“You will never leave our sight without proper permission. If you ever run away again without doing the courtesy of talking to us both, your ass will be a glowing shade of red for a month, I promise.”
Was he serious? “I don’t need babysitters.”
“Since you could have gotten yourself molested in that terrible club or in the f**king alley behind it, if not for us, I’m going to disagree.”
“But I didn’t.”
“I didn’t give you permission to speak.” Thorpe’s voice dropped another octave.
Another few swats to her backside had her flesh stinging again . . . and her pu**y weeping. Why did Thorpe’s discipline always turn her on? Why couldn’t she hate him for it and tell him to go to hell?
“And lovely? There will be no drugging anyone, no taking your clothes off for strangers, and absolutely no lying,” Sean insisted from the front seat. His voice held a harsh, authoritarian edge she’d never heard from him before.
“If you remove so much as a shoe in front of another man without our permission, you will feel my wrath.”
And to prove his point, Thorpe rained a series of short, sharp blows down on her backside, one after the other. Callie couldn’t stop the gasps, the moans. Her blood felt like it had caught fire. Her skin burned. Still, Thorpe kept at her ass, pounding one wallop after another on her vulnerable backside until she thought she would melt all over him. She barely reined in the urge to cry out in pleasure.
“Mine, too,” Sean vowed. “You’re likely to feel it as soon as I don’t need to focus on the road, in fact.”
Well, wasn’t that something to look forward to?
“I didn’t give either of you permission to touch me,” she pointed out.
“Lousy attempt, pet,” he tsked at her. “You just keep digging a deeper hole.”
“I gave him permission,” Sean clarified. “And I don’t care if you think you removed your collar. We didn’t talk about it. You decided without consulting me. Last time I checked, you weren’t the Dominant in this relationship.”
“This is ridiculous. I’m not a possession.”
“No, but you’re a submissive in need of a great deal of discipline. I have no problem giving it to you, pet.”
“I have no problem either, Callie. I was too easy on you before. That’s going to change,” Sean promised.
Her heart lurched. They absolutely meant business, and a bit of her really wanted to let them take her under their wing and rely on them for her safety. If she wasn’t Callindra Howe, she might dip her toe in the water. Okay, so she’d probably dive in. But that wasn’t her reality.
“The hell it is! I only managed to stay free for nine years because I never got sentimental. I leave everything and everyone behind and sever all ties once I’m gone. Thorpe, it’s not that I don’t believe you’d do everything possible to keep me safe. But I can’t let you ruin your life. I left because I’m trying to do the right thing so you can get back to normalcy.”
“He didn’t ask you to throw yourself on the sword, lovely.” Sean’s voice softened before it hardened again. “Neither did I. We won’t let you cast either of us aside because you think it’s ‘safer.’ What you’re really doing is being stingy with your trust and protecting your heart. I won’t have it.”
“Nor will I,” Thorpe added. “I might have been your boss and your friend, but you’re lying to me and yourself if you think we weren’t more.”
Was he finally admitting there was something between them? Callie closed her eyes. What crappy timing . . .
“So?” she tossed back. “You ignored it yourself for years.”
“I did,” he admitted. “And I’m done.”
Her heated ass throbbed in the cool night, and she felt Thorpe’s stare on her bare skin. The yearning nearly choked her, but this wasn’t just about her. She couldn’t stand to see them get sucked into the morass her life had become.
Callie figured she could play this one of two ways: either keep fighting tooth and nail and get her ass beat more for her defiance or give in until they let their guard down. Then she’d run again. Sean hadn’t asked her to throw herself on the sword, and well . . . she hadn’t asked him for that either. If he really had been protecting her and was here against his orders, she couldn’t let him jeopardize his job any more than she could risk being involved with an FBI agent. And she refused to gamble her heart on Thorpe, one of the most emotionally unavailable men she’d ever met. No good would come from that.
“Yes, Sirs.”
Above her, Thorpe stilled. “I don’t know whether to praise your breakthrough or wail on your ass again for lying.”
“I think I know,” Sean quipped.
“I think I do, too. But time will tell. Just for good measure . . .” Thorpe palmed the burning flesh of her backside, then spanked her again with unyielding discipline before jerking her skirt down and sitting her on the long seat beside him. “Behave, pet.”