The Firefighter's Woman (10 page)

“Okay, I will.”

“Oh, and Sarah?” She spoke just as Sarah was closing the door.

“Yes?”

“I’d like you to stay in the house.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean overnight,” Anne said. “I’d like you to stay in the house overnight. John would too. Just letting you know, specifically, so there is no doubt.”

Sarah made eye contact with the woman and a brief, silent battle of wills ensued. Sarah had every intention of napping for a few hours, then going out to her favorite bar. It had been too long since she’d hung out with the people she partied with, and a day in the quiet of the library had made her miss it more.

In some way, it was as if Sarah were seeing Mrs. Derringer clearly for the first time. Anne wasn’t actually as old as she’d seemed at first. Nor was she weak or infirm. She had a certain quiet strength about her, and a formidable energy to match. Sarah found herself wondering what Anne would do if she were to cross her.

“Well,” Sarah said finally. “I’m tired, so…”

“Of course, dear. Sleep well.”

Sarah closed the door and listened to Anne’s footsteps as they receded down the stairs. For the first time that day, she was alone. She kicked off her shoes and lay down on the bed, plugged her charger in and set an alarm. Eleven o’clock was probably late enough that Mrs. Derringer would be asleep. She’d never know anything had happened.

Chapter Eleven

Sarah was asleep. And then suddenly, not asleep thanks to the large man who had tossed the covers off her and was busy manhandling her over his lap without so much as a hello.

“Hey! What the hell are you doing?”

A large warm hand palmed her bare bottom. “Mrs. Derringer said you left the house near midnight last night and didn’t get back until the early hours of the morning. Where were you?”

“Mrs. Derringer’s a liar!”

“Is she? Or are you?”

“How dare you call me a liar!” Sarah wriggled as his fingers hooked in the back of her panties, drawing them down the crack of her cheeks in one smooth motion, which deprived her of modesty and the last thin barrier of protection from his palm.

“Did you go out last night, Sarah?”

There was a pause in which neither of them seemed to breathe. He was waiting to see if she would lie.

“…No.”

His hand came down in a hard slap that burst across her bottom.

“Don’t tell me stories, Sarah. Tell me the truth. That’s all I’ve ever asked of you.”

“So if I tell you that I went out, that I went to a bar, that I drank all night, and that I stumbled back in at three in the morning, you’ll be fine with that?”

“I won’t be fine with that, no. But it won’t go as badly for you as it will if you lie to me.”

“I didn’t go out,” she repeated. Another hard slap met her bottom. “Fuck you, John,” she growled. “You got some old bat to spy on me. You trust her more than me? Well, why don’t you just go fuck her.”

“You need to settle down, Sarah,” John said, his large palm spreading over the center of her cheeks. “This attitude isn’t going to fly. I want to know where you were and what you were doing.”

“And I want a house made of candy and a pony made of dreams, but that’s not happening either.”

* * *

John sighed inwardly. Sarah was in full rebellion. Though he’d made it clear from the outset that their relationship would involve rules and consequences, she always seemed to forget about them, doubt them, or just plain ignore them.

“Did you not understand what I told you?”

“What did you tell me?”

John spanked her bottom with a hard slap and listened to her outraged squeal. “That I expect you to obey me, Sarah. And Mrs. Derringer. After I’ve spanked your butt red, you’re going to apologize to her.”

“Fuck off I am,” Sarah replied, wriggling furiously. “I’m not apologizing to anyone for anything, and you’re going to let me up right now.”

“Sarah,” he growled. “Cut it out.”

“You cut it out,” she snarled. “Why don’t you just fuck off, John. You tried to get rid of me already, pawned me off on Mrs. Derringer all day and all night. If you don’t want me around, just say so. Don’t pass me around to your friends and family like some unwanted puppy you found on the highway.”

Her round butt was still squirming over his thighs and it was tempting to just spank her until she begged for mercy. She was being such a little brat. Ever since he had introduced her to Mrs. Derringer and the concept of a job, she had been pitching a fit.

