Maybe.
I honestly didn’t care at that moment.Fuckhow he was talking to me.
Our eye contact could have waged wars, though we settled for our war alone. Anger seared me. It was a battle of wills, and I would have been damned if I said it didn’t excite me more.
“Move,” he nearly growled—barked, actually—at me. His heated grip moved towards my hair and he pulled hard enough that tears began to line my vision.
“What?” I asked incredulously.
“I amnotgoing to repeat myself again, Phoebe. You fucking heard me. God, should I just go home and jerk off to my wall at this point?”
Slowly, heart dropping the slightest bit, I shuffled back a few inches.
Humiliation and uncertainty clawed at my brain now; I could feel my face blushing to the heat of an inferno. My hand moved off of his crotch, drifting down to the skin exposed by the rips in his jeans, just as his touch left my brown locks.
I gaped at him as a feeling similar to rejection flitted through me next.
Sure, I was being a bitch, but I didn’t expect him to completely deny me.
Regardless of our battle of wills, he was as intoxicating as the whiskey streaming through my blood.
I didn’t want it to end so soon.
He leaned forward with me and my face scrunched up as he started to remove the black belt secured around his waistband. It slid through loop after loop, the sound methodic, and I flinched when he snapped it out entirely, inches from my face. My gaze moved back to his face and I froze again.
He fuckingsmiledat my flinch.
“What’s your favorite safe word, pretty girl?”
I blinked. “What?What is that?”
“You’ve been having sex with these men and they never taught you about safe words?”
“No…” I led, a blush forming.
“Jesus fuck. You’re done fucking all these little boys. Your safe word with me islavender, do you understand?”
Hope bloomed in my chest, for some ungodly reason. He wasn’t ending the night. “Yes, sir.”
“Good. You’ll only use it when you can’t take something I do to you. Do you understand? Whenever you say it, I’ll stop. And I’m a man, sweet girl. I’ll stop for the night and we won’t continue at all.”
I felt like I was in a fever dream.
He continued, snapping the belt in front of my face so I jumped and looked back at him. “Repeat it for me, baby.”
“Lavender.”
“Oh look, she does do what she’s told sometimes.Good girl.”
Fuck. I was going to combust on the spot.
Why was being talked down to sofuckinghot?
I only had a moment to recoup, the urge to call him a dick on the tip of my tongue—to keep my bravado—before he lurched forward and looped the belt around my neck, cutting my gasp off entirely when he pulled it tight and secured it thebuckle around my throat. Immediately, I had the urge to start coughing and I moved my hands up to grasp the buckle, trying to pull it off of me. I struggled, pulling and panicking, eyes bulging as tears sprung down my face automatically.
“Leave it,” he ordered. “It’ll get easier. Unless you start acting out again. Then I’ll just keep pulling it tighter, and tighter, until your goddamn throat constricts on itself. You think I care about your princess status? You’re the one breathing heavy for it. Maybe I should just leave you here, blue in the face, until you can act right.”
Fear spread throughout my chest faster than water seeping from a broken glass. And for the first time that night—I was glad that I was on my knees.
