Bebe (12 page)

Tears threatened, but Bebe blinked them back. The snow had begun to fall faster. She was walking right into it, making the uneven ground difficult enough to see without the added handicap of tears. And anyway, she’d done enough crying lately to last her the rest of her life.

Shivering, she hugged her stolen shirt tighter around her and paused to search the distant landscape for signs of the fence. All she saw were trees, and sometimes in the depths of those she thought she glimpsed moving shadows, but that was probably just tricks of the falling snowflakes and the icy breeze that whistled through the branches, shifting the stark winter underbrush and dropping heavy clumps of whiteness to the already thickly blanketed ground.

Her bandaged feet were soaking wet and her toes were mostly numb. Her legs were stinging too, particularly above the bandages where her bare legs touched the snow as she sank into it almost to her knees. Now and then, Bebe stepped on bits of stick or rock, buried out of sight and felt just enough to know she was hurt, but she kept going anyway. Maybe she should look for someplace warm to hole up for the night. But what if Sir came back and couldn’t find her? No, she had to keep going. She had to find the fence.

In the distance, a low and mournful howl followed on the wind, stopping her for another look around. She brushed at the snowflakes clinging to her lashes, bending a little as she struggled to peer through the shadows. There was definitely something moving up ahead, something on four legs that skulked behind the underbrush just out of clear sight. She swiped at her eyes again and shielded her hands around them, trying to bring that shadow into some kind of recognizable definition.

“Stop!”

Bebe jumped. Jerking upright, she spun around to stare open-mouthed with shock as the Big Man came charging through the trees and snow at her. He looked very upset, but then she had stolen his shirt.

She had known better. She always got caught when she did bad things.

Bebe stumbled backwards, stripping quickly out of his shirt with shivering fingers. She held it out to him at first, but his expression only darkened. Her next shiver had nothing to do with the cold, and dropping his shirt, she turned to run. She only got a handful of vaguely painful steps. The Big Man charged right past his discarded shirt, stripping his coat off as he came to catch her in the folds. It was very warm and soft, and it smelled like him. A strong odor, but not unpleasant; simply masculine. She almost relaxed, except that in the very next instant her feet left the ground as he swept her up into his arms, tossing her over his shoulder like only so much cumbersome baggage.

Bebe shrieked, a quick half-squeak of a sound before her stomach landed hard across his shoulder. The impact knocked the air from her with a grunt, and she quickly sucked in to replace it, the cold scorching the back of her throat.

“No! No! No!” he snapped, the hard flat of his hand amplifying each word with three sharp swats falling in rapid succession across her chilled buttocks.

Bebe grabbed his shoulders, her whole body arching under the stinging fury that enveloped her icy skin. This was a pain she felt with unbelievable clarity, but she held herself still in spite of the hurt, afraid he’d spank her again if she moved. And he might have anyway, if not for the second low, mournful howl that suddenly had the Big Man whipping around to look behind them so fast that Bebe had to clutch his shoulders again, this time just to keep from falling off his arm.

He stiffened under her as he searched the curtain of trees, and then he cursed, almost whispering it under his breath. Snapping back the way he’d come, he began to run.

Grabbing onto his opposite shoulder for balance, Bebe bounced and jostled with every hard step. Bracing herself against his back, she rose up far enough to see a huge black shadow separate itself from the trees and give chase. It was the largest dog she’d ever seen, huge and shaggy, snarling as it gave chase. In only three lumbering leaps, it closed the distance between them. In the next it would be on them, Bebe realized with a horrified jolt.

She barely heard herself scream but the Big Man did, and suddenly she was sprawling face-first down in the snow, tumbling end over end as he dropped her and jerked around to confront the springing wolf. He only just got his hands up before the weight of the large animal slammed into him, and man and snarling black wolf went down together, scrambling, kicking and shouting, a spray of red snow splattering Bebe’s chest and face as the Big Man punched and punched. Bebe didn’t see the knife clutched in his fist until the wolf fell limp and silent on top of him.

