Spanked By Her SEAL
In Under His Hand by Ann Calhoun, Tess is in trouble with her on-again off-again Navy SEAL boyfriend for sleeping with her windows open in a terrible neighborhood. He promised to spank her for it if she did it again. But this spanking is about so much more than her safety from the thugs down the block:
“I’m sorry I slept with the windows open.” She was proud of her steady voice, even as her heart thudded hard against her breastbone and fresh sweat broke out under her arms and at the small of her back. Please let him have forgotten, please, please let him have forgotten…
“What did I say I’d do if I caught you doing exactly that?”
He hadn’t forgotten.
Suddenly his hands on her body felt less like sensual preparation and more like a devious softening up for an interrogation. She didn’t need to look into his eyes to note the preternatural energy humming under his skin.
“Drew. No.”
“What did I say, Tess? Do you remember the conversation?” The words were liquid, so soft, which was a little scary. Despite the drawl, the sense of humor and the unflinching Southern honor, Drew was anything but soft.
She stayed stubbornly silent through ten pounding heartbeats, twenty, because if she kept quiet, his promise didn’t exist. Thirty more beats passed with her gaze focused resolutely on the place where her pulse pounded against the circle of his fingers. Finally, she surrendered.
“We’d been in bed all day and we’d soaked the sheets even though the AC was on. You said it was on its last legs. I said I didn’t care because I’d just sleep with the windows open. I’d done it before, and I’d do it again.” Unwilling to show fear, she dragged her gaze up to meet his. “And then you said…if I did…you’d spank me until I couldn’t sit for a week.”
With his back to the windows, stark shadows lay across the planes and angles of his face, concealing most of his expression. His eyes, however, were such a pale blue she could see emotion flickering through them, too fast for her to decipher. His bent head and wide shoulders offered her no protection from the moonlight, but she didn’t look away as her heart hammered in her chest and her stomach alternated between circus flip-flops and plummeting to the bottom of her abdomen. And yet at the same time, her nipples swelled against the soft material of her tank top and a traitorous heat throbbed in her womb.
In a voice as thick and dark as the still air coalescing into moisture on her skin, he said, “Good thing you don’t have a desk job.”
Not funny.
She stepped back, twisting her head and arm to pull free, but came up short with her back to the wall. “Drew, you can’t possibly mean it. It’s…archaic! It’s crazy!”
He moved closer, boxing her in. “I meant it, Tess. You knew I meant it when I said it.”
Her jaw dropped. A minute ago he was a rational twenty-first-century male whose mother had earned her law degree studying nights and weekends, and whose sisters juggled work and kids. That man had disappeared, leaving behind a Drew she recognized only at some level so primitive she hadn’t been aware it existed.
“You need this—”
She gasped, somewhere between astonished and outraged. “I do not!”
His gentle smile almost hid the intractable look in his eye. “Yes, you do, Tess.”
For the third time in thirty minutes, shock ran, electric and searing, through her veins. Suddenly she was as motionless as he was, with no heartbeat, no breathing as she searched his eyes, pale blue and unreadable in the dim light. The hand that had rested lightly on her nape now cupped her cheek, while his thumb brushed her full lips. Then his roughened fingertips trailed along her neck, into the hollow where her collarbones met, then slid down her breastbone before detouring along the lower edge of her ribs and finally dropping to the swell of her hip. He wound his thumb in the string stretched taut there, pulled the thin strip away from her body and slid his fingers into the back of her panties to curve around her bottom.
“You’re trembling.”
“You’re scaring me. Again.” She might have sounded believable if her voice had quavered rather than snapped.
“I’m not scaring you. I’m making you mad,” he said, calling her bluff without a hint of remorse. “You know nothing bad’s gonna happen here. I, on the other hand, came up the street and saw the windows open and half the neighborhood’s Latin Kings drinking and hanging around in Mrs. Delgado’s driveway.”
An impromptu party she hadn’t heard over the music. She turned her head to the side, away from the look in his eyes. “I said I was sorry.”
