Last Dance for Cadence Page 17

  Except that when Monday did come, that’s not what happened.

  Marcus brought her breakfast on a tray and two painkillers in a little cup next to her juice. He carried her to the bathroom, then adjusted the pillows all around her, massaged the liniment into her legs and cheerfully said, “Another few days, I think. The swelling is almost gone.”

  “Maybe I could get up today…just for a little while?”

  “Do you want to know what the difference between your bottom and a freshly boiled lobster will be if you do?” Marcus replied.

  Something told her that was not a trick question.

  “There won’t be one?” she guessed.

  “Good girl.” He ruffled her bed-head muss of curls and sat down beside her to drink his coffee and chat away while she finished her breakfast.

  “Your bedside manner sucks,” she said waspishly, and had every intention of waiting until he went off to work before doing whatever she wanted to. And she already knew ‘whatever’ absolutely would include getting out of this bed. Maybe if he saw she could handle small excursions without ill effect, then he’d relent a little.

  Except, that’s not what happened, either. Enter the spies, as she very quickly came to think of the boys. From the moment Marcus finished his coffee, bent to press a fleeting kiss to her brow, and walked off, taking her breakfast dishes and cheerfully calling back as he went, “Have a good day, honey. Papa’s got to bring home the bacon.”—Buddy came bouncing in with a storybook in hand. He crawled right up onto her bed, eyed her carefully for signs of rejection even as he cuddled in close to her side.

  “Dad said you still don’t feel good, so I’m going to read you a story. Do you like stories, Cadence? This is my favorite.” Lying down with his head on her shoulder, he opened the cover, taking plenty of time to show her each of the illustrated pages. “‘How the Trollusk Got His Hat,’” he read, “by Mercer Meyer.”

  It was a fun story with brilliant artwork, and by the end of it, Cadence was thoroughly impressed by Buddy’s reading skill.

  “He’s really smart for being only six,” she exclaimed when Marcus brought her lunch tray later that afternoon. “Did you know he could read like that?”

  “I have no way of answering that without showing my absolute bias for my boys’ intelligence. They were all reading by three. I’m pretty sure they got that from their mother. From me, they get their cooking skills. Michael made the sandwiches. Sorry, they’re a little burned on one side.”

  “Michael’s cooking on the stove?” Cadence asked in alarm.

  “No, sadly this can only be labeled a tragic toaster accident.”

  Tragic was right. They must have been at the end of what they had for bread, because, as Cadence could only guess, Michael had burned one set beyond all recognition. How he’d kept the smoke alarm from going off or her from smelling it, she had no idea. But this toast wasn’t just burned, it was charred. Rather than make someone suffer through that inedible a sandwich, he’d split the two halves onto two different sandwiches. Apparently, she and Marcus had drawn the short straws.

  “Good peanut butter,” Marcus said, eating his.

  “Maybe I should—”

  “Cane,” he reminded her.

  “—just get up long enough to—”

  “Cane,” he said again, half singing and half shaking his head.

  “—keep the house from burning down, damn it! Why do you have to be so stubborn?” she cried, so frustrated now that she was on the verge of throwing her lunch at him.

  “There’s a pot and kettle case if ever I heard one.” Marcus crunched through another bite of peanut butter and char. “You’re also one more cuss word away from a hot bottom and a mouth full of soap.”

  “Argh!” Cadence howled, and even tried to suffocate herself with her own pillow. It didn’t work and afterwards, she lay in bed, glaring up at the ceiling with his parting kiss still tickling at her forehead. She was still fuming a few minutes later when all three boys entered, Playstation system in hand.

  “Want to play a game with us?” Daniel asked, bouncing up to sit on the foot of her bed while Michael plugged the game into her TV. “We’re going to Destroy All Humans.”

  “You blood-thirsty little serial killer, you,” Cadence dead-panned. Four hours later, however, she was collecting brain stems at a first-grade level, sometimes beating Buddy and sometimes not, but pretty consistently getting her hiney handed to her by both older boys. She had just crashed her last ship in a cow field when Marcus came home for the night. She hadn’t even realized he’d left until she saw the grocery deli bucket filled with barbequed chicken and potato wedges.

