Ladder 54: Five Firefighter Romances Read online

“And you can’t just shrug it off,” he shot back. “You’ve been trying all night and it hasn’t happened yet. Be sorry all you want, princess, but if you don’t take steps to make it right, you’ll never get out from under whatever guilt you’ve got trying to bury you alive.”

  And that right there showed exactly what he knew. She bit the inside of her lip to keep it from trembling. “There’s no making this right.” She should’ve stopped there but her breath broke, and her shoulders jerked. “I can’t even apologize.”

  “Why not?” he demanded.

  “Because I don’t have anybody!” she erupted. “You don’t understand! How could you ever understand? I have home, I have work, and I have this!” When Rylee flung out her arms, he looked around at the room, but it was the CCC that she meant. “This is it. That’s all. I can’t lose this. I can’t pack up and leave. I can’t find another job. Where would I go? What would I do? I’ve been here my whole life! Everything I’ve known is right here. I don’t want to leave!”

  “Nobody is saying you have to leave.”

  “Ugh!” She bowed almost in half, covering her face with both hands and laughing into them. There was no happiness in the sound and even less in her soul. She dragged herself upright again, pained that she had to explain. “They would if they knew. And even if they didn’t say it out loud, they sure as hell wouldn’t want to be around me.”

  “Fine.” Walker shoved to his feet and promptly reseated himself on the edge of the bed beside her. Their hips touched. They were skin to skin and yet a canyon’s-width apart. She’d never felt so close and yet so isolated from anyone in her life. “Then tell me.”

  She shook her head. “You’ll hate me.”

  “Try me.”

  It all felt so inevitable. She shook her head again. “I shouldn’t be here.”

  Walker’s eyes narrowed, but he only waited for her to continue.

  She couldn’t believe she was doing this. Bowing her head, she rubbed her face with both hands. “Tammi Lou was supposed to win you,” she finally confessed, and she couldn’t even look at him while she did it.

  Because she wasn’t, she didn’t see him tip his head back and roll his eyes. Sighing his weary laugh to the ceiling, he said, “Thank God for small favors.”

  Rylee startled. “I thought you liked Tammi Lou.”

  He snorted. “Are we speaking off record?”

  Walker was confiding in her? “Sure.”

  “Okay, then no, I don’t like Tammi Lou.” Counting off on his fingers, Walker said, “She is a brat. She is annoying. She only wants me for my money. And she is just this shy—” he held up his fingers a scant inch apart, “—from being a serial stalker. Standing up on that stage the other night, you never heard so many firemen praying. And each and every one of them was saying, ‘please, dear God, don’t let me be bought by Tammi Lou.’”

  “But…” Rylee hesitated. “She wanted you.”

  “Thank you for not giving up. Now, what is this really all about?”

  It was now or never. Her chest felt so tight, making it hard to breathe. “She was my biggest competition for you, and I knew she would be before I ever got here.”

  Walker started to smile again, but then he stopped. Every tangling fear she had regarding this confession took root in her already queasy stomach as she watched his face change. He frowned, his eyes locking on her with a measure of both disbelief and uncertainty. “Tammi Lou got sick,” he said faintly. “Rylee.” His face changed again, disbelief darkening with hints of suspicion. “Tell me you didn’t have something to do with that.”

  “I put syrup of ipecac in her drink.” The confession was out of her before she could stop it.

  Walker’s jaw dropped.

  “I took a bottle from the first aid kit by the bathroom and I slipped it into her drink when she wasn’t looking.” She didn’t know if she was making things better or worse, but now that the truth was out, she couldn’t stop herself from telling him the rest. “It wasn’t planned. Not really. But then I saw her there and she kept saying she was going to win you. So… I put it in my drink at dinner and then swapped our glasses.”

  He stared, mouth agape. “You put ipecac in her drink?”

  “The whole vial. I knew I couldn’t outbid her, nobody can. But I wasn’t trying to make her sick, honest I wasn’t. I just thought if I could keep her glued to the bathroom, then she wouldn’t be able to bid!”

