Chapter 13
Stace shivered the entire way from his house back to hers.
The snow was deeper than the tops of her shoes which meant every crisp step as she followed Brock across the yard, meant trickles of snow fell over the top and in along the sides of both feet.
The cold wetness soaking into her socks meant the snow was already melting.
Wrapping the excess of the big coat he’d given her tightly around Lily, she mummified them both in the warmth and thought about what she was doing, where she was going, wondered why she was being so compliant when she knew it wasn’t a hug that would be waiting for her once they reached the privacy of her living room.
No, it would be a humbling, mortifying, bare-ass spanking with thick, brown leather belt. She shivered again.
Honestly, that didn’t sound half as bad as it should have.
Not that she wanted to be spanked. It was hard to imagine anyone wanting Brock’s big hands smacking all over their butts until the stinging was more than could be quietly endured and she started crying again.
Just like she had the last time, when he’d sat her on his knee like a child scolding her favorite doll.
That image didn’t upset her either. She’d loved dolls as a kid. In fact, if her mom hadn’t accidentally cleaned out her room while she was in college, Stace would still have all her carefully stored dolls with her now.
If, that is, her mother-in-law hadn’t kept them for herself.
Thinking about it, Stace didn’t realize they’d reached her porch until suddenly Brock stopped and tightened his grip on her hand. “It’s slippery, so be careful.”
She climbed the icy steps, her right foot slipping dangerously, almost causing her to lose her balance as he walked up the steps beside her.
He held onto her firmly, preventing her from falling, holding her steady as a rock until they were off the ice and inside.
Closing the door behind them, Brock took Lily over to her crib, swaddling her in the blanket they’d brought before laying her down, then turning his attention to building a proper fire.
He took out half the wood she’d thrown into the grate, sniffing each one carefully.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Just making sure you didn’t actually use fire starter.”
She felt silly, like she always did when she did things wrong and was about to get yelled at.
“No,” she said sadly. “I didn’t have any.”
“I’m glad. That stuff should never be used indoors. Come here.” He patted the bare floorboards next to where he was kneeling. “Let me show you how to build a fire without starter fluid, and next time I’ll just watch while you do it all by yourself.”
Touched that he remembered he’d promised to show her how, she knelt down by him, hands on her knees to watch him.
He showed her how to use tinder, found in the way down bottom of the woodbin and which were nothing more than a few pages of old newspaper, crumpled into twists and balls upon which he built up a pyramid of kindling wood, followed by a single bigger log.
When he struck a lighter, the flame caught on the paper, and by the time the paper had burnt to ash, the kindling had caught.
Red sparks jumped as wood popped and finally, lines of deep red began to appear all over the log.
Little flames were licking along the edges, when he fished several sticks out of the woodbin and tossed them on the budding fire too, along with two more logs.
In no time, he had a fire roaring in the fireplace and the heat that came pouring into the living room soon had her taking off her coat.
“You did that really fast,” she complimented.
“Helps when everything is dry enough to catch right away. You should have seen me the last time I went camping. I couldn’t get that darn thing started to save my life.”
“Last time I went camping, I couldn’t get the tent poles up. I must have tried three times before...”
“Someone took over for you?” he asked. When he glanced at her in the flickering amber light, his smile was gentle, but there was a look in his eyes that just as clearly said he was about to bring this conversation full circle around to the reason he’d brought her over here in the first place.
Her shoulders drooped. She nodded.
“What did they say to you when they took over?” Brushing off his hands, Brock leaned back on his heels and stood up. He offered her his hand.
Staring at it, Stace felt the champagne bubbles of excitement mixed with apprehension racing through her head. Her fingers tingled even before she took his hand and let him pull her up to stand with him.
“He said I was impossible,” she said, a twist of an unhappy smile trying to make a joke out of something that wasn’t any funnier now than it could ever have been.
“Are you impossible?” he pointedly asked.
Did he want her to lie to him?
Is it really a lie? some quiet voice inside her whispered.
She shrugged. “I... I didn’t think so at the time?”
