Old Enough To Know Better Read online

  He was never angry or nasty or mean with her. He almost never yelled; and if he did, it was very rarely at her, and most usually at himself, or a football or hockey team on television who wasn’t playing to his specifications. In this situation, when he was going to discipline her, he was almost dichotomously soothing and sensitive.

  Cat nodded, not that she really had a choice – tears falling from her chin onto the leg of his jeans.

  “But what’s going to have to happen in the mean time, my love?” he asked, adjusting his position a little so that he sat straighter on the edge of the bed, less towards her, in preparation for what was to come. But he kept his arm around her, steady, not binding because he didn’t fear she’d run away from him, but more to provide support and remind her that she could lean on him, even when he punished her. He always sought to remind her that the punishments he dished out didn’t mean that he didn’t love her, and he never wanted her to forget that.

  She hated saying it, and Clint almost always required it when he remembered and had the time to go through the entire ritual (which he felt was very important for the both of them, so he tried to do it as often as possible). Sometimes, though, when it was a quick spanking, he didn’t. When he just flipped her over his knee in the living room, or made her bend over in the kitchen, or wherever, usually for sassing him or using a word he didn’t like (and there seemed to be an endless list of those, as far as she was concerned). She hated to hear him say her whole name, knowing what was coming next was a lecture about lady like language, to be accompanied by the loud tattoo of his hand cracking painfully against her bare butt.

  “We get to snuggle and make love?” she suggested hopefully, blatantly trying to kiss him into distraction.

  Clint knew she didn’t have far to go with that, but he had to be strong, for her, and he was determined to do so. So he unwrapped those silky arms from around his neck and set her away from him just a bit, trying to adjust himself into a comfortable position which was damned near impossible with a raging hard on pressed against the zipper of his jeans. “None of that tonight, sweetie. You know the rule.”

  She knew it, and didn’t like it. No sex after a spanking; that was his rule. He didn’t believe in pleasuring her after he’d punished her, thinking that it diminished his efforts, somehow, and he could almost never be corrupted about that. He wouldn’t even be dissuaded in the morning, either. She’d tried. They wouldn’t be able to come together until tomorrow night, and it would drive her absolutely crazy.

  Cat’s only consolation was that she knew that he would be aching at least as badly as she was – maybe even more, although she doubted it. There was always a conflagration when they came together, like gasoline and a match, they lit up the sky with their loving, always had, always would.

  “Answer my question, Cat.” This time he wasn’t fooling, and she knew she had better do as he asked, or she’d be getting two spankings: one for not answering him in what he considered to be a timely fashion, and one for buying the dress. Two Clint spankings in a row was never a good idea.

  But still, making her say it was a torturous thing, and she squirmed, quite physically, as she barely eked the words out. “A spanking.”

  “Not just ‘a’ spanking,” he corrected immediately, “your spanking. I don’t bother to spank just anyone, do I?”

  “No,” she said, her voice small, repeating, because she knew he would require it of her eventually, “my spanking.” She couldn’t repress a small shiver.

  “Good girl. Now,” he patted his legs, “over my lap.”

  He rarely positioned her himself. Clint preferred that she come to him for her chastisement herself, of her own free will, as if physically consenting to it as well as inherently, every single time. Cat had known exactly what she had signed on to well before they’d actually tied the knot. This definitely wasn’t something he’d sprung on her on their wedding night. He’d made it very clear from the beginning of their relationship exactly what he expected from her, and how he expected her to behave, as well as exactly how he’d correct that behavior, when needed, from the beginning – since before they were engaged. He’d never hesitated to keep her in line, which had always brought amused smiles to her parents’ faces, she’d noted.

  But it was downright awful to have to put yourself over the lap of the person you knew was going to spank you. It was almost painful in and of itself, forget the spanking. Well, almost. His thighs were so big and muscular that they had a thinnish pillow that he kept at hand to put over them for her comfort, so that her ribs and hips would have something to cushion them, but then it would move when she climbed on, and there was always a certain amount of adjustments that had to be made that just contributed to her humiliation.

  But he was tender and gentle but firmly resolved throughout, patient with her endless fussing and futzing until she felt just right. Cat knew she didn’t need to be hurting anywhere else but where he was going to be focusing for the next while, so she was a pain in the butt about her position. She also knew that, true to form, she was going to be flailing about like a mad woman, trying to dislodge herself or avoid a swat or twelve, not caring much at the time which it was, so she needed to be sure she was going to be comfortable the whole time, which seemed like decades at the time, but she was sure it lasted only minutes… but maybe years?

  She’d never been cognizant enough at the end to try to keep track. But it wasn’t as if Clint beat her to a bloody pulp, either. Far from it. He was always very attuned to how she was responding to what he was doing, and very careful not to over do it. He wasn’t a huge man, not a lot taller than she was, but he was definitely much more muscular. And she had to give it to him, he was always scrupulously careful of her when she was in his arms, or over his lap.

  Her spankings weren’t horrible, long, drawn out, torturous affairs, although they certainly seemed as though they were at the time, and she reacted as though they were, crying and kicking as if he was digging her heart out with a spoon. Clint made sure she regretted what she’d done; however long that took and how harsh the punishment was entirely his decision. She always ended up with a bottom that was sore for several days later, not that he ever hesitated to scorch it again, the next day, if he deemed she needed it, darn him.

