The Alexandra Series (68 page)

“I-um, I think about…about you doing these things to me.”

“And do you imagine the punishment is painful?”

“Yes, sir, very painful.” Her eyes remained closed as if she’d mentally placed herself there and was seeing the pictures in her mind as she recounted her tale.

“And do you spank yourself hard?”

“Yes,” she answered. The tears were still falling from her eyes, but the trembling was beginning to fade.

“Until your bottom’s red?” he questioned.

“Yes, sir, very red indeed.”

“So hard it’s painful?”

“Yes, that too, but…but not enough,” she said, letting out a huge sigh.

“That’s very good. I give you credit for being so honest.”

The young woman waited for the next question, but there was none.

“You can open your eyes. The worst is over.”

The maid wiped her tears away, as she returned to the reality around her.

“Since you obviously need to be punished, I’ll be certain you will, and often. And from now on, I’ll demand your good behavior and exacting work, or, green card or not, immigration or not, you’ll be fired. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If it’s discipline you require, that you’ll get. But don’t continue to sacrifice your life and gamble on your future by creating foolish blunders to be punished for. You understand?” His voice rose like a violent wind, wrapping about her quivering form with more ferocity than she ever expected. “Do you understand,” he repeated, when she hesitated.

“Yes, sir,” she answered.

“And enough with meekness!” he snapped. “You’re not a meek woman. In fact, you are a woman, not a child. Twenty-three, I believe?” He stared at the maid for several moments. Eye to eye their exchange—dominant to submissive—was a tantalizing moment, so rich in meaning and import as the young Helena discovered herself in the midst of the dreamed of fantasy, even though its outcome would be a painful reality.

“Jocelyn, get my spanker,” Reggie ordered his wife.

Jocelyn jumped at the abrupt command. Being as submissive as the maid, she tiptoed quietly to the open cabinet and pulled out the leather spanking paddle. Returning, she handed it to her husband, then shrunk back to her chair to watch the grim proceedings with as much fascination as she’d watched the German S&M theater Reggie had take her to when they were just dating.

For all the drawn out drama of the beginning, Reggie was swift to finish off his guilty maid. Moving briskly, he placed a chair in an open space in the room and bade her bend over, palms resting on the seat. Helena obeyed while her audience of one watched her nicely rounded bottom well presented, the two distinct orbs jiggling just slightly under her skirt. Reggie’s deft hands reached to the hem of the garment and drew it up over her thighs, then over her bottom, revealing a lovely ass underneath a pair of thin nylon panties. With one quick jerk, he dispensed with her underwear as well, Helena whimpering softly as the cool air hit her naked skin.

Without further ceremony, Reggie began with the spanker, the leather pelting the submissive behind so that a red glow quickly appeared where her bottom was once pale beige. She cried from the outset, but didn’t scream or wail. It appeared her response was simply genuine pain, the agony of it instantaneous and sustained as the smacks went on without pause. Only when Reggie decided that the pain was too much for the woman to handle did he ease off, so they both rested, though he paused only seconds. Beginning again, he raised the cries, the pain, and the vibrant red, leveling the leather with greater zeal and a harsher consequence, until he paused once more for a brief reprieve. He repeated the methodical process several times, until at last, a moment’s rest did nothing to ease the torment and his submissive’s desperate cries were too horrid to squelch any longer. Her bottom was vibrantly red and marked with savage looking streaks. With Helena still in the midst of the agony she’d been dreaming of for so long, Reggie finally stopped.

Sensing the punishment was over, Helena started to slump to the floor.

“Stand up!” Reggie commanded. “And don’t start sniveling in front of me.”

Getting a grip on her misery, the girl pulled herself to her feet, with her skirt conveniently dropping over her ass.

“You’ve been punished enough this once. I trust the message is clear?” he said.

“Yes, sir,” she snuffed her reply, wiping tears with the back of her hand.

“Here, take this,” he said, handing her a Kleenex. “There’s no reason to be that sloppy.”

She wiped her tears, then blew her nose and slowly backed away from the center of the room. She might have backed out altogether, but Reggie stopped her.

“Now that your great obsession has finally been realized, Miss Helena,” Reggie said. “You can watch your mistress take a few necessary cuts of her own.”

“What!” Jocelyn was immediately pulled from a thoughtful reverie as she heard her husband’s comment.

“You heard me,” he said, turning to his wife.

“Reggie?”

He didn’t answer her, but instead walked to the cabinet and pulled out a shiny bamboo cane. Once at her side, he took his stunned wife by the arm and he pushed her toward the chair. Her immediate obedience was more from shock than willingness, as she bent over, just as her new maid had done.

“Why that?” she blurted out, when at last some small bit of reason began to dawn on her flustered mind.

“For not handling the problem yourself. And because I want Helena to see what she has to look forward to.”

With the two women in the room both trembling in fear, Reggie raised Jocelyn’s skirt, letting Helena get a long look at the two mounds of white. Then with a brisk efficient stroke, he laid the cutting implement on his wife’s behind six times. The unforgettable sound of the swishing cane was matched only by Jocelyn’s grunting response, though neither sound was as intense as her silent cry that declared this unexpected turn of events to be a gross violation of her trust.

Within seconds, he was finished. Six red welts remained etched on her behind, with each distinct cut being a cruel reminder of Reggie’s darkest passion.

***

“How dare you punish me in front of one of our servants!” Jocelyn roared once Helena was ordered from the room, and she was in the library alone with Reggie.

“You’re angry.” Maintaining his cool, he didn’t even flinch at his wife’s fiery retort or her startling green eyes suddenly dark as midnight.

“You’re damn right! You friggin’ bastard,” she seethed, as she was about to bolt from the room.

He grabbed her instead.

