Promises Kept Read online

  After her first surprised reaction, as she digested what he'd said while she stood, not quite forcibly held against him from breasts to thighs, Anna blushed brightly at the thought of being taken over his lap. She was just about to expire from embarrassment at the way he was holding her - she couldn't imagine how intimate a spanking from him would be! She was likely to just faint dead away in the middle of it!

  "You wouldn't dare!"

  His reaction – throwing his head back in a full throated laugh at her outraged indignance – did nothing to soothe her concerns. In fact, it ratcheted them up quite a bit. When he'd recovered, those dark eyes caught hers and refused to let them go as he chided gently in an altogether too sexy tone, "Come on, now, Anna. You know me better than that."

  Unfortunately, there had never been any real doubt in her mind that he would do exactly as he said – he always did. Especially since that platter-sized hand of his was already patting her bottom possessively, as if in warning.

  She squirmed away from him in the full knowledge that he was graciously allowing her to do so, but could not escape without another firm pop on her backside as what she knew he considered a reminder. Anna could still hear him chuckling softly while she fled down the hall, keeping herself to a quick walk so that he wouldn't have the satisfaction of seeing her get away from him at a full tilt.

  From that moment on, she was scrupulously careful in her behavior – around him, at least. As much as she had been the doted upon apple of her mother's eye, there really wasn't enough money around when she was growing up for her to become truly spoiled, luckily, because Anna knew that Remy wasn't likely to put up with that kind of behavior.

  Of course, she had told Libby what her brother said, watching her friend turn as bright red as she had. "I'll kill him! I can't believe he said that to you!"

  Anna shrugged her shoulders. "That's Remy. What else was he going to say? 'Come stay at my home and be sure to walk on the wild side while you're here?' I don't think so."

  In truth, what he'd said had created deeply conflicting feelings within Anna.

  She'd had a gigantic crush on Remington Conrad McMahon for as long as she was sentient, at least. Their mothers had been best friends – much like their daughters were – and she had grown up as much at his house as her own. He was ten years older than she and Libby were, so she didn't see nearly as much of him as she would have liked, but she spent as much time with him as she could, even riding out with him to help with the cattle if Libby was busy with something else.

  And she had to hand it to him; he had been wonderfully patient with her wanting to tag along after him all of the time. He treated her almost exactly as he did his little sister – keeping a very watchful, brotherly eye on her and displaying the kind of patience with her that he rarely exhibited anywhere else, although he almost never yelled at anyone or anything. A short, sharp command to anyone on the ranch – including his sister and her best pal – was usually more than enough to get anyone to cease and desist or, alternately, hop to whatever it was that he had commanded of them.

  He had abided by her mother's preferences and had never laid a disciplinary hand on her, not that, she was more than sure, he hadn't considered it long and hard on multiple occasions. Instead of spanking her if she misbehaved, he simply threatened to take her home. Being forcibly separated from Libby – or him, not that she didn't do her best not to let him know it – was a fate worse than death as far as she was concerned, and she was immediately contrite and obedient when faced with that very real promise.

  But now that she was actually living in the same house with him, it was inevitable that he'd end up having to spank her eventually, and that event came all too soon for Anna's liking. And it wasn't even like she'd done anything horrible. In fact, she had been trying to help him, and make a voluntary contribution to the family.

  No one had had to tell her that the family's finances weren't what they used to be. There had been a time when their father, Jace, was running the ranch, that money had flowed like water through the house. That was when all of the expansion and additions were made to what had been a medium sized Spanish style house, as well as the ranch itself. An impressively large in-ground pool and patio area were added, complete with a cage around it to keep the pool cleaner and insects out, along with a hot tub which helped the more senior members of the family. The kitchen was updated, and what had been the master bedroom was turned into an expansive suite area by usurping two of the bedrooms they were not using.

  Remy had degrees in both business and animal husbandry, and he had pretty much been running the ranch for quite some time prior to his father's unexpected death. But no amount of experience or education could have prepared him for a precipitous downturn in the price and consumption of beef or the skyrocketing price of feed and fuel.

  Even that early, he had begun to clamp down on expenses, and one of the things that had been neglected was the small yard around the house. The landscaping around it had always been their mother's pride and joy, and now it was a field of weeds and dandelions.

  Wanting to contribute to the household as much as she could without stepping on Remy's ego and actually offering him money, she decided to aid the cause in a small way, thinking that having the landscaping done might raise everyone's spirits. She had the afternoon to herself, after all. Remy had insisted that they both get part time jobs. Not full time, because he wanted them to have some enjoyment of their summer vacation, but part time, preferably in the field they were going to be going into when they graduated. Anna had already been working for a nearby daycare since high school, so she had simply picked up there where she'd left off.

  So, while Remy was out on the ranch somewhere, killing himself with overwork, and Lib was at the job she'd gotten in a small store in downtown Darien, Anna decided that she was going to pull the weeds, mow the lawn and do the trimming. If she hadn't been confirmed to have a black thumb, she might have taken a stab at planting some flowers, like Abigail McMahon had done every year, but Anna knew that would be pushing it, and she didn't want to spend money on plants she was just going to kill as soon as she laid a hand on them, anyway.

