Last Dance for Cadence Read online

  He could say ‘please’ all he liked, but Cadence wasn’t fooled. That was not a request.

  “I don’t know why I said that,” she hedged, not moving. “I’m very sorry.”

  “Office,” he said again, his calm and personable tone at complete odds with the dangerous glint that had ignited in the depths of that slate-gray and unblinking stare.

  Swallowing hard, Cadence went. She limped past the boys, who were scrambling to get up off the floor, and then past him.

  “Don’t fire her, Dad,” Buddy wailed.

  “Of course not,” Marcus assured him. “She’s coming with us to dinner. Now, do as I said. Go upstairs and get ready. I’ll call you down when we’re done talking.”

  For some reason, knowing she wasn’t about to be summarily dismissed didn’t make Cadence feel better. Hands folded tight together, stepping into his office felt akin to walking into a dungeon. It was light and airy, brightly painted with medical posters on the wall. The fichus by the filing cabinets should have made the room seem cheery, except that it didn’t. Not to Cadence. Not right now.

  She caught her breath when she heard Marcus come in behind her, closing the door only after watching the boys disappear completely up the stairs. Turning around to face him was one of the hardest things she’d yet done today, only this time her slow steps had little to do with pain.

  “I’m very sorry,” she said, honestly contrite. “I don’t know why I said that. I never should have said that to you, much less in front of your children.”

  “Thank you for the apology,” Marcus said, just as sincerely, and then he locked the door. “Take your panties off, please. We’re going to have a conversation now, and I think you’ll listen best once you’ve hung your underwear on the coat rack.”

  She stood, huge eyed, unable to move or think of a single thing to say beyond a half-gasped, half-laughed, “Y-you want me to hang my underwear on the coat rack?”

  She stumbled back a step, bumping right up against the wall when he started toward her, but he only walked right past her. He pulled out the same stool he’d made her sit on the night before and set it down in front of his desk. Then he pulled a second chair away from the wall, setting it down smartly in front of the stool, leaving only enough space between the two chairs to provide a little leg room.

  “Hustle up,” he said, sounding more conversational than he did upset. “We don’t want to leave the boys waiting. They’ll be sitting on the top step as it is, and I really don’t think you want them to know what’s happening in here.”

  With a light tug at his trousers, Marcus sat down on the chair. He didn’t look at her right away, but instead turned his attention to his sleeves. They were already rolled up, but he gave each side enough turns to get the folds up past his elbows. When he was done, then and only then did he rest his hands upon his thighs and look at her expectantly.

  Cadence hadn’t moved.

  “Do you need me to come over there and help you?”

  Something about the way he asked suggested that might somehow make things worse for her, not better. Bowing her head, Cadence reached up under her skirt, striving to keep as much of the fabric as a shield between them as she could while she hooked her own underwear and reluctantly skimmed them down her legs. She had to balance against the wall to take them all the way off and then, eyeing the coat rack, she held them tucked up in a wad in her hands.

  “On the rack,” Marcus repeated, implacably.

  How humiliating. Cadence hung her panties on the lowest possible hook.

  “Now, come here.”

  Oh, how she really did not want to go to him. Drawing a steadying breath, Cadence approached the stool. When he patted the seat, she edged in between him and it and awkwardly lowered herself to sit before him.

  “Let me ask you a question,” he began, once they were sitting practically eye to eye and knee to knee. “Were you suggesting that I am not responsible enough to suit you, or that you only feel responsible when you push your physical limits to the point of extreme pain and possibly even permanent soft tissue and joint damage?”

  She honestly didn’t know how to explain why she’d said what she did. “I…I don’t…”

  “Did you use the scootabout at the store like I told you to?”

  He already knew she hadn’t, Cadence could tell just by looking at him. Was making her say it out loud part of the punishment? “No.”

  “Did you use your cane?” He knew the answer to that too.

