Sandcastles Read online

  When he’d finally fished reading, though, the reviews were less than enthusiastic.

  “There’s an old computer in the back room and paper in the drawer. Do what you can to clean these up and I’ll have another look.

  The days became a week and then two weeks, and each day Gwen confined herself to the small back room at the computer screen working and reworking the stories she had believed already complete. And as she tired of the seemingly endless project Denning’s mood became even more irritable.

  “What do you think of this?” he asked her shoving last night’s pages before her.

  “I don’t know,” she snapped. “I’m not the literary genius, remember?”

  “Of course you know,” he challenged her. “Are you capable of being honest, at least?”

  “Okay,” she sighed. “I know it’s not very good. I was tired.”

  “It’s atrocious,” he said, “worse than that, it’s atrocious and plagiarized. The world doesn’t need another Edgar Allen Poe, and even if it did, you haven’t got what it takes. Two weeks and three tries and this is it?”

  Gwen threw her pen on the floor and glared at him. “It’s the best I could do, damn it!”

  Denning began to roll up his sleeves and pointed to the couch.

  “Pull up your skirt” he ordered. “And bend over the back of the couch.”

  She backed up laughing a bit nervously. “You’re not serious?”

  He shook his head. “I’m serious.’

  Gwen’s temper exploded. “Well then, Genius you can go to hell!”

  Denning pulled out his wallet handed her a wad of fifty-dollar bills and tossed her the keys to his car.

  “You can leave the Jeep at the airport. I’ll send someone for it.”

  “You’re blackmailing me?” she cried.

  “Funny thing,” Denning said. “You’ve never gone back to the cove to swim. Why is that?”

  “I didn’t want to worry you” Gwen lied. “You know that.”

  “No other reason? Other than your tender consideration for my feelings, that is?”

  Gwen threw up her hands. “Yeah, now that you mention it! I preferred to avoid what happened the last time I went for a little swim!”

  “Yes and it seems to me you’ve given up snooping, as well, and helping yourself to my personal files. Same reason or have you also given up your journalistic pretensions?”

  “What’s your point here?” she asked bitterly. “That I don’t enjoy being beaten black and blue?”

  “Something like that. The real point is that you are possibly the most stubborn woman—and the most stubborn student I’ve ever met. No matter how many times I correct what you’ve written, you ignore every suggestion and plow right ahead, doing exactly what you choose to do. Which would be your absolute right, of course, if you hadn’t asked for my help—and if you weren’t wasting my time by pretending to be a writer.”

  As Gwen opened her mouth to protest, he held up one finger. “So, before you start objecting to what I’ve just said, let me tell you what’s going to happen from here on. I’ll continue to read what you write—no matter how difficult it is to stomach the worst of it. And just as your dear old college English professor did, I’ll correct your spelling errors and your grammar—which, I might add, is abysmal. The primary difference between his methods and mine will be that every time I find a spelling or grammatical error, I’m going to assess a penalty of three—no six swats—to your lazy rump with a wooden paddle of my own manufacture. I’ll go to the garage this very afternoon and carve such a device to be used exclusively for the purpose already described. I should warn you, however, that the way your work is shaping up this far you may not sit own again for months. Are we agreed?”

  “I’ve got news for you,” Gwen grumbled, “in this country most college professors just lower your grade for things like that.”

  “Ah yes,” he replied, suppressing a grin, “but this is the school of hard knocks, you see, and here we do things a little differently. Besides, as you insist upon pointing out, I’m a bloody genius, and my time is valuable. You’ve probably had your grade lowered dozens of times and simply ignored it, with the result being you still can’t spell any better than Charlie when he’s trying his level best. So in my classroom, you’ll get your knickers lowered instead of your grade, and I can absolutely guarantee you that my grading system will get your complete attention.”

  “That’s barbaric!”

  “Good word!” he said. “Can you spell it?”

  She tried.

  “Nice try if you’d been trying for ‘barbecue.’ Bend over the couch, pants down.”

  “No!”

