Mischief Under The Mistletoe Read online

  Ailsa with her perfect nipples, crowning perfect breasts.

  Play with me.

  Ailsa, bending forward on her knees to look back at him, the blue siren’s allure of her eyes begging for his cock as she positioned herself, head down and hips up, her gorgeous ass begging for his hands to take their best grip. To smack and rub, squeeze and hold steady while the head of his cock nudged its way past the folds of her glistening wet pussy and sank into the achingly welcome heat of her.

  He covered his face with both hands, rubbing while outside the closet Ailsa’s soft laughter carried through the door. “Play with me, Calder!”

  “What did I tell you about reading my mind?” he grumbled, but he had no right to be upset with her and he knew it. His was the mind conjuring the thoughts. Worse, his was the body throbbing to turn those thoughts into deeds.

  No, he didn’t want to hold her against her will, but he did want to hold her. And the last thing he wanted to do was let her go.

  She might be a doll, he thought angrily to himself, but she wasn’t a sex toy. To take that from her knowing she might not have a choice made him little better than a rapist. And he’d be damned if he’d hurt her—hurt anybody—like that.

  He shouldered the closet door open.

  “Ailsa,” he called, struggling to not to let his frustration show in his voice. “Time to g—”

  He froze not two steps out of the closet, his eyes growing huge as he stared through the open dining hall doorway at Ailsa, laughing as she twirled, hands thrown up in the air to catching the falling snowflakes and all the dancing prism lights glittering upon them. Two inches of snow covered the floor, the table and chairs, with more falling as if by magic straight out of the wood paneled ceiling. Flakes were building on all three stained glass window sills, frosting up the windows. The royal red hue of the area rug could barely still be seen, and every cup, vase, statuette, and all the other bric-a-brac on the fireplace mantel and sprinkled elsewhere throughout the room, were little more than shapeless humps beneath a fine blanket of white.

  “Ailsa!”

  The harshness of Calder’s tone startled them both. Dropping her arms, Ailsa stopped dancing. Her eyes were huge when she faced him, but then, so were his.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded. In truth, he was more shocked than angry. Snow crunched under his shoes as he ventured into the room. He held his hand out, catching the last few snowflakes still drifting down.

  Picking at her fingers, Ailsa looked around the room. “I... It... It’s not flour.”

  No, it wasn’t. It was worse. As far as dining rooms went, this one wasn’t huge, but it would be half a day trying to clean it all up.

  “Seriously?” he demanded. His hands found his hips as he swept the room, frown deepening. He couldn’t walk away and let this melt. The rug, the tablecloth, the antique furniture, the paintings—everything in this room except the china and the stained glass of the windows themselves could and would be ruined if he didn’t do something. Already, the gathering snow was melting. His gaze lit on Ailsa again. Her head bowed and her fingers played nervously amongst themselves. When he pointed to a spot in the snow directly before him, she crept around the table and came to stand exactly where he ordered.

  “What is the number one rule?” he asked, surprisingly calm and even.

  She toed a short line through the melting snow between them. “Don’t say anything I see in your head out loud?” She said it like a question, but he could tell by the growing guilt on her face that she knew better.

  He folded his arms, drawing himself up to his fullest height. “Try again.”

  “Good girls get Calder’s cock, bad girls sleep in the can?” She didn’t look at him.

  His palm began to itch. “Don’t play with me,” he warned. “This is altogether the wrong time for that.”

  “Don’t make a mess,” she whispered, picking at her fingers.

  “Louder,” he ordered. Not because he hadn’t heard her clearly enough, but because he wanted to hear her say it with the same measure of dedication that she had used when she broke that rule and violated this room.

  “D-don’t make a mess,” she repeated. Raising her gaze to his at least, she broke under the sternness of his disapproval. “But it was so pretty! Don’t be mad at me, Calder. I wanted to see it sn—”

  Unfolding his arms, Calder caught hold of hers and in a single tug, he both bent and wrapped her around his hip. She squeaked, but did not fight him, not even when he hiked up the back of her sweater and shirts, hooking the rope belt and the thin barrier of the pants he’d leant her. Skinning them down to the backs of her knees, he allowed her no protective barriers between the curves of her already cringing ass and the flat of his hand. Her squeaks turned to mewly yelps and cries within the first three slaps, but this was not his house and these were not his things, and no matter how fast he worked, he already knew something was going to bear the permanent mark of what she had done here for the sake of seeing something ‘pretty’.

