Cai
I insisted on renting a car and driving up from Idaho Falls on my own. The drive was pretty awesome. I like my personal time, and I’d gotten almost three hours in the car, cranking the stereo, on a drive that’s very different than three hours in the car in Southern California. The mountains spoke for themselves. Vibrant colors, twisting roads, and the freedom to smash down the gas pedal as much as I felt like.
If I’m honest, I’m damn lucky I didn’t catch myself a speeding ticket, but all’s well that ends well.
I also insisted on getting a room at one of three motels in town, but as I pull up to the Seeker Inn, I kind of second-guess that choice. The two-story motel and one-story office are both painted a pinkish orange that might be something like salmon pink. Maybe. If the sun were setting and I squinted a lot.
The parking lot is surprisingly full. I find a spot between a mud-splattered F-150 and a Chevy, and the rental RAV4 that felt fun and roomy when I picked it up at the airport is suddenly dwarfed. I haul my hiking backpack out of the rear and swing it over a shoulder.
I stand inside the door and take the time for a really good look around. The floor is large gray tiles, not the shag orange that the walls would make me expect. Once it all sinks in, I realize the furniture is pretty industry-standard motel stuff. Nubby polyester upholstered chairs flank black metal tables. Through an archway to the right is a breakfast area with small bistro tables made of wrought iron. There’s a check-in desk topped with gray marble that coordinates with the floor tiling, and behind the desk is a young guy with stick-straight, dirty-blonde hair.
Everything is surprisingly up-to-date. Huh. Even the desk clerk is alert and totally on top of his job. He has me checked in less than ten minutes after I walk through the door. I barely have time to text Tansy that I’ve arrived. I send her my room number once I get that too.
But despite hitting Go on the text literally as I step into the room, I’ve barely unpacked my T-shirts before I hear a knock. I open the door half expecting the desk clerk or a random stranger, but it’s definitely Tansy.
I would know that cloud of curls anywhere. She’s got on a pair of faded-out jeans that I don’t remember seeing in California. They hang low on her hips, and the Henley she’s wearing emphasizes the curves of her body. Damn, she looks good.
“Were you waiting around the corner or something?”
“Nope. I was home. It’s a small town. Doesn’t take long to get across. Not like San Sebastian. I haven’t sat in traffic for days!” She brushes past me and throws herself down on the king-sized bed. “I take it back. I’m glad you got a motel room. This bed is huge.”
“Hey.” I snap it as crisply as I can manage. “You haven’t greeted me properly.”
“What?” She sits back up, her eyes wide. The bedspread is dark blue. Her pale skin glows. She looks healthier here. Or maybe it’s happier? When I first met Tansy, she had the edge of panic to every word that came out of her mouth. Even though I’m acting firm, that feeling is gone.
“Come kiss me.”
A smile blooms across her mouth. She slides off the bed and saunters toward me. The usual sweetness clings to her, but it’s mixed with a hint of wood smoke. “That I can do,” she purrs.
She leans up on her toes and mates her mouth to mine. Her lips taste like candied apples. We aren’t touching anywhere but at our mouths, and it’s beautiful and serene.
We’ve been seeing each other two and three times a week in California, and it has been only three days ahead of me that Tansy arrived in Idaho. How could I have grown to miss her in that time? It seems like an impossibility, something that’s bigger than me and as mysterious as a phantom at the same time. Like a ghost, she’s going to slip through my fingers.
That magic quality she has, the ability to keep going despite the fear that I can read on her . . . She’s strong in a way I never thought to be. It was the months between Xue disappearing and finding her body that were the worst. The not knowing sank into my bones. The terror was never ending—sometimes I think in a literal way that’s still holding on to me.
Tansy has been through hell and come out as startlingly earnest as a grown human can be.
I’ve never tried to hold on to anyone before. I don’t know what to do this time.
She drops down. I smile at her and tap the end of her perky button nose. “Good girl.”
Her smile turns into a laugh. “Should I say ‘Woof woof’?”
