He pockets my phone and steps back, and for a second I think that's it. Lecture over, punishment delivered.
Nope.
"Come with me."
He doesn't wait for me to agree. Just turns and walks out of my room, and I follow because I don't know what else to do. My heart is pounding so hard I can feel it in my temples, in my fingertips, between my legs—
Wait. Between my legs?
No. That's not— I'm not—
He leads me to the living room. The big open space with the floor-to-ceiling windows and the designer couch that no one ever sits on.
Cesar sits on it now. Right in the middle, legs spread, hands on his thighs.
"Come here."
I stop a few feet away. "What are you doing?"
"What I should have done the first day." His voice is calm. Too calm. "You need to learn that actions have consequences. That rules exist for a reason. That when I tell you not to do something, I'm not making a suggestion."
"You can't!"
"I can. Your father gave me full authority to keep you safe by any means necessary. That includes discipline."
The word lands like a slap. Discipline. Like I'm a child.
"You're going to spank me?" I laugh, but it comes out shaky. "That's insane. I'm twenty-three years old. You can't just do that."
"I can. And I'm going to. You can either come here and take your punishment, or I can come get you." He tilts his head, studying me. "Your choice."
I should scream at him. I should run. I should call my father and have him fired, deported, arrested for even suggesting it.
I take a step forward.
Then another.
And then I'm standing right in front of him, close enough to touch, and he's looking up at me with those dark eyes that see everything.
"Over my knee," he says.
"Cesar!"
"Now."
My body moves before my brain catches up. I'm bending, lowering myself across his lap, and then his hand is on my lower back, pressing me down, and I'm staring at the floor with my ass in the air like this is actually happening.
Because it's actually happening.
"These stay on," he says, and I feel his fingers hook into the waistband of my tiny shorts, "but just barely."
He tugs them down—not off, just down, baring my ass to the cool air and to him. I'm wearing a thong underneath. Which means I'm basically naked. Which means he can see—
The first slap makes me gasp.
It's not gentle. It's not playful. It's hard, the crack of his palm against my bare skin echoing off the glass walls, and the sting spreads through me like fire.
"That's for the photo," he says.
