"And what did you imagine those consequences would be?"
His voice had dropped. Lower. Closer to the register that reached inside me and turned everything liquid. I felt it in my spine, in my belly, in the space between my legs that was already aching with the memory of last night.
"I didn't have to imagine," I said, and my voice came out steadier than I felt. "I read the contract. Section four."
Something flickered in his dark eyes. Heat. Pride. A hunger he was holding on a very short leash.
"Then you know what comes next," he said.
My heart slammed against my ribs.
"Yes."
He stood. Drew me up with him, our hands still joined, and I felt the shift in the air between us—the moment the conversation ended and something else began.
He led me to the armchair by the fireplace. Not the desk—the desk was for business. This was something else entirely.
The chair was large, deep, upholstered in dark leather that had softened with age. Dante settled into it with the ease of a man who knew exactly what he was doing, and the calm purpose in his movements made my breath come shorter.
He looked up at me.
I stood before him, trembling.
"I'm going to spank you," he said.
The words fell into the space between us like stones into still water. Low. Calm. Utterly matter-of-fact, the way he might announce the weather or the time.
"I'm not angry, Gemma. Not to hurt you. But because you broke a promise and there needs to be consequences that your body remembers." His dark eyes held mine, steady and warm. "Consequences that remind you: someone is paying attention. Someone cares enough to notice when you stop caring for yourself."
My throat was so tight I could barely breathe around it. Not from dread. From the aching, devastating tenderness of being known.
"How—" My voice cracked. I tried again. "How many?"
"Ten." He said it like it was already decided. Like the number had been weighed and measured and found exactly right. "And I want you to thank me after each one. Can you do that for me?"
I nodded. My voice had deserted me entirely.
"Words, Gemma."
"Yes." It came out a whisper. "Yes, Daddy."
Something shifted in his expression. A softening around the eyes that I was learning to read as tenderness, or maybe hunger, or maybe both. He let the moment breathe. Then:
"Trousers down."
Two words. A command as simple and devastating as a key turning in a lock.
My fingers found the button at my waist. Steady—almost. The small metallic sound as it released was impossibly loud in the quiet study. The zipper followed. I slid the black trousers down over my hips, my thighs, let them pool at my ankles and stepped out of them.
I stood before him in my sweater and underwear. Simple cotton, nothing seductive, nothing I'd chosen with this moment in mind. My skin prickled with goosebumps—not from cold. From the way his eyes tracked down my body and back up again.
He didn't leer. Didn't devour. That was the difference I kept coming back to, the chasm between this man and every man who'd come before. Dante looked at me the way he looked at everything that mattered to him: with attention. With reverence. With the careful focus of someone who understood that what they were seeing was valuable and fragile and worthy of protection.
"Those too," he said. Quiet. Certain.
I hooked my thumbs in the waistband. Slid the cotton down. Stepped free.
The air hit my bare skin and I shivered. I was exposed from the waist down, standing in a pool of morning light with my husband's gaze on me, and the vulnerability of it was so acute it felt like vertigo. Like the floor had tilted and I was sliding toward something I couldn't stop.
