"Do you?" His jaw clenched.
"I left the house alone. I shouldn't have."
He looked at me for a moment. "You didn't just leave the house; you walked clear across the vineyard and halfway up the hill."
"Yes, I know."
"Kane's men are out there watching, Juliet. Do you have any idea what might have happened if Corrigan hadn't been able to reach you so quickly?"
My stomach flipped. Honestly I hadn't thought about it until now.
"You were lucky," Nate continued. "But you need to be more careful in future. I can't allow anything to happen to you, Juliet."
Something cracked open in my chest as I realized what I saw in his face wasn't just anger. There was also fear.
"I'm sorry," I meant it. "Truly. I wasn't thinking."
"No. You weren't." He crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed. "Which is why your punishment must be harsher this time."
As he rolled back his cuffs, my pulse climbed rapidly.
"Come here."
I moved closer. He looked up at me, and the disappointment I saw in his eyes undid me more thoroughly than anger would have.
"What you did this afternoon was incredibly reckless, Juliet. I need you to understand that."
"I do." My voice came out smaller than I intended.
He nodded. "Lower your jeans and panties and bend over the bed."
I hadn't expected that. Last time, I had lain over his lap. There’d been a comforting intimacy in that. This felt different, more formal. Tears burned the backs of my eyes at the prospect of this being cold and clinical.
"Juliet," Nate said quietly and with just a touch of impatience.
With shaking fingers, I unfastened the button, lowered the zipper and pushed my jeans and underwear down before laying my torso across the bed. The sheets were smooth beneath me. I didn't know what to do with my hands, so I stretched my arms up over my head as if laying myself out as an offering. Nate murmured his approval.
At a sound I hadn't anticipated, a metallic jangle, I glanced over my shoulder to see Nate removing his belt. My heart stuttered as he folded it in half, snapping the two ends together with a crack that seemed to ricochet off the walls.
"What you did was a serious transgression, and that calls for serious consequences, but you're new to this, so I'll bear that in mind." His expression was implacable. "I'll give you twenty withmy hand and ten with the belt." He paused, tilting his head to one side. "You have your safeword?"
"Cosmetics," I confirmed.
"Use it and I will stop immediately."
"Yes, Nate."
"Good. Now get back over the bed."
I turned away from him and laid my cheek on the bed once more.
"Raise yourself up on your tiptoes and push your ass out."
I did as he asked. The position made me more exposed than before.
"That's perfect," Nate said. "Now try not to tense."
The first time his steely palm landed on my ass I gasped. It was harder than I expected, a reminder of how important the rule I broke was. Nate wasted no time in peppering my backside with searing spanks. With each impact, my body responded with a mix of pain and pleasure, the warmth in my flesh seeping deep down inside me. By the time he finished, there wasn't an inch of my backside that hadn't received his attention.
