Reckoning Read online

  “I’m not going to kill you, little girl,” he assured me.

  I stiffened at the pet name. He’d never called me anything like that before and I didn’t know how I felt about it.

  At least I wasn’t going to die today.

  “Then let me go. We can sit and talk about this. Let’s have a glass of wine and chat,” I said resolutely. Dean loved wine. He always did, just like me.

  “No. That’s not what we’re going to do,” he said firmly.

  The bed creaked angrily as he sat beside me.

  “We’re going to have a discussion first,” he began, and I stiffened. Those words seemed heavy, like they were loaded with something I didn’t understand, and I had the distinct feeling that I didn’t want to figure it out either.

  “A discussion?” I echoed.

  “Yes. We have a few things we need to deal with before you explain to me what happened, little girl,” he continued.

  There it was again. The pet name. Why was he calling me that now? Where had it even come from?

  “Stop saying that,” I muttered.

  “Stop saying what, little girl?”

  “That. Little girl,” I replied furiously. “I’m not a little girl. I’m a grown woman.”

  “Then what am I to call you? Your name isn’t Sophia Jackson and it most certainly isn’t Tina Hathaway now, is it?” he replied rather arrogantly.

  I refused to answer. There were only two people in the world who knew my real name and it wasn’t about to become three. Not when he had me bound to his bed with my life in his hands.

  “Have it your way then, little girl,” he cautioned, and I tensed as his hand traced along my back. At first, his touch felt familiar and soft. Then it turned hard as he wound that arm around my waist and lifted my hips clean off the bed. With his other hand, he unbuttoned my jeans and deftly unzipped them like he’d done it a million times before.

  But this was something else.

  I cried out in shock as he released me, only to grasp the waistband of my jeans and force them down. He pulled them hard enough that they slipped over my hips. I struggled against the cuffs in a sad attempt to stop him, but there was nothing I could do. He wanted my jeans to come down and that was what was going to happen, and he didn’t care if it hurt when he did it.

  At least my panties were still up.

  For a long time, I felt his eyes on my skin. He didn’t even have to reach out and touch for me to feel it. I knew he was looking at me all the same and it was doing something strange to me that I wasn’t yet willing to admit. My core seized tight, and my heart pounded hard in my chest.

  Why did this feel so different? Where was the Dean I knew? Who was this man and what had he turned into?

  I stilled, drawing in one panicked breath after the next.

  “Stop. Dean,” I pleaded. He didn’t answer.

  Please.

  His fingertips returned to trace the dimples on my lower back, slow and gentle and so much like the Dean I remembered. Then as if he flipped a switch, he grasped my panties and tore them clean off my body. The fabric caught the folds of my pussy and pinched them hard enough to make me cry out in sudden pain. I whimpered and pressed my thighs together, but the terrible sound of ripping cloth filled the air and surrounded me like a heavy cloud.

  He pulled the remains of my panties from my body and tossed them by my face. He rearranged them so that the gusset of my underwear was on display right in front of me.

  I was wet for him.

  I was mortified to see the damp fabric in front of me. There was a wet spot in my panties. There would be no hiding that.

  I swallowed, trying to get past the dryness in my mouth. It didn’t help.

  He didn’t make any movement to take off my shirt or my bra or the socks on my feet, which only served to heighten the fact that only my bottom and my thighs were bare.

  Another cry died in the back of my throat as he took the pillows from the head of the bed. I whimpered as his arm wound around my waist once more, lifting up my hips and putting the pillows beneath me.

  I’d never been so acutely aware of my nakedness as I was in that moment. My mouth was open in shock and it was getting hard to breathe. My stomach danced with anxiety and my core clenched tightly with something I very reluctantly identified as arousal. My thighs rubbed against one another and I couldn’t stop thinking about how my ass and my pussy were bare. My bottom felt like it was on complete display.

  “Is it going to hurt when you rape me?” I whimpered, unable to stop the way my voice shook and my lower lip quivered with terror. My fingers curled into tight little fists and my nails dug deep into my palms.

  “No, little girl. I won’t take you against your will,” he replied softly. There he was again. The Dean I knew. The Dean I’d stood at the altar with over a year ago.

  “What are you going to do?” I pressed. I needed to know what was going to happen next.

  His fingers flittered across the naked skin of my bottom and I jerked away the tiniest bit. I didn’t want him to touch me. I wanted him to touch me.

  I didn’t know what I wanted.

  What he wanted…

  “You lied to me. You faked your story, your name, every single detail of your life was fabricated. You made everything up and then you stole from me. You were a very bad girl and now Daddy has to punish you,” he replied firmly.

  Did he just say Daddy?

  “What? Please, Dean. Just let me go. We can figure this out together.”

  “No. I think it’s about time I stopped allowing you to call the shots. It’s time Daddy took control,” he added, and I could have sworn my belly dropped straight to my toes.

  What the fuck did that mean?

  His palm dragged over my naked cheeks and I pressed my thighs together even more firmly.

  “You are a beautiful little thing, but you know that, don’t you?” he asked.

  I didn’t answer.

