The Locket Page 11

  “I am buying your lunch,” he firmly reiterated, and pushed backwards off the counter. His gaze not leaving hers for a second, his hands settled warm on her shoulders, gliding smoothly down her arms until he’d found her wrists. “Still, maybe this is one of those occasions when it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

  He retreated two steps, watching her as he backed away, almost as if he thought she might change her mind and dig in her heels. For a moment, she thought she might too, but then his steps out-distanced the length of both their arms, and Kylie was drawn from the sink. Robert turned around then, abandoning one wrist, but keeping firm hold of her other as he led her back out of the kitchen and unerringly to the dining room table.

  She had asked for this and it seemed Robert was inclined to provide, and that filled her stomach with all sorts of trepidatious little butterflies. As far back as she could remember, she’d fantasized about being on the receiving end of all kinds of spankings. In her fantasies, they’d all been erotic in one form or another, even the ones that weren’t supposed to be. And now she was going to get one. An honest to God sensual spanking. One that was given just because and not because he thought she’d done something wrong.

  For one half second though, as he pulled out a chair and took his place upon it—tugging her by the arm until she stood at his side, staring helplessly down at his lap—in that small moment, Kylie felt almost scared. What if she didn’t like sensual spankings any more than she did the disciplinary kind? What if her imagination was better than anything real life could deliver? She steeled herself to endure something that might very well prove extremely unpleasant. And yet when he pulled, down she went, laying herself across his capable thighs without so much as a hint of a struggle.

  “We’re going to be late,” was all she could think to say, although her voice did tremble just a bit, she might just as well have been commenting on the weather.

  “We’ll be fine,” he replied, as if he hadn’t—only moments before—been encouraging her to hurry up.

  His arm settled across the small of her back, wrapping around her waist. His left hand rested warm along the side of her hip, while the palm of his other passed gently from the top of her bottom to the top of her tensing thighs, first one side and then the other.

  Kylie wrapped her hands around a leg of the chair and then his ankle, suddenly needing just to hold onto him. If she wasn’t holding onto him, she didn’t think she could make it through this. Even if it was supposed to be playful. Sensual. Enjoyable. Strange how the view from the lap of a sensual spanking looked pretty much exactly like that of a disciplinary one. Nothing but knotholes and wavy, wood-grain lines as far as the eye could see.

  And dirt. She made a mental note that tomorrow was Floor Sweeping Day.

  Kylie tried to laugh at herself, but his hand—the business one—suddenly left her bottom, vanishing into the unseen air above and behind her, and her whole body responded, locking up just as tightly as if she were dead certain he was about to just whale away.

  “Shh,” he reassured her, his hand instantly returning, pressing once more, flat and gentle, against her bottom. He stroked her through her clothes until her throat relaxed enough for her to hazard a small giggle.

  “I’m okay, I’m okay.” It was a toss up who she was trying hardest to convince. “Really, I am.”

  He didn’t say anything, he just touched her, his hand skimming the whole spankable surface of her bottom. And then the parts he hadn’t ever spanked: up onto her back as far as his restraining arm, around to the sides of her hips until his fingers skimmed her tightening belly, down the backs of her legs, past her knees as far as he could reach. As his hand made the upwards journey back to her bottom, she felt the soft fabric tickle of her skirt moving up along with his fingers.

  Now her legs were bare, clad only in those borrowed stockings, with the white of her panties and the garter belt stretching across the globes of her nates, a very thin barrier that he didn’t suffer to remain long between them. He had only just put her stockings on, and he wasn’t about to pull them down again. Instead, he painstakingly folded over the top of her panty’s elastic band and, pinned beneath the garter straps, patiently rolled them down as far as the clasps resting on the backs of her thighs would let them go.

  “Breathe,” he told her.

  She hadn’t realized she wasn’t, but Kylie let out the gasp she’d been holding and quickly filled her lungs again as he shifted each garter strap aside, leaving them to hug the peripheral of each buttock, framing them in bands of white with the roll of her panties lying across the crease of her thighs below.

