Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 163328 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 817(@200wpm)___ 653(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 163328 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 817(@200wpm)___ 653(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
His strike came like deafening thunder, his heavy, unrelenting hand crashing across my buttocks and shaking the dishes on the table. I cried out, stunned senseless, breathless, and burning from cheek to bone.
Before I could manage a gulp, he swung again, setting fire to my entire world.
And he’d only just begun.
Over the past seven years, I’d been beaten violently by enemies and spanked sensually by lovers. Ashley’s strikes slammed through those extremes, erased the line between pain and pleasure, and crashed straight into war.
Most of the blows landed so hard I couldn’t squeak out a breath. Others caused my body to brutally flinch beneath the agony as a ballad of vulgarity roared from the back of my throat.
Fewer were the hits that teased stings of pleasure. Those were the ones that made me hate myself for responding as though I were made for his touch.
I didn’t want him, but I needed to give him a glimpse of the possibility. I needed to embed the seed in his mind and make him wonder what intimacy with me might feel like.
It wasn’t an easy ledge to balance on, but it was easy to close my eyes and forget whose hand punished my flesh.
Because he hit like Priest.
The more I thought about that, the deeper I sank into the terrible, wicked intensity of the pleasure-pain. Gradually, my ear-splitting protests melted into raspy whimpers and moans. But even those sounds spluttered with curses at the way I yielded to his imperious discipline.
I was wet. Not from the pain. My body felt as though it were immersed in hellfire, and I wasn’t into that.
What aroused me was his undivided attention. For a man of his stature and self-control to gaze upon me like I was his sun, moon, and sea, even if only for a fleeting moment, it made me feel alive. Hungry and hot and vigorously alive.
That was motivation enough to hold my position beneath his strikes.
Aching everywhere, I rocked against the edge of the table. As another open-handed smack collided with my sore bottom, I gasped, shudders seizing me anew. I felt the ridges of my swelling skin as profoundly as I felt the trembling in his palm as he slowed his swings.
Then he stopped.
My mouth opened and closed on an air-sucking gulp. The action pushed my cheek through a puddle of moisture that had leaked from my eyes. I hadn’t cried. Not consciously. But I wanted to. God almighty, the pain was all consuming.
“Don’t move.” His voice shook with the pummel of his breaths.
I couldn’t have moved if I tried. My arms felt like water stretched above me. My lower half hung off the side of the table, buckling my knees. I lay there, my eyes drifting shut, as his footsteps treaded aft toward his sleeping quarters.
Then he was standing behind me again, staring at my naked backside. His breaths issued in broken clusters of air, coming hard and fast as an effect of whatever internal force he was fighting.
If he were any other man, I would cover myself in fear of being rutted against my will. But Ashley Cutler hadn’t yet reached that level of desperation. Perhaps he was capable of it, of forcing himself on me in a moment of weakness. But I suspected it would take a great deal more than a spanking for him to snap.
I licked my parched lips. “Are you hard?”
Silence extended an eternity before he responded. “Yes. It’s an involuntary response to a perfectly red backside.” He cleared the scratch in his voice. “It helps that yours isn’t covered in hair.”
“You see a lot of furry arses?”
“With over four hundred men on this ship, I can say with confidence that yours is the smoothest. And the reddest.” He stepped closer and stooped low, crouching behind me. “You’re also the first prisoner I’ve punished who leaked something other than urine down the thighs.”
“Don’t look for lust where none exists,” I said, echoing his words. “It’s an involuntary response to a perfectly delivered spanking.”
He made a sound in his throat, something between a grunt and a snort.
Setting a small jar he’d retrieved from the sleeping chamber beside my hip, he rose to his feet and rested a finger on my tailbone. I shivered as the touch glided downward, following the cleft of my bottom. He didn’t push into the crease, instead keeping the caress agonizing, slow and light as a feather.
“As a liberated woman, I shall presume you’ve had all your territories occupied.” His finger paused directly over my arsehole without sinking between my clenched cheeks. “Tell me, Bennett. Has this domain been pillaged?”
Only a man who was interested in the act would inquire about such a thing. Priest had demanded it dozens of times before he broke down my resolve and introduced me to the sin of Sodom.