“Apology accepted, Tess, but you still get the spanking.” His hand tightened on her hip, the pressure constant until she opened her eyes again. He looked back at her, his gaze part wry amusement, part serious intent. “Sometimes pain can feel really, really good.”
A dozen smart-mouthed comebacks trembled on the tip of her tongue, but in the end the agitation roiling inside her kept her from voicing a single one. She shoved at his shoulder and ducked under his arm, hurrying down the stairs and across the peeling linoleum to the kitchen sink. She opened the faucet as far as it would go. Cold water streamed into the scratched aluminum bowl. She scooped handfuls of water to her mouth, then splashed her face.
He’d lost his mind. That was the only explanation. He was completely insane if he thought she’d let him spank her. Yes, she’d left the windows open, but that was no reason for him to make good on a lazy promise made at the tail end of four hours of sex. Truth be told, they were nowhere near vanilla in bed, but let a navy SEAL spank her, for God’s sake? He was certifiable!
Except he sounded sane, assured and totally in control.
Expecting him hard on her heels, she shut off the water and turned, but the stairs were empty, the creaky floorboards above her silent. Would he forget about it? He looked haggard with exhaustion, dark smudges under his eyes visible even in the dim light of her room. Maybe if she gave him enough time he’d fall asleep and they could laugh this off in the morning. Or maybe he’d storm down the stairs, drag her to the sofa and blister her butt. Moments passed, then stretched into a minute without sound or movement.
Fine. He could sit up there until he roasted.
Her mind replayed his words…put yourself in my place…not as badly as you scared me…half the neighborhood’s Latin Kings drinking and hanging around in Mrs. Delgado’s driveway…not as badly as you scared me…
Well, that was an accomplishment to put on her résumé. She’d managed to scare a SEAL, an individual trained to handle any circumstance at any time with whatever meager tools and resources he had at hand. She’d scared him.
But she’d known when she wedged open the windows with a small shim that she wasn’t just dealing with her poverty-line life. She was defying the only rule he’d felt strongly enough to voice. Despite his current incarnation as a dominant alpha male, Drew was laid-back, relaxed, beyond tolerant of her unusual hours, jobs, hair color and friends. Besides the windows, he simply let her be. Of course, a highly trained, professional special operative in the United States Navy should have more on his mind than fussing over her rainbow hair and shabby wardrobe.
Okay, she got it. This had to be about his job, which called for extended, unbroken focus, and if he was worried about her, he might falter at a very deadly task. Given the life-and-death scenarios he faced, the last thing she wanted to do was distract him. She’d let him down, wronged him by disobeying a very specific request. If he felt that strongly about this, then fine. He wouldn’t hurt her. She knew that.
Best to get it over with.
She turned and climbed the stairs with far more reluctance than she’d shown on her way down. Drew sat on the bed in her room, his eyes closed, his back to the wall, one leg stretched out in front of him, the other pulled up. His arm rested on his bent knee, the hand dangling forward while the other hand lay on his thigh. A wide swath of moonlight illuminated his face and body, and she saw the tendons of his hands running under skin dusted with fine, white-blond hair. Three knuckles were bruised, nothing unusual.
“Well?”
She spoke in an even, measured tone of voice intended to hide the exasperation simmering inside her. “I get it. You asked me not to do something. I did it, anyway. That was disrespectful. If we’re going to be together, I can’t be a burden while you’re…working. In the future I’ll do whatever it takes to stay as safe as possible. And if you need to…spank me…to work this out, I’m ready.”
There. An admission of guilt plus the proper recognition for his demanding career. That ought to do it.
After another snort of disbelief, he opened his eyes and turned his head, fixing her with an uncompromising look. “You think I’m doing this for me? Wrong, Tess. Your apology was sincere. I trust you won’t do this again. The spanking is for you.”
Exasperation exploded into slit-eyed irritation. “I cannot believe you think I need—”
His lifted hand cut off her words, then he turned his wrist and beckoned her forward. “You said you were ready. Come here.”
