He sighed and moved to my other bra strap. “I’ve wanted plenty of women, believe me. But most women don’t want a mangled mess with a fucked-up head. Until you.”
“Stop it,” I said. “You’re none of those things.”
“I am,” he said calmly. “I own it. That’s why we’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you.” He slid the other bra strap down, and his voice gentled. “I think you wanted something once, and you didn’t get it. So you decided you didn’t want anything anymore.”
They cut like a sharpened blade, those words. They hurt, and my first reaction was to hurt him back. “Fuck you, Max.”
“What was it?” he asked, unfazed by my hostility. My bra straps were both down now, but he made no move to remove my bra. “What did you want so much? Tell me what it was.”
“God, you are so fucking clueless.” The words came out without thinking. I had to hurt before the hurt came to me—I always had to. “You think you’re so smart, but you don’t know me at all.” I glared at him. “It was just a few fucks, Max. That’s all it was. Maybe it seemed like more to you, because it had been so long. But I can tell you that it wasn’t more to me. There’s a lineup of men who want me. I could pick any one.”
He watched me with his dark eyes, and then he unbuttoned one cuff, rolling the sleeve back over his muscled arm. “That’s how you’re going to play it, is it?” he said, his voice deceptively casual. “That’s what you’re going to say?”
“Yes. I strip because I like it.” Those words came out hard—they were such a lie I could barely choke them out of my throat. “I like it when men watch me and they can’t have me. I like making them hard. I like knowing that they think of me when they jerk off at night. That I’m the one they’ll never have.” I choked out another lie. “Just like I’m the one you’ll never have.”
He just shook his head, rolling his other sleeve up. “You just swallowed my come in the limo fifteen minutes ago,” he pointed out. “You loved it. You expect me to believe that?”
The memory of that was still so fresh, so consuming, that I couldn’t speak for a second. Then I said, “I was playing with you.”
“You were never playing with me.” Now there was an undercurrent of anger in his voice, controlled but unmistakable. “You just think you were. Now go to the bed.”
I gaped at him. “You actually think you’re going to fuck me?”
He shook his head again. “I’m not remotely going to fuck you, Gwen. That would be too easy. Now go to the bed.”
I did it. That was how messed up I was, how badly I wanted to know what came next. I walked over to the bed, pretending that my knees weren’t almost shaking. This was the strangest thing I’d ever done, but saying those words, listening to him, letting the truth come out—it was so exciting it was almost unbearable. “Okay, now what?” I snapped.
He had followed me. He put a hand on my shoulder and turned me so I faced the side of the bed. He hooked his fingers in my panties at my hips, pushing them to the floor; I wondered if he could see how wet I was, if he even noticed. Then he put a big, warm hand on my back and pressed me gently until I was bent over, my palms braced on the
bed.
What was this? It wasn’t sex. I wanted it to be sex—despite my brave words, if he’d fucked me I would have given in, and I would have come in minutes. But he didn’t even take his clothes off. He ran his hand up my back, unhooked my bra, let it fall to the bed. Then he ran his hand around my waist, over my hip, holding me in place.
“What are you doing?” I said. My voice was shaky. His touch was making me crazy.
He leaned forward and his beard brushed my skin as he spoke. “I’m showing you who is playing who.”
The first spank hit my ass out of the blue, and I jumped. He held me in place so I wouldn’t lose my balance.
“Ow!” I shouted.
He spanked me again, and it was a shock of pain. His hand was big, his arm powerful, and the sting was sharp on my skin.
“Max! What are you—”
“Be quiet,” he said. And then he added the most curious instruction: “Just feel it.”
I closed my eyes. He was bracing me with one arm over my bent hips; his hold wasn’t even tight. I could have pushed him off, gotten away. I could even have kicked him or punched him, kneed him in the balls. Instead I stilled and waited in a crazy sort of curiosity.
The third hit made me gasp. The pain was wild, sudden, flushing through my skin before evaporating again. Anger flooded through me, sudden and powerful, like poison in my veins—not anger at Max, but anger at everything. It was like the pain had released it from where I kept it locked down. I felt like screaming.
He spanked me again, and the sadness came up. The self-pity. I didn’t sob, but I felt wet tears on my cheeks, as if everything that needed to come out was finally being let go. And with the next spank came the lust, the pain blooming between my legs, down my ass and the backs of my thighs. The lust only escalated with the next hit, my body clenching and empty. I wanted him inside me. I couldn’t be happy until he was there. I wanted to fuck him for hours.
He paused, rubbing his palm over my sore ass, seeming to assess me. It made my skin tingle. I was panting as hard as if I’d run a mile.
“We done?” he asked me.
“Yes,” I said.