I even feel goofy about her straight, white teeth. Only straight thing I like on her. This is ridiculous. I catch her around the waist. Our curves align. Where her hips go in, mine go out. Her breasts are soft. “I could give puppy play a shot if you really wanted. I don’t know that it’d come naturally.”
She giggles some more and covers her face with her hands. Splotches of bright red tint the tops of her cheeks and her ears anyway. “No! No, no, I didn’t even know that was a thing. Is that a thing? Really?”
“Some people like it.” I fold and bury my face in her neck as I make a growling noise. “See? You liked that there.”
“It tickled,” she exclaims with another round of laughter. “Physiological reactions can’t be controlled.”
Her arms hook around my neck, and she leans back so that a lot of her body weight dangles. She’s trusting me to hold her up.
I won’t let her fall.
Even if it scares the shit out of me.
We’re supposed to go over and meet her family for dinner, but one more kiss won’t kill us, so I take it. Except she melts into my arms like some sort of end-of-the-video-game prize. I claim her mouth and my hand is at her breast before I realize what’s going on. I end the kiss and push her back. “Nuh-uh. I am not going to sleep with you right before meeting your dad.”
She scoots into my arms again and curls her hands around the bottom hem of my T-shirt. She rubs her knuckles over my bare skin. “Are you sure? Are you really sure?”
“Are you trying to get me in trouble?”
“Would you spank me if I said yes?” She’s in full minx mode, with that teasing smile on her lips. She wiggles a little bit. “It’s not like I had high school boyfriends. The whole rebellion thing passed me by. I think Jody was about as close as I got to it, and she was like a grenade who pulled her own pin. I never really knew when she was going to go off.”
“That sounds seriously shitty.” The time I met Jody, she was a real peach, and I’ve guessed she must have been a bitch, but I think this is more than Tansy has ever said about her before. When I take Tansy’s hands, they’re ice-cold.
She shrugs as if it doesn’t matter anymore. I want that to be true, but I wonder how much she’s been hurt. Where her wounds end. I’m not a surgeon, but I’m someone who cares about her. Maybe I can help sew her up.
“So now is fun. I kind of want to parade you all around town. Everyone’s going to love you.”
“I don’t know about that,” I say as I shake my head. “I’m not exactly small-town material. All the tats.”
“Eh.” She pets the ink on my arm. “You’re not as edgy as you think you are.”
“You take that back, or I’ll start growling again.”
“See?” She hooks a hand around the back of my head and pulls my mouth down to her. “All bark, no bite.”
“I’ll order you to your knees again.”
“Like that’s a hardship.” She darts her tongue out and licks my bottom lip, then kisses the moisture away. “I ain’t afraid of you, lady.”
I hug her. I hold her body to mine as tight as I can manage, and she squeezes me back. We’re a port in an invisible storm. In my head it’s calm. I want her. I want to keep her, this mix of vulnerable and innocent that she has mastered. The pile of her hair covers my face, and I breathe her in.
I’m going to have a life full of Tansy Gavin, and my world is going to be better for it.
“Kneel,” I order her.
She sinks gracefully and immediately. Her gaze stays linked to mine. I’ll be damned if I’m gonna be the first one to look away.
Her touch skims down my shoulders, over the backs of my wrists, and finds purchase at the front of my jeans. She looks up at me, thumb rubbing the metal button. “May I?”
“May you what?”
Her eyes are luminous against the pale arch of her cheek. The sweep of her lashes has depth it hadn’t before. I think she got those lash things she was talking about. The effect is subtle, but it makes her even more beautiful. I have a wood nymph kneeling before me. “May I take your pants down? Please, miss?”
I have to hold back a little smile, because miss doesn’t seem like a name that fits me in the least. I’m a ballbuster, a broad. Miss is for women who attend church or are younger than twenty. That hasn’t been me for a long time. “You may unbutton me.”
She opens the snap and lowers the zipper—and I snag her hand. “Uh-uh. Naughty little one. I only said you could unbutton, not unzip.”
A gasp flies from her parted lips. “You tricked me!”
“Did I? Or did you get greedy and hear what you wanted to hear?”
