Something Has to Give Page 5

  Elsie sucked air into her lungs and promptly howled it all out again. He was spanking her again! And it hurt! It hurt like the devil, blazing up under her skin in bursts so fierce and hot she could have sworn she was being scalded by fire. But it wasn’t a fire. It was Rydecker and some silly little, anything-but-harmless cooking utensil! How many times had she scrambled eggs with that stupid thing? How many times had she washed it, dried it, and put it back in the crock by the stove? The very crock she’d lobbed at his head, only to have him duck; the wrong one broke and now she was paying the price. And it was more than she could bear, but he wasn’t stopping. Tears filled her eyes. She fought to hold them back, but she didn’t know how much longer she could—why wasn’t he stopping?—and it was ridiculous, because she could feel how hard he was spanking her and it wasn’t very hard at all! He was barely putting any force behind the raining onslaught of downward arm-swings, and yet it hurt so much!

  She couldn’t bear it! She burst into wailing tears, bawling with her cheek pressed hot against the kitchen floor and her whole bottom scalding under the snap-snap-thwap of a spatula that wasn’t stopping. Had no intention of stopping. Would never stop again. Not until he did what he’d threatened to do that morning and make her wish she’d been born without any bottom at all.

  Well, he was succeeding. She wished that now. She wished it with all her heart. She’d scream it if she could, if she thought it would make any difference at all, but she didn’t. All she could do was lie there under him, while the spatula bit every inch of her bottom, and she cried.

  For some reason, Rydecker stopped spanking her. She had no idea why. It certainly wasn’t because she had kicked him off. By the end there, she had lain too exhausted and defeated to move.

  She didn’t think it was because her tears had moved him, either; he’d let her cry for what felt like years before the spatula ceased its attack.

  She sobbed, broken and unmoving while he let go of her underwear first, then pulled her jeans up, the coarse denim scraping up over her raw skin. It hugged her swollen bottom, and suddenly she wasn’t just sitting on a stove, she was broiling in the oven. All she could feel when he picked her up off the floor was the hot, pulsing, wounded throb of her nether cheeks baking in her jeans.

  “You’ve killed me!” she sobbed, swiping and then slapping to get the tears off her face. He might have brought her to the point of bawling like a child, but she’d be damned if she let him watch them fall.

  “No, I haven’t.”

  He was still laughing at her. She could hear it in his voice.

  Bursting into tears all over again, Elsie grabbed her pants and tried to walk away, but he caught her arm and pulled her back to him. She tried to punch him then, needing to hurt him at least a little bit for what he’d done to her, but he hooked his arm around her neck and shoulders and pulled her into him. She slugged at him, but there was less force behind it and it didn’t seem to bother him anyway.

  Elsie held her bottom. For some inexplicable reason, Rydecker held her.

  This wasn’t giving up; it was just giving in a little bit. For both of them.

  It didn’t mean anything.

  They didn’t even like each other. She might even go so far as to say she hated Rydecker.

  She tried to punch him, just one last time. But while her knuckles did manage to connect, but there was no steam left behind it.

  “That’s enough,” he drawled. He gave her shoulders a pat, and then let her go. She didn’t even have the energy to glare at him. She just let him walk her out of the kitchen, steering her through the living room and back into the same stupid corner she had spent most of last night facing.

  He put her nose right up to the wall and tapped an invisible spot on the plaster. “Right here until I say differently. Got it?”

  “Go to hell,” she mumbled, glaring at the wall.

  Yeah, she hated him all right. She was really starting to hate this corner, too.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  December 23rd…

  That night it snowed, so not only did they spend their Mexican sleep-off arguing over who got what share of mattress-space and the lone pillow, but the war was extended to include the blankets. Initially, Quint won the mattress and pillow, but lost the blankets, which left him with a section of thin sheet and a corner of covering to squeeze himself under. By morning, however, he found himself swaddled in both blankets and a softly-snoring Elsie, who wasn’t just cuddled up next to his side now, but who had in her slumbering bid for warmth, sprawled damn near on top of him.

