Chapter 8 #2
The sharp claps of his hand as he swatted the backs of each thigh were drowned out beneath her shrill cry.
She hopped, dancing on tiptoes as she pulled at her captured wrist, trying to twist away.
She just couldn’t pull hard enough to keep him from dragging her in closer to his big body, and all the while the hard and calloused flat of his big hand continued whacking away at the very tender underside of her bottom.
“Move your hand or I take off my belt,” he said again.
Bouncing on her toes still, she wilted, first in her shoulders and then, grudgingly lowered herself down onto her flat feet. Sniffling, she moved her hand away from her bottom.
It was hard to be upset when she looked so adorably dismayed.
“I’m very disappointed that you would not only conceal that from me, but that you would bring your baby back into this house—” Drawing back his hand, he gave her a single swat, but hard enough to make sure it counted.
Her hips jolted at the impact, and back up onto her tiptoes she went.
“—knowing it wouldn’t be ready—” SMACK! He spanked her with the full strength of his arm. “—and lying to me—”
She yelped when he swatted her again, hitting the full center of her buttocks with all his might. Her free hand flew out, as if she were fighting herself not to cover her bottom, and yet unable to keep from reacting as the hurt of his swats chewed into her.
“I didn’t lie,” she protested.
He swatted her harder, twice now. “An omittance is as good as a lie, and you know that. Otherwise you wouldn’t have run away when I found out what was going on.”
“I’m sorry!” she wailed, but scolding done, he let his hand do the rest of his talking for him, peppering the whole of her bottom as hard as it took to send her dancing up onto her tiptoes, then bouncing and twisting her hips, striving to find any place where his hand couldn’t reach her.
There wasn’t one, and he didn’t miss his target a single time.
He gave her a hard dozen before he stopped.
She was sniffling, on the verge of real tears. Instantly, her hand flew back to rub away the sting.
“No rubbing,” he ordered, and she snatched her hand away again. “Drop your pants.”
That she fully expected to be spanked all over again was as clear as her distress.
Her head fell back on her shoulders and she bounced on her heels, crying up at the ceiling.
He didn’t yield, he just waited until her pitiful display was over and then repeated his order. “Drop them. Right now, young lady.”
Sniffling, she bowed her head and grudgingly unfastened her pants, pushing them down off her hips with her free hand. He still held firmly onto her other wrist, keeping her back turned to him and her butt well within striking range.
“Panties too,” he ordered.
She cried even more plaintively, but she pushed her panties midway down her thighs. As if not lowering them further might mean her Big girl parts wouldn’t be seen.
Hooking the elastic of her underwear, he skinned them the rest of the way down her legs, letting them drop past her knees. “To the corner,” he said, letting go of her arm at last. “Nose to the wall and don’t move from that position until—” Daddy “—I say you can come out.”
He gave her a nudge toward the corner between the window and the hearth, and she went, crying into her hands the whole way.
Watching them raptly from her crib, Lily began to whimper too, confusion on her face as she looked from him to her mother.
Those little cries of solidarity stopped when he picked the baby up.
He smiled at her, made a few silly faces to reassure her all was okay, and after that she stayed in his arms, exploring his beard with both hands while he walked through the house, checking for himself what she had to eat.
When it was all sitting in the grocery cart at the story yesterday, it had looked like she was picking up a lot than she actually had.
When she’d opened her wallet, it had reassured him to see the stack of green bills she was holding onto, too.
For all that she’d had to move and start over from scratch, at least she was doing it with enough cash to get by.
Looking at her stash in the fridge today, however, all he saw was barely enough to make a healthy breakfast. After that, she had a cupboard full of peanut butter and strawberry jelly for sandwiches. That was broke food, but it wasn’t really nutrition.
He checked the rest of her cupboards. She had dish soap and a strainer, macaroni and cheese, two kinds of crackers, lunch meat, and cheese.
She’d loaded up on boxed suppers and canned chili, tuna fish, and apple juice boxes, and a Christmas wreath that looked homemade hanging over an upper cabinet door.
She needed real food.
Hell, she needed a pot to cook it in, dishes to eat off of, and a microwave to reheat the leftovers.
What she needed was to get out of this cabin and back into his, where he could fix her proper meals in a warm house, and send her to sleep in a soft bed after a hot shower.
He shouldn’t be thinking like this, but he shut that part of his brain down and refused to look too closely at any of the reasons he was trying to use to justify how he was treating her. He was her neighbor, not her boyfriend.
