Because You Are Mine (Because You Are Mine #1)(38)
Author: Beth Kery

“I’m angry because you left without leaving word where you were. If you’d brought it up earlier, it might have been different, although I would have said that I preferred you didn’t go traipsing around a strange city by yourself. This isn’t Chicago. You barely speak the language.”

“I lived in Paris for several months!”

“I don’t like it when someone I’m responsible for suddenly disappears,” he said through a stiff jaw.

His gaze dropped over her, and she suddenly felt self-conscious of the clothing she wore—a jogging bra, a tight T-shirt, and shorts. Her nipples pulled tight when his stare lingered on her breasts.

“Go and shower,” he said, turning and walking toward the fireplace.

“Why?”

He rested a forearm on the mantel and glanced back at her. “Because you have a lot to learn, Francesca,” he said, his tone more subdued. She swallowed thickly.

“Are you going to . . . to punish me?”

“I was very worried when I came back to an empty hotel suite. I expected you’d be here waiting for me. So the answer is yes. I am going to punish you, and then I’m going to fuck you for my pleasure alone. If you haven’t learned the lesson after that, then maybe I will punish you again. However long it takes for you to learn that I don’t like it when you’re impulsive.”

Her nipples pulled even tighter against the tight fabric of her jogging bra even as her ire rose. Her sex flushed with heat.

“You can punish me if you want, but I’m not letting you do it because I went jogging. That’s just stupid.”

“Believe whatever you like. But you will go and shower and put on a robe. Nothing else. Wait for me in the bedroom,” he said, turning away and picking up his phone again. He punched out a number and greeted someone briskly in French before he began making several queries. She’d been dismissed.

She faltered where she stood, burning to tell him to go and fuck his fucking shower and his fucking robe and his godforsaken high-handedness.

Another part felt bad for having unintentionally caused that shadow of fear in his eyes.

Another part still was excited by what he’d said. She’d thought incessantly of the time that he’d paddled and spanked her, and each time regretted that things had come to an unnatural halt.

She wanted to see how Ian culminated such arousing proceedings. She wanted to please him.

But at what cost? she wondered anxiously as she walked to the bedroom, resigned to the fact that she would do his bidding.

Why must he be such a puzzle?

Why must he turn her into one . . . even to herself?

Chapter Eight

After her shower, she sat nervously on the plush sofa in the sitting area of the bedroom suite, her anger mounting. How dare he make her wait? Wasn’t it just like him to yank her strings in this way?

He was yanking her strings in more ways than one. She had an urge to run to the bathroom and lock the door and another one to grind her sex against the cushion of the sofa. The waiting was pissing her off, but for some damnable reason she couldn’t comprehend, it was making her aroused as well . . . the anticipation . . . the excitement mixed with a potent dose of anxiety about what he planned to do to her.

She jumped when the door to the bedroom suite opened abruptly and Ian walked into the room. He glanced at her where she sat before he walked over to the valet stand and hung up his suit jacket. He opened the doors to a highly glossed antique cherry wardrobe and bent as if reaching for something. She strained, trying to see what he was doing, but the door blocked her view. When he started to straighten, she turned, not wanting him to know how focused she was on his every move.

So she was shocked when he walked around the couch a moment later and set a black crop on the coffee table. She stared wide-eyed at the two-inch-by-four-inch supple leather slapper at the end of the long, thin rod, her heart starting to pound against her breastbone.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said softly.

She looked at him. “But it looks like it will hurt.”

“I’ve punished you before. Did it hurt?”

“A little,” she admitted, her gaze dropping to one of his hands, which held what appeared to be a pair of cuffs, the hand straps made of soft-looking black leather.

Oh, no.

“Well, it wouldn’t be much of a punishment if it didn’t sting a bit, now would it?” She stared up at his handsome face, mesmerized by the sound of his low voice . . . compelled. “Stand up and take off the robe.”

She didn’t break his stare as she stood, somehow taking courage from some unspoken message in his eyes. She dropped the discarded robe onto the cushion. His gaze dropped over her, his nostrils flaring slightly. She shivered.

“Would you like me to turn on the fire?” he asked, referring to the gas fireplace.

“No,” she said, thrown off emotionally by the combination of his polite query and his intention to punish her. She walked to the mantel.

“Keep your back to me,” he ordered when she started to turn to face him. She longed to twist her chin over her shoulder to see what he was doing behind her, her anxiety and excitement mounting, but she restrained herself with effort. Was that because she once again didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing she was curious, or because she somehow sensed he wouldn’t want her to gawk over her shoulder?

She started when he wrapped his hands around one of her wrists.

“Easy, lovely,” he murmured. “You know I’d never really harm you. You must trust me.”

She said nothing, her mind racing as he buckled one of the cuffs snuggly around her right wrist. “Now you may face me,” he said.

She turned, her nipples pulling tight when she realized how close he stood. He must notice. There was no way she could hide her arousal as he fastened her other wrist into the cuff, his lowered head just inches from the tingling, prickling crests. The position of her arms as he cuffed her wrists together plumped her breasts. When he’d finished, her hands were bound together in front of her mons. He stepped back. Her nipples pinched even tighter when she noticed his gaze glued to them.

“Now lift your wrists and place them behind your head,” he instructed. He watched her while she complied. “Push back your elbows and arch your back a little. I want your muscles stretched tight.” She strove to do as he asked, thrusting her breasts forward and her elbows back, noticing the slight snarl shape of his mouth when she did so. The position left her feeling extremely naked and exposed. Then he turned away. “It will amplify the sensation,” he explained, his back to her as he walked over to the coffee table.