Page 22 of Fearless
Kitty sucked a hard breath. Her mouth clamped shut against the scream she would not let escape. Her teeth gritted fast to swallow it back. Through them, she started the count over. “I’m a good girl!” she snarled, and burst into tears.
He didn’t need the full force of his arm to make it hurt like hell, but the sound of impact made it sound as if he had.
“I’m safe!” she shrieked, her perfect pose faltering under the tiniest hip twist. Her toes dug against the hardwood floor, scraping the wood as she fought not to squirm as the strap wrapped her ass in another fiery hold. “I’m loved!”
She gave herself no time to recover, so neither did he.
She screamed, “I don’t have to be afraid of anything!”
He struck her sitspot directly and he spared her nothing.
For the first time, she broke position. Her legs snapped together, her feet snapping up to cover her fiery red bottom. She sobbed. She also started over again, and so did he. He gave her what she needed, pausing only long enough to wait for her to put her feet down or move her hands when she forgot herself. Stroke after stroke, phrase after phrase, until she lost all articulation and could only garble those key words into bedding now soaked with tears. She never said her safeword. She never got up, or tried to crawl over the footrail. And though eventually he did take her to twisting and bucking and struggling in expression of the hurt that consumed her, she never once tried to fight the strap.
He stopped when she was crying too hard even to mouth her phrases. Laying the strap on the floor, he hunkered down beside her, rubbing her back and stroking her hair. He caressed her bottom, measuring the hard spots where the swelling was the worst, but finding no blisters or split skin. He had lotion in the other room, but he was loathe to leave her long enough even to go get it. At least, not until her tears eventually dwindled into hiccups and sniffles.
He had to help her over the footrail. She made no effort to crawl into his lap, which he wouldn’t have minded and, for a moment, almost regretted. But this wasn’t about him. So he helped her up far enough for her to collapse upon her pillows. Her face was hot and red. The moment she touched the pillows, sobbing, she melted into them.
Brushing her dark, tussled hair back from her face, Noah checked, but her eyes were already closed. Already the sobs were breaking into gasps, and already those were easing into deeper, even breaths. She looked peaceful. A corner of his mouth lifted. She looked as if she were already sleeping.
She was quite lovely like this. All that long brown hair and soft, pale skin, her pants still tangled around her ankles and her bottom on absolute fire. He took her shoes off, then her pants so she might be comfortable in the fiery aftermath. She didn’t rub her bottom once; Noah tried to resist, but he couldn’t help rubbing it for her.
She mewed, the softest of protests. More a whimper really, but she didn’t try to stop him. What she did do, was roll less on her side and more on her belly, giving him full access to the hurt he’d inflicted, and now tried to soothe.
He kept his touch on the summits of her cheeks. He did not dip his fingers down into the shadowy valley between her slightly parted thighs. Would he find her wet if he did, the way so many submissives became even when the pain was too much for them? His fingertips tingled to wander, but he stuck to his resolve until it became overwhelmingly clear that she was too much a temptation. The longer he fondled her, the more he ached to slip his hands beneath the elastic of her panties to feel the burning of her flesh directly against his palm, skin to skin. Flesh to flesh. Dom to sub.
He took his hand off her. She was lying on the quilt, but he untucked it and folded the wide length up over her so she would be covered. She never once opened her eyes, so he left her there to sleep.
Noah was almost out the door when he heard her mumble, “If that wasn’t punishment, I don’t ever want to make you mad.”
The blood was pounding in his veins, the allure of her pulling him to come back to her. Maybe even to lie down beside her, roll her into his arms, comfort her tiny body with his. Only sheer force of will kept him from taking that first damning step.
“I don’t punish when I’m angry,” he said, for the record. “I also don’t spank when it’s real. And no, love, you don’t want to know what my punishments are like.”
Her only response was a sigh, seductively soft and filled with longing. She curled into her pillow, and Noah walked out the door while he still could.
He closed it to give her privacy, feeling nothing but the rawness of his desire to go back inside. The low, throbbing ache of his fully erect cock, thrusting stiff against the front of his jeans. He looked down at himself.
So much for his center of calm.
God. If he weren’t so aroused, this would almost be embarrassing.
Chapter 8
Australia was nothing if not persistent. It waited a few days for the heat Noah had seared into her backside and all the tenderness of her strapping to fade, and then it tried to kill her again. This time, her imminent death took the form of the straggliest, grumpiest koala she’d ever seen.
There was a world of difference, as it turned out, between being a burdensome guest, bound to the kindness of a keeper, and being a guest with an assigned task. Noah was right. She wasn’t a citizen, so she couldn’t get a job in his country. But the task Noah gave her served its purpose. It felt good to do something. To be ruled by the clock and another’s expectations. To be needed.
Some might have thought it sexist and degrading to be commanded to care for his kitchen, but Kitty didn’t mind it, especially since Noah very quickly proved he didn’t go out of his way to make messes, he treated her with respect and he made zero sexual advances against her. Zero. She found that both comforting and, in a way, disappointing.
On that first day, once she woke up from her nap, Kitty cleaned up after breakfast and scrubbed down the sink, counters and stove. She served a simple lunch of sandwiches at twelve. He was out at the time, so she put everything in the fridge and waited at the window, watching until she finally spotted him coming up from the barn around one. She had to hurry to get everything on the table before he entered the house and barely made it in time, but it felt good. Like, major accomplishment good. His simple ‘thank you’ made her ridiculously happy, too, though she hid all signs of it so he wouldn’t see. Past experience could be a cruel teacher, and she didn’t want him to say anything to ruin how she felt. No cutting criticism of what she could have done to make lunch better, what she might have forgot, and, if nothing at all was wrong with the food, then what might be wrong with her instead.
In fact, she was so afraid of what he might say, that she tried to hide in the kitchen so she wouldn’t have to join him at the table.
“Rule Number Nine,” he said from the kitchen doorway, smiling even as he tipped her a stern look. “We eat at the table together. Every meal. Every time.”
It felt weird to sit with him, as if they were equals. Not only for breakfast, but again for lunch and then again when she got tea on the table at four, even though he’d told her not to. In fact, she’d sat at many an awkward table since she’d left Ethen, and so far, it hadn’t gotten any easier. It was hard to shake the belief she didn’t belong on a chair. It became even harder when she felt herself on the verge of doing kitten things, especially with Noah sitting right there. He liked to talk during meals, and he had a way of chatting that made her forget to watch her behavior, especially when getting up and down off her chair. She almost went to hands and knees twice at lunchtime. That was very scary, but by teatime, her concerns took a very different direction. That was when her stomach turned against her.
After feeling perfectly fine for most of the morning and afternoon, the minute she took that first sip of tea, her stomach rolled, then heaved, sending Kitty dashing to the bathroom, where she then lived for almost two hours. Leaned up against the wall by the toilet, wishing she would either hurry up and die… or that Noah would. At least then, he’d stop fussing at her. But no, he brought her tea and crackers as fast as she threw it all up. He pulled her hair back from her face and rubbed her back through the worst of the heaving, and before it was fully over, he forcibly tucked her into bed with a bucket and made her stay there while he went into town and brought back burgers for dinner. The smell of it made her want to throw up all over again until, the clock having ticked beyond some magic point around seven, the crackers and tea finally overcame the nausea and she became ravenous.
