Instead she inspected the gray, fog-cloaked hills. As far as the eye could see there were only trees and leaden gray sky. No farm-house in sight that she might run to if she escaped.
The thought struck her that it was the sort of day that she typically found gloomy and oppressive. Why the cool air and leaden skies enlivened her as she jogged silently next to Shane—their breath making clouds of vapor around their mouths at a nearly identical rate, their footsteps synchronized thumps on the frozen pavement—was beyond Laura’s understanding.
She cast a sidelong glance at him. “So what happened to your fiancée?”
“Nothing happened to her,” he said as he continued to stare straight ahead.
Laura made a sound of disgust.
“Oh, I see. You’re asking why she’s not my fiancée anymore.”
“Well?” Laura asked when he didn’t continue for several seconds, hoping he didn’t hear the anxious tremor in her query. He shrugged.
“Nothing earth-shattering. It just didn’t work out.”
“Did you break up with her?”
“I was the one who said that I didn’t think we were meant to be married, yeah,” he said, still not meeting her gaze.
“So it wasn’t earth-shattering for you, in other words. It certainly must have been for her.”
She rolled her eyes in frustration when he didn’t respond and tried to control her breathing as they traveled up a long, slow upgrade. Her thoughts spun crazily, the vortex fueled by emotion she hadn’t allowed herself to experience for a long, long time.
Had Shane broken off his engagement because of her—Laura?
“She deserved better than to have a guy who was constantly second-guessing himself when it came to marrying her,” Shane said as they breached the summit of the small hill and began to jog down the other side. “I’d already postponed the wedding twice.”
“Cold feet?” Laura wondered as she cautiously studied his profile.
“It just didn’t feel right to me.”
She couldn’t stop herself from snorting in frustrated derision. “And you always have to go with your gut, isn’t that right, Shane? That’s what all this is supposed to be about,” she said as she lifted her wrist and the chain that attached them swayed in the air.
“Yeah. I guess that pretty much sums it up.” He glanced over at her, snagging her gaze with a warm, steady stare.
Laura swallowed and broke his gaze with difficulty. Neither of them spoke for the next five minutes as they ran.
“Oh,” Laura exclaimed in pleasant surprise when they topped another rise. She paused, hardly noticing that Shane ceased jogging at the same moment. They stared down over a valley with a massive river flowing through it.
“It’s the Mississippi,” Shane said softly.
They stood for several moments, watching the mighty body of water cut its deep channel through the land. A lulling sense of peace stole over her just as gently as the fog encroached on the banks of the powerful river.
“Come on, we’d better turn back,” Shane eventually said.
“It’s supposed to snow later,” Shane murmured in a mellow tone as he set a hot bowl of oatmeal topped with fruit and brown sugar and a steaming cup of tea in front of her forty-five minutes later.
Laura frowned as she stared down at the oatmeal. Shane had unfastened her wrist when they’d returned to the cabin and had ordered her to sit at the large oak kitchen table while he prepared them the simple breakfast. During the three-and-a-half-mile return jog back to the cabin, she’d had a chance to erect her barriers against him once again. The knowledge that she’d lowered her defenses without even being aware of it as they’d gazed together at the flowing river and the stark winter landscape had set Laura on edge.
“I’m not hungry. I’m all sweaty. May I go to take a shower now. Please, master?”
He didn’t turn around as he spooned some oatmeal into a bowl for himself. “We’ll take a shower after we eat.”
“Screw that,” Laura declared as she stood, shoving back her chair from the table. “I’m showering now.”
Her heart beat madly in her chest as she swept through the living room toward the hallway, mostly because she knew without having to look that Shane quickly closed the distance between them. She shouted in outrage when he encircled her with his arms from behind, lifted her, and swung her around to his right hip. His firm grip pressed her arms uselessly to their sides and the position made it so that her legs kicked at nothing but air behind him.
“Let go of me!”
“I don’t think so. Not until you get what you were asking for,” Shane muttered grimly before he sat down on the end of the bed and draped her over his lap with an effortless ease that infuriated her. He grabbed her outside wrist, joined it with the one that was trapped next to his body. He fastened the two leather cuffs with the small connector hooks quicker than Laura could finish her prolonged shout of pure, unmitigated fury.
She still shouted when he held her down with a restraining arm in his lap and jerked down her sweatpants, exposing her bare ass. She practically choked in outrage when he swatted a buttock.
“No,” she squawked as he spanked her again and again and she jerked and writhed, trying unsuccessfully to avoid his palm.
“Remember what I told you in the car? Any stroke I give you while you struggle goes on top of your actual punishment.”
“Will you stop this nonsense?” she shrieked as he smacked her bottom again, resulting in a tingling burn in her flexing muscles.
“It would go easier on you if you just relaxed and took your punishment,” he said as she wriggled in his hold and he held her down in his lap.
“Fuck you! God, I hate your guts, Shane Dominic,” she snarled.
Laura had never experienced anything like this—such an intense, wild fury that felt as if it would explode out of her chest. She cried out when Shane spanked her briskly on the lower curve of her left buttock, her anguished shout not so much due to pain but a feeling of overwhelming helplessness. She spun in a cyclone of powerful, tumultuous emotions.
