Erotica- Forever His/ Spanking (11 page)

With that decision made, she eased to her feet. Every move made her wince. She hoped he never spanked her so firmly again. And he probably wouldn’t. Because she would be leaving later today, as soon as she told him. She didn’t have a choice. Her mother would find a way to hurt Seth if she stayed with him, if she didn’t go home. But she wouldn’t stay there. Yet she couldn’t come back to Seth either. She had to protect him.

She eased her jeans up and hissed at the horrible rub against her stinging bottom. Then she wiped away her tears and bucked up her courage.

Their gazes met when she walked into the cabin. Her heart pinched. This would be the hardest thing she’d ever done or would ever do. “I’m leaving. Today.”

His brow furrowed in anger. “Because I spanked you?”

“No.” She swallowed down a lump in her throat. “Because I have to, for both of our sakes.”

“What the hell does that mean?” He squeezed a bottle of water he was holding. “And what was that animal reference earlier?”

She looked him square in the eye. “I know about you.” She had foolishly hoped they could avoid this discussion, hoped he would just accept that she’d finally decided it was time to move on. Not happening.

“You know what?” he demanded.

“I know you’re a shifter, Seth.” When his eyes widened and then narrowed, she added, “That doesn’t matter to me. If it did, I wouldn’t have let you near me. I wouldn’t have let you take me like you did outside.”

“I wanted you,” he countered, tossing the water bottle to the floor. “You couldn’t have stopped me.”

“Yes, I could have. Nothing happens to me that I don’t allow.” She reached back to gently touch her aching bottom. “Including getting spanked.”

He didn’t look as if he believed her. “If you don’t have a problem with me being a shifter and think you can deal with whatever I dish out, then why are you leaving?”

Tears misted her eyes and she almost didn’t tell him the truth, but he deserved to know. “Because I love you. I can’t see you hurt because of me.”

He strode closer and she stepped backward. “No, don’t touch me. This is hard enough. Please try to understand that I don’t have a choice in this.”

Such pain filled his eyes; grim determination etched his face at the same time. He was going to fight her about this decision. She wanted to stay with him, but she couldn’t. Nor could she explain without breaking down. She chose the only way out, the chicken way out. She disappeared, hearing his demand that she come back as she remained there invisibly until she could take his pain no longer and went home.

Chapter Seven

Because I love you. I can’t see you hurt because of me. I don’t have a choice in this. Teri’s final words to him almost a month ago continued to haunt Seth. He couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t work on his manuscript, which was now overdue and both his agent and his editor were upset with him. He didn’t care about them. He didn’t care about anything. And he was hell to be around.

He stood by the line shack, which had become the only place he could find a second’s peace. Somehow he felt closer to Teri here, since it was where he’d last seen her. The fool in him kept hoping she’d come back. But she hadn’t and he hadn’t heard a word from her. He had a hundred questions—beginning and ending with what the hell was she? How could she have simply vanished into thin air? He had no way of tracking her down.

Frustrated, he tossed the coffee cup he’d been sipping from across the field. It landed with a barely noticeable sound in the high grass, which frustrated him even more. He wanted to punch something, someone, anything. He wanted to roar out his pain. He desperately needed to shift, but he refused to allow himself that relief. Part of him still believed that she’d left him because of what he was.

“Just do it.”

Seth spun around to see Walker slowly approaching on foot.  How had he not heard the man? “What are you talking about? And why the hell are you here?”

Walker didn’t look the least bit intimidated by Seth’s anger. He continued walking closer. “I’m here because my best friend—okay, only friend—in the world is making himself crazy.”

He was taken aback a bit by Walker’s humble admission. Only friend. And he’d been treating Walker and the others like shit lately. “I’m not fit to be around right now. Sorry.”

“Okay, reluctant apology accepted.” Walker stopped a few feet away, grim-faced and determined. “The way I see it two things need to happen. First, you need to shift and release the beast inside you.” When Seth started to speak, Walker held up his hand. “Second, you need to stop moping around here and find Teri.”

Seth’s hands were curled at his sides, nails ready to lengthen any second. He fought down the need to change with every last ounce of inner strength within him. “What do you mean shift? What beast?” There was no way his friend could know about him. Right?

