With Hearts Aflame: Valentine's Day Box Set Page 17

  Harper heard the bell ring over the door as she sat in her living room with all the bottles staring back at her. Each soft thump and creak as he climbed the stairs made her draw in a little tighter, so that when he finally opened the door, she was huddled on the couch with her arms wrapped around her legs and her head buried in her knees.

  "Is it that bad?" Damien asked mildly, taking off his coat and folding it over the back of a chair.

  "It feels pretty bad." She uncurled slightly to watch him as he went into the kitchen and put the kettle on. "I'm glad you're here."

  "Hold onto that feeling," he said wryly. "What did the ghost want me to do, exactly?"

  "It's really more of what she wanted me to do. But I need... help."

  "Okay." He sat down facing her and spread his hands. "What do I do?"

  This was the part she'd left out of her hurried explanations on the phone. She'd told him about the problem with the potions and the ghost and the counter curse, but not... not this. It was hard to know how to begin, so after a few vague attempts, she just sat there and picked at threads on her couch cushions.

  Damien waited, but when the silence reached its snapping point, he said, "You said on the phone you wanted to fix this."

  "I do!"

  "Well, the first step is always admitting what the problem is."

  "I told you the problem!"

  "You told me the potion was channeling the wrong fantasy, which I assume is yours—"

  Harper moaned and pressed her face back against her knees.

  "—and you have a way to counter it, but it involves drinking the potion yourself. And presumably involving me in the fantasy."

  Harper started rocking again.

  "I suppose I should ask... Is it the fact it's me that's upsetting you?"

  "No!"

  "Because I have to admit, this isn't how I imagined it either, but I've been trying to get closer to you for so long, I don't really care how it happens as much as I probably should."

  "I appreciate your understanding," she muttered. "This is just so awkward."

  "So if it's not me, am I correct in deducing it's the fantasy?"

  She nodded, once again hiding in her knees.

  "Do I get a hint?"

  "Well, it's bad enough that I'm freaking out about a hundred people sharing it with me."

  "So what? We hire a zither player, find a swimming pool and I get dressed up as an octopus or?"

  "God, I wish. Okay, it's... it's this. I... need you... to... spank me."

  Silence. She raised her head and peeked at him, bracing herself to see that confusion/smile/disgust.

  His brows had furrowed. That was it.

  "Say something," she whispered.

  "You've been pushing me away for two years over a little smack on the ass?" he asked incredulously. "I ought to spank you just for that."

  "Don't tease me."

  "Do I look like I'm teasing?"

  She studied him with growing unease. He looked very serious.

  "So you'll do it?" she asked.

  "Oh, I'll do it. I have no problem doing it. None at all."

  Oddly enough, this affirmation brought her no relief.

  "Well... good," she said lamely.

  "I'm going to spank you, Harper," he went on. "I have no trouble at all spanking you."

  "Um, yeah. Thanks for not making this weirder than it already is." She reached for a bottle.

  He stopped her. "Not yet."

  "I have to take it as part of the—"

  "Later. This isn't about your fantasy, not yet. Before we get to that, I'm going to spank you."

  She blinked. "Now? Why?"

  He leaned forward, holding her eyes with his. "Because you did something bad and you deserve to be punished."

  Her mouth worked, but she made no sound.

  "And until we deal with that to my satisfaction, you and your potions are just going to wait."

  "B-But... it's Valentine's Day! We don't have a lot of time!"

  "Then I suggest you take your pants down."

  One hand fluttered down to touch the fly of her jeans. The other clutched at the neck of her sweater. "I don't think it should be... that way... yet. It's just our first—"

  "Harper, honey?" He shook his head slowly back and forth without breaking his gaze. "We're not doing this your way. Stand up, pull your pants down and do it now, or I will."

  Chapter Five

  Harper stared at him for what felt like hours, but he remained unmoved and unmoving. When the kettle—forgotten in another part of the indifferent world—began to whistle, she broke at last from her shock and tentatively began to unzip her winter boots.

