Page 20 of Her Bad Boy

She outclassed him in every possible way, and he knew it—especially at this particular moment—when he was in the highly unusual position of being the worst dressed person in the establishment, but he put his head down and sauntered up to her, anyway, leaning down to drop a kiss on a velvety soft cheek that she turned away from him at the last minute, so that he ended up kissing air, saying peevishly, "You know the rules. You're lucky I'm still here."

"This is a date, not a business meeting," he shot back.

She gave him a jaundiced look. "No, it's not a date anymore. You missed our date. Now I'm spending my time with this other delightful gentleman."

Lucas drew a deep breath and began to count to ten, like his Gramma had taught him to do when he got mad, but because of a glaring personal flaw, he rarely got to one, and this time he didn't even really make it there. Instead, he skirted around her seat to come to stand in front of the man who was very lucky that he had not yet decided to touch his woman, or the poor fool would have been withdrawing as many bloody stumps as was necessary to ensure that he never did it again.

He hunkered down next to the man, putting his arm around the guy in what looked like a friendly manner, but was, in actuality, more of an agonizing vice grip on the back of his neck. Then he looked the man in the eye and removed his baseball cap. "Take a good look, friend," he ground out under his breath. "Do you know who I am? And if you do, do you think that it's a very healthy thing for you to do to get within a thousand miles of my woman?"

The hapless man, seeing who he was almost immediately, practically wet himself trying to get away from them both.

Then Lucas took his seat and turned his attention to the woman who had caused him to make that grown assed man run crying home to his mama.

"What do you have to say for yourself, young lady?"

Allie crossed her arms over her chest, obviously not in the least impressed by him or his macho display of possessiveness. "Considering what I've let you do to me and as few restrictions as I've placed on you about that, the least you could do is to honor the one or two that I have left. You know how much I detest lateness."

Lucas got up slowly, grabbing her by the upper arm and lifting until her toes barely brushed the floor, even in the platform heels.

When he spoke, Allie's body contracted automatically. And not in a good way. Rather, it was in a way that made her remember every agonizing stroke he'd ever laid across her backside, and all of the other ways he'd reduced her to mindless howling and begging him to stop. "What this comes down to is the fact that you do not make rules for me, little miss. Considering that you have to know what your bitchy attitude means I'm going to do to you when we get home, I would have thought you would have thought twice about involving someone else. Not to mention what I'd have done to him if I thought he'd so much as accidentally brushed up against you." He pressed his nose up against hers. "You're mine, and I'm going to remind you of that fact every minute of the rest of our night together. Date's over."

Allie, possessing what was admittedly an alarming lack of self-preservation, opened her mouth to remind him that they weren't on a date anymore, but he was already on his way out the door with her, after having set her roughly on her feet. And before she could get those choice words out, he popped her loudly on that luscious backside of hers, making her jump and squeal, and some of the patrons in the bar—who were ninety-five percent male—were assholes enough to laugh or snort at his audacity.

At that, he changed his mind and whirled her around so that he could get a shot from the bartender, who eyed him up and down suspiciously until he laid a couple of crisp new hundreds down on the bar.

Then he proceeded to down the shot of fine, aged whiskey, pushing the money towards the barkeep, saying, although not too loudly, "Drinks are on me, gentlemen. I have something much more intoxicating to dedicate myself to this evening."

A low rumble of laughter erupted behind them as he escorted her out the door, his hand on her still smarting behind the whole time.

Chapter 7

That first, official date that wasn't a date, according to her, had been a milestone in more ways than just that one, Lucas mused.

He had been as good as his word, too, about making sure that she regretted her bratty attitude, and he had begun in the car. He couldn't really punish her there, while they were riding, but he did reach his hand between her and the seat until he found what he sought.

She was pantiless—and he'd bet braless, too—which were added to what he considered to be the unacceptably small cluster of ways she'd obeyed him this time. She'd worn what he wanted and not worn what he didn't want. But those two small things were nowhere near enough to offset her attitude, which she was quickly going to learn he would not tolerate.

On a whim, he took a small side road off the main one. Having grown up in this area—he'd inherited the house and the land from his parents—he knew where all the best, most secluded spots were, and since it was a little drizzly and a tad cold, too, he decided to drive them to a place where they wouldn't be disturbed and where he could begin her attitude adjustment. Lucas disliked the idea of her sitting there—untouched—while they were driving to his place. He didn't want her to have even this short time of comfort—he wanted her to be constantly forced to think about the necessity of changing her demeanor towards him, to feel an unrelenting impetus to do so, whether she wanted to or not.

So, they ended up at the head of a small set of wooded trails that were maintained by the state, but the parking lot was empty, as he'd hoped, because of the inclement weather.

"Get out," he growled, coming around to her side to hurry her along, not offering his hand but rather taking her wrist in his as soon as he could get to it and practically dragging her along behind him into the woods. As he did so, he searched through them for a tree that had what he wanted, and finally, a good way from their car or anything else, in a small clearing, he found just the right one. Then he positioned her under it none too gently.

"Take off your shoes."

Surprised by his command, Allie obeyed him, the familiar trickle of fear she felt with him becoming more of a river of it as her bare feet met the cool, wet leaves and pine needles of the forest floor.

"Look up."

Again, she did as she was told, all traces of naughtiness gone.

"Do you see that low branch there, the first one up the trunk?"

"Yes, Sir."

He liked the sound of that. She wasn't so haughty with him now, was she? There was nothing like the sure knowledge she was going to be punished to remind a submissive of her place.

"Reach up and grab ahold of it tightly. And if you're as smart as I know you are, you won't let go of it until you are told you may."

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