  Gwen got the spanking probably more against her will than not, but when it was over, she had learned (the hard way) an important lesson about compliance. In the future, she would know to bend over at the instructor’s first “request.” Non-compliance, he explained pleasantly, would incur penalties—four in this instance. At five foot two inches tall, she was no match for a man of his size and strength, and her kicking and squirming and swearing had proved useless. Denning held her firmly across the arm of the couch, tugged her panties deftly down below her thighs and spanked her with a large wooden hairbrush in lieu of the promised paddle. Gwen counted twenty blows, followed by the four promised “penalty” strokes, which were applied with his bare hand. There was nothing remotely playful about the spanking, and toward the end Gwen howled in protest and called him a variety of names, which resulted in six additional blows to an area already red and throbbing.

  “I don’t mind obscenity,” he explained, as he dealt the final “penalty” swat for swearing. “But you’ll need to be more creative about it. I bore easily.”

  The next morning she had made some corrections to the pages, and some improvements—most of them while sitting on a foam sofa cushion.

  He read the corrections and nodded his approval. “Better. Still rotten, but moving in the right direction.”

  “That’s it?” she asked, dolefully.

  He grinned. “That’s a great deal, actually. I read a gossip column that claimed I was in the habit of throwing underachieving students off balconies.”

  “So I should be grateful to only get my butt set on fire?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m a genius, remember, and my time’s precious. So every time you waste my time by giving me crap like this to read, I’m going to put you over the couch or the nearest table, dispense with whatever undergarments are in my way and blister your uneducated ass for you—again. And after I’ve finished, you’ll return to your desk and try again. If what you’ve written hasn’t improved substantially by the next day, you’ll be spanked again—only this time with my belt. The second event will be longer and so hard you’ll have to stand up to type for the next week. The good news is none of this tutoring will cost you a penny. I’m offering you a full scholarship.”

  Gwen took her rejected pages and trudged back to the computer. Her first day at school had been a difficult one.

  For several days straight Gwen worked and reworked the pages that had disappointed him, partly from a sincere urge to avoid the painful sting of the hairbrush, but even more from a need to prove something to him. On the fourth day she handed the edited story to him and sat on the couch nervously, while he read it. It was the first time she had sat comfortably since she began the rewrite.

  He finished reading and placed the pages facedown on the desk in front of him. Gwen groaned.

  “So I get walloped again?” she asked.

  “Worse than that,” he said sternly, and Gwen’s heart sank. “You have to get dressed up and go out to dinner.”

  Gwen stared. “That’s worse?”

  Denning grinned. “Thoreau always said to beware of any venture requiring new clothes.”

  They had dinner at a tiny French restaurant overlooking the Pacific twenty miles from Denning’s isolated home. It was the first time in weeks that Gwen had seen another human face, other t
han their own.

  It had begun to rain by the time they got back to the house, a soft misty drizzle that settled on the windows like diamonds. He poured them both a glass of red wine. It was the first time she had ever seen him drink.

  He started a low fire in the fireplace, and they talked for a while about the book that had started it all and about his reasons for leaving his past behind. But for all the words, Denning managed to expose very little of himself. Instead he deflected the greater portion of the conversation to Gwen and her past.

  “When you go back to Los Angeles, what will you do?” he asked.

  “Well, I won’t be going back to ‘SEEK!’” she said, glumly. “That’s about all I can be sure of. No great loss there. Actually, L.A.’s never been my idea of heaven. All I’ve ever really had there was a job I hated, a cat who didn’t like me much but stuck around because I fed him, and an apartment in Hollywood I haven’t cleaned since the last time my mother came to visit, two years ago. By the time I get back, the cat will have taken up with the neighbor, who’s feeding him while I’ve been away.”

  He smiled. “What about friends or a boyfriend, perhaps? Is there a ‘significant other’ waiting for you to return?”

  Gwen flushed. Her love life, or lack thereof, wasn’t a subject she enjoyed discussing.