The temper that got her screamed at, or worse, in every foster home she’d lived in surged red-hot in her throat, but she drew breath, closed her eyes and let it out as she counted to ten. He had a point. She didn’t get his point, but dominating or hurting her wasn’t the issue. She knew that. “Fine, fine. Let’s just get this over with,” she muttered under her breath as she stepped through the doorway and stalked toward the bed.
A hint of a smile danced around the corners of his mouth before the beckoning hand switched to the closed fist meaning halt. “Take off your top.”
The heat in his eyes and his intractable tone flipped a switch in her brain. All the confused protests tumbling around in her rational mind sputtered in a crackle of static, then shut off, but her body reacted automatically. She tugged the wet, clinging fabric over her head and let the shirt drop to the floor as she bent forward.
While she’d intended nothing more than using her hair to hide the aroused flush flooding her cheekbones, a hitch in Drew’s even breathing as he beckoned to her again told her he wasn’t immune to her downcast eyes and nearly naked body. Her hair fell dark against the upper swells of her breasts, and her white panties stood out even against her pale skin. As politically incorrect as it was, she couldn’t blame her thudding heart and watery knees on nerves alone. The stark reality was she was all but naked as she crawled up onto the bed to accept his punishment for her disobedience, and her female, animal body seemed to be operating on an entirely different frequency from her rational brain. Sheer erotic arousal pumped through her veins.
Drew lifted his hands out of the way so she could lie facedown across his lap in a strange, awkward and more than a little embarrassing alignment of their bodies.
“Move forward,” he said, his voice soft yet firm.
In response to his command, she shimmied forward, centering her bottom directly over his thighs. His discarded black watchman’s cap lay a few inches away. She gathered it to her and rested her face on her folded forearms as images of how this looked flashed against the movie screen of her mind. Mostly naked, over his lap, her bottom perfectly situated for swats.
“Pull down your panties.”
Red, telling heat bloomed in her cheeks at the thought of reaching back and baring her bottom for him. The pendulum of her emotions swung wildly between a rather disturbing excitement and sheer vexation. She clenched her teeth to bite back a furious response, then turned her face away from him and reached back to hook her thumbs in the elastic edge of the string-bikini briefs. With a little squirming and some help from him, she got her panties down, lifting just enough to let him tug the soaked panel from between her legs. She expected him to slide them down and off, but he left the white fabric at midthigh.
He stroked his palm over the curve of first one cheek, then the other, the touch soft, gentle, so seductive she let out her breath in a trembling rush and, with the exhalation, melted into his powerful thighs. A lush blend of arousal, embarrassment and nerves made her wiggle her hips in a figure eight on his lap. When she made contact with his erection, hard and ready against his fly, his hand tightened briefly on her ass.
“Let’s try again. Why did you leave the windows open?”
Fuck counting to ten. For that matter, fuck him! Hot, aroused, sweating, confused and emotionally reeling, she sucked in air and pushed up onto her hands and knees. “Damn it, Drew!” she all but shouted as she turned to look at him. “You know why!”
The muscles in his arm flexed as the hand at the small of her back forced her flat, then crack! A resounding smack landed on the left side of her bottom. Tess jumped and yelped as fire spread from the point of impact.
“Wrong answer.”
“Drew, you can’t—”
Crack! She yelped again, a shock wave of pain blistering through her ass.
“Whatever you think I can’t do, I can. The windows, Tess. Why?”
If he intended to keep this up until he got the answer he wanted, she could see the benefit of coming around to his point of view. The only problem was she didn’t know what he wanted her to say, and she told him that.
Crack! “Think about it, Tess,” he said, with a low, peremptory chuckle. “Take as long as you need.”
He was amused? “You…you…jerk!”
The crack of flesh against flesh ricocheted around her bedroom. She jumped again, felt his hand spread in warning against her lower back and muffled her startled cry in her folded arms.
It hurt.
