Whatever fantasies Elodie might have indulged in regarding what being spanked would be like, were nothing in comparison to the real thing. There was nothing she could do, nothing she could read—online or otherwise—nothing that she could have heard from April about it that would have prepared her for what it was really like to feel two thick thighs beneath her ribcage, supporting her as his left arm lay lightly over the small of her back, trapping her in place as easily and naturally as could be.
She had never felt more vulnerable in her life. Not even when her ex-husband, Randy, was taking her virginity. Then she'd only felt pain and mild disappointment that that was all there was to lovemaking. It wasn't even so much the situation itself. It was that it was Clay. It was Clay who was actually delivering the spanking.
Elodie didn't know where to put the pain. It hurt at least a thousand times worse than any spanking she'd ever received as a child, and he wasn't showing any signs of stopping anytime soon. She wiggled and squirmed and tried to buck or arch away from him, but nothing was working—the only thing that she was positive about her future was that that hand was going to continue to distribute its pain all over her rounded bottom and down the backs of each of her thighs.
Those were the worst of all of them. Because of the size of his hand and how little acreage there was back there, he had easily gone over the small territory of her butt once and was ending up having to spank the same place several times, but the worst swats were still on the backs of her thighs, or that tender area just at the crease of her bottom. It was atrocious, and she wasn't at all sure she was going to survive it.
Clay began to lecture just when Elodie was starting to think she was going to go crazy from the searing heat he was creating in her tail. "When I tell you to do something, I expect you to do it. It's not as if you didn't know where you were going to end up if you didn't obey me, Elodie. I think I made that perfectly clear. All you had to do was go and get a coat. But no, you had to be stubborn. You West girls are stubborn to the bone—I should have known you weren't that different from your sister."
*****
Bringing up April at a time like this probably wasn't the smartest thing to do, but he couldn't help it. The comparisons were inevitable. But this was Elodie, who had probably rarely been spanked in her life, and not April, who had been spanked with a considerable regularity, especially when they were first married. Elodie was sobbing and crying with each swat, and Clay didn't want to be too hard on her this first time. He was sure that, even quiet as she was, she would get herself into more trouble down the road. There would be a time to be harsher with her, he was sure.
But for now, he gave her twenty more hard slaps as he watched each red handprint come up through the already pinkened flesh. When he had finished, she hung over his legs, and he no longer had to worry about whether or not she noticed how hard he was, because he wasn't.
Spanking a woman was a strange thing. In some ways, he found it—aspects of it—unbearably sexy. Having a beautiful young woman over his lap, her bottom revealed and dancing beneath the crack of his hand, the cascade of hair, the enticing wiggle as she tried to get out of what she knew she had coming to her. But the inflicting pain part, that was hard, especially when you cared about the woman you were disciplining, and Clay was of a mind that if you didn't care about her, you shouldn't be touching her like that in the first place.
But he knew that Elodie had a need. He knew she needed someone to watch out for her, for her best interests, even against herself. He knew she needed a strong but gentle hand on her bottom at all times—at least to mentally know that it was there—to remind her that she was cared for by someone.
By him.
He'd been surprising himself for quite some time, but now he realized he was ready to make a small move towards putting his life with April into perspective. Not behind him at all, because she would always be his love, but into the right light. April was gone. There was no bringing her back. And he knew, from the few, scant, uncomfortable talks they had had on the subject, that she wouldn't want him to try to climb into the grave with her in any way—not in grief, and not by trying to smother that grief in work. She would want him to pick up—after a reasonable amount of time to honor her—and go on and have a great life, and be happy.
Most of all, though, she wanted him to find love again. A love like the one they had had. She'd told him so, through tears one night when they were talking about the unspeakable possibility of losing each other.
Tears came to his eyes as Elodie lay panting and crying softly over his lap. He rested his hand—which was probably just about as sore as her bottom—on the small of her back and began to rub. Another situation where he was somewhat at a loss. He couldn't quite comfort Elodie the way he used to comfort April. He could picture the look on her face if he tried, though, and it made him crack a watery smile.
When her breathing had pretty much returned to normal, Clay whispered huskily, "Let me help you up, sweetie."