But there was a reason for that. A reason that made him sad and angry. Not at Sarah, but at the hand life had dealt her. A day was too long to leave someone like Sarah, someone who couldn’t bring herself to believe anyone loved her or cared for her for more than a few minutes at a time. He’d known it would be like this sometimes. She’d been open enough about her past to reveal the depth of damage that would not be fixed in five minutes of a good relationship. But that didn’t mean he could let her get away with acting like a brat. He started spanking her again, not as hard as before, but hard enough to make a pink blush rise to her cheeks.

“I know I wasn’t here,” he said. “But I wasn’t that far away, and I never pawned you off on anyone. I wanted to know you’d be taken care of. I didn’t want you to be alone.”

“You didn’t want me to have any fun. You wanted to keep tabs on me. You wanted to control me!”

“That’s kind of our deal,” he reminded her. “Has been since the beginning.”

“Yeah, well. It’s not fun anymore!” She twisted off his lap and tumbled onto the floor. He could have grabbed her again, but he refrained. She was angry, and discipline was only making her angrier.

“Sarah…”

“Shut up! I hate you!” She grabbed her jeans from the floor and shoved her legs into them before stuffing her feet into her shoes, not bothering with socks.

“Sarah…”

“I hate both of you!” She screamed the words at the top of her lungs, meaning them with every fiber of her being.

“Sarah!” John snapped her name. “That’s enough. You’re throwing a tantrum like a little girl.”

“That’s how you treat me, John, so I might as well act like one. You tell me what to do, where to stay. She tells me when to eat, when to go to bed. I want to go back to my house! I want to go home!” She sniffed and wiped her eyes with the back of her sleeve. “Fuck this. I want out of here.”

She turned around and stormed out of the bedroom, slamming both the bedroom door and subsequently, the front door, behind her. The whole house shook with her fury and John was half-worried that the glass in the door might have shattered. He made his way downstairs in Sarah’s wake, but waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs was Anne. She put her hand on his arm. “Let her be,” she said in calm tones.

“I’m sorry,” John said. “You didn’t sign up for this.”

“I can understand her reaction,” Anne said. “You punish her a lot.”

“I…” John frowned, realizing what Anne had actually said. “You’re saying this is my fault?”

“I’m saying listening might be better than talking with your palms,” Anne said. “There’s a whole lot locked away in that girl, and I don’t think you’re going to whip it out of her.”

“I’m not trying to do that.”

“What are you trying to do?”

“She’s got an attitude,” he said. “And she puts herself in dangerous situations, and…”

“And you think the way to protect her from herself is to make yourself her keeper. But you can’t be there all the time, John. She has to at least internalize a part of what you’re doing, and she won’t do that as long as you come down on her like that. She’ll run, she’ll hide, she’ll fight, but she’ll never give in.”

“So what do you suggest,” he said with a sigh.

“A little chivalry and romance never hurt.”

“So she goes out, does god knows what, and I’m supposed to bring her flowers and take her to dinner?”

Anne cocked her head to the side. “Have you?”

“Have I what?”

“Brought her flowers or taken her to dinner?”

“Uh…”

It occurred to John that Anne was right. He had not spent any time being romantic with Sarah. From the beginning it had been about protecting her, imposing discipline, boundaries, rules, and sex. Hot, hard, sex. Good sex. Very good sex. But there was more to love than that, and it was time he showed Sarah what that was.

* * *

Sarah sat uncomfortably in a nearby park and cried. She was so miserable, not because John had smacked her butt. She’d known that was going to happen. She probably would have been disappointed if he hadn’t, if she was totally honest with herself.

“He’s going to hate you now,” she told herself. “All he wanted was for you to have something nice, but you broke it. You made him punish you. If you’d just been good, he would have been happy with you.”

Lecturing herself didn’t make her feel better, but it did make her feel as though she was doing something. If John wasn’t around to spank her, she’d just beat herself mentally. At the end of the day, it was all the same to her. Pain was pain and she deserved it. Why else would her life be so unbearable? Why else would everyone and everything she loved be taken from her?

