CHAPTER 3
The next few months were strange. Time seemed to speed by for a while, and then it would slow to a stop with each day dragging on. The completion of their shop was just around the corner, but also so far away it was almost unbearable, depending on her mood.
Despite that, construction was going smoothly. All of the fancy bakery and chocolate equipment had arrived on schedule and was being installed one piece at a time. That part had taken a little longer than expected, but not enough to throw things off.
The upcoming changes had spurred Heaven Leigh to finally do something about the old life she’d left behind. She used the three months to start wrapping up her history, so she could focus on a future with Angel.
She’d been content to simply exist at Rawhide and had ignored the outside world for longer than she should have. But then she’d always waffled when it came to emotional decisions.
The board of her company had been happy to run everything without her, in fact they probably preferred it. But there’d been an uproar when she scheduled a Zoom call to announce her intention to sell her shares. She held a controlling interest, and their places were not secure under new ownership. They tried to talk her out of it, but she was firm in her decision.
That part of her life was over. Working with Barbara had made her happy. Baking made her happy. Heading a national company was nothing but stress and it had never brought her joy.
She was ready to get back to the basics, back to the part she’d loved, before all of the fame and money had made it tense and exhausting. Offers came in, and she made it clear that a fast transition was more important to her than the dollar amount. She wanted everything done before their new shop was ready and, with some rushing, she managed to close a deal with time to spare.
The lawyers handled most of the work, but unfortunately, she’d needed to be there in person to sign the papers. She’d been dreading it, until her Daddy decided to go with her. They took a week to get everything done, and fit in as much fun as they could, despite the long list of tasks that needed to be completed.
Her things were now boxed up in storage. Her house was on the market, and the company had been folded under the umbrella of a larger corporation. They were going to keep the name of the chain, and hold on to the national contracts, but it would no longer be her problem.
The ungodly amount of money they’d paid her for the privilege of taking it off her hands, was… overwhelming for someone who’d been a homeless runaway. At some point she’d have to make some decisions about the fortune, but that could come later when she was settled. A large chunk would go to non-profits, she’d already decided on that. Barbara would be pleased at the thought, and Heaven liked the idea of paying things forward.
When they got back to the Ranch, the first thing they did was check on the construction progress. It looked like it was ready to open, though she knew there was still a lot to do inside. But if all went well, in two weeks the contractors would be finished, and then they could start decorating the interior.
They even had a sign ready to go above the door, though it was hidden away for now. It read “Angel’s Heavenly Bakery and Chocolate Shoppe,” which was the name they’d decided on long before they had any real plans to open a place of their own. Heaven still flinched over the name on bad days, but the rest of the time she loved it.
At least she had before they’d gone to settle her old life.
Selling her house and company had stirred up a lot of emotions, and there were a few bad days in a row, where she was tempted to break the sign and insist on a different name. Angel actually caught her with a hammer in hand, about to do just that, and he’d talked her down from the edge.
“ Chiquita , if you don’t want that name, we can change it, absolutely. But what we’re not going to do is smash things because we’re upset. So let’s talk about this.” He already knew her story, but it helped to talk anyway.
Her issue with the word “heavenly” came from her childhood. Her parents, her father especially, had always insisted on saying her two names together as one word. At his tent revivals, he would call her up on stage and have her sing for the crowd. “Our daughter, Heaven Leigh will start us off with a hymn today,” he’d say.
But he always said it like “Heavenly,” as if she’d been sent straight from above to grace his sermon with her presence. Eventually just hearing her name with that pronunciation would make her mad.
She hadn’t felt like an angel. She was angry and tired all the time back then. Running away was the best decision she’d ever made. There had been rough patches at first, sure, but it had been worth it.
Living on the street, busking for change and the occasional dollar bill had left her hungry most of the time. But then she’d met Barbara, and the elderly woman had taken her in and changed her life. Because of Barbara’s love and charity she’d developed her skills at baking and become the woman she was now.
Barbara was the mom she’d always needed, and her death had broken Heaven Leigh in a profound way. She hadn’t lost a person; she’d lost safety, love, and home. Finding Rawhide had helped her, not to get over the grief, which would have been impossible, but to accept it. To let herself feel it.
Littles were nothing but emotions, and exploring her Little side had opened her up in ways she hadn’t expected. She’d wanted to be taken care of. She’d loved the idea of being a kid, since she’d never had the chance before.
Heaven thought it would be fun to play and not worry about anything, and the punishment and D/s aspects had excited her. If she’d received nothing else from Rawhide, that would have been enough, but she’d gotten so much more than that.
