Hers to Choose (Cannon Cousins) (10 page)

But all she could think
of was Alex’s hands on her body, his gorgeous cock in her mouth, his lips
searing her. Her eyes rolled and she put a trembling hand on the cabinet to
steady herself.

The front door closed and
in a few seconds, Alex appeared in the kitchen doorway, his lower parts clothed
in worn jeans. His sinewy arms tangled in a t-shirt, turning it right side out
before pausing briefly to send his searing gaze across the room. Then he pulled
the shirt over his head and ducked back into the living room.

She couldn’t keep from
following, hoping for some kind of communication. But he positioned himself at
the far end of the room, snapping on the table lamp before violently shaking
out the newspaper and riveting his stare to the page. 

Okay, she could take a
hint. She pulled on her jeans.
To hell with Dan and his maid
outfit.
It was cold. Wind rattled the back door and a shiver of
gooseflesh ran up her arms. Temperature seemed to be dropping like a stone
outside—she would need to keep the woodstove going all night. Ignoring Alex,
she squatted in front of the stove and shoved in a couple more logs.

She set the plate of food
in front of Dan and waited. Obviously he was starving—he hardly glanced up as
he worked his way through the meatloaf and potatoes. She brought a big slab of
peach cobbler. In a few minutes, these guys would go back to the cabin and
she’d be left to satisfy herself. No way could she attempt to sleep with this
throbbing heat exploding in her body.

“Miss McClure,” Dan said,
stopping her in her tracks.

“Yes, sir,” she turned to
stand by the table.

“Did Alex give you
permission to wear that instead of the costume?” he waved his hand, glancing up
and down her body dismissively.

“Not
exactly.”

He had dressed in a faded
shirt and jeans, maybe something he kept in the truck—they were pretty
wrinkled. His pale eyes examined her face, as if he could read an explanation
there. “And did he deliver any discipline for your disobedience?”

“Yes.” She thrust out her
chin. Dan wasn’t on her mind at the moment, not with Alex’s scent still on her
skin.           

He turned sideways in his
chair to look toward the couch. “Alex? What about the damn outfit? Did you
spank her? Is more discipline required?”

Alex carefully lowered
the newspaper to his crossed leg and studied Dan, his gaze darting for a moment
to Bryn. Why didn’t he simply tell Dan to go to the cabin and then spend the
night in her bed? Her body slightly weakened at the rash stupidity of her idea.

“Probably,
if you’ve got the energy for it.”

Bryn’s mouth fell open.
The bastard!

“I’m damn tired. And the
paddle is at the cabin.” Dan brought himself around in the chair and tossed his
napkin onto the plate before looking at her. “Bring me something adequate for
your spanking.”

Whirling around and
stomping into the kitchen, Bryn wanted to find the biggest stick in the house
and break it over Alex’s head. Anger clouded her eyes as she glanced around the
room. In the back corner by the door, she found a paint-stirring stick leaning
against the wall behind two half-used gallons of paint. A coating of pale aqua
covered half of it.

“Here,” she said, tossing
the stick onto the table near Dan. “Have fun.”

“That’s not very
submissive.”

“Sorry, sir,” she
mumbled.

“Pants off,” he ordered.

She let the jeans sag
around her knees. There was nothing to tie her to. And she didn’t know if there
would be any pleasure in spanking without restraint. Even with restraint, as
furious as she was at this moment, she doubted the spanking would be remotely
stimulating. Nothing like laying across Alex’s lap with his hand resting on her
ass.

“Grab the chair seat,” he
said, standing up.

She hesitated.  She
hadn’t bent over for him before. This put her in an even more humiliating
position, and she wasn’t exactly warmed up to Dan at the moment. But then, if
she had her way, it would be Alex’s bare ass in front of her hickory switch
with ten lashes for abandoning her. Twenty lashes. Let him rot in hell. She
grabbed the wooden chair seat and presented her ass to Dan.

