Maid for Spanking (6 page)

Colleen hurriedly finished up
what she was doing, then went into the kitchen.
 
Steve was opening a bottle of wine, and
he looked up at the sound of her footsteps.

“Can you grab a couple
plates?” he asked. “They’re in the cabinet above the dishwasher.”

As she set the table, Colleen
slid Steve a sidelong glance. He was wearing jeans and an old college T-shirt,
the letters
MIT
worn and faded. The
material stretched across his chest, emphasizing his muscles and showing off
his spectacular arms. Computer nerds weren’t supposed to be so hot, dang it.

“So.” He carried the glasses
over to the table,
then
sat across from her. “Why is a
programmer with your talent cleaning houses for a living?”

She gave him a teasing look.
“You mean Kristy didn’t tell you that, too?”

As soon as Steve had left her
apartment that night, Colleen had called her friend all set to chew her out.
She probably would have if Kristy hadn’t been so upset about the whole thing.

On the other side of the
table, Steve chuckled as he reached for a slice of pizza. “Getting your address
out of her was hard enough.”

Colleen sipped her wine.
“Call it burn-out, I guess. I took the job thinking I was going to write
programs, and all they wanted me to do was debug them.”

He winced. “Which is exactly
what I’m asking you to do, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but it’s not the same.
You’re not asking me to work fourteen-hour days and weekends.” She gave him a
sheepish look as she picked up her pizza. “I’m not as lazy as that sounds. I
promise.”

“You just hated the work.
I’ve been there, so I can relate. “There are other programming jobs out there,
though. Why work as maid?”

“Kristy talked me into it. I
needed to make money while I waited for my dream job, and when she told me how
much she made, I just about fell off my chair.” She shrugged. “I don’t see
myself doing it much longer, though. I don’t think I’m really cut out for it.”

Steve chuckled, the sound
soft and sexy. “I don’t know about that. Other than vacuuming while I’m trying
to work, I don’t have any complaints.”

Remembering the spanking that
had gotten her, Colleen blushed. She took a sip of wine to hide it,
then
studied him over the rim of the glass.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Go for it.”

“Why do you have your house
cleaned every day? Most of the other clients only have theirs done once a
week.”

Steve didn’t answer, but
instead stared down at his plate, his brow furrowed.

Crap, she’d offended him. She
set down her glass. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that it was…”

“Weird?” He gave her a small
smile. “You’re right. It is weird.”

Silence filled the kitchen,
and Colleen wondered if she should apologize again. But he spoke before she
could come up with something that didn’t sound inane or patronizing.

“I grew up in foster care
back east. I stayed with a lot of different people in a lot of different places.
Way too many to count.
Which is why I don’t remember
much about most of them. But the one thing I do remember is that every house I
lived in was a pig sty.” He shook his head. “Maybe it wasn’t their fault, you
know? I mean there were a lot of kids living in any one house at any one time.”
He sighed as if locking the memories away. “Anyway, I promised myself that when
I got out on my own, I’d never let any house of mine look like that.”

Colleen wanted to point out
that having his house cleaned once a week would ensure that, but at the look on
his face, she couldn’t seem to make herself say the words.

“So, how did you become
interested in computer programming?” she asked, changing the subject.

His mouth
quirked.
“Math was
the one thing I was good at in school. And the one thing that got me a
scholarship. I wouldn't have been able to pay for college otherwise.”

“And gaming? How’d you get
into that?”

“I wanted to write programs.
I didn’t want to end up sitting in some cubicle debugging them.”

She groaned. “Wish I’d
thought of that.”

“It’s not too late to join
the dark side.” He grinned. “The industry is booming right now.”

Colleen laughed. “Did you
design video games right out of MIT.
”

He shook his head as he
reached for another slice of pizza. “Nah. I worked for a small software company
for a few years first. When I left there I started up my own company with my
old roommate from college. Ed Fulton.”

“I remember you mentioning
him. From the things you said—or didn’t say—I get the feeling
things didn’t work out between the two of you.”

Steve snorted. “You could say
that.”

“Okay, now you’ve got me
really curious.” She pushed her empty plate away and rested her forearms on the
table. “What’s the deal with this Fulton guy?”

Steve was silent, as if debating
how much he wanted to say. “He’s a scumbag. We weren’t working together for
more than a couple months before he started taking credit for my work. I
shouldn’t have been surprised, I guess. The minute we hit a snag on a program,
the bastard suggested we steal someone else’s code to make it work.” He shook
his head. “I don’t know what the hell happened to him after college. I mean, he
wasn’t going to win any programming awards, but he was good enough to get into
MIT. Maybe he got lazy after we graduated. Or maybe he was stealing other
people’s code in college and got away with it. Either way, once I figured out
what he was up to, I dissolved our partnership.”

His distrust for the man made
sense now. “But what I don’t understand is why you thought I had something to
do with him.”

Steve wiped his hands on a
napkin and sat back in his chair. “Good old-fashioned paranoia. When I came in
and found you looking at my game, my first thought was that he’d hired you to
steal it. I still wasn’t sure until I was wrong until I went to your apartment.”

“What changed your mind?”

“My gut, I guess.” The look
he gave her made her breath hitch. Behind those glasses, he was really
something else. “I mean, if you only got a job with the cleaning company so you
could spy for Ed, it didn’t make sense you’d go back to cleaning houses after I
threw you out.”

Colleen felt her face heat as
she thought back to the spanking he’d given her that day. Steve must have
realized it, too, because he cleared his throat.

