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)
“You… you…” The word can’t tried to come out of my mouth, but it died on my lips, because Cal had turned to look at me. The expression on his face utterly denied the idea that he couldn’t. To my surprise and disgust, I burst into tears.
“Please… please… Cal… sir… I’ll…” I gulped for air, and swallowed hard. “Please don’t… don’t paddle me… sir… I’ll be good… I’m sorry I disrespected you. Please?”
To my astonishment—or at least to the astonishment of the part of me that had fought so hard for my ‘independence,’ as I’d been thinking of it—I did feel sorry. Somehow the threat of the horrible paddle had done that, had gotten me to see that I had made a bad mistake in the way I had spoken to the man who I knew, deep down, really just wanted to care for me, and to get close to me… as close as two humans could get.
That thought, of what could have been if I hadn’t fucked up, of the kissing and the touching and the getting out of our clothes, and the… the thing I needed so, so much, when I let myself think about Cal doing it to me… brought a fresh burst of sobbing out of my chest.
He gave another glance over at me from the driver’s seat, and then he reached out his hand, so slowly that I didn’t mistake it for anything forceful, let alone violent. I just watched it, so big and so firm, the fingers long and thick but also somehow graceful and clearly skilled at working with engines and sparkplugs and whatever else a mechanic did. It moved toward me, and then it settled on my thigh and gave a gentle squeeze.
I heard a whimper come from my throat, and the seeming distance of that sound from me told me how very thoroughly I had detached from myself, how far I floated above the truck as it sped down the dark rural highway toward my horrible appointment with Cal’s new paddle.
“Hey,” he said. “It’s going to hurt, but it’s not the end of the world.”
I blinked again, raising my eyes to his calm face, then lowering them to look at his hand. His right hand, the one that would spank me… the one whose thumb had taught me such a lewd, ambiguous lesson a few nights ago… the one that would wield the wooden paddle. I tried to stop myself, but I couldn’t: I laid my own hand on top of his, so that I could feel its strength.
“You were a naughty girl, and you’re going to get paddled for it, so that you can learn. Your butt is going to hurt for a day or two, because you disrespected me. That’s what you need, and it’s what I’m going to give you, but afterwards… clean slate.”
CHAPTER 27
Grace
We were both silent for the rest of the ride. Clean slate, I kept thinking. For everything? For, like, the shoplifting, too? But that had gotten me sent here to Grasskiln, and I couldn’t leave Grasskiln, could I? I found a little smile on my lips as I thought about it: just, like, walking away from Grasskiln, and when Mrs. Brown came to stop me, with, like the police, I would say, Well, I got a fucking paddling from your fucking accepted fucking suitor, and he said clean slate, so I’ll see you in hell, Mrs. Gerald Brown.
So, couldn’t I have just gotten a paddling in court, by the judge or my lawyer or the prosecutor or someone? I swallowed hard as I looked out the windshield and I saw the lights in the distance that had to be Grasskiln. If I hadn’t misremembered, Cal’s house lay on this side of the town.
Cal’s house, with his new wooden paddle in it.
I looked down at my hands, clenched into fists in my lap. Cal wouldn’t paddle me as hard as the judge would have. Would he? My thoughts had become confused as my mind and my body and my heart all tried to process the things Cal had said—clean slate—together with the terror that made me have to hold my hands tightly closed so that they wouldn’t shake.
And the other part. The other parts, because I understood much better than I wanted to how complicated my response had become to my suitor’s calm confidence in punishing me. The unwelcome, helpless need awakened by the terrible news that I had a paddling coming didn’t represent a simple physiological reaction; I knew that because when I thought of getting paddled by the judge I had a little twinge of arousal, but when I thought of getting paddled by Cal I felt my awful training panties start to get damp.
I swallowed hard, and to my distress I couldn’t keep still. I squirmed in the truck seat, as if I couldn’t help trying to feel, for the final time before I got what I had earned with my disrespect, the sensation of my un-paddled backside on the vinyl upholstery. As if I needed to say goodbye to the unbruised state of my bottom, so recently healed from my foster father’s strap.