The Thaw Onto The Freeze - A Nat and Alyssa Story Part Two

[naughtylilgirl09]

The Thaw onto the Freeze – A Nat and Alyssa Story
Part Two

Sitting at his kitchen table, Friday morning, Nat pondered on a theory he’d been contemplating all week. He was sure that some brilliant social scientist had already written about it somewhere, but he preferred to simply roll it over in his head. Yes, he was sure of it. If there was one thing that happened with large storms, natural disasters, any type of event that kept people cooped up in the same space, for very long periods of time, it was that teenagers, no matter what gender or age, developed a worse attitude than they previously had.

He would concede that this may not apply to every teenager in the world, however it certainly was the case with his daughter, Tina. Upon returning home with her mother, Helen, a week ago, his daughter had been purposely pushing every limit, as much as possible, since stepping through the door.

It didn’t help that he was on his own most of the week with Helen out of town for work. Helen related to Tina better than he did. Nat never was sure why. When Tina had been younger, there hadn’t been a single moment when she hadn’t been by his side. She was daddy’s little girl. But ever since entering the teen years, she’d become his worst fears in living form. Her mother related to her better, or at least knew how to talk to her. But for the majority of the week, Helen was gone and he was left to battle the teenage mood swings, hormones, attitude and whatever else there was, by himself.

It was miraculous, actually, that Helen had managed to make her flight to Texas given the state of the weather. While she insisted she had to be at that conference, Nat hadn’t been so sure the airlines and snowfall would agree with her. But her flight had taken off.

He’d really only had his family, together, under the same roof for two and a half days, and it just hadn’t been enough. Not nearly enough to make up for the time that had been lost during the blizzards that had shut down the city.

It was life. Within that very short time span, Nat managed to pull Helen aside for a few moments, and attempt to tell her about their newly acquired family member. She had been fine, accepting, more than accepting, Nat thought to himself, she had been happy about the situation. It was not, by far, the response that he anticipated. He had prepared himself for questions, arguments, hours of rationalizing and justifying his decisions.

Nat was aware that Helen had met Alyssa and her family, knew who she was, and, that, she was not at all un-attractive. He had been straight forward, direct as possible in telling her “the weeks of the blizzard Alyssa Caruthers from down the street was here as well.”

There had been no reaction from his wife. She had shrugged her shoulders, given him a smile, continued folding laundry as she never could just sit down, said “all right,” and picked up another piece of clothing. Idle hands do the devils work, Nat thought to himself. It was one of the many reasons why his wife could never not be doing something. Her mother had berated that phrase into her head.

He picked up a piece of laundry and began folding as he waited for questions, yelling, an interrogation, accusations, something, even if it wasn’t his wife’s style, anything. Nothing. So he had continued, “During that time it, uh, became obvious, well, I told you how I counseled her when she was at school, and kept her on track, and held her accountable for things?”

Looking up at him Helen had nodded, her face looking the same as it always did, which was what made him incredibly nervous. Why wasn’t she reacting? “Well,” he continued, “it was clear she still needs assistance to maintain that sort of structure, so as long as it’s all right with you, I thought we’d have her over for dinner once or twice a week. Give her a sense of that family stability that I doubt she ever had, you know, family actually sitting down and eating dinner, talking about the day. Having house rules, and general concepts of how one acts. And, possibly, depending on how things go, we’d let her have the guest room? She pretty much lived in there for the last three weeks anyway. It could use a little life.”

The timing had seemed to be perfect as Helen had just finished folding the last piece of laundry from the first basket of clean clothes. Placing it on top of the larger stacks she replied, “that’s good, I think that will be good. From what I could tell about Alyssa based on the limited interaction, the structure will be good for her.” Giving him a smile, she placed her hand on top of his, “now what was it that you wanted to talk to me about? Because I know you only want to talk up here when you are worried about something.”

At this point, Nat had paused, gone over every point in the conversation thus far, in his mind. He had to be leaving something out because there was no reaction from his wife. Taking her hand, he said, “I don’t think you quite understand my meaning when I said structure, and when she was here during the white out I held her accountable for things.”

Taking her hand back to fold a shirt from a new basket of fresh clothes, Helen replied, “I’m assuming your mean that you informed her of the house rules, and when she didn’t follow them, you put her over your knee and gave her a well-deserved spanking.”

