“Ow, ow, ow.”
“Relax,” he said, as if it were possible with the way he’d wrenched my arm behind me. Maybe he’d once been a cop. Or military and cop. Or military police. I could imagine Shannon cuffing a criminal. Easily.
When I stopped struggling, he released his grip on my wrist. He kept one hand on the back of my neck, holding me in place against the wall while the other brought the paddle down across my ass and thighs several times in quick, hard succession. The sound rang out like a hollow gong in the echoing empty minimalism of the room.
Tears streamed down my face at the intense burning sting. “Shannon, please. Please, stop.” It hurt. It really hurt. But I think my fear was that, despite everything he assured me, he would lose control. I was afraid he’d just beat me to death. I was afraid he liked this too much.
The paddle came down against my skin once more, even harder, so hard it briefly knocked the wind out of me. He kept his grip on the back of my neck.
I pressed my hands flat against the wall on either side of me, bracing myself, seeking anything to hold onto. I tried to focus on the texture of the light gray wallpaper rippling beneath my fingertips in elegant, sophisticated patterns. I took slow, measured breaths. I did everything I could to live inside those breaths and nowhere else.
“Beg me again. Beg me not to hurt you.” His voice was low and guttural, not even human.
“Please, you’re scaring me. Please don’t hurt me.”
“Apologize for your behavior. And be specific.”
“I’m sorry I disobeyed you and went downstairs. I’m sorry I left my room. Please,” I sobbed.
“If I tell you not to do something again, are you going to go ahead and do it anyway?” he asked.
“No.”
“No, Sir,” he said.
“N-no, Sir.”
When he flung the paddle away, it made a soft thud against the carpet, such a seemingly harmless sound. Heat rose off my flesh as if I were burning up from the inside. But despite this fact, and despite my terror, I felt a hard, steady pulsing throb between my legs, and I was sure if my hand were to stray to the apex between my thighs, that I would be very wet. Embarrassingly so.
Shannon pressed himself to my back and cradled me against the wall for several minutes, his breath and heartbeat keeping time with my own. I didn’t speak. I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t say no man had ever done this to me before. Perhaps they had. How could I know? Trevor hadn’t. Trevor’s tastes had always run strictly vanilla, without so much as a stray rainbow sprinkle to be found. It was all lights out and missionary with Trevor—nothing too threatening.
I had never really gotten off with him, but at times, there had been a comfort in warm body grinding against warm body, of embraces under down comforters near a warm roaring fire. I hadn’t wanted to fuck up the tiny bit of not terrible that had defined my life in the park.
I don’t think I’d ever once thought that I needed Trevor to fuck me—as if he were the only source of water that could put out my flame. It had never been so dramatic as that. But standing shoved against the wall with Shannon’s rough jeans pressing against my heated raw flesh, I thought I would climb out of my own skin if he didn’t put his dick inside me.
I would never say this out loud. I was still waiting for a man who wasn’t a monster to bust in and rescue me off to a clean suburban politeness where everything was safe and smelled like lemons.
And yet every raw nerve ending screamed for Shannon to possess me and keep me forever, and now that he’d paddled me and I’d reacted as I had, I suspected in the darkest well of my being that I didn’t do polite sex. I couldn’t say it was Trevor’s sociopathy that had kept me from being excited by him. Because Shannon was a sociopath, too.
He sighed against my hair. “It’s exactly what I was afraid of.”
“What?”
But I knew.
“I like your pain and fear.”
I tensed beneath him, but inexplicably the excitement between my legs didn’t fade away.
Chapter Six
Shannon released me and began to pace, lost somewhere inside his own head for the moment. I just stood there, except now I was facing him. I leaned against the wall, memorizing the pattern of the wallpaper pressed against my bare flesh. I’d lost the will somehow to feel self-conscious about my nudity. He’d drunk it up like peach tea on a hot summer day, so it seemed weird to be self-conscious after all that appreciative ogling. There was no question he was attracted.
Or that I was, no matter how desperately I’d tried to ward those impulses away.
“Go to your room,” he said, refusing to look me in the eyes.