  Walker stood up. Stabbing his fingers through his short, dark hair, he paced away from her, then stopped again. He stared silently out the window at the rippling blue water for almost a full minute before he turned back to her. “You put… ipecac in her drink,” he said, his tone nothing but disbelief. “And she drank it?”

  Rylee cringed. “Every last drop.”

  “And she didn’t notice the taste?”

  Lifting one shoulder, Rylee offered the tiniest shrug. “She said the alcohol was cheap anyway, so I assume she blamed the taste on that.”

  There. Now the truth had been told. Now he knew everything. Any minute now, she was going to watch his face change again, this time taking on that shocked, repulsed, disgusted look that she’d known was going to happen all night. He was going to shake his head at her. He might even get dressed and walk out. Maybe he’d call the police. Certainly, he’d call Sophie. Any minute now, Rylee was going to lose everything she had ever held dear. And even though it wasn’t a lot, it was still all she had. As best she could, she braced herself for it.

  What she wasn’t braced for was to have Walker suddenly throw his head back and laugh.

  “You made Tammi Lou drink syrup of ipecac?” Hand on his hip, he covered his mouth and stared at her again. “Holy shit, princess…”

  “It’s supposed to be medicinal!” Rylee exclaimed, almost defensively although she knew she didn’t have the right to be. “People have been using it for years. I didn’t think it would hurt her!”

  Coming back to the bed, Walker sank back down beside her. One hand on his knee, the other still covering his mouth, he stared at her. “Holy shit,” he said again, and thought about it. “Okay,” he said, then thought about it some more. Although he never quite lost his smile, he gradually came back to seriousness. “Okay, I was wrong. You really shouldn’t tell anybody about this.”

  It was at once the most deflating and yet the most relieving reaction she’d never expected. Her shoulders slumped. “I know.”

  Side by side, they sat silently in their own thoughts.

  “You’ve been trying to get me to punish you for this all night, haven’t you?” Walker finally asked.

  Straightening her back, Rylee reluctantly nodded.

  “Okay,” Walker said for the third time, but then he was quiet, thinking through all possible courses of action. She knew when he’d made up his mind when all sense of hesitancy went out of him. She didn’t know if that was the point at which she ought to feel relieved or frightened when he said, “There are two kinds of spankings in the world: one is for fun, one isn’t. A lot of people say a submissive can’t be spanked for punishment, but I disagree, so long as there’s a very specific element involved in that spanking. Do you know what makes the difference?”

  Rylee shook her head. “No, what?”

  Walker pointed at her. “What you’re doing right now. This. The fact that you care what other people think about your behavior. The fact that you have agonized over this for how many days now? Far longer than the effects the ipecac had on Tammi Lou, that’s for sure. She probably chalked the whole night up to a bad case of food poisoning and has long since gotten on with her life. Meanwhile, you’ve convincing yourself you’re going to have to leave town.” He was quiet, then shook his head again. Her stomach did the most amazing acrobatics when he said, “If you need a dom to help you get through this, fine. I can do that. What’s more, I’m even willing to do it. But, honey, while I love impact play, domestic discipline is a whole different animal. Believe me when I say this isn’t going to be fun for eith
er one of us.”

  She’d clasped her hands so tight her knuckles had whitened again. It almost sounded like someone else speaking when she heard herself say, “I don’t think it will work, Walker. I like domestic discipline.”

  “Have you ever experienced it?”

  Rylee shook her head. “But I fantasize about it all the time.”

  A corner of his mouth lifted in the most rueful of smiles. “Number one, be careful what you wish for. Number two—” he tsked, “—challenge accepted.”

  She was still trying to make sense of what he meant when he stood up and pointed to the floor directly in front of her.

  “On your knees, princess. Hands behind your head.”

  Then he left the room.

