Sweet Sinclair (Masters of the Castle) (10 page)

Another slap, this one putting the displeasure of a dozen angry hornets right under the surface of her bottom, Sinclair snapped her feet back to the floor. “Ouch! Ow!”

Parker put the paddle aside. “Like I said—” His warm hand came to rest on her equally warm and tingling bottom. “—I don’t think paddles are right for you. This feels better, doesn’t it?”

His open hand traced a lazy figure-eight across the whole of both nether cheeks. His other, busy between her thighs, wasn’t lazy at all. It was driving her mad! She couldn’t take this! He had her right there, right at the very edge and his fingers kept moving, kept stroking, and when he spanked—

“Oh!” She snapped one hand back, jacking as far up as his hold would let her get. She tried to get her feet back up to protect her, but
it was the wrong hand doing the worst of the attacking. Her hips bucked, humped, rode, and his next few spanks only seemed to make the pleasure sharper, more raw, more intense. “Please, no! Oh!”

She shouted, the heat of his hand setting her bottom right back to stinging in only a few swats, except that he didn’t stop with only a few. He put fire and hornets in every inch of her. He made it hurt, but it felt good too and she didn’t want it to stop. She tried to snap her legs together; she tried even harder to get them wider apart, to go ahead and let him see her and touch her and just please get inside her. She didn’t want to block his hands, either of them, but if he didn’t stop she was going to come flying apart at the very seams!

“Stop, stop!” She tried to grab his hand, but he evaded and then both of his hands became crueler.

He punished her clit with a pinch, but that only made the pressure and pleasure explode from the inside out. His spanking hand began a wild tattoo, paddling rigorously back and forth, from one buttock to the other. He made her buck. He made her scream. He made her cum with his hand painting her bottom a hot and vibrant pink from the crack of her ass all the way down onto the back of her thighs. It would be hours yet before she stood in front of a mirror to see the full extent of the damage he was doing now, but she could feel the burning. It laved her bottom in molten waves. Heat where he spanked her, where he rubbed and circled and pinched, where the teeth of both nipple clamps bit into her aching, pulsing, bouncing breasts. She couldn’t hold still. She couldn’t stop climaxing. Her womb spasmed, assaulted by wave after wave that scalded up through her sex and ripped the groaning shouts right out of her throat.

She was babbling, humping her ass on his knee, riding the fingers he plowed into her now, fucking her with growling aggression that only intensified with every word she cried. It wasn’t until later, when she lay limp and damn near comatose over his lap, with his fingers no longer fucking but once more stroking soothing, lazy, comforting circles in the weepy aftershocks of her release, that she came back to herself enough to realize what she had whimpered, indeed, what she was whimpering still, was “…yes, Master… please, yes, Master… don’t stop… Master, please, oh please… don’t stop…”

“Fucking gorgeous,” Master Parker said from somewhere far above her.

Tomorrow, maybe, Sinclair might be mortified by what had just happened, but for now, she just didn’t have the strength.

Thursdays were usually her best and busiest days. That was the day the local high school varsity teams took their games to other schools. Win or lose, they always stopped on the way back into town for pizza and video games at the restaurant two blocks down, and at least a dozen or so kids would habitually ditch their chaperones and dash to her shop for a bag or two (or ten), of candy to share on the bus ride back to school. Today, however, things were oddly different.

At fifteen to three (the usual time), six kids entered her store—nowhere near the group she was accustomed to seeing, but she thought perhaps this might only be the first wave and the rest would follow momentarily. That hope was startlingly dashed only seconds later when a harried mother came charging through the door and ordered the boys back out again. She made them put all the candy they’d picked up back where they’d got it from, and just before she left, she turned and gave Sinclair the most scathing look.

“You should be ashamed,” she hissed, and herded the youths back to the pizza parlor, scolding them as she went.

Standing at her register, Sinclair didn’t know what to think. What had that been for? The tiniest hint of cold dread twined through her gut. She wanted to believe she didn’t know, but she was afraid she actually might. Casey hadn’t come in that day, not to dig for more information or even to gloat. Casey knew a lot of people, some of whom had influential, gossip-prone friends, but those friends also knew Sinclair. She’d grown up here. She knew these people and they knew her. Surely…
surely, this wasn’t because of the Castle… was it?

Sinclair shut that awful thought from her mind. She spent the day minding her empty store. She finished capping off all truffles and hearts and wrapped each one in twists of pink, white and red foil. Over nine hundred pieces in each flavor—over 2700 twists of foil, plus extras. It took all day, interrupted only twice—once by the kids who were almost immediately hustled right back out of her store, and once by two men who came in together. They browsed the displays, stealing glances at her whenever they thought she wouldn’t notice, laughed in low voices back and forth, and just when she thought she might have to pull on her Big Girl Catches the Shoplifters Panties, they each
selected a couple candy bars and brought them to the counter. One tried to pick her up while she was ringing up the sale.

