I’m gasping, instinctively reaching back to cover the spot. He captures my wrist, so he has both now, and holds them in one of his hands. I crane my neck to look up at him. He keeps his eyes locked on mine and rubs one hand over my ass, then spanks it again, ten more times on the other cheek.
“Stop!” It fucking hurts.
“When I call you, you answer, Natalie.”
I tug at my arms, but his grip is vice-like.
“Do you understand?” he asks.
“Let me go.”
“Do you fucking understand?”
“Yes!”
He gives me one more hard smack before releasing me, and I stumble to my feet. I feel hot, embarrassed, and I’m clutching my ass.
“I just want you safe.” He gets to his feet.
I step backward.
He’s wearing a suit, the jacket of which is hanging over the back of a chair. He gently moves Pepper’s head off his foot before he walks toward me.
I’m mute as he approaches. There’s a darkness to Sergio Benedetti. It clings to him, like a shadow. It’s the one thing that scares me about him because I trust that he won’t hurt me. And I believe that he wants me safe. I may not understand it, but I believe it.
But this shadow, it’s not one he casts. The opposite. It seems to cast itself over him. To have a claim on him. Some strange, powerful hold over him.
“You shouldn’t have hurt him,” I say when my back’s against the wall and he’s standing inches from me.
“You couldn’t protect yourself so I did it for you. Besides, this isn’t important. That idiot isn’t important.”
“No, it doesn’t work that way. I didn’t want—”
“How does it work?” he asks, one corner of his mouth curling upward. He looks me over, leans his forearms against the wall on either side of my head. “Huh?” He dips his head closer, inhales, touches the scruff of his jaw against my cheek. “Explain to me how it works.”
I look up at him, at his midnight eyes. I smell his aftershave, remember what we did last night. My body remembers too.
“How does it work, Nat?”
I hate the nickname. Always have.
“Huh?” he continues. “I stand back while some asshole intimidates you into his bed?”
“I didn’t. I wouldn’t. I’m not fucking stupid. And I don’t need someone to protect me. I don’t need some knight in shining armor and I’m not looking for a hero.” Tears warm my eyes. I hate them, hate the weakness. But what I’ve said has made him stop. Confused him almost.
Then he laughs. “You think I’m trying to be the hero?” A moment later, he drops his head. His forehead creases and he’s looking down for a long time before he shifts his gaze back up to mine, searching mine as if it holds the answers. “I’m not the hero, sweetheart. I’m the fucking monster.”
When I don’t reply, he grins. It’s a sad, one sided thing.
“What do you think of that? Makes more sense, right?”
I push against him, but it’s like trying to move a wall, and the look in his eyes, the dark desperation in his words, his voice, it scares me. “Let me go.”
“No.” He takes my wrists in one of his hands, draws them over my head, pins them to the wall. His other hand grips my skirt, yanks it up. “You’re good. You’re the only good in my life, you know that?” His eyes skim my bared legs, the stockings that reach mid-thigh. “And I want what I want,” he finishes, dragging his gaze back to mine. “I should let you go. It’s the right thing to do, I know.”
I can’t process what he’s saying—it’s almost like he’s not talking to me but to himself. Like he’s been thinking and thinking and he’s just saying it out loud now.
He touches my face, my cheek. His thumb presses against my lower lip, forces my mouth open. “But I can’t,” he says finally.