  "Just your pants," Damien said, getting up to switch off the stove.

  "B-But I can't take my pants off over my boots."

  "You're not taking them off," he replied calmly, pouring water into one cup and capping it with a saucer to steep. "You're taking them down."

  Somehow, that was worse. Harper stood up, fumbling at the front of her jeans, pushing them down her clenched thighs, over her knees, to bind up around the tops of her boots. "Now what?" she mumbled, trying to tug her woefully short-waisted sweater down over her hips.

  "Now I want you to go face the wall and think about why you're getting spanked."

  "Oh come on!"

  "Go, Harper."

  Grumbling, she shuffled clumsily around the couch and found a stretch of unoccupied wall. Her jeans bunched up around her ankles, as good as prison chains, making her take smaller and smaller steps so that it seemed to take forever to get there. And once she had reached it, the wall certainly had nothing to teach her. There wasn't even a picture or something she could look at, just some off-white paint and some dingy cobwebs up by the ceiling.

  She heard Damien come out of the kitchen and cross the room until he stood just behind her, but he didn't speak. He didn't do anything. He just stood there. The weight of his stare, his unfathomable expectations, pressed down on her, but that was all.

  Harper stared at the wall. Her breath blew back into her face, overloud and fanning the heat of her humiliated blush. Think about what she'd done? She knew what she'd done; she didn't need to keep hearing about it! He said this was about punishing her, but she was already sorry. Why couldn't he just do whatever he was going to do so they could move on to actually fixing the problem?

  She fidgeted, growing more uneasy as the silence lengthened. Every second that crawled by seemed to pull her nerves even tighter. What was he waiting for? For that matter, why was she waiting for him to do it? It had to be noon by now, maybe even later. Who knew how many people were hooking up for a romantic Valentine's lunch and a little afternoon delight that began with one of Harper's potions and ended with someone's fender getting polished? And she was just standing here, doing nothing!

  "Have you thought about it?" Damien asked calmly. "No, don't turn around. Just answer."

  "Yes."

  "And?"

  "And... I'm sorry?"

  "Is that a question?"

  "I don't know what you want me to say."

  "You were supposed to think about what you did."

  She felt herself blushing at his tone, which was part warning and part reproach, but most piercingly one of disappointment. "Yeah, but was I supposed to write a report or act it out with interpretive dance?"

  WHACK!

  Harper leapt stupidly right into the wall and stumbled back again, both hands grabbing at her bottom, where the unexpected blow had fallen, seemingly everywhere at once.

  "Put your hands on the wall," he ordered.

  "Wh-what the hell? What?"

  He caught her wrists and moved them for her, making her slap her palms with shuddering force against the plaster. Then he let go and even though she could have sworn she didn't know what that meant, some part of her knew all right, because her buttocks clenched an instant before the next swat came crashing down.

  "Holy shit, Damien!" she gasped, again reaching back.
"Not so h—"

  He seized her wrists for the second time, but didn't put them back on the wall. She was spun, dragged like an errant child over to the couch and flung over its high back. She tumbled face-first into the cushions, her feet losing contact with the floor entirely, but before she could recover herself, he had her wrists pinned behind her back in just one hand and the other was raining down like hellfire all over her backside.

  She screamed, more with shock than pain (although pain was definitely catching up), but the couch cushions muffled her cries. Futility. The sound of Damien's hand striking home beat on her ears as loud as cannon-fire, all she could hear. With each slap came a fresh shock, followed by the slow spread of a thousand angry hornets, stinging over and over until her entire bottom was crawling with them.

  She began to squirm, then to kick, but all he had to do was lean on her a little and she was helpless. The blows kept coming, not many, but more than she could count. Soon she couldn't even tell where they were landing, her ass was so full of fire and hornets. The pain had nowhere to go but deep, so it did, spreading its scouring burn under her skin and swelling there until she could feel nothing else.

