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“Please…” I pleaded but this time his reply just came out harder, more unyielding,

“No, Anna.”

And then he suddenly let go of my wrists. But before I could do one thing about it, he bent, and got a shoulder into my middle, and stood up with me.

He threw me over his shoulder like cargo he had come a long way to collect. And it was the first time since I have known this man that he had ever handled me like I wasn’t made of glass. Every other time he had touched me he had been so careful with me that it made me want to cry about it.

But not now.

No, now he had me folded over one shoulder with an arm locked across the backs of my thighs and he was walking toward that doorway like I weighed nothing at all. As if he was done fucking around with this little chase.

So, I started kicking again and let’s just say, it didn’t end the way I expected it to.

As he slapped my ass.

Hard… Fucking hard enough to make me yelp! The sound of it went off down that tunnel and came back at us twice, and I went absolutely rigid with the shock of it.

“You did not just… OWW!”

He did it again, cutting off my protests.

“Stop it!” I demanded.

“I can do this all night, little bird,” he informed me, perfectly calm. Still walking. “Are you going to be good for me now?” he asked and I ground my teeth together and said nothing at all.

“You should know that I have no problem whatsoever with punishing you.” His hand settled flat on the back of my thigh, warm through my scrubs. “You would do well to remember that my patience has limits, and you have spent every single one of them tonight.” His voice was like ice, and it did the job of subduing me pretty quickly. Which was why I stopped struggling.

And I hate that I did.

Hated that I was afraid. That I had no choice but to take the threat seriously and enough to stop. My body simply decided to obey him, and I went still over his shoulder in the dark.

“Good girl.” He rumbled it out and I felt it everywhere. “You see. You can be taught, like a good little pet you will make me.” I swallowed hard at that as a shiver ran through me. One he felt in return.

But here was the part I didn’t even want to admit to myself, let alone to another living soul.

I was wet.

Somewhere between that wall and his shoulder and a hand coming down on me twice in the dark, my body had made a decision entirely without me. And I knew with whatever sane part of me was left, that this was not the decision a woman should make about a man who has just hunted her down a tunnel.

I hated myself for it.

But I hated him more.

And of course he knew.

“I wonder,” he said, conversational, as though we were talking about the weather. His hand moved slowly up the back of my thigh, before caressing the part he had struck. He could no doubt feel the palm mark he had left behind, burning through my scrubs. “If I were to put you down right now, and pull these pants off you, and put my fingers inside you…”

“Don’t.” I begged for him not to finish that sentence.

“…Would I find you wet for me?” He paused long enough to hum.

“I think I would… I think I would find you fucking soaked.” I shuddered over his shoulder at that, closing my eyes tight and I couldn’t stop it happening. My reaction to him was like being at war with my own body.

Of course he laughed softly.

“That’s what I thought,” he said, his tone now pleased and far less threatening. I opened my eyes at that, ready to argue, when suddenly, I saw a light behind us. I even pressed my hands to his naked back, as he had discarded his blood-soaked sweater back in the treatment room. I could feel his muscles tensing at my touch, but I ignored this when I saw the hard white lines that swung and crossed each other along the roof of that tunnel.

Flashlights.