“Are you going to hit me?” I asked, my tone betraying how much I wanted that.
“Hit? No. If you want to redeem yourself for your reckless, stupid behaviour tonight, if you want me to make you feel good by making you feel bad then I’ll spank you.”
A shudder snapped and popped through my spine. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Um.” I bit my lip, but I knew what to say, “Okay, Lion.”
“It gets to be too much, you just tell me to stop, Rosie.” His voice didn’t soften, and I was grateful for it because it would have ruined the moment, but I could read his brief softening in the way he palmed my ass cheek and in the use of his nickname for me.
I nodded and an instant later, pain radiated across my bum. A second after that again, on the other cheek. He rubbed the burn of the impact deeper into my skin, taking out the string but prolonging the heat that sluiced over the curve of my ass to nestle between my thighs.
“You like that, Rosie?” he asked, his voice in his throat.
“Is that all you’ve got for me?” I taunted instinctively, trying to ask for something I didn’t even know the name of.
His low growl vibrated against my torso and I became acutely aware of the thick, long length of his cock pressed against my belly.
Slap.
The sound cracked through the air, adding drama to the strike that I felt like fingers thrusting into my clenching core.
Slap.
“Harder, Lion.”
Slap. Slap.
“Give me more,” I begged, my voice breaking as my mind fractured into charred pieces, dissolved into cinders.
“You’ll take what I give you,” he told me, both hands at my ass now, pressing the heat farther into the muscles with his strong thumbs and rough fingers. “You love it, don’t you? You love being my good girl.”
God, I did. For the first time in years, my spirit felt free from its cage of self-doubt and reprimands, liberated from social constraints and mores. I thought being an outlaw was as free as it got but I was wrong.
This was true freedom, giving myself over to the hands of a man who would let me run wild, but keep me safe as I did it.
I squirmed in his lap as his thumbs dug deeper, painfully into my sore behind and then I gasped as he leaned down to take a plump section in his mouth, between his teeth. The bite was firm, sharp in a way that sat above the dull pulse of the hurt in my ass.
I was going to come.
I knew it even as it shocked me. He hadn’t even touched me, not sexually at least, not really. And yet I was on the precipice of a tidal orgasm so strong, I knew I’d be passed out when it finally broke and carried me to shore.
“Lion,” I groaned, turning my head into his calf so I could bite it sharply in silent demand for more.
“Hush, I’ll give you more. Wait for it,” he ordered.
The very octave of his voice, the weight in the air pressing against me, shackling me to his will brought the orgasmic tsunami closer.
“Please,” I broke and begged. “Please give it to me.”
“There she is,” he praised as one hand slid down my ass into the sopping wet crease between my thighs. “There’s my good Rosie.”
Then he drove two fingers inside my cunt and cracked a vicious slap to the bottom of my ass cheek.
I screamed as I drowned in sensation, as it spun me in a breathless cycle of cold pain and hot pleasure, as I broke again and again like the tide against his curling fingers.
When I emerged from the depths, Danner was leaning over my burning ass to tenderly kiss each cheek. I smiled into his calf sleepily then allowed him to twist me in his arms and slide me into bed, under the covers.
I caught his wrist when it pushed the heavy weight of my hair away from my face and kissed his pulse there.
“Forgive me?” I asked, my eyes mostly closed because sleep was a hound biting at my heels.
I could feel his hesitation, then his hand turned in mine so he could run a thumb over my lips. “I’ll always forgive you, Rosie. It’s yourself you have to learn to forgive.”
I frowned, dredging myself from the edges of slumber so I could argue his point, but when I opened my eyes, he was already across the room, closing the door behind him.
I didn’t see him after that except for in passing for another six months and that was the last time I saw him for three and a half years.
It was exam time. How three weeks had passed me by in such a blur of change, I wasn’t exactly sure, but there I was sitting in the exam hall with hundreds of other students, taking the last test I’d need to take before I graduated to becoming a fully qualified nurse.