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’ll take you home to Jake and Shelly’s,” Cal said, giving me one icy look before he returned his eyes to the windshield, “after I punish you for your disrespect, Grace Franklin.”
My lips opened. I couldn’t believe he had just called me by my full name. I couldn’t believe how infuriating it felt, and at the same time how terribly arousing. Also, even worse, how absolutely terrifying.
“Wait…” I said. “Wait… sir… I… I… I didn’t mean it!”
“I think that’s probably partly true,” Cal said, his voice calm now, as if having decided what he meant to do about my lunatic behavior made his temper well in check, and I wouldn’t be able to get him riled up no matter what I did. “But that just means you need the lesson I’m going to give you even more.”
Lesson. The last lesson he had given me hadn’t really been so bad. I bit my lip. Maybe this one would be like that one?
“Wh-what are you… I mean, how are you going to…” I felt the need to choose my next word very carefully, as if I had to keep from giving him any ideas. The observing part of me, which had just broken off and soared high into the sky, almost laughed at that. “How are you going to… you know, teach… me?”
“I’m going to paddle you,” he said, with that awful calmness.
My eyes went so wide they felt completely round. My whole body started to tremble.
“With… with, like… a… a paddle?” What a stupid question, but how else could I ask it?
“Yes, Grace,” he said. Suddenly I felt desperate for him to call me darlin’ again. I hadn’t really thought about it until then, but at that moment I realized that I had liked it, without even noticing. I had liked it a lot—definitely a lot more than I liked him just saying my name. “I got one from Mrs. Brown today.”
My heart rate and my breathing both sped up so much I started to think I might faint.
“Wh-what… what’s it made out of?” I asked. Again the words emerged with what seemed like zero thought behind them. Why did I want to know that? Why did it even matter, since I absolutely planned not to feel the horrid thing no matter what material some lunatic had crafted it from.
“Wood,” Cal answered shortly, turning to give me a brief look, with the same assessing expression in his eyes that I’d seen many times before. A stab of appreciation pushed into my chest, that the man who had undertaken to be responsible for me—for the shoplifting, foulmouthed handful called Grace Franklin—had the ability and the inclination to pay such careful attention to my behavior and my state of mind. Then the rebellious part of me shouted back, He has no fucking right to assess you, or whatever. No fucking right, any more than he has the right to… to get a wooden paddle and… and teach you a lesson with it.
“Oh, hell, no,” I said. “No no no. Take me home… I mean, to Jake and Shelly’s.” Fuck. I had done it again. “Jake can do whatever the fuck he wants, I guess, but… but…”
Something about the idea of a wooden thing—an implement my ‘accepted’ suitor had obtained from the horrid Mrs. Brown for the purpose of disciplining me when I misbehaved—a paddle… a word whose sound I hadn’t realized could have such a distressing effect on my mind, my heart, and my body… somehow the thought of it combined with my deeply conflicted feelings about Cal and the way he treated me, and I just suddenly wanted none of it, no matter how another part of me might feel about him—about his handsome face, his hard body, his basic kindness and decency. I felt at that moment like I would much, much sooner go over the arm of Jake’s easy chair and get the family strap than go over Cal’s knee to receive some ‘lesson’ from his new paddle.
“Listen,” Cal said. “Darlin’, you need to make up your mind to submit tonight, even if it’s only to the paddling I’m going to give you. You’re not going to get out of it, even if I have to yank you, screaming, out of the truck, and I have to tear your clothes off you to give you what you’ve got coming.”
I blinked at him, my jaw slack, as I thought about it.
“You’re going over my knee for a hand spanking. Then you’re going to have some corner time. Then you’re going to take off all your clothes and bend over the side of the bed for the paddle. All that is going to happen, and there’s nothing you can do to keep it from happening.”
I gazed at him, thunderstruck, as he delivered all this news, calmly but with so much authority that I had to work very hard, mentally, to generate any doubt about the terrible ‘facts’ my suitor had just imparted.