by Polly Carter
“I’m not sure if you’ve disobeyed me or not, Harley, or if you are thinking about doing it, so you can think of this as a kind of Schrodinger’s spanking: if you have disobeyed me, you are being spanked for that, but if you haven’t disobeyed me, then you are being spanked as a warning. When you look inside your conscience, you will have been spanked for what you did or for what you might do and you will know which it is. Either way, I will have made my point. Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“Right, then.” Arian raised his hand and brought it down with a crack.
“Ow!” Harley jumped, unsure if his hand was harder than it used to be or if she’d just forgotten how hard it was. Either way that stung!
“Keep still, Hal,” Arian said sternly, smacking her other cheek. More ready for it this time, Harley managed only a small flinch and a grunt.
“I warned you that if you thought about going anywhere near that creep or taking matters into your hands in any way you would get the spanking of your life, didn’t I?”
“Yes, Arian,” Harley muttered between the sharp smacks Arian was raining relentlessly on her poor, rapidly-colouring bottom. “But, please, not so hard. Ow. Ow. It hurts.”
“Good, I hope it does. Have you forgotten that spankings are supposed to hurt? I guess it’s been a while. I hope this will serve as a timely reminder.”
“It will. Oh! I mean it is. Ah! It has. Oh, please,” Harley stammered, floundering around for the words that would convince Arian she had learned her lesson, but if such words existed, they weren’t the ones she’d just tried.
Arian’s hand was steady as it smacked each cheek alternately until both were red and rosy, then he pushed her further over his knee and concentrated his attention on the sensitive spot between bottom and thigh. Harley’s feet were kicking with each new spank, as she squirmed and squealed. She had forgotten what this was like: how much heat his hand created, and how it spread from her bottom to warm every part of her lower abdomen; how firmly he held her in place and how small she felt laid across his knees like this; and how strong he was, and how easily he could hold her in place and stop her wriggling away.
“Do you believe me now when I say you and Jessamy are not to do any detective work? Have I made myself clear?”
“Yes, Arian. Yes. Very clear. Honest. I promise.”
Arian stopped spanking her and she heard him chuckle. “I reckon you’d say anything right now if you thought it would mean the spanking would stop, isn’t that right?”
“Yes. No,” Harley stammered, trying to say whatever would make the spanking stop.
Arian slipped the sandals off her feet and dragged her shorts and knickers right off. Leaving her naked from the waist down, he picked her up and carried her to the bed.
“Wait there and don’t move unless you want another dose,” he said as he disappeared down the hall to the bathroom. Harley heard him use the toilet, then moments later he reappeared through the door, naked from the waist down, in the process of slipping on a condom.
“No, Arian. You can’t be serious. We can’t have sex on someone else’s bed!”
“I can and I’m going to.” Walking up to the bed and standing over her, he pushed her knees apart and ran his hand between her thighs. “Ahh, good girl,” he said with a contented sigh, “you’re so wet and ready for me, aren’t you? Be honest now. I think it’s turning you on to be fucking on someone else’s bed.”
He slipped one finger inside her, watching as she smiled, shuddered and half-closed her eyes in response. He slid it slowly out, feeling her close around him as though to hold him prisoner. This, spanking and then having sex in an illicit place, was the sort of thing they might have done when they were younger when they’d had the chance, and it was turning Harley on; Arian was right. She stretched back on the bed and pulled her tank top up to expose her naked breasts.
Arian looked at her face, then her breasts and licked his lips.
“You know your body has changed, Hal,” he said. “I guess it was having Lyddia. It’s more womanly now, and infinitely more sexy. I’m sorry I missed your swollen belly and milky breasts, but I think she needs a baby brother or sister anyway, don’t you? Not now. Just in case, but as soon as we can.” As he was crooning, one hand was circling and squeezing her breast and the other was slipping in and out and running up to rub her clit, and all the time he was watching her as she moaned and opened up to him.
