I won’t give him the satisfaction. I walk over to the desk and place my hands on it, bending at the hips, my ass pointing back at him, calling his bluff.
“Look down at the desk and don’t move.”
I tilt my head, staring at the yellowed varnish coating the wood beneath my face. A floorboard creaks as he moves behind me. Still, a part of me is sure this is a bluff. He isn’t actually going to do it, is he?
The clock continues to tick. Four, five, six seconds. Then his voice, rumbling and low. “You will not curse again in my presence.”
As the sentence ends, he reaches around my waist, finding the button at the top of my jeans, expertly undoing it with a flick of his fingers. The two sides move apart, slackening further as he runs the zipper down over my panties. His fingers are brushing over the most intimate part of me. My breath catches in my throat, my heart pounding. What if he was lying? What if he is going to fuck me?
He takes hold of the waistband, sliding my jeans down to my knees. My panties almost go with them, shifting low on my hips. He makes no effort to pull them back up.
“Awful underwear,” he says, standing back up. “From now on, you will only wear beautiful things that suit a wife of a Don.”
His hand slaps down on my ass a moment later. The flat of his palm is huge, covering almost my entire right buttock.
As the blow lands, a sharp sting knocks the air from my lungs. I barely have time to understand what’s happened before his hand lands again, this time on the left buttock. It lingers there for the briefest of moments.
Abruptly, he walks around the desk, sitting down heavily in his chair.
Did I detect a bulge in his pants?
I’m still bent over the desk, my legs refusing to move.
He doesn’t look up as he switches on his computer. “Close the door on your way out.”
He waves a hand toward the door, dismissing me from his attention.
I stand up, my legs shaking, my hands trembling. Watching him closely, I fumble with my panties, tugging them back up on my hips. I pray he didn’t see the damp spot on them, that he didn’t look down there before sitting behind his desk.
“That’s it?” I ask. “That’s all you’ve got to say?”
He doesn’t respond. Not so much as a look.
I twist away as I pull up my jeans, glad I’m no longer exposed like that. As I walk to the door, I can feel a slickness between my legs. Why am I wet down there? It makes absolutely no sense.
But then, none of this makes any sense. I just let him spank my ass. It still stings with pain as I walk out and stop at the bottom of the stairs. How could he do that and then act so indifferently toward me?
Something passed between us back there. I sensed it. Surely, he did too. An understanding, a secret shared. I don’t get it, not fully, but I know it’s there.
He doesn’t seem to give a single solitary shit though. I take a deep breath. If I live to be a hundred, I will never tell a soul what happened in there. It will forever remain a dirty secret, one that only exists between the two of us.
I can’t stay here. I can’t go get measured and just accept this is my life now. I have to get away. Stay any longer and I might start wanting to be spanked. Already the thought of bending over his desk like that is intoxicating, coursing through my veins and making me want to walk back in, curse at the top of my voice.
I run for the front door. I’ve a vivid memory of the route from the house to the cove. I’m going to get on the boat and get the hell off this island, once and for all.
4
Leonardo
I walk out of the study and get changed into climbing gear. Then I head outside. The weather’s bright. The sun’s out and there’s enough of the heat of summer still around to make the sky hazy out at sea.
I take the path that leads north from the house to the jutting crags behind. On top are a few scraggly trees and dangling ropes hanging down like dreadlocks.
I don’t need the ropes today, not when I’m trying to forget what I just felt. I need to forget. I can’t have feelings for her. It would ruin all my plans.
I have it all organized in my head.
I know what she’s going to do. She’s as predictable as the clock in the corner of the study. It swings one way and then the other. Like her need to submit.