She drops her gaze, and she’s hiding her own teasing smile. There are stars in her eyes. “I got greedy. I like having all of you, mistress.”
I laugh, and it’s okay because she giggles. “No, I don’t think that one works either.”
“I need something to call you, don’t I?” She speaks so innocently, as if I’m not going to notice the way she’s inveigling her hands between the back waistband of my jeans and my panties. She grips my ass and squeezes. Sneaky gropes. I’ll let it pass because I like the hungry way she eyes me up. “Your name feels too informal right now. And I like the way you call me ‘little one.’”
“Is that what I say? It’s fitting.” I wrap a lock of her hair around a finger.
She widens her knees and comes closer to me so that they’re on either side of my toes. Her cheek lies against my stomach. “It makes me feel good when you use it. Small in a good way.”
“Have you been small in a bad way before?” I ask before I think it through.
Her grip on my ass tightens, and she presses her cheek against me. For a moment I think that’s going to be all the answer I get. The air in the meager room is still. I can hear my own pulse in my ears. The tiny shuffle of leather against carpet when she shifts one foot.
Then she nods. “I have.” Her voice is small to match. “So small I could have disappeared.”
We hold each other for a long moment. I may be the one standing, and she the one kneeling, but it’s Tansy who’s giving me a gift. It’s one so shining and pure that I hardly know what to do with it. I’ve entered into this pact with her trust and been too obtuse to realize what she was handing me.
I have so much fear it threatens to swamp me. Fear and worry that I can’t be worthy of what she’s giving me. I don’t know how to be someone else’s lifeboat when I barely know how to steer my own ship. Even now, I don’t know how to do this. To guide us from emotion and depth to sex. Because that is what I’m supposed to do, isn’t it?
I let myself have this time with Tansy wrapped around me. I fold my arms around her shoulders in return. My spine bends and my shoulders relax. Time marches on, and for once that’s okay.
I have Tansy and she has me.
I lose track of how long we hold each other before I tuck a couple of fingers under her chin and tip her face toward me. “Kiss me.”
She has to stand up again to do it, but then her mouth is on me. We catch flames with both hands and drag the explosion around ourselves. I think we’re both throwing ourselves into the kiss, giving it everything we have, because our mouths—such a simple part of our bodies, the same and yet so different—are the easiest way to explore the enormity that’s happened to us.
How long can we hang on to this feeling? How long can it last when the world itself is so impermanent?
I wrap one arm around Tansy’s ass and heft her into my hold. She pulls her lips from mine, gasping. “Be careful!”
She’s taller than me this way. I have to look up and she’s looking down, which means that her curls fall around both of us. “You’re tiny. It’s fine.”
She hitches her legs around my hips, which honestly does help balance her weight. What had been manageable becomes comfortable. Her wrists drape over my shoulders. She nuzzles my temple and brushes little kisses over the shell of my ear. The tickle makes me shiver.
The small room means the bed isn’t far away. I toss her down. She flails to catch her balance and then leans on her elbows. The quilted bedspread bounces around her, raising the scent of cheap detergent. She’s grinning in a way that lights me up.
“If I’m so little, how come ya needed to throw me down so quick?”
“Because I like throwing you around?” I grab her ankles and yank her across the bed toward me. She squeals. I grab her hip for leverage and twist her onto her stomach. “No, wait. Because I have plans for you.”
She’s laughing. She pushes to her hands and knees and makes a pretty earnest effort to scramble up the bed. “What plans?”
“Why don’t you come back here and find out?” I snag one of her ankles, wishing I had her smooth skin instead of the cool leather boot. When I pull her back, she holds on to the blanket so that it comes with her and exposes stark white sheets.
She doesn’t say anything, but she looks back over her shoulder and wiggles her butt. She settles low on her elbows so that she becomes a sinuous curve. I open my palms over her ass, letting my fingers appreciate her structure. Even through jeans, she’s soft enough that I only want more.
So I bring one hand back to my shoulder, swing wide, and smack the hell out of her ass.
“Oh!” She jolts, her toes coming together.
