Chapter 19
Frankie
N erves churned in her stomach as Frankie turned onto Holden’s long driveway. The ticket was still sitting there in her purse, mocking her in a Tell-Tale Heart kind of way, even though she couldn’t actually hear it. Just knowing it was there seemed to be enough to have her attention locked on it.
She hadn’t had a really harsh punishment since before she’d walked out on Holden. And it had been so long ago, the actual memory of how painful it had been had mostly faded. But she still clearly remembered the look of disappointment on his face, the stoic way he’d lectured her, making sure she’d known exactly why he was punishing her before he’d started.
Knowing she’d disappointed him had been the hardest pill to swallow. Being a brat, pushing his buttons, those were all things she enjoyed. As were the playful punishments that often followed.
There would be nothing fun or playful about this evening, though, and that knowledge stuck in her throat like a too-dry pastry with nothing to wash it down.
“I’m home!” she called out, shutting the front door behind her as she stepped into the entryway. Even though his giant black SUV was parked at the bottom of the steps, hope still beat in her chest that he might have taken one of the other vehicles out.
“In the kitchen!”
So much for that hope.
Dammit.
Bracing herself with a deep breath, she pulled the ticket from her purse before she even made her way back toward the kitchen, so she wouldn’t chicken out when she saw him. The moment he noticed the ticket in her hand, he’d demand to see it, and she didn’t want to disappoint him further by hiding things from him. She’d asked for this, specifically told him she still needed his discipline, so she needed to be a big girl and take whatever punishment she’d earned.
He was at the stove again, cooking up something that smelled delicious and made her tummy rumble. Feeling hungry again was a good sign, one she gave herself a moment to be silently proud of.
And her stomach wasn’t the only thing feeling… hungry. There was something about the sight of him, tall and broad-shouldered with that gorgeous head of silver hair, doing something as domestic as cooking that stirred other parts of her to life.
Down girl. None of that, at least not right now.
Ignoring the spasming of her pussy, she stepped forward, holding the ticket out. “I got pulled over today.”
There. She hadn’t even tried to hide it. Surely that should earn her some good girl points.
One silvery brow raising, Holden wiped his hands on the towel draped over his shoulder before taking the thin paper from her hand and glancing down. Frankie’s heart slammed against her chest when the corners of his lips dipped down into a frown.
“Francesca Marie. Twenty miles over the speed limit and not wearing your seatbelt? What were you thinking?”
Shit. She’d been so focused on not hiding the actual ticket from him, she hadn’t considered how to hide the reason for the ticket. “Umm, I guess I wasn’t. I’m sorry, I was just… distracted.”
“By?”
“I dunno,” she mumbled, jerking one shoulder in a shrug that probably seemed more defiant than she really meant for it to. “Just was.”
When he pinned her with that hard stare, it took everything in her not to shrink back from his anger. She deserved it, she knew she did, but just then all she wanted was for him to hold her and tell her everything would be okay.
“Well, I hope whatever this distraction was, it was worth it. I’m going to go get something, and then we’ll have a talk about your behavior.”
“Are you gonna spank me?” She hated how pathetic her voice sounded, how it trembled when she asked.
“Yes. And then you’re going to sit down and write lines for me so I can be sure the lesson sticks.”
A spanking and writing lines? “But that’s not fair!”
“Fair?” His voice dropped, and every nerve she had went on alert as he approached her with slow, lethal grace. “Would you like to tell me what’s fair about knowing that the woman I love is out there, putting her life at risk because she was ‘distracted’? Tell me, Francesca, what’s fair about your friends and family getting a phone call saying we’ve lost you because you couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to the speed limit or to put your seatbelt on when you got in the car. What, exactly, is fair about any of that?”
Guilt sat in her chest, a lead weight that refused to budge no matter how deeply she tried to inhale. “I’m sorry,” she managed to whisper.
“That’s a good start. Stay right here. I’ll be back in a moment.”
Mind racing with worry over what terrifying implement he might be fetching, she stood in the middle of the kitchen, waiting for what seemed like an agonizing eternity for him to return.
When he did, she could only stare in stunned surprise at what he held in his hand.
“What’s that for?”
