by Maren Smith
Jamie arched back against him, shouting, “Please!”
Travis pushed her from his lap and bent her over the foot of the bed instead. Holding her wrists captive in his, he slid into her from behind.
“Come,” he growled in her ear, sinking so deep inside her that at first Jamie couldn’t breathe. His rhythm was vigorous. His hips pounded hard against her raw and wounded flanks, and his earlier words were suddenly proved very prophetic.
“Come,” he commanded, and the spring inside her snapped violently. Jamie screamed her pleasure into the bedding as Travis conquered her body and soul.
Later, in the aftermath and in his arms, she wept.
Chapter 8
“I don’t know why I did that.” Jamie snuggled into his arm. She wiped at her tear-streaked face with the back of her hand. “You’re going to think you’ve married a crazy woman.”
Eyes closed, chin resting on top of her head, Travis smiled. “I love crazy women. They’re very responsive.”
They lay spooned together across the foot of the bed, arms and legs still entwined, her hot bottom pressed comfortably right up to his groin. He still cupped her sex in his hand, and every so often as he felt her belly clench under a latent thrill of pleasure—the after effects of so powerful an orgasm shivering through her—he gently squeezed to make her moan, arch and rub back against him.
“It’s never been like that before,” Jamie said, burrowing into his embrace.
He kissed the side of her neck. “It’s all right, sweetheart. So long as you don’t burst into sobs every time I take you to bed, I think my ego can handle giving you orgasms hard enough to reduce you to tears.”
She giggled, then sighed and wiped her eyes again. “I feel like a wrung-out rag.”
He raised his head to look at her. “I know that’s the expression, but how about a wrung-out silk handkerchief? I don’t like you referring to yourself as a rag.”
“Can I say ‘rode hard and put away wet’?”
“Mm.” He lay back down again. “An expression like that just begs for the crop. I suppose I’ll have to get one.”
“Ooo! I could be a cowgirl. I’ll meet you at the door some day in a hat and a pair of leather chaps. I could get a couple of sheriff’s star pasties and put them in strategic places.”
“Remind me to call ahead if I plan to bring a client home with me.”
“I could learn how to use a lasso. I’ll rope you in the living room and tie you to the couch.”
“I don’t recommend it.”
She turned her head to look at him over her shoulder. Her eyes twinkled mischievously. “I could have my wicked way with you.”
“And the minute I got loose, you’d be a cowgirl with a very raw and well-hided tail.”
“Guess I’ll just have to make sure you never get loose.”
“And I guess I’ll just have to do some hiding in advance.” Jamie giggled when Travis pushed up onto his knees, but her struggles to get out of his reach were half-hearted at best. He caught her under his arm, forcing her head to the mattress as he lifted her hips into the air, her elevated bottom now a very spankable target despite her squeals and attempts to roll over.
“All right! All right!” she laughed. “No ropes, I promise.”
“Good to hear.” He flipped up the back of her little maid’s skirt to get it out of his way. “But just to make sure…”
Her bottom was still lobster red and she gasped when his hand came cracking down across the wobbly summits. He only managed to land three firm swats before she snapped a hand back, palm up to ward him off.
Travis paused with his hand raised in the air. “Did I say you could put your hand back?”
“No. Ooh!” Her hand flipped over and began to rub at the fiery sting. “I was just kidding about the lasso.”
“And I was going to give you a ‘just kidding’ spanking. But unless you move your hand, and I do mean right now, you are going to end up with a very real spanking for disobedience.”
Jamie reluctantly moved her hand.
“Instead of five swats, now you’re going to receive ten. And because you put your hand back, I’m going to start over again.” He lay his hand flat upon the lowest curve of her bottom, one finger overlapping onto the top of her thigh. “Relax your bottom.”
Grabbing fistfuls of blanket in both hands, Jamie buried her face in the bedding. He could feel her body struggling to obey and he waited patiently until his blushing target grew slack and round.
“One,” Travis said, and his hand smacked soundly down upon her right cheek.
