Page 25 of Wanted
When she didn’t argue, he moved back onto his mat. Catching his left ankle, he moved into the next position. She did too, although she wasn’t as steady as he was as he stretched.
“That’s the way you were this morning,” she finally got brave enough to point out.
“You were testing me and you know it.”
They switched positions twice more before she found the courage to argue again. “You said you weren’t going to do that. You said—”
“I’m not your dom,” he finished for her. Yeah, he was still trying to figure that out for himself. He shouldn’t have paddled her. He’d never meant to let anything between them come close to any kind of topping relationship. That that was the last thing someone as badly damaged as she needed had been foremost in his mind right from the moment he’d decided to go get her, bring her back here, try to help her. That it might be exactly what she needed had been the thought he’d gone to bed with last night and when he’d put the paddle on the table this morning.
“You said you wouldn’t,” she said again, no trace of petulance or accusation anywhere in her words.
“I changed my mind. You want to do real yoga now, or hit the treadmill?”
“Why?” she asked, and he didn’t for a second thing she was talking about exercise.
Dropping his non-prosthetic foot, Marcus walked back onto her mat, getting nose to nose with her again. He wasn’t trying to threaten her. He didn’t want her to feel intimidated. He probably shouldn’t have done it at all, except it felt more intimate this way.
“Because you needed it,” he told her. “Are you trying to tell me you didn’t, because if that’s the case, I’ll happily wash your mouth out for lying.”
She didn’t. Her chest rose and fell in short, shallow breaths, just a little faster than normal and not because she was winded from the stretching they’d done. “I’m not saying that.”
“What are you saying?” he softly challenged, trying to gauge if she was scared. “That you didn’t like it?”
She wasn’t quite fast enough to shutter against the confusion that ever so faintly wrinkled her brow, before vanishing again. She was good at hiding what she felt. Survival 101. That was what happened when one lived with an unpredictable abuser.
“I didn’t like it,” she said. That shadow of bewilderment that briefly disrupted her careful mask made him believe she probably wasn’t trying to lie. “I don’t like pain. I’m not a masochist.”
“You don’t have to be a masochist to like it when someone takes charge of you. Whether you physically liked the sensation of being spanked or not, you did like that I held you accountable. I told you what to do, you didn’t do it, and I executed the consequences. That was what you liked. Would you like me to prove it?”
She was trying to control the shallow swiftness of her breathing, but there was no hiding that telltale flutter of her pulse, beating in the hollow of her slender neck, marred by bruises from last night’s botching suicide attempt.
She wanted to chicken out, he could tell by her eyes. She shifted on her feet. It surprised him that she didn’t back away.
“How?” she asked.
“Put your hand in your pants,” he told her. He’d had her bent over in front of him with her legs widely spread and her pants down around her thighs. He knew what she was going to find, whether she wanted him to or not. “Touch your pussy.”
That fluttering pulse beat wildly beneath her pale skin. Her face remained a mask. “Why?”
“Because,” he answered, smooth as silk. “When you show me your fingers afterward, they’re going to be wet as hell.”
Her nostrils flared, her eyebrows twitching once, the corner of her mouth quickly following suit. What was that expression? Was she scared, embarrassed? Aroused? It pricked at his pride that he couldn’t read her. He only just controlled the instinct to take hold of the waist of her too big sweats, drag her right up to him until they were belly to belly, and hold her gaze steady with his while he reached down between her legs and checked for himself.
That would definitely be crossing a line.
Like this wasn’t?
He both saw and heard her swallow.
“Did you masturbate last night?” he asked, already knowing she hadn’t. Lying awake in his own deprived hell, he’d listened to all her most subtle movements and the only thing he’d heard all night was her tossing and turning.
She only half shook her head before she froze again, a little bird in the paws of a very big cat. He wasn’t trying to stalk her, but he couldn’t make himself stop. He couldn’t even say he was trying to help her anymore. “When was the last time?”
“We’re not allowed to do that. Menagerie girls are for him. Our pleasure is for him and only when he—”
“Yeah, I get it.” It was too important that he let her talk about her abuser for him to bristle like this when she did, but he didn’t want to hear about that asshat. He wanted to hear about her letting her fingers do the walking, letting her body arch and writhe to the practiced caress of her own fingertips. Did she like soft petting? Did she go in hard and fast? Did she like to sink her fingers as deeply into her sweet pussy as she could reach, trying to satisfy that inner aching need that could only truly be satisfied by the eager thrusts of a man’s cock? “Do you come when he commands it?”
Her nipples had tightened under her t-shirt. They were little points now, thrusting out to meet him. His fingers itched to touch them, but Marcus kept them firmly at his sides.
