It had been a pleasantly mild evening until flashes of lightning lit the sky, followed by rolling thunder. The electrically charged atmosphere had driven everybody indoors and would have driven Andie indoors too were it not for Dean Ambrose. She was doing push ups under the force of his boot and still had ten left to go, but suddenly her hand gave way; her finger still wasn't right.

'Get up!' Ambrose snarled and bent over to pull her up by her hood.

She blushed with embarrassment when he hoisted her to her feet and she clumsily brushed off the dirt that had soiled her front when she had fallen.

'Give me one lap,' Ambrose ordered as she clutched her now uncontrollably shaking right hand to her chest.

She hated when it did that; it made her look weak.

'You do one lap!' she shouted back at him.

She was exhausted. She had jogged all the way here, just done forty press ups and it was past her bedtime.

'Well you can do ten more push ups on your spastic hand if you want,' he answered, eyeing her shaking hand.

She swore he made the shakes worse.

'I find that offensive,' she frowned at him.

Then they both cursed when the heavens opened after a particularly loud clap of thunder.

'Hurry up before we get soaking wet!' Ambrose yelled at her and pulled up his hood around his face to protect his scruffy mop of hair.

Andie looked around the park in dismay. Her head now pounding and the rain so heavy it would soak her to the bone she lost the will to protest and started making the lap around the park.

'What did I do wrong?' Andie asked Ambrose.

He had pulled her into the front room as soon as they had finished making the long ascent up flights of stairs to Andie's apartment. Andie hadn't even been given a chance to change out her of sodden clothes or to remove her muddied sneakers. Her heart sank when she watched Ambrose take that first step onto her cream carpet leaving a muddy foot print behind him. But with any luck Ambrose would clean it up. Despite what his general air of shabbiness suggested, so much as a book out of place on Andie's well stocked book shelf could send him into a rage. Yet now she stood before him dripping onto the carpet and grinding dirt into it and he didn't seem to care.

'You didn't do fifty push ups,' he said as he unzipped her hoodie and peeled it from her shoulders.

'My hand gave out.'

'No excuses.'

He looked her hard in the eyes but she looked away; if she looked at him she knew she would yield.

'But I did the lap,' she mumbled.

Andie rubbed her bare, goose pimpled arms; even in Florida getting caught in rain could still send a chill through you.

Dean then hooked his fingers between the thick elastic waistband of her tight shorts and the skin of her taut stomach. He tugged them down and an unattractive sucking noise could be heard as the knickers he took down with them became unattached from her sodden backside.

'You aren't trying hard enough. You failed. Again,' he answered her then stepped back to look at her exposed body, which when she looked down on it looked pasty and tinged pink where the sun had burnt her. Since coming here she had not achieved Ambrose's healthy glow, she was typically British and melted like wax in the sun.

'You are so pathetic,' was his assessment of her.

Then he grabbed her elbow firmly.

'If you don't want me to whoop your ass, if it hurts so much,' he mocked her.

'Try harder next time!'

He pulled on her elbow but Andie was ready and she dug her heels into the carpet, not to stop him, this was going to happen, but to give herself some say in the situation.

'Let me take everything else off,' she grumbled.

This pleased Ambrose.

'Yeah, take it all off. Take everything off your dirty, sweaty-'

'OK! I submit!' Andie said in irritation. There was only so much goading she could take sometimes. She threw her final garment off; her top. The sneakers had gone first; they had sucked her feet so uncomfortably that she had been desperate to lose them.

He smiled then lowered himself on to the couch. He held out his hand to her but Andie swatted it away and she saw a dark look pass over his face. She miserably wondered when she would have to pay for that one as she bent across his thighs. She felt a fleeting feeling of panic when he grabbed her right arm and twisted it up her back, then his hand smacked her right buttock hard. She closed her eyes and readied herself for what was bound to be a hard spanking. It was always hard to bear but she expected it to go on longer than usual because she had been defiant. If only she could submit, but he made it so damn difficult.

She had known how far she could push it with Regal. But Ambrose would punish her on a whim. Only a few days ago she had decided to skip her morning protein shake that Ambrose had inflicted on her. Only, when she went to close the fridge door on it she caught Ambrose watching her out of the corner of her eye, leaning against the doorway to her kitchen with his arms folded. So she put her hand back into the fridge.

'Were you going to leave your drink?' he asked. 'Just not drink it because you don't feel like it? Because you aren't prepared to put yourself through a little displeasure for the minute it takes to down it?'

Andie took the bottle out of the fridge and put it to her lips.

'Yeah, you're right. It only takes a minute,' she pretended to agree and prepared herself for the first ghastly sip, not knowing what he was about to do.

He strode to her, calmly took the bottle from her hand and set it on the kitchen counter. Then he grabbed her wrist, dragged her to a kitchen chair, propped his foot on it, picked her up, placed her over his knee and walloped her. Needless to say the minutes she spent over his knee were much more unpleasant than the minute she spent with her protein shake every morning.

