I watched her—her long hair was spread over her shoulders and back, her ass was shapely and facing the camera. Beneath the pants, I knew that her skin was raw, that if I touched her she would have to yield to me. Maybe she would eat her lobster if I tied her up and swatted her bottom—
—and then filled her up, in every hole. Maybe then she’d break and get out of my mind and out of my chest where it felt like she was pounding inside my heart with tiny fists. If I could just get her to bend to my will, then I would lose interest in her.
I needed to get Natalia under control, so I could get myself under control and get out of there. Out of the state, out of the States, and back to my regularly scheduled life, where I didn’t care about anything or anyone.
But Natalia, whose stomach I could hear growling over the intercom, was staring at her Kindle and leaving all that food untouched. And something held me back from going in there and teaching her a lesson.
What?
What had ever held me back from just doing my job? Thiswasa job—a personal debt, but a professional one in its own way.
Just treat it like a fucking job, I told myself.
I reached forward and turned off the feed to her room.
I needed less emotion.
I paced the dark house, and then I got in my lap pool and swam. I’d rather have packed up and left—I could have, after all. I could have left the door open, and let that ungrateful brat wander out and back home and never given any of it another thought again. I could have let that house rot into the ground, never coming back, never thinking of it again.
That’s what I pictured, while I swam in my pool, lap after lap.
Because now, thanks to Natalia, I couldn’t do what I would have done.
And I hated that.
Chapter Ten
Natalie
It wasn’t easy, but I resisted the food.
I couldn’t concentrate on anything on the Kindle, so I watched some movies without even seeing what was happening on the screen, my thoughts constantly churning, my body betraying me with a craving I had never felt before. I was furious with myself, on the one hand, for having anything but feelings of hatred for a guy who had kidnapped me and spanked me.
I was furious when I felt an ache in the center of my legs every time I thought of the humiliating way he’d turned me over and whipped me until I could feel my skin burning—even now.
I was furious that I liked the clothes he’d brought me, that I was having such... crazy, un-feminist thoughts like, wouldn’t it be nice to eat lobster and sleep on clean sheets in a nice room with nice clothes?
