Page 29 of After Dark
“Yes, sir,” she managed to get out. “I understand.”
“Marvelous.” Arlo tilted his head toward the ottoman. “You know how I like you to arrange yourself. Bend over, please. Present your ass. I want your arms draped over theottoman in front of you and your legs wide at the back, in case I decide to treat your pussy to a whack or two.”
When Josette only stared back at him, her heart battering itself against the walls of her chest, those eyes of his grew stern. She was suddenly aware of every line of his powerful body, and yet somehow, it was nothing compared to that iron will of his. It made her feel scattered. It made her feel wild and wretched.
It made her pussy ache.
But her knees still felt locked beneath her.
Arlo watched her closely, and it was all here, between them. His order. Her obedience. The tension between those things—the power that crackled in the space between his will and her obedience.
This was the truth of them. This was the real truth.
Not that he couldn’t trust her. It was this moment, writ large over everything that happened between them for their first three years, the last eighteen months, even the last ten days.
Did she trust him enough to override her own feelings to surrender herself to him? No matter what?
The silence stretched out between them. The tension was so thick it could rival San Francisco fog.
And it was clear that Arlo knew the stakes as well as she did. The intensity he always wore so easily seemed wilder. Rougher. He pointed towards the ottoman with the paddle. That hated, horrible paddle. His gaze was its own weapon.
“Now, Josette.”
Chapter Seven
She hated that fucking paddle.
Arlo could see her reaction as if she was typing it out on a screen and projecting it up on the side of the neighboring building. She hated the paddle. She wasn’t too fond of him right now, either. And there was pure mutiny in her pale blue gaze.
It was the closest he’d seen her come to breaking since she’d been back—and he’d seen it very rarely in the three years before that.
They only had a stalemate like this once before, and that time she’d been more upset than angry. That was the night she’d left. She had balked and they hadn’t recovered.
Then, too, it had involved this paddle.
Tonight he stood there, not moving, and watched as Josette fought a battle inside of herself.
And she didn’t take to him about eggshells now. Or about probation. He didn’t know how to tell her that watching her fightthis hardto surrender to something she already knew she would hate—that she knewheknew shewould hate—went a long way toward marking off those items he didn’t have on a list, necessarily. Not a physical list, anyway.
But he certainly knew what they were. He certainly knew each and every thing he’d been pissed about over the past year and a half and had assumed he’d continue to be pissed about for the foreseeable future.
Then she’d come back and turned all that on its head.
Josette was flushed. He could see beads of sweat at her temples. She was fighting, and hard. There were some men who would take pity on her, but he doubted those men had dynamics like theirs. He needed her to submit to him, yes—but he also relied on him to hold her to an exacting standard and would lose respect for him if he caved.
It was the yin and yang of it all, if he wanted to get extra Californian about it all. In long-term, complicated relationships, it was an ebb and a flow—but it always ebbed and flowed in the same direction. His control, her surrender. That hadn’t changed.
Or if it had—but he didn’t think so.
Still, he waited.
And then, shocking him a little bit — but only a little bit — she moved. It was jerky. Uncoordinated. It was like she was fighting her own limbs as she moved to the ottoman, then draped herself over it, just as he’d asked.
He felt a wave of pride and admiration wash over him, and it was humbling.
Because he knew that she was fighting not only her physical distaste for this particular little treat, but the things he’d said about her only liking the way he made her come. Not to mention the things Frederick had said to echo that sentiment.
He’d chosen this paddle deliberately. Because she didn’t mind a punishment, even if it was painful in the moment. She liked to be spanked. She didn’t tend to mind a whip. She’d always handled the paddle beautifully.
