Read Pets: Bach's Story for Free Online

stay put, you can shower with me.”
    She raised pure hell when he picked her up. By the time he wrestled her out of her sleep sack and dragged her over to the shower, he’d hit the end of his patience for temper tantrums.
    Bracing his foot up on the edge of the tub, he tossed her over his knee and pinned her squirming body down with one arm thrown across her back. “Little miss,” he said as he captured her wrists in one hand and twisted her arms up behind her. “It’s about time you learned what all this bad behavior will get you.”
    She was just a little thing with a little bottom. He wanted to give her only five or six good swats, just enough to deliver a bit of a sting and plant a firm and unnegotiable ‘No’ into her naughty way of thinking. He only struck hard enough to land some really crisp-sounding smacks and for the flesh of her bottom to turn a lovely shade of pink.
    Pani’s struggles ended suddenly with the very first swat, and she lay over his knee gasping and grunting with each subsequent blow until the final one bounced off her rosy red bottom and his hand came to rest on her thighs.
    Panting, she made no effort to get up on her own, so he helped her, rolling her over so that she could perch upright on his thigh. As he smoothed the unruly red mane of her hair back from her face, he realized he’d stopped way too soon. She stabbed him with the furious, slate-grey stare of her eyes, then with a roar, lashed out with both fists. He promptly toppled her face-down back over his knee. This time he gave her more than six.
    His open palm whacked and smacked all over her bare bottom, darkening the rosy red to a deeper shade of scarlet while she kicked and howled as though she were being skinned alive. A proper good skelping, as his grandfather had once told him, rarely did a body any lasting harm and often did a lot of permanent good.
    So that’s what Bach gave her. Though Pani hardly seemed appreciative. Her furious shrieks began to be displaced by pain-filled wails. Instead of kicking to hurt him, she was now kicking to get away and struggling to twist her hips from side to side in an futile effort to avoid his hand. When she tried to roll over, he promptly flipped her back into place and continued spanking until, in a move that smacked of self-preserving desperation, she began to cry out clear and audible ‘Papa, Papa’s’, then burst into tears.
    Bach stopped, but he didn’t let her up right away. He rested his hand upon her bottom, the scarlet flesh seeming to sizzle beneath his touch. As she cried in loud and lusty sobs, he gently rubbed to soothe away the hurt.
    “You need to learn what is and is not acceptable behavior,” he said. “So far, all I’ve seen from you is the unacceptable.”
    As her wails dwindled to hiccups, he again helped her up to sit on his thigh. She reached back with both hands, alternately rubbing and cupping her bottom, the saddest look upon her face. He couldn’t help but hug her and was a little surprised when she allowed it. She didn’t even turn her face away when he dampened a washcloth and gently wiped the tears from her face.
    She made no fuss when he brought her into the shower with him, other than to duck her head when the spray of the warm water struck her. He washed every part of her, but the only time she shied away was when the rasp of the wash cloth passed over her tender flanks. She had only one brief moment when she tried to get out of the shower all together, and that was when he dipped between her slender thighs to clean her more intimately.
    He caught her arm before she could climb out and sternly told her, “No, Pani.”
    She uttered a small and muffled sound of protest, then repeated, “No, Pani.”
    Without another word, she stood frozen while the spray of the water struck her bowed head.
    He tried to play with her as he was toweling her dry afterwards, but his attempts at peek-a-boo were very one-sided.
    He picked through a packed away box of