She tugged on it to cover herself and squinted at him. “Why are you doing this? I told you I don’t want to discuss it. You ought to respect my wishes.”
“Not if it’s detrimental to you. Sit up.”
“No.”
“Talk to me—or I’ll spank you.”
“Go away.”
Mark sat and, before she could move a muscle, hauled her over his knees. Her nightshirt rode up in the most accommodating way. “Let me go.” She attempted to roll off his lap. It was the most spirit she’d displayed since he’d arrived, but the fight in her was much less than what she was capable of.
He held her and rubbed and squeezed her rounded tush, warming it up. “One last time,” he said. “Tell me what happened on Friday.”
“You already know.”
“I do. But I want to hear it from you.”
“I can’t discuss it.”
“Why not?”
“I just can’t. Spank me if you have to.”
“Very well.” He brought his hand down with medium force in the center of her cheek. She flinched but didn’t utter a sound. He lay into her with a steady, urgent stroke.
Talk to me. Please
. She remained stoic for the longest time; then her arms and legs began to twitch with the blows.
He spanked harder.
“Ow! That hurts.”
“Does it?” He smacked her several times in the same spot. “Does it?” He stung the other cheek in the same way. “Tell me how much it hurts.”
“It hurts, okay? It hurts!”
Smack. Smack. Smack. Her ass was an even pink, as was his palm, which stung, although probably not as much as her ass. Smack! “What hurts?”
“My ass. Stop it!” She flailed her arms and legs, fighting him with real effort, showing her claws for the first time.
Good, good. That’s my girl. But you’re not there yet
. He anchored his arm around her waist and delivered a series of hard, quick slaps.
“It’s not fair!” she yelled. She tried to cover her butt, and he grabbed her wrists and held them against her lower spine.
“What’s not fair?” He continued, not missing a beat.
“That you’re spanking me!” Stephanie bucked her hips, but her timing was off, and her ass rose to connect with his downward palm. She howled.
He focused on one particularly red spot and slapped it repeatedly.
“NOT fair!” Her shout wobbled.
“Why isn’t it?” Spank. Spank.
Tell me. Let me stop. Let me give you what you need
. He laid into her hard and fast, not permitting her time to anticipate or recover from the blows. He refused to let her hide.
“Because
I
started WAN! Me! Not the board, not that bitch Gladys, not Evelyn, not Bethany.” The words exploded out of her mouth. “And they stole it from me.” Stephanie began to cry. Hand raised midair, Mark ceased spanking. “I recruited every single board member. Hired the staff. And th-they acted like nothing I did mattered. Like
I
didn’t matter. It’s not fair. It’s not fair! It’s
not
FAIR!” Her voice rose on a crescendo and ended in a scream. She wept, sobs racking her body.
Mark hauled her into his arms. She pressed her fists to his chest and wailed against his collar, spewing oddly meaningful non sequiturs. “Fucking boys…the girls…bitch Evelyn…thought he liked me…cheating bastard…Gladys…only a drinking glass.” He held her tight, tangled his fingers in her matted hair, and rubbed her ass.
He rocked and stroked as she dampened his shirt with her tears and seared his heart with her pain. Her eyes and her nose ran, and he snagged a tissue from a box on the nightstand and wiped her face.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured. “I’ve got you.”
When her sobs dwindled to hiccups, he held a couple of tissues to her nose. “Blow,” he said.
She did, then turned her face in to his neck. Her body trembled. “I knew this w-would happen. I hate for you to see me this way.”
He massaged her reddened ass. “What way? Sad? Mad? You’re entitled to be both.”
She shook her head. “Weak. I don’t w-want to be weak. To break down. To cry.”
“You’re not weak. And everybody cries.”
“You don’t.”
“I can’t remember the last time, true, but I’m tough.”
“And I’m weak.”
“No. You’re a woman.” He shook her gently. “The next time something upsets you, tell me. No more stuffing it inside. Do you understand?” he said in a tone that brooked no refusal.
“We’ll see,” she brooked.
He kissed her ass with his palm. “There’s always the alternative.”
She scowled into his face. “You think spanking is the answer to everything.”
“Not everything. But it will do you good if I redden your ass for real about once a week after we’re married.”
