Page 21 of Wanted
He couldn’t think of anybody. If forced to be brutally honest with himself, he wasn’t sure he’d have released her anyway and he couldn’t say exactly why he felt so conflicted about it.
He lay there well into the night, listening to the sleeplessness of the woman in the room just down the hall. Knowing he’d done just about everything wrong today that he could have; knowing he needed to change his approach if there was going to be any hope of success tomorrow. He knew how he wanted to change things, but that would be walking such a dangerous, temptation-laden path.
The stump of his leg ached in dull throbs of relief now that it was free of its prosthetic. The dull throb of his cock bothered him more, and it only got worse as he considered in his head all the things he could be doing—but never would—with the submissive down the hall.
Chapter 5
Pony/Anna
He wasn’t kidding last night when he’d said six o’clock would come early. It hardly felt as if she’d slept before Marcus knocked once on her door before cracking it far enough to call, “Out of bed. We’ve got things to do.”
He didn’t come inside. He didn’t even linger in the doorway long enough to see if she obeyed. By the time she’d pushed the blankets aside and sat up on the edge of the bed, he was gone and she was alone.
For the first few minutes the foreignness of the room was almost impossible for her to get past. It wasn’t that she’d magically forgotten the last few days—the hospital... Ethen... Marcus’s guardianship—but as she rolled to sit up on the edge of a bed that wasn’t hers, for those first few unguarded moments, she actually looked across a room that was so obviously not Puppy’s, fully expecting to see her in her childhood bed complete with its My Little Pony bedspread and Backstreet Boys poster on the wall. Then she saw the scale, and the paper tacked to the wall, and the lingering dampness of the carpet beneath her bare feet, and gradually she reoriented to her new reality.
It was the second day of the rest of her life without a master.
Shoulders slumping, she got up.
“Five minutes,” Marcus called as she wandered down the hall into the bathroom. “Consult your list and get your butt in gear.”
Head bowed, Pony closed the bathroom door and did what she needed to. Her feet dragged. Instead of washing her hands, she stood staring at herself in the mirror, her gaze wandering over the shaved side of her head while the water ran down the sink. She’d once had such pretty hair. She used to get compliments on it every time she went to the salon; she used to love the stares when they’d gone to the club. She knew how beautiful she could be, all decked out in her harness and her Pony gear, her naked breasts on display, her hair drawn up in a long ponytail mane that ran all the way down her back, the wisping tips just brushing the swells of her ass. Men had wanted her. Women had wanted her too, and envied her.
She reached up to touch the metal staples she couldn’t see, tracing the ridged ladder of them holding the back of her scalp closed. It was tender, and the headache was still there. She supposed she ought to be grateful she didn’t look worse.
Wilting, she left the bathroom. As she wandered back down the hall to her room, Marcus didn’t shout anything further at her. She glanced over her shoulder before she went into her bedroom, but she couldn’t see him in what parts of the kitchen or living room could be glimpsed beyond the end of the hall.
She was pretty sure her five-minute grace period was up, but she couldn’t seem to gather the will to hurry. Closing the door behind her, she took off her shirt and climbed onto the scale. She stared listlessly as the arm thunked in acknowledgement of a little weight gained. All that cheese in last night’s supper, she supposed. She reached up twice to adjust the weighted balances, but she stopped both times without touching it. She got off the scale without recording her weight, got the too-big sweatpants out of the closet and put them on.
Marcus was standing at the kitchen sink in black sweats and a grey tank top that showed off every hard knot of muscle that bunched and relaxed as he drank his coffee.
“What time is it?” he asked as she came as far as the kitchen table and then stopped. The black duffel bag and all those selections from last night were gone. Laying in its place was a long, heavy paddle. A good two feet in length, the thick business end was wider than her hand was flat, and a braid of red and black leather wrapped the handle in a sturdy grip.
Her wary eyes snapped from it to him, but her stomach already knew what that was there for. Instead of knotting in dread, it blossomed, swirls of that same blessed heat that had so tormented her when he’d touched her last night reigniting as if it had never stopped. Her butt knew better. It cringed, a far more practical response.
“Don’t,” he warned, his gaze fixed on her over the rim of his cup, “make me repeat myself. You will not like how I do it.”
Swallowing hard, she looked to the clock on the stove. “Six-twenty-one,” she forced herself to admit through a throat gone suddenly quite dry and tight.
“Remember your list from last night? We agreed that you had from six to when to get ready?”
Her breasts rose and fell in swift, shallow breaths. “Six-fifteen.”
“It stands to reason that six-fifteen should be what that clock says then, in order for you to be on time, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.” Her stomach was swirling, her thighs clenching. Liquid heat was trickling down between her legs, drawn to the erotic pulse of a clit gone crazy. She didn’t even like spanking. She didn’t like pain.
“Did I give you a five-minute warning?” he continued, setting his coffee cup down on the counter.
Her throat was tightening, but her pussy thrilled as he came towards her. “Yes.”
Marcus stopped directly in front of her, within easy reach of that paddle. “What’s your safeword?”
She was breathing too fast and yet it she could hardly feel herself getting the air she needed. “Red, club rules.”
He picked up the paddle. “Bend over. Hands on your knees and you’d best brace yourself, because you’re going to need it.”
The look he gave her as he walked around behind her released a heated flow of wetness that spilled through her pussy lips in a mortifying rush that was as unexpected as it was crazy.