Instead of slumping around the house in depression, feeling nothing but empty and numb, she’d learned how vulnerable and expressive she could be in Little mode. She’d cried… a lot, which was a new experience for her. She felt everything so much more vividly in a childlike headspace.
Grief was sharp and stabbing, but joy was equally intense.
She made friends. She had fun. She discovered that being punished could be therapeutic, and that she sometimes needed that kind of therapy.
And then Master Derek had brought Angel into her life, and she felt like she’d found her soulmate. Her Daddy filled every lonely place. He wrapped her up in warmth and love and everything was better when she was with him.
The grief retreated. Not all at once, and not in a steady progression, but there were fewer sad days over time.
She no longer corrected people so quickly when they said her name as Heaven Lee instead of Heaven Lay , and she’d decided that using Heavenly in the shop name was a kind of exposure therapy. It had seemed to work, until they got back.
“I thought… I thought I was better,” she wailed into Angel’s shirt, as he stroked her back. “I’m happy now. I shouldn’t be feeling all of this.”
“That’s not how trauma works, chiquita mía . It doesn’t ride off into the sunset, never to be seen again. Triggers are a thing and sometimes you stumble over them.” His voice was calm and soothing, and even though she already knew those things, it helped to hear them from an outside voice.
It just seemed like she should be over all the childhood trauma. That being with Angel, in the safest place in the world, should have been enough to get rid of the baggage, but that was probably unrealistic. She was healing, slowly, and that would have to be enough.
“Stop being so hard on yourself, little girl. Healing happens at its own pace,” he told her. Angel knew about grief and healing. He had been through it himself, so she listened.
“Yes, Daddy. I’ll try.”
“Thank you. You’ve just taken a lot of steps at once, and you’re dealing with so many changes. It’s natural to have a few bad days, right?”
She nodded without looking up.
He was quiet for a few minutes, holding and rocking her, before he said, “I think a spanking is in order.”
Her head jerked up and her mouth opened in immediate protest. “But I didn’t do anything! I didn’t break the sign.” She would have if he hadn’t arrived in time, but that was beside the point.
“You didn’t do anything wrong, but spanking isn’t always about punishment, Heaven Leigh. You’ve got a lot of emotions spinning around in there and I think a spanking will help.”
Wanting to argue was instinctive and she couldn’t stop herself from saying, “I don’t need a spanking, Daddy.” But even as the words came out, she realized they weren’t true. At least, not totally true.
One eyebrow went up as he looked at her. “Are you sure about that? It’s not punishment. You’re not in trouble. Consider it… therapy.”
Some of the tenseness eased. She didn’t like being punished for real things very much. Being punished meant she was in trouble and being in trouble meant she had disappointed someone. She never liked disappointing anyone, but it was especially hard when it was Angel.
But a therapy spanking was different. Better, though she couldn’t entirely say why. Sometimes they hurt just as much physically, and they rarely included the foreplay aspects that made bedroom spankings fun. There were often tears, but still the emotions were different.
“I… guess maybe we could try it.” And then after a brief pause, “And we can stop if I change my mind?” she asked with a hopeful note in her tone.
Her Daddy snorted. “I think we both know that’s not how it’s going to work, chiquita . If you need to stop you have your safe word, but otherwise, Daddy decides when we stop. Right?”
And that was exactly how she preferred it, but she couldn’t help trying to get around the rules anyway. Heaven Leigh shifted in his lap. Her bottom lip poked out as she deliberately widened her eyes, giving him an innocent look. “Aww, but, Daddy… if it’s not helping, we should stop.”
His mouth quirked up at one side as he gently turned and tugged her down to lie across his lap. “Uh-huh. I don’t disagree about that, Heaven Leigh. I just don’t think you can always tell what’s helping in the middle of getting your backside reddened.”
“Yes, Daddy,” she said with a sigh. She couldn’t really argue with what he was saying. In the midst of a spanking, she tended to only think about how much it hurt, and not whether she needed it.
“Are you ready, nina ?”
She wiggled a little, finding a more comfortable position, as she looked back over her shoulder. “I guess so.” That was as much confidence as she could muster, and even that vanished a second later when his palm cracked down on the back of her thin skirt.
For a moment she wished she’d put on jeans, but then she remembered it wasn’t going to matter anyway. Spankings that started over clothes never ended that way. Sure enough, after a dozen slow smacks that barely hurt, her Daddy tugged her skirt up in back to expose cute girlish panties.
“A princess day, huh?”
