Authors: Carolyn Faulkner
Her lips were still tingling from his kiss, she realized, still a bit dazed from it as her fingers touched her still-burning bottom absently.
Sean took a step towards her, though, and she backed up, albeit carefully, her hand out in front of her, saying, “No.”
He stopped advancing immediately, although he didn’t look as if he particularly wanted to.
“I can’t do this.”
“Can’t do what?”
“I’m not going to sleep with you tonight, no matter how much I might want to.”
That she wanted to was very good to hear - and he’d been locked and loaded since he’d first seen her. She thought he wanted to bed her tonight? Where they would be literally surrounded by his friends?
“No, you’re not.”
His agreement with her was so firm and surprising that she forgot not to look at him - for her own safety and the safety of what little dignity she still had left - and met his eyes, parroting back to him somewhat mindlessly, “I’m not?”
Sean chuckled, and she recognized it as a sound she loved immediately. “No. What kind of guys have you been dating, anyway?” He picked up their towels, shook them off, and then decided she looked chilly and wrapped the cleanest one around her shoulders, leaving his arm casually around her waist as he guided her back to camp.
But before they got back, he stopped, turning her towards him and asked something she was as unprepared for as she had been for the spanking. “So. Are you wet?”
She knew he wasn’t asking about whether her suit had dried, but she wasn’t about to answer such an impertinent question.
Instead, she huffed her way by him, and, of course, with her incredibly poor sense of direction that inevitably had her ending up in Nova Scotia, no matter where she was aiming, she stepped off the well-worn trail almost immediately.
Sean walked by her and casually reached out his hand to grab her wrist and pull her back in place beside him before she got lost in the woods. How could he have known how likely that was when he didn’t really know her at all?
Ginger was still fuming from the humiliation he’d heaped on her tonight, trying to understand why she was still so hot for him. Just before she reached the relative safety of the house, he stopped her merely by stopping himself and letting Ginger - who was following him very carefully with her head down - run into him.
He pivoted quickly and caught her in his arms before she could take a step back, still somewhat dazed by having slammed into that broad back, but she didn’t have time to recover before she found his hand at the back of her head, holding her still for another soul-shattering kiss that she couldn’t seem to resist, no matter how much she tried to coax forth her intelligence, along with a strong sense of indignation.
That was damned hard to do, though, when she melted as soon as he touched her. But there was no need for him to know that.
Sean pulled back from her for a moment, making sure to catch her eyes in the moonlight, and tightening his arms around her very gently, but so firmly, that she soon realized she was completely unable to move. But before she could protest, as those dark eyes held her spellbound in the dark warm night, she felt the hand that had laid claim to the small of her back, just above the top of her bikini moving around her hip, toward the front of her on the same level.
She should have been screaming for help. She could see the lights of the camp through the trees. Surely someone would come to help if she did. Ginger opened her mouth to protest, to call him every name in the book for molesting her like this, but all that came out was a throaty, shamefully sexy whimper.
Embolden by her response - however unwilling, he knew - Sean kept her eyes locked with his as his fingers very slowly, very deliberately began to delve beneath the pretty patch of material that covered her
mons
much more modestly than most of the swimsuits he’d seen. His naturally longer middle finger was the first to reach those plump, swollen lips and split them - with excruciating care - inexorably in two.
She started at that stark intimacy and his arms tightened just the slightest bit more, carefully finessing and adjusting his hold on her, not wanting to be heavy handed about it in the least. He used just enough pressure to hold her still. Both of them knew he could employ more any time he wanted to, but didn’t need to be overt about it.
Ginger was panting, her mouth slightly open, belying her response even before he found the truth of it.
His intimate exploration of her was unhurried, even languorous by any standard, both of them blissfully ignorant that they could have been discovered at any moment.
Or maybe because of it.
When the pad of his middle finger brushed her clit - careful to just glide over the very tip - she emitted another of those throaty mewls, nearly making him cum in his suit.
As
tempting
as it was to bring her off right here, right now, that wasn’t his goal, and that curious digit pressed on just a bit further, to find evidence - long before he expected - that answered his own impertinent question.
She was decidedly wet. His finger was literally drowning in her juices, and he allowed himself a small self-satisfied smile before withdrawing it altogether - however slowly - but still supporting Ginger as she seemed unable to do so herself. By the time he let her go, her hips were rubbing lewdly against the finger that was no longer there, instead finding an excellent substitute in his ever-present bulge.
She surprised herself by wondering - almost dreamily - why she had a problem with the idea of sleeping with him tonight . . .
He chuckled softly at the realization that she seemed physically incapable of supporting herself. He asked huskily, “Do you want me to carry you?”
She recovered her senses almost immediately, thankful he couldn’t see the deep blush her lewd behavior with him had inspired. She was so flushed she thought she might faint, but instead she replied, “No, thank you,” and tried to forge ahead, but again took an incorrect turn even though she could see their destination from where they stood.
Possessing an innate sense of direction, Sean teased, “Damn, woman, you’re a danger in the woods, aren’t you?”
Ginger huffed indignantly. “Oh, yeah, that’s the way into my pants, genius.”
He didn’t seem to be phased in the least by her sarcasm. “I think I’ve already found that, now haven’t I?”
The fact that he was dead right wasn’t at all in his favor, as far as she was concerned.
Not at
all
.
