The Cherished One Read online

  She’d never been the one night stand kind of girl. All of the men she’d been involved with she’d been most thoroughly involved with. They might not have been the “till death do us part” kind of relationships, but she could no more have slept with someone she didn’t know than she could have been cruel to an animal.

  Apparently, that had gone out the window, because there he was behind her, with his arm still wrapped around her waist, dead to the world – in more ways than one.

  She’d never let herself be led around by her clit, and she didn’t intend to now. Fawna tried to throw back the covers and get out of bed, but the arm around her waist prevented her from doing so. It was like a manacle around her tummy, and it seemed to be contracting.

  “Let me go.”

  Instead of gaining her freedom, her words had the exact opposite effect.

  She found herself rolled with very depressing ease, so that she was beneath him. Her pajamas seemed to disappear from her body. Fawna didn’t have time to consider if this was another one of his gifts before she found her legs spread wide, knees folded back towards her shoulders, and his raging erection pressed against the entrance to her body. She could feel how large he was – at least as big as Dag, who was extremely well endowed – maybe even more so. It seemed to be a thing with vampires. Lose the ability to walk in sunlight, but end up hung like a horse. Most men would have a hard time turning that one down.

  Fawna had deliberately kept herself very tight by doing several different types of exercises, which Dag had appreciated enormously, and it had ratcheted up the pleasure for the both of them. But that had been Dag. This was Max, and she didn’t want him inside her at all. She wished she’d kept herself tight enough to deny him entry entirely.

  “Max –no– please!” About this, she was definitely not above begging, especially since she was very concerned that she would end up enjoying this, as she had been forced to enjoy last night.

  “There wasn’t much forcing going on last night, petite.”

  “Don’t call me that!” she fairly screamed at him.

  He considered her for a moment, reading in her mind that that was an endearment his rival used to have for her. “Sorry. I didn’t know.” Max reached between them, wanting to test the waters of her response, wondering if she was at all receptive to him, and his search was well rewarded. She was as slick now as she had been last night after a long bout of petting. “Mmmmmmm, buttery,” he groaned, rewarding her by running that slickness up and over her already engorged clit.

  Fawna began to struggle in earnest, but there was precious little she could do against his strength, especially when she was already in such a vulnerable position. And she was already dangerously close to being driven to that point where all she could see, all she could think about, was that big middle finger of his, rubbing agonizingly slowly up and over the exact middle of herself, from the very bottom to the very top, of that most sensitive spot, lazily, as if he hadn’t a care in the world, but inexorably dragging it up to the top, then slowly down to the bottom, then making the return trip. And nothing she did, no position change, no contortion, no bend or jerk seem to knock him off course because he had her locked down tight, unable to do much beyond breathe more and more heavily, and endure the rising tide of her own forced desires.

  Fawna’s eyes drifted shut as she tried to shut him out, tried to concentrate on multiplication tables, starving children, plague, famine, pestilence, anything to keep her body from responding to what he was doing to it – not that any of it was helping her in the least.

  “Ah, yes, Bebe, open your eyes and look at me, or I’ll flip you over and use that ruler I brought in from the coffee table on your backside, just to remind you that I mean to be obeyed in all things. I wouldn’t think you’d need to be reminded after yesterday, but—”

  She opened her eyes instantly and, however shyly and hesitantly, found his with hers.

  “I will have your pleasure as mine, too, Fawna, along with your occasional pain at my hands when I see your need.”

  He was watching her so closely as he touched her in ways that said he knew her more intimately than he really did, and gazing at her like that allowed him to see her more deeply than he should. He drank in her pleasure, locked within it with her, almost experiencing it with her, his eyes widening at every hitched breath, every slight moan, every groan until he forced her over the edge and slipped himself inside her at the same exact instant of her first blinding contraction, riding the edge of her ecstasy to the brink of his own as their eyes remained locked and claiming a second explosion from her that rocked the two of them together and sent them both reeling.

  Too soon, much too soon, Max collapsed on top of her, utterly unable to move. He hoped he wasn’t crushing her too badly, because he wasn’t at all sure he was going to be able to move so much as a finger for a while. He’d been so concentrated on getting his revenge on Dag that he hadn’t had a woman in more years than he’d like to consider, and this one had drained him completely dry without really trying.

  Since Musette. He hadn’t touched a woman since Musette. He hadn’t wanted to. Fawna had been the first female in centuries that he’d had even the slightest interest in. And she was literally everything he wanted, and he was nothing she would have. It was the ultimate irony that he and Dag apparently had exactly the same tastes in women.

  Imagine that.

  Somehow, Fawna managed to squeeze out from under him. He wasn’t at all sure how; perhaps it had something to do with faerie magic. He didn’t know. He was just glad she hadn’t expected anything heroic of him, because he knew he didn’t have it in him, more right now than ever in his life. He’d never been the hero type, never would be.

