Free Holding Hannah by Maren Smith

and trying to nerve herself up to ask the question he could already sense lurking between them.
    “W-would you spank me very hard if…if I needed it?”
    “Every single time,” he said promptly. “Even if you didn’t think you needed it. And, like tonight, even when you need it and I disagree on the reason why. That was just a taste, Hannah. We’re going to go inside now and don’t worry, when it’s done, you won’t have to ask again if that was hard.”
    He nodded to show he meant it and, leaving her to think that over, got out of the car. He came around to her side, opened the door and reached in to unbuckle her.
    “Sam?” She whispered it so softly, he almost didn’t hear her. He pulled back far enough to meet her uncertain eyes. She bit her bottom lip. “Do you still want to have sex with me?”
    Pulling the seatbelt out from between them, he braced himself against the back of her chair and caught her chin in his hand. He smiled. “With or without the fruit.”
     
    * * * * *
     
    The next day, Hannah spent most of the morning looking for reason not to have to sit at her desk. She couldn’t. Her bottom was so sore. Even more unbelievably, Sam had only used his hand—only his very broad, very thick, very hard hand, and that only after he’d shown her his rather formidable collection of spanking paraphernalia. He seemed to like paddles. A lot. He had all kinds. Rubber, leather, wood. He had ones with studs in them. Others had holes, and still others had stenciled designs, including one with the words ‘Bad Girl’ cut in such a way as to leave said impression on whomever, he assured her, required such labeling. He’d offered to show her; she had very politely declined.
    A short time later, with him seated on a straight-backed chair in the middle of the kitchen and her completely naked, with the cuffs on her ankles clipped to the cuffs on her wrists, one strong-armed strike at a time, Sam showed her with exquisite and agonizing thoroughness that he didn’t need any of those things to take her through every imaginable level of absolute hell.
    Hannah hadn’t known she had a sit spot, but she knew it now. He’d introduced her to that aspect of her anatomy over the course of three separate lessons that spanned the longest forty minutes of her life. The first had been for her little mistakes and misbehaviors at the Sanctuary. Those had been the easiest to endure with the ten minutes of corner time that followed, frankly, being the worst part. Then had come her hard spanking request and real hell, and then comfort wrapped so tightly in the arms of the man who’d administered it, followed by an even longer stint in the corner with her hands on her head and her bottom throbbing and blazing so blisteringly hot that it felt as if she were standing backed up against a roaring fire.
    The last lesson had been for rubbing when she thought he couldn’t see her and for averting her eyes when he told her to look at him, and it was amplified and made so much worse because when he pulled her back across his knees, she’d fought him—his hold and his authority—forcing him to wrestle her down over his knees and clip her wrists and ankles all over again. Because her bottom was already showing signs of bruising, he’d spanked the backs of her thighs and kept right on spanking until she was crying so hard she could barely breathe.
    But afterwards, curled up in his lap with her head on his shoulder, her tears still drying on her face, and his spanking hand softly stroking her hair and back, all Hannah could remember feeling—beyond, of course, the bonfire blaze of a bottom so sore she couldn’t even stand to move—was better. A kind of better like she hadn’t felt in ten very long days.
    “ Hey! Are you asleep over there?”
    Hannah jumped and nearly dropped the short stack of papers she’d been in the process of photocopying. She looked back at Goodson, standing impatiently in the open doorway.
    “I’m sorry