Not realizing until then, that he had been leaning forward, as much as he had been, Nat sat up straighter and replied, “well….yes. I had her lower her pants and underwear and spanked her.”

Still folding clothes, she handed him a large pile of clean clothes from the basket to start folding as she replied, “well of course, you wouldn’t call it a proper spanking if it wasn’t on her bare fanny. I’m from the south, remember dear?” He saw her wink and started to laugh.

He remembered. The first time Nat had visited Helen’s family, her dad had taken him out to their woodshed and scared the living daylights out of him. “So you’re fine with the fact that Alyssa was here, and that she’ll continue to be here, almost like a part of the family?”

This time Helen put her hands down, with the shirt she was folding, in exasperation as she replied, “Nathan James, is this the important matter that you needed to speak with me about?”

Nat merely nodded his head, breaking his own rule about always verbally speaking your answer.

The exasperation still laced in her voice, Helen continued, “well, are you sleeping with her?”

Nat burst out laughing and said, “No.”

“Do you want to sleep with her? Do anything sexual at all with her?”

“Nope, ” Nat replied with a smile.

“I didn’t think so,” Helen said, this time reaching over and taking his hand. “And I trust that isn’t something I’d ever have to concern myself about, particularly in this situation though.” Her last comment intrigued Nat, and he was going to ask her about it, but she continued. “Besides, like I said, I think the structure and accountability will be good for Alyssa….and for you. While you’ll never admit it, you missed her when she graduated. I could tell. No student ever quite kept you on your toes the way she did.”

Nat smiled at that thought. It was true. Both that there had never been a student like Alyssa before or after she graduated, and that he had missed her. But, he wasn’t about to admit that to Lyssa.


Alyssa groaned again once she saw the state of traffic. Somehow she had gotten through Friday. She honestly wasn’t sure how. But it had happened. Despite the fact that it was the last day of the week, the quietest day of the week, and typically the day that flew by for people, today it also seemed like the longest day of the week.

With barely anyone in the office, Alyssa was struggling to find things to do. Before she would have gone on walks up and down the halls, gone floor to floor, checked to see if there were other people in the building. But after her little run in with the Deputy Director the other day, she was staying exactly where she was.

It took some creative thinking but she found things to keep herself busy until the clock hit five. She checked her filing system, evaluated the efficiency, looked up efficiency systems for filing systems on the internet and wrote a report on the topic. Then she redid her entire system. Then she color coded the whole thing. And then she moved on to her internet files, and her emails, and her word documents. That took up the rest of the afternoon. She had no idea whether the actual efficiency part was working, but all that mattered to her was that it was taking up the time that she needed it to.

Not that reaching five o’clock was the end of things, no life could never be that easy. No, instead she had to get out into awful, awful traffic and be stuck there for heaven knows how long. At one point she contemplated pulling her hair out she was so stressed just from the boredom of sitting in her own vehicle. But she finally made it back to her own driveway. Turning off the car, she leaned back in the driver’s seat, exhausted. She was tempted to just stay there, fall asleep for a while. But that wasn’t an option and she knew it.

So, at the conclusion of a perfectly horrible day Alyssa dragged herself across the street and over to Nat’s house. She was exhausted from the week, from the day, and she was dreading this weekend. She stood on the front stoop for a good two or three minutes before finally raising her hand and knocking on the door. She listened, waiting to hear the footsteps from inside to indicate someone actually coming to let her in, instead there was silence.

A car pulled up to the curb right in front of the house. Alyssa turned and glanced at it, she didn’t know the driver, at least she didn’t think so. It wasn’t more than two seconds after that, the door was flung open and Nat’s daughter came flying out, backpack flung over her shoulder, tears slipping down her red face. One hand was wiping away the tears while the other was practically glued to her bottom, rubbing away the sting of what Alyssa knew had to be a spanking. “I hate you, daddy,” the girl screamed as she ran down the steps and to the car.

Nat appeared in the doorway just a few seconds later, his voice booming “Tina Lynn, you do not speak to me with such disrespect!!” But his daughter was already in the car. Alyssa just observed as some sort of signal was exchanged between the driver and Nat. It was like she was invisible. Nat turned and walked back into the house. Just as Alyssa was about to say something, she heard another scream of indignation from the car. However the small vehicle pulled away before she could find out more details.

