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Heather presses the ruler into my right palm until the edge finds the sorest line. “Nathaniel Price had a sister waiting beside those doors.”

I close my fingers around the ruler.

Heather takes it away. “Open.”

My hand stays shut for one stupid second. Then I open it.

“Tell me his name,” she says.

“Oliver.”

The ruler comes down harder than every strike before it. Pain tears through my palm and up my arm. My hand tries to close, but Heather catches my fingers and forces them straight before they can protect anything. I laugh once because swearing is too small for it.

Heather presses her thumb into the new mark. “Who came home with me?”

“Simon.”

“Why?”

I could say she had my food in the cart. Or that I didn’t know how far we were from the house or what she would do to Oliver and Jamie if I brought the police. Every answer is true. None of them is the whole answer.

Her thumb presses deeper.

“Because I’m Simon,” I say.

Heather releases me. “Kneel.”

I lower myself between her legs. The carpet bites my knees, and both palms burn when she sets them on her thighs.

“Keep them open,” she says. She pulls her dress over her head and drops it beside my clothes. She’s bare beneath it. “You chose to come back Simon. Show me.”

I lean forward.

Heather catches my hair before my mouth reaches her pussy and holds me an inch away. “Ask.”

“Please let me taste you.”

She guides my mouth the rest of the way. The first pass of my tongue makes her grip tighten. I put more pressure behind the second, and she pulls me back by the hair.

“Slower.”

I correct the pace. My palms sting against her thighs every time my weight shifts forward and keeping them open makes the skin pull across each ruler mark.

Heather moves one foot and plants her heel against the bruise over my ribs. Pressure settles into the tender place without giving me enough to brace against. I work my tongue over her while she increases it one careful inch at a time. My right hand starts to curl against her leg.

“Open,” she says. Her heel digs deeper when my fingers flatten. “You had six people and two doors. You brought your hands home empty.”

I slide my tongue inside her. Heather uses my hair to put me where she wants me, then drags me back to her clit.

“There,” she says. “Don’t improvise.”

I keep the same angle and pace. Her heel grinds into my ribs whenever I slow, and her fingers tighten in my hair whenever I get too fucking eager. Every correction puts something hot beneath the pain until I can’t separate wanting her from wanting the next mistake.

Heather rocks against my mouth. She doesn’t praise me when I find the rhythm that works. She holds me there and uses it.

My palms grow slick against her thighs. The ruler marks keep catching under the pressure, brightening every time she spreads her legs farther and makes me follow.

“Harder,” she says. “Keep your hands open.”