Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 73013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Everything turned into a blur. Rick held my hand in the backseat of the limo. We didn’t talk much: during the flight the soreness in my butt had gone away completely, but the impression on my mind hadn’t—not at all. The memory of him putting me over his knee, of his hand coming down over and over, of my absolute powerlessness to stop it… they all remained completely fresh. As I looked out at the increasingly rural scenery and tried to process the idea that my husband had the chance to make a truly comfortable living, if we could get used to Rocky Falls, I kept seeing the private room in the airport lounge, as if reflected in the tinted glass of the limo window.
I kept catching myself squirming a little on the leather seat of the limo—even more luxurious and comfortable than the airplane’s first class seat. Every time, when I realized I had just moved my backside, I got so self-conscious that a scorching blush broke out in my cheeks. I knew—though I would never, ever have admitted it to Rick or to anyone else—I had moved that way to confirm once more that I couldn’t feel the effect of my first old-fashioned lesson.
As if I want to feel that, I told myself, not sure whether the idea came out as scornful—the way I wanted it to do—or as descriptive… speculative, even, about what my husband had done to me, on the inside, when he had taken me over his knee.
When the driver finally said, “There’s the sign, folks. We’re in Rocky Falls,” I started violently. I turned to Rick to see that an expression of concern had come over his face. He pulled my hand toward him and, to my amazement, he brought it to his lips and kissed its back. He had never done that—or, I thought, anything like it—before. I had to bite my lip to keep from crying out with the strength of my body’s response to the sweet gesture that seemed to me also to have such confidence… such dominance in it.
He leaned over to speak into my ear, the same way he had done on the plane.
“I know it doesn’t make much sense for me to ask if you’re okay, Dee,” he said into my ear, his voice somewhere between a whisper and a low growl. “But I just want you to know that I love you, and I’m going to take care of you, if you let me.”
My lips parted as my breathing and my heart rate both sped way up. I drew my head back so I could turn to look into his eyes, trying to beam directly into his heart and his mind a desperate plea for… for… for something.
“Please,” I whispered. “Don’t… I mean… can’t we…”
Rick pursed his lips and his brow went up a little in a sympathetic but also, to my dismay, a very patronizing—almost paternal—expression.
“I know,” he said. “It’s going to be hard for you. And I’m learning too—about you, and about how we can both get what we need.”
As he spoke, he tightened his hand’s grip on mine a little, as if to tell me that I could beg and plead all I wanted for him to take care of me the way I thought he should. None of that, his hand seemed to say, would change the way he knew he had to act, as my husband—as the man I had agreed, for some reason, to obey at least for this week in Rocky Falls.
I felt my face crumple. Tears prickled in the corners of my eyes.
“Ricky,” I said, his name coming out more as a sob than a comprehensible version of my gorgeous, muscular new bridegroom’s name. I felt another word start to rise to my lips, and I pushed it down—far down. Sir.
No. No way. I only called him that because… because he made me. He gave me no choice, in that horrid little private room.
He leaned close again and kissed me. Just like when he had kissed my hand a moment before, Rick kissed me now in a way he hadn’t before. He had kissed me plenty of times, of course, some of them long and open-mouthed and so forceful that they had taken my breath away. He had never, I realized, done it with such self-assurance. He had my left hand in his right already; now he put his left hand up to cup the back of my neck and so to hold my face in place for his kiss. I couldn’t force down the little whimpering cry I gave up into his mouth as he opened my lips with his and gently entered me with his tongue, that way.
I closed my eyes, thoughts and feelings roiling inside me. I stiffened, wondering if the driver was watching us in his rearview mirror. The thought that Rick didn’t care at all about that made the strange mess of emotion and sensation within my head and my chest seethe more violently.