Adjusting her weight, she drew the axe up higher and this time swung hard.
She missed the log entirely, the blade of the axe swooshing right past its target almost striking her right shin. Jumping, she dropped the axe and promptly stepped on the side of the blade, making the handle swing up where it smacked her in the side of the knee.
Embarrassed, already scolding herself for not being able to do even this stupid and simple job, Stace walked around the log that was her target, rubbing her nervous hands on the seat of her jeans before grabbing the axe up again.
“You can do this,” she muttered to herself as she got into a golfing position. Tightening her grip on the handle, she lay the cutting edge against the growth rings of the log, waggling her butt as she adjusted her stance. “Three’s the charm.”
She raised the axe high, putting her back and arms into the mighty blow she intended and which she would have delivered if only she hadn’t heard Brock suddenly shout, “Stop!”
She jumped, almost throwing the axe. Startled, she snapped around to find Brock charging at her from the front of the cabin. The look on his face was nothing but concern right up until she dropped the axe. Then, just like the evening sky, it darkened.
“Whatareyoudoing?” he demanded, sending every nerve in her body to quivering all over again.
“I’m doing it myself!” she snapped back, defensively. She hadn’t meant to snap or to sound as outraged as she did, but nor had she expected for him to show up either. Yelling. Scaring her with the determination of his steps and thatlookhe wore. The one that said she was in trouble when she wasn’t.
Was she?
She clutched at her fingers, backing up a few steps as he passed the log to scoop the axe up into his broad hand. He stopped directly in front of her, his face darkening even more.
“I said I would help you.”
It sounded more like a threat than a reassurance.
“But I can do it!” she insisted. “I can take care of myself.”
“You damn near took your leg off with this thing!”
“Oh, it’s not that sharp,” she scoffed, almost rolling her eyes at his exaggeration, but that was the wrong thing to do and she knew it the moment her gaze came to rest on him again.
One minute they were staring each other down in front of her impromptu chopping block, and in the next, he’d dropped the axe and grabbed her arm instead.
He made the whole world turn, and not in a romantic, his-arms-came-around-her, bending-her-over-backwards-as-if-they-were-about-to-kiss sort of way. No. The world turned all right, but because he’d just tucked her under his left arm, bending her over his left hip, while the flat of his big hand began a hard, fast, and furious tattoo all over the seat of her jeans.
The first blow shocked her. The second stole her breath in a shout that was equal parts pain and disbelief. He’d just taken his threat out of the realm of ‘could be let’s pretend’ and made it real with every smack after whack of his iron-hard palm.
It was beyond belief.
It also hurt like hell.
She shouted, her belated startlement finally finding voice, but not before he’d peppered every part of her bottom in stinging hurt. Every smack of his hand cracked across cold skin until hurt became a kindly descriptive compared to the painful fire he was building under her skin. Her ability to hold still vanished. She kicked her feet, throwing back a hand to block any more swats from falling, but he only turned his attention to the backs of her thighs instead.
She howled, her tender thighs absorbing the pain and sting of every hard smack, until she kicked first one foot and then the other up in defense of her thighs. No matter which foot she used, he deftly switched to her opposite thigh, and then went right back to her bottom until her hand blocked him again.
“Put your feet down,” he ordered. “Move your hand.”
“No!”
Grabbing her wrist, he tucked it into his left palm while his arm caught her in a tighter grip. Hupping her all the way up off the ground, he sat down on the stump and threw her over his lap like only so much cumbersome baggage.
“Stop!” she wailed, but Brock was already taking off his belt. She heard the clink of his buckle, the slither of leather being yanked from around his lean waist, and although she couldn’t hear it, she knew he’d just doubled it over in his hand when she felt the shift of his body as he raised it high.
As painful as his hand had been, the belt was worse. Much worse. The thickness of her jeans was no defense against the snapping fury with which he punished her bottom. His arm was tireless, and his aim unerring. It hurt. It hurt so much and went on for so long, she lost control of everything, including the wailing sobs that wracked her shoulders as she bawled for him to stop. Just please stop.
“I’m sorry!” really were the magic words, because he didn’t stop until she was crying them, over and over again while the pain burned through her butt, hot as a bonfire.
She wasn’t sure when he stopped spanking her. All she knew was one minute the denim muted whacks of his belt were all she could hear and the burning of her wounded flesh all she could feel, and in the next it was over. He didn’t let her up. He held her sprawled over his lap, with her hand firmly clenched in his and the toes of her shoes helplessly digging runnels in the wet grass behind her, and her hot tears cooling as they fell from her cheeksto the frosty ground below. She gasped and hiccuped, and only when her sobs had dwindled to little more than breathy hitches did she come all the way back to herself enough to realize he was rubbing her bottom.
“Are you done?” he asked, his tone firm but his hand gentle as he soothed away the intensifying burn. It didn’t seem to care if the spanking was over; it just kept scalding her, hotter and hotter until no amount of rubbing could ever have put it out.