She’d been feeling Little when she’d gotten dressed that morning and her underwear featured her favorite princess, Cinderella. “I was going to get some cleaning done today,” she mumbled. Cinderella was perfect for chore days and helped set the mood. But then she’d gone into the spare room to tidy things up, seen the sign, and had a little emotional spiral.
“Ah, I see. Well, Cindy hasn’t done anything to be spanked for, so let’s just move her safely out of the way.” He slipped his fingers under the waistband and tugged the panties down to her thighs.
Heaven immediately tensed, squeezing her bottom cheeks together in anticipation. It was pure instinct, but it never helped. Angel just cleared his throat and waited until she forced her bottom to relax, though the rest of her remained tightly wound.
His hand stroked over her bare skin, lightly caressing. “Heaven, you’ve had to start over too many times for someone your age. It’s natural that change is going to bring up a lot of chaotic feelings, even when those changes are good like I think these are going to be.”
His soothing voice helped, and her body lost more of the stiffness. “It just feels—” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly before continuing, “I guess it feels silly to be upset when we’re getting everything we wanted. I wanted to remove myself from the company. I-I want more freedom to bake, and to open this place with you. And I love the idea of building our own home on the Ridge so we can be near the shop too.”
That last one was a new decision, but with her selling her house, she was going to need space for her stuff. It couldn’t stay in storage forever. And now that they’d be working over there, it made sense to move closer.
Angel had been a little reluctant at first, worried about changing too many things too quickly. That had turned out to be a real concern, though she hadn’t thought it would be a problem at the time. In the end, he’d agreed only when Master Derek explained that it would be a while before the contractors could work back around to start the process of building them a house anyway.
Their future home was a year away, if they were lucky, and probably months past that realistically. Which was perfectly fine. There was no real need to rush, and they’d been so focused on getting the shop up and running, that they hadn’t even taken a moment to discuss what they wanted in a home yet. But she supposed that it was one more big change that had been added to the pile of stressors.
“Emotions don’t always make sense, chiquita . They don’t run on logic. It’s okay to feel whatever you feel.” He’d told her that dozens of times, but somehow hearing it always helped.
He gave her bottom a light warning pat, and then the real spanking began. There had been almost no warmup. Just those few smacks over her skirt, which had barely hurt, even though she’d made lots of noise about them, just like she always did.
It wasn’t an attempt to fool him. He always seemed to know exactly how much a spanking was really hurting, but the only time she was stoic about his hand meeting her butt was when she was being stubborn. And if he decided she was being stubborn… things usually ended up a lot worse for her backend.
Besides acting out and being dramatic helped in a weird way. It was like the first step to lowering her walls and unlocking her emotions. It started with lots of ows and ouches and then spiraled into the occasional yelp. By the end there was usually pleading and tears, but it sometimes took a while to get there.
Sometimes, but not today.
The first stinging swat cracked the door. Her emotions had already been close to the surface from her spiral, and they very quickly began to trickle out. The usual spanking babble of, “Ow, Daddy, please. That stings. Ouch!” was there, but along with it was a sudden spate of tears tracking down her cheeks.
Angel wasn’t even being harsh. With punishment, his spankings could be fierce since the goal was to make her regret whatever she’d done and avoid doing it again. But this wasn’t punishment, and therapy spankings had a totally different goal.
His hand landed steadily, delivering one hard smack at a time, but the pace was slow enough that she could focus on every burning swat. He kept it just on the edge of being too much, without letting her tip over into that mindless place where she couldn’t help but struggle. With punishment, that place was a given and it always left her breathless and flailing as she begged him to stop.
This was… calmer, more purposeful. A deliberate progression of building sting that left her weepy and limp with acceptance. The heat built as his palm, calloused from his work, bounced back and forth across her bottom cheeks until every bit of skin was burning.
He joked sometimes that working with hot pans and hotter chocolate all the time had left his hands immune to the sting when he spanked. “So this will definitely hurt you more than me, chiquita ,” he’d say with a laugh.
She believed it. He never seemed to need a break and was quite willing to spank as long and hard as necessary. She had her stubborn days and there were times when his arm seemed tireless as he swept it down over and over. She would kick and flail and promise to be a good girl, but her Daddy always knew exactly when she had reached that point.
He would wait for the moment when she completely surrendered to the pain and emotions, surrendered to him , and then he’d carry on just a little bit longer to make sure before he finally stopped. She was usually a sobbing, snotty mess then, desperately pleading.
But that was punishment, and Heaven Leigh wasn’t being punished, even though she’d almost destroyed the sign they had custom ordered. Angel wasn’t angry at her. He wasn’t teaching her a lesson. He was just helping her reach the catharsis that only a good hard spanking could bring.