  Oh, the agony. His cock was like stone. It would have been standing straight up against his belly if only her hot, sweet ass weren’t lying directly on top of it. His belly was a furnace, so hard and tight, as tight as his balls, with the seat of her panty-clad sex branding his groin with the fires of her teasing proximity. Her t-shirt had ridden up, leaving her bare stomach to burn against his. Her breasts were still covered—his hands ached to change that—and her hair was a curly brown fan spreading out across his shoulder and down his bicep. Her small hand was on his other arm. Now and then he could feel the minute twitches of her fingers as she slept, and oh, God, the urge to wrap his arms around her was impossible to deny.

  Even knowing he shouldn’t, Quint couldn’t stop himself. His hands moved of their own accord, folding in around her, filling themselves with the soft curves of her luscious backside. He squeezed, the pressure of his fingers easing only when she drew a sleepy breath and stirred, stretching, the tangle of her legs, shifting around his. The hot little core of her humped up a little before re-centering itself firmly against his cock. Oh, God…was he completely out of his shorts? He was, wasn’t he? He could feel the friction of her cotton panties abrading his throbbing flesh.

  His fingers squeezed her bottom again, kneading, seeking the elastic edges around her legs and moving in underneath to fill his palms with the swells of each bottom cheek.

  Elsie made a soft moaning sound in her sleep, and that sound stabbed into him as lustfully as any full-throated ‘fuck-me’ purr. He wanted her under him. Now. He wanted her mouth under his. He wanted to drink those moans straight from her lips.

  His fingers, unbidden, moved down over the curve of her ass only to discover the most exquisite moisture. Elsie was wet. She was wet for him, and wiggling again, her hands moving up to grip at his arms. He couldn’t help touching her, stroking her, saturating his fingers as they glided up and down and in and out of her. His cock throbbed from the agony of neglect. Her hot little bottom began to move again, responding instinctively even in sleep to his touch. She moaned, and then again, because now he’d found it, the secretive nub that was the key to a woman’s pleasure, growing under the slippery, circling caress of his longest finger. Around and around and around, her hips began to grind in sleepy response. She was waking, but he didn’t care. She was all he could feel, in his arms and full up against his body. She was all he could smell—her hair, her skin, the hot, wet musk of female arousal on every heated breath he drew. And the slickness of her, smearing up and down his shaft as she ground upon his fingers. Her sleepy head lifted. Her drowsy eyes lifted to stare uncomprehendingly at his chest, at his arms and then up at his face, meeting his eyes at last. And he couldn’t stop himself then, either. All it took was one startled blink—that flash of a moment when sleep retreated far enough to let recognition of what was happening take over—and there, right there in the brown abyss of her beautiful eyes, that shadow of temptation blossomed into full-blown feminine need.

  Her mouth opened, and his complete undoing came with the shivery gasp that spilled out of her on waves of full-body delight. It was a spark, the tiny beginning of a sleepy orgasm that awakened all the right nerves in them both.

  She was still looking boldly back into his eyes when he rolled them both—her onto her arching back and him now full on top of her. He had to get his hands out of her panties to do it. Need cut him, like fine razors scraping at his restraint. He held his weight o
ff her on shaky arms, but his hips refused to obey all his attempts to rise or still. His cock demanded movement. He was grinding against her now, feeling nothing but the inferno of her sex and the absolute saturation of her desire, slicking his length on the moisture spreading across the insides of both her thighs, taunting him with what he wanted most right then.

  “Spread your legs,” he said hoarsely. “That’s all you have to do. Spread your legs and let me in.”

  And she almost did. He saw that too—the lust, the wanting that turned into hesitation before exploding into anger.

  Elsie slugged him. She had a hell of a right hook that knocked him back just far enough for her to scramble out of bed. She ran for the bathroom and he was still wallowing in the blankets, cradling his jaw when he heard the door down the hall slam shut. A slightly bigger son of a bitch would have taken advantage of this opportunity to seal her into the bathroom the way she had him, but Quint didn’t.

