Page 33 of Hold a Candle

“That’s a sad story for a young lad. An entire people and a love lost with Longfellow’s words. Can ye remember any of it by heart?” She remembered studying Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poetry in school. Evangeline was one of the few poems she remembered much about, but an eerie sadness had invaded her with Longfellow’s words and left an impression she still felt.

“Only one line...ye who believe in affection that hopes, endures and is patient, and in the strength of a woman’s devotion, listen to the tale of love in Acadie...or something like that,” he paraphrased, shooting her his killer smile as they stopped in front of the door.

“That’s pretty good. I’m impressed.”

“It was at that point that Mum would reassure me of her love and devotion and not go getting myself lost and making her worry,” he confessed with a chuckle. “She liked to relate the words to a modern situation. And at that tender young age, I didn’t have a clue what the poems really meant, I just liked the cadences of the lines. Or so she said.”

His eyes slid away to his phone and he began to enter the code for the door.

Pauley tried to imagine him as a young boy listening to his mother read to him at night. She suddenly realized she wanted to know more about him. A lot more.

“Here we go.” The door swung open and Jamie waved Pauley in past him. “Ye can hang yer coat just inside the closet on yer left,” he instructed.

They hung up their coats and then Pauley was able to actually appreciate the living room she’d scurried through after coming down the stairway to the door this morning. The leather furniture set still had its shine and she wondered if that was new since he’d lost Rhonda?

Her eyes were drawn to the cozy fireplace on the left side of the room once you were past the small entryway. There was a family photo of Jamie, Lucerne, and a gorgeous red-haired woman who had to be his wife. A lovely family—her heart ached for his loss. You could see from the next picture where they were both enclosed in each other’s arms, the devotion and love in their eyes. It had been a happy marriage. Gulping down the lump in her throat, she felt like an outsider.

On the right was the staircase to the second level and straight ahead alongside the staircase was the hall headed back to the kitchen. The door by the stairwell went to his study, she could see a desk inside the open doorway with shelves behind it.

She turned and watched him as he reset the code on the door then wandered through the doorway of the study to appraise the organized space on his desk. Everything about the man was neat and well-ordered. Even his lean, hard body with muscles that flowed neatly into one another, strong and supple, yet not overly bulging like a body builder. Trim and powerful, she’d felt that strength earlier and blushed slightly as she remembered his body rolling onto hers. Marveled at how easily he’d held her captive with her arms over her head.

Granted, she was in good shape, but she knew she’d be feeling that roll on the asphalt tomorrow morning. She was willing to bet he would too, though. Time waits for no one and it begins its relentless pace towards deterioration and death from the minute you are born. The young can’t wait to get older, and the old wish they were young again.

“What are ye thinking about, lass?”

She turned to see Jamie leaning against the doorjamb, his folded arms defining his muscles in the hunter-green, long-sleeved sweater that brought out some green in his eyes. Her heart beat a little faster. “Oh, I don’t know.”

“That means ye must be thinking about me,” he teased, dropping his arms and coming towards her.

“Ye’d like to think so, wouldn’t ye?” she gibed.

“All I know, is I’ve been thinking about ye since we met. Are ye still running away from me, Pauley, or have ye decided ye want to stop and dance with me yet?”

She thought back to their conversation in the diner about his intention to chase her until he caught her interest. “I believe I’d like to dance,” she replied, throwing caution to the wind and slipping her arms up around his neck.

“In that case, we need to have a little discussion,” he replied smoothly, taking her hand and pulling her over to the leather loveseat that matched the furniture in the living room.

As he sat down, he took her with him, but not in the way she’d expected. Suddenly she found herself lying across Jamie’s hard lap and pinned against his lean body. She wanted to protest, but the words wouldn’t come. Instead, she looked back at him and watched as he smiled down at her while his big palm started rubbing circles on her rounded backside. Feeling the warmth of his hands through the skinny denim jeans, she held her breath.

When his right hand went into the air, her eyes dared him to do his worst. She wasn’t going to beg him to stop because at this moment in time, she was right where she wanted to be. If she objected, he might stop and where would that leave her?

The spanks he’d delivered in the parking lot had just left her primed and wanting more, but their residual warmth had faded quickly. In spite of her state of mind in the car, a small part of her body had savored those smarting swats, and fairly acknowledged the fact that he had kept her from making a fool of herself.

“Ye just committed yerself to me now, lass, and I don’t intend to let ye go. Part of taking care of my woman is to meet her needs. And whether ye want it not, ye need a good spanking.”

Pauley opened her mouth to say something snarky about just getting on with it when a hot pain suddenly exploded right in the middle of both her bottom cheeks. The fireball quickly moved right, then left, which set up a steady rhythm of three at a time that he seemed perfectly comfortable with. For Pauley, not so much.

“S-Stop,” she sputtered, her arms flailing as she tried to catch her breath. The thin stretchy jeans were no protection at all. She kicked her legs up and he immediately flung his right leg over both of hers without breaking stride. Desperately, she tried to catch her breath and absorb the pain as it connected with her bouncing rear. Yes, she could feel it bouncing, but wasn’t inclined to worry about the bounce of her flesh so much as the board-like hand that was inflicting the bounce.

“J-Jamie,” she shrieked, hearing the whine of weakness she detested in her own wailing tone. She tried ineffectively to buck off his lap, but earned a growl from him.

“Lie still and take yer spanking, Pauley. Ye should have listened to me and Mica when we warned ye not to go after that young lad. As a parent, I’d have ye arrested if ye decided to go after Lucerne with the attitude ye were displaying today,” he scolded. “Not that I think ye would have done Belton physical harm, ye are too much of a professional for that, but ye would have scared the poor kid out of his wits. And if he told his parents, the end result would have been the same.”

“Y-Ye said if I obeyed, ye wouldn’t spank me.” She tried objecting after all, since this wasn’t quite working out the way she’d thought it would in retrospect. This hurt like nothing she’d ever experienced.

“That’s nae exactly what I said. I said if yedidn’tobey me, ye’d get a paddling like ye have never had before,” he explained, pausing to rub her rear. “But that was before ye committed yerself to our relationship,” he added with great satisfaction. “Now it no longer applies because yer mine, and I’ll make sure ye get what ye need.”

“Ye need to let me up,” she pleaded, trying to regain control of herself. It was embarrassing to be begging, and his reasoning was too complicated to absorb in the position she was in. She needed to rethink her desires and consider she may have been wrong!

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