  A hot flush of utter chastisement flooded her, burning through her in wave after awful wave. “No.”

  “Lay yourself across my knees.” He sat back, bringing his feet a little closer together, providing her with a very sturdy lap.

  Cadence couldn’t even bring herself to look at his knees, or his hand. That very broad and strong hand. She’d never been so painfully aware of any one aspect of another person’s body before. “Dr. Devon, please…”

  “Marcus,” he corrected.

  The last thing she wanted was to deepen the intimacy between them. “I promise I’ll use them both from now on.”

  “I’m sure you will, because I promise I’m going to do my level best to make this experience one you don’t want to repeat.” He patted his knee again. “Come here, sweetheart. Lay yourself across my lap. Don’t make me have to chase after you.”

  Cadence stared at his lap, but knowing she ought to comply and being able to force herself to move toward what she knew was going to be nothing but painful and terrible was two very different things.

  “Sweetheart,” he warned.

  “You’re going to hurt me.” She bit her tongue, despising how small and weak she sounded when she said that.

  “Sweetheart.” He kept saying that, as if he actually meant it. “I’m not going to hurt you. You are hurting you, and that’s why you’re getting this spanking.” Marcus patted his thigh again. “Come on, now. Put yourself across my knee. I’ll be honest, there’s not a lot you can do right now to make the spanking you’ve got coming worse, but not obeying when you’re told is one, forcing me to come and get you is another, and if you lock your knees and hurt yourself worse because you’re fighting me, then not only am I going to spank you, but I will get the hairbrush out of my desk drawer and I will paddle your little bare bottom until you can’t sit for a week. Are we clear on the rules?”

  Cadence stared at him, her mouth a round ‘o’ of surprise and dismay. Her stomach felt like one giant pit of knots strangling her from the inside out.

  He didn’t pat his knee again. He held up his finger instead and, with solemn authority, brought it down to point at his knee.

  “I can’t,” Cadence breathed. Her legs were shaking so desperately right now, she didn’t dare try to move. Bad enough to have to get spanked without collapsing right from the very start, forcing him to pick her up off the floor. “I…I can’t.”

  “Do you want to leave?” he asked evenly.

  “Stop trying to get me evicted!” she snapped, her tone too high and uneven to be anything but verged on panic.

  He leaned over, catching both her hands in his and pulling her down, forcing her to adopt the same pose he did, elbows braced upon his knees, damn near nose to nose with her, leaving her no chance at all to put wary distance back between them. “I’m not trying to get you evicted, Cadence. I’m giving you a way out. If you really want to quit, now’s the time.”

  “I never quit,” she snapped again. She never cried, either, but she already knew, for the second time in as many days, he was going to take her beyond her ability to bite those tears back.

  He sat back slowly, but he didn’t let go of her hands. When he drew, she made no effort at all to resist. He had to help her, but the end result was still the same. She found herself lying face down across his lap. His thighs were solid and steady beneath her queasy stomach. Cool air crept up the backs of her legs when he pulled her skirt up, folding it over onto the small of her back, and it made her shiver, but nowhere ne
ar as tensely as she did when she felt the broad flatness of his hand come to rest directly upon the naked swell of her right bottom cheek.

  “Do you want me to hold your hand?” he asked.

  What, as if they were dating? He couldn’t be serious!

  She probably should be more careful with what came out of her mouth, but at this point she didn’t think anything was going to stop this, so why not say exactly what she felt? “Right now, I hate you so much. No, I don’t want to hold your hand.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Her whole body tensed when his hand left her backside, but it wasn’t absent for very long. It came down with a firm slap, at first more sensation than sound, but only at first. He didn’t give her time to take a breath before he slapped again, setting the pace for a brisk back and forth rhythm that attacked the halves of her bottom in a way those four small swats last night had not prepared her for. The sting sank in, not like before when it had felt more like the snap of a rubber band. This time, it sank in with teeth. And Marcus did not stop at four. He didn’t stop at eight, he didn’t stop at ten. He just wasn’t stopping.

