Page 78 of The Bad Husband

His hand goes over my mouth while his other arm snakes around my waist, and I find myself with my back pressed into his chest while the noise of a car engine rings outside.

I kick my legs and try to scream, even more annoyed now than I was before. Having to keep my mouth shut because she’s coming home is probably one of the worst things that could happen to me right now.

His arms squeeze around me as he drags me out of the room and away from my bedroom. Away from his bedroom as well.

I still oppose him with all I’ve got, but little good does it do to me as I can’t fight his force.

He takes the secondary stairwell, and we reach the first floor before he kicks a door open and pulls me inside a cold, dark place.

A heavy metal door locks behind me, and his hand moves away from my face, his arm still around me, guiding me toward the middle of the room.

“You can scream all you want. It’s a soundproof room. But just so you keep your mouth shut, what about we do this?”

Some drawer slides open in the dark before he gags me and locks a pair of cuffs around my wrists, my hands behind me.

Next, he drops me on a bed. The sheets are smooth yet cold against my knees and smell like fresh pine. I struggle to push up, but all I can do is press my face into the mattress and push my rear up.

That’s precisely what he wants me to do.

The LED light pinned on the wall spreads enough light around to cast a cold green hue over the sheets.

I can’t see him.

I can only glimpse his silhouette in an old mirror propped against the wall. Everything about this room screams torture. And not in the delicious, sexy kind of way.

This room must never have been used for anything other than punishing people. Something tells me no one in the house knows about it or is allowed to enter it.

Not even Henrietta.

He pushes my head against the mattress, and I almost fall over before he slides his hand under my skirt and rips my panties off.

“Never ignore one of my warnings, Lila Skye,” he says in a gruff voice, unbuckling his belt and tearing it away from his pants.

He rolls my skirt up over my ass and slaps my bare ass hard.

I cry out and cuss under the duct tape.

He smacks me again, not so hard this time.

It doesn’t matter. My skin is sensitive, and with every smack across my ass it burns more and more.

Strangely, with every hit, I feel more confident that he’s losing his head over me.

That his so-called punishment is only a way of stopping himself from doing worse things than this to me.

Things I can’t even imagine now, because I don’t know him well enough. He’s using less and less force, but it doesn’t matter. I won’t be able to sit for a week, let alone date or sleep with a man.

I try to see him in the mirror, and all I get to marvel at is the sexy curvature of his hard ass, his muscular torso, and his crisp shirt.

He moves his belt lower and lower, touching my pussy from behind, making me throb every time he hits me.

The symbolism of what he’s doing is overpowering, and knowing what I know about him so far makes me understand the meaning of all this.

Does he want to control me?

Is he annoyed that I’ve learned about Henrietta and him from a stranger and he can no longer play games with me?

Is he a vulnerable man?