“Fuck me, Arian. Please, fuck me,” she whispered opening her eyes and calling him to her as she slithered further back on the bed and opened her legs wide. This time he did her bidding, lying between her thighs and pressing himself inside her. She wrapped her legs around him as he crushed his mouth onto hers and they rocked together, clutching each other so tightly they could only move as one.
“I love you, Harley, and I’ll never leave you again. Ever,” Arian said at last taking his mouth from hers and looking down at her.
“I love you too, Arian, for ever and for always,” Harley replied, tears of joy trickling down her cheeks as she released her hold on his hips so he could move more freely, pinning her to the bed underneath him as he thrust into her harder and harder until she was clutching the bedspread with white knuckles and bucking up to meet him. And then it came, the sweet, thick warmth that started somewhere in her depths and radiated out, engulfing her in voluptuous joy until she was crying out, and as the first wave subsided so the second wave came as a tingling that rose to a crescendo and burst into rhythmic contractions that sent Arian over his own edge. He thrust harder, and again, and again, and then shuddered to a halt as his body convulsed and his face contorted in sheer bliss.
Harley gently stroked the back of Arian’s neck as she waited for him to return to her. At last, he raised his head from her breast and smiled at her. “Wow,” he breathed. “I’ve sure missed that. I think it was even better than last time.” He bent gently to kiss her then, very slowly to ease the pain of her loss, withdrew. “Wait there, my darling,” he ordered her as he disappeared again out the door and across into the bathroom.
This time when he returned, he was carrying his clothes and something in his hand. Harley was sitting on the bed waiting, thinking she should probably get dressed. He sat on the bed beside her and held out a key.
“What’s this?” she asked, puzzled.
“It’s the key to the house, Hal. I bought it for you, for us.”
Harley’s eyes popped wide. “What? But? How?”
Arian, looking very pleased with himself, took both her hands in his. “We always wanted this house and, years ago, I spoke to the owners and made them promise that if they ever wanted to sell it, they would give me first refusal. I stayed in touch to make sure they didn’t forget me, and then one day I got a call saying they had decided to sell. That was a few months back. I was actually already in the process of tidying up my affairs in the States in order to come back and look for you. I made all the arrangements, and although the previous owners had fixed it up for sale, there were still a few things that needed doing, so I’ve been doing quite a bit of work myself.”
“So, that’s what you’ve been doing all those nights you’ve been ‘working’?” Harley said with a grin. “But why did you buy it?”
“Because it was our dream house. Mind you, I will be paying it off for the rest of my life,” he smiled at her. “And of course when I bought it, I honestly thought it would take a miracle if we were ever to live here together because I didn’t even know where you were then, or if you were married or anything. But what do you know? Maybe miracles happen, hey? Because here we are.”
“We still need one more miracle, though, don’t we?” Harley said with a sigh.
Chapter 14
“Miracle, shmiracle,” Jessamy said with a disdainful snort when Harley finished telling her the huge news about the house, adding, as she had to Arian, that it would take another miracle for her to be able to live there instead of in a prison cell. “You don’t need any miracles. Mag
ic is what you need, girl.” She poked Harley with long fingernails with rainbows painted on them and declared, “Magic in the form of Private Eye Jessamy Lushpin’s Magical Bold Plan. And that is what you are getting: A plan that is both Bold and Magical.”
Harley and Jessamy had rendezvoused in the shopping centre car park again, but this time Harley was more than a little nervous. They definitely were on a quest to undertake a plan that was bold; it was probably at best also extremely foolhardy, quite possibly dangerous, and at worst, in her case, illegal. But, she had reasoned, she had to fight fire with fire if she wasn’t going to wind up in prison for someone else’s criminal activity. In this case, it was more fighting scam with scam and praying there was no fire, especially gun fire. She shuddered.
“So, Cat’s still okay with going through with this?” Harley asked to break the silence. “I’m glad she agreed to help us. When we pulled up at her place and told her she was being used as a drug courier, I thought she was going to call the police.”
Cat was the young blonde woman Gary had groomed and recruited as his next drug mule after Harley’s arrest. They’d tailed her the previous week from the supermarket to where she dropped Gary off at his house, to unknowingly dropping the drugs off at the empty house she thought was the home of his mother, and then to her front door.
