Authors: Carolyn Faulkner
He’d even volunteer to brush it for her. When he found the right woman for him, he knew that hair care wouldn’t be the only purpose he’d have for her hairbrush.
Ginger wasn’t rail-thin, either, which was another way he bucked the societal trends. He much preferred a woman who
looked
like a woman, and not a
bean-pole
. He liked
well defined
feminine areas, and he thought that most men did, regardless of what the
fashionistas
said.
She fit the bill most perfectly. Probably better than any other woman he’d ever met. He liked her bratty spunk, although it needed curbing, badly, and he was just the man to do it.
Sean had always been, necessarily, careful about how much of his interest in discipline he revealed to a woman at first, because some were completely offended by it, and he knew he had to tread delicately.
However, he got a vibe from Ginger that told him he was definitely on the right track. He’d had other instances in his life when he had to trust his instincts - life or death situations - and he’d always lived through them. If she rejected him, he’d live through that. But, damn, she was awfully close to perfect for him, and he’d never felt this way about a woman in so short a time.
It appeared that Scott had been right. Sean owed him a case of beer if this worked out. He knew that he wasn’t the only one being fixed up this weekend; Charlene had been busy on her end, too, to get Ginger there. He could end up owing her a case - make that a bottle - of Grand Marnier for her efforts on his behalf.
As he watched her, he realized that she was slowly drifting out towards the middle of the lake. Now,
Tunk
Lake wasn’t the busiest of lakes, even in the dead of summer. It was tucked well out of the way of the usual tourist’s radar, thankfully. That didn’t mean that he was going to let her get in too much further over her head.
So he swam towards her, not wanting to frighten her but determined to get her to come closer to shore by whatever means necessary.
“Ginger?” he said as he put one hand on her waist, pushing her ahead of him back towards the beach.
Of course, as gentle as he had tried to be, it was inevitable that he startled her out of position.
“Sorry. I just wanted to get you to come in a bit; you were starting to look like you were making a break for the opposite shore.”
“Oh. Thank you.” Embarrassed when she wasn’t sure why she should be, Ginger swam towards the light he’d put near their towels.
“Getting cold?” he asked solicitously when she hugged herself once she could touch bottom.
She shook her head. “No, not really.”
Sean kept a cautious distance, as much as he wanted to swim over there and take her into his arms. After a short, only slightly uncomfortable silence, he asked, “So how many tickets do you have?”
She burst out laughing, and he adored the sound of it washing over him and echoing off the water. “As if I’m going to tell you! What am I, stupid?”
Suddenly he wasn’t a few feet away, but right in front of her, blocking her view across the lake and gaining her immediately and complete attention.
“No, I’m just your friendly local cop who’s trying to watch out for you. If you don’t pay those, you could end up with a big fine, and jail time isn’t unheard of . . .”
She bit her lip, looking alarmed. “You’re just trying to scare me.”
“No, I’m trying to get you to do what you should have done the first time you got a ticket: pay it.”
Ginger cocked her head to one side. “And what if I thought the cop was wrong?”
“Then you should have challenged the ticket and had your day - or days, assuming you think that all of them were undeserved - in court.” His tone conveyed his severe doubts about her innocence, for some reason.
“Of course they were all undeserved! I was only going seventy-five -”
“Let me guess, in a sixty five mile and hour zone?”
Ginger huffed angrily. “I was the slowest car on 95! I was being passed like I was tied . . .”
The air suddenly went out of her argument as soon as he leveled that look at her. The one that said that she should have been a good girl and taken her punishment, because ten miles over the limit was still speeding.
“Don’t say it!” she warned, backing away from him in a very natural instinct at
self preservation
.
“Don’t say what?” he asked, his voice ultra quiet.
The quieter he was, the more nervous she got. “Don’t say that I should have just paid the fine when I got it because I was still breaking the law and no one else’s speed mattered but mine.”
“Sounds like you’ve got the
jist
of it yourself, young lady.”
It didn’t seem to matter where she swam, he was right there. Not touching her, but not
not
touching her, either.
Finally, she stood
,
only to realize that the water was only at her knees, and somehow she felt very bereft without its natural cover. She’d never felt quite that exposed in a bikini, but his big, blatantly dominant presence in front of her made her feel nearly naked.
When he stood, the water was only at his lower calf, and descending as he walked towards her
; she
didn’t like the look in his eyes one bit.
“So how many do you have, Lovely?” He stood in front of her, his hands on his hips, looking very authoritarian, like he’d stepped out of her last night’s wet dream.
Ginger wanted to take a step back - several steps back - but she couldn’t, somehow. It was
all his
fault, she knew. She shook her head, her mouth clamped closed against any sort of accidental blurting of the incriminating facts not yet in evidence.
“Well,” he said, taking another step closer, so that he was less than an arm’s length away, “It doesn’t really matter, anyway. Because having any unpaid ticket is cause for discipline.”
Ginger’s mouth went dry as her pulse went wild. “D-discipline?”
“Yes. As in having your pants and panties taken down so that your boyfriend can spank your bottom.”
“I don’t have a boyfriend,” she confessed before she could stop it.
He smiled, and not in a good way. “Well, then I believe we can solve two problems with one spanking, then, can’t we?”
Chapter IV
“No we can’t!” Backpedaling in the water, on soft, wet sand, was not recommended for escape, and she would have ended up flat on her ass in the water if his hand hadn’t shot out to steady her. But he didn’t just let her go. His big hand remained clamped firmly around her upper arm; a
hold which
he used to guide her out of the water and onto the beach, where he hastily arranged their towels.
