my teeth as I suck in a pained breath. The sting that follows his slap is immediate and brutal.
Slap. Slap. Slap. Slap.
Tears prick at my tightly-closed eyelids, and I scrunch up my face with the effort of not yelling out or letting those tears fall.
Fingers brush my jaw. I reluctantly open my mouth and let Zachary take the belt from between my teeth.
“Your question.”
I try to focus on anything but the pain, but it seems impossible to ignore. “Hold on,” I murmur, my breathing picking up pace.
“Now, little girl.” He caresses my ass, sending fiery licks of pain over my skin. I hiss and try to move away, but there’s nowhere to go with me sandwiched between his body and the back of the couch. “Now.”
“Your parents,” I say through my teeth as my fingers dig into the couch. “Why would they send you to the basement?”
It’s the first thing I can think of. The first logical thought of the thousands floating aimlessly through a mind that’s coming undone from this exquisite pain.
Zachary’s hand pauses. He squeezes me, and I go onto my tippy toes as I gasp at the pain.
I don’t understand this. I’ve had ten lashes, but they were nothing like this. They hurt more, but this…this is a different kind of pain. It has all these layers to it I don’t understand. I feel like crying, but not because it hurts, but because…
Because Zachary is hurting, and I can feel it.
I can feel his pain.
“Good question.” Zachary starts massaging my ass again. “And I don’t know if I have the right answer for you.”
“What? That’s not—” I cut off when his fingers stop an inch away from my entrance. Until now he’d been keeping well away from the hot, tingling mess between my legs.
“I’m not sure if it’s the right answer, because I can’t look inside their heads,” he says.
He squeezes me, and I barely hold back a moan of pain.
“I’m not asking you to psychoanalyze them,” I say, having to force the words through the pain.
He makes a soft noise in the back of his throat that could have been a stifled chuckle. “Aren’t you?”
“You would have asked them. They would have given you some kind of answer. What did they say, when they took you down there? What reason did they give?”
He lets out a laugh that turns my insides into a frozen mush. “It was my punishment,” he says. “See, I was a very naughty boy.” He shifts behind me and his jeans brush my skin. The rough fabric sends a flurry of hot tingles through me moments before his hard dick presses into my crack, forcing my cheeks apart.
My breath catches.
If he wasn’t still wearing his jeans, he’d be inches away from—
Taking what doesn’t belong to him.
Which he could have done if he’d wanted. Is he holding himself back, or just toying with me?
“What did you do?”
Another laugh. Thankfully, this one isn’t as chilling as the one before. “Sure you can handle another question?” He strokes my bare skin with his fingertips. They trace eight lines down my ass, and then converge less than an inch from my sex.
My face heats when he slowly pulls me open. My lips part reluctantly, soaked through from the twisted desire that’s been coursing through me the entire time he’s had me pinned against this couch.
“I said, are you sure you can handle another question, little girl?”
“Yes,” I blurt out, immediately squeezing closed my eyes. “I mean…if you don’t hit me as hard. Maybe.” Fuck, my heart feels ready to explode from my chest.
He chuckles quietly as he folds over me. “It’s sweet that you think I’m capable of mercy.” He grabs my wrist, bringing the folded belt up to my mouth. “Open.”
And, against all reason, that’s exactly what I do.
Chapter Eighteen
Zach
I’m barely touching the ground and every breath I take is helium. If Trinity looked around and saw my face, she’d be screaming as she ran out of here.
Which is why I slide my hand over the back of her neck and hold her in place. That way, she can’t see the sick lust on my face.
I slip a finger behind the hem of her panties where they’re gathered just under the curve of her ass. This time she doesn’t plead with me to keep them on. I tug them down to her knees, baring her smooth, shapely legs. I take a few seconds to admire the blurry red handprints on her ass before I start