I hesitantly put the chess piece back on the board. All Macalister had to do was get me to see genuine fear in Alice’s eyes and she was essentially forgiven. Maybe there was hope for me after all and I wasn’t turning into a Hale. I still cared about people other than myself.
“Alice, come,” he said in a harsh voice, like a master calling a disobedient dog.
When his belt had thudded to the hardwood, it had dispelled a significant amount of the tension in the room, but the undercurrent remained, and as she carefully approached him, it ramped back up. Whatever alternative form of punishment he’d crafted, he seemed ready to dish it out.
The last thing I’d expected him to do was kiss her.
Judging by her reaction, it was the same for her. When his large hands seized her face and tilted it upward so he could lean down and capture her mouth, she let out a sound of surprise. It was followed instantly by an excited whimper that was quieted under his kiss.
Her perfect posture evaporated beneath his lips, and she arched up onto her toes. She kissed him with a desperation I knew all too well. It was the same way I’d kissed Royce in the hedge maze the night he’d sold me to his father. Alice kissed her husband like she hated his guts, but she’d also walk to the ends of the earth for him.
Her hands slid up his neck and cupped his jaw, and the kiss deepened. The way she responded to it and how she touched him . . . was this the first time in months they’d done it? They’d never been affectionate in front of me, but I had assumed behind closed doors they were, at least occasionally.
But maybe she’d only had Vance, playing the role of stand-in for her husband’s duties.
The longer Macalister passionately kissed her, the more I began to wonder who, exactly, he was punishing. Her sigh of contentment announced he was giving her all the attention she’d craved, basically rewarding her. And I was the one who had to sit there and endure my future in-laws making out with each other.
Macalister awkwardly broke off the kiss, dragging his lips across her cheek. She swayed, looking adrift for a moment, his mouth temporarily drugging her, and she blinked her cloudy eyes at him.
“There. I gave you what you wanted.” His tone was unexpectedly flat. “Your lipstick smeared on my face. Does it make you happy?” His upper lip curled into a cruel smile. “Because I was imagining you were Marist the whole time.”
Oh, my God.
The blissful expression on her face froze, and I shirked back in my seat. This was just the beginning of it, I knew. It’d get much worse before he was done. The alternative method of punishment he’d selected was psychological warfare and—oh, shit—maybe I should have let him use the belt. It likely would have been less painful for both of us than what he had in store.
He grabbed her around the throat and pushed her roughly down to her knees. She nearly fell, putting a hand down to stop herself, and turned her surprised expression up at him, wordlessly asking what he was doing. The only answer he gave her was to step forward, putting the fly of his slacks right at her eye-level.
“Let’s see if you can even get me hard, or if I’ll have to imagine she’s you.”
Oh, my God!
There were a million tightly wound springs beneath my chest that all broke at the same time, leaving me a jangling, chaotic mess on the inside. They screamed at me to run, to fucking do something. But there was a reason I shouldn’t, some part of me remembered on a basic level. I couldn’t remember it specifically because my brain was barely processing, but the warning was enough to make me hesitate.
Alice’s gaze darted to me, but he was prepared for that. “Would you like her to complete your task?”
Her focus snapped back to him like his words had magnetized her. “No.”
Determination overcame her as she accepted his challenge, and then her hands were crawling up over his legs. He stood still, his head tipped down to watch and his hands hanging relaxed at his sides as her palms worked their way toward the center of his pants.
My mouth was dry and full of dust, making it impossible to swallow. What the fuck was I supposed to do? Sit here and watch as she gave him a hand job? My body was a cage, locked tight with horror when her fingers focused in on what she’d been searching for and began to massage him through his slacks.
They were positioned sideways to me, so I could see one half of each of their faces, and behind them the view of the mountains surrounding us. We were on Mount Olympus now, the mortals below in Aspen. Zeus stood motionless as his jealous wife knelt on his expensive inlaid hardwood floor and tried to service him.