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That erect cock was pressed beneath her breasts. It didn’t flag as he followed up the first blow with four more strikes. He spread out the location so it didn’t get to be too much, but she definitely felt them, warning her how much worse he could make it.
“Apologize for what you said to me.”
She opened her mouth to offer a double Fuck You, but he anticipated it with another swat, this time with his bare hand.
Her body wasn’t rejecting the pain. She was craving it. Wanting him to do more. He was right. She was an emotional mess.
As she strangled on a sound mixed between frustration, annoyance, tears, and arousal, he rubbed where he’d hit, sliding over her burning flesh. Her thighs trembled.
“Stop it,” she said, but it sounded weak, even to herself.
“You can count heartbeats, or more strikes on your ass. That’s the choice I’m giving you. Neither one is wrong. You want more? If you do, I’ll give you more.”
This might be the most remarkable conversation she’d ever had in her life. He expected her to embrace the spanking, rather than treating it as a punishment to avoid.
“If you want more of the brush, it’ll hurt more as I go along. I’ll stop when I decide you’ve had enough. I have a pretty good idea that’s how you’d like it. Under the right circumstances, control freaks hand over control like it’s a hot potato they can’t bear to have burning their palms anymore.”
“This is…” She curled her fingers in the bedding, her hair falling around her face as she dropped it to the mattress. The strands were already softer and smoother, thanks to his ministrations. Something else inside her softened, the anger filtering away uncertainly. “I don’t know.”
A significant pause. “Yeah. I know. Like I said. I wasn’t putting you down, baby. Just stating the way it is, where your head seems to be. My first and only job tonight is watching after you. But you still have to make a decision. Heart or ass?”
She couldn’t help a strangled chuckle. “Heart…I guess.”
The heat that entered his voice took her by surprise, but also reassured her he meant what he said. He wasn’t patronizing her. “You don’t make it easy, doc.”
He helped her up, settling them back in the bed again. He put her in the same position, draped over his body, her leg over one of his, her hand curled on his chest. She closed her eyes as he dipped the brush in water and began again, combing out her tangles with fingers and bristles. Her ass was throbbing a little.
She began to count his heartbeats. As she did, her body and mind settled, surprising her. Even lying on his erection became a reassurance, not a provocation. He wanted her, but he would have her when the time was right.
He was correct. Now wasn’t the best time.
When her father died, and all the family dominos fell in the subsequent years, she’d abhorred the helplessness she felt. She’d associated that feeling, not entirely wrongly, with being a child, unable to control her own fate.
Yet there seemed to be a difference between surrendering control and losing it. While it was a toss-up on which of those had just happened, because he had literally wrestled control away from her, he’d also gained her willingness to let them move forward that way.
It was a very different feeling from what she’d experienced as a child. And she wasn’t messing things up by pushing them in the wrong direction. Because he wasn’t going to be pushed.
Earlier, she’d thought her shaking, her mental state, could take down a building. Being inside Brick’s care was being inside a place where the walls couldn’t fall down. A stability and surety she desperately needed, when the rest of her world was crumbling.
“Brick…it’s not weird, me reacting that way to you.” She mumbled it as sleep started to pull her down again, but she took his answer with her.
“No, baby. Not at all.”
Sunlight woke her. He’d opened the curtains, showing her the thin strip of woods behind his townhome. Through the tree branches, she could see some of the other units and a blue sky. The rain had passed.
She inhaled coffee and breakfast. Her stomach growled with hunger. Then all of yesterday came back and it recoiled from the idea, feeding on dismay, fear and panic instead. As she sat up, she pushed those responses down, trying to manage them the way she did at the hospital. Distract herself with the first thing on the to-do list. Arrange other thoughts over and around them. Those adverse reactions would eventually slither to the bottom of her uneasy stomach, like rocks in a pond.
The strategy mostly worked, though the first thing on her to-do list, texting Beulah, had her avoiding her phone. She wasn’t ready for that.
Unfortunately the next thing that crossed her mind wasn’t much better. Last night, she’d had tunnel vision, narrowed to Brick and the shit waiting to collapse that tunnel in on top of her. She’d blocked out everything else.
Including the blonde.
She bit her lip. Talk about being morally compromised. He’d kissed a woman on her doorstep, then Les initiated…what he did to her last night. Which he hadn’t allowed to become anything, but still. It might not qualify as cheating on someone, but the intimacy of it…
Oh, fuck it, she wasn’t giving herself that out.
He had a five-panel canvas mural mounted over the bed. Since the rest of her brain was a swamp, what she might have given a passing glance held her attention.
