Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
Tate
I'm torn between wanting to punish her more and wanting to gather her up in my arms and kiss those salty tears off her cheeks. She tried to hide them from me, but I can hear them in her voice, and I know how I’ve affected her.
I'm determined to get the truth from her if it kills me.
If it drives a wedge between the both of us.
I hate that she’s put me in this position. I hate that she’s put my family at risk. I hate that she lied to me.
At first, when I began to punish her, I felt like I was actually getting somewhere. I don’t miss the tears on her cheeks, or the way her voice has gotten all trembly. I struck a chord, though, when I poked fun at how much of a “real” writer she is.
I don’t regret it. I need to get through to her somehow, and if this is the way I have to do it, so be it.
Jesus, I feel like a douche though. Such a fucking douche.
But I have a job to do, and I’m not going to fail at it.
I rest my hand on her arse and ask her a pointed question. “Are you going to tell me the truth, or do we need to escalate this?”
She pauses, then, with a tremulous voice asks, “What does escalate this mean?”
Without thinking, I spank her again, my palm slapping against her naked skin with the sound of a gunshot.
“Ow! Oh, God, Jesus, I’ll give you the truth. Doesn’t matter what it means, I just wondered if you were calling the others in.”
I spank her again, just where her thigh meets her arse, and she hisses in a breath. Sensitive there. Noted.
“You want my brothers to see you like this?”
“Noooo,” she moans. “No, no, please.”
She’s afraid of being before them, then.
“You fear them more than you fear me?” I ask, shaking my head from side to side. For a vulnerable woman in the process of being punished, she’s got one fucking nerve.
“No! God, no. It isn’t that at all.”
I growl and reach for my belt. “Escalating this means spanking you harder. Punishing you more severely.”
In one quick motion, I tug the belt through the loops on my trousers, fold it over, and slap it against her arse. She squeals and arches.
“Is that what you need?”
“No!” she gasps, panting for breath. “No, Tate.” Her voice cracks. “I’ll give you anything you want. I’ll tell you the truth.” She breaks out into a sob. “All of it.”
Now we’re finally getting somewhere. If I knew she’d react like this to my belt, I’d have fucking started with it.
“What do you want to know?”
We’ll start easy.
I trail the folded leather down her punished skin.
“Tell me the truth about whether or not any of this excites you.”
That wasn’t the first question I should’ve asked, but I couldn’t help myself.
She answers quickly.
“Yes. It hurts like crazy, and I wouldn’t want to be punished like this often, but… yeah. I don’t know how to explain it, but can only say that… yes, it hurts. I hate that you’re punishing me. But… it turns me on.”
It takes something for her to confess this, I can tell.
I nod. I already knew this, but I’m pleased she’s fessing up.
“Good girl,” I say approvingly, the belt still resting against her punished arse. “Next question. Who are your contacts?”
She hesitates. “Which ones?”
“All of them.”
She releases a shuddering breath. “Aisla was my contact here, but since she’s no longer here I rely on my own observations. I’ve got a contact in the Aitkens Clan and one in Wales. I ask your sisters lots of questions.”
She starts when I growl.
Goddammit.
“Do my sisters know you write the books?”
“I… can’t tell you that. I know they suspect it, and I have reason to believe it was one of them who let Aisla go. But I’ve never told them anything, and we’ve never openly discussed it.”
Good. Now we’re really getting somewhere.
“Do you have any other books in this series coming out?”
She grimaces, but a quick slap of leather gets her telling me the truth. “Yes! Yes, I do. It’s been submitted to my publisher already and comes out in a few weeks.”
“Mother of God,” I mutter, shaking my head. Jesus. “That one won’t go to publication.”
“It’s too late,” she says with a sigh. “It’s already submitted. There’s no way to stop it. I can’t take it back now. It’s been sent out to early readers…”
The leather slices through the air with a faint whistling sound. “You will.”
She grits her teeth and whimpers. She nods.
“Do you understand me?”
“Aye.” Another sigh.
“We’ll get that book back. We’ll prevent it from being published.”
“Fine,” she says on a sob. “But you do realize that this is my livelihood, don’t you? You can’t just… take it all away.”
“It wasn’t your story to tell.”
She’s crying freely now. She’s given me the truth that I need for now. Next, I’ll have to get the novel from publication and see what else she’s done.
She buries her face in one of the pillows and sobs. Her shoulders shake, and her whole body trembles. I feel like a total arse.
I’ve done my job though.
For now.
I thread my belt back through the loops on my trousers.
