‘OK.’
My mouth dropped open at my effortless victory. I closed it shut. ‘Thank you,’ I said quickly.
‘After you admit that you stole and… I’ve punished you.’
A bark of incredulity tore out of my mouth. ‘What?’
‘The problem with you, Layla, is that you were never spanked when you were young. Your Da and Jake were much too much in love with you to execute any kind of discipline over you. As a consequence you have grown up an unruly weed.’
My eyes narrowed suspiciously. I knew it. I always knew it. He was low enough to blackmail me? This was the proof I had been looking for—that he was just low, low, low. He had always been low and he would always be low. ‘What kind of punishment are you talking about, you?’
‘You should have what you have never had… A spanking.’ His tone was terrifyingly pleasant.
I stared at him in disbelief.
He raised an eyebrow.
‘How dare you—?’ I began.
But he interrupted me coldly. ‘This is getting boring. The choice is simple. You apologize and submit to a spanking, or we call your brother—or, if you prefer, your mother.’
Jake? My mother? The pseudo fury drained out of me like water from a sink plug. I worried my bottom lip and thought of my mother’s eyes dimming with humiliation and my brother staring at me without comprehension. He had given me the best of everything. When we were young and poor my mother said Jake would always forgo his share of something if I wanted it.
My actions were inexcusable. I had thoroughly disgraced and dishonored our family. I had walked into a Pilkington’s bedroom and stolen something from it like a common thief. Now that I thought about it, even I had no idea why I had done it. I had never done anything like that before. It was the stupidest, maddest thing I had ever done.
My gaze slid to his large hand, jerked back to his tanned face. ‘You wouldn’t!’
‘Why wouldn’t I?’ he clipped.
Physical punishment for me, or mental anguish for both Ma and Jake. I swallowed hard. ‘No,’ I whispered. ‘I’ll take the…punishment.’
‘Great,’ he said softly and, taking a step forward, kicked the door shut with his heel. He was so big. So meaty. Suddenly the room seemed so much smaller. He was like a predatory animal. Instinctively, I took a corresponding step backwards. My eyes strayed to his hands. God, they were baseball mitts.
‘How do we do this?’ My voice was clear and matter-of-fact. I had to assert some sort of control.
‘I’ll sit on the bed. You will position yourself on my lap. I will raise your skirt and spank you. Eight times.’
Raise my skirt! I felt heat creep over my body. Oh, the shame of it. But if I was honest there was something else, something dark and hot. Something I’d never dreamed would happen to me. How could I be turned on by his depraved idea of a punishment? I looked into his eyes. They were blank mirrors. There was nothing to see, only what I was. A thief.
But as I stared into his eyes, I saw a flash of something old. And suddenly I knew. This humiliation was not punishment because I had come into his bedroom and stolen his tiepin. It was because of what had happened when I was thirteen years old. I had tripped over a tree root and fallen down. My skirt had come up and my panties had showed. I could remember them even now. They were white cotton with red polka dots. And all the other kids and BJ had seen them. I had wanted to jump up but I was too winded to move.
Some of the kids had laughed. I knew they were afraid of Jake and they would never have laughed if BJ had not been there. At that time our families—BJ’s and mine—were in a generational feud. It was only recently that Jake and BJ had uprooted the barbed fences between our families. Since everybody knew about our feud they had thought they could ingratiate themselves with him by laughing at me.
But in a flash he had come up to me and helped me up. Even then he was a big lad with a Mohican hairstyle, and the other kids were scared of him. They had immediately ceased laughing then.
‘Are you all right?’ he had asked.
I had been so mortally embarrassed that it was him who should have witnessed my humiliation that I had lashed out at him. ‘Take your dirty hands off me, you filthy Pilkington, you,’ I snapped.
He had gone bright red and jerked his hand away from me.
I had turned on my heel and limped away on my twisted ankle. I knew he was watching me but I didn’t give him the satisfaction of turning back to look. After that we became enemies. And now he had caught me in his bedroom.
Finally, he could exact his revenge. He walked past me, sat on his bed and turning to me said, ‘Ready when you are.’
*****