Page 34 of Little Blue

“Put me down you—you brute!” I scream the words at the top of my lungs. I don’t even care right now that I’m acting like a misbehaving toddler. The man slapped me—on my ass—twice.

I haven’t had a spanking since—since—well, I don’t remember ever being spanked.

Heat burns in my cheeks and flames of rage twist in my belly. I could, I could… “I could just—fuck you!”

I’m not one to curse. Really, I think it’s distasteful and I simply prefer to find another way of expressing my feelings. Right now, however, all taste has been tossed into the flames that threaten to incinerate me from the inside out.

I’m angry. No. No, I’m not just angry. I’m livid.

“Irelynn Orla Taylor.” The man uses my full name like he’s scolding a misbehaving child—not the woman he kidnapped. I want to—I want to feel my hands around his throat. He grits, “Stop talking.”

I’m going to kill him.

I’ve never taken a life. I’ve never thought myself capable.

I was wrong.

He stomps across the entrance. I buck over his shoulder, doing my darndest to worm my way back down his front. I fail, and for my troubles, I earn myself another swift crack of his big palm against my ass. And this time, he doesn’t pull it away to pin me in place at his shoulder. No, the brute grips my thigh right under my stinging butt cheek—and I feel the tip of his thumb there.

The material of my leggings is so thin, that I feel the heat of his thumb pressing into the softness of my—my—private part!

Every part of my body stiffens over his shoulder. Breath snags in my lungs and stars wink behind my eyes.

A new kind of heat bursts inside my body even as I try to shrivel into myself.

He takes the stairs quickly, giving me another taunting stroke to show he can. Something unpleasant clenches and twists inside my core. He’s taking advantage of my body, and my body is responding in a way I wish it wouldn’t. I don’t feel repulsed like I felt with my foster brother, Jeremy.

With Ilya, I feel something else. Something…

Hot tears flood my eyes. I thought I hated him before, but I truly hate him now.

I truly want to hurt him now. Because he’s made my body betray me.

Inside the bedroom, he strides quickly across the space before he grips me by my hips and tosses me onto the bed.

I shriek, my body bouncing with the force of my landing. I get my bearings fast. Rolling onto my belly, I begin my escape. Of course, I’m not fast enough. His hand clamps like a vice around my ankle and he yanks me back across the bed. My hands grip the blankets as though they can save me, and I end up dragging them across the mattress into a rumpled knot that digs into my spine when Ilya forces me onto my back.

I scream as I look up into cool, enraged blue eyes and a jaw set hard as stone.

I kick out with the foot he doesn’t have a hold on, landing my blow to the center of his chest. A vein pops in his neck as he grinds his teeth. I’m about to land my second blow to his chest when he closes his big hand around my other ankle. He throws his arms to the side, forcing my legs to spread wide even as I twist and writhe in panic on my back. Then he leans his big body over mine—between my legs.

With the vein pulsing in the side of his neck, his cool blue eyes on fire, he roars, “Enough!”

I freeze. A small, pitiful whimper spills into the tension that pulses between us as he hovers over me. Breaths flare from his nostrils, reminiscent to a ticked-off bull.

I hate myself for it, I really do, but I cower into the bed.

“You won’t flirt with my men,” he grits from between clenched teeth. “Your smiles, they’re mine. If you want to flirt, you flirt. With. Me.”

Oh, God, he’s—he’s jealous.

His hands loosen around my ankles, spreading fire that climbs with his touch up the length of my legs until his big hands grip my hips. I’m frozen, even as I admit his touch is like a torch to my blood.

The panic in my heart mingles with the flame his touch ignites, and the trembling intensifies. I can still feel the sticky wet of my tears that streaked my temple before disappearing into my hair. My teeth clatter as my heart riots anxiously.

“If you want to fight, I’ll happily give you that tousle you crave.” His voice has deepened to a depraved pitch that has my core clenching with painful awareness. “But we do it here, in private. The last thing my men need to see is my woman being insubordinate.” He leans in even closer, so close, I can taste the winter on his breath—as though the cold lives within him. “I’ve killed men for less.”

“I’m not your woman. I’m the woman you kidnapped.”

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