Just as she was sure she could never be more miserable than she was in that precise moment, her phone vibrated with a message. From John.

Dinner. 8 p.m. tonight?

Really?
She texted the message back.

Really. But it’s an invitation, not an order.

She smiled through her tears as she realized that John didn’t hate her. Even though she’d said she hated him, he didn’t hate her. He probably didn’t believe that she hated him either; at least, she hoped he didn’t. She regretted saying what she’d said. She regretted almost everything she’d said and done in the last twenty-four hours.

Her thumb moved over the screen, sending a message back:

I’ll be there.

Chapter Twelve

Sarah looked at John over the flickering candlelight. “You look good in a suit,” she said with a playful smile.

“And you look beautiful,” he said, his eyes gleaming with desire.

Separated by an expanse of white tablecloth and with a waiter in a bow tie standing beside them, they both looked quite unlike their usual selves. The restaurant was an expensive one, where the food was stacked where possible, even the soup. Sarah had already turned her nose up at cold soup served in a gelatin mold and was nursing the glass of wine John had watched the waiter pour her with perhaps too keen an eye. She didn’t want to drink too much, not tonight.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her guilt bubbling over. “About what I said today, about…”

“It’s okay,” John said. “I mean, it’s not okay to talk that way, but I know why you were angry.”

“You do?”

“Relationships have to be more than rules and discipline, so they tell me.”

“There’s sex too,” Sarah smirked.

“And more than sex,” he said, his eyes lighting with humor and desire. “Though, the sex is…”

“Good evening, sir, madam…”

The appearance of the waiter inquiring as to whether or not they were ready to order interrupted the conversation. Sarah sat and giggled as John asked the suit-clad man for a little more time and the waiter nodded as if he hadn’t overheard everything they’d said and departed to interrupt other intimate conversations.

“This menu is incomprehensible,” Sarah said, glancing at the card that contained a lot of words that did not appear to be in English.

“Want me to order for you?”

“Sure,” she shrugged. This night didn’t seem to be about the food anyway. She wasn’t sure exactly what it was about, but John had never struck her as the fancy restaurant kind of guy.

John ordered two steaks, which came after a good twenty minutes of the politest chitchat they’d made with one another since meeting. Sarah wanted to show that she was sorry, and she figured the best way to do that was to at least pretend to be civilized and ladylike.

They both ate their meals, silence extending out between them for long minutes while all around them fellow diners engaged in muted conversations. The restaurant was one of the best in town, a place where everyone wore their very best clothes and put on their very best manners. Sarah had never been in a place like it. She felt a little prickly and uncomfortable, but she didn’t want to let that show, so she kept a smile on her face and her elbows off the table.

Halfway through the steak, she couldn’t keep up the facade anymore. “Why does this feel weird?” She put her fork down, picked up her wineglass and took a dainty sip.

The question didn’t seem to surprise John. “I don’t know,” he said with a shrug.

“Does it feel weird to you?”

“A little,” he admitted.

“It’s not really my scene,” she admitted.

“No? It’s not mine either.”

“So uh… why are we here?” She smiled playfully, swirling the dark red liquid she was still somewhat surprised he had ordered for her.

“It’s romantic.”

“Is it?”

“Well, it was supposed to be.”

“It feels more like we’re playing at romance,” Sarah observed. “Like I put my mom’s jewelry on, and you stole your dad’s suit and we’re pretending to enjoy the mud pies or something.”

John snorted. “I guess you’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry. I don’t really do… romance.”

She smirked at him over the rim of her wineglass. “No, you do something else,” she agreed, lowering her lashes.

He moved his chair so that he was no longer sitting opposite her, but next to her. His hand slid underneath the tablecloth and settled on her thigh. She let out a little gasp as he found the hem of her dress and the warmth of his fingertips played against the sensitive skin.

“Still feel like you’re playing a role?” He murmured the question against her ear as his fingers slid right up to the apex of her thighs, stopping within touching distance of the panty-clad mound.