Awkward personified. That was all Alyssa could think. Maybe this wasn’t the best time to be here. They could reschedule. She had offered that very thought and it had gotten the response of Nat’s retreating back as he walked back down the hall. “I’ll take that as a ‘no’” Alyssa said quietly to herself. The door remained open and she remained outside simply looking around trying to figure out exactly what she was supposed to do in this situation.

“Unless you plan on contributing to the heating bill, I suggest you come inside,” she heard Nat call out to her from down the hall. Her nose wrinkled, she felt it and instantly wanted it to stop. She was going to get wrinkles at the rate that kept happening. Taking a deep breath she entered the house kicking the door closed behind her. It wasn’t until she was actually inside that she realized she had been holding her breath, why exactly, she wasn’t sure.

Whatever was cooking, she did have to admit that it smelled good. She felt a bit…shy? Maybe it really was shy? Certainly she felt like a stranger in the home, even though she had practically lived there for a good deal of time. Although, she could claim that had been under duress…technically…not really. What do you call it when someone lifts you up off your feet, hauls you inside, prevents you from trying to walk to your house in the middle of a white out because they don’t want you to die, and threatens to spank you if you attempt to go outside again? Somehow, duress wasn’t the word. Her mind was going at one hundred miles an hour. She hadn’t even heard Nat come up and stand next to her she was so lost in her thoughts.

Nat watched the small girl who was standing in the middle of his hallway lost in some deep thought that, at the moment, appeared to have her paralyzed. At least she closed the door, he thought to himself. The cold air that had been blasting in from outside had done a number on the room temperature.

He walked towards her slowly, not wanting to scare her, however she was completely oblivious. Whatever world of thoughts she had drifted into, her mind was obviously staying there. Now by her side, Nat gently touched her arm as he said her name quietly. The two actions jolted her out of her reverie, startling her, and apparently her fight or flight reaction was in gear because she jumped back, tripping over a pair of boots in the hallway and tumbling onto the ground.

He automatically reached down to help her and nearly laughed at the startled reaction on her face. He had seen and heard about Alyssa tripping and falling more times than everyone in her graduating class added together. However, the look of shock she wore gave the impression that she had never taken a spill in her life. He couldn’t help but allow the rather bemused look to cross his own face, before taking ahold of her arm, and pulling her up to her feet. She weighed nothing.

Yes, he had held her and carried her multiple times in the past few weeks. It was just now occurring to him the ease with which he had lifted her from the ground. She was giving a new meaning to the phrase light as a feather. He added that to his list of things for them to discuss. If Alyssa was losing weight then she wasn’t eating.

She seemed to have gathered her bearings, her attention finally in the present moment. “How about you take your bags up to your room and take a few minutes to settle in?” Nat suggested to her. He thought he saw disappointment flash across her face but if it had. But it was gone so fast, that without slow motion play back, you really wouldn’t be able to tell if it had been there at all. She didn’t move for a second and Nat simply watched her, his mind racing as to what that disappointment may have been. Just as she was about to turn to collect her bags and head up stairs, he stopped her by saying “of course you could always give me a hug first.”

She paused, that was certain, the pause a great deal longer than he expected. When she did turn back to face him, Alyssa practically flew into his arms. She had felt so much better after the hug. It was strange, and she still couldn’t explain why, but it was like Alyssa needed the reassurance. And Alyssa had never thought of herself as one that needed reassurance. After getting that one hug from Nat, she felt fine. Now, upstairs in what was becoming her room, she wondered aloud, ‘how am I supposed to tell him?’

Yes, it hadn’t been that long since they had last seen one another, however, life had begun again, schools had started classes, people had gone back to work. She had gone back to work, her school had gone back into session. Her life had gone back to normal. In other words, her school performance had declined even more than it had been prior to that blizzard.

He would spank her, she knew that. Alyssa looked at herself in the tall mirror. She deserved it. She let the thought float around in her mind for a bit as she flopped back onto the old creaky bed. Just a few minutes, she told herself. I’ll just stay here a few minutes. Just enough time to relax and get back to being my normal self.

Somehow the thought of being spanked didn’t seem as daunting as she expected, now that she was inside the house, in what was slowly becoming her room. No, what was worrying her was actually telling Nat. He would be disappointed in her, and that, well, she didn’t know if she could stomach that.

Nat gave himself a mental pat on the back for sensing that Alyssa had wanted a hug when she arrived. More than wanted, almost needed it. Heating up soup on the stove, he tossed the situation around in his mind. It wasn’t as if Alyssa was someone who was starved for attention. Far from it, if anything it was the exact opposite. She had friends everywhere, and if she didn’t, she never seemed to have trouble making any. She was personable, and didn’t mind striking up a conversation with complete strangers.

