The Sandstone Affair (An Erotic Romance Novel) (12 page)

“What?”
“Since when do you, Julia Sharp, genius raging
editor of Lynx not want to argue with anyone?”
“Look, if we get through this, a lot will
change. I want to do things differently. I want Lynx to be a different kind of
place. I want to have a different kind of life.”
“So, the wildcat of Lynx has been tamed,”
Janice coos.
“What makes you say that?” I haven’t really
been with Mark around anyone else and didn’t realize the changes in me would
show so clearly. Balancing the submissive with the assertive is going to be
harder than I thought.
“Julia, for the first time in your whole life
since I met you, you look... content.”
“I am,” I admit. “My dad is dying, my career
is in the balance and I am going through hell right now, but I guess I’m more
content than I have been in some time.”
“Then all I really can say is: don’t blow it.”

“Tim Tebow is still working on his passing
game,” the TV in the next room blares. Thank goodness for inspiration. I write
“T-BONE” on my list and make him a street informant who hangs out by the Bronx
Cathedral. Then I add “not very accurate” beside the name.
“I don’t think you’d like this very much,” I
say to my sleeping father as I sit besides his bed. I sit with him and work on
the fake “T-list” for Janice to give to Valerie James. Like all good parents,
he taught me to be honest, fair and giving. I don’t think he’d especially care
that I’m giving a total fraud to Valerie, but he would be profoundly
disappointed I lied to Mark about its existence. Still, I’m actually making one
up instead of just telling Janice to drop it.
I look at my silenced phone to see the text
light blinking. It’s from Mark. Again. I’ve been avoiding him the past two
days. Not because I don’t want to see him. I’d love to see him. But, I need to
get this lie done with before I’m face to face with him.
“Come over tonight,” he writes. I decide I
can’t put him off forever and answer him.
“Sitting W/Dad. Cnt Lv.”

“Has there been a change in his condition?” Mark’s
too classy for text language, which only makes me want him more.
“No Change. Just 2 Tired.”
“Too tired to hear about Lynx?”

“Be there at 9”
I sit with Dad and talk to him a bit longer.
There’s no response. I tell him I love him, hide the fictional list in my car
and head over to Mark’s. The ride through traffic, the walk from the parking
lot, lying to the attendant, and the service elevator journey leaves me even
crankier than I was before.
“I’ll be glad when I don’t have to be Lucy
Conway anymore,” I spout, annoyed that I still have to use the cleaning lady’s
name, as I come off the elevator in his apartment.
“I wouldn’t be so quick to give her up,” Mark
responds with wry humor. “If you don’t get Lynx back, you could use the job.”
“That’s not funny,” I pout.
“Neither is ignoring my summons. I needed to
speak with you.”
“Look, I’ve already got enough problems in the
world without you,” I start, my volume rising with every other word. “I’m
trying to sit with my father. I’ve got the clock on Lynx ticking down like a
bomb and now I’ve got you with your expectations, distractions and plans. You
need to back off.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought we had
a deal.”
“We do, but until I have all this other stuff
in the bag you’ll have to sit some time out. Our deal is only a deal because I
say it is.” I stick out my chin like I’m fourteen and he notices. He smiles and
nods, clearly indulging my fantasy that I am in some way in charge.
“We’ll deal with that temper tantrum in a minute.
And trust me when I say: we will deal with it. But in the meantime, I need to
tell you what happened with Blake today.” Mark motions for me to sit down on
the couch.
“Let me guess, you summoned Blake to a meeting
and he’s decided to give Lynx back to me and we’re all going to a picnic on
Sunday,” I mumble caustically.
“If you insist on acting like a child, we can
deal with your attitude now and save the news until later.” I realize I am way
out of line with him, deal or no.
“I’m sorry,” I say truly apologetic. “I’m so
full of doubt, guilt and just…”
“That’s fine,” he soothes. “So, good news or
bad news?”

