by Maren Smith
“Hold it right there.” Travis caught her arm, halting her in the hallway. “Look at me.”
She stared straight ahead at her bedroom door.
“Look at me, Jamie.” When she finally obeyed, there were stubbornly withheld tears glistening in her eyes.
“I’m very tired,” she whispered shakily. “I want to go to bed.”
He wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly. “I’m sorry you were hurt.”
She started to cry. Though her hands hung limp at her sides and she didn’t hold him back, she didn’t pull away from him, either. Travis found that an encouraging sign.
“Come here.” He started to pull her towards his end of the hall.
Jamie suddenly dug in her heels. “No! I may be feeling fragile, but I’m not so fragile that you can sweet talk me into your bed!”
“Make no mistake, woman. When I finally do take you to my bed, I doubt I’ll have enough self-restraint left for sweet talking. It’s much more likely that I’ll simply throw you down upon the pillows and ravish you like a warmonger. Now come on.”
She sniffed, but when he lightly tugged her arm, she meekly followed him. “Why are we going to your room then?”
“Because if I spank you in your room, your kicking and fussing might wake Megan.”
Not only did she dig her heels into the carpet, but Jamie grabbed one-handed for the banister that overlooked the stairs. She wailed, “I don’t want another spanking!”
“I know.” Travis stopped pulling and gave her a knowing look. “But you’ve earned one, you need one, and you’re going to get one.”
“But your spankings hurt!”
“You left Rachael’s party without a word to anyone. If she hadn’t seen you go, I’d probably be going room to room right now looking for you. Yes, this is going to hurt.”
“Nooo!” Jamie grabbed the banister with both hands.
“Sweetheart, if I have to throw you over my shoulder like a sack of flour, your backside will be blistered long before you leave my room.”
Instead of winning her obedience, she surprised him with instant petulance. “You should think twice before committing yourself to a job that huge. Hell, it’ll be a challenge just to get my wide-load butt through the damn door!”
His jaw dropped. He caught hold of her and, before it even registered what he was doing, Jamie let out a shriek as he abruptly bent her over the banister. His palm beat a rapid tattoo all over the upthrust curve of her heart-shaped bottom so beautifully revealed by the form-fitting dress. The sequins hurt his hand, but he took comfort in knowing they probably weren’t doing her backside a lot of good, either.
He lay two dozen hearty slaps to his vulnerable target, then yanked Jamie back up, spun her around to face him and, bracing a hand on the banister to either side of her, gave her his best quelling stare.
“Do not,” he growled, “take the words of that viper to heart.”
“Oh!” Jamie grabbed her bottom with both hands and the sequins of her gown rasped as she frantically tried to rub out the fire he’d built without hardly trying.
“Mine is the only opinion that should matter to you, and I find you very beautiful. Is that understood?”
She nodded, wide-eyed.
“Say it.”
In a show of ill-thought-out and childish rebellion, she muttered, “I find you very beautiful.”
The very small smile he indulged her with somehow made him look even more cross. “My spanking collection does include a medium-sized paddle. The wood has a natural, dark cherry-red stain to it, much the same color your bottom will be when I get through with it.”
“You find me very beautiful,” Jamie said contritely.
“You are seductive. Say it.”
“I’m seductive.”
“Appealing.”
“I’m appealing,” she repeated.
“I can barely keep my hands off you under the best of circumstances.” When Jamie opened her mouth, he said, “You don’t have to repeat that, but you do need to know it. I am very attracted to you, Jamie. If by some miracle we do make it through the next two years without consummating our marriage, it won’t be from a lack of desire. Do you believe that?”
Jamie nodded, and he leaned towards her, bringing his stern face even closer. Her eyes widened and she held her breath uncertainly.
“If I ever hear you refer to yourself as a ‘wide-load’ again,” he said darkly. “You will not sit down again—ever—for the rest of your life. Now,” his head tipped slightly to the right, “do you believe that?”