  He was such an idiot. His body was throbbing and aching with such intensity that he couldn’t even think about handling the problem himself. God knows, Rosy Palm and her five sisters were always willing, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t Elsie with her intoxicating body and heat curling up around him.

  God, he was such an idiot. All he wanted right now, was for Elsie to change her mind, to come back out of the bathroom, to come back to his bed. If she did that, he’d have opened his arms to her. He’d have made love to her.

  What the hell was wrong with him?

  * * * * *

  What was wrong with her? She could still feel him touching her, all of her. Her body felt more alive right now than it had in years. She tingled in some places, throbbed in others, and in others still, that sensation had morphed into something that was so base and raw that it wasn’t even throbbing anymore. It was need unlike anything she had ever known, and it was Quint Rydecker that she wanted.

  Bent over the sink, Elsie stared at her reflection with both lust and horror. Quint Rydecker? How was that even possible? The man was going to throw her out of her home—the home she had made! He had also molested her in her sleep! How could she want a man like that? But the proof was right there, in the thrust of her nipples against the soft pink cotton of the long t-shirt she had worn to bed and in the molten pulse moving between her legs and up deep, deep inside her.

  That man had spanked her—not once, twice!—and she still wanted him. What was wrong with her? Even just that word—spanked—made the amalgam of warring sensations inside her thump all the harder, moving across the clenching surface of her bottom and down the backs of both legs. It flowed like a caressing hand back up the inner slope of her thighs until it could center itself between them, stroking and pulsing in molten waves until all she wanted was to feel thrusting there. Deep thrusting. Hard thrusting.

  Quint thrusting.

  She was depraved. There was just no other word for it. She was absolutely depraved.

  She bent all the way over, pressing her forehead against the bathroom counter and one hand against her sex, willing the needy sensation to stop. While in the very back of her mind, some traitorous thought whispered, ‘Open the door. Maybe Quint will see me bent over like this and spank me again.’

  Inexcusably depraved.

  She ought to be spanked just for thinking thoughts like that, for feeling feelings like this. The hand between her legs squeezed, then stroked, just once, the sort of thing girls weren’t supposed to do. The sort of thing they should be spanked for. She spread her legs a little further apart, lifting up on her toes to make her bottom a high, round, available target.

  From the hall outside, she heard footsteps approaching. They paused right outside the bathroom door and, self-consciously, she put her bottom down. Quint knocked—no, not Quint. Quint was too intimate. Quint meant they were friends or at least on an approaching friendship-type basis, which they weren’t. Far from it. He was Rydecker to her. Nothing more, and they were definitely not friends.

  “What?” she said bitterly, or tried to. Her voice was shaking. It came out sounding watery, as if she were on the verge of tears and she wasn’t. She felt the first disloyal tickle spill over her lashes and she viciously scrubbed it from her cheek. Tears were a measure of frailty and she wasn’t weak, couldn’t afford to be weak, would never be weak again.

  “Are you okay?” Rydecker softly asked from the other side of the door.

  Raising her head, Elsie stared at her reflection in the mirror of the medicine cabinet. All she could feel was the pulse of lust licking between her legs; and all she could see, were echoes of the same, haunting the deep brown of her eyes. She caught her breath before she started crying again. “There’s another bathroom in this house somewhere. Find it.”

  She wasn’t weak.

  She wasn’t depraved.

  And she was not about to let him take this house from her. Not him. Not anyone.

  Not ever.

  * * * * *

  It must have been twenty minutes before Elsie came out of the bathroom. Not that he was counting.

  Quint got up from the table where he’d been telling himself for the last twenty minutes that he wasn’t upset and he wasn’t fidgeting. He went into the kitchen and hesitated over the coffee pot until he heard footsteps coming down the stairs.

  “Do you want some coffee?” he asked as she stalked into the kitchen behind him.

  “Get bent.” She fetched her milking bucket and promptly swept back out again, heading for the front porch.