She was grateful in a weird way, even in the middle of it, when her backside burned, and her face was soaked in tears. Every crisp spank was a reminder that she was safe with him, that she could let out those emotions and he wouldn’t judge her for them. She’d never had that before.
Her parents’ voices still echoed in the back of her mind anytime she let her emotions get away from her. She could feel their judgment, their disgust when she wasn’t their perfect “Heavenly angel”.
“God hates a whiner. Stop crying like a baby, Heaven Leigh!”
“I don’t care if you aren’t feeling good. We have a service today and you’re going to be on that stage. Now wash those tears off your face and get dressed!”
“Big girls don’t cry. Now get up and go help your brothers get ready.”
“Big girls don’t cry,” she repeated the words out loud without even realizing it. There was a questioning note in her tone as if asking Angel if it was true.
“Big girls absolutely cry. Everyone who has a healthy connection to their emotions cries,” he said firmly, as his hand moved down to her thighs and began landing slow, hard spanks on the tender flesh there.
She hissed in between her teeth and scrunched her eyes up as the pain suddenly escalated. Her toes began to drum against the area rug on the floor, and she whimpered as his palm left burning swatches up and down her legs. “That hurts, Daddy!”
He didn’t say the obvious. They both knew it was supposed to. “You’re allowed to be sad, Heaven. You’re allowed to cry, and be angry, and be hurt. You can feel any emotion you need to feel because emotions aren’t bad or wrong.” Her Daddy’s reassuring voice drowned out the memories and the voices faded away.
One day, she promised herself, she wouldn’t have bad days when she needed to be reminded of those things. But for today, she was just glad she had Angel to help her through them.
As the spanking reached a crescendo, she let her emotions run wild. Anger, hurt, and years of stuffed down pain crashed over her. “I hate them,” burst from her, garbled and almost incoherent with her sobs. “I hate them so much.”
He didn’t even pause. If anything, the next few swats were even harder. “I think you want to hate them. You wish you hated them, and you have every right to, but I think it’s more complicated than that,” he said.
He wasn’t just guessing, of course. They’d talked about her complicated feelings when it came to her family. She was fine with never seeing them again, but… some part of her would always feel something for them, and it wasn’t hate.
She slumped across his knee and bawled with childlike abandon. Loud weepy sobs shook her shoulders as she hung limp. His hand continued the stern staccato of pain, flashing up and down as it added yet another layer of searing heat.
And then he stopped, and his hand was suddenly gentle as he massaged the burning flesh, easing the sting. “ Chiquita mía , I would wipe away all that pain if I could, but I will be here with you, to help you deal with it, any time you need me.”
“T-thank you, D-daddy.” It was barely more than a mumble, but she knew he heard her. It always felt weird to thank him for roasting her butt, but it did help, and she was grateful.
“You’re welcome, Heaven, and when you’re feeling calmer, we can talk about the name and the sign. It is absolutely your choice,” he assured her.
It helped to know that. He always reminded her that submissive or not, she had just as much power in their relationship. They were partners in the way that mattered, and that helped too.
Once the tears had slowed a bit and her body stopped shaking, he scooped her up into his arms and held her in his lap. She snuggled against his chest, feeling small and loved, while they talked. First, about silly unimportant things, to help her relax, but then finally about the name they’d chosen.
By then she’d realized it wasn’t the name that was the problem. On some level she’d known it before, but the pain and tears had helped it rise to the surface. “No, Daddy. I do like the name. It fits us and it’s cute.”
“Are you sure? It’s not too late to order a new sign, even if we have to open without one, it will be fine.”
She sniffled and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “I was just unsettled from the trip. I forgot that signing the papers and selling everything would be like saying goodbye to Barbara all over again. And then I couldn’t help thinking about everything she did for me and, well, it brought all those old memories to the surface.”
After a second’s thought she added, “I guess it was less work to get mad at a sign, than dig deeper to deal with the emotions.”
He met her eyes and held them for a long moment. “Well, I think we’ll put the sign out of sight for now and give you a few days to destress before we make a final decision. Just to be absolutely sure.”
“But… really, Daddy, I?—”
“I know, Heaven Leigh, but I want you to be sure before we hang it outside the shop. It’s easy to change it now. Later it will be more complicated, and there’s no harm in giving it another think, right?”
“Yes, Daddy.” She sighed and let her head rest against his chest. It was so nice having someone there to talk her down when things got overwhelming. And while she was too stubborn to give up on the name they’d chosen, it really helped that he was giving her the space to make the decision.
No one could have convinced her that Angel wasn’t the best Daddy in the world at that point.