AllFreeNovel
Share Us
His eyes narrowed and a stillness fell over him. Then he moved with a swiftness that caught me by surprise.
I was spun about and bent over the table before I could blink. One big hand pressed into my upper back holding me down while the other flipped the hem of my sundress over my waist. His hand came down on my ass with a loud crack. It took a second and the sting followed.
“Dex!” My fingers scrabbled for purchase on the wood, but he wasn’t letting me up.
“I’m starting to learn all kinds of things about you. Like how you don’t wear panties to bed, but I didn’t realize until now that you love to get your ass spanked.”
“I don’t!”
“You do,” he said, his voice low and calm. His palm against my back was warm. Unyielding but oddly reassuring. “Because you wouldn’t be talking shit about yourself like that otherwise.”
He was spanking me because I put myself down?
His palm came down again, this time to the other side. Since I was wearing a thong, there wasn’t even lace or satin to soften the sting.
He yanked me back up with a pull of my elbow and I looked up into Dex’s dark gaze. My dress fell back over my thighs, but my butt was stinging and hot. I was breathing hard and I was so very confused, not sure if I was aroused or mad at him for manhandling me. I’d never, ever, been touched like that.
Okay. I was aroused. Really aroused. I was wet and there was no doubt he probably saw a little wet spot on my panties. But he wasn’t doing anything about it. Or the hard-on I couldn’t miss that was practically tenting his shorts.
“You’re being an overbearing Neanderthal,” I countered.
He shrugged, the stupid, calm asshole.
“I’m taking care of what’s mine.” He studied me, his dark eyes raking over my flushed cheeks and wild hair, my green dress, my bare feet.
“Yours?”
Lifting his hand, he ran a knuckle down my cheek. “I now see why you were so… angry in Denver.”
I set my hands on my hips. “Oh? Tell me.”
“Things were out of control. There’s a new normal with Bridget. One that doesn’t include you.”
I hated that his words hit right on target, perhaps picking up on it even better than me.
“New? Bridget was away at school for almost four years,” I countered.
“That’s different.” His knuckle slid over my shoulder and down my bare arm as if trying to calm me. “You always knew she was going to college. Had it in your head and were prepared for it. But Mav? Her falling for a guy, let alone one like Mav, is a big change. Came out of nowhere.”
“He’s thirty-seven!” I stepped back and began to pace. “Pretty much my age. She’s twenty-two. It’s not fair she found a guy and I–”
I was mortified that I admitted that aloud. I spun around, turned away from Dex.
“I get that your life is busy. That you have to work ridiculous hours. I get that the tree really fucked up the only place you’ve ever lived. That Bridget is doing a happily ever after with my brother. But that doesn’t mean you’re not perfect, sugar.”
“Perfect? I don’t want to be perfect,” I admitted, thinking of Alan and his neat and tidy life. About how I was just like him. “It’s really boring.”
“Fine, not perfect. But I see why you make lists and crave structure. I’ll help give that to you.”
“You will?” I turned back around, stunned. “By spanking me?”
He nodded once. “Absolutely. Now you know I won’t stand for that shit. My dad used to put down my mom. And me. We could never be good enough, no matter what we did. Then I started to believe his words and I thought shit about myself. I snapped out of it once I was old enough to see the man for what he was. An asshole and a bully. You’re my woman and no one disrespects you. Even you.”
My mouth fell open. I didn’t like the idea of him having a dick for a father or being treated badly, but I’d have to question him about that later. It was what else he said that had me a little stunned.
“I’m… I’m your woman?”
“I told you that yesterday in the car. That I want more than temporary with you.”