Yet, despite the constant activity in her life, all the people around her, even those that seemed to care a good deal about her, none of it seemed to matter much to her. What he had come to learn about her these past weeks, was what mattered most to her were those individuals that remained present throughout the bad parts of her life as well. Alyssa was fun, happy and full of life and smiles, comedic intellect and adventure a good deal of the time. But she could also have large periods of drama, depression and emotional roller coasters that made many people run for the hills.

Those periods of drama, depression and her emotional roller coasters had caused him to be one of those people, at one point in their history. He just felt he couldn’t take it anymore and had told her as much. He still remembered the look on her face, the hurt and betrayal, the tears. It had always been something he couldn’t quite shake.

There had been other students that had stayed in touch until he gently told them that it was time to move on. If that didn’t work, then he had moved to the approach of sitting down with them and not-so-gently informing them. While others had looked hurt or betrayed, cried, many had looked angry, some required him to call security as they had become violent, eventually they all faded into the past becoming one big blur in his mind. But Alyssa never had. That memory had stuck with him. He had never been able to figure out why.

As he sat down at the table to slice up vegetables to make up a salad he continued to ponder on the matter. Had he known in the back of his mind how much he was truly hurting her? It was impossible, how could he? That look of betrayal and hurt in her eyes, though that was what had stayed with him. That look, and while her tears were silent, she had seemingly lost all emotion. Her voice was flat. It was like he had deflated a balloon. It had felt almost as if he had killed her in some strange way.

When the storm hit a few weeks ago, by luck of the draw it was one of the rare occasions that she took public transportation, and he found himself mere feet away from her as she was insisting that she would make it to her home when he could hardly make it to his own. It was almost as if a second chance had been offered. He hadn’t seen it that way at the time and he knew Alyssa hadn’t either.

It took her a few minutes to get her courage up but she finally talked herself into going downstairs. She could smell the soup, and knew this time that it wasn’t poisoned, no one was going to kill her. She smiled a bit at that memory. Not at the spanking that she had received, but at how ridiculous it had been to think that Nat would kill her. Entering the kitchen, she saw him at the table cutting up vegetables for a salad or some kind of meal. While there was a sharp knife in his hand, her mind no longer, immediately, thought it would be the instrument of her death.

Clearing her throat to get his attention, Alyssa over-exaggerated a cough so that Nat noticed her standing at the entranceway to the kitchen. “Well don’t just stand there, Alyssa,” Nat said to her, “come pull up a chair and help me make dinner, tell me what’s going on.” There was something in his tone that gave her a moment’s pause. She honestly wasn’t sure what to call it. It wasn’t scolding, or yelling. But it wasn’t friendly either. However his glance, when he looked at her, his eyes had been friendly, almost laughing. That one glance made her decide it was safe to go.

She walked over to the table and took a seat next to Nat, waiting for him to give her a task to do, something to help. He didn’t, though. Instead he kept working on the one that he had, and asked her, “so how was your week back at work? School?”

Alyssa wrinkled her nose, and then replied, “almost no one came back to work. There is the option of telecommuting still, so almost everyone is still working from home.”

“And so you’re lacking things to do?” Nat pressed her.

“Um, no, well, not really, I kind of uh, had a little run in with the deputy director,” Alyssa managed to confess.

“You kind of had a little run in with the deputy director?” Nat echoed her. Alyssa was well aware what the look he gave her was saying. The past few weeks, when she’d been stuck here, he hadn’t let her get away with any of her gray area statements. It had always been a thing with him, even when she was a student. Alyssa had never understood why.

“I did,” she replied.

“Did what,” Nat gave her a pointed look. She hated this. He knew she hated this. Why couldn’t he just let her be obscure? She liked being obscure. With the, ‘kind of’ and ‘might have’, and ‘tiny little incident, ‘but sort of’, and everything else she came up with.

“I had an incident with the deputy director that was not good,” Alyssa managed to say, after about a minute of searching for words.

“Better,” Nat gave her a nod of praise. “Tell me about it.”

Alyssa did not want to tell him about it. It was one of the last things that she wanted to do. But the other few options included school and that credit card bill, and neither of them were particularly appealing either.