“Good. Please, God, anything that’s good.”
“I got into the system and found out which IT
person Blake sent over to Lynx. As luck would have it, it was Howard. I asked
him to write down everything he did for Blake, including uploading a remote
desktop connection which lets him into Lynx. I had him sign it in front of my
assistant and I locked it in my private safe. So we have that part of the
puzzle for the package we file with the judge. That part was easy.”
“Are you crazy? He’s going to tell Blake and
he’ll know we’re up to something!”
“No, he won’t. Let’s just say two tickets to
the San Diego Comicon that he happened to win for outstanding service to the
company, along with airfare and hotel, made him a little forgetful of the
events of today.”
“So you bribed him?”
“I said it was easy. I didn’t say it was
cheap.”
“And the bad news?” I fear to ask. I’m
relieved Mark got the kid to confess and put it in writing, but lately I’ve
developed “second shoe syndrome” where I expect something bad to happen at any
time.
“Today at work I had a little run-in with
Blake. I was trying to get into his office and see if he had a hard copy of the
records of his transactions. He does, but I had to leave before I could get
it.”
“Won’t he move it now that you’ve seen it? Or
shred it?”
“I don’t think he knows that’s what I was in
there for. I waited until he went out to lunch. I saw Valerie’s car in the lot
so I knew he’d be gone for some time.”
“Valerie James? He has lunch with her?”
“Well, it’s not in the nature of the Stone
family to kiss and tell, but, of all the assets we’re involved in, she’s the
one who gets the most personal attention or with whom he… ah… makes the
‘deposits’. Anyway with those two at lunch, it gave me time. I called a nearby
florist and had them bring over a dozen roses from a secret admirer to Rona,
Blake’s’ assistant. I figured she would be so curious and awestruck she would
stay downstairs long enough for me to look around.”
“So, Valerie and Blake, sitting in a tree.
F-U-C-K-I—”
“That’s enough! Anyway, I got in there and the
place is a wreck. How he even manages to make evil schemes work is beyond me.
Papers everywhere! Then I realized he wouldn’t hide something as private as
this where anyone could find it. I remembered when we were kids, Blake went
through a brief and odd sort of kleptomania as a child.”
“So he’s been stealing people’s things for a
long time?”
“No, not things, exactly. Pictures. As a small
child he would take people’s pictures from their homes or school or whatever.
If someone had a picture sitting in a drawer or in a frame easily opened he
would nab it and hide it. He would always keep them behind the bookshelf in his
room. He would pull out the books, put the pictures against the back of the
shelf, and replace the books. It was the perfect hiding place.”
“Not if you knew about it,” I scoffed.
“I found out by accident. We were wrestling
and tussling around. Our mother came in to tell us to stop and right as she was
walking the door I lost balance and fell into the bookshelf, knocking it over
and all the pictures came out. There were so many. Some showed people my mother
didn’t even know.”
“Okay, you know this story just moved your
brother from the evil bastard category to the totally psycho group?”
“It wasn’t really that odd. All the pictures
showed smiling adults and families doing happy things. Some were magazine
clippings and advertisements. Our parents were busy, stoic and somewhat jaded.
I think Blake was trying to steal a little happiness and once he got caught, it
never happened again. But, he continued to use the back of the bookshelf to
hide things. Porn, condoms, report cards - anything that needed to be kept
private.”
“So he’s stealing my happiness, so he can get
laid by Valerie James?”
“No, I think he’s getting that already. But I
did discover a folder, behind a set of tax law books, that has ledgers,
printouts and things. I’m sure it’s Lynx. I thumbed through it but before I
could get all the books out to get it, Rona was back. I guess she’s getting a
divorce and assumed the flowers were from her soon-to-be ex. Instead of trying
to get the name out of the florist, she threw a fit, shredded the roses in
front of him and told him to tell the jerk he could ‘sit on the thorns’. Then
she rushed back upstairs so I had to leave the folder where it was.”
“Did she figure out what you were doing
there?”
“No, I told her I needed a transfer document
and couldn’t find it in Blake’s mess. Later he came into my office and asked
why I was rooting around his desk. I told him I needed a transfer document to
wrap up a file, and mentioned that with the new regulations we should go over
all recent transfers, including Lynx, to make sure everything was audited and
right. He got pissy and said ‘Of course everything is right!’ and stomped out
of the office.”
“Well, good. I have the T-list for Valerie.
I’ll give it to Janice and she can turn it over, although I can’t imagine why
she would want a source list so bad.”
“She doesn’t,” he replies confidently and
stands, holding out his hand. I rise and take it as he walks me to the
“playroom” we used before. There’s just a box of Kleenex and a hairbrush.
“Then why am I giving it to her?” I ask
nervously as he sits on the bed and pats the mattress for me to sit down too.
“Because you aren’t willing to give her
whatever you have that she really wants. You’re no better a liar than Blake is,
my dear. I know you’re hiding something from Valerie, and you’re hiding it from
me too. I don’t know what it is, or care. But we need to give her something.”
“Mark, I’m not...” I look in his eyes, so
beautiful, so solid. I can’t lie to him. “I’m not ready to tell you what it is.
I’m not ready to let it go. It’s not you, really, it’s just that—”
“Don’t worry about it. That’s not why we’re
here anyway.”
I look around the room again and point out the
large wooden hairbrush on the dresser.
“We’re here to change hairstyles?” I ask
jokingly. He laughs, thank goodness.
“We’re here to change lifestyles, or at least
how you deal with life.” His voice is stern again.