The tone of his voice froze her hands mid-rub. “Yes,” she squeaked.
“Good.” He released the banister and straightened. “Go into my room, find yourself a nice little corner, and put yourself in it. Dress up. Bottom bare. I will be there in exactly two minutes to engage you in a very thorough, very one-sided discussion on how you could better have dealt with tonight’s situation.”
Jamie looked dismayed. “But you’ve already spanked me.”
“That was for your self-degrading comment.” With the utmost solicitation, he asked, “Would you like an additional spanking for disobedience? Bear in mind, you still have one coming for having left the party without me. For how many days do you want to be sitting on pillows?”
Once more wide-eyed, Jamie stared up at him. “I don’t.”
“Then what should you be doing right now?”
Her shoulders drooped. Head down, rubbing her bottom the whole way, Jamie shuffled reluctantly into his bedroom.
She paused briefly in the open doorway, looked around, then sighed and trudged into the vacant corner between the dual walk-in closets and the master bath.
He watched as she fumbled under her gown to lower her panties to half-mast. Then, realizing that retaining her modesty would be impossible; she gathered the glittering folds of her dress and raised them to the tops of her thighs.
“Higher,” he called from the hallway.
She slowly bared the lower portion of her bottom, letting the rosy curves peek enticingly out at him from beneath the folds of her evening dress.
“Higher, Jamie,” he said again, and with a sigh, she hung her head and raised the back of her gown all the way to her waist.
“Now, all the way into the corner.”
Slowly, she bent forward and daintily pressed her nose to the crease where the two walls met. She heaved another forlorn sigh, then sniffled sadly, his red-headed siren, penitent in her pose, waiting for the heavy hand of fate to finally have done with her.
Half-sitting on the banister, Travis checked his watch to mark the time, then looked at his tender hand. His palm was flushed and tender, and would likely be sore tomorrow. But as far as he was concerned, the sight of her well-warmed bottom was more than worth a little discomfort.
When he stood up, her bottom clenched nervously and she tipped her head as she listened to him. Smiling and shaking his head, Travis unbuttoned his shirt cuff to roll his sleeve up over his muscular forearm and past his elbow.
After exactly two minutes, he walked into his bedroom to attend to his darling wife, waiting apprehensively in her chosen corner.
Chapter 6
Travis sat on the foot of his bed, a bare-bottomed Jamie straddling his lap. Her head was cushioned on his shoulder. He could feel her soft breath against his neck, and her underwear still dangled from her right ankle. She had one hand tucked beneath her chin in the most charming of fashions, having cried herself to sleep in his arms some time ago. Her eyes were red rimmed. So was her nose. There were tears drying on her face. She was beautiful.
And he was decided. He was keeping her.
She fit in his arms like she was made for him. Her legs were draped over his with her toes barely touching the carpet, and he could feel the hot little core of her burning through his pants and into his leg.
“You’re mine,” he said softly, stroking the gentle slope of her back, his fingers trailing all the way down to the curve of her h
ot bottom.
She made a soft whimpering sound when he cupped her there, but he knew she was still sound asleep and hadn’t heard him. The noise wasn’t an objection to his comment, but just leftover sobs and hiccups that hadn’t yet faded away.
He angled his head to kiss her forehead, then picked her up and carried her down the hall to her bedroom. It would have been so easy to keep her in his bed for the night. He would have loved the chance to hold her while he slept. To see her first thing in the morning, her hair mussed, her eyes and smile both sleepy as she looked at him. But even a knight in tarnished armor knew how to be chivalrous once in a while.
His tarnished armor was abruptly down-graded to rusty as he lay her in her bed and found himself engaged in a short but heated mental debate over what to do next. Leaving her to sleep in that sequined evening gown probably wasn’t the most comfortable thing he could do, but the very thought of undressing her made his mouth run dry, his pulse race, and his hands shake.
She was exhausted, he told himself sternly. She was also asleep. Only a man without morals would take advantage of a sleeping woman.
