But Honey, I Can Explain! Read online

  But Honey, I Can Explain!

  Volume One

  By

  April Hill

  ©2013 by Blushing Books® and April Hill

  All rights reserved.

  No part of the book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published by Blushing Books®,

  a subsidiary of

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  is registered in the US Patent and Trademark Office.

  Hill, April

  But Honey, I Can Explain! Volume One

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-62750-2801

  Cover Design by ABCD Graphics

  This book is intended for adults only. Spanking and other sexual activities represented in this book are fantasies only, intended for adults. Nothing in this book should be interpreted as Blushing Books' or the author's advocating any non-consensual spanking activity or the spanking of minors.

  Table of Contents:

  LITTLE MISS HEARTS AND FLOWERS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  A WORK IN PROGRESS

  SEXTET FOR A GRAND PIANO

  PUPPY LOVE

  ON MY DOCTOR'S ADVICE

  PART ONE

  PART TWO

  FALCONER'S PREY, CHAPTER THE FIRST

  VENGEANCE CREEK, CHAPTER ONE

  EBOOK OFFER

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BLUSHING BOOKS NEWSLETTER

  BLUSHING BOOKS

  LITTLE MISS HEARTS AND FLOWERS

  Chapter One

  If there’s one thing in this world I despise, it’s a pushy mother. The kind of clueless over- achiever who enjoys comparing her child to everyone else’s, and confides smugly to the other women in her toddler’s play group that her almost-three-year-old can recite the entire Declaration of Independence and significant portions of the Bhagavad Gita, and is being evaluated for early acceptance to Yale. I know, of course, that Emma, my own adorable four-year-old, is without question the most intelligent child in her preschool class, notwithstanding the alarming notes we have occasionally received from her teacher. Being the mature and level-headed parent that I am, I have always been able to take these things in stride, and deal with them as they happen. I am happy to report, for instance, that Emma no longer eats unwholesome amounts of construction paper, and now understands that hamsters neither require nor enjoy being diapered with sheets of Kleenex and library paste.

  According to my husband, Sam, Emma marches to a different drummer, which is as good a way of explaining her as anything else I can come up with.

  In addition to her stunning academic progress at preschool, Emma has recently learned to go potty by herself without massively flooding the bathroom floor, and achieves this astonishing feat at an almost sixty-eight percent success rate. I attribute the distressing thirty-two percent failure rate to her father, who insists upon leaving the toilet seat and its lid down, no matter how many times I explain that the rule regarding toilet seats has changed. Pre-Emma, Sam and I had the usual male-female arguments about toilet seats, and I, of course, prevailed. I’ve tried to explain to him that post-Emma, the rules have changed, again, and that he will now have to revert to his bachelor habits… unless he wants to keep mopping the floors, and fishing Winnie the Pooh and Piglet out of toilet bowls. (Emma dislikes entering the bathroom without company.)

  Sam and I have two children, the aforementioned Emma, and Chris. At a surly, solitary fifteen, Chris spends most of his time in front of a computer screen, and apparently exists entirely on Cheeze Doodles and Mountain Dew. He’s a good kid, though, who gets excellent grades. He recently told us he’s considering becoming a Druid.

  Sam says not to worry. It’s just a phase.

  Emma is adorable, as previously stated, but she’s not always the easiest child to live with, or to understand. I once endured a very painful sixty seconds or so across Sam’s knee after I jokingly referred to his younger progeny as “The Spawn of the Devil.”

  “You don’t make cracks like that in front of a little kid,” he explained firmly, applying a pretty good crack of his own to my bared behind. “She might have taken you seriously.”

  “Oh for God’s sake, Sam, it was a damned joke,” I shot back. “And she’s too little to get it, anyway. And besides, Daddy dearest, you weren’t here when she stuck fourteen wooden clothes pins and a potholder in the DVD player.”

  Sam frowned. “Why weren’t you watching her?” (Don’t you love men? Like I have eyes in the back of my head? And like I could ever move fast enough to catch up to a devious three-year-old bent on mayhem, especially when she already had a pretty good head start on me?)