She widened her eyes and dropped her jaw. “What did you say to me?”
“We’ve discussed maintenance spankings,” he reminded her.
“Not that! The other part of the sentence.”
“After we’re married?”
He never saw the punch coming. Her fist flew out and connected with the left side of his chest. How she got such a good swing when she was sitting so close, he couldn’t figure. He gaped at her furious face.
She leaped off his lap as if she’d been scalded and stomped around the room. “What world do you live in?” she yelled, making him wonder if it had been wise to encourage her to express her emotions. “In this one, you don’t
tell
a woman she’s going to marry you—you
ask
her! That’s an absolute.”
“Oh.” The tips of his ears burned, not from anger but embarrassment. That had been his original intention, but he’d bungled one of the most important moments of his life. How the hell did he save this?
When he’d imagined proposing, he’d pictured her glowing as he slipped a ring on her finger. Instead, due to his ineptitude, she
glowered
at him, her hands squeezed into fists in case she needed to get his attention again. The oversize shirt she wore hung on her frame like a sack, her hair stuck out every which way, and her eyes were swollen and red from crying, her nose tinged pink. But he’d be the luckiest man alive—
if
she’d have him.
If
he hadn’t blown it.
He slipped off the bed, onto his knees. He kissed the knuckles of the fist that had punched him. His heart pounded. Fuck, what if she said no? “I love you, kit—Stephanie. Will you marry me?”
Chapter Seventeen
The only thing more outrageous than being fired from the organization one had founded would be to marry Mark DeLuca. When she’d sunk to the lowest point of her life, he’d somehow broken into her apartment, turned her over his knee, and damn near spanked the living daylights out of her. He was arrogant, presumptuous, entirely too frickin’ sure of himself, and domineering. Marriage, as he defined it, would be 180 degrees off course from the egalitarian, meet-you-halfway partnership she had envisioned for herself.
Because Mark wouldn’t meet her halfway. He’d go the entire distance. He’d give 100 percent. Like he had today, dropping everything to hop on a plane and race to her side.
At his discretion, her ass would feel the imprint of the paddle, but her heart would flourish under his love, his protection. Just like Liz had said. He would be her rock. He wasn’t so much domineering, she amended, but authoritarian, a man who commanded because it was his nature. And she was a feminist who, through his dominance, would appreciate and express her gentler side. She would be his soft place to fall.
No, Mark wasn’t the man she’d envisioned loving. He was much better.
And right now he was on his knees, a glint of worry in his earnest gaze. She rather liked the uncertainty he wore. It fit him like a poorly tailored suit, the mismatch that much more appealing. She would hate to see him humbled very often, but for this moment? It meant the world that this proud, dominant man would drop to his knees because he loved her.
Her heart swelled until it pressed against her ribs. “Yes,” she shouted and flung herself at him. He caught her with open arms. “I’ll marry you. I love you,” she managed to say before he crushed her mouth beneath his.
“You took long enough to answer,” he growled between kisses.
“Did I?” she said as he nibbled on her neck. “It didn’t seem that way to me.”
He pulled her nightshirt over her head and tossed it aside. He drew on a nipple with fierce suction. The hardening bud tingled, and her womb contracted. The rasp of his jaw grazed a trail from one breast to the other. “I think you were toying with me,” he said and smacked her bottom lightly.
She cradled his head as he sucked on the taut peaks of her breasts. She felt herself falling, but she relaxed into Mark’s hold and landed softly on the carpeted floor. Her insides melted under his lustful adoration as he stripped himself of his clothes and dropped to his knees, but this time in full control. Uncertainty had evaporated.
Wide shoulders sturdy enough to bear her burdens tapered to a trim waist she could cling to for support. Biceps and forearms bulged with the strength to carry her. His hands…ah, his hands… They caressed and coddled, they spanked and disciplined, they guided and loved.
His cock jutted out, ever ready for her pleasure. Curly dark hairs swirled around its base and darkened his muscular thighs, braced wide apart. Even on his knees he remained dominant.
He kissed her, his mouth plundering, his insistent, stroking hands staking possession. She gripped his biceps, then flattened her palms over his chest and reveled in the hardness before sweeping through the dusting of body hair to the crown jewels. A powerful marvel of rigidity. She seized him, her squeeze-and-slide technique earning her a gratifying growl. “Ah, kitten, what you do to me,” he murmured against her mouth.