  “No,” she said, finally, “most of my ‘others’ have been decidedly insignificant. I’m afraid I’m kind of an underachiever in that department as well. A few near misses like most people but.... Anyway, I may hate my job, but I’m still a workaholic, so I don’t have a lot of time to …. I know about six men to speak to and not a whole lot of women. My boss is on his fourth wife; two of the guys I work with are gay; one’s a wannabee drug-dealer, and the rest of my co-workers are women. Nice women though.” She sighed. “I’ve even thought of becoming a lesbian. The pickings seem to be a lot better. I’ve tried the singles bar scene but I seemed to attract all the misfits. My collection included a couple of portly salesman with bad toupees, one of whom was sixty-eight. He kept showing me pictures of his great-grandkids. The other guy was this very sweet married man who dragged me into the ladies’ room and tried to have oral sex. I don’t normally drink much, so what I really got from the evening was grossly sick, followed by a phenomenal hangover. So now I just watch a lot of TV and write bad short stories.”

  She paused, embarrassed at having exposed so much about herself. “Sorry. I guess that’s a pretty long-winded way of saying it. There’s nobody back in Hollywood waiting breathlessly for my return. No serious boyfriends—not even the cat probably.”

  He leaned down and kissed her. It was a very gentle kiss and while Gwen was sadly aware that it could have been nothing more than a kindly gesture, she felt something deep inside her move almost painfully, and knew that she was blushing. Unwilling to embarrass herself by making too much of it, she waited for him to say something—or do something.

  “There are apparently more stupid men in Hollywood than I remember,” he said quietly.

  And then Joshua Denning did something Gwen had been waiting for a man to do for her entire life: he quoted lines from a poem.

  “How many loved your moments of glad grace

  And fondly loved your beauty with love false or true

  But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you

  And loved the sorrow of your changing face.”

  Yeats, she decided, trying not to give the word “loved” too much importance.

  “Stand up,” he said quietly, “and take your dress off.”

  With her heart pounding and her knees weak, Gwen did as he had asked. When she’d done it, though, and stood before him in nothing but a bra and panties, she felt more like a fourteen-year old virgin than she had at fourteen—and perilously close to throwing up.

  “Take off your panties,” he said. Gwen slipped her panties down and stepped out of them. She had begun to tremble, telling herself it was the cold or her nerves, and still waiting for something to go wrong.

  Denning took her hand and pulled her onto his lap, so that she was straddling his legs facing him—and then kissed her again—deeper and harder. Unable to stop trembling, and grateful to be sitting down, Gwen returned the kiss—cautiously at first. She hadn’t expected this, and she was unprepared for the wild range of emotions that she was experiencing. Uncertainty tinged with fear—but desire as well. Desire greater than anything she’d ever felt before, for a man she barely knew. A man she was still bent on deceiving.

  He stroked her arms and placed both her hands on his shoulders before kissing her again, deeper and harder this time. Gwen sighed as he reached behind her back to undo the hooks of her bra, and she gave herself over to the next kiss eagerly and without self-consciousness.

  He slipped his hand between her legs to stroke the soft insides of her thighs, moving his fingers upward until they reached the thatch of pubic hair. With one hand he spread the lips of her labia and found her clitoris, causing her to flinch slightly at the unaccustomed touch. Gently he slid his fingers into her, looking directly into her eyes as he did it. With his free hand he slipped her bra straps from her shoulders and let it drop to the floor. When she was completely naked, he leaned forward to kiss her breast, moving his tongue around the areola before taking the nipple in his mouth and working it with his tongue until Gwen began to make small noises in her throat. After a few moments he opened her wider, slipping his fingers deep inside her, moving them in and out very slowly at first. She moaned and he thrust even deeper into her until she winced slightly and tried to move back. Firmly he pressed his palm against her buttocks and pushed her forward and began to massage her clitoris, gently at first, then harder and faster until she cried out and leaned forward to rest her head on his shoulder. “Harder!” she whispered, her voice hoarse. “Oh please....”

  He lifted her slightly, pulled her close and drew her firmly down on him, allowing his throbbing erection to penetrate deep, hard against her pubic bone. Gwen groaned and began moving up and down, taking him into her as high and as deep as she could stand. She buried her head against his neck as he thrust harder and deeper, over and over and over, until she began to tremble uncontrollably, shivering and moaning. When she came, she bit his shoulder, and though she couldn’t have said why, began to cry.

