He presses a hand to his face, shielding himself, breathing shakily, “You’re…you’re going to teach me the difference between a spanking a-and a th-thrashing.”
And with that, my dick has had about all the fun it can handle for today.
“You’ve had a big day, Elliot. Are you ready for bed?” He gets up quickly, nodding and aiming for a bright smile but landing on one that’s not quite as high voltage as usual. “Would you like me to come and say good night when you’re in bed?”
A flash of white. Pure mischief. One thousand volts, easily.
My body reacts, but it’s fine. It’s been an intense night, and I’m human. It’s normal to have a physical response to this kind of stimuli. All I have to do is remind myself what Elliot and I have agreed on four or five times per day, and I’m positive I won’t run into any problems. This is a platonic arrangement, not a sexual relationship.
Elliot is Jeff’s son. He’s much younger than I am. I’m still coming to grips with a breakup, and I’m not in the right place for anything more.
Jeff’s son. Very young. Bad breakup.
Jeff’s son. Young. Breakup.
See? It’s not hard.
11
Elliot
Icranemyneckand look over my shoulder at the reflection of my ass in the bathroom mirror. My cheeks are the color of uncooked hamburger. My dick pulses and strains at the sight. I know I shouldn’t like it, but God, I do. My skin still feels warm to the touch and I’m overly aware of blood rushing through my veins with each beat of my heart. I hear a heavy footstep on the stairs, followed quickly by another. I pull my pajama pants up as fast as I can and scurry to my bed, pulling up the covers right under my armpits, lying back, and trying to arrange my face as that of a person who has been waiting in bed for a while.
Stuart stands in the doorway, casting his eyes around, before switching off the overhead light and coming in. My room, which is normally spacious, feels smaller with him in it. The mattress dips as he sits on the edge of the bed, facing me.
“Good night, bad boy.” The words are soft and gravelly, rolling around on the back of a wry smile. They roll around in me too. He hesitates for a moment before reaching up and ruffling my hair. “Sleep well.” I feel paralyzed by his voice and words and his proximity to my body. He switches my bedside light off and plunges my room into darkness. The mattress dips again when he gets up. Big slippered feet pad on the carpeted floor. He looks back when he reaches the door, his massive frame filling the doorway almost completely. “And don’t you worry, Elliot,” he says almost sweetly. “I’ll make a good boy of you yet.”
My hand is in my pants before I hear the door click shut. I hold my pillow over my face, smashing as much of it as possible into my mouth, and jerk it bone dry. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. It takes less than sixty seconds. Way less. I come so hard I can’t feel my legs for almost twenty minutes.
I’ve never really been much of a poker player. For some reason, sitting still and listening to people explain the rules of card games feels like a particularly hellish form of torture to me. So, while I don’t play, I do have a fondness for that moment a player shoves all their chips forward and says, “I’m all in.”
There’s something very powerful and stupid about it. I love it.
What’s happening between Stuart and me since the night I provoked him is like that. The stakes are high. The odds are low. My chances of getting through a day without having my ass scorched are slim to none. I’m not complaining. I want it. But Jesus, I feel it.
He feels it too. He must. When he spanked me for leaving my plate on the kitchen counter instead of putting it in the dishwasher last night, he said, “Damn, boy, you’re wearing my hand out.”
He didn’t say any more. He didn’t have to. The threat was as clear as if he’d spelled it out.
I’m in the study with Stuart. He’s sitting and I’m standing beside him. I haven’t been invited to take a seat, and something tells me asking for a chair wouldn’t be wise. I’ve had enough trips over Stuart’s knee now to be permanently cured of seeking that kind of attention for the hell of it. I’m behaving so much better since Stuart started spanking me in earnest that he’s had time to identify all kinds of new ways to improve me. This morning, he advised me that he’d be doing an audit of my spending and told me to report to him in the study with a printout of my last three monthly bank statements.
He’s been reading through the reams of paper I handed him for ages. I’ve been nervous as hell the whole time. I thought it would dissipate after a while, but nah. If anything, it’s getting worse. I have that fluttery, shaky feeling in my gut, and it’s making it hard to stand still. He has a ruler and a pale-pink highlighter, and as he works his way down each page, he highlights approximately two out of three lines. Now and again, he looks up and asks me what a particular expense is for. Sometimes, I know. Sometimes, I don’t. Either way, he sighs heavily and pinches the bridge of his nose.
When he’s finally done with the highlighting, he gets a calculator out and taps in numbers so hard and fast that therat-a-tat-tatof his nails on keys starts making me feel sleepy. I blink hard and try to take deep, quiet breaths through my nose to stop myself from yawning. I look around the room, pausing at each of the photographs behind his desk. I stare at the picture of Stuart and my dad for a long time. I think the same thing I always do when I see it—how the hell could the two of them be any more different?
Stuart is about as down-the-line as a man could ever be, and my dad flies by the seat of his pants and is proud of it. I feel the familiar tug of irritation I often get when I think about my dad, and to stave it off, I look at the rest of the photographs. My eye lands on the dark-haired man holding Sadie again. Beautiful is what one would call him. So beautiful he could almost give Trouble a run for his money. He’s different from Trouble though. Trouble has a lightness about him. A sweetness. It’s plain as day. You can’t miss it. The man in the photo does not. Or if he does, you sure as shit could miss it.
“Elliot.” Stuart’s voice startles me. “Would you like to know how much money you spent on smoothies last month?”
Oooh shit.
“Pretty sure I spent a couple of hundred dollars. It sounds like a lot, but it’s one of my three meals per day, and before I moved here, it was almost all of my fruit and vegetable intake. So, you know, kind of worth it, I think.”
Stuart’s face is a straight line. Hard and immobile. “Wrong. You spenteight hundred and forty dollarson smoothies.” He punctuates each word clearly, driving the insanity of them home. My ass cheeks are familiar enough with his tone now that the second they hear it, they quiver in consternation.
“Uh, um, are you sure that’s right? It sounds like a lot.”
“Itisa lot. And yes, I’m sure. I added it up twice. Eighteen ninety-nine for a smoothie? Are you kidding me? And how many of the damn things are you buying? That’s more than one per day.”
