Page 22 of Saving Meri

“Say it.” His voice was low, rough silk over steel, commanding without shouting, controlled without force.

Meri tensed. “Say what?”

Bear’s grip on her tightened just enough to remind her he would not let her retreat. “Say what you need to say.”

She clenched her jaw, every instinct screaming at her to shove him away, to claw back the distance between them, but her body refused to obey. It didn’t want distance… and that terrified her.

Her skin still tingled from the spanking, not just from the impact, but from the heat, the way it had set fire to something deep inside her, something she wasn’t ready to name.

“I don’t…”

“Don’t lie to me.” Bear’s voice cut through her hesitation like a surgeon’s blade, sharp and precise. “You think I can’t feel it? The way you’re holding yourself against me? The way you’re fighting to keep still?”

Her face flamed, the truth lodging in her throat. She didn’t know how to process this, how to accept that her body had responded to something she had never wanted before.

“I don’t understand,” she admitted, the words barely a whisper.

Bear’s fingers skimmed up her spine, light, reassuring, until his hand settled at the back of her neck. “I do.”

Meri swallowed hard. “I don’t like pain… don’t like impact play.”

“No, you don’t.” Bear’s lips brushed the top of her head, not quite a kiss, just the barest whisper of contact, enough to send another shiver through her. “That’s not what this was.”

She closed her eyes, her breathing still unsteady. “Then what was it?”

Bear tilted her chin up, forcing her gaze to meet his. “Discipline.”

Her stomach flipped, heat crawling over her skin. She had never considered it that way before. She had always seen impact play as a line she didn’t cross, something separate from the structure she had once craved, the kind of control that had given her a sense of peace in the past.

Bear didn’t give her room to run from it. “You fight yourself more than you fight me, little one. You’re so damn afraid of what you want, you refuse to even consider it.”

Meri stiffened, her nails digging into her palms. “You think I wanted that?”

His lips curled, a slow, knowing movement that sent something sharp through her chest. “I think your body answered that question for you.”

She yanked back, but he didn’t let her go far. His arm remained wrapped around her waist, holding her against him as if she belonged there.

“I don’t?—”

“Do not lie to me,” he warned again, his voice lower now, rougher, and damn her body, but it responded.

Meri shook her head, her breath coming faster, her body torn between escape and something else, something that pulsed between her thighs and made her squirm against him.

Bear noticed. Of course, he noticed. His grip tightened, his fingers flexing against her hip, but he didn’t push, didn’t demand.

“This isn’t about pain,” he murmured. “It’s about control. Structure. The same things you used to crave, the things that made you feel safe enough to relinquish control to another. You’ve convinced yourself that part of you is gone, but it’s not. It’s just buried under everything they did to you.”

Meri shook her head again, denial curling in her throat, but he didn’t let her speak. “It’s okay to need this,” he said, each word slow, deliberate, a promise wrapped in certainty. “It’s okay to want it.”

Her breath hitched, her nails pressing into his shirt. “I don’t know how.”

Bear shifted, moving her until she was straddling him, her thighs on either side of his hips, his hands steady at her waist. “Then let me teach you.”

A shudder ran through her, and damn it, she wanted to push him away, wanted to run, but instead, she stayed.

She stayed, because deep down, in the part of her that still existed despite everything, she knew he was right.

And that scared her more than anything.

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