Page 7 of Bought

“Ooh,” he laughs, a mocking note in his voice. “Listen to you, kitten. So dramatic. You’re already scared. Because I already told you what happens next. You’re mine. This game is over. I prepared for this, Casey. The minute you contacted me, I had people look into you. Having seen what our technology does, you can imagine how deep the data went.”

“You mean you read everything I ever wrote, including my emails.”

“Well, not everything,” he says with an unapologetic smirk. “But enough. I needed to know who you were. How much of a threat you were.”

So he pried into my private life. Hardly unexpected, I guess. What else is going to happen when you piss off a data maven?

He can do all of this, but he can’t force me to be impressed by it. Fuck this guy.

“You’re a sick fucking asshole. And you paid off the cops to pick me up? Just to prove a point? What are you? Some fucking super villain?”

I’m furious. I’ve literally never been this angry in my life. Ethan is everything wrong with the world. The fact that he’s rich, successful, and handsome as well just drives me even more wild. I’m going to work my ass off to make sure there are consequences for what he’s doing to me. He’s not going to get away with this, not in the long term.

“You’re mouthy,” he says flatly. “I like mouthy. You know why?”

I shake my head.

“Because breaking mouthy girls is so much more of a challenge.”

His hands go to his waist. His fingers work at his belt. He whips it off, leather sliding through designer loops in a smooth motion that sends a shiver through my body. What the hell is he doing? Is he going to take his clothes off in here?

He looks up to the officers and smiles.

“Hold Miss Casey here down over the bench,” he says. “I’m going to teach her a lesson in manners.”

“What the fuck?” I barely have time to curse before the officers do as he says. The two powerful men pick me up from the chair and press me down over the table, my upper body resting on the metal surface, my ass raised high, my feet barely touching the floor. My inability to process what is going on here makes me think slow while they are acting fast.

“Remember,” he says to me. “You had the chance to make this so much easier on yourself.”

“Fuck. You.”

He glances back up at the cops. “Bare her ass.”

My jeans are tugged down by the big hands of total strangers. My underwear goes with them. I am bare assed naked in a police room. There are three men seeing absolutely everything I have between my legs, and probably between my cheeks. Their handling is firm, but not rough. I almost have the sense that they’ve done this before.

“Do you know what’s going to happen now, Casey?” Ethan’s smooth purr draws my attention back to him.

My stomach clenches. He has that belt looped double in his hands in a way that is strongly suggestive. Unless I am very much mistaken, Ethan Keller,theEthan Keller, the man whoTimemagazine called a global genius,is about to whip my butt.

“Let me up! Let me up!” It’s not an answer to his question—or maybe it is. I’m starting to get panicky. I don’t want this to happen.

“Settle down,” Ethan says, walking around to stand behind me. I can’t see anything now besides the cinder block wall with a poster screwed to it. Something about rights. I can’t take in text right now. I’m frantic, but there’s no way to pull out of the policemen’s grips. Their big male hands are all over me, and they don’t need to struggle to keep me in place. They lean on me a little and it’s all I can do not to be flattened.

The cops move around to the side as Ethan steps around behind me. I can quite literally feel his gaze on me, some sixth sense making my ass prickle, my face flush with utter embarrassment. I can’t move. I can’t stop this from happening. All I can do is swear.

“God fucking… you utter cunt, you fucking…”

“Want us to gag her for you, sir?”

“And you!” I curse at the officer who offered to do that. “You’re corrupt! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!”

Nobody in this room gives a fuck about my opinion. That much is painfully obvious. Lecturing them is hopeless.

“No, I want to hear her,” Ethan says. “She’ll be making much prettier sounds soon.”

Whooooosh… Crack!

I hear the leather sing through the air a moment before his belt meets my ass in a viciously hard stroke. Heat blasts through my bottom, jolts through my body, ignites my outrage.

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