It’s late. The sun’s set long ago, and the moon rises now above the mountains, casting a whitish glow on the ground below.
I kneel on the bed beside her.
“Come here.” My voice is gruffer than I intend. I hate that I’ve had to punish her. I hate that she’s brought this on herself. And what the hell am I supposed to do with the knowledge she gave me?
“Don’t tell your brothers,” she sobs. “Don’t tell Islan and Paisley. I’ll pull the books, Tate. I won’t publish any more of them.” She cries even harder. “But I don’t want to lose everything at once.”
She breaks into a fresh round of tears. This isn’t her. Fran isn’t the girl that cries easily. When she was young, I once saw her break her leg when the girls were playing, and she gritted her teeth and never shed a tear.
We witnessed the burial of her father.
Not a tear.
But now… something’s broken inside her, and she can’t seem to stop the torrent of tears.
I shift on the bed to sit beside her and drag her over to me.
“C’mere.”
She pushes me away.
“I said come here,” I tell her, more insistent this time.
She looks up at me, her eyes swollen and red, and shakes her head. “I don’t want to be near you right now. I don’t want anything to do with you. What do you want with me now?”
I frown at her. “I want you here. You come here now, because I told you to.”
She shakes her head. I roll my eyes, reach for her, and yank her over to me, but she holds herself apart, her body tight, and shakes her head.
“I won’t.”
“You won’t what?”
Her voice trembles. “Let you comfort me.”
“You will.” I stroke my hand gently down the length of her back, then back up again. “I’m not angry with you anymore. I punished you, but you earned it.”
“You’re mean.”
I shake my head. “I don’t regret punishing you. You deserved much worse than what you got.”
Still, she holds herself aloof, but doesn’t move away from my touch when I caress her back.
“Believe it or not, Fran, I’m on your side.”
Her jaw drops open. “And why would I believe that?”
“Because if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have gotten the truth from you. I’d have taken you straight to my brothers and handled it with them.”
It’s the truth.
She’s beginning to soften. I place my hand on her lower back and slide her closer to me. When she doesn’t protest, I wrap my arm more firmly around her back and hold her to me.
“I believe you when you said you never meant to put us in danger.”
“I’m still not really sure how you’re in danger.”
“You revealed Clan secrets. And there are so many facts that are based on truth, there are people reading the books now that believe everything to be true.”
Her eyebrows shoot heavenward. “Everything.”
“Aye, lass. Everything. We don’t know what’s fabricated and what’s true, and it’s fucking dangerous for us not to know that. Anyone who’s discovered the books could wonder the same.”
She bites her lip. I wonder if she realizes that she’s nearly resting her head on my chest at this point, her naked body flush against mine. Her breathing slows.
“The arranged marriages, you mean?”
“Aye, among other things. For example, it’s not publicly known that my mother wed my father under duress.”
She blinks. “Really?”
“Really, and that could be used against her.”
She frowns. “I didn’t think of that.”
There were a lot of things she didn’t think about.
“No one knows our grandmother lives here either.”
She bites her lip. “Oh.”
“It’s not common knowledge that my father’s ill, and fucking no one knows that Mac and Leith are married.”
“What? Seriously? Of course they must, they have family…”
“It’s kept as quiet as possible.”
“How can… people not know that?”
I exhale, trying to be patient. She literally didn’t know. “Because we’re reclusive here in the mountains. We don’t share our information freely. It can be used against us and has been.”
“Jesus.” She winces, and it’s the first indication of real guilt she’s given me. I feel myself softening toward her. She really didn’t know.
“No one knows the location of our interrogation room, the hierarchy of the bodyguards we hire.” I pause. “I should say, no one did. Until the books were released.”
She closes her eyes and lets out a breath. “I didn’t know, I truly didn’t. Maybe you should take me to your brothers. Let them deal with me properly.”
By instinct, I fist her hair, tug her head back, and her eyes fly open, meeting mine.
“Are you implying I didn’t do a good enough job?”
She moves to shake her head but obviously can’t when I’m holding onto her so tightly.
“No, Tate,” she whispers. “I mean maybe they should be… harsher.”
I drag her face closer to mine, only a breath apart.
“Do you need more than what I gave you?” I reach a hand to her arse and cup it.
“Maybe I should die,” she says, her eyes watering. “Maybe you should get rid of me. What would you do if it were anyone else?”
This is no ploy for mercy or sympathy. She’s earnest.
I blink in surprise, shocked at where she’s taken this.
“It would depend.”
My gaze focuses on the way she bites her plump, luscious lips. Her ragged breath tells me she’s either nervous or aroused. Probably both.