“Are you going to set up a lab at home?” I ask the question while we are making what feels like a getaway.
He gives me a sidelong look, as if he knows he can’t straight up lie to me because I am not that stupid, but he also can’t tell me the truth.
“I’m going to take some time away from the lab, and so are you,” he says.
I bet he’s taking the stuff that’s going to stop them from getting chimera pets up and running. But I bet, in turn, Veronica already has that stuff. She wouldn’t let him know her plan unless she was pretty sure it was already too late to stop her. That’s the kind of person she is.
I can’t say that, though, because I’m not supposed to know about any of that, and I am absolutely not going to play my hand too soon. This is all way too good to make that mistake.
Simon takes me home with all the lab stuff, because of course he does. I may as well be the lab stuff. I might as well be a pile of folders in a cardboard box. Or a series of vials clanking gently in a holder that wasn’t really designed to be driven around.
Maybe I am tired from my long vigil of waiting for him. Or maybe it just puts me in a bad mood to know that multiple people met me and decided the most valuable thing about me was between my legs.
I keep the feelings to myself, stuffing them down. With any luck, they might never come out and even up having a disproportionate and outsized effect on my life when I could just have brought them up now and had a relatively mild conversation about the whole thing.
Simon has a home office space that has been mostly empty, but starts to fill up pretty fast once we put all the things in it. I wonder how he’s going to keep doing his work without thebenefit of the larger and more complex machines, but by this stage I somewhat don’t give a fuck.
“You look tired,” he says.
“You look old,” I snap back.
He lifts a brow at me. “That’s unusual for you,” he says, cataloging my behavior rather than being affected by it. “What’s going on?”
“Oh, nothing,” I tell him.
“You need some attention,” he says. “I’ve returned after a long absence, you had every reason to be concerned you wouldn’t see me again, and we have spent most of the day at work. You need to be given a proper reward for all you have done for me.”
He picks me up and seats me on his desk, spreading my legs wide and hitching my skirt up. I close my legs, pouting because, well, I have a whole lot of things to say that I don’t feel comfortable saying because I feel like they’re going to ruin everything if I bring them up in any way.
“What has gotten into you?” He puts his hands on my thighs and looks into my eyes.
“I just feel like there’s more going on that I don’t know about,” I say, giving him a chance to admit everything to me.
“Of course there is,” he says. “There are so many things.”
I narrow my eyes at him. His narrow back ever so slightly, and I feel a bolt of excited defiance run through me. This feels sexy, even though I want to pout and argue.
“Do you want a spanking, or do you want to be fucked?”
“Do you want a spanking, or do you want to be fucked?” I repeat his question back to him. I sound immature, but I don’t care. Sometimes I don’t want to answer a question like that. It’s a false dichotomy to start with.
“Oh, you are tired,” he chuckles. “I should spank you and put you to bed like the naughty girl you are.”
It sounds so nice to be put to bed that I don’t even put up a fight when he carries me off, wrapping one arm around my waist and the other under my ass. I encircle his hips with my legs, clinging to him like a baby koala until we reach our destination.
He sets me down in the bedroom and strips me of my clothing. I let him, because maybe I am tired. Tired of the strange stressors of this situation and everything involved with it. Then he sits down on the side of the bed and pulls me over his lap as if this is all very normal and reasonable and a totally fine thing to do.
“Settle in, baby,” he murmurs, running his hand over my back and then down my ass, soothing me into place.
He smacks my butt, but not hard. Just firmly enough to give me a little light sting, and the warm, snuggly sensation of being dominated.
I let my thoughts stop running, and I sink into that blissful, brainless state that I only seem to get when I am being disciplined. That probably means something, but I don’t know what and I can’t think about it because I cannot think about anything. His hand falls and lands, and I feel good.
“The attitude has been quite spicy tonight,” he says. “I know you know better than to disrespect me, so I’m going to put it down to the emotional hangover of my disappearance. I know I needto make that up to you, and I am going to. But first, I’m going to make this gorgeous ass completely red.”
He starts to spank me harder, so much harder that it almost feels like I’m actually being punished for my actions, but that can’t be right. I don’t deserve that. He is the bad guy; if anything, he is the one who should be punished.
“Cry if you need to, baby,” he purrs, smacking my ass hard and sharp, jolting me against his thighs over and over until I wail. “Let it all out. I don’t want you holding onto all that stress. You need to express it.”