  Clint leaned over to brush her hair back from her eyes, and give her a pillow that she could cry into. At that point, they were still living in an apartment building with tissue thin walls. One of their fellow tenants had already banged on the shared wall during a particularly loud punishment session, and Cat had been holding her breath ever since waiting for the police to arrive on their doorstep.

  “I love you, Cat,” he said, solemnly, for this was not something he ever undertook lightly, and she knew it.

  “I love you, too, ‘n I’m sorry,” she sobbed, and it damned near broke his heart every time, the trust she placed in him and the love she had for him when she let him do this for her.

  Chapter Two

  When he was through, her bottom radiated a palpable heat that he knew must have been terribly uncomfortable. His handprint was seared all over the length of her rear and the backs of her thighs, which he always deemed needed attention, as he knew they were at least as sensitive as her bottom, if not more. Cat had taken it well, though, even though she’d been crying from before she had even placed herself over his lap. She’d done her best to try to dislodge herself and scoot out from under his well placed swats, but hadn’t managed to miss very many.

  For a relatively non athletic woman, she became a world class contortionist when he had her over his lap, twisting and twirling and writhing and turning herself into a pretzel trying to avoid any spank she could, and flailing her legs like she should have tried out for Riverdance.

  But one well placed leg over hers quieted that – as soon as he remembered to do it – and the broad arm that usually encircled her waist tightened until she could barely move an inch, rendering her entirely vulnerable to whatever form of correction he sa
w fit, without having to worry about being concussed into unconsciousness in the process by the whirling dervish that was his wife.

  He never yelled at her for trying to avoid being spanked. He’d been spanked himself when he was growing up – unlike Cat – and he knew that it was darned near impossible not to try to avoid the discomfort it caused. He simply set about, calmly, and with excruciating care for her, neutralizing each attempt, so that she ended up getting exactly the spanking he intended for her, regardless of her efforts to avoid exactly that end.

  Cat was still sobbing quietly into the pillow he’d given her that, luckily, was a spare. She’d drenched it, and wouldn’t want to sleep on it tonight. Clint sighed, wanting to rub his hand over the havoc he’d created on her bottom, wanting to rub lotion on it, to soothe away the hurt he’d just deliberately caused, but he restrained himself, knowing that she needed the reminder of rolling over onto a sore bottom tonight, and sitting on it tomorrow morning at breakfast, and in the car on the way to the mall when they returned the dress together.

  So after divesting her of the dress, which he lay carefully over the chair next to the bed, and popping her into her favorite nightgown, he tried to content himself with being a replacement for the pillow, tugging it away from her and transferring her limp body into his waiting arms as they cuddled close together under the warm covers.

  She glommed onto him as she often did after a spanking, as if he was a rock in the middle of a storm, still hiccoughing sobs. He enveloped her in his strong arms and rocked just a bit, back and forth, rubbing her back and just letting her cry it out. Clint loved the feel of her body pressed up against his, and he did all what he could to not lay her back and make love to her like every inch of him wanted desperately to. His desire for her hadn’t diminished one iota from the moment he’d seen her. If anything, the more time they spent together, the more it grew; the better he knew her, the more intimacies they shared, the more the raging inferno of his desire was stoked.

  And just after a spanking was one of the times he desired the deepest intimacies with her the most, yet he had made a rule for her that effected the both of them – and although he knew she probably didn’t see it much that way, most all of her rules did effect them both, in one way or the other – and denied himself that ultimate pleasure.

  He had never broken that rule.

  Until now.

  Clint lifted her face from his shoulder with a finger under her chin, covering her lips with his immediately, insistently.

  Cat’s mouth was moist and soft. He could feel that their lips were damming what remained of her tears until he rolled with her, tucking her beneath him, insinuating himself between her legs. She gasped and arched her back at the way he took her, all at once, to the hilt, no words, no explanations . . . simple possession, in its basest of forms.

  She was so tight around him; he could feel her body pulsing and trying to accommodate him, her hips arching and rocking as she came to grips with the sudden, stark pleasure of being both pinned and pricked so unexpectedly.

  He hadn’t so much as moved, beyond claiming her inside and out, and yet she was soaking wet and panting already. Clint reached down and tugged the nightie over her head, hating even the flimsiest of obstacles to the joining of their flesh, top to toe.

  Tongues danced, lips sucked, nipples pinched and tweaked on both sides, and then he reached under her and clenched that still sore, cute little rear of hers that he’d so recently tended to, forcing her even closer against him to avoid his grasping hands, making her groan in a way that had him wishing they were on an island of their own, where no one would ever hear her scream, in pleasure or in pain.

  In lieu of the island, he covered her mouth with his and dragged himself out of her so slowly that she was begging him to take her before his hips had made it halfway back.

  Her answer was his most evil chuckle, which, to her, was false advertising. There wasn’t an evil bone in his body . . .

  She thought.

  But apparently there was at least one.