  And God help him, but this felt good. Not because he was spanking her, though she deserved it—a good sound spanking, followed by the press of her pretty nose to the nearest corner while he hunted through this unfamiliar house for a broom or a shovel, and buckets to cart this all back outside in. He ought to make her clean up her own mess too, to punctuate the lesson he was slapping into her backside. No, not because of all that, but because it had been a long time for him. Not since his marriage, what few times there had been when he’d taken his ex across his knee for a good reminder of the dynamic they had both agreed to before they were married. Every relationship he’d ever had had been built on a foundation of love and trust, dominance and submission, cause and consequence. More than half of the girls he’d ever dated had taken at least one tumble across his knees, for one reason or another. Most had done so because they wanted to know what it was like, or because the sting added a little spice to the lovemaking that invariably followed, or because they needed a well-placed reminder on one thing or another.

  Not one girl had ever been taken across his knee without knowing it was a possibility. Not one had ever come up off his knee harboring resentment or grudges. Some came up sniffling, some were surprised, almost all rubbed their bottoms as a physical balm against the stinging damage done their pride. Only a rare few reacted to it the way Ailsa did when she caught the back of his leg in both hands, dancing up on her tiptoes from hurt, but not kicking or twisting, not fighting his hold or trying to break free.

  She cried out, but she took it, submitting while he painted her bottom in short, hard slaps a vibrant shade of pink. He did it swiftly and without apology, and it did not reduce her to tears. Honestly, he supposed it wasn’t meant to.

  His spanking didn’t last a minute before he pulled her back onto her own two feet again, pointing his stern finger right off the end of her nose and capturing her attention completely. Her wide eyes locked with his as he told her, “Nose to the wall, young lady. You’re going to think about this while I clean up the mess you made. You better think very long and hard, too, because we’re going to talk about this as soon as we get home and if you give me one more flippant answer or I think you’re not taking this seriously, I’ll do more than give you a few sharp swats. So help me, I will light your butt on—”

  “Oh my goodness gracious,” Moira Campbell said from the doorway.

  Oh Jesus. He’d forgot.

  Calder turned slowly, using his body to shield Ailsa from the older woman’s sight. But any hope he had that Moira might be so focused on the snow in the good Father’s dining room rather than Ailsa’s partial nakedness and the obvious evidence that he’d just spanked the hell out of her, were dashed the minute he saw her. Moira was staring straight at Ailsa. Her mouth gaped as she stumbled a few steps over the threshold, glancing at the slush she sloshed through before staring at Ailsa again.

  “I cannae believe I’m seeing this,” she breathed.

  Calder’s stomach sank all
the way to his toes. His hand, still stinging from the steady force he’d used to spank Ailsa, not only stung harder but now began to tingle as well. He didn’t know how long Moira had stood there or what she’d seen, but the moment her shocked old eyes locked with his, he lost all hope that she wouldn’t know. She absolutely did know. If she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes, though he was pretty sure she’d arrived in time to get a bird’s eye view of him laying on those last few swats, she absolutely would have heard all as she’d been hurrying up the B&B steps. Moira Campbell, the biggest gossip in all of Scotland, had seen him spank Ailsa. Within the hour, everyone in town would know. All ten of them. By the time the rest of the local residents returned in the spring, ‘spanked’ would become ‘beat’ and that was a stigma that would follow him the rest of his life.

  “I cannae believe...” she said again, staring up at him both in wonder and appall.

  He raised his hands, but she wasn’t looking at him anymore. She’d edged around him, to get a better look at the tiny blonde slip of a woman standing behind him. The one who wasn’t supposed to exist.

  “Ailsa, darlin’,” Moira breathed. “Is that you?”

  Rubbing her stinging bottom, Ailsa said, “Hello, Moirie. Do you remember me?”

