Free Finely Disciplined Thoughts by Ashlynn Kenzie Page A

her bra and reached for her gown.
    “Why would I ruin you? I adore you. I love everything about you. You mesmerize me, Lady Smithwyck. You haunt me. You make me want to do all kinds of wicked things.” He waggled suggestive eyebrows at her and grinned maddeningly.
    “Well, you can forget about that. You can certainly forget about whatever it is that’s going through your sex-obsessed brain right now. You know we’ve never … well, I’ve certainly never … though who can say about you, you beast. But it has never crossed my mind to even consider …”
    “Now, now, Lauren,” he cautioned, wagging a finger at her. “You’re very close to crossing a line here. I warn you. And you really should practice some basic intellectual honesty where your sexual preferences are concerned. I can read the signals. I know you’ve been waiting — hoping — wondering — what it would be like to go over my knee.”
    “You have finally done it,” she stormed. “You have lost your mind. And you’ve lost something else as well, Smithwyck, because I’m not letting you anywhere near me after what you just did at dinner tonight. You’re going to be in your own personal sexual timeout for the next twenty years,” she threatened, wheeling around to face him with her gown still clenched in furious fists.
    “Oh, Lauren. Now that’s a mistake. Yes, that is definitely a mistake on your part, but I won’t hold it against you this time. Just say you’re sorry and I’ll forgive you for not being nice to me,” he offered with his arms spread wide.
    “Say I’m sorry? Dream on, my lord,” she spit out, thrusting her furious face upward toward his. “You’ll be sorry you ever …”
    And that was the moment he moved with amazing speed to push her lacy little panties toward her knees, pull her against his chest and deliver a stinging smack to her bare bottom.
    She sucked in her breath — partly in outrage, partly in surprise, partly in pain, partly in something else she didn’t have a name for.
    And despite herself, she glanced back over her shoulder toward the mirror to see his big frame wrapped around her bared body just as he administered another tingling spank that gave her matching pink cheeks.
    She instinctively reached to cover herself, but he caught her hands in one of his and with the other began tracing a soothing fingertip path across the imprint left by his palm.
    “What a lovely little peach of a bottom you have, Lauren,” he whispered. “A lovely little blushing peach. Just waiting for me to taste it,” and he dropped to his knees, turned her slightly and brushed his soft lips in feather-light kisses across her smarting flesh.
    And her last coherent thought — before she sank beside him on the floor with a sigh of surrender — was to wonder where she might discretely purchase a very suitable hairbrush.
     
     

Taking a Hand at Discipline
     
    Somewhere in the air, over the Atlantic, I lost my breath. And I found a guiding principle.
    It is one whose power I cannot explain and whose origin I can only imagine. It is, nevertheless, inviolate.
    I will reveal it in time, but it seems important to detail, first, what preceded the revelation.
    The plane was on a flight path from London to Atlanta. My senses were heightened already, as they always are after time spent abroad.
    The sole male flight attendant approaching my seat, soon after the plane gained height, gave every appearance of being a strictly professional type as he saw to the needs of other passengers; yet, when he served me, he smiled warmly and even initiated some light and teasing banter.
    I can never resist.
    I return all smiles directed toward me.
    I consistently rise to the invitation to charm. Effortlessly.
    My attention, I confess, was diverted, but not so much that I could fail to take appreciative notice of his eyes, his lips, his voice. All passed muster with grace to spare, for a man mature enough to have raised young adults of his own, at