Not that he wouldn’t mind being upgraded to that kind of relationship.
Like he even knew enough about her to think they could have a relationship.
Except she kept tripping his nurturing Daddy Dom trigger.
That was really all this was, wasn’t it? She was tripping his triggers, and he wanted to take care of someone so badly that he was putting her into that role without even finding out if this was something she wanted.
There were a lot of things she could have done if she truly hadn’t wanted to submit to his authority.
She hadn’t protested, unlike a woman who had no interest in being spanked would have.
She definitely hadn’t protested like a woman who didn’t want to take down her own pants and panties while Daddy sent her to stand with her naughty nose in the corner.
No, she’d put herself in the corner. Her head was bowed, and for the first time she wasn’t worrying her hands.
Instead, she held them tucked up between her breasts, occasionally wiping her eyes or her nose as the force behind her tears wound down.
Now and then, she’d drop one or both hands as if to rub or cup her bottom, but then must have remembered he’d said no because she always clasped them against her chest again.
He came up behind her, Lily still held in his arms. “I know it’s important to you to be independent,” he said, and she sniffled and nodded.
“It is,” she cried. “Very important.”
“Right, but there are times when it’s just as important to accept help when it’s offered.”
Her brow furrowed, but she didn’t reply. She glared at the wall instead, venting her ill-placed defiance into the corner and very wisely choosing not to aim it at him.
“Let’s make a deal,” he said, and for the first time, she risked a sideways glance up at him. “You agree that while you are perfectly capable of roughing it over here, eating cold chili out of the can and foregoing baths until next week—”
“I can heat water on the fireplace,” she offered. “For that matter, I can heat food on there too. I’ve seen survival shows where they do that.”
The mental image of her attempting to balance one of her two plastic-handled frying pans using a hearth fire flashed through his head, and right on the heels of it came the images of everything that could go wrong—burning her hand as the plastic handle melted, or Lily playing too close to the fire, or the whole damn cabin going up in flames…
“You are absolutely not going to do that, and if I catch you trying, I promise you won’t sit for a very long time. Is that one hundred percent understood?”
Every shred of defiance was gone from her face when she nodded. “Yes, Sir.”
“Yes, what?” was out of his mouth before he knew the words had leapt to the tip of his tongue.
“Yes, Daddy,” she whispered, contrite.
His chest was tight. Something he didn’t realize until he caught himself rubbing it. Jesus. Those images were the kind of nightmare fodder his pessimistic imagination did not need any help conjuring.
“From now until your house has all utilities up and running comfortably, you will stay with Pops and I. I want you safe and warm, and before you come back here again, you and I are going to have us a little fire safety class. Don’t you dare light a match before we do that. Agreed?”
Sniffling, she swiped at her nose with her sleeve. “I can’t light a fire anyway. I don’t have matches. Or a lighter.” She thought about it, her brow furrowing all over again. “Or a can opener.” She looked at him again. “If you have time, will you take me to the store again?”
“Are you going to stay with me until Monday, no arguments?”
She huffed a soft sigh. “Yes.”
“When your pants and panties are down around your knees and your bottom is hot and red, I expect you to speak to me with the proper respect.”
She shifted her feet. “Yes, Daddy. And yes, I promise I’ll be good, but only if you promise to take me to the store. A-and to let me do things for myself.”
“When you feel the need to do something, just tap me on the arm and we’ll go back into my bedroom to discuss it. I promise I will let you do as much as you need to, so long as it’s within reason and safe.”
“I can do things for myself,” she insisted in her most conversational, please-don’t-spank-me tone. “You may not like it, but I really can take care of Lily and myself.”
“And you’re welcome to, just so long as you bear in mind that I will absolutely bust your butt if I catch you doing something that could get either one of you hurt.
” He softened his tone. “And yes, of course I will take you to the store. You have two choices, if you need to go now, you can borrow my car, but before I can go anywhere, I need to run feed out to the cattle and make sure they’re sheltering at the barn. ”
She blinked, turning out of the corner in surprise. “You have cows? Why haven’t I seen them?”
He smiled. “Because they have their own fenced yards and because I don’t let them come into mine. I don’t like it when they leave their poop where I can step in it. Or smell it.”
He tapped her on the nose, winning an instant smile before she must have remembered she was standing there with her ass bared and her panties at half-mast around her ankles.
“Yes,” he said before she could ask. “You may get dressed. Anything else you need, grab it now. You’re not coming back over here until your utilities are on.”