Chapter 4: The Spanking and the Oath
The confession hung in the air between them, thinner than smoke, heavier than stone. I’ve been starving myself. The words, whispered into the cool leather of the sofa, had left a different kind of silence. Not the tense quiet before a storm, but the hollow, echoing aftermath.
Nate’s hand, which had been a firm instrument of correction moments before, now rested gently on her back, a warm, steady weight. He didn’t speak immediately. He let the admission settle, for both of them.
Then, carefully, he helped her up. Her legs were unsteady, her body vibrating with spent emotion. She kept her face turned away, a mess of tears and fiery hair, but he cupped her chin again, forcing no harshness into the touch, only a gentle insistence. Her blue eyes, when they finally met his, were oceans of shattered glass.
“Why?” he asked, the single word soft but implacable.
She tried to look down, but his hold was firm. A shudder ran through her. “It just… feels like what I deserve sometimes. When things go wrong. When I screw up a job. When people get hurt because of my planning. The hunger… it’s a clarity. It simplifies everything.”
“It’s a punishment,” he corrected, his voice low. “A slow, destructive one you administer to yourself because you think no one else will hold you accountable properly.” He brushed a thumb over her damp cheekbone. “That ends tonight. You are accountable to me now. And I will never use starvation as a consequence. Is that understood?”
The promise was a lifeline thrown into her personal void. She nodded, a jerky movement.
“Say it.”
“I understand,” she whispered.
“Good.” He released her chin and stood, his towering frame a solid pillar in the lamplit room. “Now. You made a promise. To eat, to sleep, to use your words. We’re going to start with the first one. Come.”
He didn’t drag her. He simply turned and walked back to the dining table, expecting her to follow. And she did, her steps small and hesitant on the polished concrete. The abandoned plate sat where she’d left it, the food now lukewarm. He pulled out her chair. She sank into it, the memory of his lap a fresh, aching heat beneath her.
He sat across from her, his own chair scraping softly. He didn’t eat. He watched.
“Go on.”
She picked up her fork. It felt different now. Not a weapon of protest, but a simple tool. She speared a piece of chicken, brought it to her mouth, chewed. The flavors were muted, but her body, once the barrier of defiance was gone, responded with a sharp, sudden pang of actual hunger. The next bite came easier. Then a potato. A green bean.
She ate methodically, under his silent observation. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was peaceful. The fight was utterly gone, leaving a strange, empty calm in its wake. She cleared the plate, every last bite.
When she set the fork down with a final, soft click, he nodded. “Thank you.”
He stood, collected the plates, and took them to the kitchen. She heard the water run, the clink of dishes. Normal, domestic sounds that felt surreal in the wake of what had just transpired. She stayed seated, hands in her lap, staring at the grain of the wood table. The lingering sting was a persistent, humming reminder. It wasn’t just pain. It was a border that had been drawn. A line she now knew, in her bones, was real.
He returned, drying his hands on a towel. He looked at her, still sitting there, looking lost. “You’re exhausted,” he stated. “Physically, emotionally. It’s time to sleep.”
She just nodded. Sleep felt like a cliff she was too tired to fear falling from.
“Come here.”
She pushed back from the table and followed him down the hallway, past the bathroom, to a closed door she hadn’t seen before. He opened it. It was a guest room. Minimalist, like everything else. A large bed with grey linen, a nightstand, a closet. It was clean, impersonal, and quiet.
“You’ll sleep here tonight,” he said, stepping aside.
She walked in, the plush rug soft under her socked feet. The bed looked enormous, a sea of calm. The sheer normalcy of it, the offer of a safe, private place to crash, after everything, threatened to undo her all over again.
“There are new toothbrushes and things in the ensuite,” he said, his voice from the doorway. “Do you need anything else?”
She turned to face him, hovering on the threshold between the hall light and the room’s shadow. She shook her head, then stopped. Words. She had to use her words. “No.Thank you. For… the room.”
He gave a single, slow nod. “Get some rest, Catriona.”
He began to pull the door closed.
Panic, swift and irrational, lanced through her. Not of him, but of the quiet, of being alone with the echo of her own brokenness. “Nate?”
The door stopped. His face appeared in the gap. “Yes?”
“I…” She tugged at a curl, the familiar anxious gesture. “Could I… maybe have a shower first? I feel…” Grubby.Stained. Raw. She didn’t have the vocabulary for it.
His expression softened. “Of course. Take your time. There are fresh towels on the rack.”
The shower was a revelation. The hot water beat down on her shoulders, sluicing away the sweat and tears and the psychological grime of the day. She stood under the stream until her skin turned pink, until the mirror fogged over completely, hiding her reflection. She used his soap, something crisp and cedar-scented, and it felt like a temporary claim, a scent-memory of safety.
