Ladder 54: Five Firefighter Romances Read online

  “‘But’ is not your safeword.” His gray eyes held her pinned. His powerful body was at once both threatening and relaxed. “This is our trial run, remember? While I don’t doubt there’s something very specific that you want from me, I do doubt that you paid two thousand dollars for a date with a dominant so you could tell him what to do and when. You say you’re a submissive. Fine. You say you want to make the decisions. To an extent, I’ll even let you do that, but there are rules to this game, Rylee. And right now, those rules say the only decision you’re going to make is obey or safeword out and—” he checked his watch again, “—now you’re out of time. Are you wearing panties under that dress you’re trying so hard to pretend you aren’t wearing?”

  “Yes,” she squeaked. Her stomach wasn’t just twisting or flip-flopping; it was performing an entire circus worth of acrobatics. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t swallow. She couldn’t think. According to the books, she had to take control if she wanted this to happen, but… here it was, happening anyway and she’d never felt so out of control in all her life. Which was as fantastic as it was terrifying, especially since she’d never really ever felt truly in control of it, either.

  “Come here.” Walker’s eyes never left hers, but he pointed to a spot on the floor directly in front of his waiting lap. “Right now,” he calmly added, when she didn’t move.

  She had wanted this for such a very long time. Not only this… this spanking that he seemed truly intent on delivering—but then, he had said practice run. Chances were still good that he might just go through the preliminary motions, maybe even pull her down so she could feel what it was like to be made to lie in penitent pose across a strong man’s lap, before he let her up again. But still, he looked so believable, like maybe he really would do it, she hoped he would, oh, how she hoped he would.

  Walker was so tall, so handsome. So… confident in himself. When he worked his dual floggers, his body was nothing less than pure power and poetry of motion. When he spanked, it was so hard not to pretend it was her lying sprawled across his thighs or bending over his favorite spanking bench. She wanted to know what it felt like to yield beneath this man’s touch, like so many other submissives had done. She wasn’t pretty like they were, though. She wasn’t confident. She had tried so very many times to do what others had so little problem doing, just walk up to Walker and ask if he wanted to scene with her.

  Because what if he said no? Or, what if he said he was too busy? Did ‘too busy’ actually mean he was too busy just for that night or did it mean ‘I’d really rather not’?

  Arching a brow because she hadn’t moved, Walker pointed to the floor directly between his feet. “If I have to come and get you, young lady, I will, but I promise I’ll make you sorry it came to that.”

  Just a practice run. Nothing was going to happen, Rylee told herself, deliberately dampening her nervous excitement so she wouldn’t feel so devastated when, in about thirty seconds or so, he said, “So, that’s how it’ll happen on the night we really do this.” And still, it was a wonder her knees didn’t buckle as she crept the length of the table to stand where he indicated.

  The tightness of her own chest was strangling her to the point that she couldn’t feel herself breathing. She was, of course. She could see the rapid rise and fall of her own chest when she stared down the length of herself to watch as he reached up under the layers of both her bathrobe and last night’s cocktail dress. His hands were the most glorious combination of rough and confident, callused and gentle that she’d ever felt hook into the elastic of her panties. Her knees tried to buckle when he dragged them all the way down to her ankles.

  Rylee stared at the crumple of black lace panties lying across the tops of her bare feet, hardly able to comprehend that was her underwear. Her bottom was alive with tingling, sparkling, prickling anticipation. Every nerve quavered, eager to absorb what ought to come next. Unless, of course, he said, “Just kidding.”

  He still might. She had to remember that.

  “Look at me, Rylee.”

  Rylee dragged her gaze up his legs, his lap, his chest, and finally found his face again. She was shaking.

  “This is a practice run,” he said.

  Here it came.

  “I’m only going to give you five swats.” He held up his hand, corroborating his sentence with all five fingers, something she was instantly grateful for because she was having trouble enough absorbing all this. Half of her brain was still locked on ‘Don’t be disappointed’ and the other half was ‘Is it really happening? No… but, maybe… but, no.’