  Again, he caressed her. Work-roughened skin rasped softly over pale, shivering bare skin. The whole of her world narrowed down until tactile sensation became everything, and it was in that state, as she held herself still, simply feeling his touch, that he began to spank her.

  The first clap of his hand caught Kylie by surprise. It was more sound than substance, jolting her up over his knee but not hurting at all. There was only the slightest hint of a sting that he soothed away again as his hand once more caressed from one buttock to the other, delivering the second soft swat upon the uppermost crown of her flesh and driving her toes into such tight little curls that she could hear every one of the knuckles pop.

  Another round of caresses stopped her breathing again as he circled each half globe in turn, then shifted the direction of his soothing hand. Though her legs pressed tightly together, Robert easily skirted the roll of her underwear to cup and hold her sex. When he stroked her there, his molten touch turned every bit as electric as she remembered it being on that park bench, sixty years from now.

  “Open,” he said, nudging at her thighs.

  This was moving too fast. She’d never before in her life, within a week of meeting a man, spread her legs, but she was spreading them now, lifting her hips and pressing back as the tips of his fingers parted her folds, seeking the slick, wet heat of her most secret self and finding her already very, very ready for that invasion.

  His hand returned to her bottom and delivered two crisp slaps, sparking the slightest of stings before returning back between her thighs. She shivered when he stroked her there, dipping his fingertips into her wetness before exploring, seeking, finding the tiny nub hidden within. Twice he circled it, rolling it between his gentle fingers until her hips began to match the motion. The tip of his thumb kept time with each slow circle, stroking up and down along her moistened slit, growing wet with each passing until with only the slightest prodding, that thickened digit slipped past the heat of her entrance to push inside her.

  Her soft cry sounded strangled and her thighs tensed, hugging his hand, not in any way seeking to keep him out as much as maybe to keep him deep within. And it felt like such a loss when his touch withdrew anyway, the tips of his fingers stroking the length of her sex, up into the crease of her tensing buttocks until he reached the small of her back. Four slaps now instead of two, and this time the sting was a little more real.

  “Spread your legs,” he told her, his tone commanding, and she obeyed. Her grip on his ankle tightened, but she pushed her legs as far apart as her panty-wrapped thighs would permit. His hand returned to her pussy, holding her, squeezing once before delivering four much gentler versions of the slaps he’d given her bottom. One quick pop after the other, each more electric and hotly charged than the last. “Is this the warm and sexy spanking you had in mind?”

  Her gasps felt hot and she panted, clinging to his thigh now with both hands as again he combed apart the folds along the entrance of her sweetly aching sex. Her moan turned ragged as her body yielded to the piercing of his thumb. He seated it deep inside her, deep enough to feel the thin barrier that proved no other man had ever come this far with her before him. He tested it, stroking gently in and out again while his fingertips moved around and around her sensitive clit.

  “You’re not answering,” he said. This time when he spanked her, the clap of his hand was earth-shat
tering and the sting intense. Sharp enough that she kicked up both heels, snapping her feet back over her flattened bottom in an effort to protect.

  “Get them down,” he told her, and down she snapped them, just as fast, digging her toes into the floorboards as if she could root them there. And still he smacked her bottom all over. Free of impediment, his hand moved in a round, delivering two hard slaps to each nether cheek in turn, before the fifth, the coup de grace, fell square across her pussy. It landed wet, embarrassingly wet, the impact of his fingers releasing a flow of heat that left her positively writhing. “Open your legs for me.”

  She snapped them once more apart, lifting her hips, arching back to give his questing fingers all the access he sought to take advantage of. And he took a lot. He took until her moans became soft, shivering cries, and her hips were humping, alternately bouncing under the sharp, staccato slaps of his palm and arching back to ride upon his fingers. He dipped them into her until her whole body locked around him and just shook.

