Last Dance for Cadence Read online

  …then I would spank you…

  Cane held tight in her hand, Cadence folded her arms across her chest. She struck a defensive pose, absolutely refusing to feel like a little girl about to be scolded in the den by her father. She barely remembered her father, but she knew for a fact Marcus wasn’t him. Regardless of what he might think. Maybe someone ought to remind him of that fact. She squared her shoulders, gearing herself up to be that someone, but she never got the chance.

  Coming into the room behind her, Marcus closed and then locked the door. Without a word, he took the cane away from her, laying it down upon his desk before clamping his warm hand onto the back of her neck. Careful not to propel any faster than she could move, he marched her into the nearest corner. Or rather, because the actual corner was taken up by a coat rack, he parked her next to it with her nose positioned not two inches from the anatomy poster hanging on the wall. She was so startled, all she could do was stare in shock at the musculature of the human body, while behind her, in soft and serious tones, Marcus said, “You are their nanny, but I am their father. Don’t ever countermand my authority in front of them again, is that clear?”

  “I wasn’t—” She stopped with a start when he shifted his grip from her neck to her shoulder.

  “Do you want to get your bag and return to Venia’s?” he asked, his question every bit as firm as a demand.

  Although he didn’t actually say it, Cadence knew what he was really asking. An explosion of phantom sensations shot up the backs of her thighs and spread out like a wave across her bottom.

  Was he going to spank her? Right now? She was a grown woman. This could not be happening! And why did this feel like excitement rather than anger or dread? She wasn’t excited by this, the prospect of his hand clapping hard down across her bottom. Surely not!

  “No,” she said, her throat so tight that it came out raspy and hoarse.

  He swatted her, sending an entirely different and anything but phantom explosion of sensation biting into the round curve of her right buttock. The impact jolted out her hips and buckled her knees. She caught the wall at the same time Marcus caught her.

  “Steady,” he said, soft and calm, a tone that was at complete odds with the force that had been behind that breath-taking swat.

  Cadence hugged the wall, holding herself as steady as she could, her legs shaking under her in a way that had absolutely nothing—nothing at all—to do with her messed up knees. And it wasn’t over yet. How could it not be over? Her brain scrambled to make sense of it when he shifted his hold on her, wrapping one strong arm around her waist to help hold her, positioning his body to bolster her own before continuing. His hand clapped hard across her left bottom cheek, not once now but twice. She lost her composure to a yelp, more startlement than pain, when the fourth and last spank bounced back off her right side, and suddenly everything fell very silent and very still.

  Her heart was a thundering storm inside her chest.

  His heart was steady and calm. She knew because she could feel its heady beat where her shoulder pressed against his chest. It was like being hugged by a furnace. Everywhere he touched her burned.

  His spanking hand came to rest at the small of her back. She had never been so intensely aware of how close a man was to touching her bottom, not ever before in her life.

  In that calm, no-nonsense voice of his, Marcus said, “Don’t ever countermand my authority in front of my children again, is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir.” The response was as instantaneous as it was startling to hear. Those servile words simply fell right out of her mouth, as if she said them all the time. Up until this exact moment, she hadn’t thought once about giving Marcus that kind of deference. But it came out so naturally and filled up the situation between them with such earth-shaking significance that she didn’t know if it were even possible to take them back again.

  “Can you hold yourself up?”

  She nodded, but she honestly didn’t know what would happen when he let her go. “I’m fine,” she whispered. “I’m fine.”

  His fingers trailed right up her spine, and a long, slow shiver followed with it. When he reached her shoulder, he gave it a comforting squeeze. She didn’t know how to reconcile that kind of comfort with what he’d just done. There were a lot of things she didn’t know just then.

  Marcus let her go. Assuming he was going to leave her there, she didn’t turn around. But a half second later, she startled all over again when she heard the soft thump and felt the slight bump of a wooden chair tucking right up behind her.

  “Hold still,” he said, as he reached around her waist. And Cadence did. She held perfectly still, even as the incredible shock of what he was doing bounced through her mind all over again. She felt the button at her pants release, heard the metal teeth of her zipper clicking down its track and still she couldn’t believe he was stripping her out of her jeans even when he tugged, shucking them straight down her thighs. Her underwear followed, leaving her entire backend chilling in the very sudden, breezy absence of cover.

  “Sit,” he told her.

  Her knees buckled when she tried, and Cadence more collapsed onto the chair he’d positioned behind her.

  “Naughty bottom on the seat,” he said, before tapping an invisible spot on the wall directly in front of her. “Nose right here.”

  Did he mean that figuratively or…?

  Cadence bent uncertainly, but he didn’t correct her, not even when she touched the tip of her nose to the off-white paint of the wall.

  “You have five minutes of timeout. I’ll come and get you when you’re done. If you come out of this corner before then, I will put you over my knee and I will spank you for real.”

  That hadn’t been real?

  “Did you hear me?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said again.

  He walked out of his office then, leaving her with her nose on the wall and her bare bottom on that chair and suffocating under the most incredible sensation of utter chastisement that she had ever felt. The wall began to blur before her.

