footsteps thunder on the stairs to the bar’s entrance, and I hear some of the men following us from outside.
“Now this is going to fun to watch, Dex,” Dragon says behind me. “I love when he gets like this.”
My insides churn. That’s exactly like what Striker said to me when Spider had punished me the first time, taking me out to that wretched tree. But there’s no tree here. What will he do to me now?
I expect him to march me up the steps to his room, but he doesn’t.
Spider pauses at the back couch long enough for Pip and a few other men to vacate it. Pip smirks and stands aside, watching the proceedings with a smug looking Monica and a crowd of others.
Gin freezes in the middle of serving drinks to the men on the opposite couch and her eyes widen, understanding dawning on her pretty face. She tilts her head, her eyes pleading, seeming to ask me what I’ve done to get myself into this mess. They look a little sad before she turns her gaze away, looking anywhere but at me.
“Whiskey, Gin,” Spider says to her, still gripping my nape.
Gin gives a little jerk and goes off to the bar.
Spider yanks the shirt off me, leaving me stripped from the waist up for all to see. Mortification burns my cheeks, and I instinctively hide behind my arms.
Spider whirls me to face him and grabs my nape. “Hands behind your back.”
Dread washes over me, mixing with humiliated horror. This is the price for going against him. If I fight him now, it will only get worse. I force my hands behind my back and clasp them there.
Spider pulls me over to the couch, then releases me and lowers himself onto it.
Gin returns, momentarily catching my attention as she sets down his whiskey. He tosses her shirt to her, and she catches it with a startled look.
“That belong to you?” He gives her a fierce smile when she looks at the tattered garment. “If she needs anything”—he nods to me—“I will provide it. Don’t give her anything again.”
His eyes trap mine.
“On your knees,” he growls.
No one says anything, but somehow, I feel the anticipation in the room intensify, as if someone has turned up the heat in here by several degrees.
My dread mounts, my brain scrambling to work out what’s coming, for a way out of whatever it is. There isn’t one that won’t cause me more suffering.
Throat tight, I drop to my knees, wincing at the hardness of the wooden floor under them, stinging even through my jeans.
Spider’s hand closes around the back of my hair, his fingers grazing my scalp as he pulls me closer to him, forcing me to knee-walk across the hard floor. My naked breasts sway with the movement, the weight of them making me feel painfully exposed.
Ignoring the whiskey on the table completely, he sits back on the couch, the king upon his throne with his slave at his feet.
Spider reaches out and thumbs one nipple. A spear of unwilling pleasure shoots through me, and the nipple peaks instantly, tightening until it almost hurts.
My hands instinctively unclasp, but before I can push his hand away, Spider shakes his head.
“I said, hands behind your back.” His voice is ragged and dark, and causes an ache between my legs with the command in it.
As much as I hate him for what he’s doing to me right now, there is something inexplicably hot in knowing what’s happening here. In his absolute power over me, and the knowledge that everyone else can see me, bared and left with nothing to do but submit to his will.
Clasping my hands again, I turn my eyes away from his, shame rolling over me in a wave. Especially when I hear several men moving closer for a better look at the show. Out of the corner of my eye, standing near the couch, Striker watches shamelessly, rubbing the large bulge in his crotch.
“You’re a fucking lucky ass, Spider,” the guy with the scar on his cheek says from beside Striker.
Spider jerks my chin up, bringing my eyes to his. Not seeming to have heard the man speak, his tongue wets his lips. His eyelids are drooped, and his face has that sexy, sleepy look again. My muscles coil, as they always do when he looks like that.
“You never learn, do you?” he murmurs. His fingers caress my lips, his eyes fixed hungrily on them.