“There you go,” he says, replacing the knee on my back with his hands, stroking down my spine. “Let it out.”
“Fuck you!”
Smack!
I freeze. I don’t even breathe. A pulse of heat and pain blooms across my ass, and I just lay there in shock. “Did you just spank me?”
“You know your safe word,” he reminds me. “Are you saying it?”
Yes!I should be shouting it. But I don’t. That humiliating feeling, that smallness, that corner-time haze prickles at the edges of my mind and I shudder, trying to decide what to do. My breaths are short, shallow. I can’t think. I don’t know–fuck, I’m all turned inside out. Do I want to safe word? I don’t think I do.
What does that say about me?
“Are you saying it?” he dares.
“Fuck you!” I snap again, enraged that he’s asking me that so blatantly, forcing me to come to terms with the fact that I’mchoosingthis.
Smack!“That’s not the word, Tommy. You know what it is. It’s ‘red’. And if you’re not saying it, I’m going to spank you like a little boy, until you understand what I’m trying to tell you.” And he spanks me again just to prove it.
“Shit!”
“You’re not saying it.”
“Shut the fuck up!” I shove upward but he holds me steady, keeping me down on the couch, heavy and strong. “Let me up!”
“That’s not it, either,” he points out. And spanks me hard, several times in a row. It hurts, knocks my rage out of me, knocks my thoughts loose. And when he’s done I gasp for air because I guess I’d been holding my breath. My arms tremble beneath me and–
And–
And I slowly, jerkily sink back down onto my stomach, and give up the pretense of fighting it. I press my face into the cushion, hiding from the fact that I want this, and we both know it.
“That’s it,” he says softly. “Let yourself have this. I’ll give you what you’re looking for.”
“Shut the fuck up,” I mutter, small and embarrassed. I put my hands over my head, wishing the floor would swallow me while also wishing he’d just… “And get on with it already.”
But he doesn’t. The atmosphere changes, and I tense, wondering what the issue is now.
“Tommy…” I hold my breath again at the new tone of his voice, foreboding and ominous. His fingertips brush the back of my hand–where Bruce wrote his phone number. “What is this?”
“Nothing.” I move my hand to hide it, but he pins it to the couch. I let him hold it there and nervously peek at him as he pulls his phone out of his pocket. My heart kicks into overdrive.
“I wasn’t going to call it,” I swear.
He dials the number.
“I wasn’t going to call!” I try again while it rings.
“Hello?” Bruce answers the phone. Young-gi stares at it, grim-faced and determined. “Tommy? Is that you?”
“Who is this?” Young-gi demands.
“Bruce. Who’s this?” Bruce asks, challenging him right back. Bruce’s name sparks a flare inside Young-gi’s dark eyes and he grips the phone so tight his knuckles bleach.
“Wrong number,” Young-gi says, his voice calm despite his anger. The hand holding my wrist down is also still being relatively gentle, and it almost makes it scarier that he’s so in control. He hangs up before Bruce can respond.
“You ran off to findhim?” Young-gi asks me, tossing his phone onto a nearby chair. “You left me forhim? Who is he to you?”
“He’s nobody!” I squirm, but his hand cracks against my ass again, and it stings even through my jeans. I jolt like he just electrocuted me. He grabs me, hauls me up, and I let him resituate me so that suddenly, he’s sitting on the couch, and I’m laying back down on it, draped over his thighs, ready to get spanked.
