“Yes, sir,” I breathed, my face blazing as hot as a furnace. “I…”
I realized that I didn’t have to say it, but something in me demanded—treasonously, to all my ideas of independence within my marriage—that I demonstrate this further submission.
“I understand.”
I did understand that my husband intended… intended…
My brain searched for a phrase and found one that made my blush even worse.
My husband intends to keep me in line.
Tokeep me in line, whatever the fuck that meant. Yes, I understood that.
I absolutely did not understand the way I had responded, body and soul, to that terrifying, confusing, wantonly arousing prospect, or how I would ever be able to work out, or cope with—let alone accept—it.
“Good girl,” Rick said, loosening his grip and leaning back into his own seat again.
I closed my eyes and swallowed hard. He hadn’t actually just said that, had he? He hadn’t actually called me agood girl.
No—that wasn’t even the problem. The problem, again, lay in the way I had reacted. All of me: body, heart, soul, mind. I hadlikedit. No. I hadlovedit.
Rick, his hand holding mine loosely now, either hadn’t noticed my distress or chose not to mention it. He continued with the explanation he had started a few moments before.
“No,” he said, his voice as easy as if I hadn’t challenged him and he hadn’t threatened to whip me, “no million-dollar landscaping jobs. But they’ve already accepted me—contingent on us moving—into an executive training program, and they want to fast-track me based on my management experience.”
My eyes and mouth opened wide for a completely different reason, and a flush of pleasure replaced the embarrassed blush of a moment before. In that moment, I knew I must love my husband more than I had ever loved anyone, because the joy I felt at this stunning news didn’t have to do with what it meant for me anywhere near as much as I just felt elated for him.
“Oh, Ricky,” I said. “Oh, that’s wonderful.”
In the back of my mind, a little voice said, “This is the man who thinks he can behave like some ancient patriarchal neanderthal version of a husband to you. Are you really going to celebrate his success? The success that’s taking you to a place where apparently all the men think that way?”
I silenced that voice and leaned over to kiss my gorgeous, successful husband. I refused to think the next thought, the one that had darted into my brain—the retort to the little voice.
Shouldn’t I celebrate himbecausehe knows how to keep his bratty, too-modest bride in line?
CHAPTER12
Mandy
At the baggage claim, a limo driver had a sign withMr. and Mrs. Williamson it. I couldn’t push away the thought:I could get used to this.I knew Rick had a lot more intelligence and ambition than he had ever had the chance to show. I had never even let myself dream of what our lives might be like if someone really gave him the shot it seemed like Selecta might give him in Rocky Falls, through the New Modesty subsidies.
Everything turned into a blur. Rick held my hand in the backseat of the limo. We didn’t talk much: during the flight the soreness in my butt had gone away completely, but the impression on my mind hadn’t—not at all. The memory of him putting me over his knee, of his hand coming down over and over, of my absolute powerlessness to stop it… they all remained completely fresh. As I looked out at the increasingly rural scenery and tried to process the idea that my husband had the chance to make a truly comfortable living, if we could get used to Rocky Falls, I kept seeing the private room in the airport lounge, as if reflected in the tinted glass of the limo window.
I kept catching myself squirming a little on the leather seat of the limo—even more luxurious and comfortable than the airplane’s first class seat. Every time, when I realized I had just moved my backside, I got so self-conscious that a scorching blush broke out in my cheeks. I knew—though I would never, ever have admitted it to Rick or to anyone else—I had moved that way to confirm once more that I couldn’t feel the effect of my first old-fashioned lesson.
As if Iwantto feel that,I told myself, not sure whether the idea came out as scornful—the way I wanted it to do—or as descriptive… speculative, even, about what my husband had done to me, on the inside, when he had taken me over his knee.
When the driver finally said, “There’s the sign, folks. We’re in Rocky Falls,” I started violently. I turned to Rick to see that an expression of concern had come over his face. He pulled my hand toward him and, to my amazement, he brought it to his lips and kissed its back. He had never done that—or, I thought, anything like it—before. I had to bite my lip to keep from crying out with the strength of my body’s response to the sweet gesture that seemed to me also to have such confidence… suchdominancein it.
He leaned over to speak into my ear, the same way he had done on the plane.
“I know it doesn’t make much sense for me to ask if you’re okay, Dee,” he said into my ear, his voice somewhere between a whisper and a low growl. “But I just want you to know that I love you, and I’m going to take care of you, if you let me.”
My lips parted as my breathing and my heart rate both sped way up. I drew my head back so I could turn to look into his eyes, trying to beam directly into his heart and his mind a desperate plea for… for… for something.
“Please,” I whispered. “Don’t… I mean… can’t we…”
Rick pursed his lips and his brow went up a little in a sympathetic but also, to my dismay, a very patronizing—almost paternal—expression.