The words were engraved across the dark pine surface in clean letters. The wood caught the morning light and gleamed with it.
My mouth went dry.
“I want you to think very carefully,” he said, “about what you were feeling when you picked up my phone, and why you let it get the better of you.”
“I know why,” I said, and the admission cost me something. “Because I’m still not—” I stopped. Tried again. “I’m not always good at trusting that something good is actually mine.”
He was quiet for a moment.
“I know,” he said, and the gentleness in his voice was more devastating than any scolding. “You’re going to keep learning that it is.” He looked at me with those dark eyes that had alwaysseen straight through every wall I’d ever built. “And I’m going to keep helping you learn it. Aren’t I?”
“Yes, Daddy,” I whispered.
“Get up on your hands and knees, little girl. Right now.”
I pushed the covers back. The morning air was cool on my skin. I moved to the center of the bed and lowered myself onto my hands and knees, and even with my bottom already sore from the night before, the position felt right in a way I had stopped trying to rationalize. He moved to the foot of the bed, and I heard the quiet sound of him testing the weight of the paddle in his hand.
“You trust me,” he said.
“I trust you,” I answered immediately.
“Then the next time a screen lights up on my phone,” he said, his voice almost conversational, “you’re going to remind yourself of that.”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“And the next time your imagination runs ahead of your good sense?—”
“I’ll come to you,” I said. “I’ll ask.”
“Good girl.” He rested the flat of the paddle against my bottom and I stilled. “Hold on to the pillow.”
I reached forward and gripped the pillow with both hands.
The directive made me nervous.
That meant this was going to hurt.
Really hurt…
The first stroke landed and I gasped. The paddle had a quality of impact entirely its own, spreading the heat across a wider surface than his hand, but concentrating it in a way that sank deeper and settled much faster. It was different from his palm and from the belt. It was very specifically, unmistakably itself.
He gave me a moment. Then the second landed.
“You don’t snoop, little girl,” he said.
Then the third. I cried out softly.
“You don’t assume the worst of me.”
Fourth. My fingers tightened on the pillow.
“And when something frightens you,” he continued, his voice steady in contrast to every nerve ending in my bottom, “you bring it to me. You don’t go looking for proof of something that doesn’t exist.”
“Yes, Dadddddyyyy…” My voice was already fraying at the edges.
He paddled me with hard with unhurried intent. It wasn’t rapid. It definitely wasn’t merciful either, each stroke giving enough time for the sting to bloom and peak before the next arrived. He worked from the center of my bottom outward, from the crowns of my cheeks down to the soft under-curve that met my thighs, and by the time he had covered the full territory once, I was gripping the pillow hard enough that my knuckles ached and my breathing was coming in short, quick little pulls through my nose.
“Please,” I said.
