Page 11 of Caught By Menace

“Yep.”

“By a lover?”

She snorted. “By a principal and a teacher.” She pointed out a long leather strap. “My mother was rather fond of one of those.”

He was taken aback by the idea she’d been struck by her mother and in school.

“Your teachers hit you?”

She stared at him as if he were the dumbest man in the universe. “Well, yeah. It’s called corporal punishment, Menace. You know, that thing you want to do to me.”

“No,” he said quickly. “I don’t want to beat you as punishment. What adults do in the privacy of their playrooms is in no way comparable to a grown adult beating on an innocent child.”

“To be fair, I wasn’t always innocent.”

Menace grunted in irritation. “It doesn’t matter. We don’t strike children in my culture.”

“But you go to military school at like, five, right? You honestly expect me to believe no one at the academy ever knocked you around?”

He shook his head. “Never. Not once.”

“You were obviously luckier than me.”

He was beginning to see that. Her obstinate behavior made more sense. “Why did your teachers strike you?”

She shrugged. “Sometimes it was for fighting. Most of the time it was for code infractions. My mom…” Her voice trailed off to nothing. “I didn’t always have a clean uniform for school. That was a big no-no. I finally figured out how to do my own laundry. Then, after my dad died, I missed a lot of school or I was late. Eventually I just decided it was easier to leave school than have a permanently black-and-blue ass.”

Menace let that tiny glimpse into her childhood sink in and take hold. The similarities to Hallie’s miserable childhood were so obvious. He finally understood why Vicious had taken such a drastically different route with Hallie—and why he was so overly protective of her.

Wordlessly Menace strode to the wall and started yanking down the canes and crops and striking implements. He stuffed them in one of the drawers in the corner cabinet. Glancing back at the wall, he spotted the floggers. Those would have to go too.

“What are you doing?”

He started to take down the floggers. “I’m putting away the things that scare you. There’s no reason to keep them out if I’m not going to use them.”

She stepped forward and hesitantly touched one of the soft tendrils of a flogger crafted for teasing and warming up a sub. “Why do you do it?”

The siren call of her body heat filled him with need. This was the closest they’d been without cursing or fighting. Calm and curious, she tempted him even more. He couldn’t help but compare her to the friend who had escaped him. He’d considered that one the epitome of his desires. Standing this close to Naya, gazing down into her dark eyes and breathing in her scent, he realized his first instinct had been dead wrong. It wasn’t the docile, sweet thing he needed. It was this young woman, this spitfire who drove him crazy.

“It’s our way,” he said finally.

She frowned at him. “What does that mean?”

“It means that our women are different than yours.” He placed his armful of floggers on the nearby restraint table. He selected the one she’d touched, the easy warm-up flogger, and handed it to her. “This is a flogger. It’s used for hitting fleshy parts.”

“Fleshy parts?”

“Buttocks, thighs, breasts…”

“I see.”

“There’s some new research that shows that the biochemical makeup of our Harcos women is vastly different than yours. Your bodies react much differently to endorphins, adrenaline and oxytocin.”

She glanced away from him. “I don’t really understand what that means. I never—I didn’t finish school, remember?”

His gut clenched at the shame filling her voice. Daring to touch her, he tipped her chin and forced her to meet his gaze.“It’s all right. You may not have book smarts, but you clearly have street smarts.”

She didn’t pull away from his touch. “You learn quickly how to survive. I can do math and I can read, obviously. I just don’t have much of a science background.”

---