Last Dance for Cadence (Corbin's Bend) Read online

  “Thanks.” She ducked her head, turning away from him as she checked out her kitchenette, the TV on top of a corner entertainment center, and finally the bathroom. It wasn’t huge, but it did have both a shower and a tub, and was painted the same blue as the rest of her room.

  It was hard to tell by her face whether she found it acceptable or not.

  “Very nice,” she finally said, nodding once.

  “If you need help moving the rest of your things…” he started to offer, but she was already shaking her head.

  “I’ve got everything I need, thanks.” She lay her duffel on the foot of her new bed. She turned to face him, rubbing her hands upon her thighs. “I’m ready to get started cleaning now, if you’ll show me where you keep your supplies.”

  No nonsense. Entirely business-like. Solemn-eyed with an equally solemn little mouth. He’d so much rather have her smile at him. Not that desperate smile that she’d flashed last night back when he’d first refused to hire her, but a real smile. There had to be a real smile locked somewhere deep inside her. He wondered what it would take for him to find it.

  And why was he even wondering that? Get your mind off that vein of thought, he told himself firmly. They were employer and employee now. That didn’t automatically mean they might never share a smile, just so long as they weren’t smiles shared with her lying on that queen-sized bed, her head pillowed on his arm, her soft breasts cushioned against his chest and her eyes, those baby blue eyes that seemed to match the color on these pale walls, gazing adoringly up into his…

  Great. Just great. Now not only was that image going to haunt his brain for the rest of the day, but his cock was stirring. Please, dear God, don’t let him get a full on erection. Not now when she was sure to notice it.

  “Cleaning supplies,” he said, trying hard to think about bleach and cleanser and all the things that micro-antibacterial soap might kill on contact—anything but Cadence and her assumedly soft breasts or equally soft, round bottom bent over while she scrubbed something, anything… Jesus, he needed help. He cleared his throat. “Right this way.”

  He led her back through the family room to the kitchen and the laundry room, where he also kept the broom, vacuum and cleaning supplies.

  “This is everything you should need. We have a shopping list on the fridge, so if you start to run low, just add it to the list and whoever goes to the store next can pick it up. Naturally I don’t expect you to pay for anything household related. I’ll provide petty cash for groceries and, you know, fun things for the boys on occasion. I’ll need the receipts, of course.”

  “Of course.” Cadence started to reach for the broom and mop. “I guess I’ll get started in the kitchen.”

  “Right. Oh,” Marcus stopped her. “Before we do that, there’s one more thing we need to go over. Come on.” When he gestured, she followed him back to the table. He sat down at the head, picking up his pen and opening up her file. After a moment, she sat down too.

  “I wanted to talk about the, um—” He rolled his hands, heat flushing up through him just at the thought of it. “—discipline as it pertains to the house.”

  Cadence blinked twice, then her minute confusion eased into one of sudden understanding. “Oh, no. Wait a minute. That’s okay. You are their father. I am not going to physically correct your children. If problems come up, I may talk to them about it, maybe scold if I have to. I don’t know if you’re comfortable with my giving out corner time or something like that, but—”

  “I’m not talking about the boys,” Marcus said bluntly. “By all means, you use me as the heavy weight. They know what’s right and wrong, and they know they’re to obey what you tell them. If they don’t, I expect to know about it. My goal is for them to see us as a unified pair of authority. So long as you follow my rules, I’ll back your play. No, what I meant was regarding…” He rolled his hands again, this time toward her. “…you.”

  Cadence blinked again, that confused look returning.

  “Now, I don’t anticipate there being any real problems,” he began.

  “Do you think I’m going to steal from you?” she asked, somewhat incredulously. “I’m not a thief, Dr. Devon.”

  “No, no. That’s not what I—”

  “Why would you hire me if you think I’m going to rob you blind?”