“Ouch!” Jamie kicked the mattress.
“Settle down,” he said mildly.
Her hand started to dart back again, but he saw her catch herself and quickly grab the blankets again.
Travis smiled as he rubbed the place he’d just spanked, feeling the heat and enjoying the sight of her minute wiggles under his touch. Not wanting to give the sting too much time to fade, he raised his hand again. “Two.”
Jamie hunched her back, her bottom tensing a bare second before he struck her left side. “Oww-wich!”
She drummed her feet on the mattress, but settled down fairly quickly when he warned, “Jamie…”
She groaned. “I’m sorry.”
“Relax your bottom,” he told her again.
“Ooh,” she whimpered, but grudgingly obeyed.
“Three,” he said cheerfully, raising his hand high.
But three never fell. Instead, Travis turned his head towards the bedroom door. He sniffed. “Jamie, darling. Do you smell something burning?”
***
The lasagna was reduced to a charred lump, the fire alarm was frantically beeping, and the kitchen was full of smoke by the time they got downstairs. But Travis didn’t seem to care. He simply turned off the oven and opened all the windows. Arming himself with two pot holders, he headed for the stove.
“Ready?” he asked.
Jamie took up an unspoken position by the sliding glass door as he dropped the oven door. A billow of black smoke enveloped him as he pulled out the blackened remains of their dinner. He held the pan at arms’ length, jogging around the counter, a dark cloud engulfing and trailing behind him the entire way.
Jamie opened the door and screen, coughing and waving the smoke outside as Travis set the pan on the far edge of the deck. She closed the screen after he came back in and, side by side, they watched it continue to burn. It was several minutes before the smoke cleared enough to quiet the beeping alarm.
“Well,” Travis said as he removed the pot holders and braced his hands on his lean hips. “That should teach her, don’t you think?”
Jamie blinked twice. “Teach who?”
“Lucy.” He gestured to their smoking supper. “Serves her right for leaving us to fend for ourselves.”
“What are we going to do for dinner?” Jamie said softly. “I only bought one package of lasagna.”
Travis shrugged with his eyebrows. “Since you made the first attempt, I suppose it’s only right that I undertake the second.”
“You’re going to cook for me?” Jamie asked with surprise.
“A man cannot survive on restaurants and part-time housekeepers alone. And you needn’t look so surprised. I did prepare your eggs for breakfast the other day, didn’t I?” He turned and headed for the kitchen.
“What are you going to make?”
“Eggs. I am a one-trick pony, unfortunately. But,” he said as he rounded the gourmet island, “if one has to pick a single substance by which to sustain one’s self indefinitely upon, one is hard pressed to do worse than eggs. An admirable food source, really. I love their shape, their simplicity. Their pliant acceptance of fate in the face of scrambling. I don’t suppose I could interest you in a slice of hot bread, lightly browned on both sides and smothered in butter?”
“Um, sure.” Amused, Jamie followed him as far as the kitchen bar. “I like toast.”
Travis delved beneath the cupboard after
a black, four-slotted toaster. “I am very proud of myself, actually. For a while there, the machine almost had me beat. But I rallied, and I overcame. Disconnect the smoke-alarm, if you please.” At a look from her, he confessed, “Toast is a fickle mistress, and I am a man without culinary talent.”
Laughing and shaking her head, Jamie pulled a chair under the alarm and then carefully climbed up to pop the cover and remove the battery.
“Now,” Travis said, tying on a cooking apron and hunting for a frying pan. “How do you want your eggs? Scrambled, or broken up in the bottom of the pan?”
“Oh well, if we’re going to go gourmet…”
“Naughty young maids who get sarcastic with their employers deserve to get their little bottoms warmed.”
Jamie snorted. “That excludes me then, since I’ve got a huge, mammoth—” She snapped her mouth shut, but it was already too late.
Half in the refrigerator, Travis stood up. He set the package of eggs down on the counter, then closed the door.