Whap!
The flat stick whammed across her
buttocks.

Shit! Something about the
paint gave it an extra sting. She couldn’t keep from shuddering as it landed on
her skin. But then, Alex’s hand had already warmed her up. Juices surged
against the tiny silk thong on her crotch.

Whap!
She tried to suppress the groan. The
stick burned a lot more than Alex’s hand and tugged the thong strap deeper. Her
sensitive breasts smoldered, heaving forward with each blow and pulling against
the sweater. Her lower belly contracted in a throbbing lump.

For the first time, it occurred
to her that spanking might produce an orgasm.

Whap!
Whap!
She moaned out loud,
moving her ass involuntarily against the stick as it hit her, her clit hard and
pulsing.

Whap!
Whap!
Whap!
A flood of
juice poured through her drenched pussy, her clit contracting repeatedly as she
shuddered in unexpected throes of a strange kind of orgasm.

Whap! Whap!
Searing heat rushed down her legs and
up her belly. Sweat filmed her breasts and neck. Her pussy clenched repeatedly,
sending fresh waves of cream against the soaked panties.

Silence.
She felt Dan move back. Not sure
whether to laugh or cry, she hesitated before standing to pull up her pants.
Her knuckles gripped white on the back of the chair as she struggled to regain
some kind of composure. Tears stood in her eyes.

A stronger humiliation
than ever captured her, that Dan had brought an orgasm with his spanking but
also that Alex had sat there and done nothing. If anything made it clear about
his view of her, this did it. She wanted to rub herself to finalize the
contractions of her still-pulsing orgasm. But she couldn’t let these men know
what had happened. Trying to keep her knees from buckling, she kept her eyes
lowered and waited for Dan.

He cleared his throat and
in a breathless voice said, “That’s a better attitude, Miss McClure. You may go
now.”

Dismissed.
Livid, she clattered his silverware
onto the empty plate and hurried into the kitchen, where she had to restrain
herself from throwing the plate against the wall. Steam rose off the hot water
pouring into the sink as she squeezed in a bunch of soap and rattled through
the dishes.

Conflicting emotions
raged. It wasn’t only that the discipline she had agreed to had exploded into
ferocious sexual desire. It was also that she was desperately wanted to remain
submissive, never make another decision,
give
herself
to Dan’s absolute control. After Ethan, she had sworn never to get into that
kind of situation.
And underneath all that raged this
confusion about Alex.
  All of it really messed with her mind.

Another trip to the
dining table revealed the men in conversation at the seating area and she
relaxed slightly to finish clearing the table and blow out the candle. She was
wiping down the kitchen cabinets when Alex’s voice came to her from the
doorway.

“We’re headed back to the
cabin,” he said. “Breakfast early
tomorrow,
we’re not
going into the woods ‘til midday.”

“Yes, sir,” she said
through her teeth, meeting his eyes with a level stare. She wanted him to want
her, think about her,
spend
time alone with her. But
based on his actions and the arrangement with Dan, that simply could not
happen.

Damn it, she didn’t even
want it to happen. She waited, eyes locked with his in a battle of withheld
thought, until he looked down and turned.

The red truck taillights
slowly disappeared down the slope toward the cabin. She went to her room,
ripped off the garments, hurled them against the wall, threw the boots deep
into her closet, and tried to figure out what had happened. The spanking orgasm
did not leave her satisfied.
Some kind of freakish accident
of her overwrought body.
Of course, Alex’s activities had set her up for
it. She stood in the shower, letting the stream of water from the shower
massage pulse over her clit until she felt numb.

Nothing worked. No
release. What the hell was going on? It shouldn’t matter what these men did.
The objective had been met—money, buying enough time for her to figure out how
to make more money. The hunting idea had been a good one. And much as her
control had frayed, the discipline was deeply satisfying.