  “I didn’t say that and that’s not what I think,” he said, holding up his hand to stop her. “I only meant that I run my house in keeping with community standards.” When she only blinked at him again, the sneaking suspicion that she might not know what those standards were began to filter through his head. “Cadence, you do know what kind of community Corbin’s Bend is, don’t you?”

  “I know how to behave myself,” she said, growing offended. “I’m not going to graffiti up the park, turn your kids into juvenile delinquents or perform drunken gun twirlies in your living room the minute your back is turned!”

  That sneaking suspicion became a decidedly sinking sense of disappointment.

  “Are you dominant or submissive?” he asked, but he already knew the answer to that. She was vanilla. Completely, unadulteratedly vanilla.

  She actually cocked her head at that. “I’m sorry?”

  She had no idea what he was talking about.

  “Venia told you nothing, didn’t she?” Never in his wildest dreams, or even his greatest nightmares, had he considered the possibility that whoever he hired here in Corbin’s Bend would not know about the more basic ‘bonding glue’ that held the community together. Maybe finding this out now was a good thing. Knowing didn’t suddenly make her any less desirable for him, but it did help him put things into sharp perspective.

  First, Venia was in sore need of a good old fashioned spanking and she’d be very, very lucky if he didn’t give it to her the next time he saw her.

  Second, there was no way in hell that he’d ever consider involving himself in another relationship with a vanilla partner. Ever. Again. From here on out, if he thought about Cadence at all, it would have to be as his employee and nothing else. No more daydreams about shared smiles or kisses, or soft breasts, chin lifts and hip swishes. None of that. From now on, it was strictly business between them.

  And third, if Cadence was going to stay in Corbin’s Bend, if she was going to stay in his house, then she needed to know exactly what was expected of her.

  “What was she supposed to tell me?” Cadence asked, suspicion heavy in her tone.

  He didn’t want to be the one to have to explain everything, and yet a quiver of excitement still vibrated through his gut when he looked her in the eye and said, “This is a BDSM community, Cadence.”

  What did it say about him that all he could think about right now was holding her over his knee while he saw how well she took a spanking? He hadn’t spanked a woman in years. Yesterday, he hadn’t missed it. Today, locked in the disbelieving blue of her eyes, it was all he could think about. His hand, her bottom. God help him, he was starting to get hard again.

  “What does that mean?” She turned her head, looking at him slightly sideways. “I mean, exactly?”

  “It means, if you’re going to live and work here, then you are going to have to follow the rules, just like everybody else.” And if she broke them, then it would be his job to deal with it. He could already feel that first sharp clap as his bare palm flattened the yielding softness of her feminine flesh. He could feel her on his knee, hear the soft gasp as she realized just how hard it was going to be to endure, to submit, to him.

  And that was it, the last imaginary straw that forever proved this particular camel was in absolutely no need of Viagra’s assistance. And this was only Day One.

  God help them both.

  CHAPTER SIX

  This was crazy.

  Cadence sat on the passenger side of Marcus’s car, busily chewing her thumbnail to the quick. She didn’t say a word, but her brain was going fast enough to be a NASCAR contender. Mama Venia couldn’t possibly have known what kind of plac
e this was when she first moved here.

  Could she?

  Surely now that she herself knew about it, Cadence couldn’t possibly still be thinking about taking this job, staying with the doctor, working with him. Could she?

  What did that mean, exactly? That whole bit about his running his house in accordance to the standards of the community? Why would he ask if she was dominant or submissive? Was she going to have to pick one? Like Luke Skywalker with the Force, which of those was supposed to be the Dark side? If she said submissive, was he going to want to tie her up? If she said dominant, was she going to have to tie him? She could just see it now, once a week, every Thursday would be Thursday Tie-up Day in the bowels of the Devon household.

  She could hardly wait.

  Completely biting through her thumbnail, she spit the sliver of keratin out the side of her mouth onto the floor of the car between her feet without even thinking about it.

  “Don’t do that,” Marcus said mildly.

