Page 47 of Swiped By My Dad's Best Friend
I nodded, heart thumping. “Okay, let’s do this. I trust you.”
“That means the world to me,” Trace said, sounding sincere. “Come here, then. Over my knee.”
“Yes, Daddy.”
I unbuttoned my pants and tugged them down, feeling a faint sense of embarrassment, as if I really were a naughty little boy who’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. I got into position over Trace’s lap.
“Tell me why you need this.”
“I let my friends down, people who were counting on me.”
“Why do you feel you let them down?”
I’d told Trace some of this already, but I’d avoided the details. It was so hard to say it out loud. “I need a 3.0 GPA, and I don’t have it. I can’t drop any more classes, and I’ve missed so much material and not studied. I just failed another quiz…”
“Which means?” he prompted.
“We won’t be eligible for the charity contest, and we won’t win, and we won’t be able to help Simon with tuition.”
“It means you have to bring your grades up,” he corrected.
“I can’t.”
“Youcan,” he said firmly, “and you will. But that talk is for later. For now, you’ll take your spanking. It’s not a punishment, it’s a gift, you understand? This is so you can see you haven’t let anyone down. Not me, not your friends. But if you can’t find a way to see that, you might let yourself down. Because giving up on yourself only hurtsyou. I told you to believe in yourself, didn’t I, brat?”
“Yes, Daddy,” I whispered, heart clenching as I realized he was right. He’d asked me to believe in myself, and I’d caved at the first sign of trouble.
“Are you ready?”
“Yes,” I said, my voice a little stronger.
His hand fell with a crack and I yelped in surprise, my whole body jolting. He’d hit me harder than the first night we’d been together. Much harder. The sting radiated through my right cheek. Without soothing me, he swatted me again.
And again.
He alternated my ass cheeks and the location of his swats, but the burn spread to the point I couldn’t tell one swat from the next. My heart squeezed in my chest, and tears poured from my eyes. It was as if the physical pain arcing through me opened a path directly to the emotional pain I carried, and suddenly, it was all coming out, through choked sobs and tears.
And it wasn’t just that I’d fucked up this one thing, which my friends needed from me. It was all the other baggage I carried as well. The inability to please my father, the fear I was just like my mother, the frustration and anxiety I felt over my lack of direction in my life. All the time I’d wasted by staying in school without ever really getting anything out of it.
It all came racing to the surface, tangling with the pain in my skin as Trace’s hand fell, and poured out in a flood of tears and snot.
On and on and on it went until suddenly—
Everything stopped.
Trace’s hand, my tears, my rampaging emotions. Quiet descended. And a measure of peace. I didn’t know how long it would last, but I embraced it with relief.
* * *
TRACE
Cooper trembled so hard he was on the verge of shaking out of my lap. His ass was a blotchy red, but I’d been careful not to hit him hard enough to bruise. I’d read up on spankings—all types from sexy play to serious discipline—and hoped to hell I’d gotten this right. Cooper had sobbed, but he’d never once asked me to stop. I shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d known all along he needed this. I was the one who’d taken some convincing.
I smoothed a hand down his T-shirt, absorbing the quakes of his body into my stinging palm. Cooper wasn’t the only one in some pain. I’d gritted my teeth through the last few swats, my hand on fire. But I hoped it would prove to be worth it.
“Breathe, my sweet boy. It’s done.”
His breath sawed in and out of him, but he began to calm. I continued to stroke down his spine soothingly. “You did so good for me, Cooper. Now you can let all that pain go, understand? All the guilt, all the shame. Just let it go and start fresh.”
