Tender Mercies - By Kitty Thomas Page 0,31

so much about it that he’d had to paddle her anyway. And it still hadn’t stopped the behavior. As much as he’d loved her, he’d found it endlessly irritating how much she whined about any punishment that wasn’t sexy. She’d never really internalized the idea of herself as his real property. Even with laws surrounding them that said so. And to be honest, he hadn’t either.

Grace hadn’t let out even the mildest protest at writing lines. He thought she might actually still thank him when it was over––and mean it. Even as much as her hand would hurt by then.

He watched her for a moment, sitting there in the pajamas she’d been wearing earlier in the morning, carefully copying over the sentences into the notebook. His cock twitched in his pants. He left before he did something stupid and rash.

His intentions to hold off from consummating things with her were weakening by the moment. Asher crossed the hall to the bathroom and shut and locked the door. He shucked his clothes and got underneath the spray. He’d had a shower before going to pick her up, of course. Right now he just wanted to wank, and the bathroom was the only place to do it in complete privacy.

He knew Grace would stay in her room and do as he’d ordered, but William was a whole different matter. The last thing he wanted was for his butler to walk in on a mid-morning wank in the bedroom.

Closing his eyes, he replayed the morning from the moment he’d walked into Lucas’s dungeon. Those frightened eyes, the absolute desperation she had to please him. So unlike Darcy. He should be repulsed by making such comparisons. He should feel guilty for being so turned on by his entire exposure to Grace. She was so broken. That shouldn’t get him off. Although he was angry with the way Lucas had treated the girl and the horrible conditions she’d been kept in, the resulting desperation to please and obey aroused him to a degree he hadn’t been prepared for.

Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong pounded in his head in a staccato beat, matching the rhythm of the shower spray and his hand jerking on his cock.

He bit back the groan as he came so it wouldn’t carry across the hallway, then pressed his palms against the tiles, leaning forward. He let his breath settle back into the normal pattern as the evidence of his orgasm swirled down the drain. Why did it matter if Grace heard him? Did he not have the right to come in his own house? He should be using her for that purpose anyway. It’s what he’d bought her for.

The same thing that he’d claimed had drawn the lowest common denominator to want to buy her, was what drove him as well. But with less sinister intentions. Grace was a slave who truly was a slave. She wasn’t an online fantasy girlfriend who’d come over for kinks and thrills that he couldn’t bring himself to punish in any meaningful way. She was someone he’d never have to punish that way. Someone who would give her absolute loyalty and obedience out of gratitude. Perhaps it was the gratitude that stirred his blood the most. And that wasn’t so wrong, was it?

He let the shower run for ten more minutes, not washing off, just standing there, letting the water slide down his skin. It was more subterfuge. If he was in and out too fast, both William and Grace would know what he’d been up to. And again, he didn’t know why he cared so much. He’d masturbated the previous day. And the day before that. And the day before that. It wasn’t necessarily all about the abused woman in the room across the hall, obediently writing out her punishment sentences.

Oh hell, it had been about her from the moment he’d seen her at the showing. She’d triggered both his cock and his protective urges in such a dramatic way he would have paid two million for her. More. And he was terrified that, rather than atone, he would somehow become a greater monster because of his lack of self-control with this one. He just wanted her too much.

***

Grace was on number 120 when the knock sounded on the door. Her hand had just started cramping, and she was relieved to put the pen down for a break. It felt too odd to say “come in,” as if she had any rights to deny anyone