“Too much? More?” My breathing is coming hard and fast. That same hand hovers in the air as if it would take flight on its own. I like that. I want to give her more. The sting in my palm has to be half the sting in her cheeks. There’s nothing in this entire world but her and me.
If she says it’s too much, I’ll stop in an instant. This is only good if it’s her and me against the world. If it’s me against her, it defeats the whole purpose.
She nods. Her hands clench the edge of the bedspread but her hips lift again. “Will you take it slow?”
I would promise her a colony on the moon if she asked for it. Keeping a spanking to a sedate pace seems like something completely within my wherewithal. So the fact that my fingers have a little tremble is absolutely beside the point. “Yes, little one.”
“Okay,” she says on a whisper.
“There’s only going to be ten this time. That’s what good girls get.”
She bites her bottom lip and lays her head against the bed. “Am I your good girl?”
“The best.”
I hold back some for the first smack. Her jeans are a little thin and stretchy, but it’ll still be enough to wake her up. The second makes her eyes widen. I keep going at a slow and steady pace, watching her face instead of her ass as I might have guessed I would.
On number six, her eyes flutter shut and she lets her lip free of her teeth. The plump curve is pink and gleaming just enough to drive me crazy. I want to take her mouth, then take her pussy and see which is sweeter. Instead I keep the spanks smooth and even. I can barely feel the heavy thump of my pulse in my pussy. I shift to rub my swollen clit on the inside seam of my jeans. It’s not enough but at the same time enough to keep the raw edge off my hunger to get through what Tansy needs.
Spanks seven and eight are methodical. I move around her ass so that the pressure is spread. Nine I land right in the middle of her seat, low enough that the edge of my hand is against her pussy. She jumps and gasps, then just as quickly hides her face against the bed.
“No,” I say. “Let me see you.”
She comes up on her elbows to look back at me. She’s fevered, bright red across the tops of her soft cheeks. Her eyes seem more blue than hazel against her flushed skin. The inside of her bottom lip shows in a pout. “It’s a lot.”
“That’s why you were hiding?”
I can’t wait to spank her bare ass. It’s not something I’d have previously counted as a must have in a relationship, but with Tansy, it’s all different. I rub her clothing-covered butt and even through the material I feel heat coming off her skin.
“This is . . .” Her lashes flutter as she goes somewhere inside herself. “This is intimate.”
“It’s supposed to be.”
She nods. The loose hem of her flannel rides up her back, but her tank top keeps anything from being exposed. In all ways but the truth, this tableau is practically modest. We’re both dressed. We haven’t even taken off our shoes. “It’s good that it is. But it’s hard too. My brain races so fast, trying to figure out what you want and how I can respond. How I’m supposed to respond. But then you smack me and all that flies away. For a little while, at least. And I know I’m showing you me. The real me with no way to hide.”
“That’s possibly the sexiest fucking thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
She’s still bright red, the awkward crimson of an embarrassed blush. “I’m sure you’ve heard way better dirty talk.”
“No. Filthier, sure. But all the fuck-me-harder porn star acts in the world can’t compare to the way you open up.”
I sink to the bed next to her, one arm around her waist, and I balance her face with my other hand. Her mouth melts as I kiss her. She’s exactly as sweet as she should be. Once I give her the last spanking, I’m going to yank her jeans down and make her feel as physically good as I do emotionally. I think that’s about four orgasms worth of good. I can work with that.
“More, please?” she says against my lips. “I want my last one. I want to be a good girl. Your good girl.”
Maybe she’s getting the hang of that dirty-talk thing after all because, Jesus Christ, did that do it for me. “Yes, little one.”
I stand, lining myself up behind her at the end of the bed. She makes for a flawless picture. Her ass curves into her soft thighs. I put one hand on the small of her back. Taking a moment to breathe deeply doesn’t make my head spin any less.
The words bubble up in my chest first, a hungry and live beast that wants to give as much as it takes. I would claw away the world if I could keep us here, in this room forever.
“Tansy . . . I love you,” I say, regretting it and fearing it and wishing that it wasn’t so fucking hard as soon as the words come out of my mouth.
And then I spank her.