Sadie's Little Christmas - Maren Smith Page 0,42

her out so much, she’d fallen asleep practically from the moment she laid down. She’d felt so much better once she’d woken again.

Smiling, Nanny J gave her a knowing look. “Now, what’s the one you’re trying so hard not to admit to?”

Caught.

Her face grew hot. She cleared her throat, hugging the stockings to her chest as she admitted, “When you spanked me.”

“I thought so.” Amused, Nanny J went back to hanging stockings.

That she could act so normal about it when it was all Sadie could do to keep herself under control in this place swiftly drove her crazy.

“But isn’t that strange?” she demanded. She tried to cover her unease with a laugh, but it was too high-pitched and forced for even her to believe.

Nanny J looked at her, eyebrows expectantly arched. “What part? That I did it, or that it brought you comfort in a moment of insecurity?”

Sadie shut her mouth, blinking in surprise.

“B-both?” She wilted. “I’m so mixed up. I shouldn’t want this, I know that, but…”

Nanny J’s eyebrows arched higher. “What shouldn’t you want?”

“This!” Sadie cried. “This… all of this! I have been fascinated by this stuff since,”—she laughed again, despair slowly settling in—“since I discovered boys. Spanking, submission, dominant men—I can’t remember ever not fantasizing about it.”

“Okay,” Nanny J accepted, seemingly without a qualm. “So, in that regard, you know who you are. Good for you. I fail to see the problem.”

Sadie shook her head, not at all sure if she ought to envy that or not.

“I should be dead right now.”

“Thank God you’re not.” Taking another stocking, the other woman hung it.

“But I should be,” she insisted. “And where do I go before the bruises have even disappeared? Here. What am I doing? I’m coloring in coloring books and taking naps, and… and I can’t seem to stop myself from doing things that will get me in trouble.” Her shoulders drooped when Nanny turned and focused on her again, her lovely mouth turned up in a gentle, accepting smile. “I’m fantasizing about him, too.”

“Your Daddy?”

This was hard enough for her to wrap her mind around without putting the whole Daddy twist onto it. She liked Doms. She shouldn’t even like those, but that was her preference. The whole Daddy thing… it just felt so… so infantile. She was eighteen. She wasn’t a child anymore, regardless of how much she’d enjoyed her time in the nursery, coloring, napping, spanking… Spankles.

“Derek,” she insisted, shying from the title. “Not Daddy, just Derek.”

If Nanny J hadn’t turned her back to fuss with how straight the stocking was hanging, Sadie might have sworn she saw the woman smile.

She stomped her foot. “It’s not funny! Don’t make fun of me. I’m being serious!”

“I’m not making fun, honey. I’m being serious, too. And please don’t stomp your foot at me, or I might have to take you down the hall to a certain private room and spank your naughty bottom all over again. There are hairbrushes, paddles and straps conveniently placed all around this resort, and I know where all of them are.”

“But I’m being serious!” Sadie whined, still just as frustrated, though she did manage to keep from stomping her foot this time.

“Try another tone, dear. Nanny J can’t hear whining.”

Sadie glared at her.

“No sulking,” Nanny J said, definitely smiling as she held out her hand for another stocking.

Resisting slapping it into her hand, Sadie handed it over.

“I’m not sulking,” she grumbled. “I just think you’re being as mean as everyone else here.”

“Sorry.” Nanny J didn’t sound at all apologetic. “If it’s any consolation, I don’t think having these predilections make you weird. It just makes you, you. And although you might not like the fact you’ve definitely got a Little side, I think your Daddy—”

“Derek.”

“Yes… is right in that you should at least get to know her and become friends with her if you can. There’s nothing more miserable than forever keeping your true self locked away because you’re afraid of what people—people, I might add, whose thoughts and opinions don’t even matter—might think.”

There was a ring of truth in what Nanny J was saying, and it annoyed the hell out of her to have to acknowledge it.

“Moses likes your butt,” she said, changing the subject.

Nanny J jerked around, her eyes and mouth both rounding and a very satisfying pink rising instantly to stain her cheeks.

“Why, you little stinker!”

Bursting into sharp laughter, Sadie danced quickly out of reach, evading the slap the other woman aimed at her bottom. It felt good