Leonardo looks at the man. “He’s dead anyway.” He pulls back a fist, but before he can swing, I grab his arm.
"Please," I whisper. “Don’t do this. Don’t take it out on him. Punish me, if you must, but please let him be.”
Leonardo looks at me, anger burning behind his gaze. “Fine. But remember.” He leans in and whispers in my ear. “You asked for it.”
Leonardo waits for me when I step out of the shower, a towel clutched in his fist. Water drips from my hair and skin, pools beneath my feet on the tiles. I am slick and raw from steam and the rush of adrenaline, and my husband’s punishment is sweeter than I imagined. His body is tense, the muscles drawn tight. His eyes, when they find me, burn with desire and accusation.
I should feel worried, knowing what he’s like. I should feel sorry, knowing how I’ve broken his rule. But I don’t feel sorry, and I don’t feel worried. I feel an ache low in my belly and a smile tugging at my lips.
“Really, Leo? A punishment for saving Marco’s life?” I raise my eyebrows, loving how close he is to breaking. Loving how he wants to make me pay.
“Yeah, a punishment,” he says, his tone angry, but I hear the need beneath it. It’s rough and deep, and the words bleed into me, turn me fevered, make me ache more. I know this is more than the usual thrill, the usual edge. He wants to teach me. He wants to make me remember the lesson. "So you never forget the rules again.”
I step closer. “Who said I forgot them?”
He takes a step too, and the tiles are cold against my back.
The towel falls from his fist, and for a moment, I plan to tease my husband for being so quick to forget the sweetness of his threats. A moment is all I get. The taunt dies on my lips, swallowed by Leo’s kiss as he lowers me to the tiled floor. The sun beats through the windows, turning the space shimmery. Slick. My husband turns it to something else. Hot. Breathless. Urgent. He takes his time, but not in the leisurely way. In the devastating way. In the way where every second is a cry for more. His body covers mine, liquid heat. He pins my wrists to the tiles with one hand, keeps my legs apart, covered by his knees.
The coolness of the tiles on my back does nothing to chill the fire of his touch. I arch up to meet it, desperate. Needful. Forgetting everything except my desire. But I can barely move, pinned to the floor like a butterfly specimen, there to be observed and admired.
He takes his time with me, and his time is not kind. It is rough. Stark. Calculated. He runs one hand down my cheek, my neck, across my collarbone. He’s laying his claim, sticking his flag inmy soul after his lesson in the kitchen. Making me remember what I risked. Punishment in the cruelest way: slow and sweet and impossibly, unbearably thorough.
Each touch is a challenge. Each gentle caress across my skin takes me closer to the edge. I am naked and vulnerable, and he is fully clothed. He’s barely touching me, but he knows what he’s doing, pulling me higher, pushing me further. I am Eleanor Price, more stubborn than any man could hope for, but I’m losing my ground, my breath, my control.
“The rules were simple,” he says, and it’s true.
He set them. I broke them. Now I’m breaking all over again, and he’s watching me do it. He’s loving every second. Where I expect anger, I find heat. Where I expect retribution, I find urgency.
A groan slips from my lips. If he wasn’t holding me down, I’d be arching up to meet him, arms around his neck, legs around his waist. But he is holding me down, and I can’t last much longer.
He leans over me, a growl in his voice. “I have one more rule for you, baby.”
He reaches down with his free hand and unzips his pants, releases his thick cock. “Don’t come until I say you can.”
“What? No.” My words are breathy and needy.
“This isn’t for your pleasure, Eleanor. It’s for mine. For you, this is punishment.”
I smile. “Not much of a punishment if I enjoy it.” I’m breathless.
He lifts a hand, runs a thumb over my lip. “Who says you’re going to enjoy it?”
I arch against him, giving him an answer without saying a word. His cock hard and insistent against my leg, and it throbs as I shift my hips, shift his control. “I do,” I say. I know it drives him crazy when I act like this. When I’m more in charge than heis. But that’s the thrill. The edge. He thinks he’s the one with all the power, but he’s not.
Leonardo’s eyes burn, his restraint thin. His free hand moves over me, down my ribs, my belly, my thighs, a slow, dangerous heat. Then he pushes his cock inside me, and I whimper in relief.
He fucks me in long, steady strokes, and I hold on. My anger is swallowed up by his cock, by the heat of his skin against mine. I can’t help it.
He keeps at it, won’t let me have my release. The friction is perfect, brutal, a tease of skin and sweat. The sounds are enough to drive me mad, our bodies slapping in the thick air, breaths crashing as hot as waves, the uneven rhythm of me trying to hold back. My pulse is a hammer. My need is a wildfire.
He fucks me hard, demanding and calculated. Forceful and wild, then more forceful.
“Don’t come, baby,” he says, and the command shoots through me, making it impossible to obey.
His eyes are locked on me, and he makes me come so hard I almost can’t breathe. I come hard, wild, everything hazy and slick. The sun, the glass, the hard floor, the steamy air. I shake against him. I can’t hold it back, not when his hands are on me like this. Not when I need it this bad.
I’m thrashing and panting and not holding back, and he watches the whole thing, not blinking.