Another measured smack landed in the same place, flat on her bottom. Raw sensation expanded in pulsing waves as he moved to the other cheek and administered five smacks there. A hot ache swelled and spread, much as pleasure did during long, lazy afternoons in bed. He switched sides again, settling into a methodical pace, not so hard and rapid that she felt battered in either body or soul, yet not slow and light enough for her to surface from the pain of each smack’s sharp impact.
He worked at his task while she twitched and wriggled with each stroke, gripping his cap and trying to choke back the gasps fluttering from her throat. The weight of his hand near her center of gravity anchored her, body and soul. The strength of his thighs under her stomach and legs, the solidity of his abdomen at her side all kept her focused on the painful, erotically charged, emotionally laden moment.
What the hell was this all about if it wasn’t about her dogged independence and how that affected him? She wouldn’t do it again. He trusted her to keep her word, and he was certainly keeping his. He’d said he would spank her, and here she was, naked and facedown on her quilt, while his relentless hand moved from cheek to cheek and he steadfastly ignored her stifled yelps, which threatened to become sobs as the stinging grew to burning. Despite the undeniably sexy undertone, she knew this wasn’t his first choice of activities on his first night home. He could have ignored the windows, the broken air conditioner and her crushing financial strain in favor of simple sex, pizza delivery and sleep. He could have yelled at her and left. Worse, he could have just turned around in the street.
But here he was. Doing what he’d said he’d do.
He hadn’t left when he found the evidence of her disobedience. He’d stayed, and as painful as it was, he’d kept his word. He’d stayed.
He would stay. No matter what she did.
The smacks continued inexorably, but realization broke through the burgeoning ache. Deep down, she’d doubted his commitment. She thought he would disappear for real, not because he was mobilized. He’d just leave one day and not come back. Like her father, and then her mother. If she goaded him into it, then she could control when it happened.
That’s why she’d needed the spanking, both for her lack of trust and as physical proof that he would keep his word. She could trust him to give her what he said he would. What she needed.
“I get it,” she gasped over the rhythmic slaps. “I get it! Drew, please!”
His hand came to rest again on her now stinging, heated bottom, leaving an expectant, vibrant silence. Slowly, carefully, she relaxed her taut, quivering muscles, subsiding into his lap, but while the muscle tension eased, liquid flame burned in her swollen, wet folds. He reached out and gathered her hair in his hand, sending it spilling over her shoulder. Surprised by the temperate touch, she turned her face and looked back at him.
“Why did you leave the windows open?” he asked gently.
The truth hurt. It really, really did. More than her ass, in fact. “Because I wanted to see what you’d do if I did.”
“Even though I told you what I’d do.” He wasn’t asking. He knew. He’d known before she even walked into her bedroom.
There was a time and place for obstinate defiance. This wasn’t it. “Yes.”
“And what did you learn, Tess?” His voice was so soft and open she could hardly believe it came from the same man who’d purposefully paddled her into next week.
“To trust you.” She took a deep breath and let it rush out onto the thin quilt under her hot cheek. “I learned you always keep your word.”
“Always.” The single word hummed with the unshakable confidence of a United States Navy SEAL. “You tell me to go and I’m gone. But you can’t make me abandon you because you act up.” He caressed her stinging butt. “You can earn yourself another spanking, no problem. But I’m here for the duration.”
She let out another shuddering sigh as his words sank deep into her psyche, absolution and commitment rushing in to replace fear and abandonment. But her body still had a pressing need for relief. Undulating on his lap generated a sharp, longing twinge when her pubic bone made contact with his hard thigh. She’d never felt this way before, never had urgent, immediate desire thumping under her skin while she lay limp and pliable against his hard body. Soft give and sharp need melting together, and oh, how she wanted him to assuage the ache between her thighs.
Possessive admiration softened the line of his jaw as Drew slowly scanned her from toes to calves to thighs, lingering at her ass before sliding his gaze up the length of her spine, to her brown hair draped around her sweaty shoulders, then to her face. She didn’t turn away, but let the heat throbbing in her bottom reflect in her eyes as she lifted her butt against his hand.
Admiration gave way to molten lust. “You want me to finish this,” he said, but he wasn’t asking.
All she could do was nod.
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