  “I was watching her,” I said between gritted teeth. “That’s how I knew there were fourteen clothespins, and not twenty-two, which, coincidentally, is the exact number of the damned things she dropped down the floor register. And if you want to know what she was doing with a fucking bag of three dozen wooden clothespins to begin with, ask your fucking mother, who tells me that a good mother would have known how to make cute little fucking dolls out of them.”

  Okay, so that’s actually the point at which the paddling commenced in earnest. I tend to use the “F” word a lot when discussing my mother-in-law, and when I let it slip a couple of times in front of Emma, Sam finally added it to what I like to call the “spankable offenses list.” Since then, this sort of reference to his mother has been the flashpoint for a large number of hubby’s impromptu spankings. Impromptu, I should explain, doesn’t necessarily mean casual, or less than serious. Especially when Sam has taken the time to find himself a nice fat ruler or a wooden spoon, two of his favorites, and both of which always seem to be within easy reach, no matter how often I hide them.

  For reasons I’ve never completely understood, Sam and I have never spanked either of our children. I will admit to having been frequently and sorely tempted to try these crude methods, but Sam denies every having contemplated it. Which makes him very close to a saint, if it’s true. Sam never lies, though, and he’s always been the most patient, forbearing guy you can imagine––with the kids. I, on the other hand, do get spanked. Now and then. Around two to three times a year, in an average year. My record for going unspanked is eight months. My record the other way I would prefer not to discuss. Sam explains (with a cheerful grin) that I am the only one in our household who gets spanked by pointing out that the kids are still learning how to act like grownups. I, on the other hand, already know how to act like a grownup, and occasionally—for lunatic reasons beyond his understanding— choose not to. My own explanation for it is that, like Emma, I simply march to a different drummer.

  Emma recently decided that she should be allowed to choose her own clothing for school, a concept with which I wouldn’t normally disagree. I am by nature as lazy as a slug, and on most mornings, I have about as much interest in forcibly dressing a shrieking, squirming four-year-old as I do getting dressed, myself. I regard being out of bed with my essential nakedness covered as all that anyone has a right to expect. Usually, though, the outfits Emma chooses look like they’ve been assembled by some mutant alien entity from a planet where arms and legs aren’t an issue. She dresses with total disregard for the item of a garment’s front or back, its inside and outside, and its top or bottom. We won’t even discuss buttons and zippers, or socks, all of which Emma sees as superfluous––her new favorite word.

  “It’s better than most of your favorite words,” Sam says wearily
, a sly allusion to my fondness for Anglo-Saxon expletives. “At least it won’t get her thrown off a city bus.” (I swear this happened only one time, and I had been sorely provoked into excess profanity by a supercilious and power hungry bus driver. Have you ever tried getting on a public bus with a screaming kid and a stroller that won’t fold, right after your car has been unfairly towed away because of a couple of overlooked parking tickets, and then had the snotty bus driver refuse to give you change for a perfectly good twenty dollar bill?) Sam has never let me forget it, though.

  Like I ever could forget it, after the outrageously unfair and expensive ticket, and after what happened when Sam found out about the whole stupid mess. I was in the shower when he walked into the bathroom, holding the court summons and looking puzzled. Since that day, I’ve never felt truly comfortable around wooden bath brushes. Especially when I’m wet and naked.

  Anyway, all of this familial trivia is leading up, in a circuitous way, to how Emma got crowned as a teeny-weeny beauty queen, how I got to be the Queen Mother of Hearts, and how I got the queen mother of all spankings in a tacky Atlantic City hotel on Valentine’s Day.

  It began when my friend Vanessa came to visit. I use the word “friend” in the most generous and insincere sense, by the way. The truth is, I can’t stand Vanessa’s guts, but I also can’t afford to tell her to take a hike because she’s married to Sam’s wealthiest and most important client. Sam is a hard-working but not so wealthy building contractor, and as long as Vanessa’s husband continues to put up new condominiums and shopping malls like a kid who has way too many Legos, I’ll probably keep putting up with her.

