Ace-High Flush

Chapter 1

As his youngest brother hurried back up the grassy aisle with his new bride, Ace Journey thought about how lucky Trey was to have found someone he could spend his life with. It seemed like loving Liv had enriched Trey’s life tenfold. Ace, though, was a confirmed bachelor. At nearly 38, he’d pretty much given up on meeting that perfect woman who would both suit his personality and his physical needs. The physical aspect was the easiest part to fit into place. Most women he’d been with—each carefully chosen—had been enthusiastic about their sexual encounters. Even the spanking aspect. But it seemed like modern women came in two categories: hard-edged and doormat. Ace concluded that finding someone in-between was a lost cause.

His eye was caught by someone rushing away in the opposite direction of the banquet-seeking guests. Gabriella Appleby. Young, fresh, brimming with personality and laughter, she had the potential to be someone very special. Unfortunately, she had this annoying proclivity to tell lies when it suited her.

He’d volunteered to try to spank the lies and deceit out of her when she’d tried to undermine Liv’s modeling career to further her own, and the spanking had been harsh. He'd never forget it.

That afternoon, ten months before Trey's wedding, she was gathered with the other models, having a white cotton nightgown fitted, when Liv coaxed her out of the location trailer to come visit with her and Trey and to meet Ace. She looked so young and innocent, and in many ways she was; she wasn’t a particularly mature nineteen-year-old. After meeting her briefly, Ace’s intuition told him that she was not a bad woman, but rather a woman who was trying out bad behavior to see if it got her where she wanted to go. Her test of underhanded tactics and lying only landed her in a shit load of trouble—and a spanking.

He remembered the softness of her small hand in his as he led her off to her punishment. His shoulders tensed with a mixture of desire and determination. It inflamed him to see the curve of her full breasts shifting under the nightgown as she breathed. There was no denying that she was sexy with her lightly-padded figure and her long chestnut curls. He’d never been intimate with a model of any sort, let alone a plus-sized one, but he had never found super-skinny women attractive. It was logical that she’d appeal to him.

He tried to apply logic to his twitching dick.

By the time they’d gotten to his office, past his friend Mark who, eagle-eyed, confirmed Ace’s judgment that Gabriella was going to her punishment willingly, Gabriella’s eyes were already red-rimmed from crying. She was ashamed of her behavior; that much was obvious. Although her willingness to accept her punishment was predicated on her desire to keep her job and not have Liv blackball her for her bad behavior, she was scared and it showed in the wideness of her brown eyes and the way her hand trembled in his.

Ace wasn’t thrilled to give her a punishment spanking. He believed in positive reinforcement like he’d use on his horses, not aversion tactics. Nonetheless, aversion worked in some cases where positive actions would be fruitless, as was sometimes the case with women who needed to learn right from wrong. Gabriella’s situation was like that. She needed to be taught a lesson, but no one wanted to doom a nineteen-year-old to be cast out of her chosen profession before she’d had a chance to make something of herself there.

Her mouth trembled as he got the strap out of his desk drawer, sat in the office chair and patted his thighs. Her tear-filled eyes took on a hint of panic at the sight of the strap and she tried to protest. But the relative gentleness of his hand wasn’t enough for this situation. She needed the added sting of the leather and the startling sound of it hitting her soft bottom.

If she’d ever been spanked before, it didn’t show. She approached him as though she was walking to the electric chair. Ace tried to give her a reassuring nod, a little one, not to undermine what was about to happen, but to encourage her to get the punishment over with. Her hips swayed in a feminine curl as she took those steps. Finally, she stood before him, tears tracking down her lovely face.

Once again, he patted his thighs. "Let me tell you somethin', sweetheart. I don't like to give punishment spankin's. I volunteered to do this because you deserve it, Liv deserves to know you’ve paid a price for trying to destroy her career, and my brother isn't in a position to do it himself. I won't go into that. But, I want you to know that, even though I usually find spankin' sexy, doin' it to the extent I plan to do with you isn't my usual style."

"You're scaring me."

"Do you want to stop and face the professional consequences for what you did instead?"

Gabriella hesitated, thinking about it, finally confirming that she was willing to go through it.

She folded herself over his thighs, and although his body heated with interest, his mind was saddened by the situation. He’d volunteered for this job, knowing how painful it would be for both of them. There was no one else to see to it, and as the oldest of the Journey siblings, he had an obligation to help Trey, who couldn’t take on the chore himself because he was in a relationship with Liv.

Ace tried not to get aroused by the expanse of her ivory skin as he pushed the hem of the long nightgown up her thighs to her waist. She was wearing very skimpy panties, but he lowered them to her knees. Her bottom was…well, there was no other word for it in his mind…she was perfect. Round, pale globes, full and firm, untouched by gravity or age. He wanted to caress, to squeeze, to possess and make them off-limits to any other man. In a way, he was doing that, but only for a few minutes, and under the most inauspicious circumstances. He sighed, and got to work.

