Lia #2
I’ve brought up my hands to my face, because I can feel the goddamn tears about to fall, and I do not want him to be turned on by them now.
“Lia.”
Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.
“Lia!”
His hands pry mine away from my face, and pin them to my back.
“You’re a very silly girl, do you know that?”
“And you’re an asshole.”
Then I bite my lower lip, realizing I’ve just insulted the man who remembered my birthday, cooked me a birthday cake, and bought me the most beautiful ring I’ve ever seen.
“I’m… I’m sorry, Logan, I didn’t mean, I just—”
He cuts off my apology with a deep kiss, and drags me back onto his lap.
“I wasn’t planning to ask your hand in marriage,” he breathes against my ear, “because as far as I’m concerned, your hand is already mine. As is the rest of you. Anyway, captors don’t marry their captives, do they?”
“Uhm…”
“That’s what you are, Lia,” he growls in a way that makes me wet.
“My little captive. That’s what you are, and what you always will be.
Now, if you want a marriage certificate to make official that pretty cage I’ll be keeping you in for the rest of your life, well, I’m more than happy to oblige.
But nothing can change the fact, Lia, that you’re mine. I own you, little ghost girl.”
He takes the ring from my hand and slides it onto my ring finger, before drying my tears.
“Logan, I’m sorry,” I say, feeling both terribly turned on and terribly guilty. Thank you—”
Once more, he cuts off my words, this time with an index finger to my lips. “Before you thank me, open the other package.”
This one is much larger, and shaped exactly like a tennis racket. I don’t have to open it to know what it is. Especially when I see his evil grin.
“Hell no!” I squeal, letting fall the paddle with its carved inscription: Happy 19th Birthday, Crybaby. “No, no, no! You’re gonna have to catch me first!”
I run to the bathroom, trying to close the door behind me, but he follows me in, laughing. So I turn on the shower, and angle the showerhead at him, dousing him with hot water.
“Fuck, Lia!” he half-laughs, half-chokes. “You little brat, when I get a hold of you…”
Laughing just as hard as him, I run out the door.
Logan’s car isn’t in the driveway, and I’m thankful he planned a day out for Dolores and Aurora—I guess he had a full day of celebrations, that is, the Logan version of celebrations, in store for me.
But running after his naked captive in the woods probably didn’t figure on the list.
Though, with him, who knows?
I run out in the backyard, sprinting to the thick foliage beyond the waterfall. The forest here is much denser than the one in Wyoming. It feels like no one’s ever touched it, no one’s ever sullied its floor, and something about that makes me feel safe about running through it stark-naked.
It’s so dense, in fact, that before I’ve run for very long, I start to wonder if Logan will even manage to find me. So I stop, panting hard, because I kind of do want him to catch me and try my new present on me.
Regardless of the fact that my ass is still sore from the wax.
I crouch behind a large boulder, listening to every sound, feeling increasingly nervous when in the silence of the forest, every insect’s cry and bird’s song sounds much louder than it should.
And then, there’s the rustling of leaves, the crack of a twig, the quiet tread of footsteps… what other animals are lurking in this forest?
“Hi, you.”
Fuck!
“You almost gave me a heart attack!”
Logan snuck up on me, and now he looks down at me from his full 6 feet 3 inches, a very smug look on his face.
“Finders keepers,” he purrs.
“Asshole.”
Turns out there’s no need to rile him up. He’s smacking the birthday paddle against the palm of his hand, his eyes glinting like he’s already picturing what to do with it. I take a step back, bumping into the boulder behind me.
He’s got me trapped, and no matter how much I love him, he still has the power to scare me.
“I was going to take it easy on you, seeing as it’s your birthday,” he croons. “But I guess you’re asking for it, huh, brat?”
Yes.
“No!”
“Uh huh. Lean against the boulder, and be quick about it.”
Biting my lower lip, I do as he says, and even a bit more than he says, arching out my ass toward him. He rewards it with a little pat, before removing his hand and putting the rough wooden paddle in its place.
“Can you feel the inscription?” he gloats.
Yes. I can just imagine how my ass will look when he’s spanked those words into me.
“I think I’ll whack your right cheek harder,” he calculates. “I really want to see that crybaby nicely imprinted on your butt.”
“Asshole!”
“Careful, Lia,” he teases, lifting up my birthday present and pretending to bring it down a few times, just to make me wince and jump. “Remember who’s holding the paddle.”
Asshole.
“Thinking the word counts too, you know.”