“What do you say?” he’d asked. “A little pizza, a little beer…
I’ve got handcuffs.”

His friend smacked his arm and laughed.

Sinclair’s dread grew icy teeth. It wasn’t just twisting inside her now, it was chewing. She felt sick with it, so appalled that it was happening at all that she couldn’t even think to throw them out. The men left their money on the table (one had tried to tuck the bills into her shirt, but she jerked back just in time) and then they departed, pretty much the same way they’d come in, laughing.

If she could have stepped without her shaky knees buckling under her, she’d have run after them far enough to lock the front door. She’d have flipped both signs from open to closed and she’d have spent the rest of the day…
what? Hiding in the store room?

Nothing like this had ever happened to her before. Could she be blowing things out of proportion? The chaperone with the kids, yeah, that was probably Casey, but the men? Single guys leered at attractive women all the time. It didn’t often happen to her because she spent almost all her time either working here or crashed out at home in preparation for the next day of working here. That their leer had mean overtones meant nothing more than they were mean-spirited people and she was better off not knowing either one of them.

It was just being a really rotten day, she told herself, that’s all. It would get better. Especially once she got to the Castle tonight. The thought of seeing Parker again made her feel measurably better, even knowing what lay in store. There was only one item left in his game of “Pick Your Pleasure.” Her whole body tingled, but she honestly didn’t know if it were from the embarrassment of knowing he was going to do…
that
… to her, or if it were anticipation.

She had to get back to work. If she didn’t occupy herself somehow she’d never survive until the end of the day. At least, this morning she’d remembered to put on something sexy. It had required another run out to Crystal Dolphin’s, but she found the perfect thing: matching bra and panties, lacy, slinky, sexy as hell, and she absolutely could not wait until he told her to strip so she could model it just for him.

Who would have guessed sweet little Maybe Sinclair, owner of a candy store, could be such a freak? But she was, and it tickled her! She loved nipple clamps. She
loved
being spanked. Maybe by the end of the night she’d love anal plugs too. She honestly didn’t know, but she could barely stand the wait for six o’clock to roll around so she could close up shop and watch for that innocuous white Castle van to pick her up and sweep her back to Parker. His hands, his arms… his mouth. Oh, that sinful mouth and all the things it had done to her!

Sinclair threw herself back into her work, packing up tote after plastic tote of champagne truffles and foil-wrapped hearts, baking and cleaning supplies, everything she’d need to set up tonight’s party-readying labors and keep her from having to dwell on how many times Parker had made her cum for him, all with his cock frustratingly locked behind the leather fly of his
breeches and out of her reach. It didn’t work really, but time still passed and before she knew it, there were only ten little minutes until closing time.

A car pulled up to the curb, and the instant she saw sunlight refract across the storefront windows, Sinclair felt nothing but sheer excitement launch from the soles of her feet all the way up to her heart. Except that it wasn’t the van. It wasn’t a customer either, so Sinclair was able to relax again.

“Hey, Charlie,” she greeted with a smile.

Charlie Brewster was a paunchy, balding, middle-aged sweetheart of a man. He was also the owner and leaseholder of her store. “Evening, Sinclair.” He smiled back, but something about it caught her as a little…
odd, somehow. It was all in the nonchalant—painstakingly so—way he came strolling up the main aisle, perusing the candy as if he’d never seen any of it before on his way to talk to her. He looked tense, but he was trying to be at ease. His face was flushed and twice, just in the length of time it took him to mosey from the door to her counter, he dabbed his forehead with his coat sleeve.

That dreadful tightening returned to squat heavy and cold in the pit of her stomach. “What’s up?” she asked, trying to be as nonchalant as he was, and probably succeeding about as well. “Rent’s not due for another week, right?”

“Oh no, no,” he hastened to assure her, still smiling. “No, I’m not here for that. Nothing like that.” He tried to laugh, but it came out too forceful and nervous. “It’s just… well, I wanted to tell you, I’ve been hearing some talk and I thought I should let you know. May I call you Maybe, Sinclair? I’ve always thought that a very pretty name. Is that spelled with one ‘e,’ or two?”

That dread inside her became a toothy, taloned golem, one already digging claws into her innards. “One,” she heard herself say. “W-what kind of talk?”

Her landlord shrugged. “This and that.”

No longer content to stand opposite the counter of her, he began to mosey his way around the glass horse-shoe style display. And Sinclair just stood there, watching him come, curdling from the inside out with every step he took, her mind a perfectly appalled blank of thought beyond this single frightening reality: in just another few steps, Charlie, her very nice, sweetheart of a landlord, was going to have her cornered behind her own sales counter. And he was still sweating, and looking at her so strangely. So intently. He kept licking his lips. He had fat lips. She’d never noticed that before.