“I-I didn’t mean that,” Jamie stammered.
Selecting a wooden spatula from an assortment in the crockery pot on the counter, Travis turned around. His mouth was a tight, disapproving line in a face that was otherwise resigned.
“No-o-oo!” she wailed when he started towards her. She covered her bottom with both hands, but didn’t try to run. “You already spanked me! You spanked me twice!”
He took her arm, sitting down in the chair she’d dragged beneath the smoke-alarm. “I will spank you as many times as it takes to get the message across.”
“But I didn’t mean it!” she cried as he pulled her over his lap. “I swear! It just slipped out! Please don’t! Oh no, Travis, no, no, no!”
He bared her bottom for the third time that evening. Only now he wasn’t playing and that made a big difference in her behavior. Her right hand snapped back the instant he raised her skirt.
“It was an accident!” Jamie wailed. “I’m sorry! Please don’t spank me, Travis! I’m sorry!”
When he captured her wrist, she tried to roll off his lap and tuck her rosy bottom out of reach, but he put a stop to that as well. Gripping her wrist firmly in hand, he wrapped his arm around her hips to pin her into place. “Sorry you said it, or sorry because you’re over my knee for real this time?”
She began to cry.
“That’s what I thought.”
Jamie kicked her feet back, trying to cover her vulnerable backside, and he ended up having to scissor her legs between his to keep them down. A blushing pink hue all over and a shade or two darker across the chubby, cringing base, hers was a bottom already tender to the touch. But discipline wasn’t meant to be gentle and Travis spared her absolutely nothing. Every smack of the spatula had Jamie scraping the linoleum with her toes and wailing apologies. She grabbed his pants with her free hand and, though she no longer fought against him, each crack had her arching her back, writhing and twisting her hips in response to the hurt he was inflicting.
Travis stopped at twenty, but that was more than enough to leave Jamie sobbing raggedly. When he let her go, she slid to her knees on the floor, bowing over to press her forehead against his thigh. She caught hold of her sizzling bottom in both hands, squeezing and rubbing to soothe away the painful fire.
“It’s all right.” Travis lay his hand on her back, for a moment afraid that he’d done too much. Then Jamie raised her tear-streaked face, and in the next instant, launched herself up into his arms, sobbing as she scrambled to get on his lap. As though she wanted to crawl into his clothes with him. Into his skin. Unable to get close enough.
Travis hugged her tight and hard, all of her, for she’d drawn her knees up to her chest and curled into a ball against his chest. “I will not allow anyone to harm you, Jamie. Not even yourself. Do I make myself clear?”
“I’m sorry,” she wept against his neck. “Don’t be mad. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Dinner could wait.
Travis popped two buttons off her costume in his haste to get it off her, but they were soon skin to skin and heart to heart. She wrapped her arms and legs around him, holding him as close as he could come even as he slid himself back inside her.
I love you, balked in his throat.
“You’re mine,” he told her as he loved her. He closed his eyes and hoped that she knew what he really meant to say by the way he’d said it.
***
“Momma’s gonna be a Geisha girl,” Jamie told Megan as she packed one of Travis’s European leather suitcases for a week-long stay in Japan. She had one evening gown, two nice day dresses and an assortment of shirts and pants. No jeans. Under pain of extreme punishment, Travis has told her as he’d cupped her sore bottom in both hands and lifted her up to plant a single kiss upon the tip of her nose. She had melted against him. Funny how he could make her do that so easily.
“What about this?” Travis said, and Jamie turned around as he came out of Megan’s closet with an armful of baby clothes. “I personally like the white one.” He held up a tiny, lacy white dress. “Or we could go with the yellow flower-print or the one with the pink bows?”
He lay all three on the changing table while Jamie winced expressively.
“Let’s avoid white dresses,” she hedged.
“Why?”
“Because putting Megan in white pretty much guarantees that she’ll have an upset stomach. Believe me, nothing stains faster than white.”
