"I know you're pissed," she blurts out.

Wesley turns a page of his book with care, smoothing it down. He makes an uninterested 'hmm' sound and then, when she stamps her foot, says, "I'm delighted that you're so sensitive to my moods, Faith, but if you do that again, I'll be forced to treat you like a child. Given the model I'd be basing that on would be my own formative years, I don't think you'd enjoy it much."

She puts her foot down carefully and takes a deep breath. "I'm sorry, okay?"

"You've already told me that."

"So --" She waves her hand around. "Do something! Even it up! Make me feel better."

He finally puts that goddamn book down and looks at her, his blue eyes distant and cool. "Ah. I see. You want punishment followed by absolution."

She nods sulkily. Put like that, she just knows she's not going to get it. And she wants it. Fuck; needs it, like she needs to be his best girl again, his darling Faith.

"I'm not inclined to give it to you."

Wes not wanting to spank her? Only on days not ending with 'y'.

She edges nearer. "I'm reading," he says flatly. "You're blocking the light."

"That is bullshit," she yells, the volume freezing him in place, one finger curled around the next page to be flipped, his mouth parted on another hint that he wants her to fuck off, except this is Wes and he wouldn't put it like that, no, of course, he fucking wouldn't. "You didn't even ask --" She breaks off and kicks the footstool in front of him, the one the stick up his ass isn't letting him use, leaving him sitting back rigid, one leg neatly crossed over the other instead. It spins across the floor, bumps into a side table, and sends some of his forgotten glass of wine slopping out onto polished wood.

"Oops?" she snarls. Now. he'll do it, now he'll --

"Your behavior is quite intolerable," he says wearily. "I suggest you take a nap, Faith. Perhaps you'll wake up in a better mood."

"I won't." God, sometimes she feels every bit the child he calls her, but this is just too much. She wants to feel his hand on her ass, making it sting, making it hot, like her eyes, which are about to start leaking tears fucking everywhere. Wants to cry and sniffle against his shoulder, be carried off to their bed and kissed and licked and fucked forgiven.

He takes a handkerchief from his pocket and soaks up the spilled wine. It's red wine, so she's ruined his hanky as well as the table.

"You didn't ask why I did it."

He doesn't look up. "Impatience? Greed? Annoyance that I was late? Am I close?"

"Not even," she says dully.

"I suppose you think it's foolish of me to mind."

She shakes her head. "No. I get why you're mad."

He tosses the hanky in the trash and comes over to where she's standing, her arms loose by her side, her head drooping. The hangover's still with her, a tight band around her head, an uneasy presence in her stomach. She's never wanted his cool, careful hands on her more, smoothing back her hair, rubbing her neck…

"I didn't ask, no," he says, putting a finger under her chin and tilting her head up so she's got to look into all that blue in his eyes. A girl could drown in them, float away… "Very well; why, Faith, did I arrive home, a little later than planned, yes, to find you finishing off the bottle of champagne we were supposed to be sharing for our anniversary next week? I confess it's sentimental of me, but I went to some trouble to find that particular bottle and --"

"I know." She did. He'd been so pleased when one of his contacts in the wine business had got it for him. It'd tasted pretty much like all champagne did to her; dry and fizzy, but it was the one they'd had on their wedding night… "I'm sorry, Wes. I was just so -- I was remembering… stuff… and you weren't there and --"

"Oh." His hand cups her face. "I had hoped you'd forgotten the date."

"Not ever gonna forget that day, Wes. Not ever."

"You should," he says gently. "I promise I'll never leave you again. Never."

"You weren't there last night," she says, being totally unreasonable.

"Rupert needed me and so did a very influential client who's incidentally a personal friend of ours."

"I needed you."

"Yes, I can see you did." His hand moves, tapping her cheek hard enough to leave a faint tingle, nothing more. "And yet you're apologizing? Asking for what I can't help but feel is a well-deserved chastisement? Why, as you seem to have cast me for the villain of the piece?"

She jerks her head away. Sometimes, he's just too fucking clever. "It wasn't your fault," she admits. She glares at him. "Could still have fucking called me."

"I should have. For that you have my apologies."

She nods and slips her arms around his neck, pulling him down for a kiss, salty-wet and tearful, even though she doesn't think either of them is crying. It just feels like that sort of a kiss.

By the time it's over, his hand's on her ass, just where it should be.

"I think we need to calm you down," he says thoughtfully, and his voice makes her shiver in a good way, the best way. "I've always found reading is an excellent method of focusing and distracting the mind." He gives her ass a pinch. "Go to the library. The shelves by the window, hmm… third shelf, in the middle. A History of  Champagne. A little dry, perhaps, like the wine itself, but I think you'll find it instructive."

She can't believe Wesley's gonna really make her read it or listen to him read it, but there's a sparkle in his eyes now and she's not gonna do anything to put it out.

She brings him the book -- it's thin, but fuck, does it look dull -- and he puts it beside him on the couch and pats his knee. "Over my lap, Faith."

