Page 47 of Wanted
What the fuck was wrong with him?
“Go get him,” Marcus told her gruffly. “Tell him to come back, then go to the bar and get me another drink.” He was going to need it.
Raising her head for the first time, Anna looked at him with those brilliant blue and somewhat bewildered eyes of hers. “If you don’t want me to play—”
“In about two seconds your first scene here is going to be a bare-ass spanking,” he snapped, even more gruffly, “and I promise you won’t like a bit of it. What did I just tell you to do?”
That she didn’t immediately just to obey was both a source of unparalleled irritation and pride. She had made real strides since coming to live with him.
Setting his drink aside, he very deliberately stood up, squaring off against her. “One,” he growled.
She blinked, openly startled. “Are… are you counting to three?”
“Two.” He started to take off the leather cuffs he was wearing.
No doubt remembering how he’d already said he’d use them on her if she misbehaved tonight, she got up. Any other submissive would have scrambled to obey, but not Anna. She rose in a single, fluid motion and walked away from him with a stride that was both hurried and yet as seemingly unhurried as a woman on the verge of her Dom’s punishment could be. Exactly as Ethen had trained her to do.
That annoyed him even more. What the hell was wrong with him?
Throwing himself back down on the couch, he snatched up his empty glass and tossed it back, draining what few drops were left in the bottom because it was better than rubbing his face like the hopeless loser he was behaving to be. He set the empty tumbler aside again before he was tempted to let his spiking temper get the best of him and throw it.
That little bit of weight she’d put on was doing wonders on her ass and hips. She was fleshing out. She looked good walking away from him, something he supposed he ought to start getting used to.
His jaw clenched.
It clenched again as he watched her approach Anders where he’d sidled up to the bar to lick his wounds. She touched his shoulder as she neared and he glanced at her first, then him, and then back to her again.
Get a fucking handle on it, he told himself firmly as the other dom, after only a slight hesitation, turned to come back to him. As she’d been told, Anna stayed at the bar to order another drink.
Closing his eyes, he blew out a pent-in breath and tried to find his center of calm.
Walking on a white sandy beach. Waves lapping at the shore. Hot sun beating down on his shoulders and the salty sea air playing with his hair…
“Changed your mind?” Anders asked.
“She isn’t a masochist,” Marcus said, calm not quite attained but opening his eyes anyway. He glared at the other dom, knowing everything he was feeling right now wasn’t this man’s fault and yet unable to swallow it back. “She doesn’t like pain, so it’s only used for punishment.”
Anders blinked. “All right.”
“You don’t punish her,” Marcus continued. “That’s my job, not yours.”
Nodding, he said, “Agreed.”
“She craves being touched.” He would hate himself forever for sharing that with this man. It added an extra gruffness to his tone when he followed that by saying, “This is her first time back after a very long and miserable situation. If she wants to tell you about it sometime in the future, that’s on her, but you aren’t to ask about it. You can touch her tits and her ass, but you keep your hands off her pussy. No insertables. No orgasm control.”
“Got it.”
“One more thing,” Marcus said, hating himself even more. “Screw this up and not only will you never scene with her again, but I’ll fucking break you in half. You got that, too?”
It was hard to tell if the other man was more offended or surprised, but in a blink he shuttered that emotional behind a thin veneer of irritation and an even thinner smile of acceptance. “You’re the boss.”
Yes, he was. He was also being unreasonable. Had the shoe been reversed, he’d have told himself to fuck off and walked away. But Anders didn’t do that. He went back to the bar, took the drink Klara had just handed Anna out of her hand, handed it to a passing server with a generalized point in his direction, and then he took her arm and led Anna out onto the playspace floor.
She quickly looked his way, and Marcus nodded so there would be no doubt in her mind that it was all right for her to go with him. He even tried to smile, but that was asking too much. When his drink came, he stood up and made his way around the periphery of the room, following at a distance while Anders took her into the very back area. He chose a massage table before pausing long enough to exchange words with her.
He’d have thought Anna nervous the way she glanced around the dungeon before her gaze found him. He let her see him as he took up a position along the wall, near enough to see everything, even in the dimly lit atmosphere of the dungeon, just far enough not to intrude on what that other man was about to do to her.
His leg ached.