The Big Man lay in the snow, panting heavily, a long growling stream of half shocked, half angry curses steaming the air above the dead wolf.

Was he hurt? Was he bleeding? Was she bleeding? She swiped at the splatters of red dotting her arms, breasts and belly, even her face. Her skin tingling everywhere it touched the snow, she nevertheless crawled through it to reach him. With shaking hands, she tried to pull the heavy wolf off him enough to see his face. The Big Man looked at her, and a flash of instant anger darkened his features. He got his hands and the knife under the animal’s chest and, with a mighty shove, heaved it up and over onto its side.

Rolling to his knees, he seized the edges of the coat around her, jerking her in close and gesturing at the dead animal. “Bad!”

He was even more angry now than he had been when he’d caught her. The last time someone had looked at her like this, the Old Woman had beat her with her cane.

Panicking, Bebe tried to shrug out of his coat, but the Big Man grabbed her arms and stood up, throwing her back over his shoulder once more. Again, he headed for home and all Bebe could do was cling to him. She tried not to cry, but as the denseness of the woods retreated and the station house came into view—dark against the white-smothered landscape, a thin stream of smoke rising from the stone chimney—the realization that she was never going home hit her. Sir wasn’t going to find her; in all likelihood, he wasn’t even looking, and that devastated her.

Tears flooded her eyes as the Big Man carried her into the warm station house. He dropped her none to gently on the bed before slamming the door shut behind them. He braced a huge hand against it and, keeping his back to her, glared at the back of it, not moving, for a very long time. When he finally turned on her, his chest was heaving, almost seething he was so angry.

Bebe shrank from him when he started towards her, but he caught her arm when she tried to crawl away and sat her forcibly on the edge of the mattress. She dared not move again, except an involuntary flinch when he raised his hand.

The Big Man didn’t hit her. Instead, the backs of his fingers touched her forehead and then her cheeks. He tipped back her head, frowning as he looked deeply into each of her eyes. Without a word, he knelt to strip the soaked bandages from her feet, and even as angry as he was, his hands were still gentle. At least until he saw the bottoms of them, and then his expression darkened even more. He raised snapping black eyes to hers, shook his head twice and stood again.

Now he was going to beat her. Bebe cringed, frightened and trying not to flee when every part of her so badly wanted to. She struggled to brace herself, knowing she probably deserved to be beaten for what she had done. Stealing and getting into trouble, being a burden to the same man who had pulled her out of the snow and kept her from freezing to death her first night in the wild. She wilted, but he only vanished into the bathroom. Packages rustled, bottles clinked, and a few minutes later, he re-emerged with fresh bandages.

Silently—something that scared her even more—he wrapped her feet again. Picking up the wet and blood-stained bandages, he held them out to her, arching both eyebrows pointedly as if to say ‘do you see these?’ Shaking, Bebe obligingly stared at them until he let the soaked cloth plop from his fingers into a heap on the floor. Seizing a firm hold of her arm, he sat down on the edge of the mattress beside her and jerked her facedown across his knees.

Bebe burst into tears even before that first hard crack smacked across the chilled surface of her buttocks. He gave her no mercy or respite but paddled her bottom with breath-stealing vigor. In some distant part of her mind, she vaguely recognized that Ma’am and Sir had sometimes spanked her harder, but even without a hairbrush somehow this hurt worse. It left her howling, bucking, kicking up her feet and reaching back to cover her bare bottom with her hands.

Abruptly, the spanking stopped. Pulling her up off his lap, he indicated to the door first and then the locking pad, and then gave her that pointed, eyebrow-arching look again. “No! Don’t touch! No!”

Shaking her head wildly, Bebe fought to break out of his unyielding grip, but back down over his lap she went anyway. Her stomach met his thighs in spite of all her struggles, and he shifted his legs to capture hers, grabbing her wrist when she flailed back, palm up to protect her already sore bottom. He spanked her all over again anyway, and kept right on spanking until that cold sensation in her skin was only a distant memory. Everything behind her was fire now, searing, scorching, burning her up until any ability she might have had for holding still, for taking her spanking like a good girl, was utterly gone. She had never fought a spanking so hard in her life, but he blazoned that sensitive skin where her bottom met her thighs and didn’t stop until she was just too exhausted to fight any more. Drooped and sobbing, she simply lay across his knees, absorbing each punishing smack of his palm until he finally stopped for good.