Carrying the brown mat over to the table, he pulled out a chair and draped the mat over the seat. “This is your naughty girl mat. After your spanking, you are going to sit here and write those lines for me.”
It was one of those welcome mat things, the kind people used to wipe their feet on before walking in the house. With a million little prickly things that she imagined would feel like hell on her freshly spanked ass.
Pulling out another chair, Holden sat and despite knowing how much trouble she was in, her mouth watered at the sight of him rolling the sleeves of his dress shirt up to his elbows before crooking a finger at her. “Come here, Francesca.”
She didn’t want to. As much as she enjoyed playing the brat, she was starting to realize how much she hated really being in trouble. “I’m really, really sorry. Can’t we just say the ticket is punishment enough?”
“Absolutely not. And if I have to come get you, I’ll double your count. Come. Here.”
Somehow, she managed to force one foot forward, then the other, until finally she was standing by his side.
With a deep sigh, he reached for her, pulling her over his lap and flipping her dress up so he could tug her panties down to her knees. “I’m very disappointed in you, Francesca. No matter how distracted you are, that is no excuse for putting yourself and other drivers in danger. You’re getting a count of twenty, one for each mile over the speed limit you were driving.”
Disappointed. The word was like a knife to her heart. She hated disappointing him, even more than she hated disappointing her own parents.
And the worst part was, he didn’t even have the count right. The cop had clocked her at thirty miles over, not twenty. If he knew the truth, would he be even more disappointed in her? Or would he be proud of her for telling the truth?
She should keep her mouth shut. After all, it was really the cop who’d lied, right?
But she couldn’t. Even if he never found out the truth, she would know, and she wasn’t sure she’d be able to live with herself. “Um. It was actually thirty. I don’t know why the cop fudged the numbers.”
Cupping her bottom, he gave one cheek a surprisingly gentle squeeze. “Thank you for being honest with me. Since you told the truth, we’ll keep the original count as a reward.”
Relief flooded her system. “Thank you, Daddy.”
“The count is twenty, and I want you to count each one out loud.”
His hand left her bottom, only to come crashing down a second later, the sting so intense she gasped as it radiated through her flesh. “One!”
“Good girl. Just like that.”
Fuck. Her pussy obviously hadn’t gotten the message this was a punishment, as it spasmed at his praise. Another swat landed, and she just barely managed to hold back a groan as pain and pleasure mingled together inside her. “Two.”
Just like everything else he did, the spanking was measured, methodical with every swat perfectly placed to add to the fire engulfing her skin. And when they finally hit the halfway point, he paused to rub his large hand over her throbbing bottom.
“I do not ever want to have this discussion again, Francesca. I’m going easy on you this time because it’s a first offense, but if it ever happens again, you will receive the same count with the large school paddle hanging in my office. You are far too precious to me, and so many other people, for you to be so reckless with your safety.”
As far as the actual spanking went, it was far from the worst she’d had from him. But his words, and the knowledge she’d disappointed him, weighed heavy on her heart.
“I’m sorry. It won’t happen again, I promise.”
“For your sake, it had better not, little girl.”
The next ten were harder, focused mostly on her sensitive sit-spots and tears were streaming down her face by the time she managed to gasp out the final count. “Twenty! I’m sorry, Daddy, I’m sorry!”
And then she was in his arms, held tight against his chest. “I know, baby. It’s all done.”
Curling into him, she buried her face in his shoulder as he held her. And little by little the ache in her chest eased, until she could finally draw a steady breath.
He held her like that for a while before he pressed a kiss to her hair and sighed. “Time for your lines, little siren.”
“I hate writing lines,” she whined, pressing herself more tightly against him.
Beneath her, his chest rumbled with laughter. “Why do you think I keep making you do them?”
“Because you’re a sadist.”
“I am, and you’d do well to remember that. Up you go.”
Groaning, she forced herself up from his lap and shuffled over to the other chair, where she glared down at the mat. “Do I really have to sit on that thing?”
“Yes.”
There was a hint of amusement in his tone, but also enough steel for her to know that she wasn’t getting out of this. So she lowered herself down to the seat with a dramatic sigh, wincing when her punished bottom pressed against the prickly mat.
“This sucks .”