  “When I am done,” he continued, his tone soothing and calm, “you are going to get up from my knee, you are going to take off your very pretty dress, and you are going to go to sleep. I need you to be well-rested so we can negotiate our date. No offense, but you look like hell and I don’t want exhaustion to play any part in you not getting exactly what you need to out of our time together. Now, do you understand what I just told you?”

  Yes. He was going to spank her five times. Just five. She was finally going to feel what it was like.

  Rylee nodded.

  Walker patted his left thigh. “Bend over.”

  She shook so badly. Right from the start he had to help her, but still she felt awkward and clumsy. Like she wasn’t doing it right. She tried to crawl over both his thighs, but he maneuvered her until she was lying with his left leg alone balanced up under her hips. He scissored his right over the back of her left leg, capturing it tightly, but leaving the other free to kick and fuss as much as she wanted.

  She didn’t have panties on. The view such kicking would give him. Thankfully, although short, both her skirt and bathrobe did extend far enough to cover…

  A whisper of cool air swept up the backs of her legs as he slipped a hand under both and raised both high up over her hips.

  He’d just bared her ass.

  Her ass was now bare.

  Walker Daniels was right now looking at her bare-naked ass with his equally bare hand resting on the upper slope of her thigh. His hand already felt hot and he hadn’t yet started.

  He might not start either. Except she was already in prime spanking position over his lap. Except don’t get your hopes up, because practice run and all that…

  “Five spanks,” Walker reminded, his deep voice nothing but calm. Damn near serene.

  Rylee wasn’t breathing right. Her heart hammered against her ribs. She’d waited so very long for this experience, and God knew, she deserved it. For what she’d done to Tammi Lou, she deserved a thousand times worse than a mere five swats, but at least this was a start.

  “Keep your feet down,” he told the back of her head, and Rylee immediately locked her legs. “You’re going to want to kick, but I will start over from the beginning and I will add an additional penalty if you do.”

  She nodded. “Okay.”

  “Keep your hands down too. I don’t want to accidentally hurt your fingers because they’re in the way. If you reach back, I’m going to start over and I’m going to penalize you again.”

  Rylee nodded again. Penalty for kicking; penalty for handing off. Sports rules. She could remember that.

  “This first time—”

  First time? Her nerves fizzled and her heart stumbled.

  “—I won’t make you count,” Walker continued. “I’m going to do that for you, because all I want you to do right now is pay attention.”

  She was sooo paying attention. He had all her attention. All her immediate attention and all her future attention—it was all his.

  “Your only job is to listen to what I tell you and to let it affect you honestly. Do you understand?”

  Her throat was too tight for talking. Rylee squeaked and nodded instead.

  “The CCC safeword is red. Do you remember that?”

  She nodded again.

  “You’re still not using it,” he noted, pausing long enough to make sure she still intended not to. “All right, then. Let’s beg
in.” His hand moved up her thigh and onto the full fleshy curve of her right bottom cheek.

  Rylee grabbed, though it wouldn’t be until the spanking was long over that she realized what she’d latched onto was the chair leg with one hand and a fistful of his jeans with her other.

  “One,” he said calmly and clearly, something that contrasted sharply with the thunderclap whack that positively shocked her bottom when his broad bare hand flattened the entire summit, filling every nerve beneath with a burst of raw pain and the furious sting that immediately followed it.

  Rylee didn’t squeak, she cawed—a bark of undignified sound that accompanied her involuntary breakage of every rule he’d thus far laid down. She forgot about not kicking; her feet shot up. The restrained one whacked his thigh and went no further, but the unrestrained right leg got all the way up, foot tucking in defense of her smarting ass. She forgot about holding on too, her left elbow whacked the back of his chair, but her right snapped back, palm up and fingers splayed as wide apart as they could go in an attempt to cover as much as possible.

