The air went out of my lungs. I hadn’t expected the shift in his tone, the kind of voice that made my spine go straight and my stomach turn over with a feeling I was never going to admit out loud. Slowly, I lifted my eyes.
He was seated on the couch. He had taken off his jacket and set it aside, and his shirtsleeves were rolled halfway up his forearms. He was watching me with that familiar concerning expression… The one that meant he had already decided exactly what was going to happen and was simply waiting for me to arrive at the same conclusion.
“I’m sorry,” I said. Which I was. Somewhat. At least sorry enough that I was probably going to get my bottom spanked very,veryshortly.
“Are you?”
“I said I was.”
“What you are,” he said, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees, “is proud and impulsive and entirely too quick tolet your temper make your decisions for you.” He paused. “And you know that.”
My jaw tightened.
He was right and I hated that he was right.
“She had it coming,” I muttered.
“That may be true,” he said. “But I told you specifically what tonight required of you. Didn’t I.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Yes, Daddy,” I heard myself say, and I hated the way the word softened the tightening in my chest even as my chin stayed stubbornly elevated.
“Three times,” he continued. “I told you.”
“I know.”
“And you agreed. You promised me.”
“I know.”
“Look me in the eye and tell me that you don’t deserve to be taken over my knee.”
My face went red hot. I held his gaze for exactly four seconds before my eyes dropped back to the rug.
“I didn’t say I didn’t deserve it,” I muttered. “I said she had it coming.”
The silence that followed was long enough to make my palms damp.
“Come here, little girl. Right now.”
Every muscle in my body went rigid. I recognized the feeling, the same electric charge that ran through me every single time, no matter how many times it happened, no matter how well I thought I knew what was coming. My pride reared up stubbornly and told me to hold my ground, but my body was already moving toward him.
I stopped in front of him and tried not to look at his hands.
I looked at his hands.
He had beautiful hands. Large, with long fingers, and a certain quality of stillness to them that was entirely deceptive. I knew exactly what those hands were capable of and the knowledge sent a flush racing from my collar to my hairline.
“You embarrassed yourself tonight,” he said quietly. “You embarrassed me. And most important, you did something you had given me your word you wouldn’t do. Which of those concerns you the most?”
“The last one,” I said, and the words surprised me with how honest they were.
He held out his hand, palm up.
“Then you know what comes next, little girl.”
I stared at his palm. My heart was hammering. My clit had been pulsing, traitorously, since approximately the moment he had saidlittle girland I despised my own body for it with a fury that had nowhere reasonable to go.
