Chapter 11
TABITHA
Two Daddies?
What the heck?
“Little girl, I suggest you let go of my arm right now unless you want to be the next one over my lap.”
Whipping my head back around, I glare at the Daddy impersonator on the couch. “No! You’re hurting my, um…” Calling her my cousin still feels odd and I’m not sure we could consider each other friends. “You’re hurting her!”
“Oh my god,” Josie groans from her spot draped across her Daddy’s lap. “Please just kill me now. This is so embarrassing.”
An iron band wraps around my waist, lifting me high in the air. In my shock, I let go of Not-Daddy’s arm and grab onto the band.
Only, it’s not a band. It’s my real Daddy’s arm.
Uh-oh.
“You are in so much trouble, little girl,” he growls in my ear.
Just like that, all the fight leaves my body and I go limp in his arms. “I’m sorry. I was just trying to help.”
Carrying me to another couch, he sits and props me up on his knee, his expression stern and unyielding. “Well now you’ve just gotten yourself in trouble alongside your cousin.”
A delighted gasp draws my attention to the corner of the room, where Lanie is grinning happily from her Daddy’s arms. “Cousins! That’s so fun!”
“Yes, so fun,” Not-Daddy drawls sarcastically. “If you all don’t mind, I have a naughty girl in need of her Daddy’s attention.”
“Daddy, no!” Josie cries out, but it does nothing to stay her Daddy’s hand as he brings it down on her round bottom again.
I watch, equal parts horrified and fascinated as her bottom bounces beneath his hand. Over and over again, with every swat darkening the color in her already reddened cheeks.
“I’m sorry!” she wails, kicking her feet and arching her back in what looks to be an escape attempt. But Not-Daddy doesn’t miss a beat as he continues spanking her poor bare bottom.
With every swat, a horrifyingly familiar sensation makes itself known between my thighs. Am I… Am I enjoying this?
No. That can’t be. I’m not some monster who gets off on seeing people in pain.
Am I?
Before I can answer my own question, Not-Daddy rests his hand on Josie’s glowing bottom while she sobs loudly over his lap. “You will not go running toward a moving vehicle ever again. Am I making myself absolutely clear, Josephine Elise?”
“Y-yes, Daddy!”
“That’s my good girl.” Not-Daddy’s voice softens considerably as he gathers his weeping babygirl up in his arms, cradling her on his lap and rocking her gently back and forth. “Shh, my little lovebug. It’s okay. Daddy’s right here.”
Oddly, watching Josie curl into her Daddy’s embrace, stuttering apologies as he holds and comforts her feels even more intimate than watching her get spanked. Heat rises to my cheeks and I turn my head from the sweet scene in front of me.
If “sweet” is really the right word to describe a woman being coddled by the man who just beat her.
This is so weird.
But I don’t really have time to fret about the strangeness of it all before a familiar voice pierces my consciousness.
“All right, little firecracker. Your turn.”
Colt
Without giving my babygirl a chance to argue—or worse, bolt again—I flip her facedown over my knee.
“Daddy, no! Not here!”
The panic in her voice stops me momentarily as I reach for the layers of tulle covering her bottom. I’m tempted to take her somewhere private, since this is her first spanking in her new home.
But not only will she need to get used to having her bottom bared in front of my siblings sooner or later, there are traditions to be considered. With that in mind, I flip her skirts up and glance over at my sister. “Gray, would you bring me your hairbrush?”
A grin spreads across my sister’s face. “I’ll be right back.”
While Gray fetches me the implement I asked for, I peel Tabby’s diaper from her, exposing her bottom. A soft sob reaches my ears and I take a moment to give the pale globes a reassuring rub.
“It’s all right, baby. We’re all family here. A Little girl getting her naughty bottom spanked is nothing your uncles and auntie haven’t seen before.”
“Please, Daddy,” she whispers, sounding so small and scared it makes me want to scoop her up in my arms and reassure her everything will be okay.
Reassurances will have to wait, however. First, my Little girl needs to learn a hard lesson.
“You do not ever interfere with a punishment another Little one has earned. Am I making myself crystal clear, little girl?”
“Y-yes, Daddy. I’m sorry, I won’t do it again, I swear!”
“I’m very happy to hear that.”
Her body relaxes over my lap, and I have to bite my lip against the laugh that wants to burst out of me. Poor Little girl thinks she’s getting off that easily?
The first swat of my hand against her bare bottom has her tensing all over again as a soft cry escapes her. I watch for a moment as my handprint blossoms on her skin before spanking her opposite cheek.
“In this house, the grownups are in charge,” I lecture as I land several more hard swats to her bottom.
My babygirl whimpers and flutters her feet, but she doesn’t try to escape.
“Which means that when Daddy or any of your uncles or your Auntie Gray decide someone needs a spanking, you do not try and stop them.”