Jessamy laughed. “A startled hare is what she looked like, eh? But she’ll hold her nerve today. I caught up with her last night just to make sure she was still okay with this. We hung out for a bit. She’s solid. I like her a lot, and more gumption than you might think from that first meeting.”
“I really liked her too,” Harley agreed. “There’s something sweet about her, but I thought maybe something a bit troubled too. I wasn’t sure if it was just us and our strange story. I mean, I have no idea how I would’ve felt if we’d bailed me up like that when I was running that ass… nasty man about.”
“I wasn’t that taken by her folks to be honest. Her dad is a bit creepy and her mum seems a bit, I don’t know, the only word I can think of is artificial,” Jess agreed. “I think maybe we should take her under our wing a bit after all this and make sure she’s okay.”
“Good idea, Jess. If she wants to. It might be good to keep an eye on her. See if there’s anything going on. Although at this stage you still might have to do it on your own.”
While they were talking, Jessamy had left the car park and was driving towards the vacant house that was the drug drop-off point. In case Gary had spotted the grey loaf of bread on wheels they’d been driving last week, this week she’d borrowed a souped-up black HSV Clubsport.
“This way when I pull into that drive, old mate prison-fodder is going to think the boys are back in town and after his sorry carcass. I figure that might stop him in his tracks long enough to give us the jump on him before he realises it’s two women. But if he thinks Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, wait until he gets a load of the fury of a woman who’s friend he treated with less consideration than were she vomit outside a nightclub. That loathsome evildoer is going down!”
Harley laughed, if somewhat nervously. “Well, I hope everything goes according to the Bold Plan.”
“It will, don’t worry, my sweet. The one thing Mr. Drug Dealer has going for him is that he has absolutely nothing going for him. In this little battle of wits, we can’t lose because he is completely unarmed.”
“But what if he’s armed with something other than wits,” Harley said, giving voice to her major fear. “I mean with a gun.”
“Uh-huh,” Jessamy nodded. “I caught your drift. It’s not something I haven’t considered, hence this beast. I figure fear will give me the necessary seconds to bulldog him. Then it’s up to you. And don’t worry, you’ll be great. I promise. Plus the cavalry should be there by then anyway. Now don’t worry about anything. It’ll go like clockwork and the only alarm will be when our patsy boy realises his time is up and it’ll be him, not you, doing time.”
“Okay,” Harley said in an utterly unconvinced tone. “Can you just run through everything once more.”
“Right, well first I drop you off,” Jessamy began. Harley listened intently to ensure she missed nothing. The plan, she thought, was clever in its simplicity. She couldn’t see any way Gary Mellors would realise what was happening until it was too late, and by then it would be… well, too late.
“You’re sure there’s no-one here?” she asked a short time later as Jessamy turned the rumbling black beast into the driveway of the house at which, the previous week, they’d seen Cat drop off the shopping bag of groceries and drugs. The black panel van was still parked outside as though someone was home, but Jessamy had been watching the house for a few hours every day at different times and had assured Harley that the car hadn’t moved and she’d not seen any sign of life.
“I reckon the car is part of the operation,” she told Harley when reporting back to her. “We didn’t stay to watch last time, but I’m guessing when the buyer turns up to pick up the bag, he, or she, leaves the money in the car. I checked it, it’s unlocked, and I checked the house. It’s unlocked too, and there’s definitely nobody living there. I reckon the syndicate, although that might be overstating the tin-pot operation of these small-time doodlers, rent an out-of-the-way house under a false name as a drop-off point. That real estate lady told us whoever was supposed to be renting the house you got nabbed at was using a fake name and fake ID and had paid six months’ rent cash up front, so no way of tracing anyone. I bet this one is the same deal. Now let’s get a move on.”
They both got out of the car. A shiver of apprehension shuddered through Harley and she wondered if Jessamy was really as blasé as she seemed.
