His eyes flash at me with a warning I should heed. He isn’t safe. I shouldn’t provoke him. But God, I’m angry.
“I’m going home. I’m going to find a way.” Now that I’ve gotten started, I can’t seem to stop. I go on irrationally. “And when I get back there I’m going back to my job and I’ll write about this, about the caveman I found on the island who always knew everything.”
“Nice,” he says sarcastically. “Terrific. You do that.”
“How even in the middle of nowhere he thought that somehow his patriarchal ways were needed.”
This is the stupidest argument I’ve ever made, but I’m out of my element and reaching for anything to get my footing again. I’ve worked my entire life defending the plight of the repressed woman, only to be manhandled by this ogre with no help for it.
He’s so close now I can see a smudge on his cheek where he must’ve rubbed soot from the fire. He smells like burning embers, and when he takes another step toward me, I remember. The way it felt to be pinned beneath him and fucked. The way I felt strewn over his lap while he spanked me. The way his touch ignites me.
“You know what you need?” he asks. His voice is all rumbly and dangerous. My belly clenches with need and arousal, goddammit.
I swallow hard and I feign bravado, because I’m quaking inside right now. “Something tells me you think you know exactly what I need.”
He shakes his head at me. “You need a real man to take care of you.”
I’m so taken aback, I laugh out loud. “Is that right? And let me guess. You’re the perfect one for the job.”
But apparently, he isn’t finished yet. “You need to be put in your place,” he continues, reaching for my hand. At first, I think he’s actually trying to be all tender, when he plucks my hairbrush from my fingers.
“You asshole,” I hiss. Is this still present day, or have I somehow been magically transported back in time? It’s like he’s some kinda goddamn Scottish highlander who thinks he’s the boss of me, that just because I’m a woman I need keeping. Give me fucking heels and a broom.
Before I know what’s happening, he’s kneeling and hauling me over his lap.
“Stop!” I shout, because I know what this brought me last time, and who the hell does he think he is?
But he’s bigger and stronger, and it’s an easy matter for him to turn me over his knee and pin me there. Now I know why he took that brush. My solid, wooden hairbrush. Jesus. Without a word, he smacks my brush down so hard on my ass that I scream out loud.
“Ow! Hey!”
“You need someone to take you in hand,” he says, with another hard thwack of the brush.
“Oh, and you’re the one, are you? You jerk! Let me go!” I scream furiously, which just earns me another hard spank.
“Thankfully, yes,” he says, unruffled, and for some inane reason, I’m turned on and it pisses me off.
“Put me down!” I scream, scissoring my legs and wriggling as hard as I can.
“Not until I know you’re going to behave yourself,” he says with another whack of the brush.
“Behave myself! As if I’m a child! I will do no such thing!”
“Alright, then,” he says. “Suit yourself.”
Warm air brushes my ass as he lifts my dress and pulls down my panties. My God!
“Cy! You stop that!” I scream, but it’s not just because I don’t want to be spanked, though there’s that. I’m ridiculously turned on and mad as fuck about it.
“I don’t think so,” he says, before he smacks the back of the brush on my bare ass. I squeal and squirm. My hairbrush is solid wood with a flat back, and it hurts like hell. “I think that not only do you need someone to bring you to heel, but you like it, too.”
“I do not, you big ogre!” I screech, bucking and wriggling, but not able to actually get away from him at all.
“Oh yeah?” he asks, rubbing the back of the brush over my scorched ass. “So, if I part your thighs, I won’t find you wet as fuck?”
“No!”
“You’re lying,” he says. “And if you lie to me, you’ll earn a harder spanking.”
I don’t respond, since I’m not sure what to say.
“Tell me,” he says, spreading my thighs apart with the back of the brush, before he scrapes the bristles up and down my inner thighs. “Tell me, Harper,” he repeats. “You’re not at all turned on when I punish you?”
I swallow hard, because just hearing him say the words makes my heart thud in my chest and my pussy clench. I whimper when he glides the brush between my thighs. The need for pressure right there makes my mouth go dry and my pulse ratchet even higher.