“Mostly what people are talking about is the frequency with which you’ve been venturing out to visit our poor town’s only moral blight, the Castle.” Charlie offered her another nervous smile. “I’ve known you for years, Maybe. I’ve been telling people all day long, that’s not the young woman I know. She would never do that. Surely not, and yet they all sound so certain of themselves. Someone even has pictures of you loading your stock into a van, getting in and driving away with one of those amoral corruptive influences.”

“What?” Sinclair gasped.

“Oh yes.” Charlie nodded. He was behind the counter with her now, cutting off all avenues of escape as step by slow step he closed the last few feet of space between them. “I’ve seen one with my own eyes and I can’t tell you how much that… affected me, seeing you with a man like that. I just knew I had to come here and talk to you myself.
Have
you been out to that place, Maybe? Is
that
the kind of thing you… you like?” He reach out and, frozen on legs that refused to move, Sinclair could only stand there—skin crawling, heart racing—while he touched her hair. “Because I’m thinking, maybe if that is what you like, maybe we could come to a different arrangement. You know, regarding the store.”

“What?” This time, the word fell out of her as barely more than
a gasp.

“I know you’re having a hard time, financially. If we can, indeed, come to an…
arrangement, then I’m willing to drop your rent for a while.” She must have looked as shocked as she felt because he quickly corrected, “Or, or even drop it entirely—just until you get back on your feet, mind you—if…
if
we can come to that arrangement, like I said.” He didn’t just touch her hair now; his fingers skimmed her cheek and they felt as sweaty as his head was.

Sinclair recoiled, bumping up hard against the counter. The glass doors were cold at her back. “D-don’t—”

But Charlie came in close anyway, shaking his head, sweating and flushed. His excitement was so palpable and thick that it choked the air, making it impossible for her to think. This couldn’t be happening; how could this possibly be happening—she cringed back against the case when he held up his hand, seeking both to shush and to touch.

“It’s all right, Maybe. You don’t have to be afraid of me.” He licked his lips as he looked fixedly at hers. “I’m going to take very good care of you. We’re going to take very good care of each other, right? I-I’ve always ha
d this fantasy, see, and if you share it too, then m-maybe we could…”

“What the fuck is this?”

Sinclair jumped, so did Charlie, leaping back a step to get respectable distance once more between them. Apparently, he hadn’t heard the door chime any more than she had, but never in her life had she been so happy to see another human being in all her life. “Parker!”

He looked from Charlie to her, and she knew exactly when the truth of what he was watching snapped into focus for him because Parker’s entire countenance darkened. He turned on Charlie, charging him from across the store almost faster than Charlie could stumble back and throw up warding hands. Certainly, it was faster than Sinclair could stop him.

“What the fuck?” Parker bellowed again, grabbing her landlord by the lapels of his coat and heaving the slightly shorter man right up onto his tiptoes. He shook him like Charlie weighed nothing at all, as if he were a ragdoll.

“I didn’t touch her!” Charlie sputtered.

“Wait! W-wait, Parker!”

But Parker wasn’t waiting, and he didn’t actually hit him, although that’s what Sinclair thought she was going to see next. Instead, she had to chase them both, racing to keep up as Parker dragged Charlie by his few remaining hairs and one ear, and crashing into two different candy displays and sending tootsie rolls and Charleston Chews scattering across the floor as they went.

“Get out!” Parker bellowed, and if Jackson hadn’t just reached the door to open it, he might actually have thrown Charlie through it. As it was, the only blow he landed was the side of his boot to her landlord’s butt as Parker literally kicked him out of the store. Shoving past Jackson, Parker followed, aggressively chasing her scrambling and red-faced landlord all the way to his car. “If I ever see you put hands on her again, I will fucking break you in half!”

It was six o’clock at night. There were people across the street, most of whom stopped to stare. There were other stores. There were cars. How many pictures of this would be circulating all over town by tomorrow? Hell, was someone filming it? Was s
he going to see this all on YouTube?

Clapping her hands to her burning face, Sinclair stared, horrified as Charlie’s car sped off and Parker watched it go. What would be the ramifications? That there would be some, she knew without doubt. She could feel the certainty of it, like cold, hard steel piercing up through her chest. But what form would it take?

“What have you done?” she whispered when Parker came stalking back inside.

He had the nerve to look surprised
first and then irritated. “What do you mean, what have I done? He had you backed up against the counter. He had his hands on you and you looked scared as hell! Did I misread the situation?”

“That was my landlord!” she cried, pointing after the long-gone car.

“I don’t care if he was God!” Parker snapped back. “He didn’t have the right to—”

“Everybody—” Jackson held up calming hands. “—let’s just take a breath.”

“You don’t have the right!” Sinclair shouted and suddenly, as scared and as helpless to stop Charlie as she had been just a moment before, it all came pouring out of her on waves of uncontrollable anger. “How dare you! I don’t need your protection. I don’t need you to come waltzing in here like—like—like…Captain Tight Pants to save my virginity! Which I haven’t had since I was nineteen! So why are you here at all? I can take care of myself!”