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A quiet, broken sound escaped before I could stop it, and his fingers tightened around mine.

“That’s what I thought,” he sneered, making my face burn with shame.

Sweat coated my skin and my body trembled against him with both pain and fury. The spanking slowed, his sandpaper palm now running over my hot skin between smacks, soothing, teasing, waiting.

Daring me to admit what he already knew.

I clenched my teeth, sucking in a shaky breath, forcing my voice to remain steady. “Is that all you’ve got, Alpha?”

The growl that tore from his throat sent a bolt straight through me as he redoubled his effort to tame me. I snarled, my fingers tightening around his, but my body was betraying me completely. Heat surged through me, ricocheting from my ass to my pussy to my disloyal clit. The sting bloomed beneath his palm, sending shivers down my spine, making my thighs tense, and my eyes squeeze shut behind the blasted blindfold.

His hand came down over and over again, impossibly harder and harder, the sound crisp in the warm air, the impacts jolting through me like electric shocks. My skin was on fire, each strike layering heat upon heat, pain upon passionate need.

His grip on me did not alter in the slightest, and, from my ignominious position, I could not discern any particular exertion on his part. The fucking bastard.

“You still want to challenge me, Wildcat?” He was taunting me, but it was his voice that betrayed him. There was something else beneath it now, a certain strained edge that made it seem like he was barely holding himself together.

I should have fought him.

Should have spit and scratched and screamed and yelled out something defiant right then. But when he landed yet another sharp spank, all I could do was let out a huff, my body trembling.

I was losing control, and worse, Ilikedit. What the fuck was happening to me?

His hand smoothed over my scalded skin, soothing for only a moment before the next strike came, setting me ablaze all over again. On and on he continued to spank me, for long minutes on end, the burn blazing across my bare cheeks as he punished from the top of my cleft all the way down to the middle of my thighs. Finally, the pain overwhelmed me, and I moaned. He kept going and my cries grew more and more desperate with every one.

“You don’t sound so sure anymore,” he said teasingly, his grip tightening around my wrists.

A growl built in my throat, but it died when he smacked me again, his palm landing just low enough that my hips jerked against his thigh.

I sucked in a breath, heat curling deep in my belly, my mutinous body betraying me in ways I didn’t want to admit, couldn’t admit.

“I’m sure that you’re a sadistic bastard,” I replied, with a generous helping of snark.

“Oh, Wildcat, you’re going to regret that,” he countered, and my heart leapt into the back of my throat.

The next spank was somehow harder, right in the center of my ass. The impact was more brutal than the others, and I cried out, arching away from him, desperate to get away. But there was no escaping the unyielding hand that held me firmly in place, and no way to stop the heat that spread through my core, making my thighs clench and my pussy drip.

There was no stopping this.

The unfamiliar powerlessness only made me wetter and hotter.

“This is what you needed, isn’t it, little mate. You needed me to put you in your place and show you exactly who has charge over you,” he growled.

I wanted to tell him that he was wrong. The problem was I’d be lying, because there was a deep, hidden, shameful part of me that was loving every second of this.

I loved the way his hard palm stung my bare flesh. Loved the way his thighs braced mine open, forcing me to endure not only the spanking, but also the embarrassment of being exposed and vulnerable to him like this. I loved the way his other hand gripped my waist so firmly, refusing to let me go, and keeping me from tumbling over and landing right on my face.

My chest heaved, the air too thin, the room too hot, his grip on me—and his power over me—too damn strong.

And then the spanking slowed, each impact harder, heavier. I lay there balanced over his thigh, his muscular leg pressing into my stomach and my core clenched tight with desire.

I was helpless.

Displayed.

Defenseless.

His hand came down on me again, his fingers squeezing my buttock tight. A low groan slipped from his lips, the sound guttural.