  “I was nae more than a bairn, but aye, I remember ye. I remember the wee fae who plucked me from the Loch before I drowned.” The old woman edged another few steps around Calder, and he turned with her, watching the two women in surprise. “After all these years... What are ye doing here, luv?”

  Ailsa rubbed her bottom again. She twisted half around, as if trying to see the damage done her, then sniffled. “Being bad.”

  “Oh, aye,” the older woman agreed. She looked around them, her expression shifting from wonder to appalled shock all over again as she took in all the snow. “Oh,” she said again, with more feeling. “Aye, ye certainly have been.”

  “Calder spanked me.” Ailsa sniffled again, not tattling so much as simply sharing the rest of the story.

  “Only half as well as I’d have done, believe you me.” Moira turned in a full circle. “Look at this, Ailsa.”

  “It was pretty,” the younger female tried to justify.

  “I’m sure it was,” the older didn’t argue. “But look at all the good Father’s fine things. All his family heirlooms, things his mother left him—they’ll be ruined.”

  Ailsa picked at her fingers. Pants still drooped around her knees, she looked around them now too.

  “Clean all this up then,” Moira said, gesturing the whole of the room with a roll of her hand. “Come on, clean it. You dinnae want to make the good Father sad now, do ye? You dinnae want me to be sad when I tell him what ye’ve done? Or Calder?”

  Ailsa’s already wide eyes rushed with tears. And in an instant the snow was gone. The floor, the windowsills, the blanket of melting whiteness that had covered every surface and every collectible thing upon them—every last flake and all evidence of wetness showing that it had ever been there, all of it vanished in a blink.

  Now it was Calder who turned in a full circle, struggling to rein in his shock. “If I’d known she could do that, I wouldn’t have spent a week cleaning up all that flour.”

  “Flour?” Moira echoed, then knuckled hands to her hips and leveled a stern and almost maternal frown at Ailsa. She pointed to the nearest corner. “Get ye to it, ye naughty thing. And ye be grateful yer goin’ home with this great lunk instead o’ me. I’ve got a hairbrush you’ll wish ye’d never met if ye did!”

  Shoulders sagging, Ailsa obediently turned and went where she was told. When she got to the corner, she dropped to her knees, thunked her forehead against the join of the walls and then burst into tears.

  “Quietly,” Moira chided, raising her voice to drown out Ailsa’s dramatics.

  Ailsa obediently lowered the volume.

  “Fairies,” Moira said with a shake of her head. Tsking, she walked back out of the room.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “I THOUGHT I WAS GOING crazy,” Calder said as he stirred the cup of tea Moira had made him. “I mean...” He hesitated to say he’d been alone too long, but when he looked up at the older woman, she was nodding as if she already knew.

  “As I told ye, the fae folk used to be everywhere in these old hills. My Grams, she talked of seeing them all the time when she was a girl. But myself, I only ever saw Ailsa and only the one time, when I fell in the Loch and she made the water spit me back out, throwing me up onto the shore as if I were nae but a rag. Scared me mum half to death, but she always left milk for the fae after that, especially during the winter when the veil grows thinnest.”

  “Veil?” Calder shook his head.

  “Between our world and theirs, oh aye. It’s old magic from older days.” Stirring her own tea from the chair across the small round table from him, Moira turned speculative. “I never saw Ailsa as a woman though. When I saw her, she looked a child.”

  “She acts like a child,” Calder replied, and then fought back a blush because, yes, the innocent way in which Ailsa often acted did seem childlike... right up until she did something with that grownup body that made him think of her as anything but.

  “Well, of course, she does,” Moira scoffed. “How do people learn to behave if not through interacting with others? We had parents, siblings, neighbors, and peers. Who has Ailsa had? Children are the only ones who see the fae, until they’re taught no longer to believe. All our misguided myths and folklore record them as tricksters and wicked, when in reality they act and behave the way they have been taught by the only humans who acknowledge they exist.” A shadow of sadness stole over the old woman’s features. “After so many years, honestly, I’d come to think I’d dreamed her. She saved my life and...” Moira hesitated, unable or unwilling to drag her gaze to Calder’s as she softly admitted, “I haven’t spoken to her or left milk for her, not since my mother died. It’s been forty years.” The regret he saw as she stirred her cooling tea without drinking it was like an open wound. “I wonder what’s brought her back.”