The familiar, low ache begins, centered between her legs, legs she knows Wesley's going to be parting, spreading wide before too long. She settles herself down and lets him raise the skirt of her dress and tug, with precise, fussy twitches, her panties down to mid thigh. She's all goose bumps by the time he's finished, breathing through her mouth, soft little breathy gasps she tries to keep quiet.

He props the book on a cushion in front of her face, opened to chapter one, which is all about, as far as she can see, the cultivation of the fucking vines.

His hand comes down on her ass in a crisp, business-like way. "Read, Faith," he instructs, and his hand smoothes over the patch of sting his palm's left and she clears her throat and begins, stumbling over the unfamiliar words and not listening to her voice because she's waiting for the next spank.

It doesn't come. Wesley touches her ass lightly now and then, even traces the faint scars and the cleft between her cheeks, making her wiggle her legs apart hopefully, but that's as far as he goes. It begins to be unendurable, this waiting, this anticipating, and she's conscious of nothing but the space between her skin and his hand, the cushion of air separating them.

She doesn't dare stop reading to beg, but she's babbling now, flicking over the pages with a trembling hand, hoping that it's all going to happen at the end of chapter one.

Every page she turns reveals another double page of text and she bites her lip hard each time, keeping back the howl.

He taps her once, frustratingly lightly, and makes her say a sentence over, but other than that he's silent.

The chapter ends finally, thank God, and she pauses.

"Go on," he says inexorably.

"Wes…" she whines.

"You want your punishment to be less… abstract, don't you?" he asks, amusement warming his voice.

"Yeah," she mutters sulkily. "And unless you want me to fall asleep here --"

His hand threads through her hair and he uses it to pull her head up, leaning down so that he can murmur into her ear, "When you're this wet? This hungry? I don't think so, Faith."

She is, yeah, big time, but as his fingers haven't slid through the silky warm wetness clinging to every fold of her cunt, haven't even come close to touching her there, she doesn't know how he knows that.

"Give me something," she begs getting the words out fast before he makes her carry on reading. Her throat's dry and her tongue feels thick, clumsy. "Please, Wes. Need something…"

"Such a good little Faith," he says and she kicks out reflexively and hears him chuckle.

"Five," he decides. "Hard and fast. Very hard, Faith, and if you move, they'll be the last you get, do you understand me?"

She doesn't even have chance to nod, croak out a 'yes' before his hand's cracking, sharply shocking, against the top of her thigh, first one leg, then the other. Not where she expected it and it hurts more than she remembers, just like always, and she shrinks, wants to curl up and hide even as she expands, presenting herself for his hand, knowing she looks beautiful, knowing he's watching, that small, perfectly cruel smile shaping his lips.

The next two land on her ass, dead center, it feels like, a matching pair of handprints.

She catches a sobbing breath and his cool hand, his left hand, comes to rest on the small of her back.

"I want you to come for me," he says. "I want to watch you scream and come and cry, across my lap, just like this, from this final one."

She's lost in the sensations, real and imagined, because it's felt like she was being spanked the whole time she was reading, ghost touches, memories of every time he's ever done this to her. The first slap had primed her; the last four have brought her to an arousal so intense she wants to scream, bite down on her hand just to release the tension.

He lets her think about it for just long enough and then she feels his fingers press delicately, meaningfully on the inside of each thigh and she widens them, arches her back, his hand anchoring her, keeping her safe, and feels the swift rush of his descending hand.

It's like being kissed, like being rocked to sleep… it's a wave of sensation, lapping over her because it wasn't hard, that slap, wasn't fast. Just hard and fast enough, and it ends with his fingers brushing her clit, dragging over it, and then plunging, two, three of them, into the open, waiting depths of her cunt. He holds his fingers there as she shudders around them, the climax too intense to allow her movement or sound - fuck, she can barely remember to keep breathing -- and keeps them there, moving in slow, languid stabs as she drifts back.

"You want chapter two now?" she manages to croak.

That gets her a pinch from wet, slippery fingers and she yelps and twists over to her back and smiles up at him. "I really am sorry, Wes…"

He paints her lips with a familiar glaze, watching her lick them clean, and then nods in a wordless acceptance of her apology.

"Are we done?" she asks, with what she hopes looks like a provocative wriggle. She realizes, idly, that her panties have got lost somewhere along the way. Huh. She hadn't even noticed.

Wesley purses his lips. "I don't think we've adequately addressed all your sins, do you?"

She smoothes her dress down demurely. Play time. "You mean you noticed what I was snacking on last night?"

He goes pale. "Not the Welsh cheese? Faith, Rupert risked a heavy fine bringing that back with him!"

"As if!" Stinky cheese and champagne? Even she's been better brought up than that…
"No, I found a packet of those funky chips you call crisps because you don't know any better. The prawn cocktail ones. They really, uh, complemented the subtle bouquet or something like that."

His mouth falls open and he looks beyond words. She widens her eyes innocently. "Sorry, Wes; did you want me to save you some?"

"You're incorrigible," he says finally. "And, I trust, joking."

She crosses her toes, as he'd notice if she crossed her fingers, and nods.

"Thank God," he breathes.

She'll confess later. Maybe.

Maybe not.


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