“What you do to
me
.” She smiled against his lips.
“You make me hunger for you, love you beyond reason. I love your strength and your softness. That you challenge me and defy me in small ways, but then submit with your whole heart.” Hot breath filled her ear.
Mark painted her body with his desire, nibbling on her neck, sucking her nipples, tracing circles on her abdomen with his tongue. He scooted lower and settled between her legs, and the urgent insistence of his kiss slowed to languor, coaxing her passion with unhurried strokes of his tongue, the glide of his lips, the graze of his beard she loved so well.
Her engorged clit tingled under the attention of his mouth, her pussy welcoming the invasion of his fingers. He brought her to the edge of orgasm, then flipped her over, hauled her to her knees, and claimed her in one surging thrust.
She gasped at the shock of entry, the overwhelming stretch, the glorious pressure. She tossed her head and squeezed his cock. Growling, he nipped her nape in a primitive act of mating. She cried out at the unexpected sting while clenching him tight. Holding her hips, he began to thrust.
Her face kissed the floor, her ass stuck high in the air. Need clawed at her, and she raised her hips, taking him deeper. She didn’t think he’d ever felt as satisfying. As smooth. As hard.
“You feel incredible,” he murmured.
“Mm,” she moaned in agreement.
“Always good, but this time—” He froze. “Oh fuck!”
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m not wearing a condom.”
“I’m on the pill, but I forgot to take it this weekend.”
He started to pull out.
“No.” She clamped around him and grabbed his thigh.
“Stephanie, you could get pregnant. The deed might already be done. My cock is leaking like a motherfucker.”
She twisted her head to meet his gaze. “If you want four children, shouldn’t we get started?”
His eyes blazed white hot. He curved his hand over her abdomen and thrust into her slowly, deliberately. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
With dexterous fingers he stroked the very tip of her clit. “Now. Let go. For me.”
Sweet, sharp sensation exploded. Her ecstasy arced as he surrendered to her body’s enticement and spilled himself with a deep, rumbling groan.
* * * *
Stephanie pillowed her head on Mark’s chest and wedged a leg between his thighs. He caressed her shoulder and possessively cupped her hip. Her spanked bottom throbbed, but the rest of her body felt loose and languid, as if she’d received an hour-long massage. Contentment seeped into her bones. If nothing else changed, this moment alone was perfect.
The jaggedness of her unceremonious canning had dulled like it had happened a long time ago. She would need to find another job, but she could deal with it. She hadn’t enjoyed the spanking, but it had gotten her to release her pent-up emotions. Mark had been right. Again. Not that she would admit it to him. His ego needed little stroking.
“I haven’t been out of work since I was sixteen,” she mused.
“You don’t have to be,” he said. “Liz asked me to tell you Rod and Cane still has that position.”
She wound a curl of his chest hair around her index finger. “Can you see me directing a feminist women’s program at an organization of men who spank their wives?”
“As easily as I see this feminist marrying this man who spanks.” He tweaked her nipple.
At his words, the impossible turned possible. Ideas formed. It would be a challenge, to be sure, to assist women in developing their potential and influence within the context of a domestic discipline marriage. She would benefit along with them. It comforted her to know that she could lean on Mark, that he would protect her, provide for her. He knew what she needed even when she didn’t. But at times they would butt heads, and she would end up over his lap. Teaching other women how to negotiate those complex dynamics would help her learn too. Excitement stirred.
“Working with Rod and Cane will give me more flexibility after our son is born,” she said.
Mark splayed his hand over her stomach. “Or our daughter. You do know that genetically the male determines the sex of the baby.”
“I know
you
like to control.”
“I do.” He drew lazy circles on her skin. “By the way, Bethany thinks the reason you were fired was because of some class. She feels responsible for you losing your job.”
“She didn’t help, but she wasn’t responsible. I’ll call her later and let her know.” She marveled that she could speak of the incident with such calmness, but it was all because of Mark. His loving discipline had reshaped her attitude. He got her to release her bottled feelings, to come at his command, to consider a job she would have blown off without blinking.