Page 70 of Troublemaker

“And I was pissed.”

He kissed my forehead again. “I know that, too. But that’s no excuse to put yourself at risk. I’d rather you have bitched me out in public, slapped me, thrown something at me, than gone running off like you did.”

“Noted. So can you untie me?”

He shook his head.

“No. Because I need to punish us both. And a spanking isn’t going to do anything but excite us. This is a teachable moment.”

He rose, depositing me back on the bed, still trussed up and unable to go anywhere or do anything but watch as he shook out his hands and showed them to me. His knuckles were cracked, a little bruised…probably from beating the shit out of and possibly killing those men last night. I tried to feel bad about it, but I still felt nothing but satisfaction. What that said about me, I wasn’t entirely sure, but then I was a woman who had little to no recourse in this society when it came to men who wanted to hurt me, so having someone in my corner who was willing to get therevenge I so sorely needed felt too good to deny. If that made me bad, well…it was nothing new.

I hated that he’d bruised up his hand though.

“Does it hurt?” I asked.

He gave me a wry smile.

“Not yet.”

Then he approached the wall next to the mirror.

“God, this is going to cost me a fuck ton of money—and destroy my rating on this damn site,” he muttered.

Worry pooled in my stomach.

“Coach. Blake. What are you about to do?”

“Do you have any idea what it was like, Lucy, knowing you were somewhere, possibly unsafe, and that I might not get to you in time? And then finding you in that dark hall at the bar with those men’s hands on you? Knowing it was my fault that you were in that position in the first place?”

“No…” I trailed off. “Blake.”

He made a fist out of his left hand, thumb on the outside, and glanced behind him to look at me.

“It was the worst feeling in the world. The terror literallyhurt…more than this is going to.”

And then he motherfucking punched a hole in the wall.

I screamed.

And then I screamed again.

“No, stop it!”

The sounds—my scream and the impact of bone and flesh on sheetrock and plaster—echoed in the room, making my chest squeeze tight. I couldn’t breathe.

“What the fuck, Blake?! Stop!”

“No.”

He punched the wall again.

And again.

“I’ll stop when you get it. When you understand what you’re being punished for, and you understand how it feels when someone you—someone you care about is hurt.”

I tried to wiggle off the bed and go to him, to stop him, to make this horror stop, but I couldn’t. My arms burned as I tried to pull them free, my legs, too. I could donothing.Absolutelynothing.I cried then, completely helpless, forced to watch him hurt himself, and that helplessness was too much to bear, so I shut my eyes instead.

“Lucy, if you don’t fucking open your eyes and watch me right now, I’ll drag you to the kitchen and you can watch while I set my hand on fucking fire.”