  Loneliness, Calder almost said out loud. He stopped himself before he could, afraid it would only hurt her more. And for what? “She said she’s for me,” he said instead. And then, because leaving his own admission of guilt hidden was already beginning to feel like a festering wound, he added, “I came here hoping to find a way to set her free.”

  Eyebrows quirking, Moira asked, “What makes you think she’s bound?”

  “Because,” he said, feeling a little stupid when all he could do was repeat: “She said she’s for me. I made her. She does everything I say.”

  Blinking once, Moira arched her eyebrows. In the same tone that left, ‘Are you an idiot’ unspoken, she asked, “Do you think that means she cannae resist your will? Because I could quote you stories on what happens when a fae gets pissed enough nae to want to do as you ask them.”

  Calder leaned back in his chair, a slough of fairytales from his childhood running through his mind. Most grew up learning those stories from Walt Disney. He’d grown up learning them from his mother, who preferred the non-sanitized and original Brothers Grimm.

  “Listen to me, my dear mon.” Leaning across the table, Moira rested her wrinkled hand atop his own, giving it a gentle squeeze. “I dinnae know why she came to you, but she came because she wanted to. Something in you called to her, but she’ll nae stay if she does nae want to, and if ye hurt her...” She patted his hand again. “I’ll geld ye. But only if I get to ye before Ailsa does herself.”

  He felt more comforted by that than threatened. “I’m not going to hurt her,” he said honestly. “Not if I can help it, anyway.”

  Moira squeezed his hand again. “She’s nae a child. You dinnae have to treat her like one.”

  Calder nodded, finding it far easier to let the older woman assume he’d spanked Ailsa because he’d somehow forgotten that fact. It wasn’t anyone’s business but his that his thoughts of her were anything but child-like. “Thank you,”
he told her instead. “For listening.”

  She patted his hand once, more of a slap, before leaning back again. “Any time, laddie. Ye’ve been here seven years, we’ve barely spoke two words together. Come over for supper some time. ye and Ailsa both. Dinnae ye dare keep her a stranger from me.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” he promised, as he took his leave of the kitchen. He had no idea what he was going to do once he got home, but with every step he took down the hall, his heart quickened and his belly warmed, coiling like a spring about to snap, but in the most delicious way. He couldn’t wait to get back to Ailsa, to pull her up out of the corner and into his arms, to end the ritual her misbehavior had started with a hug, whispered forgiveness if she needed it, and then to take her home again. He knew what he wanted to do with her then. He wasn’t sure he would do it, but he did know what he wasn’t going to do. He wasn’t going to send her away. He didn’t think he could bear it.

  But when he reached the dining hall where the good Father liked to preach his sermons on Sunday mornings over coffee and looked into the empty corner where Ailsa had been left, he knew he’d never be able to bear it because he never, ever wanted to feel that cataclysmic panic that turned his gut inside out when he saw that great puddle of his castoff clothing lying on the floor.

  Ailsa’s doll lay neglected in the heap of it. God help him, but the moment his fingers touched it, all he could hear were the ghostly echoes of her crying and all he could feel was how she had felt from the moment he had left the room.

  Abandoned.

  He was an idiot. He’d never been a bigger fool in his life and what made it worse, he knew better than this. Ailsa wasn’t his first experience being the dominant partner in a relationship. She wasn’t the first female he’d ever spanked, but she was the first fairy—if fairy she even was, although Moira seemed to know and after the week he’d had, he was inclined to believe her. On Ailsa’s part, the good Father’s dining room might well have been the first spanking she’d ever received. It might have been the first time she’d been sent to the corner, too, although he’d certainly imposed that punishment a time or two as well. And he knew—knew—better than to leave a freshly disciplined female alone with her thoughts while still locked in the dropping mental state that a proper chastisement so often induced. She thought he’d left her there because he was still angry.