  Thinking he meant the spitting part (and admittedly, once she realized what she’d done, she was hugely embarrassed by that), she folded herself under the dash to feel between her knees. “Sorry,” she mumbled, trying to find it.

  “I have three pre-teen boys,” he scoffed. “Trust me, this floor has seen worse. I meant, stop chewing your finger half to death. Seriously.” He softened his tone. “You don’t have to be afraid of me. I’m not a serial killer. I’m not going to chain you up in my basement or force you to do anything you don’t want to.”

  Chewing on this thumbnail was starting to hurt. Cadence went to work on her index finger instead. “Exactly what are you going to want me to do then?”

  “Clean my house,” Marcus said simply, taking his eyes off the road only long enough to flash her a slight smile. “Watch my kids. Cook dinner and maybe work during your normal non-working hours if I get called out for an emergency. That’s pretty much everything that was in the job description. Oh, and maybe stop chewing on your fingernails.”

  Cadence did not relax. “Which part was the BDSM part, exactly?”

  “Why don’t we not worry about that part until we have to?”

  Cadence considered that for all of about two seconds. “Nope. No, I really think I’d rather worry about this now. If I’m going to get slapped in chains for not washing all the dishes or…or…or flogged on…on…on—” She flung out her hands. “—the poop deck for not sorting out the red socks and accidentally dying your underwear pink, I want to know about that as far in advance as I possibly can!”

  “Okay, I am not a pirate,” he said, trying not to laugh. “I also donated my chains to the last community raffle event. Besides, dyeing my underwear pink isn’t a flogging offense. At best, I’m afraid I’d have to sentence you to go shopping for more underwear. Unless, of course, you did it deliberately, in which case I might have to teach you a lesson.”

  He said it so casually and yet it sounded so ominous.

  “What kind of lesson?” She suspected she already knew.

  “The kind best learned while bent across my knee.” Turning off the main road, he pulled the car down the winding drive and into the mostly empty parking lot of a neatly landscaped community building.

  Bent across his knee? Cadence shook her head. He couldn’t possibly mean what he was implying. “Just tell me plainly, what exactly am I going to have to do? I mean, exactly, exactly. Worst case scenario.”

  Marcus parked the car under the shade of an old Cyprus tree, not far from the main entrance. Turning off the engine, he pulled the keys from the ignition and then just sat there, looking at her. “Worst case scenario?” he echoed.

  She braced herself and then nodded.

  He drew a breath as he considered her, quite solemnly. Her leg began to jiggle up and down, and her hand went right back to her mouth. Without even thinking, Cadence gnawed and spat another piece of nail out of the side of her mouth, her stomach so consumed in snaking dread that she could barely stand to stay in the car with him.

  “I suppose,” he said in all seriousness, “under the absolute worst case scenario, I would have to fire you.”

  That wasn’t at all what she’d been expecting. “What’s BDSM about that?”

  “Absolutely nothing,” he agreeably acknowledged. “The almost-worst case scenario is probably more what you’re asking about. In that case, I would take you into my study where we would discuss whatever it is that I’ve taken exception to. I would explain my position and ask you if you wanted to explain yours. And when everything had been discussed, then I would take you across my knee, I may or may not bare your bottom, depending on the severity of the exception and how comfortable we are with one another, and then I would spank you until I felt satisfied that my point had been made and that you were in the proper frame of mind to accept the discipline I’d meted out.”

  She stared at him, half convinced he was joking. “You’d spank me?”

  “Yes, I would.” He didn’t crack a smile. He didn’t even blink. “But it would not happen without a very good reason. It won’t come as a shock or a surprise to you when I do eventually deem it necessary, and it won’t ever, ever happen if you have not given me your consent to proceed.”

  That took Cadence completely by surprise all over again. “You want me to give you permission to spank me?”

  “Yes.”

  Her eyes narrowed slightly as she looked at him, waiting for the joke. “If I don’t, you won’t do it.”

  “Not so much as a swat,” he vowed.

