Page 14 of The Captain’s Bounty (The Collectors #2)

CHAPTER FIVE

His shoulder was digging into her belly, and it only got worse with every marching step. She punched him in the back; he retaliated immediately, the flat of his hand bouncing off her ass in a single, stinging smack.

Two could play at that game. Hanging down his back, she in the perfect position to swat him in return. She did, with as much force as her circumstance allowed, but her hand did not bounce off his butt. His was a hard, masculine ass, and it definitely hurt her more than it did him.

“Ow!” She shook her smarting hand, jumping all over again when he swatted her a second time. The first one was a love-pat in comparison, compared to the penetrating pain of the other.

She gritted her teeth, but there was no biting back an involuntary yelp.

He carried her down the corridor, hauling her back into the same prison she’d just escaped from. Dropping her on the bed, he marched back to shut and lock the door.

Rolling onto her back, Lissa scrambled to get as far away from him as the cold metal wall at her back would allow.

Stripping off his wet, bactalplast-smeared uniform shirt, he wadded it up and threw it to the floor.

Stunned, Lissa froze and stared. His shoulders were so broad, his barrel chest bulked with muscle, his waist narrowing into lean hips and, dear god, the bulge that crowned the apex of his thighs, striving to break free of his tan britches to meet her more intimately.

She swallowed hard. This was entirely the wrong time for her ovaries to heat up and her pussy to start humming.

He faced her, his muscles flexing. “Pick that up,” he ordered, pointing.

Jaw clenching, hating herself for finding any part of this or him to be so arousing, she followed his finger to the foot of the bed, were the thin piece of metal she’d used to loosen the screws lay abandoned.

She picked it up, not quite certain if this was what he meant. He was either extremely brave or extremely stupid if he thought for one second that she wouldn’t try to stab him with it.

His gaze never left her, and as she turned the broken piece of metal over in her hand, she saw it in his face that he absolutely expected her to stab him.

“Put the grate back,” he ordered.

If she attacked him, she would lose. If she threw it, she would lose. If she did what he told her to do, then she might as well give up entirely. He would never let her have another chance like this.

She’d fucked up. She’d done her best to get away, but her biggest mistake was not succeeding before he got involved.

Scowling, she rolled onto her hip and picked up the fallen grate. She only found two of the four screws in the rumpled bedding, but she guessed that would have to do. Eyeing him, she climbed up onto the bed and grudgingly screwed the grate back into place.

Done, she climbed back down off the bed to face him once more.

Bruwes tipped his head, waited only a heartbeat or two, and then came right at her. She backed up until her knees bumped into the bed. She almost fell, but he kept coming.

Why she didn’t raise her hand or, hell, even raise her half-assed weapon, she had no idea.

But she didn’t and he kept coming, all bare chest and rippling muscles and that dark, dangerous intensity in his eyes, until he grabbed her.

The next she knew, he was sitting on the bed and she was tossed across his lap.

Not again!

She yelled when the flat of his hand cracking a hard, fast, take no prisoners assault all over her panty-less bottom.

The sting was far above and beyond the hurt of before, just like his second swat had been so far beyond the near playfulness of the first. He was giving her a gradient.

An escalating lesson in exactly what to expect when she disobeyed.

And he didn’t stop, not until she lost her composure to another sharp cry.

Grabbing a fistful of her hair, Bruwes hauled her up off his knee. She fell onto hers, grabbing his strong thigh for balance.

“When I tell you to do something, you do it right.”

“I lost the other screws!” she wailed.

“Find them.”

He let go of her neck and the minute he was off the bed, she was scrambled through the tussled blanket. While he sauntered back to his post by the door, she found the two missing screws and with shaking hands screwed them into the grate.

Before she even jumped down off the bed, he was coming at her again.

“Wait…” She threw up a hand to stop him, only belatedly afraid he might think she was trying again to attack him.

She wasn’t,but he was back sitting on the edge of the bed anyway this time she fought, digging in her feet, bracing her legs against the inevitable yank.

Nothing she did mattered. With a shriek she landed back across his lap for round three.

“No!” She kicked both feet up to stop him, but he wrestled her legs down again. Pinning them between the vise of his muscular thighs, he brought the flat of his iron-hard hand down in another storm of fire.

