Learning to Blush (12 page)

Jack didn’t spank with the paddle right away. He had flipped Kella’s skirts up, revealing her panty-covered bottom, and quickly peppered it with a volley of firm spanks with only the palm of his hand. The exposed skin of her bottom was immediately turning pink, and she gritted her teeth together to try to keep from crying out in front of her sisters. She ground her toes into the floor under her, trying not to struggle against her father’s hold.

Such a moment was never to be so eloquent. It didn’t last long before a sob escaped through her trembling lips, a choked, “No-o! Oh-owe!” But Jack’s spanks didn’t lighten up. If anything, they came down quicker and harder, one after the other. “No, no, no, no….” Her voice was a whisper at first, and then became louder. “No, no!” She started to struggle. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

Thorton and Graham slowly eased their hands around their ears as they watched, unblinking. She was beginning to shriek. Surely the servants could even hear, at this point, what was going on. Maybe even the neighbors. Maybe the entire planet… And the paddle hadn’t even been used yet.

Girl spankings were so much different than what Jack would give to Thorton. There was no ‘warm up’ like this. There was no process. Lately, Thorton would end up saying something that would have Jack whip his belt off mid-sentence, and that was that. Maybe it was better that way. At least he didn’t wail like that. He couldn’t—Graham would never let him live it down.

Surprisingly, just when they couldn’t think the spanking could get any worse or that Kella could get any louder, Jack grabbed hold of her panties and ripped them down to mid-thigh. Kella’s whole body seemed to flush bright pink in misery.

It became suddenly awkward to even watch. Not too awkward though; it was simultaneously impossible to look away. “I should go in there…” Graham told Thorton, worried.

“He’s barely touching her! She’s hardly pink!” Thorton hissed, grabbing Graham’s upper arm. Besides, the last thing Kella surely wanted was her younger brother to go in there and admit to witnessing her punishment. “She’s not used to feeling pain,” Thorton reminded. “
Any
pain!”

Graham must have agreed because he stopped, sighed, and looked back into the room.

The four-year-old was sobbing now, unable to bottle up her feelings about watching her sister get punished. The other three girls, and the mother, merely gazed on like they were watching a cruiser crash.

Finally, Jack reached over to the nearest table by him and grabbed the paddle into his hand again. “I don’t enjoy punishing you,” he promised his daughter. “I don’t like punishing any of my daughters. You’re all my babies—my reason for living! I don’t want anything to happen to you. I don’t want you to embarrass me and yourselves like this again.”

The cracking noise the paddle made on Kella’s deep pink, squirming bottom, was so sickening that Graham and Thorton put their hands over their ears again before Kella’s inevitable scream in response.

Kella’s spanking was beginning to seem less and less satisfying. She deserved it, certainly. What she did was unspeakable, but watching it seemed like a punishment in itself now. Still, as painful as it was to even watch Kella howl as the paddle left her flesh a dark, angry red, Thorton and Graham couldn’t pull their eyes away any more than Graham’s other sisters could.

CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! Thorton found himself flinching with every smack of the paddle, and Kella’s yelps and screams and pleas were audible enough even through his palms, which stayed pressed tightly against his ears.

It didn’t go on forever, maybe only twenty smacks with the paddle, but it
felt
like it lasted years before Jack set the wooden paddle back down. Kella was still yelping, still hollering, the pain still as real and unavoidable as ever.

Jack put his hand on the small of her back and shushed and calmed her until her shrieks morphed slowly into heavy sobs. “It’s over,” Jack announced. Eventually, he helped her off of his lap and she adjusted her panties and her skirts. “After you dress, Kella, I want you to go up to your room and stay there for the rest of the evening,” he told her. “No supper, no games. I want you to think about what you’ve done today.”

Kella nodded, too embarrassed and miserable to even reply with words, but it was now Jinga that needed comforting. Queenie had lifted the little girl into her arms, but she shifted the child over to Jack as soon as he approached.

“Oh, what’s with these tears, Sweetheart?” he cooed at Jinga, like it was some big mystery and she had just started to cry without reason. He continued to carry Jinga on his hip and cooed, comforted and rocked her as he, Queenie, and his other daughters left the room so Kella could collect herself and re-dress in peace.