  He almost felt better. That was the kind of reply and kick in the butt he needed to start seeing her as neither a victim to his runaway passions nor as a potential lover nor even as a woman, but as the harpy invader who’d taken over his house.

  He made coffee—not for two, just enough for him to have three or four bracing cups—and went to enjoy the first one at the kitchen table. He got to enjoy every one to the cacophony of a herd of goats bleating on his front porch. That was new. He also got to enjoy it to the sound of a rooster strangling out an endless chorus of crows somewhere out behind the house. That was new as well. He wasn’t particularly happy about either. Fortunately, none would be staying. Just as soon as he was done with his coffee, he was going to take a trip into town to the county courthouse where he was going to file that paperwork and start Elsie’s eviction process. He couldn’t wait.

  The front door bumped shut and then she came stomping through the kitchen.

  “Don’t touch my stuff,” she said testily, putting the now full milk bucket on the counter by the sink.

  “I’m not. I’m touching my stuff.” Deliberately, childishly even, he poked the bucket. “Want some coffee?”

  “Get bent.” She stalked back out of the kitchen again, slamming out of the back door now. Quint poured himself another cup of coffee. Peering into the bucket, he eyed the goat milk before opening the fridge door. He found the little container with remnants of more of that cream cheese she’d given him along with the jam and toast she’d slid under the bathroom door. He wasn’t sure about goat’s milk, but that cream cheese had been pretty good. Even mad as hell while he’d been eating it, it had tasted pretty good.

  Opening the container, he sniffed the contents. He dipped his finger in before sampling a taste, then found some bread, made toast and enjoyed it smothered in cream cheese, and washed it all down with the last of his coffee. He was on his last few bites when Elsie returned, this time with a bucket half full of eggs.

  “I’m heading into town,” he said. “Want me to pick you up anything while I get your eviction notice started?

  “Go to hell.” She began washing the eggs at the sink.

  Two get bents and one go to hell. What a beautiful way to start the day.

  Fetching his keys and wallet, he whistled as he headed out the front door for his truck. He never made it off the porch. It was snowing again. Not just a little this time, but big, heavy flakes that were not melting when they touched the ground. Damn. It was looking like the beginning
s of the winter’s first blizzard.

  He wasn’t going anywhere today.

  Quint stood for a long time, staring out into the swirling whiteness, trying to figure out whether he was more upset that he wouldn’t be able to get the eviction process started just yet or relieved.

  * * * * *

  The minute Quint left the house, Elsie stopped what she was doing. She put the clean eggs down in the bottom of the sink and bent all the way over, resting her forehead on her folded arms. How could she possibly fix any of this and still keep the house? She could leave—she might just have to—but, no! Where would she go? What would she do? Find another abandoned place and pray no one came home a year or so down the road to rip that out from under her too? She couldn’t keep doing this. She just couldn’t. And the worst part was she had no one but herself to blame for any of this. She’d known right from the start that this could end badly, but she’d let herself believe no one would ever object to her living here. That no one would ever come back. That she would be left in peace to eke out her quiet living until the day she died and there would be no consequences. She’d wanted to believe that. She had wanted that so much.

  Maybe she was going about this the wrong way. Maybe the way to keep the house lay in somehow sweetening Quint towards her. If she could keep him from evicting her, then maybe they could arrange some sort of rental agreement. At best, she might be able to convince him that this place was too run down for him to bother with. At worst, the house was big enough, maybe they could split it.

  In the other room, Quint’s heavy footsteps re-entered the house. Lifting her head when the front door closed, she turned to listen. She hoped he wouldn’t come this way, but funny how the sound of those big feet of his brought instantly to mind just how hot and big the rest of him had felt when he’d been pressed up against her that morning. That “spank me” crawling sensation travelled across her bottom and down the backs of her thighs all over again and wetness gathered between her legs. She could feel it, moving like stroking fingers down through the folds of her sex. Her nipples peaked, scraping the suddenly burlap-like roughness of her plain cotton t-shirt.