Last Dance for Cadence Read online

“It’s a terrible catch 22, isn’t it?”

  “What?” she gasped, then groaned when she felt him twist the root inside her. It slipped out a little when he did that but his fingers were never far from the unpeeled end and he simply popped it right back into place.

  “You’re being punished because you allowed your stubbornness to cause yourself harm. But, had you not hurt yourself so badly, then the severity of your punishment tonight would have been much worse. So, what would you wish for right now, if you could have it: less pain in your knees but the full measure of discipline you’ve earned, or more pain and perhaps not even this inside your bottom?”

  He was twisting the root inside her again, making it impossible to hold still. “Uungh! Get it out! Please, get it out! You’re enjoying this!”

  “Yes, I am,” he confessed with a smile. “But then, so are you.”

  She shook her head, yanking and jerking at her bonds now, desperate to get her hands free enough to reach down, grab his wrist and stop him. He wasn’t just twisting the ginger now, he was thrusting with it, forcing her tense little bottom hole to expel and accept the thickest part, over and over again in pumping strokes that irritated her passage and fueled the root’s oil-based fire, kicking the friction-induced heat up hotter and higher. “No!”

  “Yes,” he corrected. “You are. Do you think I can’t see how wet your poor neglected pussy has become? Or is this another example of stubbornness, that you think you can deny your need when the proof of it…is right…here.”

  He seated the thrusting plug deep in her bottom then, but when he did, his thumb swept up along her slick folds, parting her open before sinking just as deeply into her there as well. It was a brutal thrust, given without warning, but her body clamped down onto him with a hunger she hadn’t known she was capable of. She shuddered, gasping and grinding into the mattress.

  “You’ve been contrary, argumentative and disobedient tonight, and yet I find myself wanting so badly to let you come right now.”

  She couldn’t think. Unable to hold still, Cadence rode his thumb even though every bump and grinding wiggle of her hips jostled at the root, pushing at it, forcing it to move inside her. She was panting again, loud moaning breaths that filled the room right alongside the slick, sucking noises as he began to move with her. His long index finger replaced his thumb, sinking in deep on that first thrust before being joined by its neighbor.

  “Ugh!” She felt stretched. It had been such a long time. And he was right, she did like this. She didn’t want to, but she did, and it wasn’t just idle wanting. This was need, the heat of which seemed to be fed by the burning of the root filling up her ass. His thumb was directly on her clit, pressing down firmly to make the aching pulse of her lust pound even harder. His fingers pumping rapidly now in and out were hitting just the right place inside. “I can’t!”

  “I shouldn’t let you,” he agreed, “but yes, you can and you may. Come for me, sweetheart. I want to feel you orgasm right here on my hand.”

  And she did. She didn’t mean to, didn’t even realize she was that close. Never in a million years had she ever imagined cumming with a piece of produce burning up her back passage and his hand slapping briskly up against her pussy while hers were bound to the bed. With her thighs held splayed and immobile, all she could do was arch and shout and shake with the rolling spasms that shivered out from her womb. She bucked, her hips arching up into each and every thrust.

  Though he continued to pump her, wringing out wave after wave of sensual nerve-wracking pleasure, the vigorous motions of his hand began to slow, easing the franticness of her release until gradually both fell still. Her pussy continued to spasm, hugging onto his fingers while the rest of her sank into languid, sleepy peace.

  “Wow,” she croaked. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this limp, wrung out, like a well-used rag. “Go ahead. Punish me again any time you want to. Just…feel free.”

  Smiling down at her, Marcus shook his head. She was still clenching, hugging and twitching around his fingers when he took them out of her. “Thank your lucky stars, sweetheart, that you can’t take what I would otherwise do to you tonight.”

  “Promises, promises.” She tried, but there was just no keeping her eyes open any more tonight. Her knees felt good, warm and throbbing, but at least they didn’t hurt. Not really. Not anywhere near as badly as they’d been hurting. Even the burning discomfort of the ginger root still buried in her ass didn’t seem as bad as it had been at first.

