Page 125 of Tyrant (The Villetti Chronicles)

I bit my lip, reaching out to stroke a hand down his chest.

“Yeah, daddy, I will,” I whispered, conscious of the fact we weren’t alone.

He pressed a kiss to my mouth, stealing my words away. At this point, I didn’t think there was anything this man wouldn’t do for me.

Zayn pulled away and tucked an arm around me, encouraging me to walk the room with him.

“This will be your business, Ari. You’ll make all the decisions. I’ll just be here to support you.”

“So you’re not going to tell me how to run it?”

“No.”

“And how to decorate it?”

“No.”

“What if I want to hire an assistant?”

“A decision I would highly encourage you to make.”

He was so calm about the whole thing, like him giving me the space to do my own thing was no big deal. It only made me want to push his buttons.

“Look at you, giving up control for once. I never thought I’d see the day.”

He gave me a look that spoke volumes. He wasn’t amused by my joke at all.

“You and I both know who’s in charge,” he murmured, tugging me back towards the lifts. “But perhaps you need reminding.”

I noticed the man who I now realised was the agent didn’t follow us. Zayn pushed me into the lift. As the doors closed after he hit the button for the first floor, he pressed me against the back wall, pinning my hands on the metal.

“I see how it is. Daddy tells you he’s going to buy you an expensive gift and you get mouthy. That’s no way to say thank you, little fairy.”

I let out a harsh breath, knowing I was about to be punished.

“Got nothing to say now? Mmm, seems you do know how to keep quiet when it suits you. I’ll just have to give you something to scream about.”

My heart rate accelerated with his threat. Knowing he had a lot on his plate, I’d behaved all week, but perhaps Zayn needed this outlet as much as I did.

The moment the lift arrived on the first floor and the doors opened, he dragged me out of it. I was hustled through an office space into a kitchen area. Zayn’s hand was around the back of my neck, forcing me to bend over the counter as he pressed my cheek to the granite top.

“Hands by your face,” he told me, his voice low and stern.

I placed them on the countertop. My skin prickled with excitement and nerves. It felt rather illicit to be punished in a building he didn’t even own yet. Zayn didn’t play by anyone else’s rules but his own. I’d learnt that lesson many times over.

“Stay right there.”

I didn’t move as he removed his hand. The sound of his retreating footsteps had me wondering where on earth he was going and what he was planning to do. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but when he came back, I heard the door close behind him.

“If you think your obedience now will make me go easy on you, allow me to dissuade you of that notion.”

I couldn’t help the tremors running through my body as he stepped up behind me and placed something down on the counter in my eyeline.

“I was going to give you this after we left, but now I’m going to use this little gift to make you wish you’d behaved.”

I raised my face from the counter to better see him unwrapping the box. He drew out a sex toy. My eyes went wide at the level of detail the fake cock had. The memory of what he told me he wanted to do with one of those made me shift on my feet.

“You remember our little conversation about this, don’t you?”

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