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“I don’t fucking understand? Me? Do you have the first clue what I’ve been through?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Do you?” I spank again, and she cries out.
“It hurts!”
“That’s the fucking point, princess.” I flip her onto the bed and lift her to her knees. “Do you have any idea what you’ve put me through? I thought Vincent Douglas fucking kidnapped you! I thought it was him who destroyed your condo and took you. But you’re a good actress. I’ll give you that.”
“It wasn’t…”
“Very realistic.”
“I swear I—”
I push the goddamn fabric of the too long nightgown away and smack again. “That’s how red your ass will stay for the foreseeable future. Spread your legs.”
“Judge, I—”
“Spread your goddamn legs.”
She does, taking her knees wide. She’s on her elbows, looking straight ahead. I take her in. Open. Exposed. She looks back at me.
“Face forward.”
“Judge, I can explain.”
“I said face fucking forward!” I hear how I sound. How angry. How not like myself.
“Judge?”
“Do what I say, or God help me.” I undo my belt buckle, not sure what the hell I’m even thinking because I have no intention of using it on her, and the instant I do, she lets out a scream and jumps from the bed.
“No!” She runs across the room, as far from me as she can get, panic in her wide eyes. She picks up the closest thing she can get her hands on, a small, decorative vase, and throws it across the room at me.
I duck to avoid it, and it crashes against the wall. It shatters and she uses that moment to get past me to the door and slips through my grasp, leaving me holding the fabric of the nightgown when I reach for her. But as the door opens and she charges out, I don’t let go and the gown rips, leaving a naked Mercedes stumbling down the hall.
“Get back here!” I go after her and manage to grab a handful of hair to tug her backward. Her arms flail as she falls into me. I catch her, wrap an arm around her, and that’s when I feel it.
When I feel the thing that stops me dead.
It’s like time stops. The whole fucking world comes to a fucking halt.
“What the—?”
She scurries away when I loosen my grip, and I get a good look when she stands still, letting me.
It takes an eternity to drag my gaze from her small, rounded belly up over her breasts swollen like I’d noticed weeks ago when I’d thought nothing of it, up to her tearstained face.
My mouth falls open as she stares at me, breathing hard.
“Jesus.” It’s all I can manage.
“I didn’t know what they would do. I couldn’t let them hurt the baby.”
6
Judge
