Page 52 of The Vigilant

“What next, Sutton?” he growled, his jacket shivering over the sound.

I slid my tongue free—the only free part of me—and slid it along my lips, bottom and then top, and watched the wave of tension roll through him.

He let loose another deeper sound of warning, one that I felt directly on the tingling flesh of my ass.

“Do it,” I muttered as I held his hot stare.

My words severed the invisible tie on his hand, and I watched his arm swing up and arc down with the precision of a machine, so beautiful and smooth and swift, the sensation of pain as he smacked my ass was delayed until all it evoked was a low moan.

And then I gave up more of the truth, realizing I only wanted to give it in order to get something in return. To put a few chinks in his shiny, knightly armor.

“He brought her to the club, and the man took Mara to one of the back rooms. He said she never came back—that he didn’t know what happened to her from there.”

“The name of the man?” He stared at the red I could see staining the skin of my ass.

“He didn’t know. Assumed he was Wah Ching.” I licked my lips again.

His jaw twitched. “And the website?”

My body tried to move under him. The heat vibrating in my cells was like a swell of energy, growing and growing with nowhere to expend.

“Again,” I demanded, my voice low and husky.

His lip curled, realizing this bout of punishment was being flipped on its head. Instead of the spanking being a threat to procure the truth, it was the delivery of pain that let the truth free.

This time, as his hand drew back, I used the moment of freedom to tip my hips up. When his hand landed with another loud smack, it was lower on my ass, the sting teasing the edge of my sex. A breath of relief erupted in my lungs, the pain giving a kind of twisted satisfaction to the gnawing ache in my core.

But satisfaction was the last thing it gave Tynan.

He drew his hand back and wiped his palm on his jeans, glaring at me as though to warn me to never do that again. Too bad I also saw the way his fingers rubbed the damp spot on his jeans like he wanted to work it into the denim fibers so he could wear it forever.

“Jack gave me a card,” I continued. “A business card for the site, Wild Side. It had an invitation code on the back.”

His palm flew without warning, a fresh bite on my ass that echoed along with my cry through the room.

I pulled back my lip and bared my teeth. I could play this game, too. “I didn’t tell you because I knew you wouldn’t want me to sign up, which was the fastest way to get answers.”

“And that’s all you care about? The fastest way to get an answer? Not the safest?” he snarled and spanked me again, heat exploding in my lower body, desire clawing at my insides.

My moan evolved into a breathy laugh. “It worked, didn’t it?” Or would have if he hadn’t barged in. That flash of anger sent my knees into the mattress, pushing my ass up at the same moment his hand cracked down.

This time, I definitely felt the whole of his palm over my aching cunt, and the pain was worth the swift, scorching feel of him against my most tender flesh.

“Fuck,” he swore and grabbed my ass, rubbing my desire into my skin this time and pushing me harder into the bed. “What the fuck do you mean it worked?”

“I mean, I was chatting with a user who talked to Mara, and I swear he’s the one she was meeting with?—”

“Are you telling me”—he heaved out a breath like one second longer of it remaining in his chest would’ve made him explode—“you think your plan worked because it put you in the same fucking danger as your friend?”

I shivered at the threat in his tone. It was deadly and protective with the kind of intensity I’d only felt very early on in my life from the first man who’d promised to protect me…and failed.

“It worked because I found out who took her before you’re fucking friend—ahh!” My cry was swallowed up by the sound of flesh on flesh.

He spanked me hard and fast, and as much as it hurt, the pleasure I got from seeing him in the mirror was a thousandtimes more. The torture wrought over his face turned my cries into moans. Deep, desperate moans. The kind that comes from an addict when they’ve just been given their next fix.

“Fuck, Sutton,” he snarled and spanked me harder. “Fuck.”

Somewhere between the blows, the sting subsided and left only the growing buzz in my sex. Everyone had their own kink. Their own delicious, devious brand of pleasure that came from something others might try to shame them for. For me, watching this stoic, regimented man shed layers of his control as he spanked me, each strike wounding him far more than it wounded me, I was so turned on, I felt my thighs grow slick with my heat.

---