Chapter 6
Bayne
I love watching the red stripes rise on her skin with each stroke of my belt. Rosy and blushing. I’ve put a silky black blindfold on her, the darkness enhancing her senses.
Her body is so responsive, a breathy gasp escaping her full lips with each stripe. Her nipples, already hard for me, tighten further. Her bare breasts rise higher as her breathing deepens.
“Do you remember what I told you I was going to make you beg for?” I ask, swinging the belt at my side.
“Um…” She’s too lost in the moment to remember what I’ve said. Her teeth sink into her full bottom lip. The blindfold keeps me from reading her gaze but her full lips part and she gives a breathy answer of, “No.”
“Forgiveness.” I raise the belt.
Her body tenses, sensing I’m ready to deliver the next spank.
She juts her chin out. “I’m not one to beg.”
“Jesus.” I hold back a moan, my cock stiffening to the point of tightening my jeans with discomfort. Her body, so beautiful here in the soft light, arms stretched above her head, naked and on full display, completely powerless to me, yet still fighting.
It takes every ounce of self-control in my body to not grab her by the backs of her legs, wrap them around my waist and fuck her till she’s got no more sassy replies and the only word left on her tongue is my name.
All the more reason Eamon is wrong, and I should be putting the rose on her grave right now. Not admiring the rose blush rising in her cheeks.
“Neither am I.” I pull the belt back, letting it snap across the widest curve of her ass. She gives a half-moan, half-yelp of a sound.
I’m not punishing her as hard as I’d planned. I’ve found myself so turned on by the way she looks, sounds, smells, that I’m using the pain to fill her with a tidal-like wave of rising need for pleasure.
It’s its own form of torture.
One I get off on delivering to this special lass.
She’s squirming now, shifting her weight from the balls of one foot to the other. She has pretty feet. Even that doesn’t go unnoticed by me.
I want to slip my fingers between her labia see how wet I’ve made her, finger her clit and really make her moan. I want to get on my knees, bury my face in her, inhale her intimate scent, taste her arousal.
Eat her pretty pussy while she rises up on the tips of her toes, crying out as she comes, her entire body shuddering for me.
The madness of these fantasies has to stop. She needs to be punished so she’ll stay far away from the police and Collins. Then, I need to figure out what to do with her.
I double the belt over itself, this time striking her with a spank hard enough to make her cry out. “Tell me you’re sorry you contacted the police. Tell me I can trust you won’t do it again.” Before she can answer, I whip her again, harder this time so she’s sure to give me the answer I want. A stinging, smarting, angry red line rises on her ass, directly above the last.
“S—sorry!” She hisses, then sucks air in between clenched teeth. “I am sorry. I swear. I’m not going to the police again.”
My phone rings, breaking into the private moment. For a moment, I’d almost forgotten we weren’t the only ones on the island. And that’s dangerous.
Taking my belt with me I head for the door. “I’m going to leave you here to think about your lies while I take this call.”
She juts out that chin again, determined to stay tough though the idea of being left blindfolded, restrained, and alone in this room can’t be a pleasant one. My phone continues to ring. I leave her alone in the room, locking the door behind me as my phone gives a final ring.
I put my belt back around my waist, latch the buckle, and return Jonjo’s call. He answers. “Bayne, where are ye? You need to get to the house.” Reading his tone, his temper is at an eight out of ten, as usual when you’ve missed his call.
“I’m busy. What’s the matter?”
He gives the news. “Rose Anderson was down at the shop with that 1980’s Mercedes of hers this morning. Crank overheard her talking to Hamish.”
“Hamish MacDonald? The one that’s running for Council?”
“Aye. They said Council’s in talks with another conservancy. Birds this time. We need to make a wee late-night visit to the MacDonald house and let him know how the Bayne-Burns feel about more outsiders putting restrictions on how we live our lives. I think we can pull him in for our cause.”
Getting to Hamish before he gets on the Council is a good move. Jonjo may have issues keeping his cool, but his mind works fast, always a step ahead. He’s playing chess while the others are playing checkers.
“Being proactive in case he’s elected,” I say. “Very good. I’ll be there within the hour. Be ready to go.”
“Aye. Always ready.”
“Always,” I repeat back to him.
We hang up and I slip my phone back in my pocket.
Another conservancy means more jobs for outsiders and less production of our land and seas by the good people who’ve lived here for generations. Makes me want to take my belt back off and go take out my aggression on the pretty tree hugger I’ve got locked in the other room.
If we could just get the eco do-gooders to leave our land, let us live in our old ways, our ecosystem would care for itself, and the true islanders could be at peace. Instead, with more curious eyes on the island, wages go down, costs go up. We’ve had to find less-than-ideal ways to make ends meet.