  She was on the far side of the queen-sized bed, huddled there, and he knew she was crying. It wasn’t the all out weeping and wailing that some women did. It was worse. Her tears were the soft, suppressed, “I don’t want anyone to know I’m crying” sobs that were slowly carving his long dead heart out with a spoon. Max tried to reach out to her mind and discern what it was that had her in such a state after they’d shared such a taste of paradise, but her thoughts were so jumbled and there were so many deep emotions tangled up with them that his male mind couldn’t put his finger on any one, clean cause as it was wont to.

  He reached out to pull her into his arms, at more of a loss than most men at what to do about a crying woman; it had been so long since he’d comforted a woman instead of terrorizing one. But she wasn’t having any of it, and did her level best to evade his attempts until he finally just picked her up and plopped her down next to him. “That is a spanking offense, which we will deal with later.”

  She almost said “bite me”, but thought better of it. “I don’t care.”

  “You will later, when your bottom’s being roasted but good.” He tucked her into his arms, dealing not very patiently with her attempts at extracting herself from his hold. Finally, he swatted her several times and that seemed to calm her down a bit. He wasn’t any too happy with the fact his attempts at soothing her were being met with resistance. “Why were you crying? Did I hurt you?”

  She was of a mind to say yes, and if she hadn’t known that he could hear what she was thinking, she would definitely have told him that he had done her grave injury.

  “You would have lied to me?” he was surprised to find that she would lie quite that blithely.

  “To an enemy? Yes.”

  He had to give her that. Although he had, at one time, considered himself to be an honorable being, even then he would have had absolutely no compunction about lying to someone he considered to be an enemy.

  What he didn’t like was the fact she considered him to be her enemy, despite the ample provocation he knew he’d given her. He’d already admitted to himself that his heart had begun to soften quite considerably towards her. Apparently, hers was nowhere near softening towards him.

  As a matter of fact, she had been so involved in her own pleasure that she
hadn’t paid much attention to what it had felt when he had entered her beyond more pleasure. She’d been quite sure she would have felt a bit of discomfort but apparently not.

  “I’m glad of that. I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  “Stop reading my mind!”

  He frowned at her. “Definitely not. I need all the advantages I can get with females, especially in this day and age. Now, you know that I’m not fond of repeating myself.” That huge hand of his hovered threateningly over her hind end.

  “I’m unhappy.”

  “I know that. But what are you unhappy about?”

  Fawna craned herself as far away from him as he would allow and gave him an incredulous look, as if he was a complete dolt. “Do you really need a list? Put yourself in my shoes! Jeez! I’ve lost someone I loved dearly, who chose to leave me without a word, I was nearly killed a couple nights ago and am now being held prisoner by the same man who tried to kill me and who just violated me sexually, but who also went out of his way to make sure that I enjoyed the hell out of the process – against my will, of course, but then, my body’s not my own, as he reminds me at every given moment by either forcing me to orgasm by merely looking at me, it seems, or spanking me to within an inch of my life!” By the time she’d finished her diatribe, she was practically screaming, and dissolved into tears again, covering her face with her hands. “I guess thought I was a strong woman. I thought I had some control over myself, some resistance of some sort, but I can’t keep my body from responding to you, as hard as I try. Apparently I’m a complete and utter slut.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Of course you’re not.” True, he didn’t know that much about her, but he had several of the most intimate connections one could have with another being – through her blood and through her mind – and he had no such impression of her. She was as he thought she was – an innocent. He knew from what he’d gleaned from those connections that she didn’t give any portion of herself away casually, and that she was sensitive and easily hurt. There wasn’t a touch of whore in any corner of her being, and he told her exactly that.

  “You should be soundly thrashed for thinking such things about yourself.”

  “How can I not? The proof is in the pudding – or rather the orgasms.”

  Max found himself in the unusual position of having to defend the fact the woman he was, essentially holding hostage, was responding to his advances against her will. Freud would have had a field day with that one. “Bebe, you’re a sensual woman. There’s nothing wrong with that. And I,” he said, deliberately puffing himself up and adopting a very vain air, “am an excellent lover. Of course you couldn’t resist me.”

  His arrogance had the desired effect, and she smiled and even laughed a little. He lifted his eyebrow at her, and tilted his head. “But you’re going to have to pay for that remark, Fawna. I won’t have you saying rubbish like that about yourself.”

  She bit her lip. Sometimes he sounded so much like Dag it was eerily uncomfortable. And she knew that shortly, she was going to be feeling just that much more uncomfortable, he was going to make very sure about that.

  With that proclamation, he got the both of them up, standing her carefully on her feet, then walked the both of them over to her pretty white and gold desk. Her room was the only room in the place where the furniture wasn’t completely natural, because she was spoiled and liked the prissy, princessy look of it. Some of it was pink, some was purple, and some was white and gold, but it did all seem to come together, somehow.

  But the desk had caught his eye because of the smallish straight backed chair that he thought would be of a perfect height to bend her over, and, unfortunately for her, he was exactly right. He pulled out the chair and put it in front of her, gesturing to her to bend over it.

  Fawna looked up at him beseechingly, but saw absolutely no mercy there. She could still feel her bottom tingling from the spanking he had giving her last night, and he was going to spank her again this morning? She wasn’t at all sure she could survive it.

  Sighing, she did as she was bade and leaned over the chair.

