Grading Garnet: The Red Petticoat Saloon Read online

  She quickly looked at the brooch watch she’d pinned to her dress so she’d have some knowledge of when she was expected to be in his study.

  But she wasn’t going to appear before him like some naughty little schoolgirl, was she?

  No. She couldn’t. She had her dignity, and he had no right to discipline her. He wasn’t a relative or a fiancé or even a friend.

  Gloria snorted out loud at that last possibility. Never, ever a friend.

  She could run, she supposed, in the time she had left. She glanced at the watch again, alarmed to see that two minutes had already gone by while she sat there dawdling and arguing with herself. If she was really going to go, she’d better do it now.

  But to where was she going to run? She was miles from town, out in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of land he owned, with men all around who she was sure would be only too happy to help him find her.

  But the most horrible part of the whole thing was that there was a part of her mind that agreed with him, although she still considered him to be plenty culpable in the situation, too, of course. If she hadn’t given in to her prurient urges and spied on his intimate acts like a common peeper, she wouldn’t have found herself in this mess, and with the head of the school board—the man who held her professional future—or what there was left of it—in his brawny hands, no less.

  Another check of her watch and now she only had three minutes left. Damn, ten minutes went by faster than she realized!

  Quickly realizing that she would have to become resigned to her fate, Gloria sighed heavily and rose to cross to the door, opening it as slowly as she dared, then poking her head out to see if Señora Garcia was about, but thankfully, she wasn’t.

  Although a thought struck her as she made her way to the door to his study, which was off the living room.

  They weren’t alone in this house—by design—and the woman who was supposed to be a chaperone to them was going to hear every bit of her comeuppance at his hands! She had no illusions about her ability to remain quiet while he spanked her. If a woman who got paid to endure that kind of thing couldn’t stifle her pleas and moans, what hope did she have of doing so? And what was the older woman going to think about that? What might she say about it to other people?

  Near tears already, Gloria shook her head. There was no hope for it. She wanted this job—she had to have this job—and this was the price she was going to have to pay to keep it.

  She grabbed the doorknob and turned it, stepping into the big book-lined room she’d admired when she’d seen it moments ago, then closing the door behind her and turning to face him.

  He was behind the large, ornate desk, and had been reading a book, which he put down at her appearance.

  “Good girl for coming here under your own power, Gloria. That must’ve taken a lot of strength of will. You made the right choice, although in a few minutes you’re going to disagree quite heartily with that sentiment.”

  Gloria remained where she was, clinging to the door, her eyes darting nervously all over the room but never once landing on him.

  “I’ve cleared the corner for you.” He gestured to his right and behind him. “I think I’ll just leave it bare. I have a feeling it might get some use, now that you’re to live here.”

  Her mouth opened automatically to argue with him, but she closed it again almost immediately after realizing that it might not be in her best interests at the moment, considering the situation she found herself in.

  But her mind was railing against the idea. He couldn’t possibly mean that he intended to do this again! She immediately resolved that he wouldn’t have to. She intended to be the very epitome of a good teacher, so there would be no need.

  Seth paused, noting that she looked like a small, frightened rabbit, but knowing there was very little he could say to her at this point to ease her fears. Even Jewel’s most experienced girls disliked being spanked by him. Dottie’s protests that evening hadn’t been artifice or pretense, by any means. They said his punishments rivaled in ferocity those of Jewel’s partner, Gabriel Vasquez, who was the in-house disciplinarian, when such was needed, of the delightful ladies of The Red Petticoat.

  When a minute or two went by and she hadn’t moved, he asked quietly, with no trace of censure, “Do you require my assistance, Gloria, in finding your way to the corner?”

  It was a distance of some twenty feet or so, but he’d nearly aged a year before she actually got there, sort of, staring at the corner as if it might bite her while she was still standing a good foot away from it.

  “Did your father not spank you, little miss?” he asked, his curiosity getting the better of him.

  Her head snapped around to him at his question, although she still didn’t meet his eyes. “My mother wouldn’t allow it.”

  “Ahh. That explains a lot.”

  She wanted to press him further about that comment, but wisely decided that the less she said, the better.

  He stood, and she jumped as he touched her, although he didn’t hurt her at all, but merely divested her of her glasses, then, guiding her into the position he wanted her in. “Press your nose fully into the corner and fold your hands behind your back. From now on, I’ll expect you to remember every aspect of this position. Any deviation will result in a longer punishment. The very next time you’ve been told to place yourself in your naughty corner, you’ll need to pull your bloomers down to your ankles, then use your hands to hold all of your skirts and slips and petticoats up so that your entire backside, from the small of your back to the tops of your boots, will be completely bare and exposed. Placing yourself in the corner like that, like the naughty little girl that you are, is an act of submission—one that will hopefully keep you mindful of two very important things: how your misbehavior caused you to end up there, as well as the firm discipline that is soon to be applied to that very private part of you.”

  Chapter Four

  And then the bastard just left her standing there, looking like the naughty little girl he’d named her as. And, he didn’t even have the courtesy to tell her how long he was going to make her stay there in that ridiculous position!

