“Have I told you yet that your hair looks like shit?”
Izzy’s nose wrinkles on one side. She smirks.
“No, but you must be mistaking me for a woman who feels like she’s defined by her looks rather than her strength. What, Niklas, did you expect me to cry in a fucking corner over it?”
In a way, yeah. On the other hand, this particular reaction to her hair being hacked off, doesn’t surprise me, either.
The elevator doors break apart and we head straight for our suite. I set Sian down on the bed in the private room opposite the main living area, and I do a sweep of the room for any electronic devices, in case we had any unwanted visitors while we were in the mansion. Izabel and Nora wait in the main room without breaking character.
“It’s clean,” I announce, coming out of the kitchen area.
Like a blinding flash of light, Nora’s fist comes soaring toward my face, knocking me against the wall. She’s on me like a cat on its prey before I know what the fuck just happened; her brown eyes swirling, blazing with—what the hell is that? Ha! This bitch is fuming pissed, but I swear to God she looks like she wants to fuck me.
Niklas
With my back against the wall, Nora’s hand tightens around my throat. I don’t fight her; I put my hands up beside me against the wall too, and I grin. “Damn, woman,” I say, laughing, choking out the words.
She bangs my head on the wall and presses her body against mine to hold me in place; I feel her fingers digging into my throat just underneath my jawbone.
“What the fuck did I do?” I still can’t help but laugh.
Her fingers tighten; her nostrils flare; her eyes swirl.
“You know what you did,” she growls.
“Was it the whipping?” Laughter. I can’t help it!
Bang! Little black dots spring before my eyes when my head hits the wall.
The laughter dies around me; so does my smile.
“Screw this,” I hear Izabel say. “I’m going to bed.” And I hear the door to the private room close.
I grab Nora by her throat and we reverse places; I shove her as hard as I can against the wall, glaring into her face, our noses almost touching; my fingers splayed around her throat and her jaw. I’ve wanted to do this for so long—paybacks, bitch.
“Thought you could handle it?” I growl right back at her. “I did what I had to do—it could’ve been much worse.”
“It wasn’t what you did,” she says through strained words; my hand hindering airflow. “It was that you enjoyed it too much.”
The grin slips back onto my face.
She tries to knee me in the nuts, but I move enough to avoid it and she catches me in the gut instead. It takes the breath out of me; I recover quickly, but the second of distraction is all Nora needs to reverse our roles again and she pounces on me. I don’t even know how, or what part of her body is on me where, all I know is that I’m falling backward with her on top of me, and I feel flesh against flesh, and the silk of her hair on my face and my neck and my arms. When she’s done hitting me in the face—because I finally get ahold of her wrists to stop her—I open my eyes to find her straddling my chest; my head pressed between her powerful thighs, squeezing it like a goddamn grape. I let go of her wrists and take her by the elbows, easily tossing her off and onto the floor on her back. She slaps me once, twice when I’m on top of her, but I like that shit so I don’t hold her arms.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” she hisses, glaring up at me. “I thought you never break character? I have to say, I’m disappointed.”
“I got the job done,” I tell her, hovering over her, straddling her waist. “So far.”
“Could’ve been done more smoothly.”
“How so?”
“If you hadn’t been arguing with your girlfriend in front of everybody, I wouldn’t have had to make a scene, and you wouldn’t have had to enjoy beating me with a whip.” She snarls and then slaps me again; I feel the hot sting on the side of my face and it just makes my dick harder.
“I think you liked it,” I say, grinning. “And I think you like slapping me. You’re getting off on it.”