  Maybe it was her sleepy imagination, but just before she drifted off to sleep, she thought she felt his lips brush her forehead, then her cheek, and when she instinctively turned toward him, her lips. He chuckled.

  It might have been the orgasms talking, but for a laugh like that, he could warm her ass any time he wanted.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Cadence woke up the next morning to the sound of breathing beside her. Lingering in the comfortable warmth of her dreams, it wasn’t until she tried to bring her hands down and stretch that she found herself bound. Loosely, yes, but bound nonetheless by the cuffs Marcus had left on her wrists and looped through the headboard. Her legs wouldn’t close, either. The spreader bar was still between them, which meant when she tried a little harder to shift, her knees bent upon the cushion of pillows that supported them and the sudden shock of pain that accompanied that slight movement stopped everything.

  She caught her breath, her eyes snapping open. The sight of the ceiling and then her snared wrists dispelled the last shred of sleep. Cadence remembered where she was. Not to mention with whom.

  “It’s okay,” Marcus said, his hand coming to rest on her stomach. Sometime in the night, he had covered her over with a sheet and comforter, and though he’d obviously spent the night sleeping beside her, he’d done so fully dressed and on top of the covers. “Just relax. Lie still.”

  He rolled out of bed, coming around to her side before stripping the blanket and sheet aside.

  “H-hey!”

  But he was all doctor now, checking her swollen knees with gentle prodding before plucking another pair of gloves from the box on her nightstand and twisting the top off the ointment jar. “No therapy today,” he said as he began to lube up her knees. “You’re on bed rest until further notice.”

  Cadence almost laughed at that. “I am not staying in bed all day long. That’s ridiculous.”

  “If you value your hiney at all, your line is: ‘Yes, sir. Whatever you say, sir.’”

  Cadence stifled an unflattering reply. She stared straight up at the ceiling, no longer feeling like laughing. But then her knees began to heat, and just like they had the night before, the heat swallowed up the pain. Between that and the soft pillow top of the bed, it was like floating on menthol-scented waves of nirvana.

  “Are you going to hold still?” Marcus asked.

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “Are you going to jump out of bed the second I leave the room or join the first 5k marathon to come jogging by the house?”

  Snorting, Cadence smirked. “That depends. Will you promise to do that ginger-figging thing if I do?”

  She wiggled her hips, but she couldn’t feel the ginger inside her anymore. He must have removed it last night.

  “No,” he replied, smiling now as well, despite the decidedly authoritative glint that entered his gray eyes. “How about instead I roll you onto your stomach and strap your bare bottom until you can’t sit or even lie on your back for the rest of the day?”

  She took him a bit more seriously after that. “I’ll be a very good girl.”

  “I seriously doubt that.” He lightened that remark, however, by reaching up and giving a curling lock of her hair a playful tug. “Ready for me to carry you into the bathroom?”

  “What!” she exploded, her incredulity warring with laughter that felt anything but amused now. “I can’t even go to the bathroom by myself?”

  Marcus dropped that lock of her hair and promptly began to rol
l up his sleeves.

  “Wait.” She immediately tried to backpedal, to assume a much more compromising tone. “I’ll stay in bed, I will!”

  He unbuckled his belt, whipping the long length of leather out of his pants loops in two strong tugs.

  “I just don’t see why I need help going six feet into the bathroom!” Her voice kept rising because he wasn’t stopping. She laughed again, although now she was as far removed from amused as she could possibly be, and so was he. His expression was stern incarnate when he folded his belt in half and lay it on her bedside table.

  “I can see I’m going to need to do something so you’ll start taking me seriously.”

  “I do take you seriously!”

  He took off the spreader bar, then bent to unbuckle her hands.

