Embraced (9 page)

The last sentence was hurtful, he knew, but he was angry at her irresponsibility.

Barrett expected a fresh wave of sobs and pleas for leniency, as he would have gotten from Mandy, not that either would ever or had ever deterred him from spanking her. Instead, Meg pulled away from him, saying in a brave little voice, “I’m ready for my spanking. What do I do?”

He hid his surprise carefully, having forgotten that Mandy had told him that she’d never been spanked before in her life. It was past time, and he was just the man to do it, and do it well. The unassuming chair resumed its familiar station in the middle of the room, as Meg watched and occasionally sniffled. Barrett sat, then commanded, “Come here.”

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Carolyn Faulkner

She felt as if she was walking her last mile, since she really had no idea what to expect from a spanking, much less a spanking from him, each step was another measure into the surreal world where her mistakes were taken out on her bottom by a firm, caring, loving man who was close to twice her size. It was almost as if, with this spanking, there was no going back. He would always be there, ready to apply his own brand of justice to her butt whenever she needed it. When she finally stood in front of him, he cleared his throat, then reached for the top button of her jeans, pulling them and her panties down to just above her knees in one swipe. It was too bad that the first time he saw her intimately was when he was going to paddle her bottom, but he tried not to think of that as he lay her gently over his lap. Meg wasn’t much bigger than Mandy, and he was able to position her much the same, holding her further wrist against the small of her back. This made it harder for her to wiggle away, and, he was just discovering, made her arch her back and thrust her bottom out brazenly, as if reaching for the smack of his hand.

She could feel him lay his palm over her butt, and realized what Mandy had known for quite some time – he had very large hands that could cover the entire of a defenseless girl’s bottom in one stroke. Meg bit her lip before the spanking even began. This was not going to be a picnic.

“I’m sorry to have to do this, Sweetheart, but this was very serious transgression, and if a blistered fanny is what it takes for you to be a more responsible, then so be it. It’s going to hurt, and for a first time it’s going to hurt
bad.
I won’t make you count,
this
time
.”

She didn’t have time to mull over his “this time” addendum before that first spank fell, and after that it was all over for her.

Nothing in her life had prepared her for the devastating

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combination of being totally vulnerable, bare bottomed, and held in place by a giant hulk of a man who was applying the flat of his hand to her ass cheeks in a very methodical manner and with all of his considerable strength. It was downright unbearable from the beginning. Meg had never thought anything could hurt so much as the unrelenting *smack
*
smack*smack* of flesh to flesh. He concentrated on her butt, but also lay many resounding spanks to the back of her thighs. Nothing stopped him, not pleas for mercy, not the incessant scissor kicking of her legs, not copious tears.

Her humiliation hit its peak when he began to lecture her as he paddled. “Do you realize,” he accented each word with a slap,

“that you put everyone on this ranch at risk?”

*spank*slap*smack*swat* “All the people, all the animals, everyone and everything? Butch, Mandy, me, everyone. Just because you couldn’t take the time or have the presence of mind to make sure that you’d turned those two burners off before you ran out into the yard to find out who got hurt.” If anything, the lecturing made him increase his tempo. Her bottom was a fiery red well before he was done with her.

*Smack*swat*slap*whap*

Would it never end? Meagan had not one thought in her head except pain. She had been entirely unprepared for how much a spanking actually hurt. And, for a control-freak, there was the added bonus that she knew there was literally nothing she could do to make him even slow down, short of dying. She had to lay there and take it, balling like a six-year-old, crying, screaming, whining, begging. All to no avail. He was as impenetrable as a rock. No amount of promises of better behavior, moans, or cries had any effect on him.

