Chapter Twenty-Six #2
I shake my head amused, and before I realize it, I roll my eyes at him.
“Did you just roll your eyes at me, Anastasia?”
Oh fuck. “Possibly. Depends what your reaction is.”
“Same as always,” he says, shaking his head, his eyes alight with excitement.
I swallow instinctively and a frisson of exhilaration runs through me. “So…” Holy shit. What am I going to do?
“Yes?” He licks his lower lip.
“You want to spank me now.”
“Yes. And I will.”
“Oh really, Mr. Grey?” I challenge, grinning back at him. Two can play this game.
“Are you going to stop me?”
“You’re going to have to catch me first.”
His eyes widen a fraction, and he grins, slowly getting to his feet. “Oh really, Miss Steele?”
The breakfast bar is between us. I have never been more grateful for its existence than in this moment.
“And you’re biting your lip.” He moves slowly to his left as I move to mine.
“You wouldn’t,” I tease. “After all, you roll your eyes.” I try reasoning with him.
He continues to move toward his left, as do I. “Yes, but you’ve just raised the bar on the excitement stakes with this game.” His eyes blaze, and wild anticipation emanates from him.
“I’m quite fast, you know.” I try for nonchalance.
“So am I.”
He’s stalking me in his own kitchen.
“Are you going to come quietly?” he asks.
“Do I ever?”
“Miss Steele, what do you mean?” He smirks. “It’ll be worse for you if I have to come get you.”
“That’s only if you catch me, Christian. And right now, I have no intention of letting you catch me.”
“Anastasia, you may fall and hurt yourself. Which will put you in direct contravention of rule number seven, now six.”
“I have been in danger since I met you, Mr. Grey, rules or no rules.”
“Yes, you have.” He pauses, and his brow furrows.
Suddenly, he lunges for me, making me squeal and run for the dining room table.
I manage to escape, putting the table between us.
My heart is pounding and adrenaline has spiked through my body.
Boy, this is thrilling. I’m a child again, though that’s not right.
I watch him carefully as he paces deliberately toward me. I inch away.
“You certainly know how to distract a man, Anastasia.”
“We aim to please, Mr. Grey. Distract you from what?”
“Life. The universe.” He waves one of his hands vaguely.
“You did seem very preoccupied as you were playing.”
He stops and folds his arms, his expression amused.
“We can do this all day, baby, but I will get you, and it will just be worse for you when I do.”
“No you won’t.” I must not be overconfident. I repeat this as a mantra. My subconscious has found her Nikes, and she’s on the starting blocks.
“Anyone would think you didn’t want me to catch you.”
“I don’t. That’s the point. I feel about punishment the way you feel about my touching you.”
His entire demeanor changes in a nanosecond. Gone is playful Christian, and he stands staring at me as if I’ve slapped him. He’s ashen. “That’s how you feel?”
Those four words, and the way he utters them, speak volumes. Oh no. They tell me so much more about him and how he feels. They tell me about his fear and loathing of being touched. I frown. No, I don’t feel that bad. No way. Do I?
“No. It doesn’t affect me quite as much as that, but it gives you an idea.”
“Oh,” he says.
Crap. He looks completely and utterly lost, like I’ve pulled the rug from under his feet.
Taking a deep breath, I move around the table until I am standing in front of him, gazing into his apprehensive eyes.
“You hate it that much?” His eyes are filled with horror.
“Well…no,” I reassure him. That’s how he feels about people touching him? “No. I feel ambivalent about it. I don’t like it, but I don’t hate it.”
“But last night, in the playroom, you—”
“I do it for you, Christian, because you need it. I don’t. You didn’t hurt me last night. That was in a different context, and I can rationalize that internally, and I trust you. But when you want to punish me, I worry that you’ll hurt me.”
His eyes darken like a turbulent storm. Time moves and expands and slips away before he answers softly. “I want to hurt you. But not beyond anything you couldn’t take.”
Fuck! “Why?”
He runs his hand through his hair, and he shrugs. “I just need it.” He pauses, gazing at me with anguish, and he closes his eyes and shakes his head. “I can’t tell you.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Won’t.”
“So you know why.”
“Yes.”
“But you won’t tell me.”
“If I do, you will run screaming from this room, and you’ll never want to return.” He stares at me warily. “I can’t risk that, Anastasia.”
“You want me to stay.”
“More than you know. I couldn’t bear to lose you.”
Oh my.
He gazes down at me, and suddenly, he pulls me into his arms and he’s kissing me, kissing me passionately. It takes me completely by surprise, and I sense his panic and desperate need in his kiss.