  Seth looked at his charge, who appeared to be positively fuming. He picked up his book and did his best to immerse himself again, but he had just about as much luck doing that this time as he had while he had waited—on tenterhooks—for her to come to his study.

  He would have bet that she had had to talk herself out of running away, but she was a smart girl and she knew that she wouldn’t have managed to evade him for long. He wished he’d known the thought process that had gotten her to actually do as he’d told her to, considering that she was hardly the submissive type.

  As the exasperated sighs coming from behind him confirmed.

  Despite whatever misgivings she must’ve had, and he realized that there must have been a lot of them, she was standing in the corner of his study, where he firmly believed that she belonged.

  And he knew that what was happening here between them was more important to him than he wanted to consider at the moment.

  He’d never been impatient about spanking a woman in his life, but everything in him wanted him to get on with it, even though it went against all of his instincts. He had a feeling that she’d stand there till Christmas and not truly come to grips with the reason he was punishing her, so he put down the book he hadn’t been able to get through a page of in the past twenty minutes, and turned his chair towards her.

  “I want you to stay exactly where you are until you’ve heard all of my instructions, Gloria. I want you to leave the corner and find the straight backed chair that’s by the divan, and I want you to put it in the middle of the room. Then I want you to stand in front of it, head up, eyes forward, arms the way they are now, until I take my seat in that chair and give you further instructions. Do you understand what I said?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then tell me what I said.”

  “I’m to leave the corner, find the
straight backed chair by the divan and put it into the center of the room. Then I’m to stand in front of it, eyes forward, head up and await further instructions.”

  She couldn’t see it, but her obedience—she’d gotten it right almost to the letter—made him smile, although her tone of voice could use some adjustment which she was going to get in a few minutes.

  “Very good. Please proceed.”

  Only when she’d placed the chair in the middle of the room and returned her arms to her back did he stand. He took the seat before her, patting his lap. “Place yourself over my legs.”

  There was a long pause, during which he watched as Gloria stood there, seeming unable to move again. Over those few quick moments he was surprised to see a transformation come over her that resembled, in some ways, the one he had anticipated seeing when she was in the corner.

  “Gloria, are you being deliberately defiant?” Seth asked, somehow sensing that that was not the issue.

  Faced with the inevitability of her punishment, she appeared to be much less angry and much more nervous. “No-no, Mr. McIntyre, I’m not t-trying to be, r-really I’m n-not.”

  He could tell by the sincerity of her tone that she was telling the truth. He could also see how badly she was shaking.

  “I think you should call me sir when you’re being punished. ‘Mr. McIntyre’ might be strictly proper, but I fear it’s too much of a mouthful to scream while I’m paddling your behind.”

  A nervous giggle exploded out of her mouth, and she looked horrified at seeming to make light of the situation. “Yes, Mr.—Sir.”

  Then he asked, “Can’t get your feet to cooperate, little lady?” in a surprisingly sympathetic tone.

  “N-no, sir, for some reason I can’t seem to move.”

  “You know exactly what the reason is, Gloria, my dear,” he contradicted, standing to put his hands on her upper arms and physically move her until she stood to his right as he’d taken his seat again. “You’re remembering how distressed Dottie was when I did this same thing to her, aren’t you?”

  She didn’t have to answer him; her blush said it all.

  And while she was worrying about that, he carefully gathered her over him, laying her across his lap, and, while making small adjustments to her placement, he asked, “Do you remember that she said she didn’t like to be spanked?”

  The question made her freeze, and again, her body revealed what her answer would be, but this time he wanted her to say it.

  “Gloria,” he said quite sharply, intending to startle her into responding.

  “Y-yes, sir, I remember,” she admitted on what sounded like a soft sob, her muscles finally beginning to relax for the first time in what he would guess was quite a while.

  “And what did I tell her about that, little one?” he asked softly, even kindly.

  That brought her back to rigidity, her feet—the toes of which had been resting on the floor—now held up in the air in protest, her hands grasping for something solid to hold onto, which he would not allow.

  “Feet down. Rest them on the tips of your toes. Arms relaxed and hanging in front of you. At no time are you to lift your feet or reach behind you, or in any way try to interfere with or escape your punishment, Gloria, or you will have earned yourself a harsher, longer spanking. Am I making myself perfectly clear?”

  “Y-yes, sir.”

  He reached for the hem of her skirt. “Now. Answer my question before I grow impatient and add another spanking on for disobedience.”

  She grunted her disapproval at that possibility, but she answered him nonetheless. “You—you said that she was f-fibbing to you about… about that.”

  He grinned lopsidedly at her refusal to go into detail, which he intended to push her into doing. “About what? Be specific.”

  She took much longer than he would usually let her get away with to respond, and when she did, the words were almost too soft to be heard.

  “About her liking to be spanked.”

  “Louder, Gloria. Just as I shouldn’t have to repeat an order I give you, I shouldn’t have to strain to hear you, especially not when you’re in the midst of being disciplined. I expect you to speak clearly and distinctly when answering a question I’ve put to you. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir. You said that she was fibbing about… liking to be spanked,” she reiterated more loudly, if on an unmistakable sob.

