You have to. He didn’t want to be there in the first place, wouldn’t be there except for the fact that he owed Eddie the favor, but if she didn’t hold up her end of their deal, would he call the contract void and leave?
She definitely couldn’t let that happen. She needed him. She’d made progress, yes, but she wasn’t in top form yet, and she definitely couldn’t do this to herself. Which was why she’d been on her best behavior for the last two weeks—since he’d ordered her over a bench and doled out discipline so staggering, she still felt the aftershocks every time she thought about that afternoon. And she thought about it constantly. The real punishment hadn’t been the spanking, or his tough words in the face of her failure. No, it had been the way he deftly drove her need into the red zone and then left her there, aching and unsatisfied.
The punishment continued, every second of the day, with every brush of his body against hers, every correction he made to the angle of her back, or the position of her hips, or even her breathing. She thought of him when she dressed, giving attention to whether he would approve of the clothes. She thought of him when she ate, knowing he’d chosen the food. She thought of him when she soaked in the bath at the end of the day, easing each sore muscle he’d worked to the limit with ruthless expertise, making her more aware of her own body than she’d ever been in her life. She dreamed of him when she slept, and in her dreams, he didn’t walk away after spanking her. He stayed and did other things. Domineering things. Soothing things. Things that made her wake up sweaty and on the edge of an orgasm she never quite managed to capture. He’d reduced her to an agonized state she couldn’t escape, and couldn’t relieve.
Luke was in her head so deep, she worried she’d never get him out. Not just worried her, no, it scared her. Letting him get to her in such an unprecedented way was just plain dumb. At the end of this, they’d go their separate ways. Sooner, if she didn’t walk the line to his satisfaction.
“Let’s go,” he said, cracking an invisible whip. Her skin tightened in response to his order.
She gathered her strength for another rep, appalled by the inelegant grunt the effort provoked, but the strain of pushing her knees together against the resistance of the weights quickly burned any shame away. Struggling through the rep, performing the exercise exactly as he specified, sent her into a whole new sphere of agony.
“Good. Perfect. Give me nine more just like that.”
A glow of pride now accounted for some of the heat in her face. Okay, this struggle also gave her a whole new reality to confront. She wanted to meet his expectations not simply because she couldn’t afford to lose the role, or because she refused to give him the satisfaction of defeating her, but because she wanted to earn his praise. She wanted to please him.
“Hey, you’re not on a break. Knock these out. We’ve got other things to do today.”
She wanted to kill him. No, death was too easy. She wanted to torture him just like he was torturing her. Drawing on nothing but raw anger, she pumped out three more reps in rapid succession, but halfway through the fourth her muscles locked. She couldn’t push her knees together, but she didn’t have enough strength to let the weights down lightly, as he’d instructed. And if she didn’t follow instructions, she’d hand him the excuse he was waiting for. So she froze there, breathing heavy, unable to continue but afraid to admit she couldn’t.
“Do we have a problem?”
There was absolutely no compassion in his question. Only expectation. Expectation she had to meet, because falling short gave all his unfounded initial impressions of her the basis he needed to write her off as a lost cause.
Her legs quivered. “No,” she lied. “I just need…” She bit her lip, because otherwise she really would beg.
“Look at me.”
She forced her eyes open and focused on him. He knelt in front of the abductor machine, his inscrutable gaze leveled on her. His smoothly shaved cheeks weren’t flushed from exertion. His finger-combed hair wasn’t dripping with sweat. The sadistic bastard looked cool, and inexcusably handsome. She tried to hold on to the resentment, use it for strength, but a slippery panic was too all-encompassing to leave room for anything else.
“What do you need, Quinn?”
“Nothing. I—” Fuck it, her legs were going to give out. The weights were going to fall. She was going to lose.
“Six more,” Luke prompted.
A combination of sweat and failure burned her eyes. Her vision blurred. “I—I can’t.” She coughed an oversize sob from her throat. “I can’t.”
“Uh-uh.” His voice came from very nearby now. He’d leaned in close. “You don’t say those words to me. Ever. What do you say?”
“I don’t know. I don’t.” Screaming muscles erased her ability to think. Everything was breaking down—mind, will, body. All she could do was sit there, panting and trembling, as tears scalded her cheeks and her world condensed into waves of pain…from overtaxed muscles, from falling short. From being reduced to begging. “Please?”
She didn’t think the situation could get any more unbearable, but then Luke’s big hands settled between her legs. Long fingers grazed the abbreviated hem of her yoga shorts. A sudden bolt of need introduced new pain. Her breath hitched. Urgency gripped her, renewing her struggle to push her knees together so parts of her, ridiculously desperate for his touch, wouldn’t be so susceptible.
“I appreciate the manners, but no. That’s not it. Try again. What do you want from me right now?”
“Help?” Blind instinct pushed the word from her lips, and as it echoed around the room, some reinforcement inside her broke. She cried the word again—literally cried it—without the armor of a quick retort, or face-saving follow-up.
“Finally.”
The next thing she knew, he took the burden of the weight from her. Slowly and carefully, he guided her thighs apart, releasing her agonized muscles from the device. Relief had her slumped against him, face pressed to his chest while a brewing cauldron of emotion she’d pushed to some back burner bubbled over in incoherent sobs.
Anger boiled hottest. Anger at Callum, for hurting himself, and then her. If she really wanted to, she could blame him for every aspect of her current predicament. But no, she reserved plenty of blame for herself. She should have called him out sooner—when he’d first started disappearing at odd hours, and cash started disappearing from her wallet—instead of floating along on the path of least resistance until it just wasn’t possible anymore. Guilt brewed, too, for giving in to the urge to hide her suspicions and pretend everything was all right simply because she wanted it to be. Hope could be a dangerous thing, and disappointment tasted very bitter.
All the anger, disappointment, and bitterness tumbled out of her in a ragged, inarticulate torrent of desperation. “I’m sorry…I need help…please, don’t leave.”
Luke held her to him with one hand at the nape of her neck. The other made long, slow sweeps along her thigh. “Be still. I’m not going anywhere.”
She was clinging to him. Clinging, an