“I can explain,” she started.
“So can I. You thought you’d just do what you wanted with no thought to your safety or the rules. The first isn’t unexpected, but I’d thought I’d made more of an impression on you. I will correct that and ensure you understand the depth of my displeasure with your behavior. Strip.”
“Roark…”
“Strip, Sage. Now,” he commanded.
He watched the struggle play across her features. She was at war with herself. He knew part of her desperately wanted to submit, but it battled with the part of her that had convinced herself that it was wrong to do so.
He battled as well. He would have preferred for this early time together to be more about whispered words, promises, and assurances that everything would be fine and that he would keep her safe. Unfortunately, his pet was proving to be tenacious and unruly. She needed to learn to follow the rules, regardless of whether she wanted to or not.
“You broke the rules and put yourself in danger, didn’t you?”
“It’s a stupid rule. I’m perfectly safe here at the Savoy.”
“Are you forgetting someone hired a professional killer to end your life? Do you think he wouldn’t have killed you here at the Savoy if you’d brought him back to your bed?”
“No, I didn’t forget, and I didn’t bring him back here to fuck,” she said heatedly.
“No, you were quite prepared to let him fuck you under a bridge.”
That silenced her.
“That’s really not relevant to this discussion,” she said.
“You’re right. The only salient point to our discussion is you disobeyed me, knowing full well what the consequences would be, didn’t you?”
“Well, yes, but I just wanted to swim.”
“No, that isn’t it at all. What you wanted was to see if you could disobey me and not have me punish you. Guess what, Pet? I would never disappoint you. Avoiding a punishment when you have willfully disobeyed me is not going to happen. More to the point, you don’t want it to, do you?”
Tears began to well in her eyes, and she shook her head.
Roark softened his demeanor as he took a seat on the edge of the bed.
“That’s my good girl,” he crooned. “Take off your bathing suit and put yourself in position over my knee. You know Daddy’s going to spank you, don’t you?”
She nodded, removing her suit and revealing her aroused body, then started toward him. She halted, her eyes pleading, but he wasn’t sure for what and doubted she knew, either. He patted his hard thigh and waited for her to accept what she already knew in her soul to be true. With a stifled sob, she assumed the position every female with a dominant partner had been taking since the dawn of time.
Roark was so proud of her. He knew what those few steps had cost her—his proud, defiant little girl had made the decision to submit to him and trusted he would safeguard her heart. He meant to humble her but planned to tell her later that at that moment, he felt humbled, too, that giving herself to him was everything.
He raised his hand and brought it down sharply, beginning a flurry of hard swats across her upturned rump, first one side, then the other. With harsh slaps he spanked her, encompassing her entire bottom, overlapping them so their distinctiveness disappeared, and her bottom turned from ivory to pink to red.
Sage squirmed, trying to get away, but he clamped his leg across the backs of hers so her efforts failed. He didn’t hold it against her since he understood it was all part of the ritual. She would resist, especially as the pain intensified, but he would never consider stopping until she completely capitulated to his dominance.
Over and over he spanked her, focusing at first on the fullest part of her bottom, staining it a dark red. Every so often, he changed it up and landed a few targeted blows to the juncture of her ass and the top of her thighs.
The longer and harder he punished her, the more engorged his cock became. The bulge in the front of his jeans had been growing since he’d first entered the elevator and had become painful as he fished her out of the pool. What he really wanted was to stop, toss her over the end of the bed, step up between her legs, and hammer her pussy until she was raw and sore, but right now, her need to be disciplined superseded his need to dominate in an entirely different manner.
In order to focus on her needs before seeing to his own, Roark redoubled the strength and fury of his swats, causing her to yowl in response. He meant to ensure while she might find walking difficult immediately after he finished fucking her, she would feel the after-effects of this spanking for the next several days. He meant to bring home the lesson each time he slammed his hips into her bruised and swollen backside as he thrust forward, ramming his cock to the end of her sheath.
Roark wanted her to be as aroused as he was when he let her up, so he began splaying his hand and deliberately catching the tender spot between her legs. Her sharp inhalation of breath let him know he’d found his target. He wanted her sore… and soaked. Every time he struck her labia, his fingers came back bearing the evidence of her arousal. Sage’s sobs of pain began to be overshadowed by moans of pleasure.
He rested his hand on the inside of her thigh and reached forward to tickle her swollen nub, letting her writhe. Trailing his fingers along the lips of her wet, swollen labia, he stroked and parted them to tease the entrance to her sheath, a gaping opening begging to be
