I hear a rasping sound in the room and slowly realize it’s my shallow breathing. As he gave the crude, enlightening speech, my nipples have stiffened and the instinct to slither onto his lap and goad him into…into something has grown so strong, I can barely resist it. “You don’t feel this way about the other waitresses?”
His brief laugh holds no humor. “They are invisible to me. You will be the only thing I see.” His chest rattles up and down. “I can’t have that.”
“Why not?”
“I’m alone. I will remain alone. I do my job, go to church and go home. You are not going to prance in here in your tight thrift shop dress and tempt me toward a dark path.”
“You make me sound evil,” I whisper.
“You are the furthest thing from evil, but you will inspire it. In others.” He exhales unsteadily, his attention dropping to my breasts. “In me.”
Push him.
I don’t know where the voice in the back of my head is coming from. It has never been there before, almost like it is specific to this man. If another man spoke to me like this, I would be running for the exit, yet with the giant, I stand up and gravitate closer. Closer. Until I’m in the V of his thighs, my fingers playing with the top button of my dress.
Faye told me there’s a chance I’ll need to take off my dress for Craig to get the waitressing job. That advice doesn’t fit the man in front of me. Locke. But it’s the excuse I need to unhook that top button and watch his chest heave, a choked moan seemingly coming from deep inside of him. “Don’t go any further,” he bites off, winded.
Push. Just a little more. “How will I inspire evil in you?”
“You already have. I’m old enough to be your father. The corrupt actions I would take with you once my willpower breaks…they are wrong. And immoral.” He closes his eyes as if in prayer. “Dear lord above, I can’t sustain this kind of temptation.”
“Are you talking about sex?” I whisper.
His eyes open, harder than before. Ruthless. “The fact that you have to ask proves you aren’t ready to be here.”
Those words are like an arrow piercing me right in the throat.
How many times did my father tell me I wouldn’t make it two days in the real world? All my life, I’ve been made to feel useless. Even while doing everything to make the household run, the farm productive. I worked my fingers to the bone and still, I was worth nothing. Never recognized or thanked or treated like an equal. I’m not going to let this man make me feel that way. And why does it hurt so much coming from him when we’ve only just met?
I know what will affect him the most.
Pouting my lips and twisting side to side, subtly, I pop open another button, exposing the swells of my cleavage, all the way down to the front clasp of my bra. His shaky breath coasts over the pale globes, his tongue emerging to wet his lips. He looks entranced and my core tugs roughly in response. I’m going to end up in his lap.
And I do.
Just not how I’m expecting.
Without warning, I’m suddenly facedown over the man’s knees and he’s jerking up the back of my dress to my hips, revealing my backside. He makes an animalistic sound, something extremely large and hard prodding me in the side-and he yanks my panties down. All the way to my knees. There’s no time to gasp or struggle or be anything but stunned before his hand comes down hard and spanks me.
I expect pain and outrage and fear.
But all I hear is a choir singing in my head. It’s the one from church, back in our small Nebraska town. Voices lift and swell and harmonize and finally, finally, I get the religious experience I’ve been lacking all this time. The one my parents claimed to have every Sunday. This man’s hand is delivering righteousness to me in sharp slaps of my buttocks while he pants and grunts above me, that hard object growing more prominent against my ribcage.
“Misbehaving little brat,” he says through his teeth, spanking me, breathing new life into my lungs. Baptizing me. Exhilarating me head to toe. “Came in here and pulled the Daddy right out of me, didn’t you? Sent straight from the devil to test me. Weren’t you?”
Those biting words burst my bubble of euphoria.
Evil. This man who draws me so deeply thinks I’ve been sent from hell.
I’m magnetized by him. I belonged to him at first sight and he…
Told me I don’t belong here. Now he is calling me a brat.
With tears in my eyes, I struggle off his lap to my feet, fastening my dress with shaking fingers, sobs rocketing up from my belly and bursting out of my mouth. In a split second, he’s standing in front of me, trying to tilt my face up, his voice ragged. “Sissy. My God, My God, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He finally succeeds in tipping up my chin and his expression goes from stricken to miserable. “What have I done?”
