Silence fell between them and he resisted the urge to keep pushing as she considered his words. It seemed like an eternity before she nodded. “Okay.”
“Okay, what, kitten? Tell me what you want.”
“I want to be with you. To be your woman.”
Stepping forward again, he cupped her face in his hands and did what every instinct he possessed had been urging him to do since he’d walked in the door — he claimed her. And to his delight, she surrendered, melting against him with a quiet little moan that had him deepening the kiss until they broke apart, panting like a pair of horny teenagers.
“Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way.” Turning with her, he guided her over to the couch, pushing her down so her ass was lifted high. “What did I tell you about talking bad about my woman, Katherine?”
“Oh, god. Can’t we talk about this?”
There was a bit of a whine in her voice and he grinned down at her. “What's there to talk about? You agreed to be mine, and I already warned you what would happen if you kept talking shit about yourself. Now, did you do your homework?”
“Yeah.”
His hand positively itched to spank the sulk right out of her voice, but he forced himself to hold back. “And what did you mark down for spanking?”
“Pretty sure you already know it was a ‘Yes’, Austin,” she said, her voice surprisingly prim given her current position.
“Yeah, I figured, just wanted to be sure.” The cute pjs she was wearing stretched taut across her backside, and he didn’t bother to hide his groan as he ran his hand over the rounded curves of her ass. “Goddamn, baby. This is better than all those dreams I’ve been having about you.”
She lifted her head to look over her shoulder at him, surprise written all over her face. “You’ve been dreaming about me?”
“If I haven’t been playing ball, I’ve been imagining you just like this. And on your back under me, screaming my name. And quite a few other little fantasies I can’t wait to try out.”
“I swear you had to have been dropped on your head as a child,” she mumbled, turning her face back towards the couch.
Some of the anger he’d worked up on his drive to her place pushed through and he drew his hand back and landed two heavy smacks on her ass, one for each jiggling cheek. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Um. I don’t think I want to say.”
“But you will, unless you want to make your first spanking a hell of a lot longer and harder than I was planning.” He waited, letting the silence drag out before he heaved a deliberately heavy sigh.
“All right, kitten. Have it your way. What do you say if you need me to stop?”
“R-red?”
“Good girl. I’m going to pull your pajama bottoms down, now. Do you know why?”
“Because you’re a man and you like getting women naked?”
Fuck if he didn’t love that cheeky sense of humor. But he forced himself to at least sound stern when he answered her. “No, it’s because spankings are always given on the bare.”
Her squeak could have been a protest, or maybe it was just surprise. Either way, it wasn’t her safe word, so he did as he’d promised and tugged her pjs down to her knees, followed slowly by her lacy panties. As much of a hurry as he’d been in to finally claim her as his, now he wanted to draw things out a bit, let the tension build.
When she was bared to him, he rubbed a hand over her skin, warming it up a bit. “What color are you, kitten? Red, yellow, or green?”
“What’s green?”
“Green for go. Like a traffic light.”
“Oh. Um, green. But maybe a bit yellow. I just…this is really hard,” she blurted out, her voice already thick with unshed tears.
“What’s really hard, baby?”
“Letting you, um, see me. Like this. Naked,” she finished on a whisper, as though it were some kind of shameful secret.
His heart fucking broke for her. This should have been the easy part, but whatever she’d been through had her already near her breaking point. “Do you want to stop?”