Barrett paddled her beautiful bottom until it was an unbecoming shade of plum red when he finally stopped. Meagan

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Carolyn Faulkner

had gotten to that point where she had expelled all her breath in one long cry, and hadn’t gulped it back in yet. Her mouth was wide-open just inches above the pretty flowered carpet, which was now damped by a steady stream of her salty tears. When she would have struggled up, he held her in place. With Mandy, there was no need to assert his control, his dominance. She grew up looking to him for guidance, leadership, and to set rules and enforce them as to her behavior.

With Meg, things were different. Meg was not his little sister who worshipped the ground he walked on because he made the sun rise and set every morning using a switch in this very room.

Meg would probably always struggle with the idea of him spanking her and her lack of control about that, and he felt she needed to spend a little time bare, swollen, bottom up over his lap, just to absorb the vulnerability of her position and the implications of it.

This may have been the first time she was ever held accountable for her actions, but this was going to be far from the last if he had anything to say about it. And he did intend to have
everything
to say about it.

After several minutes, he helped her up. Meg jerked away from him, refusing his assistance in righting her clothes as she drew in long, ragged breaths. He heard her hiss in pain as she brought her jeans up and over her butt cheeks, and noticed that she deliberately left them unzipped and unsnapped. She faced him, saying in a voice husky from crying, “Is there anything else?”

As usual, she managed to do the unexpected. “Uh, no. I usually hold Mandy a while afterwards and comfort her, tell her I love her, then she goes to bed.”

Instead of taking that veiled invitation to sob in his arms, Meg turned and walked stiffly to the door. More than anything in his life, Barrett wanted desperately to cuddle her, tell her

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everything was all right, she was forgiven. He wanted to carry her to his room and just hold her on his big bed, let her cry herself out and kiss the tears from her cheeks. “Meg – “ She stopped him in his tracks with an absolutely devastated look as she closed the door behind her with a terrible, final click.

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Carolyn Faulkner

lthough it went against everything he wanted to do, Barrett let her go out the door to her lonely room, Athinking she might need some time to come to terms with her spanking. He fairly tingled with the need to comfort her while she sobbed within the confines of his embrace and he had to do something physical or he was going to run after her like an idiot, so he changed into a bathing suit and dove into the deep end of the pool, swimming lap after mindless lap until he was exhausted. Just as he lifted himself out by the side of the pool, Mandy came running toward him. “Do you smell smoke?”

Barrett grinned wryly. “Old smoke, Honey. Meg tried to burn the house down by accident.” He dried himself off with a thick, fluffy towel.

“Oh. What happened?”

“She left two of the burners on the stove on, and the oven mitts caught on fire. It was close when I got in here as to whether or not the kitchen curtains were going to go up, too.”

“Wow!”

“Yeah, wow. I was able to douse it quickly enough, but the house’ll have to be aired out well tomorrow, and we’ll probably

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need to do some touch up painting around the stove. Or rather,
Meg
will.”

Mandy confronted her brother, suspecting what had happened to Meg as a result of her carelessness. “Is she all right?”

Barrett patted Manda on the shoulder as he walked past her into the house. “Of course she’s fine. She won’t be sitting comfortably any time soon, but she’s fine.”

“You spanked her?!” Mandy followed her brother into the kitchen, not really believing that he’d done it.

“Of course I spanked her! She could’ve burned the whole damned place down, just because she had to see who the ambulance was coming for.” Barrett hung the towel around his neck, opened the fridge, and chugged orange juice right from the jug.

“Was the ambulance coming for you?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Do I look like I needed an ambulance this afternoon?”

Mandy sat in a kitchen chair. “No, but that’s probably what Meg thought.”

Barrett hadn’t considered it from Meagan’s angle, even though it really wasn’t a mitigating factor of her punishment. “No, it was the new hand, Terry Hartman. Got himself gored pretty good, but the Doc says he’ll be fine.”

“Good. I just hope Meg will be,” she muttered under her breath.

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Carolyn Faulkner

He sighed. “You don’t look any the worse for my spanking you. Why would you think Meg would?”