Wrapped in a towel, she realized she had nothing to wear. Her clothes from the day were piled on the bathroom floor, smelling of fear and city. She cracked open the door, a plume of steam escaping into the cool bedroom.
“Nate?” she called out, her voice small.
He appeared at the guest room door almost instantly, having clearly not gone far. He’d changed into a grey t-shirt and sweatpants, making him look softer, more approachable, though no less imposing. “What is it?”
“I don’t have anything to sleep in.”
He was silent for a moment. “Wait here.”
He returned a minute later with a folded stack of fabric. “They’ll be too big,” he said, handing her a dark henley shirt and a pair of soft flannel pants. “But they’re clean.”
She took them, her fingers brushing his. “Thanks.”
Back in the bathroom, she pulled them on. The shirt drowned her, the sleeves falling past her fingertips, the hem hitting her mid-thigh. The pants she had to roll multiple times at the waist and ankles. She looked ridiculous. She also felt profoundly, weirdly comforted. She buried her nose in the collar. Cedar and citrus. Him.
When she emerged, he was still there, sitting on the edge of the made bed. He looked up as she padded out, his gaze taking in the drowned-kitten picture she made. Something flickered in his eyes—amusement, tenderness, she couldn’t tell.
“Better?”
“Yeah.” She stood awkwardly in the middle of the room.
“Get in,” he said, nodding toward the bed.
She obeyed, sliding between the cool, crisp sheets. They smelled faintly of lavender. She pulled the duvet up to her chin, watching him. He reached over and clicked off the lamp on the nightstand, plunging the room into deep, blue-tinged shadow from the city lights outside the window.
“Try to sleep,” he said, his voice a rumble in the dark.
He stood to leave.
The emptiness of the room expanded, pressing in on her. The bed was too big, too quiet. The events of the day began to replay behind her eyes—the dizzy panic in the car, the cold wall against her forehead, the searing clarity over his knee. A small, choked sound escaped her before she could stop it.
He stopped in the doorway, a silhouette against the brighter hall light. He didn’t speak.
“It’s too quiet,” she whispered, hating the need in her own voice.
He was silent for a long moment. Then he let out a slow breath. He walked back into the room, around the bed. Instead of leaving, he sat down on top of the covers, his back against the headboard, close to her but not touching. He stretched his long legs out in front of him.
“I’ll stay until you’re asleep,” he said, his voice definitive.
The relief was instantaneous, a physical unclenching in her chest. She didn’t thank him. She just turned onto her side, facing away from him, curling into a ball inside the vast shirt. His presence was a solid, breathing wall between her and the void. She could feel the heat radiating from him, hear the slow, steady rhythm of his breath.
Her own breathing began to synchronize with his, deep and slow. The lingering ache, the humiliating memories, they didn’t disappear. But they receded, pushed back by the sheer, solid reality of the man sitting vigil beside her.
Just as her consciousness began to blur at the edges, drifting on the tide of exhaustion, she felt his hand. Not grabbing, not restraining. Just a large, warm weight settling gently on the crown of her head, his fingers sliding briefly into her damp, chaotic curls. A touch of pure, uncomplicated anchorage.
It was the last thing she felt before she finally, completely, fell asleep.
It was the last thing she felt before she finally, completely, fell asleep.
Nate sat in the dark, listening to her breathing deepen and slow into the rhythms of genuine rest. The city’s glow painted the room in monochrome, outlining the curl of her body under the duvet, one fiery strand of hair bright against the grey pillow. He waited until the even cadence was unmistakable, until the slight tension finally left her shoulders.
Then, with movements practiced in silence, he shifted to rise from the bed.
As he did, she stirred. Not to wakefulness, but into the deeper currents of a dream. A faint frown creased her forehead. Her body twitched, a small flinch. Then, in a sudden, unmistakable motion, her hand flew back—not to clutch the pillow or push at the covers, but to press flat against the curve of her backside, a silent, sleeping guard against a remembered sting.
He froze, half-upright, and watched.
The defensive gesture was so instinctive, so utterly unguarded, it pierced through every layer of his calculated control. It wasn’t defiance. It was the raw, vulnerable proof that the lesson had been felt, absorbed on a level beyond argument. A soft, unexpected breath of laughter escaped him, more a hum in his chest than a sound. He smiled to himself in the shadows, a private, tender curl of his mouth that held no mockery, only a fierce and sudden rush of possession.
“Alright, little cat,” he murmured, the words dissolving into the quiet air.
He finished standing, looking down at her for a long moment. Her hand remained where it was, a testament to her surrender and his promise. He reached down and carefully, so carefully, adjusted the duvet where it had slipped from her shoulder. His fingers brushed the oversized cotton of his own shirt. The contact was brief, electric.