  “Who wants to get the Kool-Aid, napkins and plates?” Marcus asked, which must have been a secret cue because all three boys jumped up and did it. Bringing the food right to her bedside table, he began to unpack the supper right there. “Saving the world?”

  “Nope, but I’m doing a wicked good job at destroying it.”

  “Bathroom?” he asked.

  “Please.”

  Once he pushed the blankets aside, he paused only a moment to check her knees before picking her up in his arm and carrying her into the bathroom.

  “I know I fought the bed rest thing up until now,” she hedged when he set her down on the toilet. “But I think by tomorrow, I’ll be able to do at least this much on my own.”

  “We’ll see. Call me when you’re done.” He walked out and closed the door, leaving Cadence to take care of business while listening as he moved about her room. She let the flush of the toilet summon him back again, and although the temptation to just meet him at the door standing up was strong, Cadence wasn’t stupid. She knew exactly how the night would end if she tried. Call her crazy, but as badly as she wanted out of that bed, she wanted more to go just one day without getting turned across Marcus’s knee. She’d been spanked more in this last week than she had in all the rest of her life.

  “How I’ve survived this long without someone there to constantly bust my butt, I’ll never know,” she griped as he picked her up again.

  “I confess, now and then I wonder that myself.” He didn’t even have the grace to be chagrined about it.

  Having retrieved what he’d asked for, the boys had returned in her absence and were even now positioning themselves around the TV to continue their gaming.

  “I want to play now,” Buddy said.

  “It’s my turn,” Michael told him, and since he already had the controller, that pretty well decided that.

  “Put it up,” Marcus interrupted. “There will be no world destroying and brain collecting during dinner.”

  All three groaned, but they also put up the game.

  “Can we put on a movie?” Daniel asked, coming to take a plate when Marcus dished up the food and passed them out.

  “Just because we’re eating in here tonight doesn’t mean we watch TV. Supper time’s for talking and catching up.”

  “Yeah, but usually we catch up about school and there isn’t any anymore,” Michael pointed out.

  “I guess we’ll have to find something else to talk about.” Marcus pretended to brighten. “Oh, I know. Why didn’t anyone do their chores today? Let’s talk about that.”

  “I wanted to do my chores,” Cadence interrupted.

  Marcus gave her a warning look. He held out her plate. “Do you really want to talk about that? Because I will clear my schedule.”

  “No, sir.” She promptly put a wedge of potato in her mouth so she wouldn’t be tempted to say anything more. Her resolution did not outlast her dinner.

  Once dinner was over and the boys had adjourned to whatever chores their father had set for them, Marcus handed her two painkillers, rubbed the liniment on her knees and delivered his verdict. “Another two days, at least.”

  “Oh, come on!” Cadence exploded. She immediately tried to laugh it off, but the sudden swell of helpless frustration was more than she could take. “You’re just saying that to make me suffer!”
>
  Marcus did not share her feigned amusement. “Why would I want to make you suffer?”

  She should have shut her mouth and she knew it, but dinner was over, they were alone, and she was all out of potato wedges. “Because you get off on it! Because the more you aggravate me, the better your chances are that I’ll do something you can spank me for, you…you…you sadist!”

  “You think I’m enjoying this?”

  “Yes, I do!”

  In the middle of picking up what remained of the deli store supper, Marcus stopped what he was doing and dropped everything back on her nightstand. “You think I’m doing this to keep you in bed indefinitely?”

  “Yeah!”

  One of these days, she really was going to have to learn to shut her mouth. Unfortunately, this was not one of those days, although it wasn’t until Marcus walked across the room to shut and lock her bedroom door that she had that particular epiphany.

  “You think I’m being unreasonable?” He started back toward her bed. “Deliberately, unforgivably cruel?”

