Page 33 of A Little Christmas Caper

“Darlin’, I want you so much it hurts to breathe.” Pushing to his feet, Nick crossed the room, cupping her face in his large hands. “I wanted you so much I knew there was no way I could let you go if I ever got my hands on you again. Saying no to another scene with you was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

“Really?” Hope fluttered against her ribcage, wild and painful, but she wasn’t quite ready to embrace it.

“Yes. And I would be honored to have a chance to be a Daddy to Allison.” The corner of his mouth kicked up in an amused smirk. “To be honest, I think you could use a Daddy yourself.”

“She could!” Allie jumped in before Michelle could answer. “Sometimes she gets so stressed and overworked and then I feel bad ‘cuz I need her so much. A Daddy could help her from taking on too much.”

“I don’t want a Daddy.” Daddies were for Littles and while she could see herself submitting to Nick, she was not in any sense a Little. “But… I wouldn’t say no to a Sir.”

Running the pads of his thumbs across her cheekbones, Nick smiled. “I think we can work with that.”

“Oh, god.” Michelle clutched at his wrists, searching his expression for any hint of hesitation or worry as her stomach leapt wildly. But there was none. He looked as sure and confident as Allie had sounded. “Are we really doing this?”

“If the two of you agree, I’m willing to give it a try. You’ll be at the Ranch a few more days, right?”

“Yes. We leave the day after Christmas.”

“Okay. Well, how about this? While you two are here, we’ll get to know each other better. We can go on dates alone, and together, and see how we like it.” Releasing Michelle, he turned and pinned Allie with a look that had Michelle’s tummy flipping, even though she wasn’t the one in trouble. “Perhaps starting with a certain naughty little girl who can’t seem to keep a civil tongue in her mouth?”

Before coming to the Ranch, she had never let anyone else spank Allie. But, if they were going to give this a real try, and if Nick was going to be Allie’s Daddy, then she needed to let go of some of the control she clung to so tightly. And since they were only here for a few days, it made even more sense to jump in with both feet, especially since she already knew Nick could be trusted as a Dom. “I think that is an excellent place to start.”

“Hey! No fair ganging up on me!” Despite her protests, Allie’s eyes were dancing with mischievous delight. “I wouldn’t have gotten so mad if you two weren’t being so stubborn!”

The guilt she’d felt during the sleigh ride came roaring back with a vengeance. Gathering her courage, she looked up at Nick. “It is sort of my fault for not being honest with her from the start.”

Narrowing his eyes, Nick studied her for a long, tense moment before he spoke again. “Allison, you can go plant your nose in the corner there while Michelle and I have a discussion.”

For once in her life, Allie didn’t argue about the corner. She all but ran to it, and she seemed to be trying to squeeze herself as far into the crevice as humanly possible.

To Michelle’s continued shock, Nick didn’t simply haul her over his knee. Instead, he took her by the hand and led her to the attached bathroom and closed the door.

“All right, pet. Take a big breath for me and hold it.”

Already tumbling straight into her submissive headspace, she did as she was told, dragging in a lungful of air and holding it as he counted slowly to three.

“Let it out. Good girl. Feel better?”

“A little.” At least, she no longer felt like everything around her was spinning out of her control. “Thank you. Sir,” she added as an afterthought. Surely if she was about to be punished, he would expect her to use his honorific?

“Good. Now, I want us to get something straight before we continue.”

That no-nonsense tone sent a flash of heat through her body, even as she felt the nerves creeping back up her spine. “Um. Okay?”

“You are not responsible for Allie’s behavior tonight. Regardless of what you may or may not have done to upset her, she is still ultimately responsible for her own reactions. You are not going to take on any part of her punishment, just because you feel guilty. Have I made myself perfectly clear?”

“But it was partly my fault. If I had been honest with her from the start, she wouldn’t have gotten so upset, and she wouldn’t have almost fallen out of the sleigh, and she definitely wouldn’t have snapped like that.”

“I understand why you feel that way. And if you need a spanking to help you deal with the guilt of keeping things from her, I can help you with that. But I have a feeling this is going to be an issue for us, and I want to nip it in the bud before it gets out of hand. This is me, as your Sir and Allison’s Daddy, laying down the law: The only reactions you are accountable for are your own. You will not try to mitigate a punishment Allison has earned by taking the blame onto yourself, unless you gave her express permission to do something naughty. Am I making myself clear, or do you need to write lines to help it sink in?”

Anger and relief flooded her system in equal measure. Anger, because she wasn’t used to having anyone talk to her this way, and it was obviously going to take some getting used to. Relief for, well, much the same reason. For once, it wasn’t her job to make the rules or worry about enforcing them. And there was a freedom in that she hadn’t felt in so long it nearly made her knees go weak.

Forcing the anger back, she nodded. “Yes, Sir. I understand.”

“That’s my good girl. Now, before we address your guilty feelings, how do you want to handle Allison? Do you have a standard punishment you use for naughty words?”

Nothing he could have done in that moment would have set her mind more at ease than the simple act of asking for her input with Allie. “Yes. I normally give her some leeway on them, but she knows better than to speak to me like that. In the past, I’ve washed her mouth out before spanking her.”

“Bare, I’m assuming?”

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