  He continued exploring my exposed backside, tracing his fingertips along the gentle curve of my hip and the lower arch of my spine before a single finger dragged down the cleft of my ass. My breath hitched in surprise.

  “Has anyone ever taken you here before, little girl?” he questioned.

  “No,” I balked. Of course no one had. I don’t know why I even dignified him with an answer.

  “That’s not a proper answer, little girl,” he drawled. I grimaced. The pet name irritated me, but at the same time my pussy clenched hard every time that he said it.

  “What the fuck do you mean?”

  “Such terrible language coming from such a pretty little mouth,” he purred, and I didn’t like that insinuation in his tone. His fingers kept relentlessly touching me, stoking whatever sick arousal was rolling inside me. My chest shuddered as I struggled to draw in a breath, and it was with a mortifying tremble that I realized that I was beginning to press up against him. My body was seeking his touch.

  I was responding to his cruelty and I didn’t know why.

  “Please, just let me go,” I begged. I didn’t want him to know I liked this.

  “When you’re being punished, little girl, you will refer to me as Daddy. If you don’t, you’re only going to make this worse,” he murmured.

  His palm patted my left cheek, just lightly enough for it to echo all around me. I wasn’t sure why that made my heart seemingly stop, but it did.

  He wanted me to call him Daddy.

  “What?”

  His words almost didn’t compute in my head. It made no sense. Maybe this wasn’t Dean after all. Maybe this was his evil twin, and this was all an elaborate ploy to get inside my head too.

  “You will call me Daddy, little girl,” he repeated.

  “Or else what?” I goaded.

  “Have you ever been spanked?”

  My mouth opened, but no words came out. At once, this all seemed to make sense. Him taking down my jeans. Him ripping off my panties. Him baring my bottom and putting my nakedness on display.
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br />   He was going to spank me as punishment for what I did.

  “By your silence, I take it you’ve never been spanked in your life, but that is going to change very soon. You see, Daddy is going to punish your bare little bottom until it’s bright red. I’m not going to stop when you beg me to. Daddy is going to make sure that you’re very sore and very sorry by the time he’s through with you, little girl.”

  “I won’t do it. I won’t call you that. It’s wrong,” I exclaimed. It felt dirty and wicked and why the fuck was it making me even wetter? What the fuck was wrong with me?

  Normal girls didn’t get spanked and normal girls didn’t call anyone Daddy.

  Especially not me.

  “My hand is going to hurt, little girl,” he warned.

  “I don’t care,” I blurted.

  “If you don’t refer to me properly by the time your punishment ends, little girl, you’re going to get a very real taste of Daddy’s belt,” he said.

  A quiet cry died in the back of my throat. He couldn’t be serious. He wouldn’t.

  Right?

  This wasn’t real. This was simply a bad dream that I was going to wake up from at any moment. The worst part of it all was that I couldn’t even reach for my arm to pinch myself and force myself to wake up.

  “You wouldn’t dare,” I sneered.

  He chuckled and the effect was chilling. His laughter surrounded me like a storm, swirling around faster and faster as I lost control.

  “Are you scared, little girl?” he asked softly. His hands had never stopped moving. Always gentle. Always soothing. Always in control.

  “Yes,” I murmured.

  “Daddy is going to take care of you. You just have to trust him,” he continued.

  Why did he keep calling himself Daddy? Was he sick too? Did it make his cock hard at the same time it was making my pussy wet? Were we both as deranged as the other?

  Oh, God. This was so wrong.

  “Just let me go,” I pleaded. I hated that my body was surging with arousal from some deep, dark hidden depths that I never even knew existed. My body was a traitor. I should hate him for this, but I knew that I was soaking wet because of it. My one saving grace was that I could keep my legs together. He wouldn’t be able to see the effect he was having on me.

  I could keep my body’s betrayal a secret. No matter what happened, he wouldn’t know his words were turning me on. He wouldn’t know how much I wanted to come.

  His palm smoothed over my right cheek and then like a leaf on a harsh gust of wind, his touch vanished. Not knowing what to expect, I stilled and didn’t say anything at all.

  “It’s time for Daddy to punish you, little girl. What comes next is going to hurt, but when your spanking is over, the two of us are going to talk about what you did. Do you understand me?”

  I didn’t dignify him with an answer. Maybe I should have.

  His palm cracked down hard on my left cheek. I squeaked in surprise more at the sound than anything else. It bounced off the stone walls all around me, reverberating off the hard cement and pounding down into the deep chasm of my soul. A second followed on the opposite side so quickly after the first that I barely had time to register that he’d spanked me again.

  Disbelief rattled through me. This was really happening. I’d been caught and now one of my marks had bared my bottom and was giving me the spanking that I so richly deserved.

  Did I? Had I really earned this?

  My ears hurt from the sound. It was so much louder than I could have ever imagined it would be. His palm cracked twice more on either side and that’s when the sting started to rise along with it.

  Sure. I knew that a spanking was a punishment. I wasn’t naïve. But I had never been spanked before. I didn’t know how much it would actually hurt.

  Oh, fuck. Oh. It hurt a lot.

