So I spanked her. Once. The sharp, loud crack of my hand and her yelp cut through the air.
“Wyle?” Her voice trembled. She knew she was in trouble.
“Stay,” I said.
I hit her again, on her ass cheeks, returning every hit she’d given me. I had wanted them then, but that was when I thought she was someone else. It was all a false pretense, and I owed her that back and more.
Melissa cried out with every strike, but she didn’t get up, didn’t move to stop me. If she had, I would have had to let her go, and wouldn’t that have been a shame?
I hit her and hit her. Her voice grew thicker, more stuttering, and I realized she was crying. My hand paused, hovering over her red, burning ass. Of course I should stop. I was an animal. She didn’t want this, even if she let me do it. But that’s how far gone I was, that in a show of defiance and rage, I let my hand fall three more times atop the raw skin.
I fell back on the floor. My own hand burned from the strikes, almost numb from the repeated impact. She sobbed on the floor, hugging it for comfort with her hands and face while her bare, broken ass pointed up in the air.
Shit, I’d hit a woman.
I hadn’t meant it like that. Or maybe I had. It was just that
she had spanked me and jerked me around, literally, figuratively, and I wanted to do the same back to her. But it wasn’t the same, not when it was physical. I’d wanted that spanking, but she sure as hell hadn’t asked for this.
She’d brought me to this, though.
“Why?” I whispered. “Why did you do it?”
She didn’t answer, just muffled cries into the carpet.
“Jesus, Melissa.” I pulled her to me and turned her over, then wrapped her in my arms there on the floor. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Just tell me why.”
She sniffled and looked up at me with her gorgeous brown eyes, now puffy and red. “What are you talking about? Why what?”
I tried to harden my voice, though the gig was up now that I was cradling her tenderly in my arms. “I talked to Joanna. She told me you’d asked about me. That you’d wanted to be setup on a date with me. Why?”
She turned her face away. My heart sank. I guess I’d been thinking – hoping – that she’d had a real explanation. More fool me.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll tell you the truth.”
I hardened my mind and my stomach against what I would hear.
She hiccupped. “Do you remember back – that summer when you were visiting from college? There was a cat on the street, he’d been – ”
“Run over by a car,” I said, feeling my stomach lurch. No, this hadn’t been what I’d expected to hear at all.
“Yeah,” she said. “The cat belonged to a girl. Her parents weren’t home so you helped her take it to the vet. And when the cat died, you held her while she cried.”
“Oh my god,” I said.
“That was me. Emmy was what I went by then, though I didn’t think you’d remember me anyway. We were neighbors, but what college guy is interested in an eight-year-old girl?”
I stared at her dumbly. I did remember that – a cat halfway to dead on the street and a sobbing dark-haired little girl. It had freaked me out, that’s what it had done, dealing with death and childhood when I was used to thinking about keggers. I’d helped her, but I’d been glad to pass her off to her parents once they got home from work.
“I had a crush on you that whole time,” she said. “I tried to let it go, but then when my mom got sick and I moved back to town…well, I looked you up. My mom knew yours and…well.”
I was such a fucking moron. Of course there’d been a reasonable explanation. There’d been no way for me to really know what it was, since neither my mother, nor Joanna, nor Melissa had felt inclined to tell me. But then, I hadn’t given Melissa the benefit of the doubt.
And she had deserved it – boy, had she ever. She’d been a little girl with a crush. Then she’d grown into a beautiful woman with amazing sweetness and confidence. And I’d just beat her ass red and raw.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” It was more a cry than a complaint.
“I don’t know.” She shook her head with a sniffle. “I didn’t want you to think of me as a little girl.”