  It hurt to unclench her hands, she’d held them tight for so long. Oddly, bending her knees as Rylee slid to the kneel where he’d bade her… that hurt too. Not in a physical way though. Mentally—emotionally—that’s where it hit her as she raised her arms to rest her hands upon her head. And yet, in spite of all the nervous tangles in her stomach and the tell-tale crawling just beginning to move across the backs of her thighs, already she felt lighter. Freer. Less tired than she had been just moments before. She waited, listening for the whisper-soft shuffle of bare feet padding back down the smooth polished hallway floor. Where had he gone? She couldn’t hear anything, no sounds at all from upstairs. Had he gone down, maybe all the way to the dungeon?

  Be careful what you wish for. That old adage whispered through her and icy shivers followed. What had he gone to get? The cane rack came automatically to mind; floggers were second. If doms had trademarks, those would be Walker’s. What about the whip? She’d only ever seen him use one of those once. It had sounded horrible and left bright, vivid markings all done the back and across the buttocks of the woman he’d been scening with. That submissive had come off the St. Andrew’s cross flying high in subspace. All Rylee remembered was sitting in the very back of the room, jumping and cringing at every horrible pop and crack. She hated the sound of the whip. It scared her.

  Which would almost make it the ideal disciplinary tool, right?

  She really hoped not.

  A soft creak from the stairs preceded Walker’s return. He must have stopped in the bathroom, because when he appeared in the bedroom doorway, he’d put his jeans back on. Which made this whole thing seem even more intimate than before. Barefoot and bare-chested, this became less like dating a dom she barely knew and more like what he’d called it, domestic discipline. With an emphasis on the domestic part. She could almost believe this was their house, and that they lived here together. Coming back into the room with that grimly resigned look on his face and a red oak paddle clutched in his hand, he could have been her boyfriend or her husband. Her lover, her mind supplied, and instantly rekindled that moment back in the kitchen when his first hard thrust had knocked her up onto the countertop and filled her so unbelievably that she’d actually cried out. Up until then, she’d thought that something only done in porno movies.

  Scared as she was, her nipples still tightened. The red paint of the paddle he held was vibrant in color, but probably nowhere near as vibrant as it was about to feel. Rylee tried to keep her breathing steady and slow, but her heart began to race, panicking as he crossed the room to slip past her, seating himself once more on the edge of the bed.

  Laying the paddle aside, Walker folded his hands in his lap and looked at her. “I know it’s probably a lot to ask if I say I want you to trust me not to take this further than it needs to go. Particularly,” he added, “since I do plan to take this further than you’re going to want it to go. But if you choose to go through with this, I want you to know you’re not going to have a safeword. If it’s going to be effective, then it needs to be real. There will be no warmup. There will be no soft touches or gentle rubbing to help make it easier to take. I’m going to make this just as miserable an experience as you have ever had, and it will stop only when I decide it’s enough. Your ass is going to be red. You might have some bruises and it will hurt if you try to sit after. Maybe even for the rest of the night. Also, the spanking will only be half the punishment. The other half will happen when I take you back to your house afterward. I won’t make you take the same dose that you gave Tammi Lou, but I am going to make you dip your finger in a bottle and hold that in your mouth for a full sixty seconds before you spit it out. It won’t give you anywhere near the aftereffects Tammi Lou suffered, but you are not going to like the taste.”

  Her stomach churned just at the thought.

  “After that, however, then it’s all done. I won’t bring it up again, and nobody else needs to know.”

  “Not even Tammi Lou?” she asked.

  “Especially not Tammi Lou, since I’m pretty sure she’d have you arrested for assault. And let’s face it, Tammi Lou is full of shit. She didn’t deserve what she got, and you definitely had no business doing it to her. But she is something of a bitch and I can’t say I have a whole lot of sympathy for her.” For the first time since he’d returned, Walker touched her. Catching her chin between his fingers, he pinned her with a look just stern enough to make her nerves hum. “When I say it’s finished, I mean it. You don’t get to keep punishing yourself, do you understand me? You do not get to punish you, that is not your place.”

  Shaken, Rylee nodded. “Okay,” she whispered. Even her voice trembled.

  “All right.” Letting her go, he patted his hands upon his thighs once. “Do you have anything you’d like to say before we start?”

  Rylee shook her head.