  I wasn’t ready for this, but it wasn’t looking like I had much of a choice. His palm was ruthless and terrible and incredibly hard. It cracked against my naked cheeks, over and over again until my skin felt like it was on fire. It had started as a gradual burn, but with every last spank it escalated until it felt like a flame was scalding my flesh. He didn’t just punish the fullest part of my bottom either.

  He moved to the upper curves of my ass, ensuring to punish every inch with that wickedly cruel palm. When he spanked the place where my bottom met my thighs, I cried out because the sting was so much more intense there. I struggled to take it, but I was bound, and I wasn’t going anywhere until he let me go.

  This was a punishment. A very real punishment and I couldn’t use my words or my looks or anything I’d been trained to do to get out of it. I was trapped in the leather cuffs with my vulnerable bottom presented for chastisement. With my arms pulled out wide and my ankles bound, I couldn’t really turn my body. I couldn’t squirm or twist away to stop his cruel punishing hand. I was his prisoner. I’d stolen from him and he was taking out his revenge on my naked flesh.

  “Please. Stop. I’ll figure out how to get your money back,” I pleaded.

  He ignored me.

  “Begging won’t help you, little girl. Daddy knows that you need to be punished. Daddy knows what you need,” he said firmly, and I pressed my forehead against the sheets beneath me in stark disbelief.

  There it was again.

  Daddy.

  When the term fell off his lips, my core tensed hard each time. Even though my breasts were entirely covered, I knew that my nipples were scraping against the soft lace of my bra. Even worse, I knew that my arousal was beginning to gather between my thighs in earnest. I was so turned on and I didn’t want to be.

  Something was seriously wrong with me.

  There was probably something wrong with him too.

  His cruel hand spanked my upper thighs for the first time, and a quiet keening noise escaped my lips before I could stop it. Maybe that spurred him on because he began punishing my thighs harder than ever.

  “Such a pretty bottom, little girl. It’s even more beautiful when Daddy spanks it bright pink,” he mused.

  Bright pink? Hell, it felt like it should be purple by now.

  I twisted my hips as much as the chains would allow, but that didn’t stop him. His palm turned even more punishing after that. If I hadn’t known that it was his hand, I would have thought it was something else. A block of wood maybe. I didn’t know. All I knew was that this was more painful than I ever could have imagined.

  “Please stop,” I begged.

  “You were a bad little girl, weren’t you?” he asked. “Daddy has to take you in hand when you’re naughty,” he scolded and for some reason the insanity of his words touched me far more than I wanted. Deep down, I hated my work and I hated that I had to hurt people to do it, but it was a job, and I did what I had to do.

  “Please don’t,” I pleaded.

  “Daddy’s got you, little girl,” he murmured gently even though his hand was the exact opposite. His palm was cruel and harsh as it cracked against my flesh over and over no matter how much I wanted it to stop.

  The true extent of my loss of control really settled over me. All my life, I’d been independent. I hadn’t needed anyone. Never needed anyone and now that my bottom was bare and stinging so much that I wondered if he’d make me cry, I didn’t know what to do.

  I didn’t know if there was anything I could do.

  My bottom was on fire and there was no end in sight. For a moment, he paused, tracing his roughened palm over top of my scalded flesh.

  The pain lessened, but it was still there. I’d be sore for some time. I knew that, yet something else hurtled forward that caught me by complete surprise.

  My desire surged forward like a slingshot, like it had been waiting for him to stop so that it could surface and take over every last inch of me. My core swirled with need and nothing I could do would make it stop.

  My thighs slid against one another and I came to another mortifying conclusion.

  I was so much wetter than before.
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  Not just by a little bit either. I was soaking wet. My inner thighs were covered with it and that’s when he decided to slowly trace his fingers along the lower curve of my bottom until he traced part of my inner leg.

  “You think you can keep secrets from me, don’t you, little girl?” he asked.

  I pressed my legs even more firmly together.

  “I won’t tell you anything,” I whispered hoarsely.

  “Let me tell you something, little girl. Your bare little bottom is propped up for a reason. Sure, it makes it easier for Daddy to make sure that you’re thoroughly punished, but it also serves another purpose, doesn’t it?”

  I almost didn’t want to know but I couldn’t stop myself from asking anyway.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your thighs are strong and extraordinarily well-shaped, little girl. You work hard for the body you have, and it shows,” he said.

  I could feel myself blush. With my bottom bare and thoroughly punished, I hadn’t expected his praise and it caught me off guard.

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Your thighs curve in beautifully right here,” he added, sliding his fingers upward until they took a precipitous turn toward my pussy. “When you’re on display like this, I can see everything. I can see the arousal glistening on your bare little pussy. You’ve never been this wet for me, little girl. Ever.”

  Every single smart-assed retort died on my lips. There was nothing I could say. I had thought the evidence of my traitorous body had been hidden, but he’d been able to see it the entire time.

  The gravity of that was heavy and it left me reeling.

  “Please,” I pleaded.

  What was I even asking for?

  I don’t know. None of this made sense.

  “Would it make you blush to know that Daddy always thought you needed to be given a hard spanking over his knee to remind you of your place, little girl? Would it make you blush even harder to know that he thought about doing exactly that on our wedding night?”