  “I suggest you grab onto the seat.”

  Oh, God, that didn’t sound good.

  And it wasn’t.

  He started out with his hand, and that was quite bad enough, as far as she was concerned. At least her feet were on the ground, unlike the way they had been dangling in the wind when she’d been over the back of the couch. But he certainly had her dancing to his tune while he laid a set of blistering licks to the rear she was desperately trying to keep out of his range, with absolutely no luck. And he was, she had come to believe, quite deliberately, wrapping his fingers around into her crotch, so that the palm of his hand had her crying out from the sting on the round fullness of her bum, but very tips of his fingers had her yelping from the sting they left on very sensitive, intimate flesh that was not at all used to such callus treatment.

  Max could certainly understand why she was moving about so much. He would have been trying to avoid the swats he was delivering at least as eagerly as she was. But he also wasn’t about to put up with it. So, after what he considered to be round one, and a relatively easy one at that, he squatted down next to her head and whispered into her ear, “Spread your legs, Cherie.”

  Her keening whimper sent a shiver up his spine and another that went directly to his cock, but he did not relent. When she didn’t respond immediately, he applied a set of hard swats to the backs of her thighs, which set her to sobbing loudly as she began to comply, but he continued to swat until her feet were as far apart as he preferred. “Make sure that they stay that far apart, Fawna, or you’ll come to regret it.” That, he knew, would end the dancing.

  Fawna wanted to scream at him for doing this to her, but he’d already begun again and all she could do was hold on to the seat of the chair for dear life. It was padded in little flowers and she could remember shopping for the desk when she was eight. She certainly had never envisioned being in quite this position then.

  Damn him, he had switched to the ruler!

  It was solid wood – probably oak, maybe maple - rounded at all of its edges, or it would have torn her up and he would never have thought of using it, and probably about a quarter of an inch thick or so. Just about the right thickness to teach a young woman not to think twice before thinking herself a whore, especially when she was obviously the farthest thing from it.

  Now that she absolutely couldn’t dance, it was the only thing she wanted to do – besides stop this insanity entirely. She wanted desperately to pick her feet up, but if she did, she’d lose her balance, which had been his wicked intent all along. He’d had her set her feet just wide enough apart that she physically couldn’t dance. She had to stand there and take each and every stroke as he imparted it, her hips plastered against the wood of the chair, practically mating with it. She might worry about getting splinters in her hips and legs, if she didn’t have anything else to worry about, but the fire he was setting in her bottom prevented her from thinking about such trivial matters.

  Line after inch wide line was laid across her poor bottom, inevitably crisscrossing each other and making her howl with it, reducing her to begging him to stop in a soul crushingly short amount of time.

  But she knew that nothing short of Armageddon was going to stop him until he was damned good and ready to stop.

  He didn’t neglect the backs of her thighs, either, and although those stripes were almost worst than the ones he applied to her rear, at least it gave the already tenderized flesh of her ravaged rear a bit of a break.

  When he stopped, the fabric seat of the chair was several shades darker than it had been, well soaked by her tears. Fawna made to get up, but felt his fingertips at the small of her back, keeping her in place.

  “Are you ever going to think of yourself in that way again, Fawna?”

  She scrambled to answer him as quickly as possible, watching him through still falling tears and the hair that had plastered itself to her fac
e during her trials as he walked around her, looking for all he was worth like a headmaster in one of those awful spanking videos. “N-no. No.”

  “Good girl.” He smiled. “A headmaster, hmmmm? That would make you my student? That’s not too far off, is it?”

  Even though he’d kept her in position, he’d been smiling, and she had relaxed some. Therefore, she was entirely unprepared for the last ten strokes he delivered, and they were the hardest of the bunch. When he finally finished, putting the ruler down on the edge of her desk, he gathered her up into his arms and sat down on the wet seat, holding her as if she was a little girl, carefully keeping her bottom well away from contact with anything that might hurt it, rocking and soothing her and drying her tears.

  Fawna was still in mid scream. Those last swats had been delivered rapid fire, and she had yet to draw a breath in from the original exhale after the very first crack across her very surprised rump. She was in shock.

  “Breathe, Cherie. Breathe for me.” She did, but not for him, because she had to. She’d exhausted her oxygen. He’d produced a beautiful monogrammed handkerchief from somewhere, and was busily wiping her face, brushing her hair out of her eyes and off of her face, and he even held it to her nose and had her blow, like she was a child.

  She got worried again in a hurry, though, when he tipped her over his lap and she found herself staring at the sage green Berber carpet that ran through the entire place, thinking he was going to continue her punishment. Instead, he was simply running his hand over her bottom and down the backs of her thighs, as if he was inspecting his own handiwork.

  When she realized he was merely indulging his own pride of craftsmanship, Fawna began to kick the very legs he was admiring, despite the danger that he might decide that more correction was necessary and begin spanking her again. She was, after all, still naked over his lap.

  But he didn’t. He turned her over and she could see that she had amused him, yet again. “Let me up.”

  An eyebrow rose at her demanding tone. “There’s a price to be let off my lap, Cherie.”