He paused for a moment, his hand remaining on her left ass cheek. Laura tried to ignore the way he slowly stroked her burning, sensitized flesh while she struggled and tears poured down her cheeks, some falling onto the deep pile carpeting.
His caress only tossed fuel on her inner turmoil. She increased her struggles, nearly succeeding in causing her wriggling body to spill off the end of his knees. He responded by smacking her bottom once, the brisk contact of flesh against flesh causing a sharp cracking sound, and then used his other arm to secure her in his lap, her left side pressing snuggly against his abdomen.
“Go ahead. Fight it if it’ll make you feel better. It’s not going to change anything. I’ll still be here when you’re done. I’m not going anywhere, Laura. You’re going to have to give me what I want.”
She gritted her teeth and gave one final feral growl of helpless outrage.
Her head fell limply forward as tears continued to pour from her eyes. Only once before had she felt so acutely out of control of her life. Laura had taken control then in the only way available to her.
And now Shane threatened what little advantage she’d bargained so desperately to gain.
Look at her—look at what he’d done to her in such a short period of time! She used to be able to remain calm around him. When he’d confronted her thirteen years ago about marrying Huey, she’d been matter-of-fact with him, impervious to his pleas. Now she was screeching like a fishwife, tears and snot running down her face while she struggled for what felt like her very existence and Shane spanked her bare bottom as though she were nothing but an ornery child.
The humiliation was almost too much to bear.
She inhaled raggedly, trying to catch her breath. She just needed to play along. That’s all. If Shane wanted her to submit to him, to hand over control to him—fine. So be it. She would just have to do her best to pacify him.
The thought terrif
ied her but what other option did she have, really? He couldn’t keep her here as his captive forever. At some point he had to take her home. Then she’d do her best to repair whatever damage had been done to the wound he’d reopened on her heart and go on with her life.
She sagged in temporary defeat. In doing so, she became aware for the first time of every point of contact her body made with his—the hardness of his thighs beneath her gasping chest and belly, the column of his partially erect cock stretching along his thigh beneath her heaving ribs, the rate and pressure of his own escalated breathing from his abdomen pressing against her side.
And heat emanated off him. So did his scent—perspiration from his jog mixed with an intoxicating male musk and a residue of spicy aftershave and soap.
As if he knew somehow that she was suddenly aware of him sexually, his penis lurched against her rib cage, swelling noticeably in size. She stifled a groan.
“What do you want from me, Shane?” she asked miserably.
“You know what I want.”
“You want me to sit still while you punish me?”
“That’ll do for starters,” he muttered with mild amusement from above her.
“Do it then. Get it over with,” she grated out.
“You’re not going to struggle?”
“No,” she answered sarcastically. “I’ll lay here like a good little girl and take it.”
He chuckled and loosened his tight hold on her, his hand caressing her stinging bottom once before he completely released her.
“Actually, I think I’ll have you stand and bend over.”
CHAPTER TEN
He said it so lightly that at first Laura wasn’t sure that she’d heard him correctly. Lying there in his forced hold while he spanked her was one thing—but willingly positioning herself to take her punishment was quite another.
Shane said nothing for the next several seconds. Laura got the impression he was waiting . . . curious as to how she would respond. It suddenly struck her that he no longer restrained her. She slid off his thighs and onto her knees. She grimaced in frustration when the desire to pull her pants up over her bare bottom hit her and she was stopped by the reality of her wrists being restrained behind her back.
“Stand up and bend over,” Shane directed.
Laura glared at him in anger, but for some strange reason his request sent a surge of liquid warmth through her pussy. She felt simultaneously embarrassed, furious, and aroused when she’d done what he said, sticking her bare bottom in the air. He stood, came behind her, and lowered her sweatpants to her knees. She clenched her jaw, readying herself for the sharp sting that his palm would leave on her ass.
She glanced around in confusion a few seconds later, however, when she heard the sound of a zipper from across the room.
“Bend back over,” Shane said as he returned to her side.
Laura hadn’t even realized that she’d straightened, fixated as she was on the black paddle Shane carried in his hand. It was unlike anything she’d ever seen before, being made of what looked like smooth, hard black rubber.
“Shane—” she began in a quivery voice.
“It’ll be all right,” he soothed as he approached. He came up next to her and placed his hand on her shoulder, pressing down gently, urging her to resume her former position. Laura bent over slowly, but he must have seen the doubt in her eyes. “I’ll never give you any more than you can handle. You have to trust me, Laura.”
She closed her eyes as his deep voice washed over her. He opened his hand across her shoulder. Laura jumped at the sudden sensation of the paddle touching her bare bottom—not with the brisk, stinging smack that she expected, but instead with a smooth, gliding caress.
“Bend your knees slightly,” Shane demanded thickly.
Laura groaned in mixed humiliation and excitement. He waited while she followed his instruction, continuing to stroke her sensitive, tingling bottom with the surprisingly velvety soft surface of the paddle. She inhaled sharply when the paddle suddenly pressed tightly against her butt cheeks, garnering her attention.
“I call the shots while we’re here. I decide when you’re going to eat, sleep, fuck, and come. Do you understand?”
