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M elissa

Things are moving so fast, but I’ve gotten all my things together and come to Mr. Ornix’s house as he requested.

“Okay, but don’t fall in love with him, because I don’t want to have to marry an old man,” Tempest said as I left her place in the car Mr. Ornix sent for me.

His house is even further up the hill, down a wooded driveway. It is built in an old-fashioned style. Don’t ask me which one, I have a business degree, not an architectural one.

I am met by a butler, my bags are taken, and I am ushered directly into dinner.

“I don’t think I am really dressed for dinner; maybe I should get changed.”

“Mr. Ornix indicated you were to be seated upon arrival,” the butler says smoothly. “Do not worry about your attire.”

I enter the room with more than a little trepidation. There was an energy between the man and me, and I’m aware that older men are often attracted to women in their early twenties. I don’t know if I hope he doesn’t make a move—or if I hope he does.

The house is decorated sparsely and in a fashion that again, I’d have to call… historic. It’s giving off vibes of brooding Victorian bachelor who owns the land as far as the eye can see.

I sit down at the dinner table. There’s a napkin in a silver ring on one side, and something in another napkin ring on the other.

Doesn’t look like a napkin. Looks like paper.

I wonder what secret rich person thing this is.

Is it sort of like the fancy little forks?

Or the spoons that have a serrated edge for some reason?

I’m sort of afraid to ask and prove myself uncultured.

Mr. Ornix is sitting across from me. He nods toward the extra ring and its contents.

“Open that before we have the soup course. You will not want to spill anything on it.”

Confused, but intrigued, I slide the ring off the paper and unroll it. The first thing I see is the golden UCLA college seal, the book with Let There Be Light written across the base on a fancy ribbon. The moment hits me as biblically as the quote. This is my degree. The degree they withheld.

“How did you get this?”

“That is a good question,” he says. “You see, this is where paying off certain fines becomes useful.”

I try to keep breathing. Okay, he knows there were fines.

This doesn’t have to be all over yet. They probably didn’t itemize what the fines were for.

I know how rich people operate. They throw money at little things like this.

They don’t check the details. They don’t care about them.

They’re not relevant. I tell myself that he sent an assistant in, and they threw down a credit card and he just tidied all this up the way Tempest’s dad would have.

I watch as Ornix takes something from the inside of his jacket. He unfurls a roll of paper, but his is not a degree. It is an old-fashioned receipt.

“You had thousands of dollars in fines for your behavior on campus.”

I want to shriek and giggle, and run around to discharge the sudden bolt of energy rising through me.

“Yes, but I’ve matured since then.”

His eyes run down the form. “According to this, your last fine was issued a week ago.”

“Yes, sir, I’ve matured a lot in the last week.” I bite the inside of my cheek to stop myself from laughing.

He looks stern, almost thunderous. I don’t want to lose my chance at this internship, because it pays crazy well and I really need the money, but keeping it together is going to be almost impossible. If Tempest were here, she’d be straight up screaming with me, I know it.

He looks at me, dour.

“I don’t find these things amusing, Melissa.”

“Neither do I, sir. I appreciate you paying those fines, but obviously I will work them off. I don’t want to take anything for free.”

“These fines indicate a lack of discipline,” he says, those golden eyes boring into me. “If you work for me, you will be disciplined.”

“You mean come to work on time, do my duties, that sort of thing?”

His lips twitch slightly. I find my eyes drawn to his mouth, unable to leave it.

“Yes, that sort of thing, but also real and actual discipline.”

“Oh, what is that?”

“I am not surprised you ask that question. It is clear you’ve never felt it in your life.”

I find myself blushing, though I barely know why. He’s threatening me with a consequence that makes me sweat with something like fear, but way sexier.

“Spanking, Melissa. You are going to be spanked for each and every one of these fines. You are going to pay the price of one spank per dollar, and you are going to thank me for your discipline, and the chance to learn a better way.”

“What the fuck…” I mean to whisper the words under my breath, but it is really hard to exclaim quietly.

“It will begin now. Before we eat. I do not want to reward you with the degree and let you feel as though you have not been disciplined.”

“I don’t know if…”

He has already stood up and is moving toward me.

