Chapter 48
I t was getting cold in here. Devi glanced at the fireplace. She’d never lived in a house with a fireplace before. Not that they seemed that hard to work.
Open the door, shove wood in, bask in the warmth.
Done.
Only, the fire was dying and she didn’t want it to go out.
Who knew how long Hayes was going to be?
He’d gotten some sort of urgent phone call and had had to rush up to JSI headquarters.
And she doubted he’d had a chance to call anyone to come sit with her.
Not to mention that the weather was terrible outside. No one would willingly go out in it.
The wood is right there.
With a shrug, she got up and grabbed a piece of wood with her good hand.
Hmm. Wait. That wasn’t going to work. She set it back down and reached for the handle. Ooh that was hot, she used a cloth next to the fireplace to protect her hand and opened it. A whoosh of heat hit her, making her eyes water.
Wow.
There was some real heat in that fireplace.
Well, duh. It’s a fire, Devi.
Shaking her head at herself, she grabbed the piece of wood again and shoved it into the fire. Only, it didn’t go fully in. Obviously, she hadn’t given it enough of a shove.
Shoot.
She didn’t want to reach in and push it with her bare hand. What to do? Then she noticed a metal poker sitting next to the fireplace.
All right.
That seemed easy enough. Grabbing the poker, she shoved the wood in and embers flew out, landing on the floor.
“Oh no! Oh shit!” she cried, worried the embers would catch and create a fire.
So she stomped on the fire with her slipper-clad feet. The smell of burning rubber filled the room, making her wrinkle her nose and quickly take off her slippers. Then she noticed that the door to the fire was still open and smoke was starting to fill the room.
“Shit! Shit!” She quickly grabbed the handle, hissing as the heat stung her hand. She’d forgotten the cloth. She quickly shut the door.
Her heart was racing as she sat down right there on the floor.
“Ouch,” she grumbled.
So. That was a disaster. How come it looked so easy when Hayes did it?
“Devi, I’m home,” he called out as the back door opened. “Why does it smell like smoke in here? Devi! Fuck!”
He raced in and stopped as he saw her sitting on the floor. Then his gaze moved from the fireplace to her slippers.
“Devi, what the fuck happened?”
“I didn’t realize working a fireplace could be so hard,” she grumbled.
“It was starting to go out so I thought I would put some wood on. Only the piece of wood kind of got stuck. So then I used the poker to push it in and embers fell out onto the floor. I was worried that the cabin would go on fire! So I stomped them out with my slippers. I think I’ve ruined them, though. I’m so sorry.”
He'd bought her those slippers and she’d wrecked them. And the look on his face told her that he was really mad.
Awesome.
She was such an idiot.
“I don’t care about the slippers!” he snapped. “I’ll buy you twenty more pairs of slippers. What I care about is you. Did you hurt yourself?”
“No. I’m fine.”
Well, her hand stung a little but she thought it was best not to mention that.
“Then why are you sitting on the floor?” he asked, moving closer.
“I don’t know. I got a bit panicked, I guess. I know it’s stupid.”
“It’s not stupid.” He ran his hands over her, checking her good hand. “What’s this?”
Oh drat. It was slightly red.
“I guess the handle got hot and I touched it,” she said.
“Baby, you should have told me that immediately.” Picking her up, he carried her to the kitchen and sat her on the counter. Then he placed her hand under running cold water.
“I’m going to find the First-Aid kit. Keep that hand under the water.”
“It’s only a little bit red,” she complained.
“Keep it there.” He walked off, returning with the First-Aid kit. Setting it down, he pulled out some burn cream and a bandage.
“You’re not going to bandage my whole hand, are you? I’m already down one hand.”
“Let’s see how it looks after you’ve taken it out of the water. If it’s blistering, you’re going to see Doc.”
Jeez. It wasn’t going to blister!
He drew her hand out and inspected it. The palm was barely red. “It’s not too bad.”
“Told you.”
“Do not think this means you’re not in trouble.” He put some cream and a small Band-Aid on it. “Because putting that wood on was breaking a rule.”
Huh? What was he talking about?
“How was it breaking a rule?” she asked as he lifted her up off the counter and carried her to the sofa.
Then he crouched in front of her and cupped her chin, giving her a fierce look. “Because you could have hurt yourself. It’s a safety matter. You’re not allowed near fire.”
“But that’s crazy!” she cried. “I understand not being allowed around fire when I’m in Little headspace. But . . . but I didn’t think that was a real rule! I have to be able to put wood on the fire.”