But the men did matter.
Within a few days’ time around them, she had become obsessed with physical
contact. Hell, she had been smitten by Alex’s voice on the phone, and now after
only a few days, maybe she was in over her head. Could she play this game
without getting hurt?

She flopped from side to
side in her bed, slowly allowing herself to remember Alex’s mouth on her, his
hands on her skin, his body crushed next to hers.
Those eyes,
watching her, smiling.
Damn it! She flung back the covers, threw a robe
over her tense body, and went to the kitchen. Sleet tapped the windows as she
poured a glass of milk and pulled one after another chocolate chip cookie out
of the zipper bag.

***

Alex gripped the steering wheel.

“So yeah,” he said
finally, resuming the discussion Dan had started at the house. “I decided to
swat her a few times, since you weren’t there. I don’t know if she takes me
seriously.”

“I’m not sure she takes
me seriously either. It’s a set up deal. What the hell difference does it
make?”

“It’s supposed to vent
your anger.”

“It’s going to take more
than this. A few swats on her ass, and she’s obviously hot for it.”

“Yeah,” Alex mused,
easing the truck over a rough patch in the roadway and watching sleet bounce
off the windshield. “Jesus, she is hot.”

Shut
up, Alex.
Next
thing, you’ll be telling Dan to stay away from her.

At the cabin, they lit
the kerosene lamps, and Alex stirred the coals before shoving in more wood.

“I had no idea, you
know?” Dan continued.

“What, about her?” Alex
pulled off his jacket and started unlacing his boots. “Hell, I didn’t either.
The photo on her website doesn’t do her justice.”

“No, I don’t care how she
looks. Well, I take that back. She’s a fucking knockout. But I don’t know how
much that affects this discipline thing. You always hear some joke about it,
you know, some oblique reference. But to actually paddle a woman’s ass, I’m
telling you, I think I’m hooked.”

Alex took a deep breath.
“You know, there are rules. It’s not supposed to be about dumping anger. I
mean,
maybe that works for us right now. We got lucky, and
it’s a set up deal. It’s supposed to be about needing to dominate someone, or
submit to someone.
Emotionally, psychologically.
Hell,
I don’t know that much about it. Dominants,
submissives
,
tops and bottoms—the little bit of investigating I did kind of set me back.
These people train for it.
All kinds of gear, methods,
reciprocal relationships.
I’m not sure I could need it that bad.”

“Yeah, Wade said a bunch
of the same thing. I don’t give a damn about all that, except to make sure what
I do here is appropriate. I guess it’s enough to spank this McClure woman and
think of Cathleen,” Dan said, throwing down his boot and collapsing back onto
the bed. “As long as she doesn’t mind, it works for me.”

Alex lay on the bed, the
image of Bryn’s ass exposed in front of Dan, her body pulsing forward with each
slap of that goddamn paint board. Maybe he felt a little less like killing Dan,
now that he saw how much she seemed to get off on it. It still didn’t make much
sense.

What made even less sense
was his out-of-control desire. Her lips, the scent of her skin, her body over
his knees—his cock stiffened fully, had never quite softened since he’d had her
in his arms. He had no intention of touching her at all, didn’t give a damn if
she wore boots or a bathrobe. His attempt at discipline had been an excuse to
touch her. And once he started, he couldn’t stop.

Cathleen, he reminded
himself. He forced his memory back to his college days, when Cathleen had been
the center of his universe. He couldn’t stand Cathleen now; he’d like to spit
on her for what she did to Dan. But it hardly made sense to get between Dan and
this hopeful effort to bring him back from the brink. And he’d pretty much done
nothing but get in the way ever since they arrived. It confused the situation.

“Dan?”

“Hum?”

“I, uh, got a call from
the office earlier, something about the open house.” He had to make this
happen, whatever it required. “I’m thinking I’ll try for that buck again
tomorrow, but then run back up to the office for a day or two, try to get
things back on track before the next showing. We can’t risk the realtors losing
interest.”