“Don’t leave me. You said you wouldn’t leave me, and you begged me not to leave you in your sleep,” he murmurs against my lips.
Oh…my nocturnal confessions.
“I don’t want to go.” And my heart clenches, turning itself inside out.
This is a man in need. His fear is naked and obvious, but he’s lost…somewhere in his darkness. His eyes are wide and bleak and tortured. I can soothe him, join him briefly in the darkness and bring him into the light.
“Show me,” I whisper.
“Show you?”
“Show me how much it can hurt.”
“What?”
“Punish me. I want to know how bad it can get.”
Christian steps back away from me, completely confused. “You would try?”
“Yes. I said I would.” But I have an ulterior motive. If I do this for him, maybe he will let me touch him.
He blinks. “Ana, you’re so confusing.”
“I’m confused, too. I’m trying to work this out. And you and I will know, once and for all, if I can do this. If I can handle this, then maybe you—” My words fail me, and his eyes widen again.
He knows I am referring to the touch thing. For a moment, he looks torn, but then a steely resolve settles on his features, and he narrows his eyes, gazing at me speculatively as if weighing up alternatives.
Abruptly, he clasps my arm in a firm grip and turns, leading me out of the great room, up the stairs, and to the playroom. Pleasure and pain, reward and punishment—his words from so long ago echo through my mind.
“I’ll show you how bad it can be, and you can make up your own mind.” He pauses by the door. “Are you ready for this?”
I nod, my mind made up, and I’m vaguely light-headed, faint as all the blood leaves my face.
He opens the door and, still grasping my arm, grabs what looks like a belt from the rack beside the door, then leads me over to the red leather bench in the far corner of the room.
“Bend over the bench,” he murmurs softly.
Okay. I can do this. I bend over the smooth soft leather. He’s left my bathrobe on. In a quiet part of my brain, I’m vaguely surprised that he hasn’t made me take it off. Holy fuck, this is going to hurt…I know.
“We’re here because you said yes, Anastasia. And you ran from me. I am going to hit you six times, and you will count with me.”
Why the hell doesn’t he just get on with it? He always makes such a meal of punishing me. I roll my eyes, knowing full well he can’t see me.
He lifts the hem of my bathrobe, and for some reason, this feels more intimate than being naked. He gently caresses my behind, running his warm hand all over both cheeks and down to the tops of my thighs.
“I am doing this so you remember not to run from me, and as exciting as it is, I never want you to run from me,” he says.
And the irony is not lost on me. I was running to avoid this. If he’d opened his arms, I’d run to him, not away from him.
“And you rolled your eyes at me. You know how I feel about that.” Suddenly, it’s gone—that nervous edgy fear in his voice. He’s back from wherever he’s been. I hear it in his tone, in the way he places his fingers on my back, holding me—and the atmosphere in the room changes.
I close my eyes, bracing myself for the blow. It comes hard, snapping across my backside, and the bite of the belt is everything I feared. I cry out involuntarily and take a huge gulp of air.
“Count, Anastasia!” he commands.
“One!” I shout at him, and it sounds like an expletive.
He hits me again, and the pain pulses and echoes along the line of the belt. Holy shit…that smarts!
“Two!” I scream. It feels so good to scream.
His breathing is ragged and harsh, whereas mine is almost nonexistent as I desperately scrabble around my psyche looking for some internal strength. The belt cuts into my flesh again.
“Three!” Tears spring unwelcome into my eyes. This is harder than I thought—so much harder than the spanking. He’s not holding anything back.
“Four!” I yell as the belt bites me again, and now the tears are streaming down my face. I don’t want to cry. It angers me that I am crying. He hits me again.
“Five.” My voice is more a choked, strangled sob, and in this moment I think I hate him. One more, I can do one more. My backside feels as if it’s on fire.
“Six,” I whisper as the blistering pain cuts across me again, and I hear him drop the belt behind me, and he’s pulling me into his arms, all breathless and compassionate…and I want none of him.
“Let go… No…” And I find myself struggling out of his grasp, pushing him away. Fighting him. “Don’t touch me!” I hiss. I straighten and stare at him, and he’s watching me as if I might bolt, eyes wide, bemused. I dash the tears angrily out of my eyes with the backs of my hands, glaring at him.
“This is what you really like? Me, like this?” I use the sleeve of the bathrobe to wipe my nose.
He gazes at me warily.
“Well, you are one fucked-up son of a bitch.”
“Ana,” he pleads, shocked.
“Don’t you dare ‘Ana’ me! You need to sort your shit out, Grey!” And with that, I turn stiffly, and I walk out of the playroom, closing the door quietly behind me.