“I was doing work,” she began, and noted that Nat paused in peeling of potatoes to stare at her for a long second, “not as much or as diligently as I should have been,” she admitted. His eyebrow quirked up a bit, but he went back to work which was a good enough signal for her to continue. “I didn’t even think that anyone else from the floor I worked on had come back to work, it was really quiet and I didn’t ever see or hear anyone.” This time Alyssa paused waiting to see if Nat did anything. He hadn’t slowed down at all which was a sign that he was allowing her to continue without comment.

“I talked to myself the entire day, because I didn’t think anyone was around,” she continued. “And I took breaks walking up and down the halls, talking, usually brainstorming situations, or running through analyses in my head. It was the one time I could walk around and do so, since the place was empty. I was in the break room, kitchen area getting coffee, having to climb up on the cabinets to get supplies, and I was, you know, talking to myself, complaining about how gross the coffee was, I might have said something about how it was a waste of tax payer money.”

“You might have?” Nat interrupted her.

“I said something along the lines of it was gross and a waste of tax payer money since the caffeine didn’t even do anything. I don’t remember the exact words, but that was basically it.” Alyssa clarified and looked at Nat to see if that met his satisfaction. His small smile accompanied with a small nod told her that it did.

“Anyway, I turned around to leave, to, you know, go back to work, the deputy director was standing in the doorway, just leaning against the door frame watching me. I was so surprised that I accidentally tripped. Luckily, I caught my balance before I fell flat on my face, but the coffee flew all over him.”

Nat chuckled at the mental image. If that was the most amount of trouble she had gotten herself into then it had been a calm week. Any man with a solid head on his shoulders would have been able to see that it was an accident….so long as she truly had tripped. Given her propensity to fall over her own feet, he had a feeling it had truly been an accident. “All right, then what happened,” he prodded her to continue.

When he glanced up at her, he noticed she looked a bit paler than before.

“Um, well, I demanded to know what he was doing there,” she told him.

Nat couldn’t help himself, he outright laughed. He could see her doing just that. “I’m sorry, sweetie,” he said after a moment, “what happened after that?”

“He just looked at me and was like, “I could ask you the same thing. And then did that whole thing when you want to know someone’s name, so you say the prefix in a questioning tone? Miss? Like that.” Alyssa was becoming animated in her descriptions, it had now become a story for her to tell. Nat had to hide his smile. He knew she loved to tell about her adventures, her dramas, her stories, down to the tiniest detail. He didn’t even have to prompt her, she kept going.

“I was so shocked, Nat, I thought I was going to be fired or in huge trouble or something. And I was like ‘Caruthers, Alyssa, I mean, Alyssa Caruthers, and then I managed to go through every single title I could come up with before I got to Director. So, your honor, dean, sir, director Snyder. Ugh, embarrassing. Anyway, he told me to clean everything up and then he wanted to talk to me and then he left, but right before he had totally disappeared he turned and was all, ‘oh and bring me a cup of that horrible coffee, I take mine black.”

Again, Nat started laughing. This time, partly because he did find the situation funny. But also because he could see Alyssa landing herself in that exact situation. He calmed down after a minute and signaled for her to go on. “I cleaned up everything, technically I think that floor is cleaner now than when the cleaning crew does it, but that is just me. I ran back to my desk to take care of something, that would be when you called.” Alyssa’s voice trailed off

When Nat looked over her eyes were downcast. “Alyssa,” he said gently, continuing to work on the vegetables. It took a minute but she did raise her head up to look at him. “While we’re going to discuss the issue a bit more, it’s going to be a literal discussion. I’d like for you to explain how it works for one, as I don’t quite understand, but otherwise, it’s done, closed. Regarding your attitude and sass on the phone that day, you apologized, I accepted your apology and forgave you that day. As far as I’m concerned it’s already in the past.”

“But don’t you have to,” she began, “you know, like…” she trailed off again. This time Nat knew exactly what she wanted. He wanted him to finish her sentence. Certain words she just couldn’t seem to say.

“Don’t I have to what, Alyssa?” he asked.

Nat watched as she closed her eyes, bit her lip a bit, and then squeezed her eyes closed and said, “don’t you have to like spank me or punish me?”

Nat remained silent, and about ten seconds went by before Alyssa opened one eye, looking around, as if checking to see if the world had collapsed. Once everything had seemingly checked out, she opened the other, again glancing around, before allowing her gaze to settle back on him.

