Total pages in book: 230
Estimated words: 217798 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1089(@200wpm)___ 871(@250wpm)___ 726(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 217798 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1089(@200wpm)___ 871(@250wpm)___ 726(@300wpm)
God, she’s beautiful like this, with tears on her cheeks and humiliation pink on her cheekbones and her hands stoically at her sides.
“We can discuss it,” I offer. “Or I can bend you over my lap again. I’d accept either outcome.”
“You weren’t honest,” she whispers. “Sir.”
“No,” I admit. “I wasn’t. A lie of omission is still a lie, and I omitted plenty.”
“That’s a terrible apology.”
“Probably because I’m not sorry. It made you my wife. If you had run scared, I never would have gotten to fuck you. To spank you. To hold you.” There is one more thing I need to do before we leave this ballroom. Isabella wants it. She doesn’t know what it is, not yet, but I can see from the trembling knees and the errant tears still sliding down her cheeks that no one has ever needed this ritual, this closure, more than Isabella does now.
I stand up and fold her in my arms.
The tension in her body doesn’t last. She sags against my chest and takes big, deep breaths while I rub her back. I do not tell her she’s done well, because she fought like a hellcat.
“I’m not sorry,” I murmur into her hair. “I want you too badly for that.”
CHAPTER 9
Isabella
I hope that Francisco might let up a little after the ballroom.
I’m dead wrong. He doesn’t back down at all. I’m not sure what I thought he would back down from—being himself? Taking what he wants? No. Not that. A small part of me thinks he’ll soften, and we’ll playact newlywed bliss.
There is bliss. Not the kind I expected. It confuses me in a way that I didn’t expect to feel. I can count on Francisco making me come and writhe underneath his hands and beg. He does it every day, without fail. I just didn’t think it would be...like this.
With a man like Francisco, it was impossible not to think he might be dominant. But he’s more than dominant. He’s royalty, and he rules every room he walks into in this house.
The morning after my spanking he strides into my dressing room and tells Lila to strip off my clothes. She does it without hesitation, and I find myself helping her. It’s Francisco who licks me that morning, not Lila, though he does make her stand close enough to see every movement of his tongue. I burn hotter with embarrassment with every hour that goes by. Every hour that he orders me to bend over this item of furniture or that item of furniture and display myself for him.
He’s not shy with my body, or with using it. Whenever he wants. Wherever.
Whoever is in the room. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is the force of his desire.
It’s a powerful thing. I can’t stand up to it.
And worse, I don’t want to.
A deep-seated voice in my mind reminds me over and over again that this kind of sex pushes the boundaries of propriety. The fact that it makes me so wet mortifies me until I realize that voice is the outside world. A jealous outside world.
A world that wishes a stunning, powerful man would bend it over the arm of a sofa and spank it until it was wet and squirming and crying all at the same time.
It’s never going to be simple between us.
I’m always going to have complex feelings about Francisco and the lies he told to get me to marry him. Lies of omission. He was up front with me about his expectations in a broad sense. Never the specifics.
I don’t forgive him for that. I can’t forgive him, can I?
He spanks me for every reminder, as if to drive the point home. Not enough to be a true punishment. Just enough to remind me of the deal we made.
A deal that’s very much still in effect.
On the fifth day, I wake up on my back.
It’s strange for me. I’m usually curled up on my side or sprawled out over a pillow, but sometimes when I’m dreaming especially hard I’ll end up flat on my back. I don’t remember the dream. It still feels too early to get up, so I try to turn over.
And I’m stopped by something tugging at my wrist.
Something metal.
I jerk both wrists toward my body. They don’t move. They don’t go anywhere, and it’s only then that I think to open my eyes and find out what the hell is going on.
Francisco and the butler look down at me from the edge of the bed. All my covers have been stripped away, and there are chains. Heavy and strong and with only the slightest amount of slack. I open my mouth to question my husband.
He looks at me from beneath those heavily lashed eyelids, daring me to defy him.
Maybe I would have, in the beginning. Maybe I would have raged and cursed and tried to run. Only two of those things are options for me now. I can’t run, and what I feel isn’t rage. It’s more complicated than that. Hot desire is already pooling between my spread thighs. The cooler air in my bedroom teases me there. I’m getting used to other people in the room, but the butler’s presence still makes my face heat and my breath hitch.