Page 47

I couldn’t take that. IknewI couldn’t.

Yet a part of me was curious…

He slapped my ass again right over the plug, and a cry tore from my throat before I could stop it. My whole body jerked forward, thighs trembling.

“I asked you a question,” he scolded, voice calm and serious.

I wanted to stay defiant. I wanted to stay strong, but I was unraveling too fast, and the belt was the line Icouldn’tcross. Not yet. Not tonight. Not when I was already drowning in sensation and shame.

“Yes,” I whispered, voice breaking on the single syllable. My face burned. My pride ached. “I… I liked it.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, and I felt the silence stretch out like a hand reaching for my throat.

So I gave him what I knew he was waiting for.

The word I had sworn I’d never say.

The word that now lived somewhere between fear and craving on my tongue.

“Please,Daddy… don’t take off your belt.”

I felt him still behind me.

I knew, the second those words left my mouth, I’d just given him everything. He’d won.

Thrumming silence stretched.

Thick. Heavy. Hot.

It was the kind of quiet that said more than words ever could, the kind that wrapped around your lungs and squeezed until you weren’t sure if you were trembling from fear or anticipation or both. I could feel him standing there behind me. Still. Focused. I could practically feel the weight of his satisfaction pressing into the room like gravity.

Because I’d said it.

I had given him what he wanted.

“Good girl,” he praised, finally, and the words melted through me like molten metal.

Soft. Lethal.Earned.

For one wild second, I wanted to cry.

Not because of the pain—though it lingered, a deep, pulsing ache—but because he was looking at me differently now. Not because of sadness either, but because I felt like I’d been claimed. That the wall I’d built around myself was no longer a fortress, just a ruin he walked through without even a smidge of resistance.

I couldn’t look back at him. I just couldn’t.

“Since you’re finally showing me that youcanbe a good girl,” he murmured, voice dangerously calm, “I think it’s time we see how well you really behave for Daddy.”

He moved behind me. My ears strained and I picked up on the sound of his hand pressing into his pocket. I heard a sound I dreaded to identify, the flex of plastic squeezed and a slurp.

My stomach dropped—a flutter of nerves, heat, and fear, tangled so tight I didn’t know where one ended and the other began.

I felt his hand ghost over my hip.

Then it drifted lower.

“Daddy,” I whimpered, and it was half protest, half plea.

He didn’t answer.