“Hm.” Travis contemplated the baby between them. Draping the white dress over his arm, he held up a one-piece jumper instead. “Little yellow duckling suit?”
Jamie grinned as she took it from him. “Okay, that gives her nine outfits, two extra blankets, a jacket and a coat, five sleepers, a package of diapers, a bag of diaper changing accessories, breast pump, binkies and some toys. She now has more luggage than either of us combined.”
“No souvenirs for you, young lady,” Travis told her sternly, and Megan reacted to his voice with a big grin. When she held out her hands, he scooped her into his arms. He made an animalistic noise and Megan laughed as he nibbled on the bare patch of her tummy below her shirt and above her diaper.
“Oh, thank you,” Jamie commented mildly. “Thank you very much. She’s supposed to be winding down for a nap.”
Travis lowered her to a more sedate level in his arms. “Sorry.”
“You will be when she cries all the way to Japan.”
“A little Dramamine and a bottle ought to—” He stopped mid-sentence when she spun around to look at him. “What? What did I say?”
“We aren’t going to drug her, Travis!”
“I meant me. A little Dramamine and a bottle, preferably scotch, and Megan can cry all she wants to. I’ll be sound asleep and won’t hear a bit of it. It would be cheaper than buying earplugs for everyone on the plane.”
“It would be even cheaper just to let Megan take her nap,” she said dryly. “Why don’t you quit with the bright ideas. You should be conserving your strength, anyway. You’re going to need it to lug all these suitcases to and from the baggage claim.” Jamie grinned at Megan, reaching out to take the baby’s small hand. “Isn’t that right, Megan? Daddy needs his strength, doesn’t h—”
Jamie’s smile vanished and her mouth snapped shut so fast her teeth clacked together. They looked at each other in stunned silence.
The first to recover, Travis quickly said, “It’s all right, Jamie. I don’t—Jamie, wait!”
She grabbed Megan out of his arms and fled into the bathroom, shutting and locking the door behind her.
“Jamie!” The door rattled as Travis tried the handle, then knocked.
Covering her mouth with her hand, Jamie backed away from it. How stupid! How could she have made such a slip! And in front of Travis!
It’s not real, she told herself. No matter how much she wanted it to be. Travis certainly didn’t. What had he said but that he didn’t want a woman who would cling onto him when their two years was over. She had to re
member that and not make things uncomfortable for either of them.
Her eyes teared, and she sat down hard on the edge of the tub. She hugged Megan closely, while on the other side of the door, Travis’s voice changed from concern to irritation.
“Jamie May Miracle Dorsett!” he boomed like thunder. “Nobody locks me out of a room in my own house! Especially not you, and especially not because you are upset! Open. This. Door!”
“I’ll be out in a minute,” she called, her voice trembling and choked as she struggled to keep from crying. “Please just give me a minute.”
“No, you are going to come out right now.” Travis rattled the door again.
She wasn’t being fair to him, and she knew it. But she also knew neither of them were being very fair to Megan. It was all right, she supposed, for right now. But what about two years from now? How many more ‘Daddy’ slips would it take before Megan took to thinking of Travis that way?
Jamie turned partway around on the edge of the tub, putting her back to the door. She rocked Megan, who started every time the door rattled in its frame. “God damn it! Go away, Travis! Just leave me alone!”
There was a reverberating ‘WHUMP!’ that shuddered the entire bathroom when Travis kicked the door once, then twice. The sound startled Megan, who began to wail. Jamie stood up as he kicked a third time and the door crashed open to the accompanying crack of splintering wood. It hit the opposite wall so hard that the brass handle lodged in the plaster.
Glaring and breathing hard, more angry than exerted, Travis filled the broken threshold. In a low growl, he said, “I will break down every door you lock between us.”
His amber eyes flashed angrily, smoldering as he lowered his head, his stare seeming to drill her into the bathroom floor until her legs wobbled. Jamie hugged Megan tightly, rubbing the baby’s back in an effort to calm her as well as to hide her own badly trembling hands.