“I”m sure it does.” Placing a pen and a pad in front of her, he tapped the paper. “One hundred lines, Francesca. ‘I will keep myself safe and obey all traffic laws’. Neat and legible, or you’ll start over.”
A hundred? That was going to take forever. But if she argued, he was liable to just double it as added punishment, so she swallowed the urge to whine that it was too much. “Yes, Daddy.”
With another sigh, she picked up her pen and began to write, shifting slightly in her seat to try and get more comfortable on the mat. Which proved to be a horrible idea, as the movement only added to the throbbing pain.
I will keep myself safe and obey all traffic laws.
Ugh. There was no way she could obey all of them. Even if she could admit she’d gone way over what was safe today, she never drove exactly the speed limit. And there were more than a few times she treated stop signs more like ‘slow down’ signs. And…
Okay. Maybe she really did need to be better about following the traffic laws. Especially if she was going to really keep her implied promise in the first half of the sentence. I will keep myself safe.
It was clear she’d already failed at that multiple times. Not just with her driving, but with her eating disorder. The paper in front of her blurred as tears filled her eyes.
Twice now, she’d worried the people who loved her the most because she couldn’t just keep her shit together. How could she keep herself safe when she couldn’t even keep herself from crashing out and landing in the hospital when things went wrong?
A sob rose in her chest, and she tried to smother it before it slipped free, but she wasn’t quite fast enough. And as soon as it released, Holden was there, scooping her up out of the chair to cradle her on his lap.
“What’s wrong, baby?” His usually gruff voice was surprisingly soft, his arms gentle around her. “What happened?”
“I’m s-s-sorry!” Throwing her arms around his neck, she buried her face against his shoulder as the sobs racked her.
If she hadn’t been so lost in her own misery, she might have found it odd that he didn’t shush her. Didn’t try to tell her to calm down. He simply held her, and let her cry herself out until at long last she let out a final, shuddering breath and collapsed against him.
“There we go,” he murmured, rubbing slow circles over her back. “Wanna tell me what that was all about?”
Too exhausted to even consider trying to hide the truth, she sniffled. “Just realizing how shitty I am at the whole ‘keeping myself safe’ thing. And how much it must suck for the people who care about me. I’m not a good person.”
“You’re really determined to get another spanking tonight, aren’t you, little girl?”
“You can’t spank me for being honest about myself.”
“Tell me one more time what I can or cannot do and see how quickly you find yourself back over my knee.” Strong fingers cupped her face, digging into her cheeks as he turned her head so she was forced to look in those dark, serious eyes. “I am your Daddy, Francesca, and you agreed to my discipline. Which means you will keep yourself safe, physically, mentally, and emotionally on my watch. If you want to talk poorly about yourself, you will find yourself over my knee with a bar of soap wedged between your teeth until I’m certain I’ve washed all those filthy lies out of your mouth. Am I understood, little girl?”
“Yes, Daddy.” Though with him holding her face, the words came out a bit slurred.
His hold on her softened, as did his expression. “You’re a good person, Francesca. Don’t let anyone, even the voices in your head, convince you otherwise.”
“I don’t feel like a good person these days.”
“Why?”
The truth burned on the tip of her tongue. She should tell him about the conversation with her father, the things he’d said. But for some reason, the words just wouldn’t come.
“I flunked out of school. Put you and Lottie through hell worrying about me. Now you’re still taking care of me even though you’re not getting anything out of it. A good person would have walked away and let you live your life in peace.”
“You’re wrong, little siren. I get everything out of taking care of you. It feeds a part of me that hasn’t been fed in a very long time. I was never in this for the sex, Francesca. I was always in it for you.”
Jesus, how the hell was she supposed to keep things platonic between them when he kept saying shit like that? “You deserve more than me.”
“There is nothing more than you. Not for me.”
Closing her eyes, she let her head fall forward, their foreheads pressed together as she simply breathed in the scent of him. “I’m sorry I can’t be what you want right now.”
“Baby. You don’t have to apologize for needing some time to figure shit out. When you’re ready, I’ll be right here, waiting. That’s a promise.”
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she was aware she couldn’t keep him waiting forever. That eventually he’d get tired, and he’d move on to someone else. Someone who didn’t need him quite so much.
But for a few precious moments, she allowed herself to believe he’d wait as long as she needed him to. And that was enough.