Page 7 of His Runaway Mate

When he speaks, his voice is calm, measured, and deep. There’s even warmth in it. A hint of affection that finds its way in between the very few cracks in my armor. I might only be twenty-three, but I have constructed what I thought was an impenetrable hide.

“I’m going to give you to the count of five to put down that weapon, or I’m going to take my belt off and whip your bare ass so hard you remember what respect is, little whelp.”

I feel a hot flush suffuse my face in an instant. Obviously I am not going to put down the knife. It’s my only leverage. But the way he just spoke to me is doing things to me. It almost feels like foreplay. We are in a brightly lit room, open plan, with a glass door behind him. There is no real privacy here, though I’d bet nobody from my little pack can see that I have a knife pulled on him from behind. They’ll be able to see it on the cameras though.

“Five… Four… It doesn’t have to be like this,” he murmurs. “It’s going to hurt terribly if you let me get to the end of the countdown.”

I stare in his eyes and don’t fucking move.

“Three… two… last chance, little one…”

He pauses for what feels like a small eternity.

And then he moves. Faster than I would have thought a man his size was capable of moving. He grips my wrist and turns his body at the same time, so even if I did jab the knife forward it would go past him rather than through him.

He spins me around and deposits me face down on my desk in the least cluttered part. Prototypes tumble onto the floor around my legs as he yanks at my jeans and the same elasticated waist that makes them so comfortable betrays me by making it easy for him to bare my ass in one go.

I am cursing and kicking. I make contact with his legs more than once. I wish I’d worn heavy boots today. The rubber in these sneakers just serves to soften the blows.

“I warned you,” he says, still sounding so fucking calm. “You had every opportunity to avoid this. Think about that when you feel the belt.”

“I’m going to fucking kill you!” I shout back at him.

I hear the sound of his belt whipping out of his pants. He must have gotten it off one-handed, because the other is entirely taken up with the task of keeping me pinned down.

“No, my dear, you won’t. What you will do is take your spanking, and learn something from it.”

I hear the belt again, this time slicing through the air.

Crack!

It makes contact with my ass, dead center across both cheeks. The sudden pain makes me gasp. I curse at the top of my lungs, call him every name I can think of and some that generate out of thin air.

Crack!

The belt lands again, showing me that my protests don’t matter. He doesn’t care if I curse at him. He doesn’t care about anything besides punishing me. Fucker.

It hurts like hell.

Every time the belt lands, it sends a fresh bolt of heat through me. Fuck this guy. He’s everything I thought he was. Brutal, domineering, demanding.

Crack!

I can’t think for the bursts of heat and pain that just keep pulsing through me.

“I’m going to fucking take everything from you,” I swear. “You’re going to regret the fucking day you were born.”

He pauses for a moment, one hand on the back of my neck. He lays the belt over my hips, leaving it there like he’s going to use it again in a moment.

“You’ve never been spanked before, have you?”

“No,” I growl.

“Alright. I should probably have taught you how to take one first. If you’d started off being a little less of a brat, I could have done this over my knee. Used my hand. But you pulled a knife and now you’ve got some welts from my belt.”

I feel his hand on my ass the moment after that, rubbing the heated skin.

“Say sorry, and I’ll stop now,” he purrs in my ear.