I can’t deny I’ve been a brat today. I think I have my reasons, but I don’t bother arguing in my own defense. Even though I’m a little afraid to, I ask, “What do brats get?”
“Punishment.”
I suck in a breath at the cool steel in his tone. At the word itself. I may have been a bit combative at dinner, but I’m not in the mood to fight with him anymore today. “Even—even if I’m sorry?” I ask tentatively.
“Are you?” he asks, not bothering to mask the interest in his voice.
I swallow down the feeling that I’m betraying myself with my answer and nod. I just want to go to sleep. I want this day to be over. At least when I wake up, I know he won’t be here.
He sits forward, bracing his hands on his spread thighs. “All right. Then I’ll allow you to choose.”
My brow creases with confusion. “Choose?”
“Your punishment,” he specifies.
It’s only when he nods to the corner that I notice the piece of equipment set up there. It’s horrific. A beam of metal erected at the center of an ebony-colored, solid wood base. There’s a layer of red leather padding, and restraints behind the beam. Most horrifying of all, in front of the beam a thick silver dildo is attached to some kind of shaft.
“What is that?” I whisper, hearing the tremor in my own voice.
“Door number one.”
“It looks like a torture device.”
“It can be,” he says casually, gazing at the monstrosity. “If you choose this option, I won’t fuck your pussy tonight. It will. You will get on your knees, naked. I will strap you into the restraints and smear some lube inside your pussy as a kindness. If you hadn’t apologized, I wouldn’t have bothered. I’d have let you feel every bit of the brutality as the impaling machine pushed inside your dry little cunt before you were ready. You’d strain with all your might to get away from the intrusion, but you’re on your knees. There’s only so far you can go.” He holds up a little black remote. “And see, I control that intrusion. So when you’re stretching away from it and retreating as far as you’re physically able, I make it thrust higher. Faster. Harder. I let the machine brutalize that sweet pussy until you’re crying and whimpering and begging for it to stop, begging me for mercy, and my cock is rock hard because I’m the one doing it to you. And then, my sweet Hallie… then I fuck your face while my machine abuses your pussy, and I keep doing it until my cum pours down your throat and your pussy is so sore you can’t sit down, and then in the morning I wake you up with my cock, because I love to fuck a battered pussy. So much easier to make you whimper and whine and beg me to stop.”
My knuckles are white from how tightly I’m holding onto the towel. My face might be, too, and my stomach feels sick.
Not that. Whatever door number two is, I want that instead.
When I can trust my mouth to open without bile coming up, I finally ask, “And my other option?”
“A spanking,” he says simply.
My heart lightens. “That’s all?”
“And whatever else that leads to, of course. But your second option is much less brutal, all things considered. You unlocked that one when you chose to stop being a brat. See? Good things happen to you when you behave.”
It’s hysterical that he thinks this constitutes a good thing happening to me, but I’m desperate to avoid that impaling pole and the horrifying scene he described, so I don’t say that.
Swallowing past the lump stuck in my throat, I ask softly, “What do you want me to do?”
“Which do you choose—me, or the machine?”
I hate the way he phrases that, as if I have any choice at all. “You.” I swallow again, the self-betrayal cutting even deeper. “I choose you.”
I can see from the glint of victory in his eyes that those words seal my fate, but who am I kidding? My fate was already sealed. It was sealed before I slipped into his office and grabbed one of his shirts to paint in, before I ruined the rug or the couch. It was sealed before I ever even agreed to any of his concessions, back when I first saw Jackson’s name flash across the screen and answered the call.
I should have ignored that damn call.
Too late now.
“Drop the towel.”
My grip on it tightens, but I override the impulse and force myself to open it, revealing my bare body for his viewing pleasure. My flesh warms as his gaze moves down my body. He lingers on the most obvious places, of course, but he takes his time admiring every inch.
“Come closer.”