Again Walker surprised him. “I’ve encountered a lot of strange things in my life. Even had a run-in once with vampire. And before you ask, no, I wasn’t bitten.”

Seth listened, stunned, uncertain what to say.

“I met a couple of warlocks, too, a dozen years back. Damn scary men.” Walker looked Seth straight in the eye. “I saw you shift one time up here. Yes, I know. I wasn’t supposed to have come here, but I did.”

Seth didn’t know what to say about that either, but relief snaked through him. His friend knew about him and clearly wasn’t horrified. He hadn’t given away Seth’s secret. Or had he?

As if he’d read Seth’s mind, Walker shook his head. “Every man on this ranch has his own secrets to deal with. Me included. Yours is a bit stranger than most, but it doesn’t bother me.”

“Why not?” Curious, he had to ask the question.

“You’ve never caused problems to anyone around here. And the people in town think a lot of you.”

They studied each other for a few minutes, Seth trying to come to terms with the change in his situation. His secret was out, at least to Walker and Teri. Teri. Depression swamped him again. He attempted to shift the focus off what he was.  “Warlocks, huh?”

Walker nodded with a shrug. “Back to what I said. You need to go after that little gal. It’s plain to all of us that you love her…and we kind of liked her, too.”

Seth turned to look at the trees by the end of the field. Pain wrenched his heart, as it had since she’d left him. His ego still felt bruised. “She left me.”

“Yeah, so? Women do all sorts of illogical things. But it was clear as ice that she loved you, too.”

“I can’t go after her. I can’t track her at all.” He blew out a breath and ground his jaw. Trampled-on ego or not, he would hunt her down if he could. He’d even considered contacting his old pack to see if they’d help him. They probably would, but what could they do? Even they wouldn’t be able to track her. There was nothing to track.

“Why not? She had to have left some of tracks, some kind of trail behind.”

“She didn’t just drive off in that truck I gave her. You know that since the truck is still there. She didn’t take any of her belongings with her…not her few clothes, not her cameras.”

He faced his friend, who seemed okay with knowing he was a shifter. Something that still amazed him. Maybe Walker could handle the strangeness about Teri as well. “She vanished. Poof. Like a puff of smoke, right in front of me.”

Walker’s eyes widened. “No shit?”

“Disappeared. Vanished. Smoke.” He had thought about it a thousand times, didn’t understand what had happened. One second she was talking about leaving him, the next she was gone.

“Well, now that’s damn interesting.” Walker looked impressed. “Life around here is getting more fascinating every day.”

“You seem awful accepting of these weird things…my being a werewolf. Teri being a…hell, I don’t know what she is.” He didn’t care what she was. All he knew was that he wanted her back with him.

“Werewolf? Really? Like in the movies?”

Seth rolled his eyes. “Forget the movies. All that is a bunch of crap made up by Hollywood writers who don’t know squat about the shifters of this world. And there are a damn lot of us.”

He sucked in a breath, tamped down his irritation. “I don’t know what kind of special being Teri is and I don’t care. But I want her…here…with me.”

Walker remained quiet a few seconds and then he said, “What about that Tyrone character? Didn’t you say she’d originally come to Templeton in a car loaned to her by a friend of hers? Tyrone?”

“I’ve never met him and she really never talked about him. Besides, the car was gone, too. Evidently vanished just like Teri did.” He grumbled a curse under his breath. “Too many damn magical beings around here lately.”

One of Walker’s eyebrows had shot up. “You think this Tyrone is magical, too? I swear I ain’t never leaving this ranch. Too many out of the ordinary things happening here.”

“No, you’re not leaving here. Fact is, I’m planning to make you a partner.” Seth glanced at his friend, stunned that he’d told him that so bluntly.

Walker grinned, one of the first real smiles he’d ever seen on the life-hardened man. “You for real?”

Relieved that another one of his problems was out in the open and hadn’t turned into a disaster, Seth nodded. “If you believe you can be partners with a wolf shifter.”

“Damn straight I can.” Walker’s shoulders straightened. “I’d be more than proud to be your partner.”

