Page 38 of Taming His Honeydoll
Suddenly Oliver didn’t seem so bad after all.
He’d just grounded her, or talked Aunt Tootie into grounding her. After the incident at the school where she’d been caught with some other kids smoking weed behind the gymnasium, he’d taken her car and phone away for the rest of the school year, which had been three months. She hadn’t actually smoked it, but Oliver had said she was guilty by association and had punished her accordingly.
But this—this was painful!
“S-Stop,” she begged, her nose starting to run and her feet dancing to a rhythm only they knew. It didn’t help the pain any, but she couldn’t stand still just the same.
“Are you ready to listen to me, baby brat?”
Apparently, she waited too long to reply, and in truth she was still angry, that he lit into her again. “I can keep this up all night until you simmer down,” he growled.
Her jeans were no protection from the board-like hand that was covering every inch of her backside in quick precision. It was when he started moving lower to that tender area between the bottom of her buttocks and the top of her thighs that she finally broke.
“Okay, okay,” she agreed frantically, collapsing into sobs that were shaking her entire body. Her skin felt like it was on fire, her buttocks aching like crazy. “I’ll listen, I p-promise.”
“It’s about time,” he snorted, pulling her upright. Then he sat down on the hay bale and pulled her onto his lap.
Through an abundance of tears Emma could see they appeared to be sitting in some sort of three-sided hay bale set-up with a blanket thrown over it. Her bottom was hot and sore against the hardness of his thighs as she settled between them and sobbed into his shoulder. When his arms closed tightly around her, she couldn’t help but feel secure and safe.
When her sobs finally quieted down to hiccups, she swiped her face with the back of her sleeve and just lay there enjoying his arms around her. She sighed in defeat. She was such a fool. Why did she have to fall in love with someone like every other man in her family? Except maybe Harlan, her uncle. She didn’t think he spanked Aunt Tootie, but she knew Nat and Ty were just as bad as her brother.
She could feel Sawyer’s heart beating beneath her cheek where she lay on the soft fabric of his shirt. His arms and lap felt so safe, like a harbor from the rest of the world. She found herself wishing they could just remain here like this forever. Was this how Marsha felt after Oliver spanked her?
The scent of his shower gel was connected to his shirt, a clean, manly scent that blended with all the other barn smells and seemed a perfect fit for his personality. She was almost getting sleepy as her tense and tired body finally relaxed. When Sawyers deep voice rumbled in his chest, she jerked awake.
“Emma, I made a stupid mistake. When we met in college, you were the most amazing and beautiful girl I’d ever seen. I’d see the way other men would look at you and I was insanely jealous. Plus, you flirted with all of them. Once I finally got the courage to ask you out, I was over the moon in love.”
Emma shifted slightly to sit up and look at him, searching his face. “You were really jealous?”
He chuckled and nodded his head. “I thought you knew that and flirted on purpose, but then I finally realized you never seemed to take them seriously. You were so young and innocent, like a flower fresh from the fields on your ranch. I wanted you all to myself.”
Emma turned pink. “I never knew that.”
“The night we were together at my apartment, I just couldn’t stop myself when you wanted me to love you. I should have been more responsible, should have had a condom with me, or should have just plain refused. But I didn’t keep condoms with me because I was focused on school and not girls. Then you came along and took my breath away. I fell in love like a ton of bricks and I couldn’t resist you.”
“Are you sorry you made love to me?” Emma asked, tensing slightly.
He cupped her cheek gently with his palm. “Yes and no. I’m not sorry we made love. I am sorry that I made a mistake and didn’t consider the fact that you could be pregnant when I left.” He ran his hand through his short cut. “I got a call about joining the services before I met you. It was unexpected, out of the blue, and the money they were offering would pay for the rest of my master’s degree in engineering and computer sciences. I was over the moon excited because I’d already been wondering how I would afford the rest of the schooling I needed. I replied and said I was interested but would need to talk more about it.”
“You didn’t tell me anything about it,” Emma replied softly. “I knew I liked you the first time we met, but you didn’t ask me out for weeks. I was beginning to think you never would.”
“I didn’t know for sure if they were serious because they didn’t call back for weeks,” he explained. “I’d almost given up when I got the official letter from them stating they wanted me at boot camp by the end of March and they had agreed to all my conditions. It was the night after we’d made love,” he added. “I only had a few days to pack and leave. I took you to dinner to explain but it went badly.”
“You could say that again,” Emma replied bitterly, turning her head away. “I tried to tell you how much I loved you and would wait for you, but you brushed me off.”
“That’s where I made the biggest mistake of my life,” he said ruefully. “You were so young, younger than me by three years and that made me think I was just a crush—that you might not know your own mind yet.”
“But I did know my own mind,” she protested.
Sawyer held up his hand. “Let me finish. I didn’t want to hold you back if you fell in love with someone else while I was gone. I was pretty sure I was in love with you, but I didn’t feel like it was fair of me to tie you down for God knows how long I’d be gone. So, I told you not to wait for me, to go on and live your life and write to me when you could. I wanted to stay in touch. I just figured that if you really did love me that you would do as I asked and our love would have stood the test of separation.”
“You were testing me?” Emma was shocked and furious. “What gave you the right to do that?”
“I wasn’t trying to test you; it just seemed a reasonable thing to do for a young girl.” He sighed deeply and continued. “But you didn’t hear anything except the part about not waiting for me. You took off angry and there wasn’t any more time to talk about it, so I left. When I got that letter from you a few months later, I realized I’d been right. Or I thought I’d been right. So, I tried to put you out of my mind because you were married and no longer available to me.”
“You were wrong,” she said hotly.
He took her slender fingers between one hand and rubbed then ruefully. “I know, I was full of myself, wasn’t I?”
