Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 75898 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 304(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75898 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 304(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
“Let go of the seatbelt, Grace,” I said, looking into her frightened, teary eyes. “Pretty much everyone in Grasskiln has spent the last twenty-four hours telling you that I can. I don’t tolerate foul language from a young woman I’m courting, but it’s your attitude I’m much more concerned with.”
“I just… I just…” She stared at me, wild eyed. “I only said shit.”
Her gorgeous green eyes told me everything. It seemed an odd moment, in a certain way, to realize I could absolutely fall in love with Grace Franklin, but I had to hand it to the New Modesty algorithm: those wet eyes held for me some magical mixture of defiance, worry, need, and—deep, deep down—submission.
“If it had just been the swear word,” I said, hearing with satisfaction how calm and reasonable I sounded, after the intense flare of anger I had experienced only a few moments before, “I would have warned you, and let it go for the moment.”
She had stopped struggling. She blinked at me, her brow creasing in a kind of puzzlement that I could tell meant she genuinely wanted to understand.
“It’s the disrespect that earned you the lesson I’m going to teach you now.”
“But…” she said—automatically, it seemed like, as if she felt like she couldn’t really be in the wrong. I raised my eyebrows and waited, looking steadily into her eyes.
Yes, I’d felt my temper flare up when she’d said it. I guess I’m just a city girl who doesn’t know shit like that. The word shit really hadn’t played much of a role at all in my reaction. Grace’s attitude had earned her the trip over my knee. I had only wanted to make conversation, and she had made a clearly conscious decision to take it the wrong way.
Sure, I hoped Grace would enjoy her first taste of a real grass-fed steak, and the thought of providing that for her had given me a real moment of happy expectation. Then she had pretty much, well, shat on that. I had let the anger die down, though, before I made the decision to discipline her, and now I could see in her face just how correct that decision was.
She had nothing to follow up her but with, it seemed.
“Let go of the seatbelt, Grace,” I said. “I don’t want you to hurt your hands, but you’re going over my knee one way or another.”
Grace
“No,” I said weakly, but when Cal pulled me further, his eyes still locked on mine, my fingers just let go of the webbing of the belt, as if he had cast some sort of spell over me. Being in his arms, even if he had put them around me for such a humiliating, alarming reason, seemed to make it difficult to imagine doing anything but following his calm—but also terrifying—instructions.
You’re going over my knee. My ears had heard the words, and my brain had processed them, but I seemed to feel them in my body, too, in the most distressing way. My stomach twisted and an electric current seemed to run over my skin as I felt Cal suddenly, shockingly lift me into the air and upend me like a sack of potatoes, over his shoulder.
“But… wait…” Words seemed to come out of my mouth without any meaning behind them except that I had absolutely no idea how I wanted to respond. I struggled a little bit as Cal, with his left arm wrapped securely around my upper thighs, opened the door from the garage into the house. I could see only his muscular legs in the faded denim of his jeans and the concrete floor of the garage, and then the two steps up into what I could tell from the tiled floor had to be his kitchen.
I’m going over his knee. I swallowed hard while the neat lines on the very clean kitchen floor went by below me. I thought I should probably feel unsafe, like I would fall off his shoulder or he would even hurt me by carelessly knocking me against a doorframe, but I didn’t. The idea of Cal’s knee had some sort of power—a kind of terrible fascination that I could feel not just in my mind but in every inch of my body. I felt my face pucker in dismay as I realized that part of me desperately wanted to know what it felt like, even though I knew whatever Cal would do when he got me there would definitely hurt.
The kitchen floor ended. I got a glimpse of wood cabinets, the bottom of a refrigerator. Then the tile gave way to a wood floor, quickly followed by a red rug. A wild part of my brain couldn’t help noting that Cal had decided to give me the chance to inspect his housekeeping skills very closely, and he had obviously vacuumed today, maybe in my honor. For some reason, the idea added a flash of heat to my already very warm face.