  “Oh, no!” she gasped, eyes as wide as disbelief could make them. In all the times that she had seen Walker play, he had never, ever, not one time spanked anyone without a warmup. His warmups were legendary. They were seduction incarnate. They were so popular and so eye-catching that Sophie had once invited him to give a class at the CCC on how to give a warmup spanking. Seventeen submissives had volunteered for it. She had hyperventilated in the bathroom just trying to work up the nerve. And this… this was definitely not a warmup. Not by his well-known standards or anybody else’s. This was…

  Real.

  Rylee’s jaw dropped, her breath catching and not just because of the intensifying sting now chewing its way through her bottom flesh, growing worse by the second instead of better. This was a real spanking. A disciplinary spanking. Walker Daniels was sitting on a chair in her kitchen and he was giving her a disciplinary spanking the likes of which she hadn’t known existed outside of fantasy novels.

  Or, domestic discipline-based relationships.

  Didn’t one first have to have the relationship to get that kind of spanking?

  “You just earned your first two penalties, which is really very sad,” Walker said, and he even managed to sound sad when he said it. Sad and yet resolute. “Because as you’re going to find out when I give them, one penalty is bad enough. Two will hurt terribly, and we’ve only just started. Move your hand and put your feet down, or I will double the penalties and instead of two starting-over swats, you’ll get four. Do you want that?”

  Rylee shook her head wildly.

  “You know what the safeword is.”

  She nodded.

  “Then move your hands and feet.”

  Breathing hard and fast, Rylee lowered her feet to the floor. The urge to kick them up again was insane. Instead of only four more of those blistering swats, she had six left to go! She locked her fists on both the chair’s and Walker’s legs, clinging on for dear life.

  “Your first start-over swat,” Walker said, and then delivered it.

  If Rylee could have got up off his lap, she would have, but Walker in his expertise had already wrapped his free arm across her back and around her hip.

  “Your second start-over swat.” He gave that one too, and how was it even possible that it could hurt this much more? “One,” he said again, as she fought herself not to kick or let go of the chair. “Because you’re hiding something.”

  Rylee almost let go of the chair all over again. Eyes huge, she stared at the floor without truly seeing it. She caught breath after gaspy breath, but all she could think was exactly what he’d just said. One… because you’re hiding something.

  He knew? He knew what she’d done? Oh, shit, he knew about Tammi Lou!

  “Two,” Walker said. “Because you ran away.”

  She panicked. Her hands fluttered, a spasm of grabbing that never quite fully made it back behind her, but only because her left elbow whacked the back of his chair again and his right hand clamped down on her other wrist.

  “Let’s just tuck this here,” he said, as if doing her the biggest favor. He pinned her arm against her own hip. “So you don’t get yourself into any more trouble.”

  That meant it was going to get worse. Rylee panicked all over again.

  “Three,” Walker continued the count. “Because you know what you need to do, and four, because you’re avoiding it.”

  She was mortified. How had he found out? Who told him? Did Tammi Lou herself know why she had gotten so sick, and why was she only getting five? She deserved so much more than that for what she’d done.

  A rush of hot tears stung her nose and filled her eyes. Rylee barely had time to suck in a breath and brace herself before his hand caught her again, two smacks this time, both of them every bit as hard as the first had been, each of them building on the hurt and the sting of the ones that had come before it.

  “Five,” he said, announcing the last, and she broke down completely. “Because every single one of the reasons I just gave you is as good as a lie, and I won’t be lied to, Rylee.”

  The whole of her hot and throbbing bottom cringed to avoid what she knew she couldn’t… and shouldn’t. Thankfully, he was holding her hand, otherwise there was no way she could have stopped herself from thrusting it back in that last defense of a bottom that already smarted so fiercely and that deserved to hurt even more.

  Nor would she have been able to keep both feet firmly on the floor; it was all she could do to keep from kicking the one he’d allowed to stay free.

  “Please… please… please,” she was crying, begging, but to be honest, she didn’t know what she was begging for. She wanted him to stop, but she didn’t deserve for this to be over yet. She needed more. She’d earned it, and she’d earned for it to be every bit as awful as he’d just delivered.