“You say that like it’s a question.” Taking off his coat, Brock draped it over the back side of the crib. Checking the baby to make sure he hadn’t just wakened her, he held out his hand for her coat.
The minute she took it off, she knew, she would be that much closer to the spanking that was coming. She hugged herself, confused by the tiny spark of happiness that leapt at the thought of him taking hold of her arm and pull her closer.
She seriously doubted her nerves would be sparking quiet so brightly once he bent her over his hip and started smacking. Her nerves begged to differ, and Stace hugged herself tighter, not at all understanding what was happening.
“I might be wrong,” she stammered, wincing slightly as she waited for his frown to deepen.
It didn’t, and the longer he waited for her to finish her thought, the more the knots inside her loosened.
Her stomach was starting to hurt, so she was so sure she was about to say the wrong thing.
But it was the truth too, and what point was there in hiding the truth from him?
He’d find it all out sooner or later, wouldn’t he?
“But...?” he coaxed when she worried her hands. The super-long sleeves made it hard to pick at her fingers, so she picked at the sleeve cuffs instead.
“But what if you’re wrong too? What if I’m just one of those people who can’t do things right?”
“What if you’re wrong, and instead of doing things incorrectly, you just do them your own way?”
“Yeah, but my own way when it comes to building fires involves using a hefty squirt of combustible liquid,” she pointed out. “I could have burned Aunt Maggie’s cabin down, you said so yourself. So was I doing it the wrong way or my own way?”
“Good question,” he countered. “How about you take off your pants and panties, and go stand with your nose to the corner until you can think of an equally good answer?”
Her shoulders slumped all over again, this time in defeat. “You said you were going to take off a punishment, not add more.”
Brock tsked, his expression softening. He reached for her shoulders. “Come here.”
Her bottom tingled, as if covered in an army of restless ants, all of which were swarming the spankable surface, running faster and faster the closer he came.
Her forehead touched his shoulders and his arms came around her, rocking her in a faint side to side motion.
There was nothing trepidatious about that feeling.
Just hearing the slow beat of his heart under her ear made her own dance in her chest.
“Why are we here, Stace?”
Her heart was still dancing. That that question didn’t kill it surprised her.
“Because I said things about myself that you don’t like and I’m very sorry for that.”
“Are you, though?”
That made her think. She bit her bottom lip, worrying it as she wondered whether she would do better to tell him what he wanted to hear or if she was supposed to be honest.
“I’m sorry I made you mad,” she said finally. “But I don’t understand why saying I don’t do things well is wrong.”
“Because you’re judging whether you’re doing things right based on the harmful things being said to you by others. It’s painful for me to see you repeating those same harmful things. Do you really want to spend the rest of your life thinking of yourself as inadequate in everything you do?”
She bowed her head, tapping at her fingers as her shoulders sank under the weight of the mountain of guilt now building up inside her.
“No,” she said softly, hating that he was right.
Hating that she could see herself doing exactly what he’d just said, and yet, it felt so real, so truthful whenever those things just popped out of her mouth.
“Pants down,” he told her again. “Panties too. Nose to the corner, please. I want you to think about how you can keep from being mean to yourself, because I’m not going to allow you to say these things anymore.”
She shouldn’t be saying mean things about herself to start with. When had it become such a habit?
Shoulders drooping, she walked herself to the same corner he’d put her in the last time he’d spanked her. Sighing, she glared at the walls, then took down her pants and panties both. It was horribly humbling.
“Hands on top of your head,” Brock said dryly.
She glanced back over her shoulder to find him standing by the crib, arms folded across his broad chest while he watched her.
“Turn around,” he ordered, making twirling circles with one finger until she did. “Nose to the wall.”
She sighed as she obeyed, tugged at her shirt, pulling it down as low as it would go over her bottom.
For all the good it did. The moment she crept her hands up to rest palm on top of hand on top of her head, she could feel the hem of her shirt rising, baring her from behind.
Her face flushed hot and her eyes began to sting from the watery rush slowly filling up the back of her throat until it overflowed her lashes and blurred everything before her.