Something Has to Give (10 page)

She stared at her knees for a time, turning the hairbrush over and over in her hands.

“You’re right,” she finally admitted, once more her voice falling to very soft tones. “This isn’t my house and I don’t belong here. You don’t have to evict me. Let me stay until the snow melts, and then I’ll go.”

Now it was his turn to stare. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“Go where?”

She had no idea. He could see
that in her eyes.

“I’ll be okay,” she said. She looked at the hairbrush, turning it over in her hands again. After a moment, she held it out to him. “Do you want to spank me now?”

“No!” The word blurted out of him before he could stop either it or the wave of startled laughter that followed. Had he the chance to think about it, he would have tried harder to catch himself. She could so easily have misinterpreted that laugh as being directed at her rather than the situation.

“Why are you laughing?”
She glared at him. “You have no trouble spanking me when you think I need it, but if
I
think I need it, then it’s funny? What kind of misogynistic bullshit is that?”

“
For someone who has hated every spanking I’ve yet given her,” Quint promptly countered, “I’m surprised you’re asking for one now.”

“I stole your house. Am I not allowed to feel bad about that?”

“You didn’t steal it. You just lived here for a while.”

“You’ve been threatening to evict me
all week and now you suddenly don’t care?”

“
Of course I care. But maybe I’m getting used to you. Maybe the idea of living here alone isn’t as appealing as I thought it would be.” He offered her a wan smile. “Maybe I’m wondering if this house isn’t big enough to share.”

Something that looked a lot like hope sparked to life in the very backs of her eyes. It dimmed in the time it took her to blink. “
What kind of strings come attached to that?”

He almost laughed
again. Almost. “Elsie, I want you to sleep with me because you
want
to sleep with me. If you can’t say that to me right now, I’m going back downstairs tonight and tomorrow we’ll make up a bed for you in one of the other rooms.”

She rubbed her fingers. “I’m not whoring myself out for a house,” she finally said.
“I’d like to think I have just enough self-respect not to do that.”

He added his own somber nod to that,
fighting back his smile and a shake of his head. “I’d like to think so too.”

She tried to hand him the hairbrush again. “Please spank me.”

It was everything he could do not to withdraw. He didn’t want to spank her. Well, okay. Maybe if it was something sexy and playful, he could probably be pulled into enjoying the hell out of that kind of spanking. But not disciplinary. Not for punishment. That wasn’t the mood he was in.

She conti
nued to hold the hairbrush out until he gave in and took it. He set it on the bed beside his thigh.

“Why?” he asked, no longer smiling.

Another one-shouldered shrug was all she gave him. “Why not?”

“Because I don’t spank for why not. That’s an indefinite reason and grown women should never be spanked for indefinite reasons.
Every spanking I’ve given you has been for a very definite reason and I’m not going to break that record now.”

She blinked twice more, stubbornly looking down at her knees while her eyes grew watery. “
How about because I feel bad, because I want to start over, and because you can’t start over unless you make amends first?”

“So this is
for atonement?”

“Does that make it all right?”

Oddly enough…yeah, it did.

He’d spanked her twice—three times if one counted those few swats he’d given her out in the snow—and
in none of those instances had she ever gone bottom-up with anything approaching meekness or compliance. But when he took her arm, Elsie rolled right over and braced her hands upon his left thigh. He saw her breasts rise in apprehensive little hitches as she lowered herself into position, wiggling her hips and legs as she tried to find a measure of comfort like this.

“Will you h-hold my hand?” she begged
, reaching her right hand back into the empty air behind her hip.

Spanking her was not what he wanted to be doing right now, but that…that was almost too cute to resist. Quint took her hand in his, tucking it up against her side as he wrapped his arm around her waist. If left up to him, he’d have told her she had nothing to atone for.
Yeah, he hadn’t expected her to be here when he’d come home and yeah, she’d definitely been something of a pain in his ass since then. But listening to the misfortune that had brought her here made a difference. And he wasn’t lying when he’d said he didn’t particularly want to live here alone. He’d never been the sort to hold grudges either. Truth be told, she really was growing on him. Maybe they could share the house, build some kind of working relationship—just him and her, a smattering of chickens, those cussed, rotten goats…honey bees…whatever else she had growing out there in the unknown wilds of his property…

But all working relationships were built on
a system of give and take. And for this one to find some stability, something told Quint that Elsie needed this atonement.

She stiffened, her free hand clutching at his thigh when he raised the hem of her nightshirt and folded it over onto the small of her back. Her breath caught, doing that hitching thing all over again when he hooked his fingers into the backs of her panties and
skinned them all the way down to her knees. Just like she had been when he had her face-down on the kitchen floor, he had her bottom completely bare. Unlike that time in the kitchen, this time he couldn’t help noticing how sexy, round and wobbly in all the right places she was. He would have loved to caress her, to cup her bottom and squeeze, but that kind of slippery slope could only lead to his forgetting about the spanking entirely and just rolling her under him on the bed.

Elsie squirmed, lifting up a little in an effort to look under her. “D-do you have an erection?”

He spanked her, his hand catching first one pale nether cheek and then the other, bringing an instant blush rising to the surface of her naked skin and promptly redirecting her concerns to matters far less embarrassing for him.

