Rock the Bodyguard (12 page)

“Kevin, please!”

He slapped her bottom, catching the
bare skin. She squealed as if she'd been branded. Miss Dwyer clearly didn't
have all that much in the way of natural pain tolerance. When Kevin applied
several more measured slaps to her cheeks she started drumming her feet against
the floor and squealing in a high-pitched tone only dogs and Cash could hear.

“Stop!” It was Cash who was upset
now. “You're really hurting her.”

“He's not hurting her,” Miles said.
“You know he isn't, don't you?” He turned her to face him, his hands resting
lightly on her upper arms. “You know what it feels like. It's uncomfortable,
but it's not going to do her any harm.”

“Speak for yourself, Muscles,”
Mattie cut in as Kevin paused and began rubbing her cheeks. “If this doesn't
stop I will actually die. Of death.”

“Brat,” Kevin said again, swatting
her lightly. “Are you learning anything? Or do I have to do this all over
again?”

“No!” Mattie said quickly. “I'm
sorry, okay? Serious.”

“It's not your job to corrupt
Cash,” he lectured, holding her in place, pink bottomed over his knee. “And I
don't appreciate being cursed at either, understand?”

“I understand,” Mattie said,
wriggling uncomfortably.

“Good.” Kevin released his grip and
let Mattie scramble off his lap.

She yanked her pants up, her face bright
red from embarrassment and all the screaming she'd been doing.

“It didn't even hurt,” she
declared, skittering off to her room to hide.

Kevin shook his head. “Little
liar,” he said, rubbing his hands together, dissipating some of the sting.
“That... was quite satisfying,” he mused to himself. “I should go check on her,
make sure she's not actually hurt.”

“Wow,” Cash said, staring after
Kevin as he went. “I hope he never gets mad at me.”

“You've got bigger things to worry
about, Miss Raine,” Miles reminded her.

“You sized things,” she agreed,
smiling as her drew her into a hug.

Later that evening Kevin and Miles
sat down with a couple of beers. Kevin didn't want to talk about what had
happened to him, but they had to talk about who was behind the attacks. The
authorities weren't of any help because being on tour meant constantly moving
between jurisdictions. As far as getting to the bottom of the matter went, they
were it.

“We've got a problem,” Miles began.

“Hell yes we do,” Kevin agreed.
“We've got a tail. There's no way a casual stalker would be able to follow us
like this.”

“Right” Miles agreed. “He always
manages to strike when we're at our weakest and he never comes anywhere near
me. This is someone who knows where I am. We're not dealing with some Sherlock
Holmes mystery. We're dealing with someone who is hiding in plain sight, right
under our noses.”

“A traitor.”

“Precisely.”

Kevin swigged his beer,
contemplating the world through narrowed eyes. “So what do we do about that? Set
a trap?”

“We keep our eyes open,” Miles
said. “We watch. We don't leave ourselves open to attack and we don't leave
Cash or Mattie open either.”

“Except concerts,” Kevin said. “I'd
rather be hit over the head any day than be stuck in a room with thousands of
shrieking fans.”

“Except concerts,” Miles agreed.

*
* * * *

The next day they were on the road
again. A collective sigh of relief was heaved as their party left London and
headed out onto the motorway. They were pleased to escape into the green and pleasant
landscape, even if it was liberally littered with plastic bags sticking out of
bushes and clinging to tree branches.

Cash and Mattie were in
particularly high spirits. They retreated into a girly huddle in the bedroom at
the back of the bus. There was a lot of humming and giggling, and it looked
like they were doing something vaguely like work. Miles left them to it at
first. He was pleased that Mattie hadn't gone into too deep of a sulk after her
trip over Kevin's lap. It had given her a bit of a shock, he was sure, but she
seemed to have accepted it fairly gracefully.

Kevin was still pretty worn out
from the incident, and perhaps from whatever drugs he was taking to even out
his mood. Miles was sure he'd been prescribed something by the doctors, though
he didn't ask Kevin directly. Kevin was touchy about that sort of thing; he
didn't like to talk about the terrors that dogged him. He wanted to pretend he
was normal. Miles could respect that. He knew better than anyone how difficult
it was to slip back into everyday life after a tour of duty. He wasn't sure it
was actually possible.

Meeting Cash had been a godsend in
more ways than one. Working the tour, Miles didn't have to pretend as though
everything was humdrum. It wasn't. In many ways it was a tactical operation,
complete with people to manage and dangers to guard against.