Laura’s mouth gaped open, but before she had a chance to respond he drew back the paddle and swung. The resulting smack made air pop out of her throat. Before she had time to recover he paddled her again. She couldn’t stop herself. She stepped away from him, instinctively trying to avoid the sharp sting of pain. She lost her balance due to the sweatpants gathered around her knees, but Shane steadied her with the hand on her shoulder.
“Dammit, that hurts, Shane!” she muttered fiercely. In truth, the sharp sting of the blow had already faded, leaving a hot, prickly sensation in the cheeks. She grimaced when she recognized that fiery sensation on her ass seemed to be spreading to her sex, tingling and enlivening the damp flesh. Was her arousal clear to Shane as she bent over like this with her thighs parted? Her ass cheeks must be glowing bright pink at this point, but could he see what his actions were doing to her traitorous pussy?
He responded to her accusation by rubbing the surface of the paddle up and down on her bottom with a frictionless glide. It soothed Laura’s nerve endings, but his actions also caused a sharp, almost painful twinge of arousal on her clit.
Fire seemed to streak from her clit to her sacral area when he transferred the tip of the paddle to the base of her backbone, rubbing her gently. Why that relatively innocent caress had such a dramatic effect on her body, she had no idea. It’d had the same effect when Shane had caressed the skin just above her crack while he held her in his lap last night.
Perhaps the most disconcerting thing was that he somehow had knowledge of how sensitive she was there, even though Laura had never suspected it herself. Shane possessed far too much knowledge of her secrets.
She knew he was about to resume when he once again pressed the paddle tightly to her cheeks and circled it subtly against the flesh.
“Hold steady,” he murmured.
Laura gritted her teeth together in preparation for the blow. She grunted when it landed with a loud crack. Once again, he soothed the sting with the smooth side of the paddle.
“Are you going to stop insulting me?” he asked.
“I’ll try,” Laura conceded.
He paddled her again, this blow angled slightly upward, landing on the sensitive lower curve of her bottom. She yelped. “All right. Yes.”
“Yes what?” Shane queried softly as the paddle rubbed just inches away from her aching pussy.
“I’ll stop insulting you,” she moaned.
The paddle cracked her ass again. “And what else?”
“I-I’ll eat when you tell me to . . . and shower whenever you tell me to,” she added quickly when she felt the paddle leave her skin.
“And?”
Laura wiped her wet cheek on her shoulder. “I’ll . . . I’ll fuck when you say to . . . and come . . .” Her voice trailed off.
She grimaced when the paddle stung her again sharply.
“. . . when you say to,” she added tremulously. She tried her mightiest to restrain a sob, but didn’t quite succeed when he again soothed her burning hot flesh, this time with his palm instead of the paddle.
He urged her gently to stand with his hand on her shoulder. Then he bent to pull her sweatpants back up over her hips and unfastened her cuffs. Laura was so stunned by the entire experience she just stood there mutely while he went to the bathroom. He returned a moment later with some tissues. She said nothing as he wiped off the tears and snot from her face with a tenderness that nearly undid her.
Her only defense was to refuse to meet his stare.
“Why do you fight it, Laura?”
She shook her head slowly, still staring steadfastly at the blue “H” of the Hoyas on his ancient T-shirt. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She couldn’t believe it was possible, but fresh tears scuttled down her cheeks. S
he couldn’t recall the last time she’d cried during the past decade or more and now it had become a regular occurrence since Shane had reentered her life. It was as if he’d flicked a switch in her . . . released a dam of emotion.
“Just tell me what you want me to say and I’ll say it,” she grated out, straining to regain control.
He never said “Look at me,” so she had no idea why she did it. She felt compelled to look up and meet his stare. His eyes glowed brilliantly in his dark countenance.
“It’s not forever, Laura. But for these three days, you will give me complete control. I don’t know why for sure you believe you had to carry the burden of your secrets alone. All I know is it’s going to stop between now and when we leave next Monday.” He stepped closer. His long legs parted, cradling her hip. “I need to know what you know.”
Laura ripped her gaze from his, staring straight ahead . . . willing herself not to be ensnared. He dipped his head. She felt his warm breath ghosting her ear.
“I’ll never forget what it was like between us, baby. I can’t let go of it. Tell me you remember.”
“If I say it now you won’t know if I’m doing it just to please you or not,” she managed hoarsely. “Isn’t that the shortcoming of this game?”
“This is no game, Laura. Just say it and I’ll decide. Look at me.”
Laura swallowed, steeling herself. She glanced up warily. His blue eyes glittered with emotion.
“I remember,” she said.
For several seconds he didn’t move. Then he stepped back several feet and turned around.
“Come out to the kitchen and finish your breakfast,” he ordered before he exited the room.
Laura followed slowly, wondering what he’d seen in her face that resulted in his bold features stiffening in fury.
Neither of them spoke a word while they ate breakfast. Despite the tension, Laura found herself eating every last bit of the oatmeal topped with banana and brown sugar that Shane had set in front of her. She never added sugar to her cereal or oatmeal. At first she was irritated with him for having put it on there without asking her preference.
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