He took a firm but gentle approach to it, checking the downward strokes of his arm, spanking slow but steady and giving plenty of time for the sting of each slap to fully sink in
. But right from the very start, Elsie seemed to have trouble enduring it. Quint couldn’t begin to count all the times he’d taken a firm hand, or belt to Maydeen’s errant backside. In retrospect, spanking her probably hadn’t been a good idea. But Elsie was different. She gasped, cringed, and clenched her bottom in anticipation of each fresh smack, making the globes of her soft, round ass jump under his palm. If she had any idea just how much each wiggle exposed all her beautiful, feminine, and hitherto hidden charms, for his viewing pleasure, she might have worked harder at holding still. But she didn’t know and he certainly wasn’t going to tell her, and so with every new crack of his hand, she would toss her head and writhe, twisting her bottom first one way and then the other, lifting up as if trying to meet his hand, only to cringe back down again—two blushing buttons jamming helplessly together to avoid a hurt they could not escape.

He thought he was being gentle, all things considered, but she must have had a very low pain threshold because he couldn’t have given her more than twenty or so firm swats when she began to sniffle, and then to cry. But it was also right about then that Quint noticed something else: a shimmer of moisture gathering along the crease of her sex, glistening under the overhead lights and growing more pronounced with every spank and subsequent wriggle. She was becoming aroused. Quint didn’
t for a second think she was faking her discomfort or tears, but the sight of all that shimmering wetness sent a bolt of answering lust charging straight through to the burning core of him. What he had now went beyond any mere erection. This was something only long years without a woman, and three even longer nights sleeping beside one that was sexy as hell and twice as aggravating, could do to a red-blooded man fresh home from the military.

Her wetness beckoned to him—a hot, winking welcome she tried to lock behind her tensing thighs. He had to touch it, soak his fingers in it, and the next thing either one of them knew, he had tightened his arm around her waist, hauling her not just further over his knee but wrapping her around his hip while he wrenched his right leg out from under her. He clamped her left leg, the one closest to him, in a scisso
r hold impossible to escape and shoved the other right off the end of his knee, leaving it free to kick and scramble as she would and opening her right up to the hungry appreciation of his eyes.

“Wh-what—” She stopped with a breathy squeak when he touched her, dipping into that well of liquid heat and filling the air with the heady scent and sound of her arousal. Elsie went stiff as a board. She twisted, trying to see back at him, her eyes huge with
the most darling mix of mortification and confusion. “What—” she said again, but never made it any further. Her whole body rippled, shuddering when he slicked down through her folds to find her swelling clit.

“Elsie,” he said huskily. “You have been a bad, bad girl.”

She came, pinned across his knee with her blushing bottom on full display and his fingers stroking lazy circles through the slick heat of her sex. That she had no idea where that orgasm had even come from was plain by the abject confusion she wore, even as her small body contorted in tight, little spasms, trying to ride both his fingers and his knee, but that was all right. In this case, he was prepared to be one hell of a thorough teacher.

He began to spank again, faster this time, firm but not hard. She might have asked for hard, but she didn’t need it and he doubted she could take it. And even with only his hand, he still set her bottom on fire. Breathy gasps and squeaks gave way to yelps and cries, and yet he knew it wasn’t all just pain. Her bottom was moving in lusty ways, sometimes struggling to get away, yes, but just as often thrusting back to meet his palm and grinding down on his knee in desperation of another climax.

He never used the hairbrush. He’d save that for another time, when the offense really did warrant something more than just his hand and when there was no pleasure to confuse and diffuse the bite of that particular disciplinary sting. Instead, Quint took her right to the very edge of coming and just as she arched, her whole body tensing on a whole new wave of spasming jerks, he yanked her up off his knee and rolled her down onto her back on the mattress. He thrust his fingers into her, loving the milking sensations of her body trying to pull him deeper, mashing with his palm and rubbing fiercely to make her ride that wave for as long as she possibly could. Until her cries diminished to mews and her clutching, arching motions began to wilt.

He moved between her legs, every nerve in his body pulsing with need. In that moment, he could think of nothing more beautiful than the sight of her, so sated that she glowed from it, could barely move from it.

“Can we please start over now?” she whispered.

Quint shook his head. “To hell with starting over.” He stabbed his fingers through her hair, bringing her mouth right up into his ravenous kiss. He wasn’t gentle when he finally got out of his pants and into her, but then, she absorbed his
initial thrust with little more than an arching moan and arms and legs that wrapped around him, holding him as tight as two people could possibly come. They were practically strangers, but as cliché as it sounded, she absolutely rocked his world.

For the first time since he’d been discharged, C
aptain Quint Rydecker came home.

December 25
th
…

It was snowing again, soft and gentle flakes that were building up on the wood panes of the bedroom window. It was the first thing Quint saw when that crummy rooster crowed at the crack of flippin’ dawn on Christmas morning. Chicken ‘N Dumplings. That was that rooster’s name…and future, just as soon as he found his axe and a decent-sized cooking pot.

Closing his eyes, he lay down on the back half of the pillow he and Elsie were sharing. She was snoring softly; he smiled and wrapped his arm that much more securely around her waist. Her curly hair was tickling his chin, but he didn’t care. It felt really good that she was lying here, just like this, a warm little bundle pressed up against his chest with her hot little bottom nestled against his groin, right where it would do them both the most good just as soon as he was awake enough to pay attention.

Yeah, she felt good just like this. She felt like she belonged, in his arms and in his bed. What the future might hold for them was anybody’s guess. It was just too early to tell, but as he held her, casting his contented sigh softly into her hair, for now it felt
like home for them both.

He smiled, pulling her closer.

Merry Christmas to him.

The End