He was still obviously angry when he pulled her upright again, but he gave her no pause to rub or soothe her wounded, throbbing bottom. Dragging a chair into the nearest corner, he set her down on it and left her there to face the wall and cry.

Covering her face with both hands, Bebe obligingly did plenty of that.

* * * * *

Arms folded across his chest, Tral stood over her, frowning down at the back of her head and trying hard not to flex his stinging palm. Her bottom looked thoroughly roasted, as it should. He’d be happy if it stung half as much as his hand—who’d have guessed a spanking would also hurt the spanker?

Hands behind her head where he’d put them, his little stray all was rocking and shimmying on her seat, trying to ease the pressure on her bright red bottom and yet unable to hold still for the burning effects that still assailed her. She stayed in the corner though and, her more frantic sobs having finally dwindled to breathy, keening hiccups, she tipped forward to balance her weight on her thighs and pressed her forehead to the join of the walls.

“Yeah,” he growled. “You stay right like that.”

Tral walked away from her then. He picked up his coat where it lay on the floor by the bed and was just irritated enough to hang it up on the wall peg. He tucked his work chair back up to the table and dropped to sit at his computer.

“Like I don’t have better things to do than go chasing after your skinny ass all morning long,” he muttered under his breath. “In over a foot of snow.” He cast her a sour glare. “Attacked by wolves.”

The sting in his palm was little more than a tingle now. He rubbed at it, flexing his fingers once before he caught a glimpse of movement from the corner of his eye. She had turned her head to peek back at her through the curtain of her tangled blonde hair.

He snapped his fingers and pointed at her. “Face forward.”

Her bottom lip quivered. She faced the walls, but only for a few minutes and then she turned to peek at him again.

“Do you see this hand?” Temper beginning to spark hot all over again, Tral held up his tingling palm. “The spanking can resume at any time. Now, face the corner until I say otherwise.”

When she did not immediately comply, he snapped his fingers twice and pointed. “Little girl, you are testing my last nerve!”

She still did not obey, but instead very softly, very clearly, her voice quavering, said, “Home.”

She could talk?

She could
talk
!

At first so startled that he could scarcely think, a wave of swift rising anger quickly brought him back to himself. If she could talk, then she could understand at least some of what he was saying. He held up his hand and began to tick them off. “Number one, I don’t know where your home is. Number two, I have no way to get you there, even if I did. This isn’t a lost pet taxi service; it’s an observation post. We observe. And number three—and you’d best pay really close attention to this one—they’d only turn right back around and
dump
you someplace else. A more inhospitable and remote than this one will be hard but not impossible to find, and then you’ll die!”

Her face crumpled as she began to cry all over again, although he suspected due more to his tone than what few words she might comprehend.

“Corner,” Tral snapped one last time. If she didn’t obey this time, in every fiber of his being he was prepared to grab her back off that chair and—tender palm or not—turn her bright red bottom a deep and fiery crimson.

Her small shoulders shaking, she faced the wall and pressed her forehead back against it, hands laced behind her head while she cried. It was a heart-rending sound that stole the edge off his anger with each gasp and sniffle and hiccupy keening whine. And the longer it went on, the more the urge to get up and comfort her began to needle at him, until Tral was shifting in his chair every bit as uncomfortably as she was.

A man had to be firm with humans. It did absolutely no good at all to blister the tail off her and then turn right back around and hold her or comfort her or do anything at all that might look as if he were sorry for it.

“I’m not sorry,” he grumbled, as she sniffled again. He frowned and faced his computer again so he wouldn’t have to keep looking at her. That sound was really starting to grate on him.

He got up abruptly, but not to comfort her, he told himself. Gathering a wad of tissues from the bathroom, he brought them out to her and pressed them into one of her hands. She looked at him and sniffed.