Because You Are Mine Part IV: Because You Must Learn Read Online Free Page B

fabric of her jogging bra even as her ire rose. Her sex flushed with heat.
    “You can punish me if you want, but I’m not letting you do it because I went jogging. That’s just stupid.”
    “Believe whatever you like. But you
will
go and shower and put on a robe. Nothing else. Wait for me in the bedroom,” he said, turning away and picking up his phone again. He punched out a number and greeted someone briskly in French before he began making several queries. She’d been dismissed.
    She faltered where she stood, burning to tell him to go and
fuck
his fucking shower and his fucking robe and his godforsaken high-handedness.
    Another part felt bad for having unintentionally caused that shadow of fear in his eyes.
    Another part still was excited by what he’d said. She’d thought incessantly of the time that he’d paddled and spanked her, and each time regretted that things had come to an unnatural halt.
    She
wanted
to see how Ian culminated such arousing proceedings. She
wanted
to please him.
    But at what cost?
she wondered anxiously as she walked to the bedroom, resigned to the fact that she would do his bidding.
    Why
must
he be such a puzzle?
    Why must he turn
her
into one . . . even to herself?

Chapter Eight
    After her shower, she sat nervously on the plush sofa in the sitting area of the bedroom suite, her anger mounting. How dare he make her wait like this? Wasn’t it just like him to yank her strings in this way?
    He was yanking her strings in more ways than one. She had an urge to run to the bathroom and lock the door and another one to grind her sex against the cushion of the sofa. The waiting was pissing her off, but for some damnable reason she couldn’t comprehend, it was making her aroused as well . . . the anticipation . . . the excitement mixed with a potent dose of anxiety about what he planned to do to her.
    She jumped when the door to the bedroom suite opened abruptly and Ian walked into the room. He glanced at her where she sat before he walked over to the valet stand and hung up his suit jacket. He opened the doors to a highly glossed antique cherry wardrobe and bent as if reaching for something. She strained, trying to see what he was doing, but the door blocked her view. When he started to straighten, she turned, not wanting him to know how focused she was on his every move.
    So she was shocked when he walked around the couch a moment later and set a black crop on the coffee table. She stared wide-eyed at the two-inch-by-four-inch supple leather slapper at the end of the long, thin rod, her heart starting to pound against her breastbone.
    “Don’t be afraid,” he said softly.
    She looked at him. “But it looks like it will hurt.”
    “I’ve punished you before. Did it hurt?”
    “A little,” she admitted, her gaze dropping to one of his hands, which held what appeared to be a pair of cuffs, the hand straps made of soft-looking black leather.
    Oh no.
    “Well, it wouldn’t be much of a punishment if it didn’t sting a bit, now would it?” She stared up at his handsome face, mesmerized by the sound of his low voice . . . compelled. “Stand up and take off the robe.”
    She didn’t break his stare as she stood, somehow taking courage from some unspoken message in his eyes. She dropped the discarded robe onto the cushion. His gaze dropped over her, his nostrils flaring slightly. She shivered.
    “Would you like me to turn on the fire?” he asked, referring to the gas fireplace.
    “No,” she said, thrown off emotionally by the combination of his polite query and his intention to punish her. She walked to the mantel.
    “Keep your back to me,” he ordered when she started to turn to face him. She longed to twist her chin over her shoulder to see what he was doing behind her, her anxiety and excitement mounting, but she restrained herself with effort. Was that because she once again didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing she was curious, or because she somehow