  As suddenly as it had begun, it was over. He pulled her up onto her feet, turned her around and marched her back over to the wall, where she put her hands up in a daze.

  "We're going to start over," he said.

  "O-okay... "

  "Have you thought about what you did wrong?"

  Those words again. "I said I was sorry!"

  "Sorry comes later. Right now, I want you to think about it."

  "I've thought about it, I've thought about it! I screwed up! Don't you think I know that? But come on, enough already! So a few butts got spanked. Big deal! It's not like anyone got seriously hurt. Judging from the repeat sales, most of them liked it."

  "Are you done?"

  She thought she was, but his cool, unimpressed tone found a little more fuel to throw on her fire. "Stop trying to get me to feel worse, damn it!" she snapped, balling her hands into fists on the wall. "I'm the only one trying to fix this! You're the one screwing around! I knew it was a mistake to call you. I just knew it."

  He waited. She glared at the wall, her angry breaths harsh on her ears.

  "Now are you done?" he asked.

  She rolled her eyes. "Yes."

  "And?"

  "And what?"

  "Tell me why you deserve this spanking."

  "Because I was bad," she said impatiently.

  WHACK! Again, the swat caught her completely off-guard and she jumped back, but he was right there, pushing her into the wall until he was done. WHACK WHACK WHACK! She had not realized that the burn of that first startling spanking had been fading until now, when he woke it back up. WHACK WHACK WHACK, all over, fast and hard, until she was sobbing and clawing at the wall in a mindless attempt to climb up it and escape through the ceiling.

  "One more flip answer like that and you'll be sleeping on your stomach for a week," Damien warned her. "I'm not here for me, I'm here for you, so show me the courtesy of answering my questions."

  "I'm sorry!" she wept.

  "What did you do, Harper?"

  "I hurt people."

  "Nobody got seriously hurt," he said, throwing her own words back at her hard enough to bruise. "So a few butts got spanked, right? Some of them liked it."

  "They trusted me," she whispered.

  "What?"

  "They trusted me! They liked me! It... It doesn't matter if they got hurt or not." She clapped shaking hands to her face, hiding from him, from the whole world. "I shouldn't have done it. You were right. It didn't need to be magic. They never would have known the difference. I just did it because I could."

  "Go on."

  "I didn't want anyone to get hurt!" she brayed, pressing her face to the wall in shame. "I didn't want them to get spanked! That was private! I just wanted to do something magic! Something real!"

  "Why?"

  "I don't know!"

  WHACK!

  "Because of all the stupid stuff that isn't!" she sobbed. "I know you don't think that's a reason, but you don't know what it's like to have a power and never get to use it!"

  "So you use it on your customers?" he demanded and spanked her again, three hard, fast swats that stirred the hornets into new fiery life.

  "Ow-ow! It wasn't supposed to go like that! It was supposed to be fun!"

  "Any way you try to spin it, Harper, it all comes down to you messing with someone else's sex life for your own personal satisfaction. It's you trying to prove something to yourself using other people who don't even know what happened, but who had to pay for the privilege of being used."

  The words were worse than the spanking. She cringed into her hands and started crying harder.

  "Tell me you're sorry," he ordered. "You can't exactly tell them, so tell me. Make me believe it."

  She turned around, slung her arms around his neck and wailed against his chest like a child.

  He stood stiffly at first, but slowly his hands came up to hold her and at last, with a sigh, he wrapped her in a close embrace.

  "I'm sorry," she wept. "I am! I didn't know what would happen! I know you tried to stop me and I know... " She shuddered in a deep breath and out it came: "I knew it was wrong! I knew it from the very beginning! Everything you said was true and I knew it was wrong!"

  "Then why, Harper? Why did you do it?"

  "I don't know. I just wanted to do something real for once! I wanted... " The words caught in her throat like a bone. She had to force them out, but they kept coming, choking her. "I wanted to see if I could. Nobody else in my family could even make one of Verity's potions, much less make their own. We used to be witches, real witches! Now we're nothing." She twisted away from him, fresh tears falling hot from her eyes no matter how hard she slapped at them. "I'm nothing," she wept. "And I am sorry I did it and I am sorry they got spanked and maybe it's not okay to even feel this way, but I'm sorriest of all that I couldn't get the stupid potion right."