Thorton and Graham quietly retreated and walked back to their room, tired of watching Kella move so gingerly. She wouldn’t sit down again for three days afterward.

Thorton was quick to stick his hands in his pockets casually when he and Graham re-entered their bedroom. “Wow. So, at least Uncle Jack’s just not strict with
me
. Sheesh!”

Graham sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah,” he agreed, then quieted for a second as he went deep into thought. “I just can’t get why Kella would want to take a risk like that. I mean… She knows better! I nearly swallowed my tongue when I’d heard! She must have really been in love, you know?”

“Maybe. But I tell you what—I wouldn’t ever attempt a woman who’s attempted another guy,” Thorton divulged. “I mean, could you imagine? Your wife ever being touched by another?” He gave a dramatic shudder. “If it was my daughter, I would have topped
that
, Kella or no!”

* * *

It was strange to think on that memory now, but Thorton had done a lot of thinking about it since then. Even Perfect Kella could slip up because of a love-fancy.

Fifteen years later, Thorton was finally beginning to see what she might have been thinking. Penny… Penny was gorgeous. But so, so used. So touched.

But then, he hadn't met her father yet. He didn't seem to be anywhere; nobody had mentioned him yet. Penny was alone except for two dim-witted brothers. Of course, she had no choice but to repeat the same mistake over and over. She certainly hadn't had a guardian like Jack around to teach her any lessons. Thorton knew that Penny's father wasn't dead—Ellie had talked enough of the family to keep him sure of that, but come to think of it, Ellie had admitted that her family had as much use for girls as they had for a hole in the head. Possibly, Penny was what happened. Could Penny have been neglected? How was that possible? As naughty as she was, Penny was still enchanting!

She was absolutely a vision whenever she looked up at him with those shimmery, impossibly blue eyes and flicked that gorgeous, fiery red hair over her shoulder.

She was every bit as much in need of a spanking as Kella had been. The only difference was that Thorton was imagining doing it himself… and liking it.

* * *

Looking up at the very, very tall man before her, Penny found herself squinting, wondering how Ellie could have been silent about him. He was even more unusual than Thorton, and not just because of his height. There was something off about him that she couldn’t put her finger on. Maybe it was because his height was made that much more obvious because he was slimmer and not as muscular as Thorton was. Maybe it was a strange tint of purple in his brown hair that was only visible when the light hit it just right. Maybe it was simply because he didn’t smile like Thorton.

And unlike before, Graham was happy now. It was apparent. His eyes were twinkling, but his mouth stayed in a firm line, even as Graham pushed Thorton back and closed his hand around hers.

Graham's hand felt like he had been baking out in the sun all day. It had a heavy, dry warmth. His skin was odd feeling, too. She wanted to say his hands were calloused and smooth at the same time… His skin had a certain amount of thickness to it that she was unused to; like polished leather.

He didn’t shake her hand, just squeezed it and held onto it, as if he wasn’t clear on the proper procedure. “You are absolutely lovely,” he finally said over the music. “Ellie told me you were pretty, but she hadn’t said how absolutely beautiful you are. Thorton, wouldn’t you say she reminds you of a fireflower?”

Penny cocked her head to the side, her eyebrow raising, wondering if Graham was hitting on her. She turned to Thorton, who was now inclining his head to the right, looking thoughtful. “She does, doesn’t she? Hopefully she’s not as poisonous.”

“The prettiest flowers always are,” Penny said with a slight laugh, and then winked. “I’m afraid I have no idea who you are, outside of text-messaging.” She thought he would eventually let go of her hand, but instead Graham began to slowly lead her off around the dance floor and towards the tables. Thorton followed closely behind her. “So… So who are you, Graham?”

“Your new cousin, I imagine,” Graham replied simply. “I’ve been married to Eleanor for a year now—um, over a year, I suppose.” His eyes suddenly rolled back like someone doing math in his head. “Yeah, about twelve of your months or thereabouts.”

“
My
months?” she echoed, just because it struck her as odd. He said it as if he normally measured time differently.

