Tiernan takes his sweet-ass time just appreciating my bare bottom. Undoubtedly, he’s doing it on purpose just to agitate me more.
“I see this isn’t the first time you’ve found yourself over someone’s lap,” he utters faintly, while his thumb lightly traces over the bite marks my father’s belt buckle left on my lower back, ass, and upper thighs. “Miguel’s handiwork, I presume?” he adds, but I don’t make a sound, not wanting to confirm his perceptive deduction either way. “I’ve never liked your father. Now I hate him even more,” he whispers softly, making sure to brush with the pads of his fingers every scar that he can find.
But it’s the ones lying dormant inside my soul—the ones that will forever remain out of anyone’s reach—that yearn for the same delicate attention.
I push the weak thought away and bury my head into the mattress, biting into the duvet cover to keep myself from begging him to continue on with his soft caresses. He begins to slowly massage each ass cheek, running his hand back and forth, squeezing the sensitive flesh every so often in between every gentle stroke.
But I’m not fooled. This is just the eye of the storm that is coming.
It dawns on me that while Shay needed to believe that someone was being kind to Iris, Tiernan wants to make sure that his sister will not be the only soul that suffers tonight.
“This will hurt much worse if you don’t relax.”
“Isn’t that the point? For it to hurt? For you to punish me?” I snap back, cursing myself for breaking my vow of silence so quickly.
“Who says you can’t find pleasure in pain?”
“Right,” I scold. “If that’s the case, then remind me the next time you do or say something I don’t like to lay you over my lap.”
CRACK!
The sound of his palm connecting with my butt cheek sounds scarier than the pain he inflicted. In fact, compared to my father’s heavy hand, Tiernan’s is quite tame. If his intention was to scare me into obedience through the threat of pain, he’ll have to do much better than that.
“Do you always speak your mind like that? So freely?”
I wrinkle my brow in confusion.
I wasn’t aware that I had been up until he said it. I’ve tried to maintain a cold barrier between us, but I guess being face down and ass up, waiting to be spanked, opens up old resentments that prohibit me from keeping my mouth shut.
“If me speaking my mind offends you, then maybe you should double how many slaps you intend to give me.”
“Maybe I will.”
“Maybe I don’t care.”
“Hmm. I think you do.”
God, I wish he didn’t hum like that. It makes other parts of my body tingle. Parts that have no right doing so.
With one hand, he restarts his soothing massage on the butt cheek that I’m sure has his five large fingers imprinted on it, while his other begins to sneak up my inner thigh.
“What… what…” I stammer, aghast, when he’s mere inches away from the apex of my thighs. “What… are you doing?”
“Proving you wrong.”
I suck in a breath when warm fingers begin to sink into my folds. I start to thrash on his lap, needing him to pull his hand away from my core before he finds proof of how much he affects me.
“Shh, acushla. Be still. This is going to end quicker than you think. Trust me.”
Trust?
Can that word even exist between us?
Especially with the circumstances we find ourselves in?
Highly unlikely.
Unfortunately, no matter how much I try to pull myself off him, the strenuous endeavor ends up being pointless. Tiernan is just too strong to loosen his grip on me. The robe has also slipped enough off my head that I now can see my nemesis’s face with utter clarity. And to my chagrin, this also means he has a perfect view of mine.
“Please… don’t,” I rasp out, not wanting his fingers on me like this.
Especially when they are starting to make me feel too good for words.
“Fuck,” he groans, staring right at me with that penetrating gaze of his. “That’s it, acushla. Beg.”
Refusing to give him what he wants, I bite my inner cheek so hard that blood begins to pool in my mouth. The snicker he lets out when I turn my head away from him has me clutching the duvet in my fists.
“So stubborn, aren’t you? Don’t fret, Rosa. I know many ways to eradicate that awful trait in you. Just give me time.”
“？Vete al diablo!” I think to myself, my bravery confined only to my inner thoughts now.