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He pulled his T-shirt back over his head, careful not to disturb the bandages she’d taped in place. “Weird how?”
“I mean is there going to be jealousy?”
Marcus grinned. “Not from me. I have a feeling you and I are not interchangeable cogs in his machine. But if you getweirdas you call it, there will be punishment from me. I might not want to hurt you, but you’re not going to run over me, either. So don’t get any ideas.”
“He said you couldn’t...”
“He said I couldn’t break skin. I can spank you, cane you, and whip you so long as I don’t break that rule. And there are many ways to punish a person that don’t leave any marks which I’m more than happy to explore with you if necessary.”
An electric jolt ran down her spine. “Yes, sir.” Getting into a pissing match with him over Quill was the last thing on her mind anyway.
“We better get back to the house.”
Inside the large hall of the main house, Marcus pulled her into an embrace. His lips pressed against the shell of her ear. “Be good. I’ll see you tonight.”
He drifted off down the hallway toward the room she’d found him sleeping in the day before.
Saskia took a deep breath and dropped the robe before going to meet Quill for breakfast.
He was reading the financial papers again, his breakfast dish already picked clean. The coffee cup moved absently to his lips every few minutes as he scanned the news.
He glanced up. “Come here.”
She’d been about to sit, but she abandoned the chair and edged toward him.
“I’m not going to bite you.”
His assurance brought little comfort. But when she reached him, he pulled her onto his lap and just held her for several minutes, his fingers trailing through her hair.
“It’s important you know that Marcus can be punished as well and that I watch those video feeds.”
Lacy came in with an ice pop in hand, gave it to Quill, then left without comment.
Saskia hadn’t detected sexual undercurrents between Quill and Lacy—even when she tried looking for them. And she’d tried. But the subtext had always been there with Marcus. It just hadn’t occurred to her that Quill liked to play on both sides so she hadn’t noticed. Admittedly it was only stereotypes that had prevented her from seeing it. Both of them were so traditionally masculine that it hadn’t occurred to her they might have had a sexual past together. She knew there was no universal law that said one or both of them must be stereotypically feminine. That was just her fucked-up lens of things—her own issue to work through.
Whatever was between her master and her guard was something raw and animal and so innately male that it would have been impossible to look away, even if Quill hadn’t ordered her to watch it unfold. It wasn’t hard to see Marcus’s appeal to her master. Someone who could hang in chains and take lash after lash without so much as a peep. No whining or begging or screaming or crying. Sure, Quill might like such desperate displays well enough. But Marcus’s ability to take whatever was dished to him without complaint expressed a kind of peaceful strength she both envied and admired.
Quill studied her and stroked her throat as he might stroke a mare he was preparing to ride.
“I noticed in the video that you were able to take Marcus pretty well. He’s not unendowed.”
Maybe not, but he wasn’t as endowed as Quill. Did he think she’d just been pretending he was too much for her to take? Some kind of ego stroke or manipulation on her part?
She wanted to stay furious with him for what had happened in the gallery, but sitting on his lap with his arms around her, his erotically charged energy directed at her... it was hard to maintain those feelings. And if Marcus wasn’t upset by any of it... He was right; she had to figure out how to play Quill’s game and find all the loopholes if she wanted to survive here.
Quill tore the paper off the ice pop. “Open. You’re going to take this. Then you’ll take me. If I’m satisfied by both performances, you can have breakfast.”
Saskia’s lips parted as he slid the ice pop in and out of her mouth, going deeper each time.
“Relax your throat, Miss Roth.”
It was perhaps the first time calling her Miss Roth had sent a burst of excitement straight between her legs. She squirmed to try to ease the ache forming within her.
He smacked her thigh. “No. You were very bad. You’re going to take care of my terribly fragile bruised artist ego. Or my cock. Whichever. And perhaps you will be allowed pleasure tomorrow or the next day. Everything depends on your progress here.”
She allowed the cold treat to cool and then numb the back of her throat until she could take it as far as he wanted without gagging.
“Good girl. Now me.”