“Don’t I need to punish you,” Nat repeated the question, setting down the potato and potato peeler. “I hadn’t planned on doing so. I’m actually quite proud of you, Alyssa, that you recognized the fact that your behavior was going down an ill-advised path, took that moment to regroup and correct yourself, and then came back, behaving much better and apologized.”

“Oh,” she said, looking rather dejected. That was not at all lost on Nat. Picking up the vegetable and going back to peeling he said casually, “why? Do you think you should be punished?”

It was obvious that the question was one that she didn’t want to answer because her eye contact was skating all the room, never in one place for more than a few seconds. “Uh, I don’t know,” she finally replied.

Nat knew that was a lie. And he planned to discuss it with her later. For now, he wanted her to finish what had happened at work. “All right, well what happened with the Deputy Director,” Nat asked.

“Oh, right,” Alyssa came out of whatever thought she had been lost in. “I got a new coffee for myself and one for him and went to his office. It was so weird, Nat, I wasn’t like sure of what to do. Like, his secretary hadn’t come back to work, so there wasn’t anyone that could call and check if he was free then. I was holding coffee in both hands so I couldn’t really knock. And I didn’t want to go stick my head in the door. I know, I know, I have no trouble doing it to you and pretty much everyone else. But I just couldn’t in this situation. So I just took baby steps up until he could see me.”

Alyssa saw the smirk on his face. Nat knew her too well, that was the problem, and that was why he was finding all of this funny. She wasn’t sure how funny he was going to find the rest of this.

“He was like, well come on in, don’t just stand there. I hate it when people do that. It’s like, you’re trying to be polite by not just barging into their office, and then they make you feel stupid for doing so. Anyway, I went in and sat down, he was reviewing a document and I ran out of things to think about so I started reading the thing he was marking comments on. On the last page he couldn’t think of the word that he wanted so he left it blank, and then finished the thing and looked up at me. I stupidly opened my big mouth and told him that he should use the word ‘Ostensibly’.”

One glance over at Nat told her that he didn’t understand the significance of what had happened. “He actually did use the word,” she began. “But the document, I shouldn’t have read it. Only people with a much higher clearance are allowed to read that document, and probably a bunch of others in his office. You can go to jail for reading stuff you don’t have clearance for.”

Alyssa looked over at Nat, waiting for him to start yelling at her for doing something so stupid, so irresponsible. For being so careless with her future. But he was just peeling potatoes. He must have noticed that she paused because he did also, looked up and said, “well, you’re obviously not in jail, so I imagined the situation worked out somehow. Keep going.”

All of a sudden she was embarrassed. Realization struck on exactly what her predicament had been that day at work. Director Snyder had put her in time out. It wasn’t like she had never experienced that before, Nat did it to her all the time. But that was here, it was between the two of them. No one outside of the house knew about it. Despite the fact that she was sitting with the very individual that put her in time out, over and over, she was embarrassed to tell him that it was now something that happened at her work also. Looking down at the table, she said under her voice, “he put me in time out and then lectured me and sent me home.”

Nat paused his never ending task of peeling potatoes. He was sure he hadn’t heard that correctly. “Alyssa, look up at me when you speak to me,” he said to her. The fact that she didn’t want to look at him, and was speaking in such a manner was giving him the feeling that he had heard her correctly. But surely he was wrong. It took her a few moments to raise her head up to where they were on eye level. He could already see the blush on her cheeks and rising on the back of her neck. Oh, he had definitely heard her correctly.

“Why don’t you try that one again, speaking clearly this time,” he said, making certain she understood it was not a suggestion. She gave a loud sigh and then, still managing to look at him, said, “he made me sit in time out and then lectured me on my behavior and the consequences if it had been a different situation and then sent me home.”

She had turned bright red by that point, her embarrassment quite evident. “He stopped just short of turning you over his knee for a spanking, then,” Nat remarked with a chuckle. Picking up the metal instrument he returned to the task of peeling potatoes while Alyssa squirmed uncomfortably in her chair. He noticed that she had turned an even brighter shade of red. “Alyssa,” Nat said, giving her a stare that always seemed to get the truth out of her. “He stopped short of turning you over his knee for a spanking? Or did you get your bottom spanked this week?”
He didn’t think it was possible unless she was running a fever, but she got even redder, and offered a pathetic weak smile while slightly raising her shoulders, and lowering her eyelids just a tad. “Is there anyway we cannot talk about this now?”