*******************
And now, here she was, ten or so years later, bent over the back of her own beautiful vanity chair, gripping the bottom of it spasmodically when the whistle ended and the stripe formed, then for several moments afterwards, until she had the next, fresher one to deal with, and they all blended together. All the trails across her bottom would, eventually, before he was done.
She couldn’t even count the strokes, and he hadn’t asked, as he usually did. All she could do was allow her feet to dance in place and let the tears fall from the end of her nose to darken an increasingly larger spot on that lovely cushion until it stopped.
Which was at least a thousand years after it began, as far as she could tell; in fact, it was probably less than a half-hour. Eventually, he stepped away and tucked the cane back into its rightful place, although Ginger knew better than to just get up and walk away. Her husband definitely didn’t allow that. She could get up when he came back and told her she could, which he was usually quite quick to do.
She couldn’t just run away when he released her, either. When she rose at his bidding, he tugged her into his arms and held her through the inevitable storm of tears. It was only when she
didn’t
cry afterwards that he knew there was a problem. But that was on him, as almost everything else was about this portion of their relationship, and it was a heavy responsibility that he completely embraced - which made the guilt when he misread her that much worse.
Luckily, this wasn’t one of those times. When he pulled her against him, she melted as he had intended, wrapping her arms around his neck as if she would never let him go. Sean held her tight and guided her to the bed;
ever-mindful
of her throbbing backside, he made sure she was comfortable on her side before joining her. She had barely let him go enough to get her settled before she was again limp against him as soon as he lay down next to her.
He always held her for as long as she wanted, or until she fell asleep, whichever came first. When she was breathing deep and evenly against him - not long at all after they’d begun to cuddle - Sean gently extricated himself, set the chair back to its rightful place in front of her vanity and turned on the monitor on the nightstand next to her. Then he headed downstairs to fix them a healthy dinner.
The receiver-end of the monitor was portable, so he clipped it to his belt before tackling the contents of the fridge, and he could hear every whimper and moan whenever she decided to change positions. It tugged at his heartstrings - and other places - but he knew he was doing what was best for her, as she’d admitted to him multiple times - some of them even not under duress.
. .
. Well, none of them under duress, actually. He was always very aware that, although she was the submissive one, he could - would - only do this with her consent.
Dinner was eaten in bed. Sean was too much of a
neatnik
at home to allow much of that, but he knew she wouldn’t be comfortable sitting at the dining room table or, as they more usually did, eating in front of the TV downstairs in the den. So he gave her the all-out treatment, waking her with a dinner tray complete with a rose in a crystal vase and a bottle of good white wine. His offering was a largely vegetable and chicken concoction, with plenty of garlic, bay leaf and a little wine thrown in for good measure, all served over fragrant jasmine rice.
Ginger felt refreshed - if not pain-free by any means - by her nap, although if she had been in better spirits after the punishment, she would never have allowed him to maneuver her into going to sleep. Unfortunately, he had found that after a particularly severe punishment, she generally needed a nap - something which he had recognized depressingly early in their relationship.
Dinner was a definite hit. Since he never followed a recipe, she never got the same meal twice, but the variations she’d tasted of this dish were all phenomenal, and she ate every morsel, then tried to invade his plate with her fork, which only got her a smart crack on the back of her hand for her efforts.
Once they had finished with his light dessert of fresh-fruit compote, he tugged her back into his
arms,
made sure she was cozy and comfortable then presented her with a box, all wrapped with a bow and everything. It wasn’t her birthday or their anniversary or anything like that - she went through all of those things in her head very quickly before deciding she hadn’t forgotten an important event in their life together. They celebrated so many of them that sometimes it got hard to keep track.
But no, today wasn’t the anniversary of the day they’d first met, or when they’d first made love, or when he’d proposed - which, being pure Sean, had been much more of a command than a proposal - or anything else like that.
She ripped the paper off immediately. She would never be one of those people who had the patience to undo the tape and try to save wrapping paper. It was there to be shredded, as far as she was concerned, although she did take the bow and stick it to the top of her head, as was her own tradition. At Christmas she ended up looking like she was wearing a hat of bows.
Inside was a red velvet box, and she immediately thought of jewelry. He loved to surprised her with different pieces - some quite expensive when he thought they could afford it, others just pieces he might have found at a craft fair or seen her admiring in a jewelry store window.
Opened, it revealed two silver capsules, both the same size that looked like large metal pills. They weren’t solid, she didn’t think, but they had some heft to them.
“What are these?” She genuinely had no idea. He’d already gifted her with a set of Ben
Wa
balls that she had tried to make disappear and had been dissuaded from doing so quite thoroughly when he discovered her plot.
In answer, he held up a small remote control and pressed the “on” button. The box began to vibrate loudly in her hand, startling her into throwing it away from her as if it was a cobra or a spider.
That was good for several minutes worth of riotous laughter - for him. He thoroughly enjoyed startling her, although she had succeeded in convincing him several years ago after a particularly annoying spate of practical jokes that she didn’t find it in the least funny.
It had taken tears to do it, but she finally managed to drive the point home, and he had been circumspect about practical jokes ever since.
When it happened naturally like this, there was going to be no living with him for a while. He was laughing so hard he was crying as he retrieved the two not so little fellows and proceeded, while still chuckling occasionally, to insert them inside her, giving her a chastising eye when she made as if to protest this intimate, mechanical invasion of her person. A hand, judiciously placed where it could rub the fresh ridges she still wore - and would wear for a while - from her caning convinced her that was not a good idea.