“My word, you
are
pissed.”
As if she wouldn’t be.
His treacherous smirk made her furious. She tried shaking him off, but his hold was too tight. His masculine resolve increased her fury, but he didn’t relent. She struggled against his grasp, but to no avail. Then at last he backed her up against his desk until her chest was against his chest, their hearts so close they could feel the other beating.

Suddenly pinned and without a chance in hell of getting away, Jocelyn smothered a flurry of four letter words. Nothing was right, nothing could describe her anger as clearly as she was feeling it. And yet, with his breath, his eyes, even his mouth so close and focused on her, she started to give way, abandoning fury in favor of the sexual charge their battle produced. When she felt his hard cock through against her thigh, she knew she wasn’t going to protest anymore. She wanted him. Lifting her to the desk, Reggie opened her legs wide and pressed his erection into her welcoming home. They screwed arm in arm, clenched tight, loins grinding in a senseless frenzy until they both climaxed. Then exhausted, they fell against each other forgetting everything but their two beating hearts and the end of the struggle.

Time passed, and Jocelyn was fingering Reggie’s once stiff starched shirt, looking at the floor, her head resting against his muscled chest. He didn’t hold her like this often enough, with this degree of openness, his body feeling as if something substantial and protective was welded to her, incapable of being taken away. When he was often ready to move away from a sexual aftermath quickly, he didn’t this time. She was thinking that neither one of them were good at being so exposed to one another in this intimate way. She smiled, self-satisfied to have him in this vulnerable place. “You know, Reg, you’re still a friggin’ bastard,” she said softly.

“I am,” he agreed with her, while his hand combed through her mass of tousled curls. He liked the playground of their desires, where she made him feel so safe after making love, that he was happy with her inside the lines of his well defined sphere. No one else could break the barrier of his heart. Not this way. Jocelyn’s fragrant aroma kept him holding her, then kissing her with small tokens of affections from his lips to her forehead. Capturing her face in his hands he kissed her eye, and then her lips that warmly welcomed the affection.

“I’m not going to forgive you,” she added to her complaint when they pulled further apart.

The magical spell of safety was breaking away sparring like this, but then, they couldn’t take too much intimacy all at once. A playful ending was as natural to them as their affections and their lust.

“Then don’t,” he replied. “I can live with that. Though I can’t live without loving you the way I love best. And you know, my darling, there’s a lot of desire in you that you’re not admitting to. Eventually I’m going to make an honest woman of you.”

One last kiss and he pulled away from her altogether. Gathering the tools of punishment in his hand, he moved to the cabinet and replaced them, taking time to arrange them exactly where each belonged. Jocelyn watched the ritual as she sat on his desk, feeling the sticky aftermath of their love making between her parted legs. It was strange to love a man so meticulous about certain aspects of his life, but so crude about others. Then she smiled, noting what a fine tight ass he had. How she loved to squeeze it as much as he loved squeezing hers. Forgive him? She already had. How could she not when she loved him so much?

Chapter Eight

Will was home at last, his car in the parking space where it belonged side by side with Alex’s small sedan. Her heart beat twice as fast at the sight of the red Fiat. She had to keep herself from running to him, from flying through the door and attacking him, though he’d probably laugh at her efforts. Imagining his grin, she felt the affection already working its magic.

Up the elevator and opening the door, she found the apartment was so quiet it was eerie walking inside. Was he lurking there in the dark, behind some door, ready to jump out at her? How she wished he’d attack her. Like a madman. Scare her. Startle her right out of her wits. Just the thought was arousing in familiar places. Reminders from the night before he left for Alaska were skipping through her head. She shivered just as she’d done on the patio when his presence loomed more perilous than the imminent storm, when she’d been spirited away, making love to him in midst of that savage night.

Tiptoeing further into the apartment, turning a light on here and there, Will still wasn’t to be found, even when she searched the kitchen for him—he hadn’t even raided the refrigerator—and then their bedroom. The only sign of his return was an unpacked bag sitting on the bed. He wouldn’t have dared go out walking his first night home. But there wasn’t a reasonable explanation for his whereabouts until she returned to the living room and looked toward his studio. The light was burning underneath the door.

Of course. But working so soon?

Rapping on the door, Alex heard his familiar voice respond.

“God, you’re home! I didn’t expect you until the weekend,” she dashed to him, flinging arms around his neck, kissing him crazily until he pushed her back. “You don’t look happy, something’s wrong?”

“Is this a joke?” he asked. A hellish look accompanied the question.

“What a joke?”

He stared at his worktable, a copy of the letter she’d sent the museum with a sample of his photographs was lying neatly in the center of his desk, just where’d she left it for him to find.

“I thought you’d be pleased. I was talking to Davidson at the museum. He was dying to see your work. Said you were supposed to have sent it. I couldn’t get hold of you in Alaska, but I know you talked to him just days before you left…”

“So you went ahead and sent him my stuff. These pictures?”

“Of course.” By then, Alex was almost stammering. The look on Will’s face, no pleasant grin, no spontaneous excitement to allay her concerns; she was worrying now that he was about to slap her. The rage beneath the surface she’d seen before in him scared her.

“I didn’t believe it, when he told me. I honestly didn’t believe it,” Will started talking, though he wasn’t making any sense. “I mean, I thought Rick was just full of shit, telling me these photographs were being touted as part of the next museum expose. I told him he was crazy, that the photographs were safely in my files. And now, I see the whole world’s ogling them while I have egg on my face.”

“I sent them to Davidson, they were just for consideration. Nothing more.”

“Do you know what a fool you’ve made of me?”

“I don’t understand.”

“You had no right to do this!” Will barked. He walked away from her toward the kitchen. She followed. Grabbing a beer from the fridge he turned toward her and glared. “I told you not to mess with my stuff, and what do you do?”