He arranged her in a satisfactory position to deliver a good, thorough spanking with amazing speed, as far as Ginger was concerned. She was still working on having been rescued from falling backwards into the water, and then suddenly she found herself over his lap, her face practically planted in the sand until he tucked another towel there for her to lay her cheek on.
Not that she was going to take this lying down . . . metaphorically speaking. She wiggled and twisted and arched her back and tried to get leverage with her knees and dig her toes into the sand to rise up and get the hell out of this horribly awkward position, but five really sharp, very hard swats had her reconsidering her position in a hurry.
Not that anything she did seemed to help her cause in the least. One muscular arm tightened - just slightly - across her back, his fingers claiming her far hip much more possessively than she was prepared to deal with at this point, and she found she could barely move, much less effect an escape.
Sean wasn’t going to really take her to task for her tickets - yet. He didn’t know her well enough to do the thorough job he wanted to, and water carried sound a little too easily for his comfort level, but this spanking would let him test the waters, and if a relationship did evolve, he would readdress the tickets at another time.
Sean began with what
he
knew were relatively mild smacks, to settle her down so that she would take her punishment more readily, but she twisted and squirmed - and expended not-inconsiderable
lung power
. He said, “I was going to give you a short sweet spanking, but the longer and harder you protest, the more effort I’m going to put into it and the longer and harder it’s going to be.”
Ginger stiffened immediately. As much as she was into spanking - and she was . . . well, reading about it, anyway - the reality seemed a bit too . . . well, real for her all of a sudden. Her butt was already throbbing and stinging fiercely from just those few swats. She wasn’t at all eager to find out what the rest of the spanking was going to be like, but then she wasn’t interested in lengthening it, either.
Her brain wasn’t, anyway. Her crotch - well, that was an entirely different matter. This position - submissive and vulnerable and inherently intimate, with her privates placed directly over that seemingly ever-present erection - had enflamed that area - almost as much as her butt cheeks. She could feel her most intimate parts swelling and aching, burning with his every word and move.
She’d never be able to deny that parts of her were definitely enjoying this. Hopefully, he wouldn’t notice - and her entire body contracted at the thought that he might just go exploring to determine that before he let her up - but his palm lay over the entirety of her bottom, as if claiming it for his own, tantalizingly close to where she desperately didn’t want - wanted - didn’t want - him to explore with those big fingers . .
. .
It was a quick spanking - as his spankings went - just enough to feel her out on it, to gage her reactions before, during and after. He was very careful not to over-spank - this time - especially at first and most especially because she was right out of the water, and he knew that that made a woman’s bottom even more sensitive, so he wouldn’t have to spank her as many times to achieve the same effect.
But he also didn’t want to just let her go with nothing, because that wouldn’t be how it would usually go - quite the contrary, so he had to be careful not to tip too much in either direction. He thought he had achieved just about the right level on everything.
Ginger, however, wasn’t necessarily buying into any of it. In fact, he thought that he had made a terrible mistake and misjudged her at first. The moment he began to spank her again, she began to sob and wail so loudly that he was a bit worried that someone from the house might decide she needed to be rescued.
Apparently, though, that gang was just a bit too much in
their
cups, because no one came.
He finally let her up - feeling quite proud of himself for resisting the considerable temptation of taking her bikini panties down - and not necessarily so that he could freely swat that beautiful bare bottom. Much to his surprise, she took a swing at him, and the woman packed a punch. Luckily, he was well trained in
self defense
. His hand shot up and caught the punch; she had broadcast her intentions from the moment her feet hit the sand. He used the leverage that gave him to tug her off balance; she had to plaster herself against him to keep from falling down.
That was when he finally did what Charlene had so rudely interrupted this afternoon: he bent down, just slightly, and made sure she could see his eyes as his lips descended slowly onto hers in a kiss that was light at first, but grew rapidly out of control as he slanted his mouth over hers and his tongue made a bold foray between her lips.
The object of his affections, however, still had plenty of fight in her, despite the humiliating results of trying to punch him. She continued to pummel his shoulders with her free hand until his tongue met hers, and then she stopped struggling and stiffened, no longer fighting him but not acquiescing to the kiss either. He was undeterred by her lack of response, understanding her reticence in kissing the man who had just tanned her hide. He persisted, though, and eventually, slowly - most definitely against her will, it would seem - she relaxed against him, and he knew she was as lost as he was.
She was the one who stepped back first, knowing the entire time that, if he hadn’t allowed it, she would still be trapped against that nonstop body of his.
Ginger felt herself as close to tears as she’d ever been, and it wasn’t because her bottom was still on fire from the spanking, although it most certainly was. It was more from being overwhelmed by what had happened between them - every minute of it. She wasn’t used to moving so quickly with a man. She was an anachronism, and one of the few woman she knew who didn’t routinely sleep with a guy on the first date. Hell, she didn’t sleep with them on the third or the fifteenth, either, if she didn’t think it felt right to her, and she always let guys know upfront about that, so that they could back out of the date if they wanted to.
To her dismay, unfortunately the vast percentage of them did.
She hadn’t even had the chance to tell him anything like that, and he’d already spanked her and kissed the breath out of her. She didn’t want him thinking that anything was going to happen between then tonight, especially not in the house of her best friend’s family.