  “I’m taking you very seriously, but it’s six feet! It’s right there! I can walk that far, and I sure as hell don’t need you—no!” She didn’t mean to whine, but that’s how it ended when he slid his arms under her shoulders and knees and lifted her right up off the bed. Carrying her into the bathroom, he deposited her onto the toilet. “I don’t want you in here while I pee!” she snapped, but he wasn’t staying anyway. He turned and walked right back out again. From the sound of his retreating footsteps, he’d left her room entirely.

  Faint snips of sound from the living room suggested at least one of the boys was parked on the couch, watching Saturday morning cartoons. She thought she heard Buddy’s higher pitched voice inquiring after breakfast. Grabbing a towel from under the sink, she quickly got herself covered and did what she had to do, cleaning and flushing afterward, even going so far as to wash her hands while sitting exactly where she was because she did take him seriously. She absolutely took him seriously and something told her she had just pushed him a little too far.

  It was several long minutes before Marcus returned, and when he did, she heard it when he both closed and locked her bedroom door. She sat tense and still, listening to the crinkle of plastic, the minor shuffling of cloth things being moved, and the rattle of his belt or maybe the spreader bar being picked up. She hadn’t budged an inch from where he’d left her, but when Marcus walked back in to the bathroom, he didn’t seem inclined to notice.

  “It’s not that I mean to challenge your authority,” she said, trying to sound reasonable in a situation that was rapidly becoming anything but. “It’s just that I don’t need you to pick me up and cart me around. I can do things for myself.”

  He picked her up off the toilet anyway and carried her out of the bathroom. A small mound of pillows were lying one on top of the other right up at the very edge of her mattress.

  “You don’t have to do everything for me,” she added, sounding somewhat desperate even as he set her down next to that mound. “That’s all I’m saying.”

  Without a word, Marcus cracked open a bottle of aspirin, shook two pills out into his hand and gave them to her along with a cup of cool water.

  “Why won’t you talk to me?” she demanded, her stomach beginning to tighten up in a tense and dreadful way.

  “Because I’ve said everything I intend to on the matter. Drink up.”

  She swallowed the pills and water, and relinquished the glass when he reached for it. He took her towel too. She tried to hang onto that, but he was more insistent and since he’d already seen everything there was for her to hide. After a while, she began to feel petulant and ridiculous.

  “Let go,” he told her finally, and she did, blushing furiously all the while. “We’re going to roll over now. Be careful of your knees.”

  “I don’t need you to tell me to be careful,” she spat, beginning to get angry now. She had to blink back tears, because he wasn’t listening to her and she was trying her best to be extremely reasonable. …And he was probably right, too. It had been a very scary thing last night to find that she couldn’t pick herself up out of the tub. But she really, honestly, could not be expected to lounge in bed and have other people do things for her all day long. Especially now that she knew her knees, despite how they had felt last night, weren’t bending the wrong way. They hurt now, yes. But they would get better. They had to get better. “Please stop treating me like an invalid.”

  His look darkened but he didn’t respond to that either. He just helped her roll over, positioning her hips high up on that pile of pillows, leaving her top half lying flat on the mattress and her legs to hang down behind her. Her toes touched the floor; her knees did not.

  “The boys are awake, so you might want to use the blankets to muffle yourself.”

  Saying that was the scariest thing he could have done right then. Or at least that’s what she thought, right up until he picked up his belt.

  “Do not kick. Do not reach back.”

  He barely gave her time enough to wrap her mind around the rules before he stepped back and let his belt do the rest of his talking for him. Five strokes, that’s all he gave her, but it was four strokes more than he needed to convince her that this was something she did not want to repeat. Each lashing stroke felt like she was being flayed alive. The leather caught her bottom, hugged it in a fiery kiss, and on that very last stroke—almost as if he meant to do it—he missed her bottom completely and caught the very tops of both her thighs. If she hadn’t had her face buried in the blankets by that point, her resulting screech would have been much, much louder than it was.

  “Do I have your attention now?” Marcus asked, calm and quiet.