  Cadence watched him come, her breath catching in her chest and strangling in her throat. He had a funny look about him. Calm and quiet, stern and intense—she didn’t know how to classify it. All she knew was when he locked those slate gray eyes on her, she found it impossible to look away. If she thought for one second that getting up out of bed right now would not end with her bottom bared and rounded up on pillows while he took off his belt, she’d have been making a very prudent and strategic retreat.

  “Let’s see how cruel I really am.” When he reached her bedside, she tried to pull the blankets back over her, a thin cotton barrier totally inadequate when it came to shielding her from Marcus. She no sooner got her legs covered than he caught the edge and whipped it right back off again. “Which is your best knee?”

  Cadence wordlessly pointed. His expression was one of determination, but his hands were firm and gentle as he took her left leg, cupping her ankle and behind her knee.

  “One knee bend,” he said. “Just one. If you can make it, you can get out of bed right here and now. On three, ready?”

  Gripping the edge of the mattress when he began to count, Cadence lay back against the pillow-strewn headboard and braced herself. When he reached three, she lifted, hiking her knee up toward her chest and almost made a full ninety-degree angle before icepick-like pain shot straight up through her leg. She stopped instantly, but he kept lifting and bending, gently forcing the motion until she lost control of the involuntary scream she just could not keep locked behind her tightly gritted teeth.

  She struck the mattress with both fists, spitting even as he lowered her leg back down again, “That’s not fair! I’m stoving up! You’ve got me just lying here!”

  “Are you going to get up when I leave this room?” he interrupted calmly.

  “Damn right I am!”

  Marcus took off his belt, folding it in half once before palming the buckled end. Though he was looking right at her, as if he had no interest in anything beyond listening to her tirade, he unbuttoned the wrist cuffs on his work shirt and began to roll up the sleeves.

  “You can’t!” she cried, helpless desperation already beginning to displace her equally useless rage.

  “Roll over,” was all he said.

  When Cadence only glared, he sighed.

  “You’ve got five licks coming,” he tried again. “You can roll over and take them like a good girl, or I will roll you over and instead of five, you’ll get twenty. Hurry up and decide, because I’m only going to count to three and then I’m going to take the choice away from you. One…two…”

  Cadence rolled over, and that hurt too, but nowhere near as much as those five biting licks that he lay across her freshly-bared buttocks in neat overlapping, ladder-like lines all the way from the hem of her nightgown to the tops of her thighs where her panties lay bunched in a roll. She made it through from start to finish without shedding even one of the hot tears burning at her eyes, not even when he lay his gentle hand on her back, rubbing right between her shoulder blades.

  “You did this to yourself,” he softly reminded her. “Not me. So I’d appreciate not being made the brunt of your anger because you don’t like the consequences your actions have brought you.”

  The worst part was, he was right. She knew he was. She folded her arms in around her head so she wouldn’t have to look at him while her bottom burned and throbbed.

  “Look at me,” he coaxed.

  Cadence shook her head. She didn’t think she could without bursting into tears, and he’d seen her cry enough for one lifetime.

  “Cadence…”

  She was saved by a knock on the door.

  “Dad!” Daniel called frantically through the wood. “Buddy put dish soap in the dishwasher and now there’s bubbles all over the kitchen floor!”

  “It said dish soap!” the youngest Devon boy shouted from further down the hall. “It’s not my fault!”

  Marcus tsked.

  “They’re singing your song,” Cadence said thickly.

  Marcus tsked again, but he didn’t argue. “I’m coming,” he called and stood up.

  No longer boxed in by his overwhelming proximity, Cadence tried to reclaim some normalcy. She reached down, hooking the elastic of her panties to pull them back up over her striped bottom, but he stopped her.

  “Hold out your hands.” He tapped the mattress between her head and the headboard. Halfway expecting he might strap her hands next, Cadence reluctantly obeyed. She caught her breath, cringing even as she opened her hands. Marcus lay his folded belt into the palms of both her hands. He tapped the worn and supple leather. “Hold this while I’m gone, and think about it. We’ll talk when I get back.”

