Page 53 of Irish Brute

Without changing his expression, Braiden throws me over his shoulder. I’m so astonished, I forget to fight for a moment, but then I pound his back with both fists. My belly is pressed into his shoulder, so it’s hard to grab a full breath. I twist in his grip, trying to squirm free, but he merely swats my bottom, hardenough to make me shriek. I try kneeing him in the chest, but I can’t get the angle right.

He carries me down the hall. Across the landing at the top of the stairs. Past Aiofe’s nursery. Past my room. Into his bedroom at the end of the hall.

“Put me down!” I manage to shout as he slams the door closed.

“Sir,” he reminds me.

“I’m not saying that. I’veneversaid that, not like you mean.”

“Why don’t we agree up front there are a lot of things you’re going to do tonight that you’ve never done before.”

As nerves explode in my belly, he shoots the deadbolt on the door. Why does a man have adeadbolton his fucking bedroom door? What the hell am I doing here?

He dumps me on the mattress. The bed is huge, with four posts, a footboard, and a headboard, all made of some dark, carved wood. As Braiden drapes my skirt over the footboard, I scramble to the top, taking refuge in a pile of tailored, hunter-green pillows. I clutch one, holding it to my chest like it’s some sort of armor.

I can’t look away as he drops his jacket on the floor. He strips off his tie, fingers slashing through its emerald knot. When the silk gleams on top of his jacket, he starts unbuttoning the cuffs of his snow-white shirt.

Something ripples deep inside me as he folds back his sleeves—one precise turn. Another. Another.

“What are you going to do to me?” I whisper, sounding like I’ve eaten an entire box of saltines.

“Sir,” he repeats for the third time.

I shake my head. I can’t say it. Won’t say it.

He walks to his dresser, a massive chest of drawers carved in the same style as the bed. Sliding open the top drawer, he takes out a flat black box, bound in leather. As he approachesmy refuge at the head of the bed, I make out a line of tiny hinges along one side.

Watching me, drinking in my reaction, Braiden opens the box. It’s lined with black velvet, so dark it looks like a hole to another dimension. Nestled against the velvet is the most gorgeous necklace I’ve ever seen.

The central stone is an emerald as large as my thumbnail, cut in a gleaming rectangle. It’s set in platinum, a lustrous braid that flows inside the box like starlight. The clasp is a delicate padlock made out of the same metal. A key waits to be turned.

My fingers stretch toward it, like iron drawn to a magnet. “It’s gorgeous,” I say.

“It’s yours.”

“You can’t—” I cut myself off. Braiden won’t take kindly to my telling him what he can and cannot do. Instead, I settle for, “It’s too much.”

“It’s not enough,” he corrects me. “But it’s the best symbol I could buy.”

“Symbol of what?”

“Your submission.”

My gaze jerks from the emerald to his eyes. “No.”

“Trust yourself, Samantha.”

“That’s not who I am.”

“You’re not the woman who grabbed my shoe and begged for my forgiveness?”

“I didn’t have a ch?—”

“You’re not the woman who spread your legs and took a spanking, dripping cunt and all?”

“You said I had to!”

“You could have safeworded, any time. The way you did when you let me tie you up in the greenhouse. When you let me eat you raw. When you came so many times you lost all your fancy lawyer words. You’re saying that wasn’t submissive?”