A burst of cackling laughter from
the rear of the vehicle made him smile. It was nice to hear Mattie and Cash
laughing again. There had been too much solemn silence and worry of late. He
made his way back to see what they were doing, and found them sitting on the
bed, surrounded by scrawled upon pieces of paper.

“What on earth are you two up to?”

“How did you like the concert the
other night?” Cash answered his question with one of her own.

“It was great,” Miles said. “I
liked your new stuff.”

“Shhh, keep it down.” Her eyes
sparkled. “What if I told you that the new stuff wasn't exactly authorized?”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean me and Mattie wrote some
lyrics for me to sing in her songs. We didn't run it past Kevin, because Kevin
never comes to the shows. And Kevin would never say yes.”

“We're going to write more,” Mattie
chimed in. “We're going to perform them all over Europe...”

“And people will record it, you
know, with their cell phones and stuff,” Cash took over, her excitement rising.
“And then it will be on the internet. And then they'll have to start green
lighting the sort of songs I want to sing.”

Miles nodded. “That's one way to
take the bull by the horns, Miss Raine.”

“No way, man,” Mattie cut in,
“we're not taking the bull by the horns, we're taking him by his fucking
testicles.”

Wincing, Miles indicated that he
got the general idea. He left Cash and Mattie to it, figuring song writing was
the least of anyone's worries.

The next few weeks of the tour went
surprisingly smoothly. The concert in Manchester went off without a hitch, and
so did the next one in Dublin. With a grueling schedule and a concert almost
every night there was little time for Cash or Mattie to get into trouble, and
with the need to be vigilant, there was little time for Miles to indulge any
amorous impulses.

It wasn't until they crossed into
continental Europe that the pace slowed - largely due to the extended traveling
times. Hours upon hours on the road made everyone restless. Miles felt the
tedium as much as anybody, though he managed to contain it far better than
Mattie and Cash. Mattie dealt with things by being her annoying and outspoken
self. Cash was reacting in an even less ideal fashion. She ate little and she
slept even less. Each evening they would pull into a new hotel, and each
evening Cash's light would be one of the very last to go out.

More than once he'd threatened to
spank her to sleep, but it was more effective to have her in bed with him. He
strongly suspected that she tended to sneak out of bed once he was asleep
though, and there was no way to prove otherwise.

“Young lady,” Miles said, catching
Cash on her way off the bus as they disembarked in Strasbourg. She was looking
decidedly pale and peaky. “Have you eaten anything at all today?”

“I had crackers,” Cash said,
batting her eyelashes the way she was wont to do when she knew she was caught
out. “And, uhm, some of that green stuff. Celery.”

“Right,” he said, “when we get up
to the room, I'm going to order you a proper meal. And you're going to eat it
standing up.”

“Why would I eat it standing up?”
Her expression was quizzical.

He did not reply, he simply gave
her a hard look until she worked it out for herself. He knew she had when her
eyes went wide and she covered her bottom as a matter of reflex. By that time
they were in the elevator and nobody besides Miles saw her do it, which was
probably fortunate because her entire demeanor was one of perfect guilt.

“Miles, please don't,” she begged
as he escorted her into the suite. “I didn't not eat to be bad.”

“It doesn't matter,” he said,
picking the master bedroom, which was always assigned to Cash, and leading her
there. “I've told you a dozen times to make sure you eat.”

“But it's hard,” she whined, as he
sat on the bed and turned her over his lap.

“This will help make it easier,” he
replied grimly. It was with very little fanfare that he swept her sweatpants
and panties down, baring her bottom. The spanking he had in mind wasn't
intended to be in the slightest bit erotic. He caught her slim thighs between
his own, pivoting her over one leg and leaving her to support her own weight on
her outstretched hands.

He started spanking her bottom with
crisp, hard swats that immediately bought a bloom to her cheeks, and yelps of
complaint from her lips. It was the first truly disciplinary spanking he'd
given her, and he could tell that she was not enjoying it at all. With no warm
up to speak of, heavy swats of his hand singed her cheeks hard and fast,
whipping her pale bottom to a red glow.

Cash squealed and cried out for
clemency, but he was not in the mood to provide it. Eating was a simple enough
task, and it was important. Failing to eat was an inexcusable neglect, and he
told her as much in the brief pause between volleys of slaps.