“Enough about me,” he said.
“What about you? Are you originally from California?”

She smiled. “I am.”

Though Steve laughed as she
entertained him with stories about her big, extended family, the look that came
into his eyes at times was almost a little sad, as if he was thinking about his
own childhood. She wanted to ask if he’d ever known his parents, or had been
put up for adoption when he was a baby, but she didn’t want to pry. She’d never
known anyone who had grown up in foster care, so she’d never thought about it
much. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like not to have a family to love,
support and be there for her. But Steve had somehow succeeded and made
something of
himself
despite that. It gave her a
newfound respect for him.

Steve told her not to worry
about cleaning up, but Colleen helped him clear the table and load the
dishwasher anyway.

“Do you mind if I stay for a
while and finish up what I was working on before we had dinner?” she asked as
she dried her hands on a dishtowel.

She could just as easily do
it tomorrow, but she’d been meaning to get to that section of code the whole
day and hadn’t.

“Go ahead,” he said. “I’m
going to do some more work anyway.”

Once in the office, however,
she had a difficult time concentrating with Steve sitting so close. No matter
how hard she tried to focus, her gaze kept straying to his hands while he typed.
She’d been right about his hands being so big. She bet when he’d spanked her one
would cover her entire ass cheek with a single swat. Abruptly, all of the
fantasies that had been playing through her mind over the past two weeks came
rushing back. She stared hard at the string of code on the monitor, hoping to
make them go away, but they wouldn’t. It didn’t help that there was a familiar
purr between her legs. Oh God, not now.

Why did she keep thinking
thoughts like this? Did she really want him to spank her again? It had stung
like crazy, so why was her pussy betraying her by getting excited? But if
anything, thinking about how much it had stung only made her even more aroused.
Her traitorous mind kept wondering what it would be like if Steve spanked her
on the bare ass.

That thought brought another
rush of color to her cheeks, and she fidgeted in her seat as she realized her
pussy had gone beyond the purring stage and was actually getting wet now.
Dammit, why the heck had she had made him promise not spank her?

Colleen’s fingers froze on
the keyboard. What was she saying? She couldn’t honestly want Steve to spank
her again. Fantasizing about it was one thing, but willingly letting him do it
was something else entirely. And yet, as she gazed over at his strong hands,
she realized that was exactly what she wanted. The thought almost made her hyperventilate.

But how could she get him to
spank her when she’d made him promise he wouldn’t do it again? It wasn’t as if
she could come out and ask him for a spanking. She could just imagine the
conversation now.

Steve,
could you do me a favor?

Name
it.

You
know how I told you that I didn’t want you to spank me again. Well, I’ve
changed my mind. I think I actually would like you to put me over your knee
again.

You’re
saying that you want me to spank you again?

Yes,
Steve, that’s exactly what I’m saying. And I’d really appreciate it if you’d do
it right and pull my panties down this time.

Just thinking about it made
Colleen go red with embarrassment. There was absolutely no way she was going to
ask him for a spanking, so she might as well just drop the whole idea. That was
easier said than done, though. No matter how much she tried to focus on the
program in front of her, her mind kept slipping back to what she and Steve
could be doing instead.

She chewed on her lower lip. Just
because she was too shy to come out and ask him to spank her didn’t mean she
couldn’t trick him into doing it.
But how?
She studied
the code she was working on as she considered that. It was a fight sequence
between one of the games military heroes and an evil wizard. It was fairly clean
already, and she automatically corrected typos as she came to them.

She paused, her fingers
hovering over the keyboard on her lap. Hot damn. She’d just figured out a way
to get that spanking she’d been looking for. Eyes locked on the monitor, she
typed as fast as her fingers could move.

“What are you doing?” Steve
asked.

Colleen turned her head to
see him frowning at the monitor. She hadn’t realized he was watching her. That
made the whole thing easier. She thought she’d have to challenge him to a game
to get him to notice.

“Adding some stuff to make
the game more interesting,” she said.

She typed another erroneous
set of instructions, then ran the program to see how the changes looked. She
grinned as the hero pulled a bouquet of flowers from holster in place of a gun.
Opposite him, the sorcerer extended his hand to produce a glowing round orb,
but when the robed figure threw it at the hero, it wasn’t a fireball, but a
water balloon. Colleen laughed as it splatted harmlessly against his opponent.

Steve, however, wasn’t as
amused. “Cute. Now, change it back.”

Colleen tilted her head to
the side as she watched the sequence play out on the screen in front of her. “I
don’t know. I kind of like it this way.”

“Put it back, Colleen.”

She gave him a teasing look.
“What are you going to do if I don’t? Spank me?”

The words hung in the air
between them. Colleen held her breath she waited for Steve to say something.

He studied her as if trying
to decide if he’d heard her right.
After a moment, his mouth
quirked.
“If you don’t do as you’re told, you’ll find out.”

Colleen’s pulse skipped a
beat. This was it. She could either do as he told her and put the code back the
way it was, or deliberately disobey him and leave it like that. She folded her
arms and gave him a smirk.

Steve’s blue eyes narrowed
behind his glasses. He was looking at her as if he was trying to decide whether
he should call her bluff. What if he thought she was joking? He had to know she
wouldn’t tease him about spanking her if she didn’t want him to do it. Then
again, men didn’t do subtle. Maybe she should spell it out for him.

She opened her mouth to do just
that when he put the keyboard he’d been using back on the desk and got to his
feet.