This time, she didn’t even try to take it quietly.

She flailed until he pinned her hands. She bucked in useless thrashes, but he wrapped his arm around her waist, tucking her tightly into his side.

And all the while, he spanked her and he didn’t stop until her ass burned as bad as her wrists and she was almost in tears.

Grabbing the back of her hair, he pulled her off his lap again. She fell onto her knees, her hands clutching at his thigh to keep from grabbing her throbbing ass.

Holding her hair at the scalp, he brought her face to his, forcing her to look at him. “Did I tell you you could leave this room?”

If he weren’t holding her so tightly, she’d have shoved back from him. What was he going to do, go down her list of sins and spank her for each and every one?

Oh , it purred. He’s vindictive. I like that .

“No!” she gasped, and then shrieked as her fear came true and back over his knee he hauled her. She snapped her hands back, shielding her backside, the humiliation of this completely lost behind the desperate need to protect her already fiery ass by any means necessary.

Grabbing her wrists, he pinned them to the small of her back and it started all over again.

If he was holding anything back, she couldn’t feel it.

His hand was a paddle, smacking down over and over again, harder and harder.

Her flesh blazed. But as awful as that burning and throbbing was, the heat refused to stay in the place he was punishing.

It wandered, moving deeper with every burgeoning throb until she could feel the pulse pounding between her legs.

It was in her sex, pulsing and throbbing until her womb ran molten.

Tickles of liquid lust spilled through her folds, running hot and slick along the seam of her core, cooling rapidly as it dripped down the inner slope of her thighs.

She clamped her legs to stop it, terrified he’d see.

But the spanking wasn’t stopping and with every mighty smack of his hand, he chipped away at her defiance.

She was drowning, lost in a sea of pain and fire and mortification.

Nothing like this had ever, ever happened to her. Never for punishment, and certainly not for pleasure. What was wrong with her? Hell, what the fuck was wrong with him?!

Soon, it didn’t matter how wet she was or how badly she wanted to hide it, she couldn’t stop herself.

She fought him, needing to twist her hips, breaking her hands free so she could grab his arm and make him stop, even if only just long enough for her to catch her breath.

He held her so securely pinned that no matter how she moved every protest she attempted was locked down into little more than ineffective squirming.

Bruwes took her right to the brink of sobbing tears before, finally, he stopped. Dumping her off his lap, he dragged to her knees by her hair until she had no choice but to stare into his reddening eyes, see the dark promise that he could and would do this forever, if that’s what she wanted.

Her ass was hotter than any sun, and his spanking hand was just resting on his thigh. She tottered on the precipice of bawling; he seemed completely unaffected.

“Are you a naughty little girl who needs her bottom spanked until she learns to do what she is told?” Bruwes calmly asked.

Her belly clenched, but so did her pussy.

“No,” she gasped, hot tears slipping through her lashes to spill down her burning face. “I w-won’t say that. You c-can’t expect m-me–”

That was not the answer he wanted, and she felt that drop of sinking dread all the way down to her toes when he tipped his head in that tic she was starting to recognize meant if she refused to do as he asked, she wasn’t going to like his response to it.

“Yes,” she quickly corrected herself. “Yes, I’m sorry I tried to escape. It won’t happen again, I swear.”

His head remained tipped. If anything, his eyes grew darker and his nostrils flared.

She shouldn’t, but she couldn’t stop herself.

Reaching back in defense of all her aching flesh, she gingerly felt the damage.

She felt swollen, hard on the very summits of her aching cheeks, and fiery to the touch.

Her traitorous pussy wept along in time to the pulsing hurt beneath her soothing fingers.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, swiping the humiliating wetness dripping off her cheeks and chin.

“You made a mess in my room.”

“I’ll clean it up,” she promised.

“You made a mess in my Medibay.”

“I… didn’t mean to,” she said weakly. “I panicked and things got… explodey.”

“Because you used your powers on my ship.”

“That wasn’t exactly me.”

Don’t involve me in this .

The captain’s hard face hardened even more, from tree-bark to stone. “And you tried to use your powers against me.”

I think I like this one.

Please don’t let him spank me again.

Her breath caught. She fought not to flinch as he reached for her, catching his hand tightly in her hair once more.

“Stand,” he ordered.