Page 323 of Dirty Discipline, Vol. 2

And yet… why couldn’t he just drive away?

“Tabby,” he said, in his sternest Daddy-Dom voice. “Get in the car. Come on, you’re just hurting yourself more.”

Her chin hiked higher. His last Little had done that too, usually when she wanted him to punish her.

That wasn’t what Tabitha needed.

She needed to be hugged and rocked. Taken firmly by the hand and coaxed to sit herself upon the lap of someone who loved her, with comforting arms wrapped tight around her shoulders and loving voice inviting her to tell Daddy all about her terrible, awful, no good, really bad day.

He shook that thought out of his head. Pausing the truck, he let her walk on ahead while he dug through her sacks until he found what he was looking for. “Hey, hold up.” He had to catch up with her again before holding her wallet up so she could see it. “Look what they found in the bread aisle.”

She stopped walking. Staring straight ahead, she glared down the road with the heat of the sun rising in rippling waves off the concrete for a good ten seconds before scrubbing furiously at both eyes with the backs of her hands and then turning to fix that glare on him.

She marched up to his rolled down passenger side window, braced her hand upon it, and in a soft voice that shook—whether from anger or tears, he wasn’t sure—she said, “What do I have to do to get it back?”

“Nothing.” He held it out to her, hating the hard mistrust with which she stared at him before snatching her wallet from his hand. “Your ID is still in it, but there was no money.”

“Guess you were following the wrong thief,” she said flatly.

It wasn’t a joke, and he wasn’t inclined to laugh.

“I’m sorry,” he told her.

“Thanks.” Shoving off the car, she put the wallet in her pocket, then looked at him again. “Now, kindly go fuck yourself.”

He watched her walk away and sighed. Everything in his makeup said not to drive away and leave her like this, hurt, angry… stubborn… but he didn’t have a lot of options. Sadly, there came a point in every man’s life when he had to accept he’d screwed up beyond forgiveness.

Nodding and adjusting his hat, Jeff acknowledged that this was his latest and greatest screwup with an under-his-breath, “Yup.” He rolled up the window. It felt like he was compounding the wrongness as he drove away from her, down the road to the motel, where he pulled into a wide space on the side of the road. He wasn’t about to talk to his snake of a brother, so he waited at a respectful distance until Tabitha came home.

She never once looked in his direction, though she walked right past him at one point, muttering, “Jackass,” under her breath as she did it. He heard her even with the window rolled up. Figuring he deserved it, he let it go and simply waited until he saw which room she marched into, shutting the door firmly behind her.

Well, no one is perfect, not even Daddy Doms. Chalking this up as a regrettable mistake, he drove up to her room and quietly unloaded her groceries onto her doormat. With a soft knock, he then got back in his truck and went home.

Tabitha watched through the flimsy curtains until she was sure the sheriff was gone. Opening her front door, she glared at all the grocery bags and five plastic-wrapped boxes of Ramen waiting on the stoop. If she had money, or any other option at all, she’d have taken every bit of it—both the items she’d wanted as well as those unwelcome items he’d picked for her—straight to the dumpster around back.

But she didn’t have options. She really, really didn’t want to go hungry. She’d experienced her first taste of that while in prison, and trying to sleep on a stomach that wouldn’t stop pinching and rumbling wasn’t fun.

Scowling, she bent to grab the first bag and bring it in. She set it on the long, low four-drawer dresser beneath the wall-length mirror that faced her bed and the table that was the only other item of furniture in the room and returned for the next bag.

Travis was standing there, her groceries in his arms and a smile that was anything but friendly curling his mouth. Her stomach sank as she stared at her reflections in the silver, mirror-lenses of his sunglasses. Clamping her mouth shut, she kept her misgivings from showing on her all-too-open face.

“Let me bring these in for you,” he said, his tone keeping up the lie his smiling mouth was trying to sell. Her gut refused to be convinced. Still, there were no locks on the doors and she didn’t have the right to keep him out of her room. She stepped sideways, allowing him in. Bending to gather the cases of ramen, she checked the parking lot. The sheriff had gone. Seeing no one else, she swallowed back the unease and reluctantly withdrew back inside where the door, with springs on hinges, drifted shut behind her.

The old hotel room was so much smaller with Travis in it. She stayed where she was, between the window and door, ready to bolt outside if she had to, knowing she had nowhere to go and no options except to let Travis catch her.

“Just set them there, please,” she hedged as he walked around the small table to look out the window.

He glanced back toward town first, then glanced towards his office.

“Right there,” she said pointing to the dresser, her anxiety growing until, finally, he decided it was all clear. He set the groceries on the table.

Drawing the curtains closed cast the room in darkness and her stomach knotted as she watched him do it. She opened the door, pinning it to the wall with her back. The room was still too small, but at least they had light and she, at least the illusion that someone might hear her if she had to scream.

“Making friends?” he asked as he came back to stand by her.

Tabby shook her head. It took all she had just to keep her breathing slow and steady. She was shaking, though. All through her legs, stomach, her arms... her chest. Suddenly too small to hold everything it was supposed to, she couldn't seem to breathe right and her pulse raced. She could feel the battery of her pounding heart beating so nervously behind her ribs.

"No." She had to say it twice before she could get the word out of her tight throat.

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