  She had never mown a lawn before, but how hard could it be? She and her mother had always lived in apartments or, every once in a great while, a rented house, so they'd never had to do any outside maintenance.

  After having first pulled all of the weeds she could recognize, Anna found an old push lawnmower – the gasoline powered kind, thankfully, not those old push only mowers that weighed a ton – in the shed next to the barn, and, despite her ineptitude with machinery of any kind, she managed to get it going, too. Inordinately proud of herself for having done so, she tucked her IPod into the front pocket of her shorts and began to tackle the front yard.

  She was so engrossed in what she was doing, and in listening to her favorite playlist, that when Remy appeared in front of her, his big dirty booted foot stepping firmly on the lawnmower to prevent it from moving as he reached to turn it off, she jumped back away from him and the loud beast, nearly falling on her butt in the process.

  Luckily – or, really not so luckily for her, it turned out – he was right there in the blink of an eye, shoving the machine out of the way and putting an all too well muscled, supportive arm behind her back before swinging her up into his arms in such a fluid a motion that one would think he'd spent long hours practicing it.

  Anna giggled somewhat nervously when she realized that she was being held tightly to him as he walked towards the house, turning slightly in his arms to gaze almost longingly back at the half-chopped lawn as she quickly pulled the ear buds from her ears. "Where are we going? I was mowing the -"

  "I know what you were doing, Annalise Nicolette Kenner."

  "Lawn," she finished. Her head snapped back around, both at his strict tone and his use of her full name. Libby had told her once that pretty much the only time Remy ever used her full name as when a spanking was imminent. Anna hadn't even known that he knew he
r full name, and despite her trepidation at what his use of it meant, she felt her heart swell and ache longingly in her chest that he did.

  "Was I doing something wrong?" she asked in all innocence, noting that once he'd gotten them into the house he seemed to be heading for his study, which she knew instinctively was not at all a good thing. "I just wanted to help. I noticed that the lawn was in need of a good clipping."

  He seemed to be on a course to surprise her in everything he did, because instead of setting her down on her feet as she expected, he instead brought her to the big couch that lined almost the entirety of one wall of his study and gently set her down there, immediately knelt in front of her, taking her right foot in his hand and removing the flip flop she'd been wearing to inspect it closely, and then its twin, running his hands up and down her calves and thoroughly examining every inch of her feet. His tender care had stopped her dead, mid-sentence.

  When Remy finally looked up at her, she could see how deeply his brow was furrowed, as well as the concerned wrinkles across his forehead. His lips were tightly set, as was his jaw.

  "I'm fully aware of what you were trying to do, and, although I appreciate your effort, I am appalled that you didn't have the common sense not to use a push mower while wearing shorts and – I shudder to say it – flip flops."

  He'd never really taken such a disciplinary tone with her. He'd never had to. With Anna, nothing more than a disapproving look was needed to get her to cease and desist whatever it was that she was doing at the time, and, if all else failed, he simply brought her home to her mother. That had only had to happen once before she realized that Remy didn't make idle threats. He promised.

  "First off, mowers like that can spray all sorts of crap out at you – rocks and twigs and Lord knows what else could be in the grass, especially as tall as it is – and there you'd be in your shorts, at the very least pock marked for life, or worse. You never, ever user a mower like that without wearing sturdy denims."

  She found herself nodding dutifully, almost awed at the level of anger in his voice. He was nearly trembling with it; the fingers that had continued to claim her slender feet shaking as he massaged them while he spoke.

  "Secondly, and more importantly, you don't ever, ever mow any lawn with any mower in these." Her now green-stained, pink flowered flip flops dangled precariously from the tip of his finger. "What would happen to your completely unprotected feet if the mower rolled back over them accidentally, hm?"

  Responding to more than just the dominance in his tone, but rather the entire package of the nearly seething, somehow all of a sudden larger than life man in front of her, Anna swallowed and nodded obediently before she could even think about it.

  Then he relinquished his hold on her foot and took a seat beside her. Her backbone had deserted her until then, but reappeared quickly. "But there are no hills or even inclines in the lawn. And – aside from the weeds, which I already pulled – there's nothing in the lawn but grass. And what am I supposed to do? Wear pants and shoes when I'm mowing a lawn in summer in Texas? You want me to put on a down jacket, too? I might not quite achieve heat stroke with just the pants and shoes, you know."

  Being smart with him at that point probably wasn't the most intelligent thing she'd ever done, but she felt she had to defend herself. The desire to be flippant with him fled immediately, though, when she found herself over his lap before she could voice even the slightest protest, a deceptively strong right arm keeping her firmly in place. And he didn't stop there. She was wearing comfortable fitting elastic waist shorts, which he dispensed with – along with her IPod, which he placed carefully on the nearest end table, practically at the same time as he positioned her on his lap, so that before she knew it he was staring down at her frilly "days of the week" panties, and paused for a moment.