  "Harper—"

  "Well, I am! Maybe you think I did it as a joke, but I didn't! I was really trying," she said bitterly. "I never worked harder on anything and look what happened! Don't you get it? This is the one thing that makes me special, the one thing I thought I was actually good at and I messed it up!"

  "You are special," he said firmly. "You don't need to prove it to anyone."

  She pulled out of his grip, shaking her head. "You don't understand. How can you? You're normal."

  "Not so normal," he said, brushing at her cheek. "Look at me, Harper."

  She glanced at him, scrubbing her sleeve across her face.

  He caught her chin and tipped her head back, forcing her unhappy eyes to meet his... which had turned a brilliant, glowing gold.

  "Not so normal," he said again as she stared.

  "Wha—huh?" She took a few breaths and tried again. "What are you?"

  "Human. Mostly. Just... not so normal." His eyes darkened again to their customary shade of deep brown. "I want to know you, Harper. I have for years. And I want to let you know me. But before we get there, we have to finish here."

  She backed up, trying to project a confusion she didn't feel. "I thought we were done."

  "No. You're just ready to begin." He touched her cheek, drying a last errant tear, then offered her one of his rare smiles. "Turn around and face the wall. I want you to think about why you're here and I don't want you to think about your perceived failure as a witch. I wouldn't spank you for trying a recipe that didn't taste the way you wanted and I won't spank you for a potion that didn't work the way you wanted."

  "People get spanked for burning dinner all the time," she said and was immediately appalled by herself. Why was she arguing? Standing here with her pants around her ankles and her bottom still burning, why would anyone argue?

  "People burn dinner because they forget they're cooking. It's an issue of neglect. I know you, Harper. You didn't walk away in the mi
ddle or get caught up doing something else. By your own admission, you never worked harder on anything. Was that true?"

  "Yes, but—"

  "Then let it go."

  "But it wouldn't have happened if I'd been a better witch!" she finished stubbornly.

  "Harper, everyone should always be trying to be a better person, but you're not running that race with anyone else. You can't compare yourself to some ideal you and then punish yourself for not measuring up."

  "But—"

  "Yes, you're a witch, but your power is only part of who you are. How you use it is far more important, wouldn't you agree?"

  She dropped her eyes and silently nodded.

  "I know you know what you did and I know you're sorry you did it, but what I need from you now is for you to think, really think, about it. Not about the consequences or how you feel, but about the people you hurt."

  Even now, that word made her squirm. She opened her mouth to tell him she already knew, that she felt as bad already as anyone could possibly feel... but could think of no way to phrase it without turning it back on herself. At last, with a sigh, she simply turned around and shuffled over to the wall to stand staring into the faceless plaster, miserable.

  Think about what she'd done. The potion, as yet untouched, sat on her coffee table; the counter curse, as yet uncast, beat against the walls of her mind like a trapped moth. She knew what she'd done and she wanted to fix it... but no, she hadn't really thought about it and she didn't want to.

  The sound of glass scraping quietly against glass distracted her, much more abrasive than it had any right to be. What was he—? Was he drinking his tea? He was back there drinking tea like some... some professor while she stood there being his half-naked whipping girl! Looking at her. Judging her.

  She hated that. Harper had felt judgmental eyes pricking at her all her life. As witches, her family neither donned pointed hats and striped stockings nor ran around 'sky clad' wearing pentacles, but they stood out nonetheless. Small towns have a way of ostracizing people with differences, cutting away the offensive bits and cannibalizing the remains. The Hickeses had mostly given in and donned their protective coloration, but not Harper. Never Harper. It was part of what made her want to open Hedgewick's, when she could have just sold stock over the internet—not just to create a place where she was free to be who she was, but where everyone was.