The Protege

I nod, unable to look at him. There are so many things I want to ask him, about how he feels about me. About that night. But I settle for something much less frightening. “Would it be all right…Could I have a hug, please?”

“Oh, sweetheart, of course.” He wraps both arms around me and holds me tightly against his chest and I want to cry it feels so good. Like coming home. My Laszlo, hugging me the way he always used to.

“I don’t want things to be like the way they were that last year I lived with you. I want these new things with you.” My words are muffled in his shirtfront.

When I look up he strokes a finger down my cheek. “I want that too, sweetheart.”

Relief pours through me. It’s not like it was when I was a child, and it’s not like that terrible time when he could barely even look at me. We’re becoming something new together.

Taking a deep breath I let go of him, and then get on my hands and knees and slink over his lap, feeling exquisitely embarrassed, the blood rushing through my body. He doesn’t seem self-conscious at all and is quite happy to arrange me in his lap, his hands on the small of my back and the fleshy part of my behind.

“Are you all right, sweetheart?”

I nod, and he strokes his hand up my back and into my hair, his long fingers rubbing over my scalp. He takes his time and it’s so relaxing that by increments I feel my body go limp in his lap.

“How do you want it? Dolce? Allegro?” he asks. Sweetly? Fast?

I swallow, not knowing what I want because I don’t know how it will feel. “You’re the conductor, sir.”

“So I am.” One of his hands leaves my behind and he brings it down in a hard, stinging slap. There’s nothing dolce about it. It’s more like the hammer strike from Mahler’s Sixth and my head rears up in a gasp of surprise.

“Ow! That hurt.”

“You sound surprised, Isabeau.” His voice is as smooth as melted chocolate, almost like a purr.

“You said you were going to go easy on me.”

He laughs darkly. “I promise you I am. Does it still hurt?”

My ass doesn’t sting anymore. In fact it feels tingly and sensitized beneath his touch. “It feels sort of hot.”

“Good. That’s what we’re going for.” He spanks me again, just as hard, on the other cheek, and I yelp. He keeps going, setting up a regular percussive rhythm that makes my skin burn without quite becoming unbearable. But it’s close. Very close.

“Ah! It’s very—ah!—loud. What if someone—ow—hears?”

“Stop squealing so much then. And hold still.” He takes a firmer grip on my hips with his free hand, holding me tight against his thighs and belly. A bright, hot sensation shoots through my insides. I imagine someone walking past the door and hearing the rhythmic slaps of flesh on flesh. Someone who knows it’s Laszlo’s room. Someone who later sees me leave, pink-cheeked and flustered.

“It’s not my—ow!—squealing that I’m talking about, it’s your hand.”

His voice somewhere over my head is unrepentant. “I can’t spank you any quieter, Isabeau. This is what spanking sounds like. And I’m not going softer on you. This is meant to hurt just enough, otherwise it won’t work.”

Well, fine, but he needn’t say that with quite so much relish.

“Would you like me to go on? It’s up to you, sweetheart.”

He waits, one hand hovering over my flesh, until I nod. I grab a cushion and push my face into it as his spanks grow fiercer. I flinch against each one, wriggling this way and that as he beats the same spot over and over, making it glow white hot before moving on.

He smooths the flat of his hand over my heated flesh, a long, hot caress as I pant into the sofa cushion, too spent to move. My heart is pounding and all the heat down there is making my sensitive parts tingle and I dearly want him to keep touching me, to move those fingers deeper. But he merely straightens the lace edges of my underwear and helps me up. I sit beside him on the couch, my ass burning, pushing a hand through my tangled hair. I feel hyperaware of everything. The lights are too bright. My breathing is too loud.

I reach for my jeans with a shaking hand.

Laszlo’s arms come around me, pulling me against him, and the relief is intense. I curl into him with a little moan and he gets an arm under my knees and pulls them across his lap.

“Isabeau?” But I feel too funny about what just happened and hide my face in his shirtfront. He laughs softly. “Feeling shy?”

I nod without looking up. Shy, but not unhappy. I burrow into him, needing the warmth of his body, his strength, and he gives it to me without hesitation, like he used to do when I was younger. Proper big-hearted, tight-against-his-chest hugs, not like the stingy, tense hugs he gave me after I turned seventeen that left me feeling bereft. Except this is better because his hand is stroking the bare skin of my thighs and I know he won’t make me let him go anytime soon.