He’s removed his jacket and is now in a waistcoat.

Oh, fucking kill me now, he looks so good in it, the way it emphasizes the breadth of his shoulders and the narrowness of his waist. I can barely take it.

I’m trying not to seem like a thirsty girl trying to seduce her new boss by showing up to dinner in a bikini.

At least I have my little poolside wrap skirt on.

We can sort of pretend I’m half-dressed.

He’s a very tall, very handsome man, and I feel held in place by his magnetic presence as much as his hand as it wraps around my wrist and guides me up.

I think about resisting as he guides me up from the chair, bending me over a portion of the long, polished table that has no place setting.

“Your transcript shows you to be academically able. Your fines show you to be a badly behaved, disrespectful risk taker. We will address that here and now. Fines mean nothing to someone who never had the ability to pay them. But this will mean something. You will feel this.”

He presses me down against the table, his hand splayed against my lower back, long fingers wide, the weight and strength of him keeping me easily in place.

My reflexive response is to try to get up. Even though there is no way to do that, and I already know that, there is some urge to push, to test, to see what he will do to keep me in place.

“Stay,” he orders, one word, firm.

“Please don’t spank me, Mr. Ornix. I’m sorry. I really am.”

“You do sound sorry, but that is likely because this is the first time you have ever been taken to task in a manner that immediately provides a hot and inescapable consequence. You’re going to take this spanking, and many others, young lady.

You are going to actually feel the consequences of your actions. ”

With that, he smooths his hand over my skirt and flips it up, revealing my thong-clad ass.

A hard slap follows, too firm and too intense for me to argue or complain or do anything other than gasp. Three more land in quick succession, and instantly my ass is on fire.

I whimper helplessly, taking the punishment in a sort of stunned shock. I have never experienced anything like this before. I never got spanked when I was a kid; my parents were way too busy to do anything like that, and I never got into the sort of trouble they would notice.

Mr. Ornix has already noticed me more in the course of a few hours than most people seem to do in lifetimes.

“Are you feeling this, Melissa?”

“Yes,” I squeak.

“Good,” he says, his voice sounding deeper and huskier than before.

If I didn’t know better, I would say he was aroused right now.

There is heat rushing through my system, making my flush face, making my nipples tingle, and making my entire body perform a slow squirm that causes my hips to gyrate.

There’s something deeply intimate about this, an intense sting that is making my clit feel like it is humming with new life.

He spanks me again, and again.

“How does it feel to be taught a lesson?” he asks. “Do you appreciate the effort I am taking to correct you?”

“Yes,” I gasp breathlessly. I don’t know if that is entirely true, but I know it is what he wants to hear, and I want him to be pleased with me. I wonder what it would feel like to hear praise in that rich, deep voice of his, and see approval in his eyes.

“Good, because I intend to keep doing this for you for a very long time. You have so much potential. So much sweetness, light, and magic.”

“Magic?” I’ve never been called magic before, but there’s a reverence in his voice when he says that word.

“Yes, Melissa. It’s in you. Surely you’ve noticed how bright you are, how people are drawn to you, and how you are drawn to trouble?”

He smacks me again to emphasize the question, but he doesn’t feel as stern as he did before. There’s a softness to the gravel in his tone, and he runs a hand briefly over my stinging rear as he asks.

“I know I’m trouble, sir,” I whimper. “But I don’t really mean to be.”

“Of course not. You end up in it no matter what you do. It seems like fun, and opportunity, doesn’t it, a break from the tedium of everyday human life that seems to occupy others, but never quite satisfies you.”

I arch my hips. The movement isn’t intentional so much as it is instinctive. I want to feel the heat of his hand, the soothing roughness of it against my skin.

I am rewarded when his hand slides straight back down over my cheeks, the tips of his fingers following the curve of my cleft until they make light but deliberate contact with the slit of my sex.

“Oh, my god!” I gasp as I feel him touch me there with complete assurance, as if that part of me were not only made for him, but belonged to him.

“I own your debt,” he says. “And that means I own you.”

“I don’t think that’s what the law says.”

“That is exactly what the true law states,” he replies, spanking me again, even as the tingling sensation of being touched in such an intimate way continues to zip through my lower belly.