  Her eyes remained narrowed. “I guess that settles it,” she said, finally reaching for the door handle.

  “Does this mean you feel better about going inside or that you quit?” Marcus asked, getting out of the car, too.

  “I never quit.” Shutting the door, she limped toward the main entrance. “But if you’re not going to spank unless I agree to it, then I guess we really don’t have anything to worry about.”

  “Because you’re never going to agree to it?” His reflection in the tinted glass of the doors looked faintly bemused.

  “That’s right.”

  He shrugged. “As you wish.”

  Funny, he said that as if he knew something she didn’t. Almost as if he thought she’d change her mind, but there was no way in hell that would ever happen. No way at all.

  He ducked ahead of her to catch the door, holding it open wide, and in that brief pause that filled the space between his stepping aside and her breezing into the community center just past him, Cadence caught herself eyeing his hands. They looked very big. Strong and capable, and broad enough to cover a lot of spankable surface area.

  Her bottom tingled, a completely unnerving sensation that crawled somewhere between dread (justifiably so) and…good Lord, was that jittery anticipation? Absolutely not. How crazy did a girl have to be to waste time wondering how a man’s hand would feel while swatting at her bottom?

  Which was exactly how long it took for yesterday morning’s mystery to suddenly become crystal clear: Spank Mobile. The next time she saw Mama Venia, she had a thing or two she wanted to say to her, and at this point, Cadence wasn’t at all sure if she was going to be able to say any of it nicely.

  As it turned out, she didn’t have to wonder for long. When Marcus took the lead, he took her only a few doors down to a comfortable office where Venia was already waiting for her, along with two other people: a middle-aged blond man and a plump, older woman, her graying brown hair curling all around her smiling cherubic face.

  “Hi,” she said, standing the minute she saw Cadence come into the doorway.

  It looked like an intervention, or a bank loan. The office walked that fine line between homey and too sterile to be comfortable. Good Lord, was that a paddle hanging on the wall behind the table? The man, standing now as well, had a small stack of forms on the table before him. What was it with this place and their forms?

  Venia was the only one who didn’t bother to stand. She leaned over far enough to pat th
e seat on the chair beside her. “Come on, Cady baby. Take a seat.”

  Cadence shot her an accusing glare. “Don’t talk to me,” she grumbled even as she accepted the chair offered her. “I don’t think I can be civil to you right now.”

  “Oh,” Venia chuckled, throwing an arm around Cadence’s shoulder and pulling her in close enough to kiss her on the top of her head.

  That was all it took for the sharpest edge of her irritation to just melt away. “Spunk mobile,” she said, with a shake of her head.

  Venia’s chuckle dissolved into girlish giggles, which she tried to smother against Cadence’s shoulder.

  “Excuse me?” the man said, glancing between them slightly perplexed.

  “Inside joke,” Venia explained, at the same time Cadence suddenly pieced together that morning’s second mystery as well.

  “No wonder you didn’t want to call the police,” Cadence exclaimed. “He wasn’t beating her. He was spanking her!”

  The unknown man tipped his head slightly, his gray eyes locking in on her with interest. “Who was this?”

  “My neighbors were enjoying a little, um…” Venia cleared her throat. “Shall we say, early morning delight with the windows open?”

  “I see. Well.” He arched both eyebrows. “That can sometimes happen around here.”

  “Cadence,” Venia introduced. “This is Brent Carmichael. He heads the Housing Board and will be taking your application to join our community.”

  “Venia explained to you what our community is all about, I’m assuming?” Brent asked as he began to sort his forms, pulling one from the middle of the stack and laying it neatly on top.

  “You’d be assuming wrong,” Cadence said drily. “Mama Venia, being possessed by a rather perverse sense of humor, let my new boss do the explaining for her.”

  Staring straight down at the table, Venia had the grace to blush a little at that. “‘And by the way, we all spank’ is not something one works easily into every day conversation.”

  “Try harder,” Cadence said sweetly, and then let the last of her irritation go.