  Chapter Three

  Gwen woke the next morning, late, feeling exhilarated and ravenously hungry. She had turned to Josh sometime before dawn and kissed his chest sleepily, looking for no other reward other than to be folded closer in his arms as they slept. Instead he woke, making love to her slow and hard and deep until she was rocked by waves of an orgasm so strong she had to bite the pillow to keep from screaming aloud. Mildly embarrassed, but pleased beyond shyness with what was a new experience for her, Gwen confided her delight to him, blushing and as bashful as a new bride.

  “Well,” Josh smiled, wrapping her in his arms to kiss her good morning. “With what appears to have been excellent foresight on my part, this house has no close neighbors, so I can promise you that any such ecstatic noises you care to make in the future won’t be overheard. I, however, will regard them as sincere compliments.” And with that said, he carried her to the couch, where they made love again before breakfast. That morning Gwen began to suspect that she was falling in love with Joshua Denning.

  As happy as she was about the intimate and romantic turn their relationship had taken, Gwen was quick to notice that this very personal change didn’t alter the curious student/teacher contract they’d agreed upon. As charming and funny as Denning could be at times and as tender and sensitive at others, he continued the role of demanding taskmaster, brooking no argument from her about his expectations—or his discipline. That very afternoon, after the extremely pleasant way the day had begun, she learned that her new role as “teacher’s pet” didn’t hold much sway anywhere other than the bedroom—or maybe the couch.

  He had first discovered her smoking in the kitchen three days after her arrival and had set down rigid r
ules about where and when she could smoke. “Never, under any circumstances, smoke in this house,” he ordered. “If you insist upon poisoning yourself, please do me the favor of sparing the dogs and myself while you’re at it. Stay on the deck steps where the fumes won’t blow in the house.” She had agreed readily, and always smoked out of his presence, afraid of another lecture.

  On this same afternoon, however, less than four hours after she’d straightened the rumpled sofa cushions, smiling as she remembered every delicious detail of how he had made love to her, she forgot herself and sat down to have a cigarette. She was on the deck stairs watching the blue-green ocean and thinking divinely libidinous thoughts about him when Josh walked out onto the deck took the cigarette from her hand and stubbed it out in a flower pot.

  “This stops now,” he said, coolly flinging the dead butt off the deck.

  Gwen protested irritably. “You told me I could smoke as long as I didn’t do it in the house.”

  “I changed my mind. New rule, as of today. No smoking anywhere, anytime—period, end of discussion. You’re going cold turkey. Go get your stash and throw it away. Better yet, give it to me. I’LL throw it away and spare you the temptation.”

  “But why?” she complained.

  “Because I don’t like sleeping with a future cancer victim, and because I said so.”

  “Since when are you the surgeon general?” she joked. It would occur to Gwen later that her timing could have been better.

  He went into the house, and to Gwen’s dismay returned moments later with a wooden paddle in his hand—the handmade paddle he had promised to make, presumably. Pulling her swiftly across his knee, he peeled her jeans and panties down to her knees and laid six or seven experimental sharp cracks with the new implement across her bare buttocks. The result was an intense burn in both cheeks that came as an extremely unpleasant surprise, given the paddle’s small size and weight. As he continued spanking, landing each scalding smack a bit lower and harder on Gwen’s chilled rear end and the backs of her thighs, Gwen bit her lip and tried not to squeal or yelp. Even when it began to rain he didn’t let her up, but kept whacking her now wet backside as if testing the half-inch thick paddle’s all-weather capabilities. Only six inches wide, the crude and poorly finished device produced a loud crack (along with a gasp of pain) every time it descended on Gwen’s bare flesh and would prove to be the most dreaded weapon in Denning’s arsenal. On its very first outing, the paddle left the test-subject vowing at the top of her lungs that she would “never do it again.” Though “it” in this case referred to her smoking habit, Gwen would have readily agreed to give up virtually anything during those anguished few moments.