Chapter 8
Georgia
Though his grip threatens to pluck out a few strands of hair from my scalp, I cannot help almost smirking at the man. I probably also look puzzled, because I am.
Awkwardly I prop myself on the bed. My palm sinks into the mattress.
His other hand is raised but he slowly lowers it. “What?”
“Do you really think minor pain does anything to me now? A deterrent? Pfft.” The huff blows some of my loosened hair into the air. “After the House, this is nothing. Besides…”
I shift on him, feel his muscular thighs under me and there’s that scalp-burning hold, and hmmm. My eyelids drift down. I decide not to tell him that spanking me does do something, it just doesn’t make me sorry I bit him.
“Besides what?” he says calmly, letting his ass swatting arm rest over my back and surprise, surprise, if that doesn’t make a rude excitement wander up through me from my butt.
“Besides,” I mutter, staring at the rug instead and losing my train of thought. “I think you should know I’ve been caned and thought little of it, even before that.”
The man leaning on the doorway, Lazlo, makes a noise. He’s righted himself and is standing there. For a second he stares at where I’m exposed. “I will leave you to it, whatever it is you’re doing.” Then he closes the door and now I have to explain to Rafael how stupid his punishment is to me.
Maybe I should pretend it works.
“I see. You say spanking does nothing.”
“Yes.”
He lifts me as he stands then throws me onto the bed, face down. I bounce once before he covers my body with his. I’m flattened under him. I worm out a hand and try to turn myself over, only to have that hand grabbed then the other. They’re both dragged above my head and held there.
“Now, be still while I examine you.”
“What?” My face is half buried in quilt. The weight of him alone pins me, though I struggle to get out from under him until I’m puffing.
“Done?” He looks down at my one eye where I’ve managed to unbury my face.
I kick at the bed and get nowhere, rock under him and…same result, especially since he’s crushing me from both sides with his elbows and arms around my chest and his legs splayed over my lower body. Defeated, I give in and slump to the bed.
“Good. You forgot we had an agreement already? You do what I say in return for getting access to everything we do to find those killers…or killer?”
“No.” I hadn’t forgotten.
“You thought Lazlo might free you? Was I right?”
I guess I did. There was this flicker of hope as ephemeral as the Easter Bunny, though Lazlo is a bit big for a bunny. I grimace then nod, bed linen rustling against my ear. He’d said he wasn’t interested in doing anything more than letting Rafael have me.
“Guess I can’t blame you for that but if you ever do it again, I will consider our agreement invalid. Gone. And you know what that means. I hand you to someone else. Just once more. Once. I refuse to keep you in a box. Okay?”
But the next man might do that. Keep me imprisoned. That ultimatum is scarier now. Reluctantly, I nod.
“You understand?”
“Yes.”
“Okay then. Stay there. Leave your hands where I put them.”
He rises onto his knees, frees my hands, and runs his down my back, like the best masseur ever, kneading all the right places as he goes, before reversing and massaging the same muscles all the way up to my shoulders. I groan, simply from the tension releasing from my overwrought muscles.
“You like that,” he says softly.
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Good to know. You see. I have my uses.”
I cough out a laugh that’s stifled by the bed.
He then rearranges my hair so it’s not half engulfing my face. “Stay.”
Though I feel like I’m half dog at this stage, with all the stay commands, I remain still, even as he sifts the dress material up the backs of my thighs, skimming my skin, softly revealing all of me down there.
“Open your legs.”
I hesitate for a second. He’s going to fuck me, and I’ve not done this since the internal sutures were placed. Though I know it must have healed…still, there is an inevitable fear of that pain I remember from before. From them.
“I’m not hurting you but if you don’t obey, I will do something to you at this meeting, tonight, whether Sir Benjamin wants me to or not. Am I clear?”
The threat is enough. I imagine him bending me over in front of that man and Lazlo.
I know the CNC parties are crazier but I’m not ready.
Slowly, I spread my legs a few inches. He pushes them further apart as he crawls backward.
I peek and see he’s kneeling between them, is sitting on his knees back there, and yes, he is examining me. I turn my head and stare at the bed.
It’s as if I can feel the touch of his gaze, and there’s that barely perceptible rise of excitement, licking over my clit where it’s nudging the bed. As well as the heat from where his hand impacted on my rear. The echoes that created have not died away.
I dare not move again.
“Spanking doesn’t affect you,” Rafael muses. “Liar.”
Quietly, I clutch at the quilt that’s beneath my hands.