Time to Control (8 page)

I took off down the street when the
office disappeared and the theater appeared.
 
I heard Eddie sigh and run after me.

“Where are you going?”

“To find something to kick or
punch.”
 
The borrowed sweatpants
were too big, and I tripped over the extra material bogging down my steps.
 
I
 
would have fallen on my face if Eddie hadn't caught me.
 
I realized that neither of us had taken
our clothing into consideration before 'traveling', and also realized I didn't
care whatsoever.

“You need to calm down,
Schroeder.
 
Talk to me, sweetheart.”

I pulled from his grasp and
continued on.
 
“Now's not good for
me.”
 
I wove through the crowd
walking along the Thames, idly wondering if days were incrementing back here;
there hadn't been this many people out and about previously.
 
And the day seemed sunnier than the last
few visits.
 
I elbowed someone who
didn't move out of my way fast enough because he was staring at the crazy woman
in weird clothing, and Eddie grabbed my arm firmly and pulled me closer to the
river, out of the way.

“Leave me alone, Eddie!”
 
I gave him a shove, then gasped as he
lost his balance and fell off the crude loading dock, right into the river. Oh,
shit.
 
Who knows what plague or
disease Eddie was being exposed to.

“Man overboard!” A worker shouted,
and several men rushed to pull Eddie out of the water.
 
My arms were grasped harshly by a couple
more men, and they weren't letting go.

Eddie climbed back onto the
riverbank, soaking wet and pissed.
 
He talked quietly with the workmen, and one pointed at some nearby
crates.

“You want I should get
constabulary?” One of the men holding me shook me roughly.

“No, I'll handle this.
 
Come here, wife,” he said, making our
relationship clear to the bystanders.

“I'm sorry, Eddie, I-- No!”
 
I shouted as he grabbed
 
me firmly about the waist and threw me
face down over his lap on the crate.
 
The love taps in previous days were nothing in comparison to the serious
swats he gave me through the thick sweatpants.
 
Even the spanking at Charles' cottage
wasn't even close.
 
Attempts to
cover my bottom with a hand resulted in it getting secured in the small of the
back with his left hand.
 
He resumed
spanking with his right hand, and I continued to fight him.

“You will listen to me, and you
will. Calm. Down.” He emphasized the last words with his hand.

“Help!
 
Abuse!”
 
I cried to the onlookers, who were
laughing at me and encouraging Eddie.
 
“You're hurting me!”
 
A
constable pushed to the front of the growing crowd, and I plead with him.
 
“Help me!”

“Sir, I find that the bare bottom
works best on my wife,” he advised, and walked off with a nod of his head.

“Good idea,” Eddie said grimly, and
wasted no time in yanking the sweats down.

“No!” I shrieked as his heavy hand
stung ten times harder on the exposed flesh.
 
I wiggled and squirmed in earnest as the
punishing blows rained down.
 
After
a few more minutes I gave up fighting, and the tears started flowing.
 
He released my right hand, and gave
another dozen or so whacks before turning me over and gathering me in his arms.

I sobbed into his shirt, holding on
for dear life.
 
“I have
nothing.
 
It's all gone.”

“I know, I know.
 
Let it all out.”
 
He had kept a hand on my rear, and rubbed
my burning bottom, to try to take the sting out.
 
“You all can move along now, nothing
more to see here,” he said harshly to the crowd.
 
I didn't look to see if they left
– I was embarrassed and humiliated enough as it was.

“My clothes, my books, my photos.”
 
I hiccupped. “My laptop – Alan is
going to kill me for losing that.”

Eddie hugged me tightly.
 
“He'll do no such thing.
 
It's not your fault.
 
These things happen.”

My breathing finally began to even
out, with a few hiccups here and there.
 
“To top it all off, I lost my mind and went off on Joseph.
 
He's probably planning out how to fire
me right now.
 
Oh God,” I buried my
head in his shoulder.
 
“I screwed
everything up.”
 

“Hey, hey, hey, you didn't screw
up.
 
You've had a bad break.
 
Can you tell me what happened?
 
To the apartment?” He asked quietly.

“Neighbors left the stove on.
 
They didn't even think to call 911.
 
By the time the fire truck showed up, my
place was on fire.
 
It burned
through everything.
 
You saw my
place – I had mostly clothes and books.
 
They didn't have a chance once the fire
hit them.”

“I'm so sorry, sweetheart,” he
whispered and kissed my forehead.
 

“I'm going to lose my job too,
aren't I?”
 
I started crying softly
again.

“Baby, if you lose your job because
your boss wouldn't give you the day off when your apartment burned down, you
don't want this job.
 
I don't want
you to have this job.”

“I love my job, though.
 
I love the company.
 
Alan is just an old friend of one of the
board members.
 
Joseph told me once
when he had too much to drink that Alan was only hired so that the board member
would invest in us.
 
They can't fire
him without pissing off the board.”

“The board, which is irrelevant
once the buyout is finished?”
 
He
pointed out.

“I didn't think about that,” I
admitted, a lot more calm.

“You weren't really thinking at
all,” Eddie said, and gave a light swat on my already tender rump.

“Ow!
 
And was that really necessary?
 
To humiliate me like that?”
 

He considered the right words.
 
“I needed to get your attention, and nothing
was working.”

