Chapter 5 #2
Now he did grip her chin, running the pad of his thumb over her full bottom lip. “You are stunning, you know that?”
Surprise flickered in the blue. “Really?”
“Absolutely breathtaking. Tell Daddy what’s wrong, my beautiful princess.”
Everything about her softened at the command, and to his relief some of the fear drained from her eyes. “Oh, that’s not fair.”
“What isn’t?”
“This whole”—she jerked her hands as if to wave at him before she remembered she was bound and she let out a huff of annoyance—“everything. The tone, the flattery, the gentle dominance. How am I supposed to fight that?”
He let his lips curve, let his own amusement show. “You aren’t.”
“Bastard.”
Excitement pounded through his veins. Tightening his grip on her chin, he forced her head back further, a more unnatural angle that would be uncomfortable but not painful. The move was enough to have her eyes going wide, her breath catching in her throat.
There. That was the fear he wanted.
“Naughty, naughty girl. If you weren’t tied to this bed, I’d bend you over the end of it and put seven perfect cane lines up and down your ass. One for each letter in the name you just called me.”
“Alas, I am all tied up. So sad for you.” Despite the bravado of her words, they were breathy, a bit shaky with the mix of desire and terror she was so valiantly trying to pretend she didn’t feel.
“So sad for you, really. That would be the easy punishment. Now I’ll have to get creative.” He waited a beat, let the words land, let her imagination get to work before he leaned in, dropping his voice to a low murmur. “But first, you’ll have to tell Daddy why you were so scared a moment ago.”
“Counteroffer. I tell you in exchange for not punishing me.”
Bold little thing, wasn’t she? “This is not a negotiation, princess.”
“I thought everything was a negotiation in a scene.”
“Cheeky brat.” She had a point, of course, but he wasn’t about to give her an inch.
Next thing he knew, she’d be walking all over him.
“You are going to be punished for calling me a bastard, one way or another. The longer you delay, the more creative I’ll have to get.
So I suppose the question you have to ask yourself is, do you really want to test a man who enjoys hurting pretty little things like yourself? ”
To his utter delight, she didn’t wither at his words.
Eyes narrowing, she met his gaze head-on without so much as flinching.
“See, that’s the kind of thing that scares the shit out of me.
What kind of man enjoys hurting women? Like, Beckett seems perfectly lovely until you get him up on stage with Ruby and then he’s leaving welts all over her ass and laughing about it. ”
Not only a newbie, but confused about her own desires. Empathy welled, a pressure in his chest that made him ache for her. “Trust me when I tell you it’s not an easy thing to reconcile, even for a man like me.”
The moment the words left his mouth, he was cursing himself for a fool. He was treading dangerously close to telling her far too much about himself, all because she was under his skin.
Curiosity spread across her face as she watched him. “What does that mean? A man like you?”
“I have a reputation for being rather ruthless in business.” It wasn’t a lie, though it was far from the whole truth. “For a long time, I worried that ruthlessness was why I enjoyed kink so much. That it was merely an extension of the monster I am.”
Fucking hell. What was it about her that had him saying things he’d never said to anyone else, not even his sister and cousins?
Annoyed with himself, he forged ahead without giving her time to voice the reassurances he could see in her eyes.
Reassurances he didn’t remotely deserve.
“But I realized at some point that what I truly enjoy is giving my partners what they want. What they crave. And if their needs happen to align with my desire to hurt them, all the better. If not, however, I get no enjoyment out of hurting them. I’ve played with a few submissives who weren’t masochists, who got nothing from the pain, and it all fell rather flat for me. ”
He watched her eyes, watched the wheels turn and realization clear the lingering worry from the blue. “You’re going to hurt me, and you’re going to like it. But only if I like it, too?”
“That’s the nutshell version, yes.”
“Okay.” Blowing out a deep breath, she gave a decisive nod.
“I got a little freaked out when I realized how much you were going to enjoy hurting me, and I guess I got in my head about it. About what kind of man I’d locked myself in this room with, if you actually enjoy hurting people.
It just made you seem, I don’t know, more dangerous than you actually are, I guess. ”
Oh, princess. I’m far more dangerous than you could possibly realize.
Giving voice to that thought, no matter how truthful, was likely to just scare her again, and not in the fun way he had planned. So instead, he leaned further in, brushing his lips over hers. “Good girl for telling Daddy what scared you. I know that wasn’t easy, and I’m very proud of you.”
Hunger, a kind that had nothing to do with the desire stamped all over her stunning face, filled her eyes. Oh yeah, his naughty little princess enjoyed his praise, far more than she was willing to admit.
“Proud enough to let me off the hook for calling you a bastard?” she asked, a dimple in her cheek flashing as she grinned up at him.
He couldn’t help it. The sheer brazenness pulled a laugh from him as he straightened.
“All right, princess. You win. I’ll let you off the hook, just this once.” Sliding the lid off the box, he held up a single silver clamp, let the pretty pink jewels dangle in the dim light as he smiled. “But I’m still going to hurt you. And I’m still going to enjoy it, very, very much.”