Sadie's Little Christmas - Maren Smith Page 0,12

how he intended to deal with her.

Spankles would have to be content with sharing in his inevitable scolding, but it was Sadie alone who would go over his knee. Sadie’s little bottom, he would bare as he held her naughty hand pinned to her side and used his other to paint the pale mounds of her cringing bottom to a bright, hot pink.

He had a hairbrush on his nightstand and a slightly larger, heavier paddle in his closet for Littles, who needed something more than just his hand. He had his belt and a two-tongued strap called The Dragon, which, with every snapping bite it took, could make its victim jump and plead.

For that very rare submissive, whose occasional need for pain matched his own ache to deliver it, he also had his bullwhip. To date, though, he had yet to find a Little who could or would take that.

Sadie was not that Little, he told himself, tearing his hungry stare away from her lest he lost himself down that damning rabbit hole. She wasn’t here to be his plaything. She was here because of what had happened to her, because she’d had no safe place to go. Rawhide Ranch was the best place for her, and he was still every bit as determined now as he’d been when Jared Stark first called him. He would do everything he could to help her, and he would keep his hands to himself while he did it, even if it killed him.

His wristwatch beeped, signaling the end of the time he’d allotted for her to be in the corner.

“All right,” he announced, retreating into the comfortable headspace of Ranch Owner and general Daddy Dom. Daddy to every Little boy and girl here, not just Sadie, he told himself as she turned around. “Come and sit down.”

He busied himself clearing his files off his desk, so he wouldn’t sit there, watching her approach as if she were a prime piece of steak, and he hadn’t eaten in days. He put his accounting away and pulled out a copy of the contract every Little who came to stay here was required to sign.

“I was going to do this in the privacy of your dorm room,” he said, fishing a pen out of a cup full of others just like it. “But that little stunt you pulled in the hallway has changed things up a bit, wouldn’t you say? Sit down.”

Sinking into one of the two chairs set out on the opposite side of his desk, she played with her kitty’s ears and studied the stapled papers he flipped around and slid across the desk for her to read. Dropping a pen on top of the short stack, he leaned back in his chairs and folded his hands in his lap.

“What is it?” she asked.

“An agreement. In these pages, you will find a list of our rules, which you will need to agree to. You’ll also find a list of consequences,”—a corner of his mouth quirked when she immediately picked through the pages to find the list—“for when you break those rules.”

“I have to initial them?” she asked, glancing up at him in surprise.

“Each and every one,” he confirmed. “So, we both know you have read and understand what is being said.”

She picked up the pen.

He stopped her. “Start at the beginning, please.”

Eyebrows crashing down in a disgruntled line, she made a soft growling sound in the back of her throat but flipped the contract back over to the very beginning.

“I’ll need to make a copy of your driver’s license if I may.”

She got up to get her wallet from the duffel bag he’d dropped just inside his office door back when they’d first arrived. Handing it to him when she came back, she sat down and without a word, began reading again.

Eighteen, he was happy to note, with a few months to spare. As he took her license out, he couldn’t help but note how empty every other pocket in her wallet was. No cash, no debit or credit cards, no change in the zipper purse, not even so much as a business card.

Hmm.

He had a small tabletop scanner-printer-fax combo on the filing cabinet behind his chair. When he swiveled around to make his copy, she flipped the first page.

“There will be a quiz on the contents of that contract over dinner tonight,” he said drily, and his smile broadened a bit when she growled her frustration again and grudgingly flipped the page back