Page 73 of The Sadist and the Brat

“Well, then,” he said, somehow sounding delighted and resigned at the same time and aimed the next jolt at her left buttock.

By the time she’d reached the dining room table she was jittery from half a dozen more jolts and starting to perspire. She could feel the skin at the small of her back growing damp, and worried that if she got too sweaty it would make the zaps hurt more. And though her mind was starting to go fuzzy, she had enough of her senses to recognize that that could be a very bad thing.

“You’re starting to sweat,” he announced behind her with unmistakable glee, not missing a trick. “And you’ve got about…oh, thirty feet to go. This could get interesting.”

She looked down at her ankles. She’d hoped the shuffling would’ve loosened the ropes, but they were snug as ever. Her skin was faintly red, abraded by the friction produced by her ungainly shuffle, but she barely felt it. Abrasions were the least of her problems at the moment.

She was just past the dining room table when he zapped her again, this time delivering it to the tender—and damp—skin where ass met thigh, and the jolt was so much sharper and harder than the ones that came before that she reacted without thinking, leaping forward with a shriek. She went airborne, and for a split second her mind went white with panic. Then instinct kicked in—along with four years of childhood gymnastics—and she bent her knees, crouching low for balance, and stuck the landing.

“Well, damn,” Jack said, and she looked back. He was two feet behind her, a surprised grin on his face. “You’ve been sandbagging.”

She hadn’t, but she wasn’t about to tell him that. She merely gathered herself and hopped forward again.

She didn’t go far, not wanting to risk a fall with no way to catch herself, but it was farther than the shuffle method had gotten her. So she did it again, and again, hop after hop with barely a pause between. When she reached the ottoman, she hopped in a half circle and plopped down on it with a grunt.

Then Jack stepped in front of her, and she realized the sound she’d been hearing wasn’t her heart pounding in her ears. He was laughing.

His deep, rich belly laughs filled the air, one hand on his abdomen as though he wanted to feel them shake out of him. It was…well, it was kind of awesome.

She found herself smiling, watching him bend forward, his hands braced on his knees as tears of mirth streamed down his face. She didn’t even care that he was laughing at her. In fact, that just made it better.

When the laughs had faded to wheezing chuckles and the occasional guffaw, she cleared her throat to get his attention. “So glad I could amuse you.”

He wiped his streaming eyes. “Me too,” he gasped and, walking up to her, took her face in his hands and kissed her.

She jerked, surprised, but he held her steady, rubbing his lips over hers. The soft, almost sweet caress was a stark contrast to the rough way the scene had begun, and it threw her off balance. Wary, she held herself still, her scrambled brain trying to figure out his angle. But his lips were firm and warm, and she could smell the subtle spice of whatever he put in his beard to make it so soft, and it was hard to remember that she was supposed to be resisting. After a moment of agonizing over whether to stick to the script or go with the flow, she parted her lips in invitation.

He smiled and moved his hands, tunneling them into her hair to cradle the back of her head. He slipped his tongue smoothly past her lips to glide silkily against hers, and the frantic thoughts swirling around in her head just drifted away.

She’d expected him to devour—instead, he savored. She’d expected an assault—he gave her a seduction. Slow strokes of his tongue, the gentle scrape of teeth. When he closed his teeth gently on her lower lip, biting down just hard enough to make her breath catch, the wave of heat that spread through her left her dizzy.

With a last nibble, he drew his mouth from hers, sliding across her cheek to nibble along her jawline. “You scared the hell out of me.”

Her head felt so heavy, and it was so easy to just let it fall back into his cradling hands. “I did?”

“Mmmm.” His tongue slid down her neck, leaving a tingling trail in its wake. “When you made that first leap, I was too far away to catch you if you fell.”

“Oh.” She blinked her eyes open to stare hazily at the ceiling. “Oops.”

He laughed softly into the hollow of her throat. “You stuck the landing, though.”

“Gymnastics,” she managed as he scraped his teeth against her collarbone, hard enough to make her flinch. When he flicked his tongue over the tiny hurt, she sighed with dreamy pleasure. “Four years.”

“Yeah?” He kissed his way back up her throat to nip at her chin. “That’s good to know.”

Something in his tone had a twinge of apprehension fluttering to life inside her, and she tipped her head down to look into his face. He was smiling, laughter still dancing in his eyes. But there was something else, just a hint of wildness lurking behind the mirth that made her throat go thick with sudden panic. “Why is that?” she asked faintly and tried to swallow it down.

His gaze darted down to her throat, watching it work. When it lifted to meet hers again, that faint hint of wildness had turned into a savage blaze, and, too late, her survival instinct kicked in.

He smiled, and this time she saw the devil in it. “I’ll show you.”

Chapter Eleven

Her eyes flared with alarm, hazel darkening to brown, but she offered not a hint of resistance as he dropped his hands to her wrists and swiftly dealt with the rope. Keeping one hand firm on her unbound wrists, he leaned into her, urging her back onto the ottoman with his chest against hers. When she lay flat, her arms pinned beneath her, he reached for the cuffs he'd set out before going after her.

“You’re going to give me your left wrist,” he told her, putting some steel in his tone. “If you try to get away or do anything other than give me your left wrist, I’ll zap your pussy.”

Alarm flared in her eyes, and her throat worked as she swallowed. But she dragged her hand from behind her back and offered it.

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