I suck in a deep breath, trying to keep my expression very neutral; which is pretty hard, given how he’s running the paddle threateningly over my ass.
“We’ll start with twenty.”
Twenty? We’ll start with twenty?
“What the hell? What do you mean, twenty? I can’t take twenty smacks of that! Besides, I’m only nineteen!”
“Uh huh. And one to grow on.”
“What the hell? That’s cheating!”
“Honestly, it should be one hundred,” he continues smoothly, “since that’s how many years you’re going to be stuck with me.
So take it like a good girl, or it’ll be one hundred.
” He rubs the paddle over me again and I clench my jaw, trying very hard not to give him a reason to carry out that threat. “Maybe it’ll be one hundred anyway.”
“Logan!” I protest weakly.
“Fine, fine. Get ready, brat. Three… two…”
Crack.
“Fuck! Ow! Fuck!” I jump up, startled, then cry out when the pain blooms in my ass about a second after impact. “You were supposed to smack me after one, not on one!”
“Huh. I wasn’t aware you made the rules.”
“I didn’t make the rules! That’s just what people do! I wasn’t ready, you whacked me on one! You should’ve whacked me after one! Holy crap, Logan, that hurt!”
He chuckles and positions me against the boulder again. “Fine, I’ll whack you after one. Anything for my birthday girl. Now, don’t move, or I’ll add an extra one. This one won’t hurt like the other one.”
Crack.
“Logan!” I whine, dancing around with pain. “That hurt worse! You promised!”
“I promised it wouldn’t hurt like the other one. And it didn’t, did it? It hurt worse.”
“Asshole!”
“Uh huh—look at that. You’re moving. Guess I’ll tack on that extra one.”
“Logan…”
Somehow, I make it through the next few without moving. But goddammit, he hits hard. Just as hard as with his hand, except he’s got a paddle. Every stroke of it makes me see white.
“I can’t… do it anymore…” I sob against him, after the seventh one, feeling his stiff cock press against my stomach.
He kisses me while rubbing the sting from my sore cheeks. “Want to say red, birthday girl? Hmm? You can say red.”
I shake my head, sniffling. “I just don’t… I don’t want to be able to do it…”
He pauses, clearly puzzled.
“I don’t want to be standing up… I don’t want to have to stand still and take it… I want you to make me take it. I don’t want to think, later on, that I could have stopped it… please, Logan…”
He looks at me, and I can just detect something in his eyes, something like sadness and pain mixed in with a question. “I don’t want to hurt you, Lia,” he says at last.
I snort. “Pretty sure you do.”
“I mean… not like that.” He takes a deep breath. “Sometimes I get the feeling that something has happened to you. If I don’t know what it is, how can I make sure not to cross that line with you?”
“Well, I have a safe word,” I mumble, wishing the very painful, yet very sexy, paddling hadn’t devolved into this.
“Yes, but can I trust you with it? You’ve barely ever used it.”
“That’s because I don’t want to use it. If I wanted to, I would. Please, can we just… can you… I’ll lean against the boulder. It’s fine.”
“Lia…” His eyes gaze into mine. “Lia, tell me what happened. I know something happened to you. Please tell me what. Why are you so scared to tell me?”
I hesitate. I’m not entirely sure myself. It’s a mix of a lot of things, I guess. Even though I don’t really believe, anymore, that he would react to it like my father did, my father’s views on purity are so ingrained in me that I also can’t believe it wouldn’t change some things.
More importantly, though, is that I’ve started to understand what kind of man Logan is. He’s the kind of man who would go after Carmelo and gun him down if he ever found out what he did.
And if he kills Carmelo… he’ll die.
I just can’t lose him.
That’s the reason I keep my mouth shut, looking up at him resolutely.
“Nothing happened,” I lie. “I’ll lean against the boulder again. It’s my birthday, and I want my birthday spanking, Logan, so you’d better give it to me.”
He looks intently at me for what feels like an eternity, although it’s probably less than a minute. Then I can almost see him push aside his suspicions in slow motion, before his mouth flattens into a smirk.
“Come here, brat.”
He sits down on the ground and pulls me down over his lap. Then he brings one of his legs over my lower back, trapping me between them.
“Logan!” I giggle. “What are you doing?”
“Making sure you can’t move.” I whimper when I feel the wooden paddle rub against my cheeks. “That’s what you wanted, birthday girl, wasn’t it? You wanted me to make you take it. And I’ll always do what my crybaby wants. Now, count to three—I’m gonna make it hurt.”