Priceless (Ruthless Doms 1)

I've taken this too far. I can't let myself even think of defiling her innocence.

I have one job, and I have to stay focused.

I remove my hold on her so quickly she nearly falls, the silky black fabric of her dress falls over her flaming red ass like the curtain at a play.

The End.

But I can't let her first punishment at my hands be in vain. I need to reinforce the lesson. or this has all been pointless. With considerable effort, I lift her shoulders off the table and turn her around to look at me. She casts her eyes down, but not before I notice they're brimming with tears. Marissa is disgraced.

It's about fucking time.

Still, I want to hold her. I want to console her. I want her to see how much better it is if she only obeys me.

I give myself just a taste, pulling her to my chest in a chaste hug. At first, she freezes, but when I wrap my arms around her and hug her to my chest, she burrows into me like she's meant to be there.

Khristos. She fucking is.

At first I think she's holding her breath, but then I realize she's trying to stifle her tears, and my resolve to stay stern and corrective dissolves.

"Be a good girl, Marissa," I say gently, running my hand down the back of her head and holding her face to my chest. "Don't make me do that again."

Her arms are tucked into her, across her breasts, a sub-conscious move of self-protection, but as I run my fingers through her hair, inhaling her sweet scent, she melts into me. To my delight and horror, she lifts her arms to encircle my neck. And hell, they belong there, too, like she was created for this very moment, to fit in my arms just like this.

We can't do this. We shouldn't.

I can't help but hold her around her slim waist. My hands fit just so. Right there. Just like this. Because Marissa belongs to me.

"I just don't understand," she sobs. "Why, Nicolai?"

"Why what?" Does she want to know why I punished her? That's obvious enough.

"You're the one who's supposed to protect me."

I swallow hard. I am.

"You're in danger," I tell her, though I know before I say the words that she won't believe me.

She shakes her head into my chest. "But you kidnapped me. You won't let me call anyone. You gagged me and you just spanked me. Why?"

I harden my heart to her tear-filled supplications.

I could tell her everything I know. And all it would take would be one call to a friend, one text to her boyfriend, one little slip up and we could be found. She would be taken. Abused.

And gone from me forever.

"Trust me, Marissa. Please."

"How can you ask me to trust you if you won't trust me?"

It's a fair question. But before I can respond, I'm vividly aware of how close we are. How my shirt is damp with her tears, how her arms feel around my neck, and how her full breasts are pressed up to my chest.

I release her, but not before grasp her chin and bring her eyes to mine.

We have no time to deliberate. I will not reason with her. I will not beg.

"I will tell you everything when I can, but I expect you to obey me. Do you understand?"

Her eyes cloud briefly and she tries to shake her head, but her chin is still firmly in my grasp.

"Yeah," she whispers. "I—yes, sir."

In the deep south, she was taught to say yes, sir and no, ma'am. I know this. But she's never called me sir, and always treated me like her peer.

Something's shifted between us.

Something dangerous.

I release her chin and nod to the bathroom. I take a step back. Denying this intimacy. I have to shut down anything that could happen between us. I fucking have to.

"Get ready for bed," I say, my voice hard and commanding. Detached.

I ignore the look of betrayal she gives me before she does exactly what I say.

It doesn't affect me.

It doesn't.Chapter 4Marissa

I don't even know how I make it to the bathroom. I'm shaking from what just happened.

And I'm so confused, I don't even know how to sort my wild thoughts. Hell, forget my thoughts.

My feelings. My body's absurd reactions.

I'm sad and confused... but hopeful.

Nicolai took me, but he swears it's for my own good. He won't tell me why he took me or where we're going, and he wants me to trust him. And deep inside me, I want to.

For years, I've longed for attention from him.

I'm struck with the irony of the situation.

Tomorrow's my birthday. I'll be eighteen years old. An adult.

And he just punished my like an errant child. It's hardly an acknowledgment of my adulthood.

But though I'm embarrassed, I'm beginning to feel things I never felt before. I've always been inexplicably aroused by his brooding, dominant nature, but now—now, he's stoked a fire in me so hot, the threads of my being are incandescent.