Seth studied his friend, felt guilty for having waited this long to deal with the subject. Walker was a good, dependable man. This would all work out. Now…if he just figure out how to find Teri.

“I guess it’s time to head back home. I’m not doing anyone any good by hiding out here.” Including himself. She clearly wasn’t just going to pop back here. He had to forget that crazy idea.

“I’ll meet you back there.” Walker started striding off in the direction he’d come from. “I left my truck at the bottom of the hill.”

Seth stood there a few more minutes, staring at the trees, no longer wanting to shift and run free. He wanted Teri so much he hurt, but he’d have to accept that she was gone. He’d have to move on with his life. What other choice did he have?

* * *

Teri paced her bedroom in the Grand Palace, going from one end of the enormous, extravagantly furnished room to the other. She hated it. She missed Seth’s ranch house, which wasn’t small either, but nothing like this place. It was a house, a home. This palace had never been and never would be a “home” where she would feel comfortable.

She stopped to glance out the window that stretched from floor to ceiling at least twenty feet high. Her room overlooked the expansive back lawn with its many flower gardens. More flowers than she even knew the names of, gardens busy with flower faeries flitting about all times of the day and night. They had their tasks, as did the woodland faeries and the water faeries, and the… Well, every faery in this kingdom had responsibilities, including her sisters Gabriella and Sabrina. But she, Princess Terianna, had nothing to do. Nobody seemed to know what to do with her now that she’d returned. She didn’t belong here. Everyone knew it but didn’t want to admit it. Certainly not her mother.

Her mother, an impossible woman. Apparently she’d become heartless, too, over the years. She barely tolerated the faery men Teri’s sisters had become engaged to, refused to allow their marriages until…nobody knew when “until” would be. But neither Gabriella nor Sabrina would challenge their mother. No backbone. But then, where was hers? Why was she still here? She loved someone, Seth. Yet she’d given him up without any kind of fight, with him or her mother. By now he’d probably forgotten her. He hadn’t even wanted her there at the ranch to begin with.

“No. He won’t have forgotten me. Not yet.”

“Oh dear, you’re talking to yourself again,” Sabrina said pityingly as she walked into the room. “Maybe I should call the Royal Physician once more. He must have missed something when he examined you.”

Teri heaved an annoyed sigh. Her sisters, her mother, the servants…everyone in the palace seemed to think that it was perfectly all right for them to just walk into her room. She had no privacy. She felt like she existed under a microscope and was constantly examined for any changes. After all, she’d lived amongst mortals for years and years. She had to have been horribly affected by their influence, or so she’d heard in loud whispers from nearly everyone here.

She’d never raised her voice to her sisters, even her mother, but she was tired of playing nicey-nice with these irritating people. She faced Sabrina and allowed her frustration to come out in her tone. “You will knock before entering my room from now on, do you understand? You will show me some respect.”

Sabrina blinked in surprise, paled. “Still not quite yourself, I see.” She started to back out of the room. “Mother just wanted me to check on you. I’ll let her know--”

“Let her know what? That I’m ‘not quite myself’…whatever that’s supposed to mean. That I’m not like milk toast, like you and Gabriella. That I refuse to live under Mother’s thumb any longer.”

Her sister’s eyes widened. “How can you talk about Mother in such a way? She’s the Queen. She’s…”

Teri felt bad about basically attacking her sister, but it was time her sister looked at her life a bit differently. “Yes, she is the Queen here. But she is also your mother. She should want you to be happy, want you to have a life of your own. Just because she and Father had a loveless marriage—okay, almost hated each other—doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t find happiness with someone.”

She’d had a taste of it with Seth and the weight of the loss of it had nearly killed her spirit. She was tired of crying herself to sleep each night, tired of aching for him all the hours she was awake.

Sabrina lowered her voice almost as if she feared someone would overhear her. “You really love that…that werewolf?” She said werewolf as if he had to be the most despicable creature in the world.

Teri’s eyes misted and she fought the pain that clutched at her heart. “More than anything.”

“Then why are you here? Why did you come back where you obviously don’t want to be?” Sabrina met her gaze, confused, clearly envious, too. “If I were as strong as you…I would marry Geoffrey even without Mother’s permission.”