But it was a fifteen-hundred-dollar dress.
It looked stiff.
It was probably scratchy.
Maybe pokey even. And uncomfortable.
And it was also backless, so there would be no bra.
And did he mention it was a fifteen-hundred-dollar dress?
Oh, for heaven’s sake, here he was, a once married and now divorced man, acting like an adolescent boy trying to peek down his first blouse! How childish, he scolded himself.
Though hardly a playboy lover by any stretch of the imagination, neither had he spent his younger years as a monk. Admittedly, it had been a while, but he was pretty sure he could still provide an accurate description of the female anatomy. And thanks to Megan’s demanding feeding schedule, as well as Jamie’s own charming style of misbehavior, he could even give a fairly good description of what Jamie looked like.
Not to mention what she felt like, bent across his lap, kicking and wailing under the application of his strong palm.
Mm, what she tasted like. Passionate kisses exchanged in the car under the guise of practice.
“That’s it,” he muttered and did an abrupt about face. He headed out the door while he could still walk in relative comfort, but he got not more than two steps down the hall before he spun back around and returned to Jamie’s bedside.
He was being silly.
He gently stripped the evening gown from her uncooperative limbs and lay it across the back of a cushioned chair, tucked up to her mirrored dressing table. That was as far as his chivalrous side went. One look at those breasts with their pert, round tips stiffening in the open air, at the neatly trimmed proof of her natural red-headedness further on down her shapely torso, and at those black garters and the stockings that hadn’t needed to be removed to bare her for her spanking, and the black knight in him sprang right to the forefront.
He’d heard it said, if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. What a load of twaddle. Whoever said that had obviously never seen Jamie, or he’d have kept his mouth shut. She was a sensual feast just waiting to be devoured. Travis smiled; she was also snoring softly. Well, with everything else that he liked about her, he could even live with that.
He tucked the blanket in around her shoulders, and Jamie woke up enough to roll onto her stomach, hug her pillow closer, and sigh. Cold shower number two, coming right up. He clicked the light off and left the room.
As long as I’m here, he thought and ventured into Megan’s room as well. Like mother, like daughter, she was also sleeping on her stomach. And on her knees, he noticed, with her diapered bottom sticking up in the air and her thumb in her mouth, though she wasn’t sucking at the moment. Her red hair on the white sheets was a startling contrast. And Travis stroked the baby fine locks, lightly so as not to wake her, before tucking her kicked-off blanket back around her.
Yes, he was decided all right. He was keeping them both.
***
The next day, Travis joined the ranks of fatherdom everywhere. During his lunch break, he took Jamie and Megan to a photo gallery. Megan sat on Jamie’s lap, Jamie perched on his knee, and with him holding them both, when the photographer snapped the picture, they looked just like any other happy family smiling out of the gallery of frames that decorated the walls.
By the end of lunch, he had six photos in his wallet: four of Megan, one of mother and daughter, grinning cheek-to-cheek, and crowning the stack, the photo of the three of them together. It was the first time in his life that he’d ever carried a picture of anyone in his wallet. Well, other than his driver’s license, of course. He pulled it out from behind the plastic cover and studied the picture. Stiff posture. Formal smile. Expired renewal date.
Oh bother.
On the way back to his office, on a whim he stopped at Greta’s desk. He stuck his hand out, “Hello, my name is Travis Dorsett.”
Greta looked up from her computer, blinked at him once, then handed him his phone messages. “Your three o’clock pushed his meeting to three-thirty.”
“Fine, fine. Here, pretend you don’t know me for a minute.” He shifted the messages to his other hand and extended his arm again. “Hello, my name is Travis Dorsett. And you are?”
She gave him an odd look, then swiveled her office chair around and went back to her typing.
“You aren’t cooperating very well.”
“I don’t talk to strange men,” she said without turning around.
“Greta,” he warned.