  “No rush,” she muttered bitterly, and yet, once he was gone all she felt was abandoned. Hating the very feel of it, Cadence promptly let go of the belt. She glared at it, tears brimming in both eyes, slipping past her lashes to roll down her cheeks when she, unable even to bear its being on the same bed with her, slapped it off onto the floor.

  For some reason, that didn’t make her feel better either. She actually felt worse, but she still left it there, lying wherever it fell while she buried her face in her folded arms and silently fought her misery back until she could contain it again.

  Think about it, he’d said. Think about what? About the fact that he could beat her whenever the mood struck him? Except that wasn’t really what was happening. It’s not like the rules hadn’t been spelled out for her right from the very beginning. Why did she keep pushing at him? It was almost as if she were deliberately trying to provoke him into spanking her, as if this feeling—this hot and achy bottom—were the salve by which she could smother all the myriad of pains she didn’t want to have to face. How crazy was that? To almost prefer a spanking over just building that proverbial bridge and getting the hell over it already!

  She should pick up his belt. He’d told her to hold it and here she was, disobeying simply for the spite of it.

  He ought to spank her again for that alone. More than five though. Ten, at least. Maybe twenty, like he’d threatened.

  Twenty with his belt would probably kill her.

  She sniffled, feeling just guilty enough and awful enough to briefly consider leaving the belt exactly where it was. Her sense of self-preservation quickly reassumed control over the insanity, though, and Cadence slid around to lean over the side of the mattress. She’d given the belt a better slap than she’d realized. It was completely out of reach. Her only hope of reclaiming it without Marcus ever being the wiser would be if she got out of bed long enough to get it and then get back in again.

  She didn’t want to do that.

  Lying down flat on the mattress again, Cadence buried her face within the sheltering folds of her arms and waited for Marcus’s inevitable return. It seemed to take forever, with every passing minute bleeding out a depressing eternity, right up until she heard the carpeted tromp of masculine footsteps coming dow
n the hall toward her bedroom door. Then, more than anything, she wished she had more time to put off that fast-approaching moment when he would discover that she’d deliberately done the exact opposite of what he’d asked.

  She closed her eyes, pressing her forehead into the backs of her wrists, wishing she could just disappear as the footsteps crossed her threshold and then stopped. He sighed. Until then, she hadn’t known something as simple as a wordless breath could sound so…so disappointed. He could have cut her with razors. It would have been less painful.

  “I couldn’t reach it,” she said, lifting her head off her arms only far enough so that he might hear her. “Please, can I have a second chance?”

  Crossing from the door to her bed, Marcus bent to pick up his discarded belt. “Hold out your hands.”

  She still had that moment of apprehension when she lay her hands on the mattress before her, turning her palms up like a naughty schoolchild of old about to receive a well-deserved slap. But just like before, he draped the length of his folded belt across both her hands as if it were a sacred offering.

  “Think about it,” he said again, and that was all. Just before he left, she thought she felt the softest touch of his hand, smoothing down the back of her hair. But she didn’t look up and she couldn’t be sure.

  He was gone a long time, even longer it seemed than before, leaving her to lie where she was, her panties still in a roll across the tops of her thighs, her nightshirt still bunched up in the small of her back, her bare bottom still on full display but no longer stinging or aching or even burning any more. She held his belt exactly as he’d given it to her, stared at it, wondering all the while what she ought to be thinking about. Maybe this was something submissive women knew instinctively and which she, as anything but a submissive woman, just didn’t have it in her to understand.

  That was almost as depressing as his sigh had been. It brought her right to the brink of tears.

  Maybe she was supposed to be thinking about what she’d done wrong. But what was so wrong with wanting to be responsible, independent, and physically able to take care of herself? Why should she have to want to be taken care of? Why should she have to want to be a burden? She was supposed to be taking care of his children, instead they’d spent the day taking care of her. She was supposed to be the one washing the supper dishes, instead Marcus was out there scooping thick froths of soap bubbles out of the dishwasher and off the kitchen floor. And yes, her knees were bad right now because she’d pushed herself too far, and yes, it hurt to bend them or put any kind of weight on them, but life was pain, wasn’t it?