“I told you to take this off.”
“Let go, and I’ll take it off.”
“Too late,” he says calmly, then does it himself.
His fingers untie the belt, and with no ceremony, he pushes it off my shoulders. Stripping me.
It’s like I can’t move. His gaze holds me fast. The presence of him, the room, the fireplace, the robe pooled at my feet. The smell of smoke, the warmth. The hint of whisky on his breath, and that look in his eyes.
He takes a pace back, but only so he can better see me. Then he walks around me, slowly, inspecting me like I’m a statue. My skin awakens, expecting him to touch me. Maybe close his hand around my throat from behind, like he did in his bedroom.
But he doesn’t. Instead, he walks off.
I’m left standing in the middle of the fucking room, naked, aroused, and wondering what the hell just happened.
He’s back a moment later, a towel in his hands.
I stare at it—at him—in confusion. Which only increases when he again walks straight past me, this time toward the large table in the suite. He pulls out a dining chair, picks it up, walks over, places it opposite his chair near the fire, then lays the towel on its seat.
“Sit.”
“Excuse me?”
“Get your cute, tight little butt over here, and put it on this chair.”
Yes, that’s what I thought he meant.
I stoop to pick up the robe.
His voice cracks out. “Leave that.”
I straighten and glare at him. I’d cross my arms, but that’s not a power move I can pull off when I’m naked. Instead, I put my hands on my hips. Let him look, if he wants to look. “Where do you get off, speaking to me like that?”
His lips curl into a smile, his eyes dancing with amusement. “You can sit down now, or you can sit down after I’ve bent you over that dining table and taken my belt to your ass.”
The sudden weakness in my legs and the trembling in my midriff undermine the defiance I was trying so hard to portray, but I still lift my chin and glare at him. “I’m not your…”
I trail off as his hands fall to his belt, and flick the leather through his buckle. And I’m walking over to the chair even as he pulls it open. Sitting as he pauses, then pointedly refastens it.
“Good girl,” he says.
Bastard.
His hand slips into his pocket, and he pulls out an object that glints in the light of the flames. It takes me a moment to recognize it. Not because I don’t know what it is—it’s pretty obvious what it is—but because it’s the last thing I expect him to pull out of his pocket.
It’s a pair of tweezers.
He hands them to me, and I take them, not really sure what else to do. Then he sits himself down again, and picks up his book.
I sit on my chair, on the towel, holding a pair of tweezers that I have no idea why I’m holding, and stare at him.
The silence lingers. Largely because he’s ignoring me.
“Would it be out of place to say, ‘what the actual fuck’?”
“I told you to go to the salon,” he says, not looking up from his book. “You didn’t.”
Oh, hell no.
