Sunny nodded.
“Good. You’ll notice, of course, that I’m being my usual extra generous self and giving you a head start, just like I do my brother’s kids.” He felt her swat his arm at that, which was just as he expected. “So I’m going to turn my back,” he said, “and count to twenty five slowly. I suggest you get a move on if you want your free pass.”
He didn’t know it, but she was already gone.
Counting only that far didn’t sound like very long, but for Rod, whose adrenaline had been pumping every since he’d had this foolish idea, it was an eternity. It must appeal to his cave-man instincts, which, as an alpha male weren’t very far beneath the surface, and she brought them to throbbing prominence.
“Twenty-two . . . twenty-three . . . twenty-four . . . twenty-five.” He took several strides and stood at the edge of the stairs down into the yard. “Mark the time, Sunny. I’m coming to get you,” he yelled in what he thought was more than fair warning. He was quite confident that he could find her relatively quickly, despite the size of the grounds and many natural and man-made places where a tiny little thing like Sunny could hide. His niece – who was only four but smart as a whip – managed to get the whole household in an uproar one time by barely setting foot off the deck when she’d hidden herself away under it, where she couldn’t be seen, and had quickly been fast asleep in the noonday heat as they called and called for her.
Just in case his quarry had decided to do something stealthy like that, he peered through the lattices he had put up to discourage Charlotte from doing that again, and saw nothing, as he’d expected, but he wanted to be thorough. He wasn’t surprised that she hadn’t run the risk of being found that quickly, though. That belt would tear up her poor bottom something fierce.
So Rod turned and started out onto the lawn. The game was on!
Chapter VII
Sunny spent the first five seconds she in a panic, wishing she’d been more athletic all her life. Why, oh why, had she skipped so many Phys Ed classes? Then she headed for the furthest clump of big bushy pine trees she could find, just at the edge of the forest, hunkering down behind them and watching him. She was so far away she couldn’t hear him counting, but she definitely heard it when he yelled that he was coming after her. It was two-fifty. She had to last out here long enough to at least avoid that strap, and although her real goal was always to win the ultimate prize, she had no illusions about her ability to elude a trained hunter.
Rod was cursing the fact that they hadn’t mown the lawn today. Just afterwards, when it was pristine, footprints could be seen easily in the grass, and it wasn’t tall enough for her to have left a more blatant trail.
He curved around to the left until he encountered the fence line, then cleared the perimeter of the property, with six minutes to go till the wooden paddle took over. He went to the back of the property and began to work back towards the house, systematically clearing each of the obstacles he met.
She wasn’t anywhere to be found. By the time he got a third of the way up the lawn, the strap was out of the running. He had to hand it to her; he didn’t know what she was doing, but she was doing something right. He hadn’t seen so much as a glimpse of her yet.
She almost made it, too, but he got her in the wide clearing between the house and the closest outcropping of bushes. She’d made it that far on pure instincts and adrenaline. She didn’t see him coming at all, she was so intent on making it up to that star. He darted up behind her and tackled her, rolling carefully to make sure that he took the brunt of the impact, keeping himself securely wrapped around her until they came to a stop. He made sure the tumble left her beneath him; he had forgotten about the spanking she was to receive, because all he could think about was getting inside her and marking her as his.
She was still struggling, still resisting him, until he literally had to pin her limbs with his, and even then she continued to fight. Rod began to wonder if something was wrong until he heard her mumbling angrily under her breath, “Damn it! I want that blasted get out of spanking free card!”
As much as he desired her at that moment, and he did, he had to chuckle at how competitive she was. She was down for the count, with a two hundred plus pound man on her, and still she was still trying to grope her way out from under him to get to what she wanted.
In a lightning-bolt flash, he realized he was in love with her, and it scared him moreso than anything else he’d ever faced, because he was sure she didn’t feel the same way about him. He refused to allow the thought to bloom within him and, instead, shoved it into a dark corner of his mind until he felt ready to deal with it. Maybe after she said she loved him, or something like that.