Page 57 of Ruthless Daddy
He waited. I felt the next one before it landed—my skin already hypersensitive, the heat from his palm making a map of everywhere he had touched.
“Three.” The voice sounded raw, like it belonged to someone else.
He moved his hand to the other cheek. It was not random. It was careful, precise, as if he was trying to color in a picture with just his hand.
“Four.”
The pain was mounting now, each one building on the last. My face was wet. I didn’t even remember when the tears started. I didn’t care.
“Five.”
He paused. He rested his hand on the center of my back, just below my shoulder blades. I felt him breathing, deep and steady, the way you did when you wanted to keep yourself under control.
He said, “We are halfway. You are doing so well. You are being so good.”
It hurt. It really hurt. But what hurt more was the thing I realized, right then: I would have done twenty for him. Thirty. I would have taken anything.
The tears were not just from the pain.
I was so fucking good, and I wanted him to see it.
The second half was different.
He let his hand rest in the center of my back, right on the ridge of my spine, until the air between us settled again. Then he slid it down, fingers splayed, tracing the line of my waist and the raw, burning skin below. He cupped it, squeezing—not hard, but enough to pull a gasp out of me. He was measuring me, mapping the heat, the places where his handprint had already begun to rise. He held it there, palm open, until I began to feel the pain transform into something else, a buzzing under my skin that made my whole body want to arch.
Then he lifted his hand, and I tensed. I tried to brace, hips locked in place, but there was no way to prepare. The sixth strikelanded dead center on the spot he’d just squeezed. My body convulsed, thighs clenching, a full-body spasm that nearly made me lose my grip on the duvet. This one didn’t bloom the way the first few had—it detonated, all at once, like a live wire pressed to bare flesh. I shrieked. There was no hiding it, no way to swallow it down. The tears that had been threatening since the third blow broke loose and streamed hot down my face.
I said, or tried to say, “Six.” But it came out warped, a choking half-cry, half-question. I wasn’t sure if I was asking for it or asking him to stop.
He didn’t say anything. He left his hand exactly where it was, fingers loose, thumb stroking a small circle over the sorest part of me. The comfort was worse than the pain, because it made me want to collapse into it, to give up and beg him to forgive me. But that wasn’t the deal. I stayed where I was, arms locked, legs trembling, soaking in every second of the punishment I’d earned.
He waited so long I thought maybe he’d lost count, that maybe he was letting it sink in, or giving me a chance to come to my senses and back out. But he was just making sure I felt it, all the way through. When the seventh blow landed, it was lower, closer to the crease at the top of my thigh. The skin there was untouched, and the difference was torture. The new pain layered itself over the old, sharp and fresh, and the sound I made was beyond words—a howl, a whimper, a surrender. My hips jerked against the pressure of his hand, and I felt the wetness that had been simmering under my embarrassment finally break free, slicking the inside of my thighs. It was mortifying, and perfect, and so much worse knowing he could feel it, the damp patch blooming into his joggers.
I pressed my face into the blanket, tried to breathe, tried not to sob. I could feel the tremor in my voice when I whispered, “Seven.”
He didn’t say anything. He just put his hand back, palm open, and stroked the spot he’d just struck. There was no malice in it, no anger—only the precision of someone whose job it was to keep order.
The eighth landed, not quite on top of the last, but close enough to send a lightning bolt through my spine. I sobbed, full-throat, and for the first time I didn’t try to muffle it. There was no point.
“Eight.”
I was gone, wrecked, the muscles in my legs shivering with each breath. The tears were everywhere—nose, mouth, even my chin. I wanted to reach up and wipe them but I didn’t. I just let them fall.
He said, “Almost done. You’re nearly there, Baby. Just two more.”
The ninth was sharp, not even the hardest, but it made me curl in, folding my knees and clenching the duvet. It wasn’t pain anymore. It was something bigger, something that came from somewhere deeper than just skin.
“Nine.”
He paused. He laid his hand flat across the small of my back. The warmth of it was a kindness that I could not bear.
He said, “One more, Angela. The last one. Take it for me, my good girl, my angel.”
I nodded into the duvet.
The tenth landed square in the center, a perfect line of fire. My whole body clenched, went rigid. I tried to say the number but it wouldn’t come out. I was sobbing too hard. I was so far past composure that it almost felt good.
He didn’t ask me to say it. He just pressed his palm to my skin and let it stay there, covering the mark, holding in the heat.