He left the door to her room open a precise inch as he walked out.
In the living room, the remnants of their clash were gone. The table was clean, the air still. He stood at the massive window, staring at the grid of lights below without seeing them. His palm tingled with a phantom memory: the heat of her skin through fabric, the jarring impact, her choked sobs that turned into a confession he’d almost suspected.
She was a wreck. A beautiful, spiraling wreck of self-sabotage and fierce pride.
And she was, inexplicably, in his home. Asleep in his clothes. He ran a hand over his face, feeling the rough stubble along his jaw. This wasn’t the plan. Yanking a stranger from traffic was one thing. This—the corner, the spanking, the enforced meal, the vigil—was a labyrinth he’d entered without a map.
He was a man who built things, who relied on schematics and load-bearing walls. She was pure seismic activity.
A quiet ‘thump’ from down the hall made him turn his head, muscles tensing. A moment later, a muffled, sleepy curse followed. He was moving before he’d decided to, his footsteps silent on the concrete floor. He stopped in the aperture of the guest room.
She’d rolled onto her back, one arm flung out, having clearly knocked the glass of water he’d left on the nightstand to the floor. It lay on the rug, unbroken, a dark stain spreading. She was blinking up at the ceiling, disoriented, her guard-down hand now resting on her stomach.
“I broke the glass,” she said, her voice thick with sleep. It wasn’t an apology. It was a groggy fact.
“It’s just water,” he said, walking in. He picked up the glass and set it back on the nightstand, then blotted the rug with the edge of the towel from her shower, left draped over a chair. “Are you awake?”
“Sort of.” She turned her head on the pillow to look at him. In the half-light, her eyes were barely blue, just dark pools. “Thought you left.”
“I did. I heard the crash.”
“S’not a crash. It’s a… damp thud.” She watched him dab at the rug. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I know.”
He finished and straightened. She was still watching him, a new, fragile awareness in her gaze. The sleep gesture hung between them, unmentioned but palpable.
“My ass hurts,” she said quietly, the blunt words cutting through the dark.
“I know that, too,” he replied, his voice equally low. “It’s supposed to.”
She held his gaze for a long moment, then looked away, out the window. “I don’t know what happens tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” he said, moving to the door again, “you eat breakfast. You rest. We talk. One thing at a time.”
“Nate?”
He paused. “Yes, Catriona?”
“Is the door staying open?”
He considered the question, and the fear beneath it. “Yes. It’s staying open. Go back to sleep.”
She didn’t answer. He heard the sheets rustle as she turned over, presenting her back to the open door and to him. He waited another minute, listening until her breathing evened out again into that deeper, slower rhythm. This time, he retreated to the living room sofa, a book open but unread on his lap, a silent sentry in his own home.
The deep night silence of the apartment was broken only by the occasional sigh of the climate control. Nate’s own eyes grew heavy, the book a blur. He must have dozed, because the next thing he knew, a different sound pulled him awake—not a crash, but a soft, shuffling drag.
He was on his feet instantly, silent, every sense sharpened by years of night watches. The hall was dark, but a sliver of light spilled from a door further down, past the guest room.The library. He never left that light on.
He moved toward it, his bare feet making no sound on the cool floor. The door was ajar. Inside, the single brass desk lamp was lit, casting a warm pool over the Persian rug and the lower shelves of leather-bound volumes. And there was Cat.
She stood in the center of the room, swaying slightly, adrift in the vast expanse of his borrowed henley. Her face was slack, eyes open but unseeing, fixed on nothing. She was murmuring, the words a low, frantic stream.
“...gotta hide it, he can’t see, he can’t know, hide it from Daddy, quick, quick…”
Her hands were clawing at something cradled against her stomach. She turned in a slow, disoriented circle, her wild hair a dark corona in the low light. Then she moved with sudden, lurching purpose toward a large potted fiddle-leaf fig in the corner. She dropped to her knees, her motions jerky and dream-clumsy.
Nate watched, frozen by the window, as she began scratching at the dark soil with her bare hands. Her murmurs grew more urgent, disjointed. “Just bury it. He won’t look here. Daddy gets so mad. Bad. I was bad.”
With a final, frantic whisper, she shoved the object into the hole she’d made and began patting the dirt back over it with flat, slapping motions. Nate took a slow step forward. The thing she was burying wasn’t a weapon or a secret. It was a navel orange, taken from the wooden bowl on his dining table. Its bright, absurd peel was now half-covered in black soil.
“Catriona.” He kept his voice low, calm, the way he’d address a startled animal.
She didn’t hear him. She kept patting the soil, her breathing ragged now. A tear traced a clean line through the smudge of earth on her cheek. “Hidden,” she mumbled. “All hidden. He can’t count them now.”
