Page 124 of Which Witch Is Wicked?
“Show off,” she retorted, feeling a little burst of pride that she’d been able to subdue him earlier when such feats were within his repertoire.
He leaned across her body and repeated the same process on the shackle holding her other wrist.
Moira drew her arms into her chest, glorying in the feeling of unrestricted movement. She rolled her wrists and rubbed the pink, damp skin where the cuff had been. A thousand pinpricks needled her hands.
“Seems like an awful waste if you ask me,” Moira said, filling the room’s dense silence with insubstantial words.
“I didn’t.” Nick rose and walked to the foot of the bed where he broke the band around her left ankle as quickly as he had the others.
“I mean, you’re just going to have to get you a new set next time you need to chain someone to your bed,” she babbled. “Uncle Sal used plenty of chains down in his shop, and these don’t look like the kind that’d be easy to replace is all.”
“That’s because they’re irreplaceable.” Nick rent the last band binding her to the chains but kept hold of her ankle with his hand. “A gift from the Marquis de Sade.”
He gripped her opposite ankle, and for a moment, Moira thought it was to relieve the tingling as she had done for her own wrists…until Nick pulled her roughly to the end of the bed.
Splitting her legs, his hips plowed into her inner thighs with bruising force. Already, his desire hardened against her thin panties, the heat of it radiating through the fabric separating them.
The barrier disappeared as quickly as the shackles had, torn and discarded. As were her skirt and tank top in the seconds that followed.
Nick’s eyes burned brighter as she lay naked on the bed before him, devouring every detail from breasts to belly button to the thatch of hair between her thighs.
“Roll on to your stomach,” he ordered.
“But aren’t you going to—”
He gripped the backs of her knees, rotating one leg over, flipping her onto her face. Nick’s fist fastened around the hair at the nape of her neck. He yanked just hard enough to send a tingle of mingled pain and pleasure down Moira’s spine.
“When I give you an order, you will obey me, Moira.”
“Obeyyou? We didn’t say nothing about—”
What happened next stunned her with an embarrassment she hadn’t felt since her girlhood, when Uncle Sal took her over his knee for borrowing the fishing boat without asking.
Nickspankedher.
A hard, stinging slap on her right ass cheek. Moira bit down on the bedclothes to keep from crying out. She’d be damned if she’d give him the satisfaction of knowing her body answered with an unexpected clench of pleasure.
“You will do as you’re told. Do you understand?” he demanded.
“I said you could fuckme,” she ground out. “I didn’t say you could—”
“You’ve spent enough time punishing yourself.” His voice was as hard and sharp as a blade’s edge. “Now, I will do it for you.”
Another slap scorched her ass and, frightened by the rush of moisture between her thighs, Moira kicked out as hard as she could, unbalancing Nick just enough to wriggle from his grasp. She rolled to her back, scuttling backward to the headboard away from this dark part of herself as much as from the man who made her confront it.
The second she caught Nick’s enflamed gaze, panic fluttered in Moira’s heart as she saw her own mistake. She had run. Like prey.
Nick lunged for her, launching himself from the end of the bed, his full weight coming down on her before she could find purchase against the cracked headboard. With her free hand, she slapped his face hard enough to feel the indentation of his cheekbone beneath her palm.
He caught her wrist in his iron grip, pinning it to the mattress as she bucked beneath him.
Whatever power she had enjoyed over him earlier had evaporated the second she had voiced her agreement to his terms.
“There,” he growled into her ear. “There’s the fight I was talking about. Without opposition, there can be no conquest. And oh, Moira, am I ever going to enjoy breaking you.”
Had she heard that right? Was he saying that he actuallywantedher to fight him?
“Fat fucking chance,” she spat.
