Page 23 of Wanted
“Up, Sir.”
“Did you record it?”
She stared at the floor, her breath catching in hitches and hiccups. “N-no, Sir.”
“Why not?”
Because she hadn’t wanted to. She stared at the floor.
“Bare your ass.”
She burst into tears all over again. She also didn’t bother standing. Hooking her thumbs in the waist of her sweatpants, she pushed them down. The elastic scraped over the swells of her already raw and sore ass.
One more, that was all he gave her, but on bare, fiery flesh, the crack of the paddle was deafening and the sharpness of the pain so blinding that for a moment, all she could do was bawl. She held herself in position, barely, dreading the more that she was so sure would follow until she heard the faint clatter of the paddle being laid back down on the table. He took hold of her pants, pulling them back up over her deep red bottom.
“Go record your weight, wash your face, and be back here in two minutes. I don’t like starting my day late.”
As he headed past her into the kitchen to get his coffee, his hand fell on the top of her hair. He stroked her, the only sign of forgiveness he offered, but it worked.
Pony rose, her bottom on the most painful fire, but every step she took back to her bedroom felt somehow lighter. Gone was that depressing weight that had consumed her when first she’d awakened this morning. Her hand was shaking as she recorded her weight. Her face was red and her eyes watery and swollen, but she felt so much better as she bent over the bathroom sink to obediently wash her face.
She was well within her two-minute deadline when she returned to the kitchen. Whoever would have thought a spanking could actually make her feel better instead of worse?
* * *
Marcus
He’d done exactly what he’d said all day yesterday that he wouldn’t do. He’d treated her as if he were her dom and she were his to command.
Hip propped against the kitchen sink, his coffee in his hand, Marcus crossed his ankles and waited to see how she would emerge. Had he just made things better or worse?
With roughly thirty seconds left until she hit her deadline, Anna came back down the hallway and he got his answer. She wasn’t smiling, but her step was lighter, her back straighter, her shoulders no longer hunched as if she were a shell of a woman going through the motions, but thrown back. Even her eyes looked clear, not haunted or sullen, or even sad.
He’d got it right.
Pushing off the sink, he got a bottle of water from the fridge and handed it to her. “Had you been on time, I’d have let you have coffee. Now you’ll have to wait for breakfast. Sad, that you’ll have to do your exercises with a hot ass. Still, the choice was yours. Follow me.”
Water bottle in hand, she trailed him through the kitchen as obediently as a well-trained puppy.
The basement stairs were concealed behind a door near the entrance to the garage. He hit the light switch just inside and headed down the plain wooden steps. Of all the rooms in his house and barn included, this was the one Marcus spent most of his time in. This was his home gym and the biggest reason he was able to walk now as well as he did, without a cane despite the bullet fragments still lodged in his hip and his below-the-knee prosthetic. As far as he was concerned, everything he needed was right here. A mat in the middle of the floor where he could do his yoga, two treadmills up against the wall from when his ex-fiancé and submissive had lived with him, the well-used punching bag on which he regularly beat his frustrations, and in the corner, the weights that kept him toned. Solid body, solid mind—even temper, that had become his motive shortly after his failed attempt to eat a bullet.
Megan hadn’t enjoyed this room as much as he had, but she’d tolerated it. Mostly because he hadn’t given her a choice. He didn’t intend to give Anna one either. She came down as far as the bottommost step, and then he heard her footsteps stop when she paused to look around. The floor was cement, the ceiling bare wood rafters with three hanging lightbulbs evenly spaced in sockets down the length of the room. The tiny utility room at the end was where the furnace, water heater and a narrow set of supply shelves kept his gym from looking too dungeon-esque. In that regard, he supposed, the spanking bench, St. Andrews’ cross and padded horse in the corner probably didn’t help. Unlike the exercise equipment, those articles hadn’t seen any use since he’d told Megan she needed to find someone else. Someone whole. A dom worth following.
Yeah, his depression after his injuries hadn’t been kind. Not to either of them.
Crossing the floor to the supply closet, he dug out Megan’s old yoga mat, something he’d been more than tempted to toss out on a number of occasions. He was glad he hadn’t now.
Dragging it back with him, he dropped it on the floor a short distance from his mat, toed it into an even position with his own, and then snapped his fingers and pointed at it.
“Front and center,” he said. “Let’s get to work. You ever tried yoga?”
Pony came to him, shaking her head. When he pointed again, she stepped onto the mat.
“I’ll teach you, we’re going to do this every morning.”
Working out with someone else wasn’t his favorite experience, never had been. Exercise had become his retreat. He loved to make it burn, to push himself harder and farther, until the sweat was pouring off him and by the end he was just sitting on the floor, too fucking exhausted to move. Since his accident, that had become to him what sex and topping used to be. It had to, deprived of the latter by his broken body, he’d needed something to pour his energy into while he’d struggled to climb out of the self-pity wallow he’d built for himself.
It was easy to see now that wallow had been the reason he and Megan broke up. At the time, he’d thought he was being sensible, but he’d pushed her away. The more she’d said she loved him, the more she’d cried and tried to hold on to what they had, the more he’d been convinced he couldn’t give her what she needed. He’d worn her down until she finally gave up and left.
