“But I—” I started to object.

Christian’s right hand came in front of my face. I felt my eyes go wide as I understood.

“Oh, no,” I whispered, but gently and deliberately he placed his fingertips just above my upper lip and under my nose.

“Smell yourself, naughty girl,” he murmured. “And address your sponsor properly.”

A tiny sob escaped my throat. I sniffed at the fingers, like that chastised puppy. Christian didn’t have to say it—the lesson he meant me to take away from the degrading command. The shameful scent on his fingers said it all: I needed it.

I needed a man inside me. I needed itbad, and this man knew how to make the most of a wayward girl’s natural cravings. If I didn’t call him by the title he preferred, he wouldn’t put his rigid cock in my aching pussy.

“Sir,” I whispered, though I actually didn’t mean to say it out loud. I wanted to see how it sounded, on my tongue, and how it felt to say it.

When Christian said, “Good girl,” though, and put his hand back inside my romper immediately, and began to masturbate me again, I couldn’t help closing my eyes, moaning it over and over.

“Sir… sir…” With far more skill than I had had at my disposal this morning, he brought me terribly close to a climax, even through the lace of my panties. The sensation of being bare—of being barefor him—made the pleasure so intense that I couldn’t have sworn it wasn’t pain. “Oh, God… sir…”

He pulled his hand away again. In a new, sterner tone, he commanded, “Stand up and take off the romper.”

My eyes flew open. I saw the picture window again. In a voice that sounded even weaker in contrast to Christian’s dominant words, I begged, “Can you… can we… I mean…”

“You want to close the blackout curtain, don’t you?” he asked. A wave of conflicting emotion rose in my chest: surprise that he had read my mind again, gratitude that it might mean he would hide this degrading scene from the view of the world, and then understanding of the strict tone with which he had spoken.

He didn’t wait for me to confirm the request.

“No, Leah,” he said. “I want you to feel that your discipline session will be an example to any nosy folks looking through binoculars. People need to learn to respect the right of a man to punish a wayward young woman.”

“But… it’s not fair,” I wailed, remembering how he had affirmed the injustice of the treatment. “You said so!”

The spirit of rebellion had begun to arise in me again, the floaty detachment of a moment before ebbing away.

“I don’t care,” Christian said simply. “Get up and strip to your underwear. I want a good look at you before I give you your real spanking.”

He accompanied these imperious words with letting go of my wrists and lifting his right leg. He helped me start to stand up.

The thoughts and emotions roiling in my mind and body, under the pressure of all Christian’s words and touches, of my having gone so far into submission already, seemed to burst into my muscles. With a surge of adrenalin, I managed to twist myself completely free of him, losing my balance but then landing somehow in something like a racing crouch.

I ran for the door.

CHAPTER16

Christian

“Apartment, lock door,” I said, without getting up from the couch.

“Door locked,” said the pleasant voice of the Selecta assistant.

Leah, who had nearly reached the door in question, whirled to face me with wide, staring eyes. Her jaw went visibly slack, and her chest heaved distractingly—verydistractingly, given the hints of the lacy white bra I could see supporting her lovely little breasts.

“It’s not fair,” I repeated, “but it’s the way it needs to be, Leah. Security is watching over you, for both our sakes, but like I said before, they know as well as I do—and as well asyoudo—that as scary as it is and as uncomfortable as it’s going to make your backside, this spanking is—”

Leah interrupted me. “For my owngood? What a load of—”

She went silent, her mouth still open, as I got up and began to move toward her, a good deal more quickly than I had when I had pinned her against the wall for that extraordinary first kiss. I could see in Leah’s eyes that the rebellion her Selecta Arrangements profile had theorized—the deep resistance this wonderful girl needed to show, and to have severely corrected by a dominant sponsor—had begun to emerge. Swift action seemed not only warranted but required.

Leah shrank against the door, her hands going behind her just as they had done when we first entered her apartment. She stared at me with wild eyes as I approached, and I felt again the odd rapport that seemed to have arisen between us: I could see in her face all the conflict of her heart and her body.

Having her warm bottom, and then her even warmer pussy, in my hand as I fondled her under the green fabric of the romper and over the white lace of her naughty panties, had sent my own libido reeling. The way Leah’s sweet, lithe form had responded to the mastering freedom of my touch as I explored her intimate places had seemed to connect us on some dark plane of sexual and emotional tension.