“No. You could hurt yourself.”
“And what am I going to do when you’re not here? When you have to go back to work? Am I supposed to just freeze?”
He glared at her, his jaw working. “You’ll come with me.”
“Hayes, I can’t come with you.”
“Sure you can. Or I’ll only do local jobs.”
“Even if you only do local jobs you still can’t come home and stoke up the fire for me.”
Three days had passed since her talk with Kent and Zeke and she’d been doing a lot of thinking about what they’d said.
She loved how he took care of her and she understood all of the rules that he gave her were his way of keeping her safe. But there were some things that just weren’t practical.
“It’s not practical.”
“I have to keep you safe.”
“I know you do. But you can’t keep me safe from everything. And surely you can see that putting baby locks on the cupboards and over the power sockets is maybe just a bit too far?”
He ground his teeth together and a muscle started to tic by his eye. “I have to keep you safe. Nothing can happen to you.”
Her heart was breaking for him. “When Mom got sick, I thought that there must be some way I could make her better. If I fed her lots of good food or if I was very good and quiet so I didn’t stress her out. But nothing I did saved her. Sometimes, no matter what you do, bad things happen.”
For a moment she thought she got through to him. But he shook his head, his face growing stern.
“No. What you need are more rules. Then you won’t get sick or hurt yourself. You broke one of them.” He sat next to her, glancing around almost frantically. “Too many hazards. Too many things that could harm you.”
He wasn’t even paying attention to her.
“Time for your punishment. And after your spanking, you can spend the time in the corner thinking about what you should have done differently.”
Irritation filled her and she tried to push it down as he laid her across his lap. Her arm had healed enough that he now felt like he could lie her in this position for a spanking.
But this wasn’t right. She wasn’t in the wrong!
Okay, she had kind of messed up putting a log in the fire, but she just needed to be shown what to do. It wasn’t practical to say that she could never touch the fireplace. And she couldn’t even plug anything in because those darn electrical sockets were all covered.
As he reached for her pants, drawing them down, she started wriggling.
“Hayes, stop!”
“Can’t believe you stomped on embers. What if you hadn’t been wearing slippers? You could have been seriously harmed.”
All right. So she probably shouldn’t have done that.
“No, this can’t happen again. I have to protect you.”
“Hayes, no! Listen to me. Stop!”
Shoot. How to make him listen to her?
Well, you could start by using your safeword.
“Hayes, Parsnip! Parsnip!” she yelled.
What if he didn’t listen to her? What if he didn’t stop?
She knew that it would break something between them if he didn’t listen. And she wasn’t certain if that was something that could be repaired.
Thankfully, he froze, and she managed to get off his lap and back onto the sofa. She was breathing heavily. Gathering up her courage, she risked a glimpse at him.
Oh God.
What had she done?
Why didn’t you just let him spank you? Technically, you did break a rule. Even if you didn’t think that staying away from fire rule was real, you could have harmed yourself by stomping on embers. You didn’t really know what you were doing. What if you’d set the house on fire?
Shoot.
Why did she always have to make things into an issue?
If she had just let him spank her, then everything would be done by now. And they could have carried on as normal.
Well, other than the fact that he was going a bit crazy with all this child proofing.
Be understanding, Devi. Remember that he lost his wife. He’s being overprotective because of that trauma. Not because he’s an ass.
“You . . . what happened? Are you all right? Are you in pain? You hurt yourself, didn’t you? Where?” Hayes started to frantically pat her down, as though searching for hidden trauma.
“Hayes! Hayes, listen to me. I’m fine! I’m all right.”
“Then why did you say your safeword?” he demanded.
“Because you can’t . . . you can’t punish me for this.”
“It’s a rule.”
Devi shook her head. “I don’t think . . . I didn’t realize . . .” Frustration bit at her. “Urgh. I can’t get this out!”
“Hey, take it easy,” he soothed as he kneeled in front of her. He ran his hands gently up and down her thighs. “Just talk to me. What’s going on, baby?”
He was being so sweet. What had she done?
“Did I go too far? Was I too rough? Did I scare you?”
The absolute horror in his voice made her feel terrible. Why hadn’t she just let him do what he wanted?
“I’m so sorry!” she cried. “I should have just let you do it.”
He flinched back as though she’d hit him. “What? No, baby. A safeword is there to keep you safe. If you need to use it, you should.”
“Aren’t you upset with me?” she whispered.
“I could never get upset with you for protecting yourself,” he reassured her.
There he went, being so amazing again. And she felt like such a freaking failure.