“But he was hurting her!”
“Yes, baby. Spankings are meant to hurt, so Little girls learn right from wrong and not to put themselves in danger. Josie did something very dangerous today and her Daddy just wants to keep her safe. Because he loves her.”
As I talk, I continue spanking, and by now my babygirl’s bottom has turned a hot, bright pink. Her kicking and whining has grown more insistent with every swat, but at my last words she goes still.
“He loves her?”
Pausing the spanking, I run my hand over her heated flesh. “Yes, little firecracker. Your Uncle Bram loves his little Josie very, very much. Just like your Uncle Axel loves Lanie.”
Twisting around, she stares up at me through tearful eyes. “So, they spank them because they love them? Why?”
“Because they don’t want them to get hurt. And because sometimes Little girls just need their bottoms spanked.”
Her nose crinkles with obvious disgust. “I don’t think that’s true.”
Chuckling, I give her pink bottom a hard squeeze that makes her whine and kick her feet all over again. “If that were the case, you wouldn’t have been so naughty today.”
“I wasn’t naughty, you’re just a bully!”
All around me, quiet laughter breaks out. Movement from the corner of my eye catches my attention and I look over to find Gray making her way toward me, her wooden hairbrush clasped in her hand.
“Unfortunately for you, little one, I’m about to be an even bigger bully.”
Tabitha
“What?” Fear grips me, clawing at my chest as I jerk my head around, trying to figure out what’s happening. I spot Auntie Gray approaching with a large wooden brush in her hand, and my mind goes blank.
Are they… going to brush my hair? Is that part of my punishment?
The answer, I quickly learn, is no. Auntie Gray hands Daddy the hairbrush, and a moment later the cool wood taps against my bottom.
“I suppose this is officially part of the wedding day tradition,” Daddy says with a laugh. “Welcome to the family, Tabitha Grace.”
With that, the wood snaps against my exposed skin with a loud crack.
For a split second, the sound is all I notice.
But then the pain comes, thousands of stinging needles digging deep into my flesh and it shocks a howl from me as I arch up just like Josie did, desperate to escape more of this impossible punishment.
“Daddy, no! It hurts, it hurts!”
“I know it does, baby.” Despite the soothing tone of his voice, he snaps the wood against my bottom again. “But naughty Little girls learn best with very sore bottoms. And you were a very, very naughty Little girl today.”
“I’m not naughty!” I wail, throwing my hand back to try and protect myself from the next agonizing swat. “I’m a good girl!”
Linking his fingers with mine, he anchors my hand at the base of my spine. “You are a good girl. A good girl who sometimes needs a little help remembering how to behave.”
Again the brush falls, this time hitting just below the curve of my bottom, almost to the tops of my thighs, and the tears brimming in my eyes burst free with a sob. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I’ll be good forever, I promise!”
“You aren’t the first Little girl to promise good behavior when she’s getting her bottom paddled, little firecracker.”
Panic digs its claws into my chest, into my lungs, slowly squeezing the oxygen from them. “No, I mean it! I’m a good girl, I am!”
A sob rips from my throat, and my tears are coming so fast I can barely see.
I’m crying so hard, in fact, I don’t even notice that he’s stopped spanking.
All I know is that one minute I’m draped over his lap and the next I’m sitting up, with Daddy’s arms wrapped tight around me as he holds me close and rocks me gently from side to side.
“It’s okay, baby. Daddy’s right here. You’re okay. You’re safe.”
Throwing my arms around his neck, I cling to him, sobbing into the side of his neck. “I’m n-not bad! I’m not!”
“No, baby, you are a very good girl who just made a mistake. And that’s okay. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes.”
His words seem to reach inside me, calming my racing heart as I try to breathe through the panic. “Th-they do? Even you?”
“Yes, little one. Even Daddy. Not as much as your Uncle Ford, but I still mess up sometimes.”
“Hey!” Someone shouts from far away, and everyone in the room laughs.
As the laughter dies, Daddy nudges me away, gripping my chin so he can force me to look up at him. There’s a smile on his lips, and the panic recedes even further, and I finally feel like I can breathe again.
“You are my perfect babygirl, Tabitha Grace. And nothing will ever change that. Not even a little bit—or a lot—of naughtiness. Understood?”
I want to believe him. All my life, I’ve clung to the belief that if I can just be good enough, quiet enough, sweet enough, nobody will ever leave me. The idea of being loved for who I am, exactly as I am?
It’s more than I can wrap my mind around at the moment.
“Not really,” I confess quietly, worry creeping up my spine. What if he’s angry at me for not believing him?
But Daddy’s smile only widens. “That’s okay. You don’t have to believe me right now. We’ve got our whole lives for me to prove it to you.”