Oath of Fidelity (Deviant Doms 3)

I shove the memory away again and mentally count to sixty.

Then I count again.

Where is he?

I don’t hear a thing, but I’m wide awake, vividly aware of my naked body on display. My breasts are small but pert, pressed up against the smooth, cool leather. My hands are splayed out like he commanded, palms down on the soft leather, my forehead pressed between them. My legs are parted, cool air kissing my naked sex and ass while I wait for him.

And wait.

And wait.

My back begins to ache like this. My belly and breasts nearly fall asleep, all tingly pressed up against the couch. I try to roll my neck, but it’s too awkward a position to really move at all.

I close my eyes, but this is too uncomfortable to really fall asleep. All I can think about is what the next decades of my life will look like, married to a man like him. I want to sob. I’d rather be a nobody on the street than shackled to a guy who commands my every goddamn move.

I start when a door opens behind me.

“Good girl.”

I don’t expect his praise, and I don’t expect the way I react to his words.

Nobody has ever called me a good girl before. Ever.

I like it.

I wish that I didn’t. I wish I wasn’t relieved he’s finally here.

I wish I didn’t want him to touch me.

“You did exactly what I said for once.” Noiselessly, he walks up behind me. My pulse races when I feel his hands spanning my hips possessively, his rough, calloused palms gliding up my sensitive skin. I close my eyes, not surprised to feel his hardened length pressed up against my ass. It isn’t the silky fabric of his pants that keeps me from touching bare skin, though. I turn my head to the side.

He’s wrapped in an ivory towel. The bastard had me strip and lay over the couch while he took a shower.

The terry cloth is thick and soft but slightly damp, and he’s naked from the waist up.

I want to observe every detail. I want to run my eyes along his tattooed arms and neck and chest, the curve of his biceps, the tight abs and strapping shoulders. If he’s to be mine, at least I should get to play a little.

When I was a little girl, my Nonna used to tell me a good luck fairy would smack babies with her magic wand to make them handsome or beautiful. I thought it an odd Italian tradition, but accepted it. And now all I can think is, Tavi got whacked good and hard.

I turn my head and look back at the couch.

“I like you in this position.” He gently grinds himself against me. Heat suffuses my core.

“Am I allowed to respond or are we still doing that silent thing?”

A pause before he responds. “Depends. What were you going to say?”

“Just that I’m not surprised you like me in this position.”

“A pointless observation.”

“A pointless position.”

Without warning, his palm slams against my ass so hard I lose my breath. I come up on my toes as pain explodes along my skin, and he smacks me again. And again.

Fuck.

Prelude to my punishment, or is this the punishment itself?

I hiss in a breath and brace my hands on the couch when he pauses, unwraps the towel from his waist, and twists it into a rope. I know what he’s going to do right before he steps back, flicks his wrist, and sends the wet end of the towel curling toward me like a whip.

The whack resounds in the room. The pain is deep, it burns. I hold my breath when he wraps it around his fist, spins it, and whips it again, then again, each flick more painful than the last, the crack against my ass deafening.

“Ow! God, that fucking hurts.”

I imagine locker-room jocks whack each other with towels, but I’ve never been struck by one. I’ve never been struck by anything. It hurts a lot more than I would have anticipated, probably like an actual whip.

“Of course it does. Don’t you ever fucking hide from me again.”

Whap.

Tears blur my vision, but I blink them back. I won’t cry, not from this.

The towel hisses through the air and whips me again.

I nod. “Fine,” I manage to hiss out. “I won’t.”

I gasp when he grips my hips again. The towel falls to the floor, the goddamn traitorous thing. His hard cock juts against my ass, unencumbered with the towel between us. “Why did you?”

“Hide?” My voice is choked, my whole body tense as I don’t know what he’s going to do next.

“Yeah, Elise. Hide.”

After taking that spanking, I feel like he’s torn away a layer between my mouth and brain. I couldn’t lie to him now if I wanted to. And what benefit is there to hiding the truth?