She'd spoken to the abducted women, doing her best with Ramiro's help to soothe, reassure and provide whatever information was available. After a half hour or so, Ryan had come over and grasped her shoulder. When he'd told her he'd arranged for transportation for her over to his mother's, Hope had gone without protest. She could tell by the tense lines around his mouth that she'd tried his patience enough for one night.
It was now two thirty in the morning, but she was the polar opposite of tired. She felt anxious about Ryan's formidable silence ... about the tension she felt coiling in him just beneath the surface. She pulled the lapels of Ryan's huge police jacket more firmly around herself as she studied his cold visage.
"I want you to know that I was very careful while we were at the Field Museum."
Ryan regarded her silently as he leaned against the door. He looked handsome as the devil with the top two buttons of his dress shirt unfastened and his bow tie falling loosely from the collar. He pinned her with his singular, intense stare. Hope shivered in a strange mix of anxiety and excitement.
"You told me you wouldn't wander off by yourself." "Well... I know I did, but Jim Donahue and all of his men had left by that time—"
"Did somebody tell you that all of his men had left?" Ryan asked as he straightened. He slowly started to come toward her. "No, but—"
"Because they clearly hadn't."
"I realize that now," Hope admitted sheepishly. "But—" "Do you remember what happened the last time I told you not to wander off by yourself because you were in danger?"
She froze with her mouth gaping open. The powerful, carnal memory of him paddling her bottom crashed into awareness as though she were experiencing it right at that very moment. Her cheeks flooded with heat. Ryan's nostrils flared slightly as he stared down at her. For the first time she realized that at least part of his rigid tension was sexual in nature—the savage lust of a warrior following battle.
I think I might have to give you a punishment.
"I see you do recall," he said softly, obviously referring to her flaming cheeks. He grasped her elbow and turned her toward the grand staircase. "Time to face the music, honey."
Hope's heart pounded so loudly in her ears by the time Ryan shut the door to the bedroom that she wondered if she might burst a blood vessel. Her excitement was like nothing she'd ever experienced. The scandalously tiny underpants Eve had given her to wear felt damp at the crotch. She heard him crossing the large, dark room. The dim bedside lamp switched on and he turned to face her.
"Take off the jacket and your dress."
Hope stood unmoving.
"I told you I'd never harm you. You are going to get it harder than you did at the Sweet Lash, though," he said grimly. He jerked the bow tie off his neck and unfastened several more buttons on his shirt. Hope considered protesting, but he looked so hard at that moment she knew arguing would be pointless. He paused in unbuttoning his shirt.
"Well?" he asked darkly.
She shrugged out of Ryan's jacket and draped it over a box. Her trembling fingers found the zipper just below her armpit and she drew it down. "I want you to know I protest at the unfairness of your treatment," she told him a tad haughtily when she'd removed the dress and placed it carefully alongside Ryan's jacket. It was really shocking how quickly a modern-day woman could strip to nudity.
Or at least near nudity, Hope conceded breathlessly as Ryan's hot eyes dropped over her body. She still wore the scrap of silk panties that Eve had given her, along with her shoes and the ingenuous stockings that required no garter because they merely clung to her thighs with an elastic band. She held her breath when Ryan slowly walked around the footboard of the bed.
"Don't all impulsive, headstrong individuals say something similar when they've been caught?" he asked as he sat down on the edge of the bed.
"I can't believe you want to ... do whatever it is you want to do right now because some criminal kidnapped me!"
He surprised her by merely shaking his head silently at her outburst. "I'm not going to spank you right now for Jim Donahue's or Manny Gutierrez's crimes. I'm going to because you deserve it for being so damned reckless with your safety. And I'm going to spank you because I want to, Hope. Got it?"
She swallowed in the face of his potent intensity and nodded.
"Good. Come over here."
Hope approached him warily, but then he did something that banished all her doubts. He spread his big hand across her waist and hip and pulled her toward him. He lowered his dark head and pressed his face to her belly. Her hands tangled in his thick hair because there for a split second—ever so briefly before he'd buried his face in her flesh—she'd seen naked anguish on his handsome face.
A moment later he raised his head and looked up at her.
"Lie down across my lap," he ordered gruffly.
The wild beating of her heart when she came into the room was nothing in comparison to what she experienced as Ryan guided her down over his thighs. The sensitive undersides of her breasts pressed against the wool material of his pants, abrading her slightly . . .
exciting her greatly. She made a small squeaking noise when he spread his hand over her bottom as though he tested the dynamics of the arrangement. He shifted her slightly in his lap, making her all that much more aware of the long, stiffened column of his penis lying along his left thigh.
When he drew down her panties, exposing her bottom to the cool air, Hope squirmed.
He responded by smacking her bottom with his palm.