Well, Graham didn’t respond to her confused look. He just continued to gently pull her towards a table filled with her brothers and Mike. Thorton said, seeming to notice the apprehensive look on her face, “We met Ellie under a covert military operation near her location. It’s sort of a long story. We’re sort of from… far away.”

“I got that much from your accent,” she replied with a laugh, of course thinking that they meant Denmark or Ireland or Russia—their accent was still impossible to place, and she had been very bad at fingering accents, anyway. Graham pulled out a chair for her at the table and motioned towards the seat before letting her go. Slowly, she sat, surprised that he pushed the chair in for her as she sat, like a proper gentleman. “Where is Ellie, anyway?”

“Getting us food.”

Penny turned her head at the answer and saw Ellie pad up to the table with a beer in one hand and a pop in the other. She handed Graham the beer. “
Shesha
,” Ellie said as if she was explaining what the drink was. The strange word wiped the look of confusion off his face and made him sniff his drink.

Ellie turned back towards the rest of the table. “I’ve decided that—”

“
I’ve
decided, actually,” Graham added quickly as he pulled a chair up to the end of the booth and sat down on it.

“
We’ve
decided that we’re not leaving here without giving you guys some sort of non-B.S. explanation of what the hell’s going on,” Ellie said without missing a beat. She looked like she was going to just stand next to Graham at the table, rather than sitting in a chair, but Graham suddenly swept his hands around her waist and brought her into his lap, where she sat, looking extremely uncomfortable and unhappy about it.

Mike didn’t notice. He ran his finger over the rim of his beer glass and said, “That’s mighty kind of you, Sis,” he replied crisply. He still seemed upset that he was unable to get Thorton shit-faced, which was the original plan. Thorton’s eyes didn’t even seem glassy despite all the beer he'd drunken that night.

Thorton sat down next to Penny, although it seemed like he did so just after deciding that squishing her into the booth would keep her not visible to the rest of the room. “Don’t get too angry with her for a fib or two,” Thorton told Mike. “The truth is stranger than fiction, I should warn you.” He turned his head slowly and asked Ellie in a different language, “
Bue li lia dek
?”

Ellie shrugged and replied, “
Zili
.”

Tim scrunched his face up with confusion. “Dude,” he whined to Ellie, obviously not liking being excluded from any conversation, “I didn’t even know you knew another language.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know, Tim,” Ellie assured frankly, looking up at him with a distant expression, like someone about to ask some of their family members to bury a body for them.

The expression on her face made her family all lean in toward her as if she turned on a magnet. “The waiting is killing me,” Tom clarified, stealing the hat off of Mike’s head for no particular reason before putting it on his own and trying not to look like he cared about Ellie’s story. “Tell us or don’t.”

Ellie didn’t look comfortable, but she seemed less so when she shifted her weight on Graham’s lap and cleared her throat. “Well… You see… You’re not gonna believe this, but let me get this out.” She lifted her chin stoically. “When I disappeared a couple of years ago, I was actually abduct—”

Suddenly all the lights went out in the entire restaurant.

There was the sound of screaming from shocked customers, startled at the sudden pitch-blackness of their surroundings. There was no light
anywhere
. Not even from the outside streetlamps.

“Hold on, people! I have generators that will turn on any second!” Landon called from the bar.

But the generators didn’t turn on. Not in the next second or the second after that.

Through the darkness, eyes glinted at Penny—reflecting non-existent light like a hunting predator. Their eyes shifted around and then they disappeared for a moment before returning. She realized then that the eyes were Thorton’s. “
Iki dun le’tie, Frian zu
,” his deep voice rolled out in a concerned hum.

“Huh?” Penny asked, and realized alarm was in her voice. Although she was normally fine without lights, there was something about it that gave her goose bumps.

Ellie’s small hand reached across and clutched hers. “Keep close. We need to get out of here,” she said, her voice a hushed whisper.

“Why?” Tim asked, clueless.

“We were followed. They must have spotted us landing in this area from orbit,” Thorton answered. She could hear him clutch Tim and Tom tightly and pulled them from their chairs. Graham must have just grabbed Mike, because he made a displeased grump from being touched in the darkness.