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panties and Lydia howled with indignation as he pulled them down. Her second spanking was delivered firmly on her bare bottom, and it was the most embarrassing, painful experience of her life. Mason’s steady spanking soon had her in tears. Her blonde hair, hanging by the side of her face, was soaked with them. She kicked and writhed and bucked, but to no avail.
    For his part, Mason believed the task at hand was necessary. He had not saved Lydia to have her die from bad judgment. And it wasn’t an entirely thankless task. Lydia had obviously worked very hard to get the body she had, and Mason couldn’t remember seeing a finer, firmer ass than the one he was relentlessly reddening. But this was discipline, he told himself, and it was wrong to be attracted to a woman he was trying to correct.
    He concentrated his last blows on the lower portion of her upturned cheeks, thoroughly reddening the sit spot in a manner that guaranteed she’d not sit comfortably for quite some time. When he was assured that he’d gotten his message across, Mason tilted Lydia to her feet and gave her a stern look as he pulled up her panties.
    “Out here you have to listen,” he said. “It’s not an option. Doing something foolish can get you killed.” He paused as he buttoned her jeans. “That’s probably why I’ve been alone out here. It’s dangerous, and being with you has made me realize how protective I’d be over someone I cared…about someone else.”
    But Lydia had heard, and had taken note of how he’d caught himself. The shock of it would have made her stop crying if her bottom didn’t feel as if it were completely on fire at that moment.
    He looked away. “You know where to go.”
    “I don’t need to stand in the corner to know what I did was wrong, Mason,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
    Mason thought about making her go anyway, but he’d spanked her hard, very hard, and he had no doubt that she was being genuine in her contrition.
    She looked up at him from under tear-sodden lashes.
    “I suppose you’ll be glad when you can finally be rid of me,” she said.
    “No. I won’t be glad,” he said.
    For a moment neither of them said anything and then Mason muttered that he had to go check on the snow machine. Lydia stood in silence as he walked back outside. She watched from the window as he walked to the boulder where the machine had crashed. It was starting to snow again. Fortunately it wasn’t a heavy snowfall, but Lydia couldn’t imagine that the sky could hold anymore.
    Mason worked nearly an hour removing the snow-machine from the drift. He used a come-along in the shed to haul it to where it could be examined, his ears trained for the sounds of the returning bears. Their presence had worried him, particularly the more ardent of the two. It was lean and far more aggressive than most black bears he had encountered. He wondered if he’d been wrong in not killing it. Mason didn’t like to kill any animal unless it was absolutely necessary. The previous winter he’d been forced to kill a bobcat that was hiding injured in the corner of the shed. He’d wanted to help it but knew that the animal was in too much pain to safely approach. It had bothered him for weeks.
    But bears were something else. He’d tried to make the shed bear-proof, but most of them that came sniffing around were easily dissuaded. But these animals had seemed more determined, probably because of the early winter. If his snowmobile were operational, he’d take the remains of the elk he’d dressed and put it in the thicket a few miles up the path, where the predators could eat it. But as he assessed the wrecked machine, he grimly determined that this vehicle would not be going anywhere anytime soon. The accelerator had apparently stuck and the machine had struck the rock with such force that it crumpled the front and cracked the engine block.
    Lydia knew when she saw his face that the news wasn’t good.
    “I made a mess of