“Have you got everything?” Jessamy asked. “Camera? Phone? Alarm? Rope? Snacks? Hat? Sunglasses? Have we forgotten anything?”
“Sanity,” Harley muttered under her breath, taking her bag and following Jessamy to the black panel van.
“Okay, kid. Jump in,” Jessamy said, opening the door for her. “It’s perfect for us that they have curtains on all the side windows. Hop in and get into position. We’ve got time for a quick run-through. I’ll go back over to our car and you film. See what sort of view you get and I’ll see if there’s any chance you can be seen.”
So saying, she walked back to the car they’d arrived in, walked around it and up to the front door of the house and back, then back to the panel van, sticking her head in the driver’s door.
“So, how’d it go? I couldn’t see you at all.”
“Pretty good actually. I can see your car and the front door, so I should be able to get some pretty good footage. Look, this is the vid of you.”
“Sweet,” Jessamy nodded approvingly. She took a deep breath, the only sign Harley had seen of the possibility she was feeling at all apprehensive. “Now do you need a pee or anything before I go. You might have quite a wait. And I need one.”
“Yeah, can I?” Harley climbed back out of the panel van and they ran inside, reappearing a few moments later. “Okay. I’m ready,” Harley said. “And I think you should get going, just in case anyone happens to notice us here.” She hugged Jessamy. “Good luck, Jess, and thanks. If this works, boy am I going to owe you one.”
“Three things, girlfriend of mine: one, we won’t need luck; two, it will work; three, you will owe me nothing. I mean think how good this is going to look on my private investigator resume?”
Harley hurried back to the panel van, while Jessamy got into her car and drove out onto the road, heading for the house at which she and Harley had seen Cat drop off Gary.
Harley settled herself in the panel van. It was quite warm in the car, so she didn’t bother climbing into the back just yet. She would get a warning when it was getting close to time, so for the moment, she sat in the passenger seat with the window open. It was in the shade and hidden from the road, so she felt relatively safe and invisible, especially as she sat as low in her seat as possible.
She’d been waiting
for about twenty minutes when her phone vibrated and lit up. She’d turned the sound off as a precaution and as she was messing about on it anyway, she didn’t miss the call. It was Jessamy.
“Okay, I’m in place. What’s happening at your end?” she said as soon as Harley answered.
“Nothing’s happened here. What’s next?”
“I sent Cat a message,” Jessamy began but Harley interrupted.
“Was that a good idea? I mean what if he accidentally sees it or something?”
“Stop panicking. Cat and I worked out a code. My message said: The car you were inquiring about is available for viewing. If you’re still interested, let me know. That tells her I’m in place and will see her when she arrives, and to let me know if all is going according to The Plan at her end. If he doesn’t turn up at the usual time, she’ll call me and let me know. If I don’t hear from her, she’ll text me from the shopping centre when he’s gone in to buy his groceries saying: Still interested. I’ll come by later this morning. They should be here about twenty minutes after that. Then I guess they’ll be here a few minutes and, so long as Gazza doesn’t do anything more stupid than even I give him credit for, we’ll be heading over to you. I’ll let you know when we’re on our way. Okay?”
“Okay, but…” But Jessamy had rung off, and Harley could do nothing but nervously wait running over in her mind all the possible catastrophic outcomes that could result from their escapade, the one on which Arian had strictly forbidden her from embarking. But she had no choice. It was all very well for him to talk about lodging an appeal if she wound up in prison, but she would be the one imprisoned for a crime she didn’t commit, well, that she didn’t intentionally commit, and that must count for something. She didn’t want to go to prison at all. It wasn’t really like going on vacation or to a camp for a short stay. She didn’t want to go for even one night, and if Jessamy was the only person offering to help her avoid that she would do whatever her friend said. Arian couldn’t possibly be angry with her when he discovered she’d fixed up the mess she was in and he didn’t have to worry about doing anything. He was bound to be incredibly impressed. Wasn’t he? To stop her mind from churning over possible disasters, she brought up a game and was soon so engrossed that when, sometime later, her phone rang, she nearly dropped it.