She found such unexpected inflictions of physical pain so hard to endure that the following day she had asked him to write down the punishment she could expect alongside every step he had listed on the fitness plan he had drawn up for her if she missed one of them. He'd agreed to do so then gave it her back having only etched beside every step: a beating, a beating, a beating

...

'Why aren't you crying yet?' Ambrose asked sharply. He stopped slapping Andie abruptly to turn her face towards him.

'Oh, you are,' he smiled when he saw her tear streaked face then continued.

'Have you missed this?' Ambrose asked her as he rubbed his hard naked cock in front of Andie's face.

His actions that morning had surprised her. He had not touched her intimately for weeks unless you counted the numerous spankings he had given her and Andie did not. Why was he teasing her like that? On that morning of all mornings; the first she would spend back in the ring after her recuperation. The last thing she wanted to do was to get frisky with him when her nerves were shot to pieces.

'Not now,' Andie murmured, though her eyes lingered on his hard cock. She forced herself off the couch so that she would not pass ten minutes staring at it.

'I thought some head might put you at ease!' he shrugged.

'Like hell you did,' Andie answered with a roll of her eyes and turned to walk away from him.

'Afterwards then huh?' he mumbled into her ear having followed her. Then she felt him rub his dick on her back.

She had missed the sex. She had found it odd to say the least that he had spent most of the past twenty one days or so sleeping on her couch but not once had he tried to make a move on her. Her feelings towards him had become a lot clearer since he'd started taking care of her, at least that's what she thought he was doing, it felt that way sometimes. She wanted to ... make love. She wanted more of those cuddles he had given her that night he had come back to her. She would have happily made love to him then and had fully expected him to take advantage of her fragile state but he had done the gentlemanly thing and refrained. But now what he was doing was far from gentlemanly. Had he deemed her ready again for the crazy type of sex he liked? That couldn't be it; Andie had dropped enough hints that she had been ready for a long time.

A couple of weeks ago she had walked in on him in the morning beating off on her couch. She had hung back by the door of her bedroom and watched him unseen like a pervert; she watched his hand make fast movements, rapidly pulling his foreskin up and down the shaft. Those squelchy noises had filled her ears along with the sounds of his moans. He had his eyes and mouth closed, but not tightly, she could see he wasn't even close to cumming yet so she had made her presence known.

'I can help you with that.'

Ambrose didn't immediately open his eyes and smiled before he did so as if he knew she had been there all along.

'You can watch,' he said.

Then he got back to doing his dirty work. Andie had that image to think of whenever she masturbated and that had been every night since then until the current day.

Andie's hands had shook so badly around the steering wheel that Ambrose had taken over driving. She would not usually trust him with her vehicle but she was probably more of a danger to herself and other road users right now than he was. Andie clenched her right hand into a fist as he drove in an attempt to still the shaking. When would these shakes stop? She would like to say that she was confident they wouldn't be an issue in the ring, but she wasn't at all confident.

'You'll do fine Kid,' Ambrose said when he parked her car and reached out to give her shoulder a shake.

It was the sort of encouragement you might give any rookie, not a former lover, or current lover because he had promised to rekindle that 'afterwards'. Andie was getting wet just at the thought of it which hardly helped when she needed to be on top form right then.

And when she laid eyes on Regal after weeks of no contact with him she felt even worse, as she knew she would. They had not parted on good terms when they had last seen each other but if Regal harboured any resentment over that he did not show it. He smiled at her warmly as soon as their eyes met.

'My, you are a sight for sore eyes,' he sighed.

Andie's sober face cracked into a smile.

'Really? She asked drily.

'Of course. You're my beautiful English rose,' he replied.

Andie laughed and it sounded and felt completely bizarre coming out of her.

'Come,' Regal said with his arms held wide open.

Andie walked slowly forward, and then broke into a run when she was feet away from him and jumped. Luckily he caught her and she felt him stagger a bit under her weight and laugh. He held her securely in his arms and Andie burrowed her face into the shoulder of his suit jacket.

'I'm sorry,' she mumbled.

'I know,' he said back softly.

'Are you done kissing and making up?'

Andie looked back over her shoulder at Ambrose watching them and smiled at him. They made an odd threesome; her, Regal and Ambrose. But these guys were her family away from home, though far from nuclear or functional, they were a unit. For better or worse.

'Congratulations on a triumphant return,' Regal smiled at Andie as she stepped out of the ring after an intense, but satisfying, session. It had gone better than she dared to hope it would. Her hand had sometimes misbehaved but it had not proved to be a hindrance. It seemed to be, like so many things, something she could and would conquer.

'I'm aching so much,' she said with a laugh in order to avoid having to say, 'thankyou'. Taking compliments was always awkward.

'But you aren't out of shape,' Regal observed as he slowly looked her up and down.

'You looked good. Things will only get better here on out,' he assured her.