I don’t know the answer to that and I can’t stay here another minute stewing in the pain of rejection. The pain of being so wrong about my connection with him. Furthermore, I’m still confusingly excited from being spanked. Why? I don’t know. I don’t know what’s happening to me, so I run. I pick up my cheap purse and sprint out the door and down the hallway, throwing myself into the closing elevator while he bellows my name behind me.
Chapter Four
Locke
I’m in a cave. That’s how I’ve felt all day.
Like I’m locked in a dwelling made of stone that continues to close in on me, suffocating the breath from my lungs and exerting pressure on all sides. Leaving me ready to burst. A strangled roar has been building in my throat all day and I am almost to my SUV in the underground parking lot where I will let it out. As soon as I’m inside, I’m going to shout loud and long enough to shatter the glass.
I struck that sweet young girl.
I spanked her until my handprints appeared on her cheeks.
I’m surprised no one came to arrest me during my shift in the pit. God knows I deserve to be locked behind bars for the rest of my life for what I’ve done. Putting that angel over my knee and…abusing that supple ass with slaps. I’ve never done anything like it in my life. Never even thought about spanking a female. Maybe if my brain would stop insisting that she liked it, I could stop obsessing over every single second of it.
But memories continue to rock me.
Her horny little whimpers. The way she all but pushed her bottom into my hands, hips tilted to give me a better angle, her nails digging into my thigh.
Stop.
You’re sickening.
I continue toward my SUV, which is parked in the far corner of the lot. I’m an hour later than usual and the sun is probably already coming up over the Strip. After Sissy ran from me, I looked for her everywhere, frantic to soothe her, to rub her little butt until the sting went away. I couldn’t find her anywhere and eventually barged into the surveillance rooms, demanding to see footage of my beautiful blonde temptation. To know which path she took out of the casino.
Somehow she even eluded the cameras.
Vanished. Gone.
I’m sick. I’m sick over what I’ve done.
I reach my SUV and grip the rooftop, slamming my head into the rear window until it cracks and there’s a satisfying throb in my skull. Well deserved. My God, am I never going to see her again? Is that it? She has simply disappeared into thin air? I can’t stomach the knowledge that she’s out loose in Vegas, possibly falling prey to debauched men…when I was presented with the chance to keep her safe. How could I squander such a gift?
I’m strong enough to withstand the temptation of sex, aren’t I? If it means her safety?
I’ll never know. Because I fucked up so severely. So unforgivably.
That bellow is threatening to rip out of me, so I hasten toward the driver’s side-
And that’s when I see her, curled up in the back seat of the car beside mine.
At first, the relief nearly knocks me onto my knees, but right on the heels of that is utter outrage and denial. She is shivering. Sleeping in a parking garage. My angel? I begin to shake with renewed rage, burning with the need to punch a hole in one of the concrete walls. It takes me long minutes to get myself under control enough to knock on the window of her ancient Nissan. She stirs on the back seat beneath a threadbare jacket she’s using as a blanket, yawning with such abandon that my heart zip chords up into my mouth. Then she blinks up at me, going very still.
“Please don’t call security,” she says, her voice muffled by the glass.
That’s what she thinks of me. That I would get her in trouble.
I loathe knowing that, but I suppose it’s better than the fear I was expecting if I ever saw her again. The way a young girl would fear a man who spanked her without permission.
She even spread her thighs for those strikes of your palm.
She let you see that pretty little asshole.
Doesn’t matter. I acted abominably and it won’t happen again.
God obviously put this down-on-her-luck girl in my path for a reason and my dick needs to stay the hell out of it.
“I’m not going to call security, Sissy. Open the door.”
Several beats pass. “Why?”
“So I can bring you home. You can’t sleep in a parking garage.”
“I don’t have a home.”
My heart isn’t going to survive the morning. “That’s why I’m bringing you to mine, honey.”
“Oh.” She chews on her bottom lip a moment. “No, I think I’ll stay here.”