“With a hairbrush? How on earth are—” A
blinding picture flashes through my imagination. The Kleenex, the hairbrush,
the bed. “Oh, no, you’re not serious.”
“This time, I’m very serious,” Mark says as he
rolls up his shirt sleeve, one and then the other. He adjusts his position on
the bed and looks at me with a slight grin.
“You’re going to spank me? With a hairbrush?
Like a little kid getting punished?” I can’t tell if I’m giggling because this
is so silly or trembling because I’m a little scared but my voice is shaking.
“I’m going to spank you, with my hands, and
then maybe the brush, like you are a grown woman who needs some release. You
bottle everything up inside you, Julia. Your fear, your doubt, your guilt. This
is one of the quickest and best ways I know to strip off the armor and get to
the soul of the problem.”
“Mark, I know I’ve been a bitch lately, but
really,” I begin but I know the look in his eyes, it’s the ‘I’m patiently
waiting for you to stop talking so we can go on’ look.
“I can’t promise you’ll like it. But what I
can promise is that when I’m done you’ll have one red backside and one happy
inside because you’re going to cry out all the stuff that’s blocking you from
thinking, laughing and loving.”
“And if I don’t feel happy and joyous after
your little spanking fiasco is done?”
“Then I’ll happily refund your money, and
enjoy your red backside anyway,” he says with a wink and a sexy smile. “Look,
Julia, this can be ‘win-win’ or it can just be ‘I win’ but, either way, you’re
getting a spanking. Now stand over there and pull your pants off. You can leave
the rest on for now.”
I feel like such a fool. Standing here in
front of Mark, with his sleeves rolled up in a very no-nonsense fashion. My
parents didn’t believe in spanking and I was raised in the era when it had been
voted out of schools. I had to do extra chores or be grounded a few times, but
I’ve never had anything like this. So here I am, a grown woman, about to go
through a silly childhood ritual.
Mark instructs me to lie over his lap. He puts
a pillow on his legs so it raises my bottom slightly in the air. I put my head
down on the bed and stare at the wall. Maybe if I act entirely uninterested in
this nonsense, he will cut this short and we can get down to some lovin’.
He begins by rubbing my bottom in circles, my
mound instantly alive at his touch. He rubs and grasps my rear, even leaning
over and giving one of my cheeks a little kiss. His hand slips underneath my
panties and I feel his finger flit against my lips. Then his left arm goes
around my waist and his right hand gives my rear a series of short swats. They
pop against my skin like little jolts. Not entirely unpleasant at all. After a
couple of volleys, he rubs me again and I feel some warmth rising on my pinkish
globes.
“This is just the warm up. Warming you up
slowly will help you endure when the real challenge begins.”
“We could just stop here,” I joke, and earn
another volley of short smacks on my rear. Then his hands continue rubbing and
press against me. I wish I would have volunteered to take my panties off,
because my wetness is sure to be apparent any moment. He shifts his legs under
me, raising my bottom a little higher and gives me about twenty quick smacks,
one right after the other. I feel the heat rising on my globes.
“Deep transformation,” he says as he is
rubbing my warmed rear and running his fingers under the waistband of my
panties, “takes time and you must remove your outside shell to release what’s
hidden in your soul.”
Mark slowly pulls my panties down. I feel the
cooling sensation of the air on my rear and it gives me delicious goose bumps.
At the same time, I feel him peeling off my defenses, cutting through my
hard-ass demeanor and exposing me.
“Sometimes,” Mark continues, speaking slowly
and deliberately, as if to a child. “We need someone else to remove that shell
for us.”
SMACK! SMACK! SMACK!