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“Vincenzo — what the hell are you —”
Second slap. Sharp. Deliberate. In the same exact place as the first.
My breath punches out of my lungs.
I do not scream. I do not cry, or flinch away.
I find myself arching my back, pushing my hips toward the hand that has just marked me. A moan escapes me.
His hand stills on my butt.
Above me, his breath is ragged.
His palm smooths, very slowly, over the heated skin he has just marked. My pussy clenches so hard I nearly sob.
“Learned your lesson?”
His voice is a thicker, rougher version of the one that told me to make a choice. Nothing controlled is left in it.
“No.”
I say it into the mahogany.
He breathes in.
“Then let’s set a rule.”
His hand slides up my spine. Stops on my nape. His fingers wrap around the back of my neck, not gripping, or pressing, just there. A promise more than a hold.
“Say the words I’ve learned my lesson, Rosalie. Any version of them. You say it, I stop. You say something close to it, I stop. Say it in a whisper, a shout, or while you’re coming, the answer is the same. Do you understand me?”
“Yes.”
“Say it back to me.”
“‘I’ve learned my lesson’ means stop.” My voice has gone rough.
“Good girl.”
The two words open a door in me I didn’t know was there.
He alternates now. Slap. Palm smoothing. Slap. Palm smoothing. Slow. Deliberate. Every one of them lands in the same place. Every one of them is followed by his hand moving over the skin like he needs to know what he has just done to me. I am rocking my hips back into his palm on the recovery, and I know it, and there is not one part of me that wants him to stop.
By the fifth slap I am soaked.
His hand slides down, past the small of my back, over the curve of my hip, and between my thighs. Two fingers push through the wet.
His groan behind me is a low, wrecked thing.
“You loved that.”
“You knew I would.”
I say it into the wood.
His fingers curl. Patient. Thorough. Every movement is exactly where I would have chosen if my brain had been functional enough to choose. He presses the heel of his palm against my clit at the top of the stroke, and I come apart on his hand with my forehead against the mahogany table, his name in my mouth.
He works me through it. Doesn’t stop until my thighs have stopped shaking around his wrist.