The raw, childlike fear in her sleepy voice, the word “Daddy” spoken with such tremulous dread, lanced through him. This wasn’t the defiant stuntwoman or the sobbing woman over his knee. This was a foundational terror, etched deep.
He crossed the room and knelt beside her, the rug rough against his knees. He didn’t grab her. He placed a broad hand gently on her back, between her shoulder blades. “Cat. Wake up now. You’re dreaming.”
She flinched violently at his touch, a gasp catching in her throat. Her head whipped toward him, her eyes wide and blank, then slowly focusing. Confusion drowned out the fear. She blinked at his face, then down at her dirt-caked hands, at the disturbed soil and the glimpse of orange peel.
“What…” Her voice was a dry crackle. She looked around the library, disoriented. “How did I…?”
“You were sleepwalking.” He kept his hand steady on her back, an anchor point. “Talking, too.”
The memory of her own words seemed to surface. He saw the shame flood in, hot and swift, chasing the confusion. She yanked her hands back from the soil as if burned, hiding them against the shirt. “What did I say?”
He ignored the question for now. “You were burying an orange.”
She looked at the pathetic, lumpy mound of dirt. A weird, choked sound escaped her—not quite a laugh, not quite a sob. “An orange.” She repeated it flatly. The absurdity of it collided with the residual panic in her eyes. “Why would I… I don’t even like oranges.”
“Your body might.” His voice was quiet, matter-of-fact. “After what you’ve been doing to it, withholding food, it might be craving the sugar. The vitamins. Your subconscious grabbed the closest source.”
The clinical explanation seemed to ground her slightly. She stared at the buried fruit. “I was talking about my father.”
It wasn’t a question. He didn’t confirm it, just waited.
“He… counted everything. Food in the pantry. Cookies in the jar. If something went missing, there was hell to pay.” She wiped her dirty hands on the flannel pants, a useless, agitated gesture. “I used to sneak things. Hide the wrappers. Bury apple cores in the garden. Once, he found a candy bar wrapper under my mattress.” She shuddered, a full-body tremor that had nothing to do with the cool room air. “This hasn’t happened in years. The sleepwalking.”
“Stress,” Nate said, his hand moving in a slow circle on her back. “Extreme fatigue. Your body is running on empty and your mind is trying to process everything. The accident. Today.” He didn’t say the spanking, but it hung there, another seismic event. “It’s not weakness. It’s a system overload.”
She leaned into his touch, just slightly, her head bowing. The fight was completely gone, leaving only a hollowed-out exhaustion. “I made a mess of your plant.”
“The plant will survive.” He stood, then offered her his hands. “Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up.”
She let him pull her to her feet. He led her, not to the guest bathroom, but to the master suite. He sat her on the lid of the closed toilet and ran warm water over a washcloth. He took her wrists, turned her hands over, and began meticulously cleaning the dirt from under her fingernails, from the lines of her palms. She watched him, silent, her breathing slowly calming.
“You should have woken me,” she whispered. “When you heard me.”
“I did wake you.” He rinsed the cloth. “Startling someone in a parasomnia state can do more harm than good. I was observing first.”
“Navy medic,” she said, recalling his history.
“Yes.” He finished with her hands and gently wiped the smear of soil from her cheek. “You’re safe. The orange is safe. Nothing is going to be counted or punished here.”
The promise, so specific and strange, undid the last knot of tension in her shoulders. She slumped. He guided her back to the guest room, back to the bed. This time, when she slid under the covers, he didn’t sit on the edge. He hesitated for a moment in the doorway.
“The door stays open,” she said, her voice small but clear from the darkness. “But… could you maybe not be all the way out there?”
He understood. The vastness of the apartment, the echo of her own footsteps in the silent library, the vulnerability of sleeping alone—it was too much. He gave a single, slow nod. He walked to the large armchair in the corner of her room, a sleek modern thing, and settled into it. It wasn’t comfortable, but it didn’t need to be.
“I’ll be right here,” he said. “All night. Sleep, Catriona.”
She turned on her side, facing him. In the dim light, he could just see the glint of her eyes watching him. “You must think I’m a complete headcase.”
“I think,” he said, his voice a low rumble in the quiet, “you’ve been trying to be your own anchor for too long, in a storm you created for yourself. Anchors get dragged. They get buried in the muck.” He shifted in the chair, finding a position. “Now close your eyes.”
This time, she obeyed without another word. He watched as her lashes finally stilled against her cheeks. He listened until her breath became a soft, steady tide. In the quiet, the image of her patting soil over that bright orange orb lingered. A fruit, hidden. A childish fear, alive in a woman’s body. A hunger so deep it spoke in her sleep.
The architecture of her pain was becoming clearer to him. And he, a man who built things, began to silently draft the plans for its renovation.