  She wouldn’t cry. She refused to cry. Cadence never, ever cried, not even with a freshly spanked bottom and her nose as close to being in the corner as that stupid coat rack would allow. She blinked furiously and willed the heat in her face to die back and the sting in her eyes to go away. The sting in her southern cheeks was a little slower in complying, but maybe that was only because sitting in this chair of shame made the contrition of needing to be spanked feel all that much worse.

  Never had five minutes taken so long to pass her by. She heard his footsteps come up the hall, but it passed right by her door and carried him steadily upstairs instead. Silence filled the house, punctuated by her own soft breaths and the whisper-soft ticks of an unseen clock somewhere behind her.

  Heavy footsteps and the sound of father and son conversing announced Marcus’s steady descent back downstairs.

  “All of them, please. I want the kitchen spic and span,” was all she heard him say, and that only happened because he’d opened his office door at the same time he’d said it.

  “I know,” Michael grumbled, but she could tell he was already halfway down the short hall, retreating toward the kitchen.

  Cadence kept her nose on the wall even after the doctor came inside and closed the door behind him.

  “You may turn around now.”

  She sat back from the wall, but made no effort at all to turn around until he came up behind her, took hold of the chair and pulled just a little further back from the wall. He stepped in between her and the coat rack, once more catching her chin between his fingers, physically lifting her face so he could see her. Cadence hadn’t realized until that exact moment just how angry she was. She’d never hated anyone before, but right there in that brittle space in time, she was sure she hated Marcus.

  It took everything she had to keep that hatred off her face.

  “You may come out of the corner,” Marcus softly repeated, “if you think you can
be civil.”

  One more word. Just one more. She’d show him civil.

  When she still didn’t move, Marcus said, “I’m going to hug you now…”

  Go ahead and try it, buster. Her mouth ached to tell him exactly what he could do with his hugs.

  “…and then you will be forgiven…”

  She was going to tell him what to do with his forgiveness too.

  “…and then it’s done, do you understand?”

  He waited, as if to give her a chance to either argue or comply. Cadence couldn’t make herself do either. She said nothing and she didn’t move, not even when he hooked his hand under her elbow. When he prodded, she stood, stiff and wooden, with her pants sliding down her legs into a puddle of useless denim around her shins.

  His arms came around her, drawing her in, pulling her right up until she had no choice but to lay her head upon his shoulder. He smelled good, just like his aftershave. His arms felt good too, strong and comforting, folding in around her as if he had no clue whatsoever just how much she hated him. Despised him. Wished he were dead, even, buried under all these Colorado mountains, just one gigantic and flat bloody smear with the weight of the rocks crushing his bones into dust.

  “It’s all right,” Marcus murmured, stroking her hair. “It’s all right, Cadence.”

  But it wasn’t.

  She felt the brush of his hand as he gently rubbed her back and something deep inside her, something so thin and fragile that she hadn’t even known it existed way down in the deeps of her flesh and soul, snapped. She felt it, the crispness and cruel irrevocability of that break. And Cadence, who never, ever cried, felt it when he folded his arms just that much tighter around her, as if he too had felt that brittle snap, and totally fell apart.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The next morning with her legs screaming in protest the instant she started to move, Cadence rolled out of bed. It wasn’t even six o’clock yet, which was comforting in a way. It reminded her of her dancing days, back when practice routines started long before the sun put in an appearance. There would be no dancing today, though. If her knees had anything to say about it, there wasn’t going to be much walking, either. It was sheer force of will that got her onto her feet. If it weren’t for the wall, she never would have made it to the bathroom. Once she was moving, however, she limbered up and walking became easier. Not any less painful really, but easier. Digging the aspirin out of her bag, she took four and then she took a shower.

  Marcus was waiting for her in the family room, already dressed for the day in comfortable beige trousers and a white, button-up shirt with the sleeves already rolled up past his elbows.

  “Where’s your cane?” he said before she even set foot in the family room. She had to go back to her room and get it, but when she again entered the family room a few minutes later, she did so with the cane held stubbornly in her fist. She didn’t lean on it once and if he said one word about it, she was going to clock him one.

  Marcus made absolutely no comments, but what he did say when she was at last standing before him was delivered with a certain degree of censure and a mildly aggravating twist of a smile. “I’m very serious about your having a cane with you at all times. That cane goes with you wherever you go. Forget it again, and I’m going to spank you. Agreed?”

  “I’m perfectly aware of what my capabilities are,” she said testily.

  “I’m glad to hear that. But until you start heeding what your body is telling you regarding those capabilities, I guess I’m going to have to heed them for you.”

  “You can make me carry it, but you can’t make me use it.”

  “Of course, I can. I’m simply picking my battles. Still, I want you to know I brought a few implements down to my office this morning, one being a wood-backed hairbrush. The first time you fall because you stubbornly insist on carrying your cane instead of using it, I am going to spank you with that hairbrush.”

  It was a convincing threat, one that was delivered with a smile. How he managed to do that and still be so very believable she didn’t know. She did, however, put the end of the cane on the ground. She refused to lean on it, but she did hold it the way it was meant to be held. And she glared at him the entire time she did it. It was hard to hold onto the intensity of her irritation when all she felt inside was so completely, thoroughly chastened.

