Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 64392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 322(@200wpm)___ 258(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 322(@200wpm)___ 258(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
Cain puts his hand on my lower back, guiding me to the room we shared before. I can tell he has some sort of agenda. His grimness indicates he is going to attend to everything that has happened between us now. No polite chit chat. No downtime.
“Right,” he says. “Now to deal with your misbehavior. Suffice it to say, I don’t expect to have to pick my mate up from jail.”
His words are delivered in close to a neutral tone, but my guilt is so intense that I immediately burst into tears.
“I’m so sorry. I knew I shouldn’t. But my aunt…”
“This is the first and last time I will ever accept your aunt as an excuse for your behavior. I know she has manipulated you over the years, but there is a point at which an adult has to take responsibility for what they do. Committing crime because someone tells you to is still committing crime.”
He lectures me grimly, making it clear that although he saved me, and will always save me, there are consequences.
He sits down on the bed and rolls his sleeves up, forearms flexing before patting his knee. “Come over here, Kira.”
I hesitate for a brief second.
Dark brows lower over light eyes. “If you are so sorry, then you know full well you deserve to be disciplined for this. You’ve been a very unruly, naughty mate.”
I don’t think of myself as unruly or naughty, but I guess that’s what an unruly, naughty person would say. I go to him, though every step feels like walking through molasses.
He puts his hands on my hips and tips me over one knee. The other leg clamps mine in place. I am not getting off his lap until he decides to free me, that much is obvious.
“You are mine,” he says. “And I mean that in every sense. You are my mate. The love of my life. I am devoted to you, and that means I will never abandon you, not even to your own bad choices. But I will also lead you, and you know very well that I will punish you too when you deserve punishment.”
He says all of this with my head pointed down toward the floor. I don’t say anything. What can I say? He’s being so sweet, and so loving, and yes, firm because he’s the alpha. My alpha. My mate. I don’t deserve any of his attention.
He pulls my pants down and my underwear. He bares me, and I know that soon enough, things will start to hurt. Before they do, he has one last thing to say.
“I was terrified at having thought I lost you. Don’t you ever make me fear for your safety again. It is a pain unlike any I have ever experienced, and I do not wish to undergo it again.”
His words are somewhat stiff and formal, but I can feel the pain in them. He missed me. He worried about me. He looked for me. And he found me.
Now he’s spanking me.
His palm meets my ass hard and fast and continues to do so until my toes are drumming against the floor and I am writhing in the leg-lock he had the foresight to put me in before starting.
Cain whips me with his hand for longer than I think I can handle. He must have smacked me over a hundred times, and he’s still going. Some are hard and some are softer, some are fast and some are slow, but every single one of them builds a painful sting and ache, both of which I try to take as stoically as possible.
“I don’t care what that woman asks of you. She has no power over you anymore, do you understand?”
“I don’t want her to have any. But she raised me. I owe her…”
“You owe her nothing. Not your life, and certainly not your freedom. You almost went to prison, Kira. If I had not found you, you would have thrown everything away for a woman who has never cared for you—and who has no capacity or ability to care for you. Stop trying to make people who don’t love you, love you.”
His words strike harder than any of his slaps.
I’ve spent my entire life trying to become pleasing to someone who cannot be pleased.
It’s never going to happen.
She’s never going to care.
I lost my mother when I was born, and I’ll never have one, no matter how hard I try, or what I do. I could ruin my entire life trying to please my aunt, and pay a debt to her that I never owed.
It is as though floodgates open inside me with that realization. I’ve been trying to make something happen my entire life that will never, ever happen. I cry the same way a newborn baby cries, searching for the comfort I was made to seek, and deprived of it by the same fate that brought me my mate.