I snapped around, hissing, “Says the gold-digger who pants after every tight bank account she sees!”
Bethany snapped around too. “I weep for the future of Bahar, horse breath!”
Grabbing my ice water, I dumped it directly over her perfect head and into her lap. “You look a little hot and bothered,” I said over her scream. “That should help cool you off!”
I’d have thrown the empty glass at her too, except my wrist was seized and the glass taken from me.
“That was not well done,” Azid said firmly, neither smiling nor seeming particularly upset. “Come along, Princess. We’re leaving.”
I wasn’t in a mood for tea anymore anyway. “I hope she chokes on her sandwich,” I spat, only half under my breath as I was walked back into the palace. He still had me by the wrist and we were halfway up the stairs before I realized what we were doing. “Where are we going?”
“To discuss manners, and why you aren’t going to do that again.”
Far be it from me to play the royalty card, but I was a princess. I outranked Bethany. “The ice in her panties was lonely. I was being solicitous.”
“All right,” he said evenly. “That’s two.”
“Two?” I countered. “Two what? It’s not two, it’s well-deserved. So don’t think for a second that anything you say or do will ever make me apologize. I’d sooner slit my own wrists than ever tell that... that...”
“Language,” Azid warned proactively.
I glared at him. “I’m not sorry, and I never will be.”
We reached his room.
“Challenge accepted,” he said, opening the door and pushing me in ahead of him.
His suite was every bit as luxurious as mine, but done in that deep midnight blue color I liked so much. It made for a very relaxing atmosphere, right up until he locked the door.
“Why did you do that?” I asked, a part of me wondering if I ought to be alarmed. Another part of me wondered if he was going to kiss me again.
My insides went all molten and swimmy. My nipples tightened at the look he gave me as he closed the distance between us. I’d never felt my fluttering heart skip a beat so many times in one day before, but when he took my hand and led me to the couch, it did it yet again.
He was going to kiss me. I was almost sure of it. I rolled my lips, practically able to feel the touch of his on them. But then he sat down, and it threw me off completely when I felt that sharp tug. For the second time today, he jerked me over his lap. Face down, instead of sitting as I would have thought he’d want me.
“Oh, not agai—Ow!” I cut off with a yelp when the flat of his hand launched a vigorous assault all over my upturned ass.
He wasn’t just spanking me again, he was spanking me so much harder than before. Like seriously hard. It actually hurt and suddenly I realized he had gone easy on me the first time around. He must not have been hitting very hard back then, but he was now.
Forget kisses. Shock gave way to fury. I bucked, struggling to throw myself backwards off his lap, but he clamped his free arm across my back, hugging me to him while his hand never missed a beat.
It stung. No, not just stung. It hurt like a fury, and it wasn’t stopping.
“You can’t do this!” I cried, and he paused long enough to hike the skirt of my yellow dress up, tucking it under his restraining arm. “No. No!”
I tried to catch his arm, but he caught my wrist, pinned it down, and then went right back to spanking me.
I still wouldn’t have thought my dress much of a barrier until it wasn’t there. The smacks were crisper now; the pain, even sharper. He landed three stinging swats and that was more than enough for me to know I just couldn’t bear this.
“Stop!” I shouted, kicking wildly with both heels in an effort to hit him.
In a swift jerk, one of his thighs disappeared out from under me. Catching my legs between both of his, he clamped me down as if in a vise, and there was no breaking free from him now.
“Azid!” My whole body went stiff as a post in his unbreakable grip when I felt his fingers hook the elastic of my panties and down they came.
Azid had just bared my backside.
Now he had full view of me. The cringing cheeks of my bottom. My—oh, I was horrified—my sex! Everything was naked for his approval. I panted, appalled, shocked, and so ludicrously, thoroughly aroused that I could feel the trickles of liquid lust slipping through the lips of my pussy. No one had ever done anything like this to me.