  Their lovemaking that night was her undoing. In the aftermath, she shook and cried in his arms to the point that he thought he might have seriously hurt her, but the truth was far from it. He split her open, the very insides of her, places she never showed anyone. He brought the light of his love to places she didn’t even know she owned and, although it was a tender, joyous thing, it wasn’t easy, which made it all that much more achingly tender to her.

  She fell asleep, as she nearly always did, with her head on his chest and her body throbbing in time to his pulse.

  So there she stood at the very back end of the engagement party for a dear friend, years later, Clintless, alone by choice. Wishing she was anywhere else, and thinking too much about old times with a man she’d never see again, who’d never again hold her in his arms or even sear her flesh with his palm. Hell, she’d even gladly sign up for a spanking again without so much as a second thought, if only to be near him.

  Tears flooded her eyes, and she turned, wanting to run home when she knew she should have been trying to enjoy herself at Jane’s party. After all, Jane was one of her oldest friends, and she’d been alone, too, raising her first husband’s son from his first marriage, Finn, for more than twenty years. Jane’s husband had died, too. You would have thought she would have understood better than anyone else what Cat was going through.

  But Cat and Clint’s relationship wasn’t the norm, and neither had Jane and Paul’s been. It hadn’t been the happiest of marriages, even at its best. Paul’s favorite companion had been the bottle, and he’d preferred to take out his shortcomings on Jane, so she actually had less of an understanding of Cat’s reluctance to date and come out of mourning than her other friends did.

  It was funny. Out of her close friends there was only one couple that she thought actually had a good relationship, anything like what she and Clint shared. Everyone else had cycled through good and bad relationships like the seasons of the year, picking up and then discarding them for one reason or the other, four out of the five of them ending up alone and seemingly content that way.

  Three out of four, now, she corrected herself, mentally raising her glass to Jane and whatsisname.

  What was that guy’s name? She couldn’t come up with it for the life of her. Early Alzheimer’s was definitely setting in.

  Cat was shaking her head at the way she was slowly losing her mind as she headed for the dining room, where all of the potluck dishes had been laid out for everyone to help themselves, spread from hell to breakfast on the groaning, gorgeous mahogany trestle table that had been in Jane’s family for more than two hundred years, on the immaculate sideboard that her great-great-great-great grandmother had brought over from the old country with her, and on the Hoosier that Cat had always not so secretly coveted. Leave it to Jane to have a party for herself and then make everyone else contribute towards it. If it had been Carol’s party she would have had it at the Bar Harbor Inn and she would have spared no expense. Cristal would have flowed like water, and there would have been a huge spread of lobster and caviar and Kobe beef fit for a sheik.

  But Jane was a much more the down to earth type. They had all been born and bred on the Island, but Jane had retained that down home practicality that some of them had lost. She had inherited a perfectly gorgeous old center hall colonial from her parents, circa 1825, decorated with lovingly treasured antiques that had been handed down from generation to generation, so she didn’t feel the need to have her party anywhere else but her own home.

  Besides, she knew some of her friends were the best cooks in town. Why let that go to waste?

  And she was right. Cat took one – and only one, she told herself sternly – of Carol’s famous stuffed shells, two paper thin slices of Rhonda’s famous garlic studded leg of lamb, a homemade roll that she knew by the cloverleaf shape was Mrs. Kellerman’s, and a small – all right, a slab – of Jane’s chocolate cheesecake and made her escape to the screened porch, where she
was relieved to find no one was at this time of year, to devour her bounty in relative peace and privacy.

  It was still a little to chilly for most folks, but the Taylors had gotten a prime piece of land in Southwest Harbor sometime near its inception in 1761, right on the water, back when that didn’t mean anything like what it did now in terms of value, and the town was just a small, working fishing village.

  She took a slow, calming breath. Even with all her traveling, Cat had never lost her deep love of the smell of the Maine ocean, even at low tide.

  She was just sitting back, having kicked off an uncomfortable high heeled shoe to place a stockinged foot on the cold floorboards in favor of rocking the swing a little as she listened to the ocean and began to tuck, miniscule bite by miniscule bite, into the luscious cheesecake - first, of course, in case there was an earthquake and the house fell into the sea and she’d started with the roll and missed out for eternity on her last possible bite of chocolate cheesecake - when she heard the screen door open and Finn appeared.

  Oh, God, now she had to feel guilty about what she was eating, because someone had caught her at it. The rule was that if no one saw you eat it, there were no calories, right?

  “I thought I’d seen you come out here,” he said.

  My, my. When did he get old enough to possess a voice like that? It was at least as smooth and guilt inducing as the cheesecake that was melting in her mouth. She cocked her head to one side, thinking that that was a relatively strange thing for him to say, too. Why on Earth would he be paying attention to where she was? “I was just trying to escape the crowd, and this has always been my favorite place in this house.”

  “Mine, too,” he said, leaning against the railing of the porch, watching her thoughtfully but in a manner that was making her nervous nonetheless.

  Despite the smooth richness of the dessert, she was beginning to regret that she hadn’t brought anything but lemonade out to drink. It really didn’t go with cheesecake, and she frowned as she took a sip. It completely ruined the effect.