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)
I climbed awkwardly and uncomfortably to my feet. Every movement reminded me of the punished, red state of my backside. Instinctively, with my back toward Cal, I reached down to pull up my panties.
“Nope,” Cal said. “Leave your underwear where it is.”
“But…” I said, turning my tear-stained face over my shoulder. “I can’t walk like this.”
“Of course you can, darlin’,” Cal said, frowning. “You just mean you can’t walk that way without remembering that you’re a naughty girl who disrespected her suitor.”
I felt my face contort itself into what felt like the saddest expression a naughty girl had ever worn.
“But… but, sir…” I found myself saying, while at the same time I realized that Cal had spoken the precise truth.
I looked into his dark eyes as he sat on the couch, his hands on his thighs and his knees still spread, as if to remind me that he could take me back over his lap and keep spanking me if he chose. I saw his forehead cloud slightly, and at first a thrill of fear went through me because I could see his patience beginning to ebb away again.
Then his expression changed, and I understood that he had put his temper under control one more time; instead of wrath, I saw sympathy in his eyes. But he shook his head nonetheless.
“Put those hands on your head and get going,” he told me. “Into the corner, now.”
I swallowed very hard. My arms seemed to fly up of their own accord at the sound of the extra emphasis he had placed on now. With my brow working hard in utter embarrassment I started to waddle across the room toward the fireplace. I could see how perfect a place for corner time that part of the room made: the rug ended two feet or so from the wall, so that when I got there I would stand on the wood floor. It felt as if my teacher had sent me into a special, humiliating place to display my spanked backside, but of course one where he could look over and inspect his handiwork and evaluate my behavior at all times.
I arrived in the corner. I looked at the walls that joined there, their off-white color. I felt certain Cal had painted them himself, and I tried to distract myself from my shameful lesson by wondering why.
Because your future husband is a hands-on kind of man, a serene voice answered in my head. He paints his own walls with those huge, strong hands, and he punishes his future wife with them, too, when she’s been naughty.
I closed my eyes and lowered my head. I tried to keep myself from it, but I shuffled my feet out of sheer bodily instinct, clenching my butt cheeks, all as if I could somehow prevent Cal from seeing my bare bottom, red from his firm hand, on display in the corner of his living room.
“Think about what you did, darlin’,” he said. “How you ended up with your panties down and your butt spanked, and the paddle coming.”
CHAPTER 30
Grace
I obeyed. I had absolutely no way to help it; I thought about what I’d done to earn my first real punishment from the man who clearly intended to marry me. Really, it just wasn’t that bad. I had just, like, talked back to him, I guess.
Well, I had actually kind of talked forward, hadn’t I, when I had said that he shouldn’t expect anything in particular when we got back to his house.
I felt my face flush even hotter than my butt felt. Why had I said that?
My forehead creased even harder, and I started to chew on the inside of my cheek.
Then I realized why I had sassed Cal that way, without the tiniest bit of provocation. The answer drew a little sob from my chest. Because I couldn’t clench my hands into fists with my fingers intertwined atop my slightly disheveled hair, I clenched my fingers, then my forearms, then my shoulders, sending a kind of signal through my whole body until I felt my bottom clench, too.
That made the whole thing much worse. I felt certain Cal could see my ass squirming like that, at the thought that I had tried to sabotage the night not because I didn’t want him to claim my virginity but because I feared I wanted it too much—that I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from yielding up everything to him.
That I would lose, finally and forever, the independent, rebellious idea of myself that I had tried to craft—until Grasskiln. Until Jake and Shelly. Until Cal.
I squeezed my eyes even more tightly shut, as if I could block out the humiliating knowledge that way. But I could see myself, there with my skirt up and my panties down, in the corner of my accepted suitor’s living room. I couldn’t see him, but he could get his eyes’ fill of my red, bare backside. He could admire the work of his firm hand, the progress he had made in taking responsibility for the handful named Grace Franklin.