  In that, Walker did not disappoint. Were she not already in tears, his parting swat would have left her bawling. She drummed her feet against the floor, waggling and humping her bottom with little regard for the show she gave him. It didn’t even help. No matter how she wiggled or moved, the pain still stung her, still chewed deep into her naked flesh, and even when it at last began to fade, that was when the burning rose up to take its place. The burning and the throbbing both.

  “Ow,” she moaned, only vaguely aware when he let go of her arm and her imprisoned left leg and eased her up to sit, oh so tenderly, upon his knee. “Ow… that really hurts!”

  “It ought to,” he told her.

  A connoisseur of self-help and books designed to help her get what she wanted out of life, still Rylee didn’t think she’d yet encountered words more brutal and yet more honest. Groaning, she tried to touch the source of all that awful burning, but he blocked her hand.

  “No rubbing,” he said, firm but not unsympathetically.

  She clasped her hands over her stomach to keep from reaching back again, but she couldn’t stop thinking about it. Did he know? Why had he stopped at five? Those five had been hell, why did she want more? Sniffling, hiccupping, staring at her knees because she felt bad enough about what she’d done without adding anyone else’s censure into the mix, Rylee couldn’t stop herself from whispering, “I didn’t mean to lie.”

  Taking hold of her chin, with gentle force Walker brought her gaze to his. “I don’t know what’s eating into you, Rylee, but I do know this sort of thing doesn’t go away by itself. If you want to be free of it, it takes more than a few spanks and some scattered tears. You have to be sorry.”

  She was. Rylee swallowed hard. She really, honestly was.

  “You have to confess and apologize.”

  Oh, please no… She could apologize. She’d rush to apologize even, but did anyone else really have to know? Everyone would look at her differently. They’d hate her, and she didn’t have a whole lot of friends to start with.

  “And then you have to accept the consequences of your actions. If you need me to dish
those consequences out, I can do that,” he promised. He was very believable when he said that too. With her bottom still smarting and on fire, she absolutely believed he could dish out all the consequences she could take, plus some. “But I’m not going to spank you again without a confession, an apology, and then you have to ask me for your punishment. Confess,” he held up one finger, while she stared in open-mouthed dismay. “Apologize,” a second finger joined the first, then up popped the third. “Ask. That’s all you have to do, and I’ll take care of the rest.”

  All? Inside her, Rylee’s heart and stomach both sank. All. He said that as if it were nothing. Three tiny little tasks of no great import when, from where she was sitting on a hot and throbbing bottom, perched upon a knee more than capable of holding her both sitting upright and sprawled facedown, those three little things were tasks of such Herculean impossibility that she didn’t even know where to start.

  Confess? To who? To Tammi Lou, or to him? Either way, she’d almost rather be eaten alive by sharks.

  He smiled, but his eyes suggested he knew exactly what she was thinking. “Pretty easy, huh?”

  She could feel her insides shriveling, even as she made herself smile back. “Yeah.”

  She’d definitely rather be eaten by sharks.

  Chapter Three

  Walker washed his hair four times before he was confident he no longer smelled like drill-fire smoke. Someone had donated their back-acre shed to the fire department for easy demolition. And they, being the fire department, demolished it in the Ladder 54 way. They set it on fire, let it burn itself into an absolute monster of a bonfire, and then they practiced putting it out. There was no arsonist quite like a fireman, as the saying went and, in this county, he was the best arsonist of them all. And yet, it took him three attempts to get the flames going, and his hair stank like it. The whole of him stank like… well, like a fireman in gear that badly needed a scrub down. The problem was, he couldn’t concentrate. He blamed Rylee.

  Don’t think about it, he told himself as he turned his back to the spray and tipped his soapy head into the flow. Don’t think about how good it had felt to hold her pinned across his lap while he busted her butt with seven blistering swats. Or how she had broken down, crying the way only a submissive burdened with guilt could do. Anyone else would have come up off his lap pissed and probably swinging. Rylee had come up wanting to be held, albeit unable to ask for that any easier than she’d been able to ask for the spanking to start with.