Page 9 of Hunted Mate
I am displeased.
I made myself clear.
I claimed her.
She should know better than to rebel against me.
I remind myself she’s human, not wolf. She doesn’t feel the same inclination to submission that a shifter would. Instead she’s headstrong, following her intellect and her interest rather than instinct.
It’s time to take another shot at dissuading her.
It works in my favor that she decides to stay late in her office that evening. She’s already forgotten the intensity of what I did to her. She’s able to brush terrible things off in a way most people of any sanity wouldn’t, because she’s hyper-focused on this one special interest of hers. Breaking her attraction to it is going to take another, even more intense session. I can’t afford to be nice to her this time. This time it has to hurt.
She doesn’t hear me coming. She has her headphones on, playing a podcast of wild assumptions about shape shifters, if I had to guess. She’s typing furiously on her computer as I approach her from behind and slide a hand around her mouth.
Callie stiffens in place, instantly aware that she has been caught off guard. I don’t sense fear, though. Interesting. I have not scared her, even though I thrashed and bred her the first time we met. The woman is truly immune to good sense.
“You’re going to stop researching this subject,” I growl in her ear.
She makes a sound in my hand. I loosen my grip enough to let her speak.
“Or what?” She asks the question with sass and impudence.
Or what.
I stand back, turn her chair around, and undo my belt in almost one single motion.
Her lower lip quivers just a little. I snap my belt between my big hands, making a whip-crack sound.
“I warned you, Callie,” I say. “I told you that you needed to drop this. But you wanted to keep disobeying me. You don’t think anybody is going to follow up when you misbehave. You’re ever so wrong, baby girl. Now. You can get up, bare yourself for me, and accept your punishment, or I can put you in position, and this can hurt like hell.”
She narrows her eyes at me, showing yet more rebellion.
“Don’t,” I say.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t make this worse. I already intend to punish you hard. Trust me, you don’t want more than I originally planned.”
I watch as she pouts. She is so spoiled, but not in the traditional sense that most rich kids are. She is not spoiled from being given too much, and expecting too much. She is spoiled in the way someone who has always had to forge a path for themselves has to be spoiled. She ignores feedback, dismisses discipline. She is like a one woman icebreaker, plowing through the defenses my kind has been putting in place for years now.
Calista
“I’m going to keep researching. You would have to kill me to stop me. So unless you are going to wrap that belt around my neck…”
He drops one end and quick as a flash, he does just what I dared him to do. I feel leather against my throat, a firm presence that makes me feel instantly caught. He doesn’t snatch it tight, though. He doesn’t start squeezing the life from me. He just loops it around, the tongue going through the buckle so that it snugs against my neck like a collar.
“You really don’t understand, do you,” he growls at me. “You always escalate, always dare me to try to break you. You’re going to make this so much worse than it needs to be.”
He steps in toward me. “If you had listened, you wouldn’t be in this position. This punishment fucking you’re going to get? If you were a reasonable woman, it could have been an email.”
I smirk even as the belt pulls a little tighter.
He doesn’t understand. There is something inside me that comes to life when I am told what to do. It is pure resistance, and it turns punishment to pleasure. Sometimes physical, but always psychological. I wouldn’t stop my research anyway, but his insistence that I do ensures that I’ll never give it up.
He tugs on my impromptu collar.
“Get down,” he growls. “Now. I want you on your hands and knees.”
