Page 49 of Sky and the Grumpy Troll

“Positive.” He swatted my ass. “At least in some ways. For me it was my grandfather. He ran a wushu and tai chi school, traditional martial arts.” As he spoke, his hands skimmed over my back, loosening the muscles with skilled fingers. “He passed recently, and my mother took over the school. She wants me to teach, too, instead of dancing.”

“But you are a dancer, not a fighter.”

“Wushu is like dance, beautiful and elegant, with moves that are more show than substance. There are weapons, also more show than substance. Maybe I’ll show you sometime.”

“I’d like that.”

“Good.” He worked lower, massaging my ass now, digging deep into muscles that I didn’t know were sore from the long journey. “Now I want you to be quiet for a moment, and think about what it means to open yourself up to me. To reach a place of trust where no emotion is too scary to share. Because I’ve got you, sweetheart.”

“I hope so. I will try,” I whispered.

“If you need to go around, we’ll go around. But we won’t do it because you hid the truth. We’ll do it because you expressed your need and communicated the problem clearly. Understood?”

“I think so. I just didn’t want to disappoint you.”

“Honesty would never disappoint me, sweetheart. It’s all this subterfuge that bothers me. And for what reason?”

He was right. I knew he was right. But I still couldn’t say it.

“You understand what you did wrong, then?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And do you accept your punishment?”

“I do.”

The first tap of the crop landed between my shoulder blades. Light. A warm-up. I knew this rhythm from the forest, the way Sky built sensation incrementally, reading my body’s responses with a precision that rivaled my own literary instincts.

He didn’t grill me with questions. He went quiet, allowing me to lose myself in what he was doing. Another strike. My hands fisted in the sheets. The sting bloomed and traveled, and the words tried to climb my throat but would not come.

“Do you trust me with your feelings the way you trust me with your body?” Sky asked, and the question cut deeper than any crop.

“Sky, please—”

He hit me again, and I moaned, pressing my hips up into the touch. The pain was bright and clean and it was bypassing the locked doors in my mind, routing around the careful barriers I had built.

“Little pain slut. You’re enjoying this.”

“I’m not little.” But I was enjoying it, and I wasn’t even sure I understood why.

He switched to the paddle. The first strike made the bed frame creak and drove the air from my lungs. The thud of it was deep and certain, nothing like the crop’s sharp sting, and it sent a wave of heat through my body that made my cock pulse against the mattress. It was right at the edge of too much, at a place where I considered asking him to stop.

“Count for me, baby. Ten hits.”

The leather cracked across my skin, a hot, thudding kind of pain, enough to bring tears to my eyes. “One,” I managed. “Please?”

He shifted on the mattress next to me, soothing the place he’d hit with his free hand. “Please stop, or please more?” He slid his hand between my legs, skimming down my crack and cupping my balls, and before I could think about it, I was arching my back and lifting my hips to give him access.

That part of me was his, after all. He moaned softly, a noise I wasn’t even sure he was aware he was making as he found me hard, wrapping his fingers around my shaft.

“Please, more,” I said. “Definitely more.”

He chuckled, squeezing my cock. “Does it feel good?”

I couldn’t admit it out loud, but my body told him everything he needed to know.

He struck twice. “Two… three,” I groaned, rutting into his hand. The blood was rising to the surface of my skin, my ass hot and tender and sensitized, and each impact sent a shock through my cock.