Chapter Nineteen
Poor sweet girl. And what whiplash she must have experienced in the past month, to go fromno one cares what I do so I won’t even try and if I’m purposefully a jerk it won’t hurt when no one likes meto being terrified that he wouldn’t love her anymore if she got a bad grade. Knowing how hard she had studied, it probably wouldn’t have been that bad even. Just…not as good. His heart hurt for her.
But it would be okay now. He would make it okay. It could take a while—hell, it might take forever—but he would be there like a stubborn rock. He was good at being stubborn, at showing up every day. And honestly that was probably a good half of what Twyla needed. Was someone to simply be there. Some discipline wouldn’t go amiss either, and when she was more settled, defined expectations.
The searching way she looked at him, fear and hurt etched into her otherwise fresh features made his breath hitch. She’d been through so much already—too much—and that would stop with him. Rocks had to be good for something.
“Promise?” Twyla’s voice was a whispered croak and it worked its way through his ribcage and into his heart. She was already there, and every day whether it was through a sweet giggle, a shy smile, angry tears, or the way she trusted him, every day she anchored herself there more firmly. She was his, no doubt in his mind.
“I promise,” he said, wiping away a stray tear with the pad of his thumb.
He kissed her cheek, the tip of her nose, her temples, and she giggled and squirmed like she always did when he kissed her all over. He tried not to groan as his cock got heavy and hard, thickened and lengthened against her bottom as she wriggled against him but it was no use.
Everything about her turned him on, and while he was determined to take it slow because though they hadn’t talked about it, he suspected many of the people she’d been with had done precisely the opposite, his hunger for her was growing every day.
He needed to put aside his desire, though, because that was not what she needed right now, and he would always give her what she needed, whether she liked it or not. This she was not going to like. She wasn’t supposed to.
“I’ll love you always and no matter what, but you’ve still earned a punishment. Part of me loving you is correcting your behavior when it’s unacceptable. Do you understand?”
She rolled her lips between her teeth and looked at him with those big green eyes. “What if I said I was sorry?”
“You’re going to do that too but I don’t think just apologizing will leave a sufficient impression.”
Twyla looked down at her hands twisted in in her lap. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to spank you. Sometimes I’ll give you good girl spankings but this is going to be a punishment spanking. It’s going to hurt, you’re going to be bruised, and you’ll be thinking about it every time you sit down for the next few days. But I promise I won’t injure or harm you. I’m not hitting you because I’m angry, I’m administering physical discipline. Does that make sense? Do you understand the difference?”