  Cadence grabbed at the legs of his chair, desperate for something to help her hang on and just endure, but her whole bottom felt attacked and it just wasn’t stopping. The slaps kept falling, now biting into all those places he’d already spanked, elevating the sting to something that hurt. Really hurt. Flooding it with a slow heat that invaded her flesh, sinking deeper and deeper with every driving swat.

  Cadence grit her teeth, but tiny grunts and gasps escaped her anyway. She squeezed her eyes shut, but nothing could help block out the quick falling slaps or the deepening hurt that had long since passed sting to become the beginning sparks of a very real and very localized pain.

  She couldn’t take this. She just couldn’t!

  Except that’s when it abruptly stopped.

  Cadence lay panting in place, unable to move straight away, perhaps even afraid if she did that he’d start right back in again. It wasn’t until she felt his hand cup the back of her shin that she realized the only reason he’d stopped was because she’d kicked her legs up to cover her bottom with both feet.

  “Put your legs down, sweetheart.”

  Cadence didn’t think she could. The hinge of her knees grated, bone grinding on calcified wounded-bone growth as she lowered her feet to the floor. “Please, can’t we be done?” she begged.

  His hand descended back onto her bottom, a soft touch this time, one that caressed the heat burning up behind her. “We’re not even close to done yet, honey. We’ve just gotten started.”

  “But I said I was sorry!” she protested. “You’ve made your point!”

  “Have I?” He began to spank all over again, and how cruel it was that after so brief a respite his hand could feel so much larger, broader and harder. Each clap of his palm against the soft, yielding mounds of her flesh sounded like firecracker pops. They came fast now too, each on the heels of the last until try though she did to hold still, it just wasn’t possible. Her feet kicked up again, deliberately this time, hoping against hope for another reprieve even though she knew it would only last a few seconds. At this blazing moment of throbbing, aching discomfort, any kind of break at all was nothing less than sheer heaven. But this time when he stopped, it was only to catch the backs of her legs.

  Suddenly, one of his legs shifted out from under her and Cadence found herself lying only across his left thigh. The right he’d swept out and, in an abrupt rocking of motion that nearly dropped her nose all the way to the floor, he shifted position to clamp her legs in the unbreakable vise of his own. There would be no more reprieves, no more kicking. At least not enough to make a difference.

  She lost her composure to a shout. No, not a shout, she refused to shout. Yelp, maybe, but even then she locked her lips to keep that sound from escaping her again. That was right up there with crying and though she could feel the tears stinging at her eyes and welling up in the back of her throat, she refused to break again. She threw her head back, grabbing his leg with both hands and arching, straining to keep everything locked down deep and silent inside her while his hand rose and fell without mercy, paddling her until the heat and the pain had filled up every corner of her mind. It was all she could feel. All she could think about, and it was inevitable that it should eventually break her determination to endure.

  “I’m sorry!” she wailed, throwing back her right hand, trying first to catch at his and when that failed, to cover as much of her blazing bottom as she could, palm up, fingers splayed. She felt ridiculous. A little girl trying to block Daddy’s next spank. It worked about as well too.

  Marcus took her hand and held it. Oooh, her incredulous brain said, piecing that part of the puzzle into place. It wasn’t dating at all, but the sudden intimacy turned the sensation into something many times more intense than she was prepared to withstand.

  “Please, I’m so sorry!” she wept.

  “I know you are,” he said. “Sorry you got in trouble.” His spanking hand clapped her bottom so hard, it knocked the tears right out of her. “Sorry you got sent to my office.” She struggled to worm her left hand back between their bodies and cover her bottom, but he caught that wrist too and pinned them both together in an iron-like grip. “Sorry you had to bare your own bottom and lay yourself across my knees for a spanking that you have been earning for two long days now and which I have tried, for two long days, not to give you. But, no more.”