Andie nodded cautiously; she hadn't completely forgotten Ambrose's words of warning about Regal. Though she longed to go back to those days where she hung off Regal's every word.

'Yep,' Ambrose agreed and clapped Andie on the shoulder.

He then put his arm around her sticky shoulders and she relaxed against him, suddenly feeling much safer. She adored Regal, there was no doubt about that, but at some point she'd ended up putting her wellbeing and fate in Ambrose's hands.

'He's right,' Ambrose said, taking a gentle hold of her chin. Then he stroked his knuckles down her cheek.

It felt affectionate, but Ambrose was never so giving without good reason. Bearing this in mind Andie averted her eyes and shrank away from his touch, breaking the spell he was trying to put her under.

'Don't you think Andie deserves a reward?' Ambrose then asked Regal.

Andie's eyes snapped back up at Ambrose.

'A reward? What kind of reward? What are up to now?' she asked him anxiously.

Just those few words were making Andie doubt his benevolence, she felt disappointed that she was still so quick to think ill of him.

'She does,' Regal simply agreed after a pause of silence where Andie's questions went unacknowledged by both men.

Then Ambrose turned Andie to face him and pushed his hands down on her shoulders. His intentions were quite clear to her.

'You think that's a reward?' she sneered at him.

Sure, Andie was up for it – in private. She was gagging for it. But what was this all about? She could not feel horrified by Ambrose's actions, but Regal's actions were both confusing and hurtful ...

'You seriously want me to suck your dick in front of him? And you-' she turned to stare at Regal, 'you want to watch?'

When Regal gave her a twisted smile she wondered if she was very prudish or just naive. She had never thought she was either but if she had learnt anything over these past months it was that she didn't know herself at all.

'Morgane ... how vulgar...' he commented.

Andie laughed cynically and shook her head.

'Yeah, you are sooo vulgar,' Ambrose put in and began pushing down on her shoulders again insistently.

'Will you stop doing that?' Andie snapped at him and shoved him away from her.

'Silence,' Regal said to them as if they were a pair of squabbling children.

Then he moved closer.

'Don't you want to do this?' he asked Andie.

She found looking Regal in the eyes hard right now but she made herself do it.

'No,' she said with a firm shake of her head.

'I'm not sure I believe that,' he said, then raised her chin which had dropped.

'Tell me the truth,' he demanded.

In all honesty she was open to it, but it was one thing to imagine yourself doing such a thing, quite another to actually do it.

'I'm not comfortable with it ... Sir,'

'Then we shan't do it.'

'What? She's lying! She's been touching herself every night, I've heard her!' Ambrose burst out next to her.

Andie's eyes flashed at him. It stung that he would tell Regal something so personal. After having practically lived with him for at least two weeks, it really stung.

'That's enough,' Regal said over the rest of Ambrose's ranting, the content of which Andie hadn't heard because she was still reeling from what a shit he was.

To Andie's surprise Ambrose obeyed, but not without throwing a tantrum. He let out a frustrated growl and kicked the ring steps over before storming out and muttering under his breath unintelligibly.

Regal ignored him as if he was used to such behaviour from a fully grown man. But Andie was not incredibly surprised by his reaction, though she was used to him not getting his own way ending up in much more painful consequences for her. Perhaps the private fallout between the two of them would be something to look forward to later ...

'Now then,' Regal said, as if the business of Ambrose was now done and dusted.

'You did not speak to me appropriately earlier. You have been away for a while but I would have thought after how you'd been spending your time off that you would not have forgotten the ground rules.'

Andie twisted her mouth. It was not a shocker that he knew but still, it was kinda embarrassing to know that he knew. And again she felt another stab in her gut that Regal was privy to something else she had not chosen to let him in on.

'I didn't. I'm sorry Sir,' she swallowed hard.

It was extremely tempting to make excuses but she knew it would do her no good.

'Bend over,' he ordered.

She kept her natural reaction of surprise in check; she thought she'd get away with a warning. In fact she thought maybe Regal should be doing some grovelling himself ... But she'd learnt to do something else in her break too: obey first before you complain.

'Where?' she asked.

'Here will do,' he said, patting the mat of the ring.

Andie nodded, pulled her gym shorts down, put her hands on the mat, bent at the waist and trusted her bare backside out. If he was going to put her through pain she might as well meet the pain head on. He then moved to her side, put a hand on her back and landed a flurry of hard smacks on her ass. They hurt but it was more humiliating than it was painful.

'Alright, stand up and pull your shorts back up.'

Andie was keen to obey and when she looked down she saw that the wetness she had felt in her panties, but that she had ignored, had soaked through to her shorts ... that was most embarrassing of all.

'I trust you won't give me cause to do that again tomorrow,' she heard Regal say as she set about making herself look dignified again.

'Well done again, for today' he praised her when she turned to face him.

'You can go. I will see you tomorrow.'

Andie left him feeling confused. So, since when had he wanted her to suck dick in front of him?