Page 29 of Mr. North
“I’m not. I’m just…”
“You’re scared.”
I have no idea why proving him wrong is so important to me. I’ve been called a chicken, I’ve been heckled and harassed by people trying to urge me into positions I have no business being in, and it’s never mattered before. I’ve never had a problem saying no to something or someone. In fact, saying no has been the easiest thing in the world for me. Apart from right now, looking up into Raph’s eyes, seeing the challenge there; I want more than anything to rise to his challenge, to tell him he’s wrong, but I honestly don’t know how.
As if reading my mind, Raphael places a hand on the back of the chair, looking down at it in a contemplative manner. “It’s really simple, y’know.” He steps around the chair, locking it back into an upright position. He has to adjust a lever to make the backrest recline a little. Once he’s satisfied with his alterations, he sits down onto it, leaning back. I’m no idiot. I can see the perfect outline of his erection through the material of his pants. Raphael glances down, obviously seeing it too and not caring. He angles his head back, his chin tilting upward, his arms thrown over either side of the wooden rests. He looks like some sort of fallen angel—beautiful and cruel all at once. “I’ll be your buffer. Just this once, I’ll stand between you and your fears. Sit on my lap,” he says.
“I’m not eight years old. I don’t need to sit on your knee. Or is this some sort of “Daddy” thing?” I ask, my laughter nervous and jittery.
A serious expression forms on his face. “You can call me daddy if you want to. I’d prefer sir, though. Or master. We can figure all of that out later, though. For now, think of this as an experiment. You find out if you like being close to me. I find out if you’re capable of relinquishing control to me. Even just a little.”
Normal guys take a girl to see a movie on their third date. Normal guys take a girl to watch a play, or they’ll cook something delicious at home to make a good impression. Normal guys do not have a torture/sex chair crafted to your very precise specifications. They don’t ask you to sit on their lap in order to see if you’re able to submit yourself to them. And Raph and I aren’t dating. We haven’t been on one date yet, let alone three. This is all really, really fucked up.
Raphael rubs his thigh through his pants, eyeing me like he wants to take me right here, right now on the floor of this strange, airless room. “It’s okay if you want to leave. You can go. Turn around and walk out of the door. Take the elevator down to the ground floor, get into a cab and disappear into the night. But you and I both know what will happen the moment you climb into bed tonight. You’ll touch yourself, thinking about this moment. You’ll make yourself come with your fingers or with a piece of fucking plastic, and you’ll feel cheated. You’ll know you’ve missed out on something remarkable.”
“There you go again. So fucking full of yourself.”
Raph just smiles, allowing his head to hang for a second as he looks down at the floor. “And like I told you, Beth…I have every reason to be arrogant. I’m really good at fucking. I’m really good at bringing a girl to climax. I’m really good at making girls scream my name. Not to mention, my dick is fucking glorious.”
Jealousy surges through me when he says that. He must have had an awful lot of sex to be so cocky and confident. Exactly how many girls has he made come? How many of them have found themselves praying to the god of North Industries? If I ask him, he’ll probably tell me exactly how many. I realize almost instantly that I don’t want to know that information. I drop my purse, allowing it to hit the floor. I cross the room, eyeing Raphael and the huge bulge he’s sporting between his legs. His dick really must be glorious to be tenting the material of his pants like that. I look away, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of watching me stare at him, but when I look up to meet his gaze, Raphael’s eyes are filled with amusement anyway.
This moment is pivotal for me. I know it deep within me, inside my very bones. If I sit on his lap, I’m telling him that I want this, and in turn that I want him . I should be taking more time to consider my options here. I certainly shouldn’t be slowly walking towards him, my body pulled to him, no longer responding to my own will. I have liquid fire traveling through my veins. I have light under my skin. I have a raging inferno for a heart. I can’t seem to stop myself from reaching out to touch my fingertips to his face.
This is all so unexpected. I don’t trust my own intuition anymore. I’m completely lost. Raphael doesn’t respond to my touch. His expression is blank as I trace my fingers over his cheek, along the sharp, angular line of his jaw. “You got under my skin,” I whisper to him. “I don’t know how you did it so quickly, but I can’t deny it. You know my past. You know what happened to my mother. You obviously know how that day has affected every moment of my life since. I don’t want to live under the weight of that anymore. I want to be free.”
