Page 45 of Roped

I bite my lip as I study him. Then, for some insane reason I say, “I don’t like them.”

His brows furrow.

And I explain, “They’re too small.”

His brows furrow even more.

“They’re, like, my least favorite feature. Even worse than my birthmark. So I don’t know if you’ll like… sucking on them.”

His response is to lift me up. He puts both his hands around my waist and sweeps me off the ground. He makes me wind my thighs around his waist as he settles between my legs. Shocked, I grab his shirt at his shoulders. “Radisson, what are you doing? You’re hurt.”

His hands go under my blood-soaked dress, all rough and authoritative, gripping my thighs. Like he has every right to do that. “Are you talkin’ about your juicy little tits?”

I clutch his shirt harder. “I—”

He squeezes my thighs, kneads them almost as he says, “’Cause if you are, then I’m gonna have to tell you to shut the fuck up.”

“Excuse me? What the—”

At this, he gropes my thighs so hard that I gasp. “That’s not shuttin’ up.”

“You’re such an—”

He pushes against me again and whispers in a rough tone, “You don’t listen, do you? You talk way too much with that pretty mouth of yours—”

“Fucking asshole,” I snap, glaring and pulling at his shirt.

A second later, though, I flinch and squeak, because he does something so totally unexpected, I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it happened. But the burn is real and so was the crack that sounded when he smacked me. He smacked me. On my ass—and my mouth falls open with a long moan.

As if I liked it.

Holy shit. I liked that. Didn’t I?

“So maybe I should talk with my hands,” he says, calm as ever.

“I—”

He smacks me again, this time on the other side of my ass, his palm all rough and rugged against my tender skin. “Told you not to sully your princess mouth because of me, yeah?”

I squirm in his hold. “I… That was…”

He digs his fingers into my butt, groping the burning flesh, worrying it. “I did. But you didn’t listen. So now”—another smack—“I’ll talk like this.”

My chest is heaving, my breaths broken. “What?”

“Rule number one: No cussin’,” he declares, his breaths warm and intoxicating. “Your mouth’s too beautiful, too precious, too fuckin’ innocent for that.”

“I—”

“Rule number two,” he keeps going. “Nothin’ about you is strange-lookin’ or too small or anything less than perfect; is that clear?” His eyes roam my flushed features. “You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen in my godforsaken life. You pull at my gut until I’m shakin’. You make my chest tight until I can’t breathe. You make me sweat. You make me hard. You make me hungry, and you make me feel like the world ain’t burnin’ around me all the time. And every time the world gets a little too loud and unbearable, I close my eyes and think about all the nights you came undone for me. You did, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” I whisper.

“I think about what I’d do if I was in the room with you.”

“What?”

“I’d have taught you.”