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told me Ringer had considered the matter of how they would look to the security force. Not like two men torturing a woman for information, but two indignant guardians punishing a disobedient little girl.
    I’d faced a lot of threats during my time as a Special Agent and most of them had been faced calmly if not insolently. But this time the sweat broke out on my forehead, my mouth turned dry, and my knees would have been weak if I’d been standing on them. Maybe that was because Val was a true believer in not sparing the rod, and had a lot of things to get even for. Maybe it was just that I could remember so clearly the other spankings my partner had found it necessary to give me. Val leaned the cold, hard, back end of the hairbrush against my thigh, and moved his lips close to my ear again.
    “Don’t say you didn’t ask for this,” he told me, keeping his voice low so that it didn’t carry to Ringer. “You may have forgotten what I told you about learning to behave, but I don’t think you’ll forget again.”
    I snarled and struggled against being held, but it still didn’t get me anywhere. I could have kicked myself for ever having gotten mixed up with him, but kicking myself wasn’t going to be necessary. Val was ready to do a better job on me, and Ringer couldn’t have picked a more willing accomplice.
    “Change your mind yet?” Ringer asked pleasantly from the chair he’d pulled over closer to the bed. I turned my head to look at him and licked my lips, but didn’t answer because I couldn’t. Aside from wrecking everything I’d already done, talking now would guarantee that Val would very quickly find out about the detail that involved him so intimately. Then it occurred to me that it might not be so bad if I could make Val back down a little.
    “You can’t be serious about this, Val,” I said, my voice shakier than I wanted it to be. “You know how I feel about getting even.”

    I’d been trying some oblique threatening of my own, but it went over about as well as the rest of my plans had gone.
    “Yes, I do remember that,” Val answered in a strange voice, as though he’d just remembered what he’d gone through the first time because of me, and the next minute it began in earnest. I tried to ignore the whole thing, but that brush was hard and Val wasn’t taking it particularly easy.
    Now, I’d been beaten on Xanadu, strung up by the wrists and beaten by James with his cane till my back was a bloody ruin. But though I still choked with terror over the memory of that beating, I could look back on it and know there was no comparable damage being done to my dignity. I could not, however, look back on the spankings Val had given me and think the same thing.
    There’s no way to see the kicking and howling produced by his hand swatting my bottom as being in the least dignified no matter how you look at it. This time, with him using the hairbrush, it was a hell of a lot worse. I held out as long as I could then gave in to yelling and struggling, wishing they’d used hot irons after all.
    What felt like at least an hour passed before Ringer finally interrupted.
    “Hold on a minute, Valdon,” he said, leaning forward to put his arm on his knee.
    “What do you say now, Diana? Have you had enough, or should he continue?”
    From the flaming ache in my backside I knew I’d had more than enough, but how could I tell him? I lifted my head to look at him, and let my desperation show through.
    “Ringer, please – ” I began, but his face was solid granite.
    “Might as well get on with it,” he told Val as he leaned back again. “We could be here for hours.”
    “No!” I said as fast as possible, positive I could hear Val’s arm lifting into the air.
    They’d simply keep it up until I told them, so it made no sense to take any more.
    Even if the security force suddenly appeared in the room, the picture would show nothing but two indignant adults teaching the brat in their charge some manners.