“All right, all right. I hate it when you use that tone.” She shook his hand. “Hi ya, Travis. I’m Greta. Gosh, you’re a hunky-lookin’ stud of a man. Why don’t you buy me a drink, I’ll play footsie with you under the table, and we’ll see where this ends up?” She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively.
His hand flopped to his side as he glared. “You’re a married woman.”
“Old What’s-His-Name never has to know.”
“You’re also nine months pregnant.”
“More like twelve,” she muttered dryly.
“I refuse to be a contributor to fetal alcohol syndrome, however I might consider buying you flowers, when and if you ever decide to having this child before it’s time for him to graduate high school.”
“Maybe if I knew what you wanted me to say,” Greta suggested, “this would go faster.”
“Ask me if I have children.”
Bracing her elbow on the desk, cupping her chin in her palm, she dutifully asked, “Do you have children, Mister Travis Dorset, whom I’ve never before met in my life?”
“Why, yes I do.” He flipped open his wallet to show her the new photos. “A beautiful little girl, in fact.”
Greta looked obligingly, then cast a smile up at him. “You are utterly besotted, aren’t you?”
“Don’t be silly.” He snapped his wallet shut. “She’s barely six months. That would be robbing the cradle, for which grown men have been known to go to jail.”
“Wrong red head, and you know it.”
“No one uses words like ‘besotted’ anymore.”
“You still hear ‘head over heels’ from time to time. Or how about ‘useless in love’?”
“How about unemployed?” Travis countered. “Don’t bait me, woman. I eat people like you for breakfast.”
“You can talk as ogreish as you like, but you’re a pastry and we all know it.”
He frowned. “I am not a pastry.”
“A crusty exterior with a warm, gooey, cream puff hiding inside.”
“You’re one word away from cream-puffing yourself out of a Christmas bonus.”
“So sayeth the éclair.”
There was just no talking to some people. Travis went back into his office and spent the rest of the afternoon dictating memos in revenge.
And still, for about two days his life was as good as the photos in his wallet suggested. It was both strange and fas
cinating to go home from work, not to an empty house and the reheat-able dinner left by his rarely seen housekeeper, Lucy, but to Jamie and Megan, his instant Shake-N-Bake family, even if only still a Let’s-Pretend one. Having them in his life made Travis about the happiest man—if not in the world—well then certainly in all of the Greater Seattle area.
The Seattle Times posted an announcement of their marriage in the Social pages. He received calls and cards from a number of well-wishing business associates, and an enormous fruit basket from Rachael. Unfortunately, it was also about then that he lost his status as the only man in the world to suddenly decide he couldn’t live without Jamie.
Travis came home from work on Monday, day six of their marriage, to find a strange car parked in the driveway and leaking oil on his asphalt.
Ben took one look and said, “Whoever it is, they’re going to clean that up before they leave.”
Travis’s smile lasted only halfway up the porch, which was when he heard Megan crying. Although perhaps screaming might have been a more accurate description. At the top of her lungs, no less. He opened the door to hear Jamie, in the living room, saying, “I told you, she doesn’t like strangers. Here, let me have her back—”
“I’m not a stranger,” claimed the blonde man before her. He held Megan to his shoulder, twisting his torso away from Jamie’s outstretched hands as he said, “I’m her father. She can get used to me.”
Travis shut the door, perhaps a little harder than he meant to, and they both turned around to look at him. Megan was the only one who didn’t fall immediately silent, though she did stretch out her arms for him as he slowly crossed into the living room.
‘Help’ was all over Jamie’s face when he looked at her, but then she lowered her eyes and flopped down to sit on the end of the sofa with her hands in her lap.
“This him?” the blonde man asked her.
Jamie didn’t answer him, but instead looked up at Travis apologetically and said, “This is Dale.”
“Hi,” Dale said and stuck out his hand in greeting.
The Business Man’s Code was every bit as rigid and uncompromising as the Schoolboy’s Code. Although entirely acceptable to wage fearsome battle with a man, to the death if need be, rules of the Boardroom dictated manners first.
