“Wait,” I whisper, my voice muffled.
“Minette?”
I squeeze my eyes shut for a second. I can’t believe I’m about to ask this but I’m tired of keeping my mouth shut about the things I want. “Could you, um...”
He waits, not moving.
“Hit—hit me again. It’s not...worked yet?” I don’t understand what I’m saying but I know I can take more, that I want more.
“You want me to keep hurting you,” he says slowly. I suddenly realize how awful my request is and I move to get up, but he holds me down with the hand on my back. “I didn’t say you could move. So. You feel like you haven’t been punished enough for what you did?”
“I don’t know,” I whisper. “I just feel like I don’t want you to stop yet.” He doesn’t say anything and the silence is excruciating.
“Not here.” And he helps me up. I try not to look at him but he catches my chin between his fingers and peers at me closely. I feel hot and flustered, wondering what he’s thinking, what he can see in my face. His expression is unreadable. Severe, but not angry, and I get the feeling he’s trying to discern what I’m thinking.
Finally, he asks, “Can you take your skirt off?”
I feel a pulse between my thighs and realize there’s something vaguely sexual about this. No, something very sexual.
I fumble for the zip, undo it and let the skirt fall. He takes me by the hand, leads me back over to the sofa and sits down. Then he looks up at me, waiting. Sucking on my lower lip, not able to meet his eyes again, I drape myself awkwardly over his lap. My chest and belly are pressed against his thighs and his large hands splay over my behind. He takes his time, settling me in place, running his hands over my skin and squeezing it lightly. I grab a cushion with both arms and press my face into it, hugging it tightly. This is definitely the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to me. This is definitely the weirdest thing I’ve ever asked for.
One of his hands lifts away and I flinch, but nothing happens. The waiting, the fact that I’ve submitted to this, is making the strange sensation between my legs pulse stronger than ever. It’s like being horny, but it’s a stronger feeling than I’ve ever had before. It’s dirty. Why don’t you just admit, Miss Literature PhD, that it feels dirty and base, and in a really good way?
His hand comes down in a sharp smack, and I yelp and clutch the cushion tighter. He spanks me repeatedly in the same spot until it burns white hot before he moves onto the next, and all thoughts are driven from my mind. I’m not laughing now and soon my whole behind is red with pain and my face is wet with tears. He stops every few minutes, stroking my hair and asking me if I’m all right. I keep my face pressed tight against the cushion and mutter an incoherent yes. And he keeps going. I’m in his power, and for the first time in a very long time everything is just easy.
Eventually he asks me again if I’m all right and I can only shudder, my shoulders shaking beneath his hands. Just like the laughter, now I can’t control my crying. I want to stay where I am, I don’t want him to see me like this, but he pulls me up and my legs over his lap, one arm around my body and the other under my knees, holding me tightly against him. I bury my face in his shirt, not able to look at him, still crying. He’s opened a valve and now I can’t stop the flood.
“Minette, chérie, it’s all right. Shh.” He murmurs the words, his lips against my hair.
“Oh, god,” I say thickly, wiping at my face. “I’m such a mess. What’s wrong with me?”
“You’re allowed to cry. No, stay there,” he says, when I try to pull away from him. Resting against his chest feels so good that I stop resisting. He holds me close against him, stroking my hair, wiping the tears from my face. I feel hot and tired, and very limp, but the steady beat of his heart beneath my cheek is so comforting. He speaks soft words to me in French that I don’t understand but are soothing just the same, and my gulping hiccups slowly recede.
Finally he asks, in hesitant English, like he’s trying not to compel or startle me, “Has anyone ever done that to you before?”
I shake my head. There’s never been anything in my life like that.
“I think I was too hard on you,” he says, sounding regretful.
I catch hold of his shirt, looking up at him. “No, you weren’t. It’s not that you hurt me too much, it’s just that I...” I can’t explain it, though. I feel like he’s shaken something loose inside me that I’ve been holding tightly for too long. Is he going to think I’m crazy like Adam did? I search his face for disgust or disapproval, but he only looks concerned. “What about you, have you ever done that to someone?”
“Oui. Many times.”
That’s not a surprise, I suppose. He seemed quite practiced about the whole thing. “Is it supposed to cause uncontrollable crying?”
He looks rueful. “Some tears, maybe, but women usually...”
Frederic’s never been reticent to speak about anything before and I’m suddenly curious. “Women usually what?”
“It’s usually a kind of foreplay. Though I wasn’t going to try and have sex with you. Not unless you asked me to.”
Try and have sex with me. If I’d asked him, he would have taken me to bed. I don’t know what to do with that, and I don’t know how he can state it so baldly. Suddenly I feel very stuffy and English. Is this how things are in Paris?
But I did feel horny in a very strange way when I started giving in to what he was doing. And then you cried like a freak, like you used to do in front of Adam. I’m so screwed up. “Is that why you did it? As foreplay?”
He reaches up and rubs a thumb over my cheekbone, swiping away the last tear. “No. I told you why. It was a punishment because you went back on your word and I don’t like that.”
Some of my mortification ebbs. Crying because you’re punished, it’s childish but at least it makes sense. I should be outraged that he’s treated me this way, but the part of me that’s enjoying being curled up in his lap, calm and cossetted, tells me, Well, you did go back on your word, Evie. “I didn’t mean to. I want to do a good job with the book and the story was distracting me. If I’d sent it in I would have just started worrying that they thought it was terrible.”