  “Well then, unless you think you can magically learn to live with this,” he pointed to his lap, “over my knee.”

  Rylee looked at the paddle. The bright red business end was a hand’s-width wide and long enough to cover the summits of both her nether cheeks at once. She’d never felt it before, but she’d seen its handiwork often enough to know it stung like the devil. More submissives called red after a few smacks with this than any other implement, except perhaps the whip. Even with a warmup, most scenes with this ended in tears.

  Could she live with it? Of course she could. She’d been living with it for a week now, and every day of it had been a guilt-ridden nightmare. She’d be lying if she said she wasn’t scared by the scenario Walker had just outlined. The thought of having to hold ipecac in her mouth for a full minute made her stomach roll, although it did feel deserved. Disgusting, but deserved. And so was the spanking, even if she couldn’t end it whenever she wanted. That felt deserved too.

  Shifting onto her knees, Rylee lay her hands upon his thigh, lightly, just long enough to steady her courage and get a feel for the choice she was about to make. Crawling up into his lap, she put herself into position.

  “Give me your hand,” Walker said.

  He’d told her he was going to pin her legs and hold her hands, but to actually hear the command brought a crash of reality down upon her. That he wasn’t going to give her the option of trying to control herself through this, meant he didn’t think there was a point in making her try. Maybe because he knew she wouldn’t be able to, which reinforced just how determined he was to make sure this was hard to take.

  Because forgiveness for some things shouldn’t come easy, Rylee thought. She offered back her right hand, blinking rapidly against a haze of premature tears when he lay his arm across the small of her back. He captured her legs too, and she swallowed hard when she felt him pick up the paddle behind her.

  “Repeat after me,” Walker said, as the smooth cool wood came to rest lightly upon her bare ass. “I did a very bad thing and I’m very sorry. Before each swat, I want you to say that. Do you understand?”

  There was no blinking back this new rush of tears. “Yes.”

  “All right. We’ll start whenever you’re ready.”

  She’d already cried so much today, she should have been all cried out, but that penitent phrase proved her wrong. Her bottom lip trembled; she bit to stop it, but the tears sl
ipped free anyway, blurring the coverlet as she whispered, “I did a very bad thing and I am very sorry.”

  She meant it too, just like Walker meant it when he’d promised not to make this easy for her to take and that she wouldn’t enjoy it. He’d been right to take her hands and pin her legs, too, because by the third stroke Rylee couldn’t hold still. By the fifth, she was crying too hard to repeat her penitent phrase with any level of coherency, but that didn’t mean she regretted her actions any less. The pain consumed her. It broke her down, turning her into a being incapable of speaking, or thinking, or anything except reaction. Reaction against the next crack of the paddle. Reaction against the desperation and self-preservation begging her to break free, while the very last shred of her guilt clung on just long enough to make sure she knew she was getting exactly what she deserved. Until eventually even that failed, and all Rylee could do was beg Walker to stop, shriek for it, bawl for it. She fought his restraining limbs until all her strength was expended and she had nothing left, only tears. Only this overwhelming sense of sorry and the fiery pain that mounted crack after fiery crack across a bottom already so hot, so throbbing and so sore, that she couldn’t ever imagine being able to sit again.

  Except that Walker made her, because eventually the spanking ended. Laying the paddle aside, he dragged her up and forced her down again, this time to sit upon the lap he’d just spanked her over. With her head upon his bare shoulder, he held her until she had no tears left.

  He held her, too, the entire time she got dressed, keeping her steady when her legs were anything but. She felt slow and sluggish, foggy in a weird way, with her nose all stuffed up, and her head aching from how hard she’d cried.

  He held her hand in his car as well, while she cried even more because she hadn’t realized this road had so many potholes and she could barely tolerate sitting as it was.

  He even held her hair in the privacy of her own bathroom while she threw up, because the taste of the ipecac was so damned awful. It took three times before she could hold her own ipecac-smeared finger in her mouth for the full measure of the time he’d sentenced her to, even though he was willing to let her off after the first attempt.