Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 174632 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 873(@200wpm)___ 699(@250wpm)___ 582(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 174632 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 873(@200wpm)___ 699(@250wpm)___ 582(@300wpm)
She had to hide her flinch.
“Every time you say something bad about yourself, my hand wants to smack your ass,” Ian told her.
“Really? Your hand has a mind of its own? That’s a tad disturbing . . . or is your hand like Thing? I’ve always loved Thing.”
“You loved a severed hand with a mind of its own?” Jack asked.
“It wasn’t severed. It was without a body. It was bodyless. A bodyless hand. Like you’d say a handless body.”
It made sense in her head.
“Maybe we should move to the other gifts,” Ian said. “Before I have nightmares tonight of severed hands.”
Yeah. Good plan.
Wait. More gifts?
“Why did you buy me more gifts?” she asked.
“We thought you might need things to do,” Ian explained. “Since you’re bed bound.”
She huffed out a breath. “Jameson didn’t say I had to be bed bound. I just need to rest.”
“You need sleep, have less stress, to eat more, and you must stay off that hip.” Ian ticked things off on his fingers.
“Is it too much to ask that you have a memory lapse?” she muttered.
“You wish,” Ian replied. “Next bag.”
She was almost scared to look in the bag. Then she noticed the logo on the front.
“Is this from the toy store?” she asked Jack.
“Yep.”
Okay, now she was definitely too scared to open it. “I can’t.”
“You don’t have to,” Ian told her gently. “But Jack told me about your trip to the play area. How much fun you had. It sounds like that was the first time since you arrived that you truly had fun and relaxed. That’s all we want, Little Misfit. To give you some respite from everything. It doesn’t have to mean anything, but I have the urge to make you smile.”
“And you think this will?”
Jack shrugged. “Open it and see.”
She drew out the items in the bag. Her heart raced. Inside, there was the cutest little outfits. A black jacket and jeans and shoes.
“For Ziggy,” Jack told her. “Hopefully, they’re all in his size. Although if he doesn’t want them . . .” He picked them up and she grabbed them back.
“No snatching, Little girl,” Ian told her firmly.
“Sorry, Daddy.”
Monkeyballs!
32
“Imean, sorry, Daddy Ian. Ian. Just Ian!” she yelled.
With a groan, she grabbed a pillow and put it over her face, before she screamed into it.
“Whoa, what are you doing?” Ian asked, pulling the pillow away from her face.
“Give that back!”
“No way. I’m not letting you suffocate yourself.”
“I wasn’t suffocating myself. It’s my scream pillow. I like to scream into pillows.”
And pull her hair. But she wasn’t going there. They didn’t need to know that she was mad as a hatter.
“You scream into pillows? Sounds perfectly reasonable.” Jack cupped his hand around the side of his mouth. “Ian, do you still have those therapy vouchers?” he asked in a mock whisper.
She grabbed the pillow and whacked him in the face. Then she had to giggle at his dumbfounded look.
Oops.
“Stop it. It’s perfectly normal to have a scream pillow. Right?” She glanced from one to the other. “Oh God. It’s me. I’m the messed up one here, aren’t I?”
“What did I say about calling yourself messed up, Little girl?” Ian growled. “My spanking hand is starting to forget that you’re injured.”
“I’m still worried that your hand has a mind of its own.”
“You can’t spank her, Ian,” Jack said.
“Thank you!” Finally, someone was the voice of reason.
“Not until after I’ve spanked her anyway,” Jack added.
Um. Wait. No, that wasn’t right.
“Why do you want to spank me?” she asked.
“Because you lied to me,” Jack told her in a dark voice.
“I did not!”
“Really? So when I asked you if you were all right while we were in the bouncy play area, you didn’t lie and say you were fine?”
She bit her lip.
She had done that. “I told you, I’m used to pushing my pain to the side. To ignoring it.”
“Maybe you are. But I don’t think that was all of it. I think you still lied and so you’re owed a punishment.”
A shiver ran through her.
He didn’t mean that. Right?
Although she got the feeling that Jack said very little that he didn’t mean.
That did not bode well for her.
“Does that scare you? Make you uncomfortable?” Ian asked.
“If I say yes, then you guys will stop threatening to spank me?” She wasn’t sure if she was relieved or upset about that.
Stop lying to yourself. Upset. Very upset.
“Yes,” Ian replied.
Yeah. Maggie was definitely not happy about that idea. But she couldn’t tell them that, could she?
“We’d have to come up with other punishments. There are classics, like time-outs. Although you and Jack seem to have a different spin on that. Or there’s writing lines.”
Jack had told them about their time-out in the closet? Well . . . it seemed that these guys shared everything.
“Or there are aborted orgasms,” Jack suggested in a quiet voice. “I have a feeling she won’t like them at all.”