  By the time she’d done that, he had her skirt and under things bunched up at her waist, baring what had proven to be a surprisingly ample, cotton-covered bottom for a small woman, one that had him itching to spank it.

  He debated about whether or not to take down her bloomers, but decided not to in the end, favoring the idea of using that as leverage should she misbehave in some way while he was punishing her.

  “And do you like to be spanked, too, Gloria?” he probed, deliberately laying his big hand over her rump as he did so. “Is that why you continued to watch us when you knew you shouldn’t have?”

  He heard her swallow hard. “I don’t know, sir. I’ve never been spanked.”

  “You’ve never been spanked by anyone? Not a governess or a teacher, either?”

  “No, sir.”

  He’d asked the wrong question, apparently, because he continued to probe her on this humiliating subject. “Do you think you might like being spanked?”

  “No, sir!” she answered emphatically.

  “No? Not in any way at all?”

  “No, sir,” she said, sticking to her guns. “I think it’s going to hurt like the dickens!”

  “And you would be right about that, Gloria. It’s going to hurt, because that’s the best way for you to learn not to repeat that immoral and unbecoming behavior. But even though it is very painful, some people find it to also be quite… stimulating.”

  Gloria wasn’t about to touch that statement with a ten-foot pole and reveal much more about herself to him than she wanted to, so she kept silent.

  “And what behavior is it that’s brought you—a grown young woman—to lie here over my lap, awaiting your first ever spanking?” He gathered her tight against him in preparation, placing his left arm over her back and tucking his hand around her hip to prevent her from getting off his lap, while his right hand remained covering those delicious curves, patting them and exploring them much more freely than she was comfortable with.

  Almost experimentally, with a growing sense of alarm, she tested his hold on her and found that she could barely move at all. Gloria didn’t know if, in the back of her mind, she’d retained some flight of fancy about how she was going to be able to get away from him when he began to punish her, but that fantasy was now thoroughly quashed.

  “I-I uh… spied on you when I shouldn’t have.”

  “Gloria,” he chided, and she was horrified to feel her lower body contract pleasurably at his scolding tone. “You must confess your transgression fully in order to receive absolution from your correction.”

  “Uh… I-I watched you spank her, even though I knew it was wrong. I just… couldn’t seem to help myself.” As impossibly hard as it seemed at first, the more truthfully she confessed, the better she felt, somehow.

  That was, until that first swat cracked loudly against her behind, anyway, to say nothing of the many others that followed.

  She tried to stifle the yelps and yips his efforts inspired—she really did. Keeping Señora Garcia firmly in mind, she had promised herself that she wasn’t going to make a sound no matter what he did to her. Those resolutions, solid as they might have been when she made them, flew out of the window embarrassingly fast, within the first few unbearable spanks.

  And although he covered every inch of available flesh—inevitably overlapping simply because of the size of his palm in comparison to the size of her cheeks—he tended to concentrate on that tender area where thigh met butt, as well as the tops of the backs of her thighs.

  He had her literally dancing to his terrible percussive tune, trying to predict where
he was going to smack next and dodge her hips out of the way the best she could without being able to see anything, but he was holding her so tightly that she never managed to actually avoid any swat he decided to give her.

  Seeing all of her resolutions about how she was going to act when he spanked her fall by the wayside one by one, Gloria still refused to beg him to stop like Dottie had, to debase herself in that way. She had never begged anyone for anything in her life, and she most certainly didn’t intend to start now, here, with him.

  But, when she began to despair that he would never stop, she found she couldn’t stop herself from doing that, either, softly at first, and, as the agonizing discomfort he was inflicting decimated her pride, causing her to soften towards submission, her pleas grew louder in the sincere hope that he would hear them and have mercy on her.

  And then she did it. When he began to concentrate exclusively on the sweet spot that he had already thoroughly singed, she couldn’t help herself. Her feet came up and she kicked out, hands scrambling for purchase on the chair leg or his too big calf, she didn’t much care what. She was desperate to avoid even just one smack. She had to have some kind of relief.

  At first, she thought that that was exactly what she was going to get; that she had succeeded in stopping the spanking.

  But then she received a very rude awakening, when he readjusted his hold on her, tightening it considerably and manacling her right wrist to her back just by holding onto it. He used the fingers of his other hand to tug her bloomers down in one quick, devastating motion. They would have ended up around her ankles, but this movement sent her legs up in the air again in protest, causing her to try to wiggle around futilely.

  And he simply held her there, letting her exhaust herself trying to escape the inevitable.

  Eventually, he commanded softly, “Feet down, on your toes. Arm hanging down.” She tugged at her other hand, but he shook his head. “No, I’m going to retain ownership of this hand until I’m done with you, Gloria. It would have been over by now if you had been able to behave and stay put. But I’m sorry, baby girl. I will not have you breaking position when you’re being punished, and the sooner you learn that, the easier this year is going to be on you.”