I run a hand through my hair. If I leave her here, by morning her friends will be calling Collins. Her being our only witness, if she truly won’t talk, the easiest thing would be to let her off with a warning and take her home now. As of now, Eamon and I and my informant at the station are the only ones in our gang who know she’s a witness. Eventually word will get around that the pretty American girl almost went to the police, but by then things’ll have died down.
I unlock the door, opening it slowly, enjoying one last long look at her in all her captive beauty. “Time to get dressed,” I say, crossing the floor to her. I untie the blindfold. She blinks against the dim light. I quickly unlock the cuffs, hooking them back around the leather for storage.
I doubt she’ll be running off into the hills after what I’m about to tell her. “Did you learn your lesson?”
“Yes.” Shyly she looks down at her hands, rubbing her wrists where the cuffs held her.
Marks on her wrists. Marks on her ass. Ones that will remind her of me. Of her time here in the cottage. Of the danger that waits for her if she disobeys again.
Her pretty brown eyes rise to meet mine. “Have you decided what to do with me?”
“I’m taking you to the lodge,” I say.
Her brows rise, hope hidden in the deep brown depths of her gaze. “Really?”
“Yes. If you’ll truly be good and keep your nose where it belongs—out of the business of the men on this island.”
“I’ve learned my lesson. I swear.” I find her earnest looks to be convincing. “Take me back. Please?”
“Get dressed and meet me in the kitchen. We can talk about coming to an agreement.”
When she returns to the kitchen table, her coat zipped up to her chin, I’ve two cups of hot tea waiting for us. There’s no milk here but I’ve found some sugar cubes in a bare cupboard, adding two to both.
“Thank you,” she says, gingerly slipping into the same blue chair she first sat in. She cradles the warmth of the mug in her hands. “For the tea.”
“Talk,” I say. “Convince me I can take you back to the lodge and no one will be any the wiser about what happened that night.”
She stares down in her tea for a moment, contemplating. “The only ones who know I’m gone are two of my friends. We were watching a show when I snuck out. They think I’m at the police station. If you drop me off a few meters from the lodge, I can walk back, alone. I’ll tell them I went to the police station, then thought better about it—they did warn me not to go, by the way—and that I realized it was a mistake and had them drop me off down the road.”
It”s not a bad plan. And I’ve got bigger haddock to fry. Babysitting her isn’t exactly going to fit into my work schedule right now.
Her cheeks are still rosy from my touch. She shifts her weight from ass cheek to ass cheek, her skin stinging from my belt. Knowing her sore ass is against the hard wood chair makes me hard.
I shift my own weight, discreetly tugging at the tightness in my jeans under the table.
She blows on her tea before sipping it. “I like tea better without the milk.” She eyes me, searching my face for a decision.
Maybe she has learned her lesson. What reason does she have to go against me and tell? She can move on with her internship—she’ll be gone in a few months anyway—and I can get back to work. Collins will have to eat shit when he finds out his star witness is alive, well, and no longer eager to share.
I take a sip of the sweet, hot, earthy tea. “Keep talking.”
She can see she’s wearing me down. “I’ve got no need to talk to the police. I get it now. Things here work different. The men run the show. Not the cops. I just want to keep my head down and do my work.”
“You cannae go to the police.”
“No. I won’t. I swear.” She shakes her head back and forth with vigor. “No cops.”
I give it a moment to sink in, Eamon’s face focusing in my mind’s eye, telling me to leave her be. My father’s rage and how I never want to be like him. My mam so sick before she passed, Eamon only a toddler, me thirteen, sitting by her side, her weak, cold hand in mine, saying, a light heart lives longest.
I tear my gaze away from her pretty face.
Killing out of necessity doesn’t bother me.
Killing this beautiful girl?
That would be a burden.
I feel her gaze, steady on me. Waiting.
Finally, I nod. “Aye. I’ll take you back.”
She collapses against the back of her seat, a heaving breath leaving her in relief. “Thank God. Thank you.” Her hand flutters to her hammering heart.
Sounds like her friends will be keeping an eye on her as well. Good, island girls who know their place. I need her phone. I don’t need her sneaking away to call DI Collins. Or anyone tracing her. Who knows what kind of tracking devices she has loaded on that American cell phone.
“One condition,” I say. “Leave me your phone.”
“What?”
“You don’t need it on the island. There’s a phone at the lodge and the center. You’re good with numbers. You can memorize your friends’ in case you need them, but you all are never separated anyway.”
“What about my mom?”
“You can email her.”
She hesitates as if to argue further, then thinks better of it. She takes her phone from her coat pocket, setting it down on the table between us.
I put it in my pocket for safekeeping. “Let’s go.” When we’re close to the lodge, I pull the truck over into the high grass off the side of the road. She can walk from here.
But not without one more warning.
I cup her chin in my hand, like I did that first night she lay hiding in the ditch.
I stroke her soft skin with the rough pad of my thumb. “If I have to come back for you, if you lie this time”—I stare straight into those big brown eyes, pulling her face closer—“ye won’t be coming back. Ever.”