“His name,” I demanded.
Bianca looked up at me then, her heart-shaped face shadowed against her halo of blonde hair. She seemed shocked by my response, mouth open and lax, hands limp holding my own.
“You spanked me the other day, is that so different?”
“Entirely,” I barked. “You knew the rules, you broke them. I gave you a punishment and you didn’t even fight me on it. That is not the same as being hit senselessly by a brute just because he’s a miserable fuck and you remind him of what he will never have.”
“Why do you care?”
“His. Name. Bianca,” I growled.
“What’re you going to do?” she asked, head cocked, a dark thread of curiosity in her tone.
I didn’t answer.
“Hurt him?” she asked, eyes narrowing, cheeks flushing a pink the same shade as her lips. “Hurt him for hurting me? An eye for an eye?”
“No one hurts what’s mine,” I ground out, even though I could barely hear the words through the roar of blood in my ears.
I was already calculating how long it would take to get to Bumfuck, Texas, again. If I could get out tonight and be back for the meeting with Faire Developments at three the next afternoon.
“I wasn’t yours then,” she countered mulishly. “I’m not yours now.”
She gasped when I turned my hand over in her hold, the skin stitched back together and stinging, to grip her wrist tightly.
“You live under my roof, you sleep in one of my beds, I pay for your very existence. You are mine, Bianca, and the only man with the right to hurt you is me.”
I watched, fascinated, as her eyes flared blue, then black with obvious arousal. So, the pretty little thing liked my aggression, my possession.
A growl worked through my chest, but I didn’t let it loose.
The air in the office felt suddenly too close.
“Do you want to hurt me?” she whispered, the pulse in her wrist fluttering like hummingbird wings under my thumb.
I stood up slowly, looming over her, casting her all in shadow.
“Yes,” I hissed softly, dipping my head so my breath fanned over her face. “I’m the kind of man that finds pleasure in pain. I’m the kind of man who makes a woman scream and cry because she doesn’t know how to take the intensity of the things I do to her body. I’m the kind of man that would make a woman crawl and beg for me before I deigned to put her out of her misery by setting her on my dick.”
“Oh,” she said, almost inaudibly, more a breath than sound. “That’s, ah…oh.”
With my free hand, I found that tangled length of hair and wound it around my fist, tugging her head back so harshly, she gasped and her mouth bloomed open like a perfect pink rose. Her innocence contrasted to that dark, yearning curiosity was an intoxicating combination that made me feel as though I was about to lose my mind.
“You wouldn’t know how to handle me, little girl,” I taunted her.
Fire flashed in those sapphire eyes, tightened that full mouth.
It only made me harder to see that sass and spark. Made me wonder if she’d fight harder to get my cock inside her if I teased and denied her for long enough.
“I’m not into old men,” she retorted, but her breath was too quick, her cheeks stained. “I’m not into being hurt.”
“You were yesterday,” I pointed out cruelly, my grin a weapon. “You writhed and moaned from the strike of that cane on your sweet ass. I thought you might even come for me, untouched.”
“Not likely,” she snapped, breathless.
“That sounds dangerously close to a challenge,” I noted darkly, tugging her hair a little harder just to hear her hiss, just to have her back arch high enough to brush her breasts against my chest.
Their rigid peaks pressed into my pecs.
“You wouldn’t,” she said, but she didn’t sound convinced because even a skilled liar couldn’t have made that true. “You dated my mother. That’s disgusting.”
The grin that claimed my mouth was wolfish, full-on hunger and greed. I used my hand on her wrist to raise her right hand and brush her own fingers over the nipples beaded behind the thin fabric of her shirt. “You don’t seem disgusted to me.”
“I hate you,” she spat, and maybe she did.
I’d ripped her away from everything she’d ever known in Asshole, Texas, to bring her into the big, bad world of Morellis versus Constantines, to use her as a means to an end. I’d treated her poorly because, at first, she was just a tool, a vaguely annoying one. Then, she irritated me for different reasons. No one had sassed me, talked back to me ever. It was surprisingly refreshing and shockingly arousing. I wanted to shut up that smart mouth with my tongue, my fingers, and my cock.