Gabriella wailed as he applied the strap up her thighs and over her pristine ass. Pink rose to the surface quickly, then a rosy blush. When he concentrated on the junction of her thighs and rear, she kicked and screamed. Ace set his jaw and held her down as he as he spanked her.

He had to give her one thing: she didn’t plead for mercy or beg him to stop. She took it, painful and miserable though it was. Ace didn’t count the strokes. He spanked until her bottom and upper thighs were good and red. He didn’t want to bruise her, but he did want to give her something to think about for a few days each time she went to sit down.

Toward the end of the spanking, she went limp and silent. He knew she hadn’t fainted; rather, she’d taken all she could and now was going numb from the pain and humiliation. It was time to stop.

Ace drew her up into his lap and held her tight afterward. Her tears wet his shirt, but she didn’t seem to hate him. They talked a little about what had happened, and she surprised him by asking if they could be friends in spite of the episode.

It was a fleeting notion, though. They didn’t see each other after that. She’d finished her photo shoot on his family’s ranch and then flown back to the east coast, leaving Texas—and Ace—far behind.

Maybe that was for the best. But seeing her again at the wedding, almost a year later, made a small pang of regret shoot through him, like a needle in his palm. He considered hurrying after her, but his brother, Deuce, slapped him on the shoulder and encouraged him to go get a beer before the guests got them all.

He forced a smile, and took the less dangerous path, opting for the brew over the beauty.

* * *

The airport in Newark, New Jersey, was as sterile as every other airport Ace had ever been through. It had little personality and no particular style. The facility added boring scenery to his other travel discomforts. He hated to fly. He'd take his pick-up truck and good ol' US highways any day. But this trip had to be done rather quickly. His father wanted to make an investment in a New Jersey company, and, old-fashioned as Leo Journey was, he didn't want to take his broker's word for it. He wanted it checked out first hand. He guilted Ace into doing it, pleading that he was "too old for that shit" and reminding his son that Ace's own stake in the ranch would be affected by investing outside of Texas.

Thus, armed with cellphone, laptop and luggage, Ace caught a cab to the local Hyatt and started making plans to inspect the business.

He made several calls, and noted the results on his Google calendar and Google Docs, then sat back in the stiff hotel room chair and stared at the computer screen as he stroked his moustache. A note on his to-do list stared back at him. It was marked with a big yellow question mark. Gabriella Appleby. She lived in New Jersey, according to Liv, near the airport. Should he call her?

It had been nearly a month since he saw her slipping away from Trey's wedding without a hello or a go-screw-yourself. Ace realized it could go either way. But she'd been on his mind more than once since they'd had their spanking encounter, and even more so since the wedding. Something about her preyed on him. She left him wanting something, something indefinable.  The memory of her soft flesh so near him was like the scent of a woman lingering in a room she'd left minutes before.

His mouth curled up wryly at the uncharacteristically romantic thought.

There was one way to get her off his mind, and that was to call her and hear her reaction to him. Rejection, and he'd put her memory in a box and bury it deep in his mind's storehouse; acceptance, and he'd be on the road to purging those romantic thoughts of her and getting back to his usual, pragmatic self. By finding her again, he'd remind himself that they had nothing in common and burst any lingering bubbles of sappiness. It couldn't work. She was focused on being a model and was driven, even into poor behavior, to reach her goals. He'd already forged a path to his goals and was now building on that foundation. He was eighteen years older than she, and had a life over a thousand miles away.

He toggled his computer to his contact list, and to the entry he'd made according to Liv's information. Neither of them knew if Gabriella lived at the same address anymore. They only knew that she was still modeling, and struggling to get jobs. She didn't appear much in the b-grade photo spreads, and even less in the high-profile ones.

Her phone was answered on the fourth ring. Expecting a voicemail box, Ace was surprised when an older woman's voice came over the line.

"Hello?"

"Good afternoon, ma'am—"

"I don't give to charities over the phone, so—"

"No, ma'am, that's not why I'm callin'. I-"

"I don't need more credit cards either."

He chuckled, though it was a little frustrating to be interrupted at every turn. "No, ma'am, that's not why I'm callin' either. I'd like to speak to Gabriella. Is she there, please?"

"Gabby? Who is this?" Aggression had been replaced by curiosity in the woman's high-pitched, breathy voice.

"My name is Ace Journey, ma'am. I'm an acquaintance of Gabriella's."

"She's at work. Why don't you call her cellphone?"

"I don't have that number," he explained.

"Are you a bill collector?"

That was an interesting tidbit to be considered at leisure. "No, ma'am. Have I reached the right residence? Does Gabriella live there?"

"I'm her mother. Yeah, she lives here. Where did you say you met her?"

"I didn't say, ma'am. But I met Gabriella in Texas last year. I'm in New Jersey on business and I thought I'd give her a call."

"They don't have long-distance calling in Texas?"