  She only thought he’d been paddling her before. This, what he was doing now, this was paddling and it hurt. Not like before, that was just discomfort compared to this. This was pain. This was real, and this was more than she could accept.

  Gasps broke into sobs. With tears rolling down her cheeks, she fought to get her hands free, to roll off his knee, to tuck her bottom somewhere where the iron-hard palm of his fast-spanking hand would not find her, but he held her so easily, there was just no breaking away.

  “Ow!” she sobbed, and then threw back her head and wailed it. In that moment, she didn’t care who heard her. She wasn’t thinking about the boys, possibly sitting at the top of the stairs where they were sure to overhear. She didn’t think about anything except his hand and her bottom and pain mounting higher and hotter every time they met. “Please—ow! Ow! Stop!”

  Abruptly, it did, but though she scrambled to, he didn’t let her up. Instead, Marcus held her, bent across his knee with both her hands and her legs pinned down, and her bright red bottom on full and fiery display.

  “When I told you to use your cane, did you?” he asked.

  And that’s when Cadence broke for good. She felt it, the giant splintering crack that split her open inside and let everything she’d been trying so hard to keep back just flow free. “No,” she wept, but whether in response to his question or because now she knew it still wasn’t over, not even she knew.

  “No,” Marcus agreed, solidifying that as her answer, regardless of how she’d meant it. His hand caught her right buttock, just once, but so hard that it felt branding.

  She bucked, her hips rolling and writhing.

  “When I ordered you back to my office, I had to remind you to get your cane. Even knowing I was going to spank you, you refused to use it, didn’t you?”

  The faintest thread of guilt began to weave in among the pain. “Yes,” she wept.

  Three swats this time, all delivered with methodical strength and pause between them.

  “You did it just to spite me, didn’t you?” Marcus asked, but not because he didn’t already know the answer. He wanted her to say it out loud, and that was the last thing Cadence wanted. She twisted her face away, as if that somehow made it possible to hide from the truth. “Didn’t you?”

  The guilt inside her swelled until it began to choke her every bit as much as her tears were. She nodded.

  He gave her aching bottom a warning pat. “I want to hear you say it, sweetheart.”

  Inexplicable rage suddenly burst
up through her gut, breaking through the choke hold of guilt in her throat until it came spewing out her mouth. “Yes! Fine! Do whatever you want. I don’t care!”

  He didn’t spank her again. He picked her up instead, wrestling her down to sit upon his knee when all she wanted right then was to wrench herself up and walk away. She wanted to hit him, but he wrapped his arms around her, drawing her in so close and secure that she just didn’t have the leverage or the will. His hand touched her head, forcing her down onto his shoulder. Admittedly, she only held herself stiff and unyielding against him for just a few seconds, but already the rage was eking back out of her, leaving behind just the burning heat, pain and guilt.

  She lay her head upon his shoulder. She let her tears be absorbed by the softness of his shirt, and when he began to speak to her, he said it so softly, so gently, she could almost make herself believe that he wasn’t scolding her. “Well, I do care. I care very much. I’m not going to continue to stand by, sweetheart, while you let your stubbornness cripple you.”

  “Stop calling me that,” she muttered defiantly against his chest. “You know you don’t mean it.”

  She thought she felt him stiffen at that. “Don’t I? Tell me again what I do and don’t mean, I dare you.”

  “What, I can’t say that, but you can tell me what I can and can’t do?” Cadence tried to shove her way off his lap again, but she only managed to sit up before he caught her wrist. His arm around her tightened like a vise. Her bottom was a mass of throbbing heat and the exhaustion from all her crying and struggling had set in. She gave up trying to get away far earlier than she wanted to, then simply sat there, stiff and fuming upon his knee, twisting her face to keep from having to look at him even when he took her by the chin and forced her eyes back to his.

  “It’s not fair!” she spat, as angry with herself just for saying that as she was with him.