Raphael’s pale green eyes seem to shine a little brighter. “But more than that…” he says, a ghost of a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. “You want me .” He places his hands on my waist, lifting me up roughly. He spins me around, turning me, pulling me down onto him so that I’m sitting sideways on his lap. When he puts me down, Raphael plants me directly on top of his rigid boner. I gasp—the sensation and the feel of him is almost too much to bear. Three milometers of fabric separate my pussy from his dick. Three measly layers of clothing that might as well be made out of tissue paper at this point. I can feel everything, and I’m betting Raphael can too.
His eyes shutter a little, his bawdy, confident façade slipping for a second, revealing just how turned on he is right now. “I won’t ever do anything to you against your will, Beth. Ever. You can believe that.”
Weirdly, I do. I believed him back in that VR simulation, and I believe him now. I nod slowly, my heart racing out of my chest.
“I’m not going to tie you up and fuck you today,” he says softly. “But I am going to put you over my knee and spank you.”
“Spank me?”
“If you don’t think you can handle it…” Raphael points to the door. “It’s still open. I won’t think any less of you.” He says this in such a teasing way, a challenging way. It’s a carefully crafted barb. His eyes shine brightly, and I can see the anticipation there. I can’t decide what he wants me to do more: get up and go, therefore chickening out on his blatant dare, or stay and accept the challenge.
Every part of me is burning now. Fuck, I don’t know how I’m supposed to act. How am I supposed to just hand myself over to him like this? Like my emotional freedom is worth nothing to me. The reality of the matter is that it’s the most important thing to me in the world. Raphael wants it from me, and it’s the hardest thing for me to give. Maybe that’s exactly why he’s asking this. If I valued something else more, he’d no doubt want that from me instead. It’s messed up. It’s a clear, obvious power play, and it’s making it difficult to consider all my options without losing my temper. The simple solution in this situation is to coolly and calmly leave with my pride and my dignity in tact, but I just can’t do it. My head is filled with him. Always . I smell the scent of him teasing the back of my nose every time I walk down the street. I hear his voice whenever I’m in class, or on the subway. The man is haunting me like the mysterious, enigmatic ghost that he, for all intents and purposes, is, and it’s driving me insane. “Why don’t I get to strap your ass into the chair?” I ask in a hard, clipped voice. “Why don’t I get to give you a good hiding?”
Raphael laughs softly, his voice the sound of rustling silk. “That’s not how this works and you know it.”
“Why? Because you’re an arrogant asshole who wants everything his own way?”
“Yes. That’s part of it, anyway,” he concedes evenly. “A Dom also doesn’t bow down to a sub.”
“Sub? You seem to be making a lot of assumptions here.” I try to keep the snark from my voice, but I’m unsuccessful. What the actual fuck? What have I done to give him the impression I’d be submissive to him? It’s absolutely maddening. He’s being such an outrageous prick. I look back over my shoulder, and I can’t stop staring at him, though—the way the dim light is hitting his shoulders, casting long shadows down his body, and throwing his handsome face into dramatic patches of light and dark. He is the physical manifestation of all my darkest, most sensual desires come to life…and he is impossible to ignore.
“How hard will it be? How hard will you spank me?”
He answers immediately. “As hard as you can take it.”
A thrill of adrenaline rushes through me. My mind splinters into three. The first part is focused on the shape of his full lips as they curve and arch into that smile of his. The second part is focusing on the idea of pain, and how much of it I can handle before I have to back down. The third part is focusing on my underwear, trying to remember which panties I put on this morning. Black lace? Red lace? Boy shorts? Hipsters? God, I hope I didn’t pull out a pair of granny panties in my rush to get out of the door for school. I find myself nodding, though, relinquishing control of the moment to him. “All right. I’ll let you know when I can’t take anymore.”
“I’ll already know when we reach that point.”
“How?”
“By the way you breathe. By the way your body writhes over my knee. By the way you jump every time I lay my palm to your bare skin.”
