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.

Another sob pulled itself from my chest. I heard the sofa creak, and my eyes flew open, blinking as I tried to figure out what Cal might do. The floorboards creaked a little, too, then, and the noise approached me, across the room. I felt the air move slightly, as if with the passage of his enormous, masculine limbs.

I closed my eyes again, and swallowed hard, willing myself desperately not to look over my shoulder.

Cal's huge, strong hands arrived a moment later, gently but without any further warning—without any request for permission. He, my accepted suitor, had the right to touch me in any way he wanted. That thought sent a shudder through my whole body, which mingled itself in the most complicated way with the instant wave of need Cal's touch brought surging between my thighs.

His left arm came around my waist, that hand spreading to grasp my bare hip. His right hand took possession of my bottom in a way that had already become very familiar to me. I let out a little whimper as I realized just how good it felt, despite what it meant.

No. Because of what it means. It meant ownership. It meant discipline, and training, and…

And fucking.

I couldn't help it. As the naughty word forced itself into my conscious mind, I clenched hard, and I pushed my bottom back into Cal's hand. My face went hot as a flame as I realized just how transparently I had just told him what I needed, and how deeply it put me in his power.

"Good girl," he murmured into my ear. "Such a good girl, when you set your mind to it."

His right hand moved gently. Those two magic middle fingers pressed at the naughtiest spot, the bottom of my bottom, where the sting from his punishing hand lingered longest. With a helpless little cry, I shuffled my feet further apart, and I pushed out my backside, inviting my master's most shameful training.

"I'm sorry, sir," I choked out. A wave of real, actual remorse swept over me; the understanding that this strong, gorgeous man… well, that he loved me, for some reason, mixed with the bitter memory of how I had acted. "I'm sorry I ruined it."

"Oh, no," Cal said. "No, darlin'. You didn't ruin it at all."

I couldn't help it, I turned to look at him, fearing as I did that he would start spanking me again, and even thinking if he did, he would only be doing the right thing, given my wayward behavior.

"Really?" I asked, as a surge of relief and affection—not without a crazy bit of disappointment—rose in my chest at the kind smile on his face. "Sir? Really?"

"You said what you needed to say," Cal told me. "And you got the consequences you needed to get. For you and me, that was the right thing."

I blinked at him, suddenly uncertain. A little thrill of hope had just lit up inside me, alongside more of the strange disappointment. It kind of sounded like Cal had decided not to paddle me.

Then he spoke more firmly, and the hope became dread.

"Go on into the bedroom and take off all your clothes, darlin'," he said. "Stand at the side of the bed. I'm right behind you."

Dread and… the arousal that seemed to lick its way outward from Cal's fingers all the way over my skin and through my muscles in little tingling flames forced a whimper from my throat. Dread and so much more.

I almost said "But," the same way I had when I had gotten halfway across the living room, but the thought of more spanking for that but before I had to undergo the terrifying paddle for the first time stopped me.

You're learning, said the observing part of me, the watcher who felt less like a different person now than a calm center I had never known I had.

Cal stepped back, and I almost cried out in grief at the loss of his hands' strength on my quivering limbs. I turned around, only realizing as I started to move my feet that he would get a clear view of my shaved pussy, since he had tucked up my skirt so securely around my waist.

A tremor went through my whole body as the forces of shame and need waged war inside my nervous system, my muscles, my bones. My hands and arms started to move, out of embarrassment, in a belated attempt to cover myself. I felt completely certain that Cal would punish me for covering myself, though. Even more dismayingly, sheer, irresistible heat filled my limbs at the knowledge that he would see the bare, smooth cleft into which he meant to thrust his masculine hardness. Worse, he would see the evidence that, thanks to Jake's part in training me for my future husband's pleasure, my private parts had been readied for his claim and to use as he liked to make his rigid penis feel good.

I didn't want to see the expression on his face. I didn't want to turn my eyes to his, as he took in the full frontal revelation—the confirmation of my submission, my obedient preparation for the loss of my virginity.

I couldn't help it. I felt my forehead crease hard as I watched him look me up and down. My hands on my head as if to make clear that my body belonged to the man who had taken me in hand. My skirt raised, by him. My mortifying training panties around my knees.

My virgin pussy, shorn of its red curls, daintily and shyly showing, I knew, just a hint of its pink secrets.

As he raised his gaze to mine, the blood surged into my face. His eyes betrayed absolutely nothing for a long moment. Then he smiled, the left side of his mouth quirking up a little higher than the right.

"You're so beautiful, darlin'," he said. "I feel really lucky to be your suitor."

I licked my lips, then chewed on the upper one for a moment. My skin felt like a continuous electric current was running over it, all over me, centering between my thighs but also possessing the rest of me, inflaming the rest of me, more thoroughly with every heartbeat.

"Lucky to… to be the man who…" I whispered. I blinked at him. I wanted him to say it. I didn't know why, but suddenly it didn't seem like enough for him to leave it at being my suitor.

Cal's eyes narrowed, and his smile widened very slightly. He nodded, as if I had just confirmed something important. Another flash of heat came to my cheeks, because I understood what it must be. I'm a handful. I'm not going to let him leave it at the ordinary, vanilla-romantic level. I'm going to push it every time, and get my butt smacked every time.

My lips parted again, but I didn't have any more words.

"Yes, Grace," Cal said seriously. "I feel lucky to be the man who's going to fuck you for the first time. You're going to get it in your pussy, and your mouth, and your butt, after your paddling. It's going to happen tonight. All of it."

All of it. My eyes went wide. I had wanted him to say it. Yes, all of it—in so many words. But now I felt rebellion rising in me.

How could he just say it, like that?

I had started to breathe in ragged pants. In a flash of insight I understood the surge of resistance, how I needed to defy my suitor. The realization, though, felt unwelcome and even somehow wrong. It felt like knowing how my… well, my handful-ness worked would ruin all the fun.

I looked closely at Cal's face, trying to beam my understanding into his eyes, willing him not to say it in words… not to say flat out, You're going to keep defying me just because you need my discipline so very much.

His lips twitched a little, and then he said, his voice thrillingly stern, "Get that naughty butt into the bedroom and take off your clothes this minute. Don't make me paddle you harder than I'm already going to, darlin'."

I put it away, somehow—the distressing self-knowledge that would get in the way of me belonging to Cal, body and soul, not merely as his fiancée and someday his wife, but even more deeply. As his naughty slut. His well-trained, submissive-yet-defiant fuck toy.

I swallowed hard, and I felt the fear of the paddle and the terrible need brought on by the mere thought of it crawl through my tummy. My face crumpled in woe and terror, and with my eyes cast down to the floor I started to walk across the living room as quickly as I could, toward the hall where I knew Cal's bedroom must lie though I had never seen it.

He stood in the doorway while I took off my clothes. Next to the king-sized bed, facing it, I cast a look over my shoulder with a pout on my face, as if to beg my justly wrathful suitor to spare my already punished bottom. That was when I saw he had the paddle in his hands. He had the handle of it in his right, and the two-foot long blade, with three holes in it, rested on his left.

Terror surged through my nervous system as my eyes traveled from the horrible thing to Cal's face. For an instant the factual, unsexy knowledge rose in my mind, that I had provoked this terrible punishment as a way to get the man I was falling in love with to give me some firm boundaries and make me feel cared for. Then I had put that idea somewhere else, where it could reassure me from time to time but it wouldn't get in the way.

"What did I tell you to do, Grace?" he asked, his voice low but very, very menacing. "Take them off. Now."