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That was the moment.

He moved. Fast. Too fast for me to react. One second, I was safe behind the kitchen island, flush with adrenaline and pride and just the right amount of reckless bravado—and the next?

I was bent over it.

Hard marble under my hips, one of his arms braced across my lower back, his other hand gripping my wrist and pinning it down.

I sucked in a sharp inhale, stunned still, heart ricocheting inside my chest like it was trying to escape.

“W-What the hell are you doing?—”

“You want to act like a bad girl?” His voice was a growl against my ear. “You’re going to learn what happens to bad girls inmyworld.”

The panic rose first—quick and instinctual—but it was tangled up in a frayed sense of reluctant arousal. My skin burned under his touch, my heart pounding for all the wrong reasons. He let go of my waist and I tried to push against the counter, but I soon realized that I wasn’t going anywhere. My panic rose tenfold.

Then his hand came down.

Hard.

A sharp, suddencrackagainst the curve of my ass that sent a jolt straight through me—shock first, then heat, then something I didn’t even have words for.

I gasped.

I’d never been spanked before.

I got grounded growing up—a lot. Stern talks, revoked privileges, a long list of punishments that came with private-school polish and my dad’s tired, weary sighs. The consequences of being difficult, of being too dramatic, of beingtoo much.

Nothing like this.

This was… different.

I’d read about it in books—dark, delicious, secret stories I only opened when I was alone, tucked under covers with my heartracing and one hand slipping lower. Fantasies. Kinks. Girls bent over with pink cheeks and shivering thighs, getting ‘taught a lesson’ by men who always knew best.

I had wondered about it. More than once.

But this?

This wasnota fantasy.

This was a man with a palm like stone, holding me down and spanking me so hard my skin already felt scorched, my breath came in short gasps, and my thighs were shaking.

It was so much worse in real life.

My whole body locked up. Not from fear but from the humiliation of how fast I got warm. How much I felt it deep in my core.

“Let me go. You can’t just spank me like this—” I twisted, but it was half-hearted. Utterly pointless.

His hand came down again.Harder.

“I can do whatever I like with you, little girl, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me,” he growled.

My legs shifted. My thighs clenched.

I hated how my body was reacting to him. Hated that I could feel the damp heat already pooling between my legs, and I hated that I didn’t know if it was from the spanking or from the way he called me ‘little girl.’

“You think your daddy’s name protects you from me?” he asked, leaning over me now, his mouth so close to my ear I could feel his breath.

“Fuck you,” I bit out, but my voice was different now.