“Yes, sir.” Follow his directions. Baby steps, one at a time. She could do baby steps.
“If Kawan is a halfway decent dominant, he won’t let tonight affect your professional relationship. He will understand and respect that you aremysubmissive, not his. And he will not look down on you for it in any way. In fact, he should respect the hell out of you.”
“Huh?”
Austin’s lips twitched, but the steel remained in his gaze. “I’m going to interpret that as ‘What do you mean, sir?’”
“Oh. Yes, sir.”
“Look, baby. I know this is hard. Submitting to someone else, letting someone else call the shots, letting them hurt you and humiliate you and punish you isn’t an easy thing. No matter how much you crave it, it’s fucking hard. Any good Dom understands that, and he respects any submissive who is able to give themselves over that way.”
“I guess. It’s still embarrassing.”
“What are you embarrassed by?” His voice lowered, soft and silky in a way that she instinctively recognized was meant to embarrass her further. “That your friend knows you were a naughty little kitten and that your Sir is going to punish you?”
Heat threatened to engulf her, and she glanced around to see if anyone was listening, but everyone seemed to have found something more interesting than a Dom quietly lecturing his submissive. “Yes, sir.”
Lifting a hand to her hair, he wrapped her curls around his fist, forcing her head back and her chin further up. “Good. Embarrassment helps a lesson stick, often times more than the actual pain. Stand up and strip.”
The order sliced through her, freezing her to her core. “What?”
“Stand up and take off your clothes. All of them.”
All of her clothes? Here, where they barely had the illusion of privacy? “I can’t.”
“You can, and you will.”
“I can’t. Sir. Please.”
“Katherine. Take off your clothes. Now.”
It was the whip-crack of his voice that spurred her into action. Forcing herself up onto trembling legs, she tugged the hem of her dress up over her hips, pausing to send him a pleading look.
“Good girl. Keep going.”
He began circling her as she worked the dress up over her tummy. “If you’d worn the outfit I’d chosen for you, this all could have been avoided. But you chose to be a naughty, disobedient little girl, and now the whole club is going to watch as I teach you a very painful lesson. And stripping yourself bare for me is part of your punishment.”
A whimper escaped and she faltered, teetering on the too-tall heels. He caught her, his hands on her waist as she pulled the dress off over her head, leaving her in the matching bra and panty set she’d so carefully chosen, and the ridiculous heels.
“God, you’re beautiful,” he murmured, running his hand down her spine. “It baffles me that you somehow manage to look in the mirror and not see how absolutely perfect you are.”
“Would you like me to list all the reasons alphabetically or just start with the most obvious, sir?”
Two sharp spanks landed, one for each cheek, and she hissed at the sudden bursts of pain.
“Watch the attitude, kitten. You’re already in enough trouble.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Let’s finish getting you naked, and then I think I’d like a drink.”
“May I have a glass of wine, sir?” she asked as he unsnapped her bra and pulled the fabric from her breasts.
“No.You’re being punished. You don’t get to hide behind a buzz.”
“Sadist,” she mumbled.
“Yeah, but you already knew that about me.”