  “Is this the hot and sexy spanking you wanted?” he asked again, wringing every last shuddering gasp from her body until she couldn’t move, not even if she wanted to.

  “Yes,” she admitted with a moan, and it took every stitch of self-restraint she had not to kick up her feet to cover her bottom when he began to spank her all over again. Raw pleasure buzzed through every nerve ending; the heat turned all consuming. He shifted his left hand, moving it under her belly until his fingertips found their way through the folds of her sex, locating that tiny bud that electrified her every erotic sensation, heightening the intensity until it was far and beyond her ability to bear in silence. And all the while he spanked her, the breadth of his palm falling harder and faster until the heat became searing and the ecstasy so sharp as to almost be a hot, sweet agony of its own.

  She came hard, her hips bucking and riding upon fingers that were no longer inside her, her thighs quivering with the effort it took to keep them from snapping tight together.

  In the tenderness of the aftermath, the scrap of his palm as it passed ever so lightly from one blazing hot buttock to the other felt as rough a scouring pad. It was the first thing that she noticed as she came slowly back to earth, back down into herself—that rough gentleness of his hand moving in endless figure-eights, back and forth, from side to side.

  The second thing she noticed was the knocking at the dining room window.

  “Robert,” Braden called plaintively. He cupped his hands against the glass and peered in at them. “Robert, are we still going to the fair?”

  Robert quickly jerked the back of her skirt down over her naked bottom and thighs, trying his best to hide her from view below the surface of the table that was between them and the window. “Yeah, buddy. Uh, go stand by the car. We’ll be right out.”

  “Okay, Robert.” Braden stood there a moment longer, blinking before he vanished beyond the window. Kylie’s face was at least as red as her bottom as she heard him singing out, “Uh oh, Mama. She was bad!”

  Robert started to laugh; Kylie didn’t find it quite as funny.

  “I think I’ll stay here,” she said, crawling back off Robert’s lap. Her legs had all the solidarity of well-cooked spaghetti. They promptly tried to buckle, and had Robert not been holding her securely, she likely would have ended up in a heap on the floor at his feet.

  “Like hell you will,” he said, but his eyes were smiling and dancing. “You can just get over the embarrassment. You roped me into going to this thing. There’s no way I’m going by myself. And besides, you’ve been working on that lunch all morning, and I’ve got my mouth set to enjoy some of that southern fried chicken. After that, when we get home tonight you’ve got a choice to make. Either we save these sexy little spankings for after we’re married, or you need to rethink our current bedroom arrangements. I’m not going to rush you into something you’re not ready for, but I’m also not going to do this again.” He took her hand and laid her open palm against the sizeable bulge that had grown to tent-like proportions in the front of his jeans.

  “Oh,” she breathed. She didn’t know if it was him or her imagination, but she could swear she felt it throbbing beneath her fingers.

  As Robert excused himself to the back porch to apply a cold cloth where it would do the most good, Kylie stood in the dining room, her face every bit as hot as the seat of her dress. She knew she ought to hurry into the kitchen and finish throwing her box lunch together, but all she could think about was crawling naked into Robert’s bed tonight, lying down beside and then beneath him, wrapped her arms around his shoulders and her legs around his hips as she welcomed him into her body as eagerly as she had just accepted his fingers.

  Oh my, she pressed her hands to her blazing cheeks. Oh my, oh my indeed.

  “Are you getting ready?” Robert called down the hall.

  The faster they got out the door and through the day, the sooner tonight would come. Kylie glided into the kitchen, warm and tingling and utterly surreal, to finish getting ready.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Robert won her boxed lunch. He had to outbid three other men and spent an obscene amount of money (three dollars and thirteen cents) to do it, but he counted out every last penny in his pocket and by God he had lunch with her. They sat on a blanket under the shade of an old weeping willow while they ate, watching the teenagers picnicking all around them, listening to the calling of a trio of ducks, and feeling the warm summer breeze as it rippled through the tall grass and out across the water of a nearby pond.