  “If you don’t like Vanessa, why don’t you just dump her?” asks Sam, innocent babe in the woods that he is. “It’s not going to change the business relationship I have with Harry.” Harry is Vanessa’s husband, and a tough businessman, but if she asked him to jump off the end of a pier into the waiting jaws of a great white shark, he’d do it–– with a silly little grin on his face the whole way down. My own plan is to simply bide my time until Sam lands a client with even more Legos.

  So, when Vanessa appeared on my doorstep that cold December morning just after Christmas, I welcomed her with the most genuine fake smile I could muster. I knew that she’d come for the usual reasons––to brag about her perfect life, her newest new car, and her perfect kid. And to make me feel like a completely inept and crappy mother, of course. Vanessa has a six-year-old daughter named Chloe, who’s truly gorgeous. She has incredibly blue eyes, long eyelashes that always stay mysteriously curled, and suspiciously golden blonde hair that falls in equally suspicious “natural” waves all the way down her back. Chloe’s spacious pink and lavender bedroom is festooned with award ribbons and trophies, and with the thirty-eight rhinestone crowns she’s won in beauty pageants all over the country. According to Vanessa, Chloe has been chosen Little Miss Hearts and Flowers for five years in a row, despite the fact that she has the personality of a baby scorpion. (I added the scorpion thing, and I know it’s petty. Try to ignore it, please.)

  But today, Vanessa had some distressing news. Chloe had donned her last Little Miss Hearts and Flowers crown.

  “The new rule is that the Grande Supreme Little Miss Hearts and Flowers winner can’t be over six years old,” Vanessa lamented. “It’s terribly unfair, but I suppose the pageant people feel that after Chloe’s incredible record, they should give some deserving little girl at least a chance to compete with out record. We’ll be going on to even more important pageants, of course, but we’ll both miss being Little Miss Hearts and Flowers. You won’t believe the fabulous new dresses I just ordered for the Tiny Miss Topeka event.”

  At this precise moment, while Vanessa was displaying dozens of photographs of the fabulous new dresses she had purchased for her budding beauty queen, my own little Miss Lower Middle Class Suburbia clomped into the room, arrayed in an outfit of her own choosing. She was draped head to toe in a pair of old gingham curtains, one of my threadbare bras, and her brother’s discarded cowboy boots—on the wrong feet. (Emma still has a little trouble with left and right. I think it may be an inherited trait, since Sam says I have the same problem when he’s giving me driving directions.) She wore the battered straw hat I take to the beach, and had wrapped the belt from Sam’s bathrobe around her waist a couple of times. Tucked under the belt was a neon green water pistol, which was currently dripping all over her bare feet and the floor. The powdery smudges of blue eye shadow on both her cheeks told me she’d been in my makeup drawer, again. That and the red lipstick she’d applied more or less to her mouth, and to her chin.

  “Your Emma has always been…” There was a noticeable pause, during which Vanessa maintained a rigid, barely polite smile on her lips. “How shall I put it? Such a very interesting-looking child. Where do you have her hair done?”

  Actually, Emma had “done” her own hair— after chewing an entire sixteen-piece package of bubble gum into a rainbow flavored mass and hiding it under her pillow. In a misguided effort at fixing what even she recognized as a problem, Emma had whacked off as much of her hair as possible with a pair of plastic safety scissors and appeared at breakfast with a comb and six plastic barrettes imbedded in the mess. I’d repaired the damage as best I could, but the bare spots were still growing in, and her hair was at least eight different lengths.

  “She likes to play dress-up,” I explained, rather unnecessarily.

  Vanessa raised one eyebrow. “My goodness, I can’t believe how chubby she’s gotten,” she cried. “How much does your adorable little piggy weigh, these days?” She leaned over to poke at the adorable little piggy’s tummy, which had preceded the rest of the little piggy into the room by an inch or two. Emma narrowed her eyes at Vanessa in exactly the same way she used to when she was a toddler—just before she bit someone.

  “I’m not a little what you said,” Emma declared, brandishing the water pistol to emphasize her point. “I’m a cowboy Indian.”

