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Since Father had died, I had lived in such a guarded state around Anthony. Always having to be wary of myself and my own reactions toward him. Not wanting to let too much emotion or reaction show around him while I squashed down everything I felt for him and stuffed it into the hidden, cobwebbed corners of myself, only to be examined on the darkest of nights when no one would be the wiser.
The way our relationship was developing, though, let me feel so free. He was moving slowly enough that I didn’t feel alarmed, and every single thing he did made my body sing… even the spankings, although I wouldn’t admit that even under the pain of the worst kind of torture.
But feeling freer meant that I was that much more likely to get into trouble, such as repeated use of the f-word while describing how ridiculous it was that three-hundred-pound men who were paid exorbitant amounts of money to do something as simple as run up and down a field and catch a pigskin ball still managed to drop it on occasion.
I had seen him coming, with that thundercloud face of his, and had backed away from him, but even in his huge kitchen, there was nowhere to go to avoid him. He was so big, he filled my field of vision when he was still a distance away from me, and from the way he was stalking toward me, his eyes never dropping from mine, I knew that unlike the player on the TV, there would be no fumble once this man got a hold of me.
Instead, he’d tipped me forward, over his left arm, and brought his right hand down onto my jean-covered butt, very sharply ten times in a row. The strength of each swat rocked my whole body, lifting me onto my tiptoes. And even though it looked like I should have been able to get away from him fairly easily, there was nothing doing. I wasn’t going anywhere that he didn’t want me to go.
“I didn’t realize you possessed the vocabulary of a sailor, my dear. But this is fair warning. If I ever hear a diatribe like that come out of your beautiful mouth again, you won’t be able to sit down for a week.” He punctuated nearly every word with another painful meeting of palm to rear. “Do I make myself perfectly clear?”
In my heart, I protested the blatant suppression of my right to free speech. It was supposed to be an inalienable right, dammit, and here he was, ‘alienating’ it all over my ass. I quickly decided, however, that I’d rather end this spanking as soon as possible. I was already on the verge of crying, and he didn’t seem to be anywhere close to finishing.
In fact, because I hesitated before acquiescing, he got in another ten or so swats. “Apparently, I haven’t—”
“Yes, yes, yes, you’ve made yourself clear!”
I was already trying to wiggle out of his hold, but he clearly didn’t want to let me go. “That didn’t sound very contrite to me.”
If he didn’t cut it out, he was going to hear another string of words he didn’t want to, and then I would be in even worse hot water. In a deliberately syrupy tone, I craned my head back and batted my eyelashes in his direction. “Golly gee whiz, Anthony. I think you’re coming through loud and clear. I’ll never let another cuss word pass my lips, I promise!” I even had the audacity to reach over and cross my heart, or as close to my heart as I could get with his big arm in the way.
My blatant insincerity had him smiling. He’d turned me loose, and I’d scooted as far away from him as I physically could without stepping outside the house.
Now the view of the chintz upholstery on the sofa was a bit too up close and personal for my tastes—and the future comfort of my butt. He had my pants and panties down in a split second, and I had to reflect that he was getting too darned good at that, too. That familiar, hard arm was across the small of my back, and an instant later, that first godawful explosion of searing pain ripped into my tender flesh.
“Stop it! What are you doing?” I didn’t want to be spanked. I was mad at him, and I wanted to stay mad. If he spanked me, I’d end up feeling submissive and apologizing to him and, as far as I was concerned, I had done nothing that warranted an apology.
But, after the first few swats, even though they weren’t the worst I’d had by now, the tears started to flow against my will. It wasn’t the spanking. It was his words.
“I know I make more money than you do. And I’m not going to apologize for it. But what I have has always been yours. Even when I was just a friend of the family, I would have given you anything you needed, but I know you would never have asked. If there’s anything that Dasha’s death brought home to me more so than anything else, it’s that life is to be enjoyed, and that’s what the money lets me—lets us—do. It’s nothing more than that, and I won’t let it become a bone of contention between us when all it is is a tool that can make our lives better. And I fully intend to enjoy every single day that we have together—whether we go out to a five-hundred-dollar dinner, or eat pizza in front of the TV. I like spending time with you, and I want us to pack as much into our time together as we can.”
