hands, she realized that was exactly what she wanted. The thought almost made her hyperventilate.

  But how could she get him to spank her when she’d made him promise he wouldn’t do it again? It wasn’t as if she could come out and ask him for a spanking. She could just imagine the conversation now.

  Steve, could you do me a favor?

  Name it.

  You know how I told you that I didn’t want you to spank me again. Well, I’ve changed my mind. I think I actually would like you to put me over your knee again.

  You’re saying that you want me to spank you again?

  Yes, Steve, that’s exactly what I’m saying. And I�
�d really appreciate it if you’d do it right and pull my panties down this time.

  Just thinking about it made Colleen go red with embarrassment. There was absolutely no way she was going to ask him for a spanking, so she might as well just drop the whole idea. That was easier said than done, though. No matter how much she tried to focus on the program in front of her, her mind kept slipping back to what she and Steve could be doing instead.

  She chewed on her lower lip. Just because she was too shy to come out and ask him to spank her didn’t mean she couldn’t trick him into doing it. But how? She studied the code she was working on as she considered that. It was a fight sequence between one of the games military heroes and an evil wizard. It was fairly clean already, and she automatically corrected typos as she came to them.

  She paused, her fingers hovering over the keyboard on her lap. Hot damn. She’d just figured out a way to get that spanking she’d been looking for. Eyes locked on the monitor, she typed as fast as her fingers could move.

  “What are you doing?” Steve asked.

  Colleen turned her head to see him frowning at the monitor. She hadn’t realized he was watching her. That made the whole thing easier. She thought she’d have to challenge him to a game to get him to notice.

  “Adding some stuff to make the game more interesting,” she said.

  She typed another erroneous set of instructions, then ran the program to see how the changes looked. She grinned as the hero pulled a bouquet of flowers from holster in place of a gun. Opposite him, the sorcerer extended his hand to produce a glowing round orb, but when the robed figure threw it at the hero, it wasn’t a fireball, but a water balloon. Colleen laughed as it splatted harmlessly against his opponent.

  Steve, however, wasn’t as amused. “Cute. Now, change it back.”

  Colleen tilted her head to the side as she watched the sequence play out on the screen in front of her. “I don’t know. I kind of like it this way.”

  “Put it back, Colleen.”

  She gave him a teasing look. “What are you going to do if I don’t? Spank me?”

  The words hung in the air between them. Colleen held her breath she waited for Steve to say something.