  I was just starting to wonder if the water pistol was loaded, and with what, when Emma squeezed the trigger and doused the front of Vanessa’s magenta silk blouse with a sticky stream of what I fervently hoped was liquid hand soap. Emma likes to play chemist, and while we try to keep anything potentially dangerous locked up, she’s been known to concoct some fairly noxious substances out of simple ingredients like eggs, orange juice, ketchup, and mustard. She’s especially fond of soy sauce.

  Just shampoo, this time, as it turned out. But it worked. It was all I could do not to give my kid a big wet kiss of thanks when Vanessa left hurriedly, muttering about impossible stains and other people’s children and a couple of other things I couldn’t quite make out.

  * * *

  That night, after dinner, I regaled Sam with some of Vanessa’s beauty pageant horror stories.

  “What kind of moronic mother would drag her kid around to these things?” he asked, shaking his head. “The ones I’ve seen on TV are like a circus side show.”

  “Maybe the kind of woman who’s unsure of herself,” I suggested, trying to sound thoughtful and wise. “About her own attractiveness, or about growing older.”

  Sam grinned. “Well, that sure as hell doesn’t describe Vanessa. Say what you want about her, but she takes damned good care of herself. Harry says she spends most of her spare time at the gym, and you have to admit that she looks terrific…for her age, anyway.”

  Actually, I didn’t have to admit this at all, and I certainly didn’t appreciate Sam saying it. Not out loud, anyway. And not in my own damned living room. There are unspoken rules about things like that in a marriage, and Sam has always been great about not comparing me to other women. Maybe he just didn’t realize that Vanessa is actually four years younger than I am. The again, maybe he’d been paying attention when I scarfed down two large slices of the chocolate cream pie at dinner, whereas he’d eaten his usual single slice. Sam has never complained about the fifteen (Okay, maybe twenty) pounds I’ve put on since our wedding da
y, and his ardor certainly hasn’t cooled in our sixteen years together, but you never know what men are really thinking. Unless you can listen at a locker room keyhole, that is.

  I never knew, for instance, that Sam is what is often referred to as a “leg man,” as opposed to a “breast man.” (Boobs, if you want to be crude about it.) He let this cute little secret slip out while we were on what was supposed to be a second honeymoon in Las Vegas. I began to notice that he reserved most of his furtive, sidelong glances—the glances I wasn’t supposed to notice—for the tall, willowy showgirls who came equipped with elegantly long legs and fishnet stockings. I am fairly well-endowed in the chest area, but being only five foot two, not so much when it comes to long, elegant legs. I have two of them, (legs, that is) and they get me around all right, but that’s about the best you can say.

  So, during the rest of what should have been a lovely, romantic weekend, I insisted on referring to myself as “Stumpy, the Previously Unknown Eighth Dwarf.” Finally, Sam got tired of my whining, and of stroking my injured feelings. He took me upstairs to our elegantly appointed suite, bent me over the edge of the luxurious Jacuzzi tub, and administered a brief, surprisingly effective spanking with the narrow but remarkably durable Zagat Guide to Las Vegas. It turned out to be very romantic afternoon, after all, because after he’d thoroughly shredded the Zagat Guide, he took me to bed and set about persuading me that long elegant legs are not all that important in the larger scheme of things.

  * * *

  The first time Sam spanked me had been a surprise to both of us—or so Sam has always insisted. We had only been dating for six weeks when he took me to meet his parents, who are very old world Irish, very religious, and very political. Sam had warned me in advance that while his father’s language could peel paint off the walls, his mother was “kind of straight-laced.” When the dinner conversation drifted to the recent election, I got hot under the collar and referred to their newly elected councilman as “that brainless, fucking moron,” a phrase I apparently liked so much that I repeated at least six times before Sam leaned over and quietly explained to me that the BFM in question was his uncle—his mother’s younger brother. My future mother-in-law sat there shaking her head with sorrow. Her beloved son was about to throw his life away by getting tangled up with a profane, loud-mouthed shrew—of the wrong party.