Page 35 of The Mentor
With all my strength, I pulled his arm back and screamed at him to stop.
“Step back,” he ordered.
Placing myself between him and Sky, I pleaded with him. “No more, please, no more.”
Archer pushed me back with a look of annoyance. “We said twenty-five and I only smacked her seven times.”
“It's enough, don't you see?”
“Your hysteria is only making it worse; just let her get it over with.” Archer pushed me out of the way and raised his hand again. Sky squeezed her eyes firmly together and screamed at the top of her lungs.
In a state of panic, I shouted over her loud screaming. “I'll do it!”
Archer’s head swung to me. “What? I thought you said you couldn't hit a child?”
My whole body was trembling, and my throat was dry as the desert but I managed to gather enough words to explain myself. “I meant, I'll take her punishment for her.”
Archer’s eyebrows lowered and his lips pursed, “Are you out of your mind?”
“No,” I whispered in a trembling voice. “If you must hit someone, you can hit me.”
“And what exactly do you think Sky is gonna learn from me hittingyou?” Deeply frustrated, he paced back and forward in the small room.
“Sky?” I quickly pulled the girl up from her bent-over position and dried her eyes. “It's okay, sweetie, just go.”
The miserable girl flung her arms around me and sobbed into my chest. I closed my arms around her and made soothing sounds while pushing her toward the door. “Run to Shelly, okay?”
She didn't say a word but I felt her head nod into my chest, and with a few more sniffles she hurried out of the room.
When I tried to go out the door myself Archer’s hand grabbed my wrist and slammed the door shut. “Not so fast,” he muttered. “You said you would take her punishment, and now you're running away?”
“I'm not running,” I said in a voice much braver than I felt. But the truth was that my instinct was to get as far away from him as possible.
With a jerk on my arm, Archer pulled me in front of him to look straight into my eyes. “Don't think for one second that I'll hold back. Unlike Sky, you are no child “
I swallowed hard and blinked a few times before I nodded. “I understand.”
“No, you don’t understand. You think we’re just savages who want to cause pain in the children, but I’m sick of you undermining me. The whole purpose of physical discipline is to do it in front of the others, but you wouldn’t let me. What you don’t get, Kya, is that it’s not about the pain, it’s about the humiliation. If you really want to take her punishment, you’re going to take the humiliation of doing this in public.”
I lifted my chin, signaling a bravado I didn’t really feel.
“No, this will be done in here, right now, just like we agreed upon.”
There was a silent power struggle between us before he nodded. “All right, if you’re really serious about this then you better get into position,” he said with his eyes narrowed and his lips thinned.
I had never been as humiliated in my life as when I walked over to the desk and bent over, placing my elbows on the cool surface of the table.
“What are you doing?” Archer muttered. “Did you really think I was going to go this easy on you? You’re an adult, so you will stand up and hold out your palms. I want to see the pain and humiliation on your face, so I know you’ll never do something as crazy as this again.”
I blinked in confusion. “Why are you being this mean to me?”
“Because you piss me off when you constantly sabotage the way I do things here. You shouldn’t have interfered with Sky and I’m gonna make fucking sure that you never do it again.”
“Sky chose this type of spanking, and I said that I would take the rest of her punishment.” My voice was quivering a little so I took a deep breath to steady myself, and to speak the next part in my most firm schoolteacher voice: “You may punish me, but we will do it this way.”
Archer snorted behind me. “It wouldn’t be much of a punishment. With that thick fabric covering your behind, you wouldn’t feel a thing.”
I frowned because the thought had already occurred to me that I was much more protected in my knitted dress than Sky had been in her thin pants. I had just hoped he wouldn’t notice.
