The Obedient Wife Page 4

  Until he took those last three steps towards her. Why she didn’t back away from him she’d never know. Because she didn’t want to, she guessed. She wanted to step closer to him, but didn’t at the same time, so he had taken the choice away from her.

  He’d be doing plenty that in her future; simply removing the choice, but she didn’t know that then.

  Nothing he did was alarming, in and of itself. Everything was calm and controlled, just like he was. First his hands claimed her waist, gently but firmly, as if she had tried to get away, he might well not have allowed her to go. Then, with his eyes locked to hers, he brought them gently, inexorably together for the first time, breast to chest, package to cleft, thigh to quivering thigh.

  She wanted to say he was going way too fast. She wanted to push him away forcefully while saying an adamant, “NO!” like she’d been taught in all of those self-defense classes she’d taken.

  None of those were even possible now that he’d touched her. She felt lost and found at the same time, as if something deep inside her recognized something deep within him.

  She felt as if she’d found her soul mate, and that more than anything made her extremely grateful when they both heard Charlene’s car roaring up the driveway.

  It gave her the distraction she needed to rip her eyes from his and take a step away from him. He didn’t - as she’d thought he might - try to hold her there, but he didn’t let his hands drop once she started moving. They fell away from her only when she moved out of his reach, as if he wanted to touch her every second that he could.

  When she took another step back, she felt somehow bereft, as if she’d made the wrong choice, until she looked up at him and he stood there, in all of his self confident masculine glory with a very small, almost imperceptible smile on his face.

  “Go greet your friend. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  “You’re not coming -”

  He made a gesture towards his bulging crotch.

  “Oh.” Now it was her turn to blush when she really didn’t need to. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen a man with an erection before.

  “I just need a minute to . . . compose myself, then I’ll be right down.”

  Ginger practically ran away from him, which was very unlike her. She wasn’t the type to give away so much about what she was feeling, but she couldn’t help it. If she spent another second in that room with him, she was either going to end up under him or - worse than that, somehow - over his lap.

  She wasn’t at all sure which was better . . . or worse.

  Her confusion must’ve shown in her face, because Charlene thought she was sick when she saw her.

  “You sure you’re all right?”

  Her friend must’ve asked her that several times, even in front of Sean, who appeared out of nowhere and grabbed the bags they were both carrying.

  Of course, Ginger couldn’t keep her curious eyes from wandering to the zipper of his jeans, which still looked as if it was under considerable stress, but she forced herself to look at her friend, instead, whose continued questions about her health were driving her crazy.

  “I’m fine, leave it!” Ginger finally snapped. They were all gathered in the kitchen, trying to decide what to have for snacks with the inevitable pre-dinner happy hour. Tonight that would be steaks on the grill that Sean would cook.

  “All right, all right! Don’t be so touchy! Jeez!”

  “How about something easy - my parmesan and garlic dip with some salt and pepper chips?” She, for one, would be happy for the distraction of having to make her latest concoction - anything to get her mind off a certain person’s bulge. Ginger pulled one of the grocery bags she’d brought out of the cupboard.

  “Well, none of us will be able to breathe on each other, but that sounds great.”

  Although she could feel Sean’s eyes on her occasionally during the evening, he didn’t approach her again, and she kept her own eyes strictly to herself.

  Well, maybe not strictly, but mighty close to it.

  Charlene’s family was wonderful. She’d met several of them before, and they all went out of their way to make her feel like she was part of the family. They laughed, they talked, they ate continuously; snacks during happy hour, steaks and salad were nowhere near enough for them, so they sent some of the brothers down to the corner store for an ice cream run about eleven o’clock.

  Ginger had just ducked up the stairs to use the facilities, since the downstairs bathroom aways seemed to be ocupado. Of course, she ran into Sean there; apparently his room was right next to hers. That made her wonder about his choice of bedroom for her, but not for long, since he had come out of his room in the worn denim cutoffs that clung lovingly to every muscular curve, with a beach towel around his neck.

  Ginger stopped in the bathroom doorway, trying not to drool at the sight of him naked to the waist.

  He gave her a calculating look, then said, against his better judgment, “I need to clear my head, so I’m going down to the water for a swim. Wanna come?”

  Damned if she didn’t! She found herself nodding even before she’d even really thought of what kind of response she wanted to give to him, but by then she was committed.

  “I’ll meet you downstairs by the back door.” He then added, “Don’t keep me waiting.”

  That sounded suspiciously like a command and she rankled, thinking up ways to delay, but if this man was as dominant as she thought, and perhaps even into spanking, that might not be the best idea.

  Still, she wasn’t about to let him think he could order her around, so she took her time changing into her suit and retrieving a towel from the linen closet.

  When she finally appeared before him, his look was not reassuring, as if he knew she had deliberately stalled, just to prove a point.

  All he said was, “Follow me.”

  She had never been to this lake before, so she didn’t know much about the lay of the land, and was relying on him to get her to wherever the best swimming hole was. Since they had a beautiful beach right in front of the house, she figured that wouldn’t take much time.

  She was wrong.

  They had trekked for a good fifteen minutes before he finally said, “We’re here.”

  It was a gorgeous spot. The sky was clear and the moon was full, and it was almost as bright as daylight out, although she was glad to see that he had brought a small lantern, too, which he left on shore. It illuminated a small sand beach where it was wonderfully quiet - away from the loud sounds of the family playing poker and drinking - but mostly drinking.

  It was the height of summer, and the water was quite warm. Sean waded right in, but then he knew what the bottom of the lake was like.

  As if he sensed her hesitancy, he said, “It’s a clean sandy bottom, no rocks or anything, and there’s absolutely no seaweed or marshy grasses here at all. There are very few spots of that anywhere on this lake. If you feel anything plant like underfoot, it’s just leaves or twigs from the surrounding trees. So you can walk right out, although it does get deep pretty quickly.” He swam in a ways, and then stood with the water up to his neck. “Another step and it’s over my head.”

  Ginger loved the water; had since she was a kid. She swam like a fish, only she hadn’t really ever swum at night. Her mom was the type who dragged her kids out of the water as soon as the sun started to set.

  It was intoxicating, though, however cold, she thought as she made a shallow dive to wet herself entirely. It was so quiet - almost eerie - as they were serenaded by the crickets and the loons.

  She floated on her back, dulling her sense of hearing, feeling as if she was in another world, with everything shaded silver and gold in the moonlight.

  Sean watched her, as covertly as he could, as she floated there, staring up at the sky. She wasn’t classically beautiful, but that was fine with him. He’d never gone for any woman specifically because of how she looked, anyway. And her hair was much shorter than he would have preferred. The color was gorgeous - a
nd he didn’t care whether it came from a bottle or not - but he preferred long hair on his woman - as long as she could grow it.

  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 kn
ew 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.