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“Who are you and what have you done with Raychel?” he asked with a chuckle. “I thought I was going to have to threaten to spank your ass to get you to agree to come out with me on occasion.”
My throbbing heart stopped at the word ‘spank.’ He was kidding obviously, but still the power that single word had almost knocked the wind out of me. It was something I didn’t dwell on… except very late at night, when I was nearly asleep, when thoughts of being spanked by Anthony would creep into my mind. Thoughts of being taken over his lap and swatted, my bottom becoming cherry red while I kicked and cried, then being turned over onto my back so that he could love the hurt away.
Something was wrong with me. Seriously wrong with me.
“I don’t think so,” I replied in what I hoped was a righteously indignant tone.
“Well, you’d best mind your p’s and q’s around me. I’ve done it once, and I’ll do it again.” He chuckled after he uttered the words so casually as if what he said was so ordinary and an everyday occurrence. Like it had been completely normal when he’d spanked me all those years ago.
“I know,” I blurted without thinking. What was coming over me? I didn’t want to talk about that spanking! Not with anyone. It was my dark secret that I fantasized about. Not discussed! I needed to get off this phone, or I was going to end up saying something I would regret.
“You deserved that spanking. I knew Dasha wasn’t going to do it, and someone sure as hell needed to.” He paused for longer than I liked. “But maybe it wasn’t my place. I didn’t think that through when it happened. I just acted out on instinct.” He chuckled again. “Did it make you mad? We’ve never discussed this. It happened and then we just moved on.”
“It didn’t make me mad,” I said softly. God, if he only knew what it really did to me.
“Did you ever tell your dad?” he asked.
“No. Did you?”
“No.” He paused, and the awkward feeling in the pit of my belly grew. “Why not?”
“I don’t know… embarrassed, I guess. Or that he would get even angrier that I went to you in hopes you would help me cover it up.”
“You never came to me expecting me to lie for you again after that,” he said.
I huffed. “No. I learned my lesson that day.”
He laughed. “Good. Is that why you’re so shy around me?”
I was glad he couldn’t see how I was shifting nervously in my chair. He was getting uncomfortably close to the truth. “No—I’m shy of everyone and everything. Haven’t you noticed?”
“I have. I had hoped you’d come to feel safer around me, but that never happened.” There was a long pause on the other end. “Is it because you were worried I would spank you again?”
Okay. That was enough of that. “So,” I said abruptly, “you’re going to pick me up at seven, right?”
He growled, and I thought it was one of the sexiest things I’d ever heard. “I’ll let you go this time—but I intend to get back to this discussion, Raychel Polov. And next time I won’t let you off the hook so easily.”
I shivered. The impulse to say “Yes, sir” was so strong in me, I had to bite my tongue. “Okay. Well, then, I’ll see you tomorrow night.”
“I’ll be there. And if you’re not, Raychel, I’ll find you,” he warned, a bit of a rumble in the deep timbre of his voice.
“I’ll be here. I’ll be here.”
I hung up the phone and sat in my chair for the longest while, replaying what had just happened over and over in my mind, turning it this way and that, trying to see if there was any way to erase what I’d already said, and what he’d said back to me.
The truth about my feelings for Anthony needed to be even more buried than they had been for so many years. He could not find out anything about how much I desired him, how I’d wanted to claim him as mine the moment I’d seen him. I needed to just continue to be Mousy Raychel—my nickname from high school. I didn’t know how I was going to accomplish this. He seemed determined to drag me out of my safe, cozy little shell, and I was going to have to resist with everything I had.
Unfortunately, part of everything I had was a bunch of mutinying body parts that wanted to spend as much time with Anthony as they could, saving up memories for future fantasies.
I padded off to bed, huddling under the down-filled comforter that had been a Christmas present from Anthony two years ago, letting my mind wander into the comfortable fantasy I’d lived on for so long: of being together with Anthony. A fantasy of being in our house, painting in my own studio and greeting him when he came home after a hard day of work. Being swept up into those big arms. He had on occasion embraced me, and I had filed each of those times away, remembering every nuance of it as I was held against his big body as he hugged me tightly. Anthony had always treated me as someone special, just because of who I was to Dasha. His normal guard was down with the family, and he never hesitated to hug me hello or goodbye.
