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He didn’t need to specify what I was done with. I got the gist.

“Yeah.”

I wasn’t done parsing through everything in my head, but that wasn’t what he was asking.

His fingers tightened around my neck. My breath hitched. “It’ll be interesting to test that pain tolerance of yours with an audience. More instructive for them, too.”

“Right.”

The words registered a second later. He wasn’t going to spank mebeforethe workshop? I craned my neck as much as I could. No idea what I was trying to achieve or what I thought I’d find reflected in those dark eyes. Tony had one hell of a poker face. The only thing I could surmise was that he looked serious.

For some reason, I didn’t have it in me to question or fight him.

I didn’t even find it in me to fight him when he slapped my side before getting out of bed.

“And pup? Work on that damned email.”

Or when he said that.

FOURTEEN

tony

After Jaime had first showed up at my place, I had gone through several itemized lists of everything I should prepare for. His readiness to attack and stubbornness were among the first in all those lists. His relationship with Cece was another. With Sergio, too, for that matter. I’d kind of ticked off the last two—or started doing it. After reading through a dozen forums on puppy play, I didn’t have more questions than answers, but I definitely had one hell of a headache.

That was irrelevant.

No, what I hadn’t thought to add to any of the lists was my phone now incessantly buzzing with texts andmentions. Most of them came from Jaime and Cece. Sergio was slowly mimicking his friends, too, as evidenced by the last string of only mildly connected texts he sent.

Sergio

Kara kidnapped me to talk to her therapist

didn’t know that was a thing

but I have a therapist now

it’s annoying

she said you don’t have to be a nightmare-inducing monster, so yay, endorsement?

she also said I shouldn’t force myself to interact with you, which I’m clearly not doing, so who knows if her judgement is good?

anyway

Jaime said you’re spanking them this weekend

Daddy said we can go but i’m on speech restriction

but I don’t like speech restriction

can you imagine me not talking?

he said I need your permission to not be on speech restriction

well, he didn’t use the word permission, but you know what I mean

The texts sat unanswered. I’d read them about ten times by now and cleaned my house to the point of reorganizing my bookshelves. Procrastination wasn’t something that I usually had to keep myself from doing.