  A long moment.

  Permanently, she hoped.

  Although he'd been ready to lecture her about what she would and wouldn't be allowed to wear while she was pushing a mower, he found himself oddly halted by what he saw. "Your butt's lying. It says it's Tuesday, but it's Friday." Despite the seriousness of the situation, Remy found himself hard pressed to keep a straight face at the sight of her incorrectly emblazoned bottom.

  "I know. I really wasn't expecting that anyone else would ever see that, you know."

  "Then why aren't you wearing your Friday panties?" he asked, genuinely curious.

  Anna tried to crane her head up enough to meet his eyes, but the hard arm across the small of her back wouldn't allow it. Sighing exasperatedly, she said, "Because I never wear the right day's panty on the right day." The full story was that she had gotten a set of these just because they reminded her of the ones her mom used to get for her when she was a little girl. But being the contrarian she was, she consciously never wore the correct day's panty.

  "Somehow, knowing you, I can believe that," he replied with much more conviction than Anna appreciated.

  Taking advantage of the moment, she planted a hand on the couch cushion on either side of her, doing her best to extricate herself from that terribly intimate – and horribly vulnerable – position. "Let me up right now!" She threw herself around as much as she could, trying to squirm or fold or contort herself out of her current ignominious state, but had no such luck.

  "I'm afraid, my dear, that you are in no position – currently or otherwise – to make such demands. I'm sure Libby has told you that I'll let you up only when I think you've learned your lesson."

  In fact, she and Libby hadn't really done much talking about the fact her brother occasionally laid down his law on her rump. It seemed to embarrass Lib to no end, and although Anna was dying to know details – because of her insatiable curiosity about Remy, not any prurient interest in Libby – she respected her friend's feelings and managed not to press her about it – barely.

  But that was one of the few things about getting a spanking from Remy McMahon that she did know, and she would have recognized that fact even if she hadn't heard it from her best friend. Remy wasn't about to let any miscreant go until he was certain she had absorbed the full import of the lesson he was taking the time to teach her.

  "Besides that, you'll wear what I say you need to wear while mowing the lawn. And I'm sure you'll remember that I've already warned you that I'd take the matter of your discipline into my own hands." He emphasized his statement by covering her nearly bare butt with his dominant left hand.

  Hearing the word "discipline" coming from his mouth as pertained to her was a sobering shock that tingled along her nerve endings, making her even more nervous than she'd been from the moment she'd first seen his face as he'd commandeered the lawn mower. The reality of this spanking was setting in more and more each second that he held her like this, helpless over his lap.

  Unfortunately, the shock didn't seem to dampen her libido in the least, which was already positively rampant around him, and absolutely the last thing she wanted him to realize. So Anna renewed her attempts to get away – heck, she'd be happy even to just sit on the couch beside him. But she quickly realized it just wasn't going to happen.

  As if to emphasize that fact, and to let her know that he was through putting up with her intermittent struggles and sassy attitude, Remy landed five hard swats on that fibbing rear of hers, thoroughly enjoying the satisfying crack of his palm against her rump.

  But, cute as they were, those panties had to go.

  Since she had no idea that was what he was going to do next, they were halfway to her knees before she reached back frantically with an indignant – and not just a bit embarrassed exclamation - to try to reclaim them, only to find her desperately grasping hand swatted smartly for her efforts. Mortified almost to the point of fainting, knowing that he was staring at her bare butt and that she was helpless to prevent it, she buried her head in her arms as she felt him drag them inexorably down to just below her knees. She chanted the pleading refrain, "Remy, no, you can't do that!"

  "I think I can, Anna. In fact
, I already have," he said softly, almost intimately.

  Remy was doing his best to hide his blatant desire from her – as he'd been doing for quite some time in every other aspect of their lives – but this was more of a challenge than he'd ever had, and he wasn't at all sure he would be successful at it, especially since it kept slipping out in his rough, reverent tone.

  He allowed himself the indulgence of covering the very crest of her generous bottom, which was almost his undoing when he felt the silky smoothness of her skin. But instead of being able to luxuriate in the new found freedom to touch her – which was definitely what he wanted to do – he had another purpose here.

  When he'd first come home, still atop his big gelding, he had to admit that he was gratified that someone was taking the front yard in hand. His mother would have been truly appalled at its state, but he didn't have the time, the inclination or the money to deal with it right now. Then he had dismounted and began walking and then jogging quickly towards her once he realized that his little benefactress needed to be taken in hand herself before she got hurt.

  He had intended just to turn off the machine, give her a stern warning about the proper apparel while mowing, and send her back into the house to put on some jeans. But when he'd gotten close enough to see what little she had on her feet, he knew he needed to do more to get his point across.

  So here they were. He wasn't at all sure that she would still be speaking to him afterwards, but, regardless, he was very firmly resolved to do anything he needed to do to keep her safe, just as he was about his sister.

  Only the comparisons between his feelings for the two ended there. Unlike Libby, he most definitely did not consider Anna to be a sibling in the least.