  They talked and walked together afterward, holding hands like real couples were supposed to do when they were in love. And although it was way too early for this to actually be love, Kylie certainly did feel something. Especially when he leaned over and whispered in her ear, “Is your butt still warm?”

  Like a first-degree sunburn fully immersed in heated water. But she loved it when he slipped his hand down her back, giving her two gentle reminder pats before his palm drifted back up her spine to a more socially acceptable position on her body.

  All together, the church raised nearly fifty dollars to put toward their Welcome Home party. Kylie didn’t know if any real matches were made among the box lunch bidders, but there was at least one man still grinning from ear-to-ear at the end of the day.

  With the dying sun painting the sky in hues of pink and bronze, Braden lifted his mother up into the back of Robert’s Woody and then climbed in to sit beside her. Abigail had paid thirteen cents to have lunch with her son, just as she’d done every year since he was twelve, and even now, hours after their lunch date was done, Braden could hardly contain his glee.

  “That was good pie,” he said loudly, folding his huge frame into the very back so his exhausted mother could lie down on the seat.

  “I’m glad you liked it,” Kylie said honestly.

  “I gave my crust to the ducks. They thought it was good pie, too.”

  It had been a wonderful day. The best that she’d yet experienced since coming back in time. And it wasn’t over yet.

  “You tired?” Robert asked once they’d dropped Braden and his mother off at their front porch. It was well and truly dark by the time they headed out of that driveway and across the street toward home.

  “Not really,” she replied, grateful for the dark so that he couldn’t see her blush.

  “Good. Neither am I.” As he pulled into the driveway, the headlamps on the Woody illuminated the fruit stand, and for a moment, although she never would have thought anything could have distracted her from the night’s impending activities, the sight of that empty wooden top did.

  Robert floored the brake pedal so hard that Kylie had to grab the dash with both hands to keep from sliding clean off the seat and into it. She barely noticed. There were only two apples left in one of the slanted display crates. That was it. All the pies, the rest of the fruit and the jars of preserves that had been set out that morning were gone.

  “Did we get robbed?” Kylie asked.

/>   Robert got out of the truck without a word to get a closer look. She didn’t see the slip of paper under the money bowl until Robert picked it up. He pocketed the few coins that had been left, then tipped the note into the light of the headlamps and quietly read it.

  “No, we’re fine,” he said, slipping the note into his pocket before climbing back behind the steering wheel. He shifted the wagon back into gear and, as they bumped and jostled their way slowly to the front porch, he asked, “Have you figured out where you’re sleeping tonight?”

  He couldn’t have picked a more successful topic to redistract her with. “I think so, yes.”

  He didn’t ask, and she didn’t specify. She simply got out of the Woody when he dropped her off at the steps. “How long should it take me to put the truck away?”

  “About ten minutes,” she replied, the question making her laugh a little even as her face flushed that much hotter.

  “Ten minutes,” he echoed, with a nod. And then he drove away, taking the wagon back to the detached garage behind the house.

  Kylie watched him vanish around the corner before heading inside. Ten minutes was not a lot of time when one had to pump wash water into the back sink and sponge bathe. She wished she had something slinky and sexy to change into. She wished she had make-up, but in the end, the best she could do to make herself pretty and appealing was to light an oil lamp, turn it down low, and crawl into Robert’s bed as naked as the day she was born.

  That was a nerve-wracking wait. She sat up against the headboard, a pillow behind her back and his patchwork quilt pulled all the way up and tucked under her armpits. Her fingers nervously picked at the seams until she heard the front door open and bump gently closed again. His feet tromped across the floor into the kitchen, and then a few minutes later back across the floor as he headed for the stairs.

  Kylie sat up a little straighter. She combed her fingers back through her hair. She wished she hadn’t eaten so many pieces of pie this last week and then cobbler again today at lunch. She really wished she’d taken the time to borrow Robert’s safety razor.