  “Yes!” Cadence cried, and the next thing she knew, she was sobbing. Bawling into the blankets hard enough for the jerking shakes of her shoulders and hard gasps of breath to jostle the entire bed.

  “You will not leave this bed,” he said.

  She shook her head, a sniffling, hiccupping mess. “Can I reach back now, please?”

  “No.” But at least he set his belt aside.

  Her bottom felt laved by fire, but the pain there wasn’t anything compared to the pain she felt ripping through the inside of her when he gathered her up to sit on his lap. He wrapped her in the tight cocoon of his arms, rocking as he stroked her hair. “It’s okay to cry,” he said, as if she needed his permission.

  Maybe some part of her did.

  When he hugged her, she latched onto him back, burying her face against his neck like a child trying to hide from the world. “I’m so tired of this!” she wept.

  “Tired of what?” he asked.

  She was throbbing, sore across every lower inch of her bottom where his belt had striped her. She could feel the welts, overlapping with nearly every stroke, stretching her skin as they swelled to create an unbearable tightness all over back there. But the pain of that was secondary to the ripping that made her hug him so fiercely. It used to be that she never cried. With him it seemed she couldn’t stop.

  “I don’t like you,” she wept. The only problem was, she didn’t quite think that was true. He had marked her, both inside and out, just as thoroughly as if he’d used a brand. There was no getting free of that.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  All weekend long, Cadence languished in the useless boredom of her bedroom, and there wasn’t one damn thing she could do about it.

  Marcus took care of her, like she was a baby. He dressed her every morning in clean nightshirts and panties, discovered she only had clothes enough for three days and promptly went out and bought her a whole wardrobe full of underwear and nightgowns. He brought her food and things to drink, alternating coffee with juice or tea. He carried her to the bathroom when she needed it, drew her a bath when she wanted it, and twice, he put her back across his knee and paddled her bottom with the broad, flat of his hand. Once for being snappish after he warned her he was in no mood for it, and then again for arguing that she was well enough to get up and at least take herself to the bathroom.

  “I’ll use the cane!” she begged, and then begged all over again because he was stronger than she was and no matter how she wriggled or thrashed or tried to dodge him, he still caught her ar
m, still sat down on the edge of the mattress, still dragged her down to lie across his knee and bared her bottom (because when he spanked her, he did so on the bare now, every single time) as he said, “Keep pushing like this and the only one who’ll use a cane today will be me.”

  Then his hand began that dreadful smacking cadence all across her writhing nates and Cadence went from begging to wailing in very short order because it just wasn’t fair!

  It was also just a spanking. It was childish. It was insignificant. She tried to make herself grow some perspective. Compared to any other torment in the whole of history, it was the one people in line for much worse would have loved to get and yet, for Cadence, it was hell. Marcus made her bottom burn. He made it hurt. It never stopped anywhere near soon enough, but what was worse, apart from the burning and the hurting and the eternity of blistering smacking that went on and on forever, Marcus made her feel mortified.

  From first smack to last, the entire time she was bucking and howling and positively dancing across his knee, with his never being satisfied until he had her bottom blushing all those hot, achy, freshly-spanked shades of pink and red, he made her face blush too. Here she was, a grown woman, twenty-six years old, getting her bare ass swatted because she refused to do as she was told. Was she being asked to blow up a bank? No. Was she being asked to fellate the boss? Not even. She was being asked to take care of herself, to stop being stubborn in ways that were hurting her, and to let herself get physically well. Why was that so impossible for her? Why did she keep resisting?

  She didn’t know, but she did stop arguing after that second spanking. She stopped trying to get up too, and somewhere between all the times he brought her something to read or drink, or all the times he adjusted the pillows or fed her painkillers to make her more comfortable, or massaged that wonderful heating liniment into her knees so they’d stop hurting if only just for a little while, Cadence even stopped hating him for making her feel so pitiful and weak. After all, he couldn’t keep her in bed forever. Sooner or later the weekend was going to be over, Monday would come, and Marcus would need her to resume her duties so he could resume his.