I don’t like getting my ass whipped by random men, but I think, deep down, I knew I kind of deserved that. I wasn’t paying attention, and whatever the guy behind the dumpster wanted, it wasn’t to smack my ass and tell me to pay attention. Most male attention comes with a crude carnality that is so deeply off-putting as to be disgusting. I have so often felt like I am nothing but a piece of attractively shaped meat to the men I am around. The fact that I have a brain and a personality has more often been an inconvenience that has to be tolerated than something that is appreciated.
That changed with Teddy, though, and when he was killed, I thought that part of my world had forever ended. Maybe it has. Maybe not.
The tattoo thing he said, though? I’m not going to listen to that. I need a new one. There’s something about the process of being inked that feels like being reborn. Doing something permanent, something that involves pain, art, and another person marking me forever… there’s nothing else like it.
That’s why I was scrolling on my phone, trying to decide if I want a custom piece, or if one of the flash tattoos would work for me. I don’t know if another cutesy little baby duck is going to scratch this itch for me. I want something bigger. Maybe a giant duck rising from the ashes like a phoenix, stretched all the way across my back?
Most of my tattoos so far are small, but the pain I am in now demands some painful answer, something that comes from the outside and makes sense of it.
I wonder if I will see him again.
That man who cared enough to intervene when most men would have kept on walking, or worse, watched. He must be a very, very good man. He punished me, he gave me comfort, but he took nothing for himself. Not even a quick grope.
As I walk in my front door, I am aware that there is a smile on my face that has no business being there—and a dampness between my thighs that is even more sinful than the smile.
CHAPTER 3
Leo
I have made a huge mistake.
Once I am certain she is back home unharmed, I return to my private apartment in the city. I have a good view of the park from here, and a sense of lofty privacy that few others can afford.
The family home is cozier, but this space feels more like mine. The family home is full of history and the trappings of generations of wealth. This apartment is sparse, modern, and without decoration. I have what I need, and nothing else. Once a week a woman comes in to clean. She changes the sheets, cleans the bathrooms, vacuums the floors, wipes the surfaces and leaves. There is rarely anything to tidy. I despise clutter and objects. I like a clear mind, and I find a clear space facilitates that.
I can think of nothing but Ella Chick. The way she looked. How much smaller than me she was. How curvy she really is. How her ass felt underneath my hand when it made sharp contact with it.
There’s more, too. The rage I felt when I saw an unworthy wretch lunge for her as if she was just anybody’s woman. She belonged to Teddy. She was his. And that means she is mine. I think I killed him. I hope I did. I did not bother to check if he was alive or not, and by now there is a good chance he is not. If such a death is good enough for the best man I have ever known, then it must be acceptable for scum like that.
She took her spanking well.
The sound of her gasps and moans, the ones she did involuntarily without even being aware that she was doing them, is locked in my mind, playing on a loop. I expected more resistance and brattiness. I suppose that’s because of her appearance. She looks sassy. I think she might be, when she is not caught off guard and then completely taken in hand.
I was supposed to stay at a distance and keep myself a secret. But now I know her scent—both her perfume, and the more intimate one that is uniquely hers. I know the way her hips move when she both wants to escape something and wants it to happen to her.
I am rock fucking hard with recollection. Sitting in my armchair, looking out over the city the way old kings must have once only imagined being able to do, I play our little interaction out in my head over and over again. It lasted less than two minutes in real time, but it has filled my mind for hours.
I am used to being outside the law. I live most of my life outside it. My willingness to do what should not be done is the reason Aiden can be so successful doing what should be done. The two of us are two sides of the same coin.
I don’t usually feel a thrill when I do something wrong, as it were. But what I just did with Ella, that fleeting contact, felt like something Luke would get addicted to. Adrenaline, arousal, tenderness, anticipation, all wrapped up together.
I’ve set her free again, but her butt is going to show the marks of our meeting for a little while at least. I wonder if she is at home touching herself. I wonder if she can admit she enjoyed what happened, or if she is trying to erase all memory of it as fast as she can so she doesn’t have to face what she is.
I unzip my pants, wrap my hand around my cock, and imagine what else I could have done to her in that alley. I could have hiked that skirt, torn her hose, pulled her panties to the side, and pushed myself inside her. I could have fucked her like a little animal. I could have forced her submission.
She was cute when she cried, too. Comforting her made me feel even more protective than I did when I saw she was in danger. Something about Ella makes me want to look after her. There’s an echo in her that reminds her of me, and of Teddy. I might be imagining it, but I don’t often imagine things. The cold ability to see precisely what is there, and nothing else, is one of my greatest assets.
I fist my cock and pump it slowly. I imagine fucking her while she sobs out of contrition. It’s a dark fantasy, but there’s some part of me that very much enjoys punishing a deserving woman, and this little funeral-crashing brat feels like a valid candidate.
I could have questioned her, I realize. Perhaps I should have. I still don’t know how she found us on the day of the burial. I don’t know what she was doing with Teddy, if she was just a friend, or something more. Aiden is following some of those leads, I am sure. But asking any of those questions would likely have givenmy identity away, and in the moment I knew that she didn’t need to be interrogated. She needed to be looked after. So that is what I did.
I close my eyes and stroke myself to completion imagining how prettily she would come for me when I made her. I know she’s tight. I can sense that about her. The way she wriggled that ass made me almost certain I know how she feels to fuck. Hot, wet, desperate to be driven to the point of release. She needs to come as much as she needs to be spanked to tears. I could do both with my cock inside her. Over and over again.
“Fuck…” I curse the word to myself as hot seed spurts from the head of my cock, arcs onto a rug worth more than some people’s cars, then settles in a warm strand across the top of my fingers.
I need to clean up.
Just as I go to do that, my phone rings.
