The Brothers Rule - Carolyn Faulkner Page 0,79

then more forcefully as he slanted his mouth across hers. Laurie yielded herself to him entirely, lips parting at his insistent tongue, head tucked against the hard muscle of his shoulder. As dominant as he was, he drew her own out to play, nipping and nibbling at the tip as she traced hers over the sharp edges of his teeth, then caught his lip between her pearly whites, carefully not biting in the least, just tugging playfully.

"Tease." He grinned against her lips, hugging her hard, then letting her go.

"Why don't we address your transgressions first, and then, perhaps, if you take your punishments well, I'll soothe you a bit."

The way he soothed her was to drive her crazy with pleasure, and she was all for that counterpoint to what she knew he was going to subject her to beforehand.

"Stand still. I want to get things ready for you."

Laurie watched him as he retrieved one of his jackets from their luggage, spreading it out over the end of the picnic table and using the metal clamps—that were actually for the tablecloth but worked just as well in this situation—to hold his coat where he wanted it.

He turned to her and brought her over to stand at the end of the table. "Wouldn't want you to get any splinters in any painful areas," he explained, gently encouraging her to bend over and lay herself on top of his jacket.

Then he stooped down and surprised her by lashing her ankles to the legs of the table.

"You won't need that for the spanking—probably—but I bet you'll be glad of it when I use the new implement."

Laurie's stomach dropped onto her feet upon hearing that. Kicking up was not allowed by any of them. Drumming her feet was fine, squirming and writhing were expected. But she was not to try to disrupt a swat.

"I don't think you'll need to during the spanking portion, but you'll probably want to grab the edges of the table and hold on later."

That, too, didn't bode well for her poor behind at all!

She didn't much compare the three brothers, but regardless of their personalities outside of the disciplinary arena, they were—all three of them—disgustingly methodical when they punished her. There might be slight variations, but they all made certain that every swat was memorable from the very beginning and that they covered every available square inch of flesh. Jace and Ryan, generally—as long as she took her punishment well—would only decorate her rear end with their handprints or swats from the hairbrush or the paddle.

Adam, sometimes, would leave her thighs, which were so easily available just beneath the cheeks he'd already made fiery red and sore, in much the same condition, as he did this time.

Because of that, he made her glad that he'd bound her ankles before he got to whatever the new, terrible implement was. And he was wrong about when she would need to grab the table, too.

From the very beginning, she couldn't keep herself from crying out every time that big palm of his snapped down on her tender flesh, and it kept coming.

"Please, Adam, Sir. Stop! I'm sorry!" She was begging him embarrassingly early on, long before she knew he would stop even just the spanking!

"I know you are, Laurie-girl. You were sorry from the moment I told you that you were going to be punished, but you're going to be more so before I'm done."

Her fingers had curled around the edge of the wooden picnic table long before the spanking wound down.

And there was no pause between one kind of discipline and the other. The last gasp she uttered as his palm smacked down onto her far cheek simply melded into the yelp she emitted when he lay something thin and whippy across both the crests of both curves.

"Yeow!"

Adam actually chuckled. "Well, that seems to be having the desired effect."

He gave her another ten slices or so—each of which left a thin, angry line across her already hot, sore bottom. She was absolutely frantic to get away from it, and he thoroughly enjoyed watching her futile attempts to do so.

When he paused, she spoke before he did.

"Oh God, no more, please, Sir!" she panted, and he could see the damp, dark evidence of her tears on his coat.

"I'm sorry, Laurie, but this is a matter of not just your safety, but everyone else's. You know that there are lots of spots on the roads to the ranch where there's no cell reception. I would