  “Good girl,” he said, deepening that feeling to depths of uncomfortable humiliation the likes of which she hadn’t known existed. Her stomach squirmed, knotting up in an instant, although maybe that had more to do with the fact that he had reached for her, cupping her elbow while he took her cane away to lay it on the coffee table a short distance away. His hand was firm on her arm. “Can you lay down on the floor?”

  “Why?” she asked suspiciously.

  “I’m going to massage your legs to start and then we’re going to do some gentle stretching exercises. Once I show you how, you’ll be able to do these on your own throughout the day if you feel your legs begin to get tight. It should help with the muscle cramps.”

  She barely heard him, her brain having locked in on the first of two major problems: He was going to touch her? The other was more immediate. “I have to get down on the floor?”

  He braced his foot directly in front of both of hers, shifting his grip on her from her arm to her hands. “Hold onto me,” he assured. “I’ll help you. Lean back.”

  “No.” She stiffened, refusing to move, even when both his hands took hold of hers.

  “Lean back,” he encouraged. “I won’t drop you, I promise.” His smile turned dazzling, teasing. She didn’t know what was worse: his Jekyll or his Hyde. How could this be the same man who had spanked her last night and threatened again to spank her this morning? With a hairbrush, no less.

  He took hold of her hands.

  “Mm.” It was a soft and worried whimper, barely muffled behind tightly closed lips, but he moved with her, holding her easily as he lowered her to the carpeted floor. His foot kept hers from slipping, and her only break in composure came at that inevitable moment when her knees were forced to bend. She sucked a hard breath, but managed to keep from crying out.

  “It’s okay,” he said, easing her all the way down. “It will get easier, I promise.”

  It had been almost a year and it hadn’t gotten easier yet. Some days it felt like it was getting worse.

  Cadence lay on her back, her irritation just minutes ago now a thing of the past. She gazed up at Marcus as if he were the only lifeguard and she were drowning in the deep end of a pain-filled pool. Her legs were shaking already. She struggled to stop it, or at least to hide it so he wouldn’t see it too.

  Standing over her, Marcus straddled her legs. He patted his thigh. “Right foot.”

  She looked at his thigh, then at the ceiling. “I’m wearing a skirt,” she said, not moving.

  “Are you wearing underwear?” he countered.

  Her face flushed hot. “Yes.”

  “I saw you in significantly less than that yesterday. Right foot.” He patted his thigh again.

  “That was yesterday.”

  “We can repeat it again today, if you like. How’s this morning work for you?” He snapped his fingers and then pointed, with significant authority, at his thigh.

  Cadence made a face. She also cupped her knee, needing to lift with both hands to get her foot up there.

  “I think you might have overdone it yesterday,” Marcus said, circling her calf with his hands.

  “I don’t need a lecture,” she snapped. She tried not to enjoy it when he stroked her leg, moving from knee to ankle and scar to scar. She thought it was going to hurt when he finally began to rub, but what little discomfort there was as his fingers sought out tension in the tight muscles of her calf was mitigated entirely by the intimacy of his skin on hers.

  “Sorry,” he said, with a tsk and a shake of his head, both of which said clearly no sincere apology would be forthcoming. “Lectures come free with the service, I’m
afraid.”

  His hands felt wonderful. This was magic, sheer magic, and although she didn’t want to like it, already her body was relaxing. His fingers molded her flesh, seeming to find all the problem places that at first brush made her cringe, then melt. By the time he finished with her right leg, Cadence was halfway to being boneless all over.

  Lowering her leg gently to the floor, Marcus patted his other thigh. “Right here, sweetheart.”

  The endearment was probably nothing more than reflex for a handsome man like him, and Cadence knew that. But every nerve in her body still came humming to erotic life when she heard it. She gripped her left leg, lifting it up until he caught her ankle, bringing her foot to rest upon his other thigh. Then it started all over again, the magic of his fingers as he sought out every trace of stiffness and tension. He stroked, rubbed, pressed and caressed. He found every scar, the knobs of every pin. He saw her legs in all their ugliness, something she hadn’t let anyone do since leaving her therapy doctors behind her and that brief glimpse she’d given Venia the other day. Normally, this would have been a point of extreme stress for her, but at this exact moment, with his warm hands rubbing and rubbing at her, she just couldn’t summon enough bones to resist the magic of his touch.

  “Good girl,” he chuckled when her eyes drifted closed. “I’m glad you like it, but don’t go back to sleep.”

  “There’s nothing to like,” she said. Oh Lord, why did that have to come out with all the bedroom huskiness of a moan?

  “No, of course not.” His smile said he wasn’t fooled. Lowering that leg to the floor now too, he shifted his stance over her. “How about some gentle stretches?”

  She was so relaxed right now, she wasn’t sure she could move. She managed to hold that thought right until Marcus turned around. He straddled her hips now, his big feet planted to either side of her right before he lowered himself to one knee. His butt was right there now, and it was one fine, fine butt, perfectly exemplified by the trousers he wore. Cadence tried not to stare, but as he reached to grip her right shin, against her will, her eyes were drawn.