“I don’t know. She’s never been spanked before. I don’t imagine she had any real idea what to expect. I’m sure she never knew how much it hurts.” Her hand went to her own bottom reflexively.

“Hmmmmm.” Something to think about.

Mandy stood up. “Well, I’m going to bed.” She kissed her brother on the cheek.

“You look nice. Did you see Jake?” he added, just to get a rise out of her.

She smacked his arm on her way by, and grumbled the long way to her room about wishing everyone would lay off the idea of her and Jake especially since she couldn’t stand the man . . .

Barrett wandered down the hall to his own room, pausing for a minute at Meg’s door, wondering if he should check in on her.

Deciding against it, he retreated quietly behind his own door, exhausted physically and emotionally.

He awoke early the next morning, as was his habit. Dressed in black jeans and a black t-shirt, he carefully opened the door to Meg’s room, intending to be there in the room with her when she woke, to reassure himself that she was ok. What he saw immediately was her back as she bent over her suitcase, trying to get it closed.

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Meg was having a terrible time getting the blasted zipper to work on the ancient suitcase; she thought it might be easier if she weren’t trying to see it through tear-filled eyes, but as another drop rolled down and off her chin, she knew that wasn’t likely to happen.

That tear landed squarely on the back of the lightly haired paw that had caused her butt cheeks to sting so torturously last night. She met his unfathomable stare with a hopeless look in her eyes. “Going somewhere?” his voice was low and intimate as he searched her face.

She turned back to tug futilely at the offending zipper.

“Back home.”

Barrett flinched noticeably. He’d hoped she’d begun to think of this house as her home, but apparently not. Desperate times called for desperate measures, he thought, taking the luggage away from her. He grabbed the handful of dog that was lying nervously on the coverlet and then grabbed the dog’s mistress, and brought all three of them to his room, finally allowing himself to do what he had wanted to do since he ended her spanking – comfort her.

When she hesitated to join him on the bed, though her traitorous dog was already comfortably ensconced, he picked her up and placed her on her left side on the bed, carefully not to touch her bottom to the bed. He then made his own place behind her, cuddling her back against him, with Butchie settled into the curve of her stomach with a contented sigh. He could feel wetness soaking through his shirtsleeve where her cheek lay, and the tears were all the worse for her silence. Barrett closed his arms very tightly around her, saying nothing, just being there.

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BacksideOfLove.com

Carolyn Faulkner

Eventually, as he’d known they would, her emotions got the best of her, and she started to shake with sobs. He turned her toward him, and that was all the invitation she needed. Her arms crept around his neck as she hid her face against him. Barrett stroked and soothed her as capably as he had spanked and smacked her last night, until she was only hiccoughing slightly. His voice began to rumble into her ear through his chest. “You know that was a very severe spanking you endured. I’m sorry that your first punishment was such a hard one.” He did not apologize for spanking her, just that he was sorry it had had to be such a nasty punishment.

“It should have been harder,” she whispered.

Again, she had managed to say the unexpected. He drew back to look into her swollen, wet eyes. “So you’re not threatening to leave over the spanking,” he stated, not quite believing it.

“Well,” she backtracked a little. “I certainly didn’t like it, and I don’t want to be spanked EVER again.” He smiled, understanding that sentiment perfectly. “But I did deserve it. I don’t deserve to live in this beautiful house after I’ve tried to destroy it.”

A light went on in Barrett’s head. She had accepted the spanking as a just punishment, but had not embraced any feeling of forgiveness or absolution. Perhaps that was his fault. He forced her to look up at him with his fingers under her chin. “You listed to me, Meagan Honoria O’Reilly,” he said sternly. “and listen very carefully: You are forgiven. I am telling you that your beaten bottom is enough restitution, and I
own
the blasted house.” Tears still traced down her cheeks, faster than he could kiss them away.

“Hear me now and believe me later,” he intoned in a very bad imitation of an Austrian accent, which got him a watery smile.