“I'm sorryyy!” She yowled the
apology, drumming her toes against the carpet.

“You will eat regularly throughout
the day, understand?” He punctuated the question with fresh slaps.

“Yes! Yes!” She would have agreed
to anything just to get him to stop spanking. He knew that, but it was still
good to hear her agreement. He hoped she'd stick to it.

“I've had to talk to you about this
several times,” he said, holding her in place whilst he stroked her red-hot
bottom. “And I want to make sure this sticks.”

“It will, it will!”

“So you're going to count out the
next ten strokes,” he said. “You're going to count them out and you're going to
say 'I will remember to eat'. Do you understand?”

Waiting for her response, he held
her in place over his lap. She squirmed and made pathetic noises, hoping to
gain clemency. But Miles was not in the mood for clemency. He was in the mood
for making a point.

*
* * * *

Cash couldn't believe it. Her
bottom was so hot and sore she hardly thought she could take a single slap, let
alone ten more. And counting them out? And promising to eat? It was more than
she could bear.

“Please Miles,” she whimpered.
“Don't make me do that.”

“You're going to do it, Cash,” he
said firmly. “You're going to do it because you need to remember. And you need
to know if you don't remember, you're going to be taken to task for it. Now
hold still.”

Cash gasped before his hand even
landed. When it did, she shrieked. The slap seemed so much harder than any of
the others that had preceded it. It added fresh fire to what already felt like
a consuming blaze. If her legs hadn't been trapped between Miles' hard thighs
she would probably have kicked him.

“Cash.” There was warning in his
voice when she didn't say the words.

“One,” she sniffed. She opened her
mouth again, but she couldn't say the rest of it. It was just too embarrassing.
It made her feel naughty and small.

“The rest of it, Cash.”

“I will remember to eat,” she added
reluctantly in a tearful mumble.

“Good.”

She felt his palm leave her bottom
and return again with another hard slap.

“Miles!” She shrieked. “It hurts!”

“Those aren't the words, Cash,” he
insisted, bringing his hand down hard again,

“Two and three!”

“No sweetheart, that was two, and
now the words, or we do it again.”

“You're mean!”

Another slap cut off her protest.

“Two. I will remember to eat,” she
whimpered, giving in.

Her ass ached. She wasn't sure she
liked Miles anymore. This treatment went well beyond anything she'd ever
expected to receive from him. His usual gentleness had turned to an almost
scary determination to discipline.

“Good girl.”

Those two words changed her mood
almost instantly, a little reminder of the affection he had for her in the
midst of a very painful interlude. Unfortunately the praise didn't mean that he
was letting her off the hook. He made her go all the way up to number ten, by
which time her bottom felt like a furnace. She was weeping too, tears of
frustration and shame. She was frustrated at herself for not eating, she was
frustrated at Miles for disciplining her so harshly, and she was ashamed that
such a thing would be necessary.

When it was all over, she felt his
leg lock release. His hands slid to her waist as he helped her up and drew her
into a tight hug. Nestling her head between his shoulder and neck, she gave way
to floods of tears.

He hugged her close, murmuring
reassuring words. She couldn't really hear what he was saying over the sounds
of her own sobbing, but the low rumble of his voice was comforting.

She cried for what seemed like an
awfully long time and when she stopped she was dead tired and not at all
hungry. But Miles instead she have dinner anyway, because he was mean like
that.

“You need to start eating
regularly, Cash,” he explained. “You're putting your body into starvation mode.
That's why you don't think you're hungry.”

Cash tried to sit down to dinner
with Mattie, Kevin and Miles, but as Miles had predicted, sitting was not at
all comfortable. She bounced up as soon as she sat down, yelping aloud.

“Jesus, Miles, what did you do to
her?” Mattie asked, giving him a dirty look.

“Worry about your own bottom,
Mattie,” Kevin said.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

Kevin gave her a look, but said
nothing further on the issue. Cash and Mattie exchanged nervous glances. With
every passing day, they were starting to worry more about what might happen
when Kevin discovered their unauthorized performances. It hadn't been such a
big deal when they'd started out. Back then they'd thought of Kevin as a sort
of gentle giant, occasionally grumpy, but no real cause for concern. The fact
he'd joined Miles on the spanking bandwagon, that upped the stakes of their
little artistic experiment quite a bit.