The second was the moment I saw Jesse, standing in the hallway at the hospital. His first night home on leave in six months, and he and Kent had gone out to decimate the local Golden Corral buffet. And there he was, waiting for me, the look in his eyes telling me everything my nightmares were made of.
My brother was gone.
Jesse had always had power. Not just over me, but over everyone he ever met. As I lay across his legs in that office, completely at his mercy, I felt it in the deep strike of his blows, restrained as they were. But it was so much more. It was something deep inside every fiber of his being that made him almost vibrate. Elevate. The energy that surrounded him made people take a step away, give him a wide berth, without even knowing why.
Holding my breath, the next stinging smack layered upon the last and dots of white light speckled in my vision.
Smack.
“Holy shit,stopit!” My pitiful voice was barely above a whisper as I lay over the legs of the man that had been the object of my fantasies back before I should have had fantasies.
His open, bare hand made sickening smacking noises against the naked flesh of my upturned bottom.
The force of his blows was immeasurably more intense than a mere spanking.
Likesmack smackto the n’th degree.
The world seemed to tip over on itself. I felt the flex of his muscles against my belly. The warmth of his body holding me down as much as his hands were.
There was pain, sure, but under that prickle of nerve endings the connection went deeper.
Deeper.
God, so much deeper.
My eyes exploded in stinging rivers of tears, along with soul-shaking sobs that emanated from a place so walled off and fortified deep within me, that no light had penetrated since Kent died.
There was a pause, a silence so ear-splitting I filled it with words I barely recognized as my own.
“More. I need—” My throat closed, fists balled, eyes squeezing shut to block out everything but this, right here, right now.
Jesse’s hand pressed down on my back as his other came down.
Somehow, in a moment between the blows, I teetered on that knife’s edge, that thin space between pleasure and pain as the heat and stinging impact of the spanking wrenched through my body.
The thunder of his open palm against my soft flesh made my ass sing with the heat of the sun, then a strange base layer of comforting warmth gathered under the impact.
The sensation sunk through the fleshy layers, finding its home, wiggling its red fingers into my outer lips, teasing and tingling before the next impact.
Smack. I sucked all the air from the room. Popping my lips together to hold it inside.
When I could hold my breath no more, I took huge gulps and gasps between sobs as Jesse’s heavy hand took point on top of my welted ass, creating a connection deeper than our history or the fact that my upturned ass was across his lap.
“It’s okay,” he said, and those simple words opened up parts of me I wanted to keep hidden forever.
All the fight left me as though his voice and the hand on my ass was relieving me of all my shame and fear.
“Why?” It was all I could manage, unsure even what I was asking. There were so many ‘Why’s’ in my short life, and I knew he didn’t have the answers, but somehow I felt if I gave him the questions, I wouldn’t even need the answers anymore.
In the deepest, most sacred part of my soul, I knew that he would take care of me as he promised. And it didn't matter if I refused it, it didn't matter if I fought against him. In that moment, I knew Jesse was going to love me and keep me safe, for the rest of my life, with my permission or without it.
“Kat?” My name felt like a hug coming from his lips. That warmth inside me turned from angry flames to honey, dripping and sticky and sweet.
“What?”
“You just need to trust me.” There was a restraint in his voice. A tension I had never heard before, and my heart clenched somewhere between grief and bliss.
“Okay,” I said, accepting whatever he was going to give. Whatever he was going to do.