“It got my attention, all right,” I
grumbled, and Eddie chuckled and started caressing the item in question with
the attention getter.

“I wouldn't have done this in
modern times,” he assured me.
 
“I
wasn't trying to hurt you, just get you to calm down.
 
You were too wound up, and I had no idea
what you would do next.
 
Pushing me
into the river was a step further than I expected you to go, and I needed to
get you under control.
 
I'm
sorry.
 
It was all I could think of
to do.”

I relaxed into his
ministrations.
 
My bottom was on
fire, and he was heating up other parts of me now as well.
 
“Keep doing that, and I'll forgive you.
 
In fact, think you can find
 
those straw piles?”
 
I pulled his head down to kiss him and
show him what was on my mind.
 
He
inserted two fingers in me, and I gasped as I immediately came.

We waited a few minutes for me to
compose myself, then went off in search of a place a bit more private.
 
I didn't object when the sweats came
down this time, and in fact found that the sensations were rather increased due
to the earlier activities.

When we were lying on the straw
basking in the afterglow, I brought that up to him.
 
“I don't think you'd be able to do that
again.”

“Sex?” He asked, confused.

“No, before.”
 
I blushed, hesitant to talk about
it.
 

“Baby, I promise.
 
I won't spank you again.
 
I crossed the line, and I'm sorry.”

“No, it--” I bit my lip.
 
“It wouldn't have the same effect.”

He lifted up on one elbow,
interested.
 
“What are you saying?”

I turned away.
 
“Never mind, it's nothing.”

“Schroeder,” he growled, his deep
voice sending tingles throughout my body.

I rolled back over towards him, but
still didn't look him in the eye.
 
His chest was a much safer place to look.
 
I chose my words carefully.
 
“In private, it might have some....it
wouldn't discourage behavior in the future.”

I could almost hear the gears
clicking into place in his brain.
 
“That bears investigating.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said, and rolled back on
top of me.

After another energetic workout, I was even less enthused to go back to
work. “I just want to stay here. We can make a little nest out of the straw,
and never leave.”

He chuckled and pulled a piece of hay out of my hair. “It might get a
bit messy.”

“So?”

“So you need to go back to work,” he said firmly.
  

“You do realize I just quit, right?
 
And after chewing out my CEO, I’m
doubting they want me to stick around like I offered.
 
Heck, they don’t normally even let
people do their two weeks.”

“Well, they don’t have to, legally,” Eddie pointed out, then shut up at
my glare.
 
“Baby.
 
You’re indispensable.
 
Joseph knows and recognizes that, even
if Alan didn’t.
 
Frankly, I don’t
see how or why you’ve put up with Alan for this long.”

I sighed, and snuggled closer to my husband.
 
“Yeah, he’s a jerk.
 
An asshole.
 
Really.
 
But it’s not written anywhere that you
have to like your boss.
 
I’ve cooled
down, thanks to your...um...insistence...and if I could take back quitting, I
would.”

“Wait, what?”
 
Eddie sat up,
dumping me off of his shoulder.
 
I
pushed him back down and cuddled again.
 

“I like my job.
 
I like the
work I do.
 
If I have to put up with
an overbearing, assholish, jerk of a boss, that’s life.
 
What was that line I heard in a musical,
‘it’s not so much do what you like, as like what you do’?”
 
I shrugged.
 
“I’m doing better than a lot of people
in liking what I do.
 
And it’s not
Alan’s fault he’s the way he is. “

“Schroeder, you’re seriously going to make excuses for him?
 
It doesn’t matter if he was dropped on
the head as a child, or whatever it was.”

I bit my lip.
 
While Alan
wasn’t dropped, he was abused.
 
Matt, a co-worker who I was friendly with, had gone to high school with
Alan, and had given me the scoop one day when we were ranting over
margaritas.
 
Alan’s stepfather had
beat him on several occasions, and when Alan stood up for himself and fought
back, the broken leg he had received in the fight cost Alan his college
football scholarship.
 
Ten years
later, Alan was still bitter about that, and woe to the person who wore a Texas
A&M jersey in Alan’s presence.

“People in your life influence you, that’s all I’m saying, “ I finally
answered.
 

“We’ll have to agree to disagree for now.
 
You have control over your own
actions.
 
You can’t control what
someone else does, but you can what you do.”

“Heh.
 
I learned that last
night.
 
No one else called 911 for
the apartments being on fire.
 
Just
me.
 
It was too important to tweet
about it and post photos on Facebook.
 
And now...I don't even know where I'm sleeping tonight,” I confessed.

“You can stay in my hotel room, but
I can't guarantee how much sleep you'd get,”he waggled his eyebrows and tweaked
a nipple.

“I thought we were going to keep
our distance publicly – wait a few weeks before telling folk that we
eloped.”

“I don't think we anticipated your apartment
going up in flames.”
 
He massaged
the breast whose nipple he tweaked.

“No, we shouldn't.”
 
I thought through the amount of money in
my bank account, and the time frame the renter's insurance company had given me
this morning on payout.
 
“I can afford
a room for myself tonight, and if I can get tomorrow off, find a new
apartment.”

“Money isn't a problem, Schroeder.”

“Maybe not for you.”

“
Wife
, money is not a problem,” he repeated.
 

Oh
yeah.
 
He's a millionaire.
 
I felt weird taking his money, though.
 
“Eddie...”