“Spread your legs,” he tells me. I’m almost wishing for the dark of our first encounter again as I do what I’m told. Zeth has a look of revenge about him as he climbs up over my body. “I’m not gonna tie you up this time, Sloane. But you should know, you move one hand, try to fight me off, do anything that involves your teeth and my dick, and you’re gonna pay for it. Understand?”

I nod my head, wondering what he has in mind. And then I see the small, narrow, tweezer-like instrument in his hand. “What the hell is that?”

Zeth grips hold of the device with a level of pleasure that has me squirming on my back, suddenly regretting complying so easily. “This is what you get for being bad,” he informs me.

I quiver as he runs his hands down the insides of my legs, stooping down to lick at the sensitive skin just before my pussy. He grazes lips and tongue across my hot skin, licking again and again, but it’s all teasing. Nowhere near where I need him to lick me. I’m beginning to feel frustrated, angling my hips up to him, opening myself to him, when I feel the cool metal against my pussy. My body quakes with sudden nerves, but Zeth grasps hold of my hip in his free hand, sending a penetrating look of warning up my body. “Remember. Fight it and you’ll regret it.”

The metal instrument in his hand turns out to be a clamp. I know this because he affixes it swiftly to the swollen bundle of nerves at my very center, causing me to yelp out in shock. He flicks it with his index finger and a relay of sharp pleasure mixed with pain volts around my body.

“Zeth!” My cry is one of surprise and pleading. “Oh my God, don’t do that again.”

He does do it again, wearing a frankly malicious look of glee on his face. My legs spasm, wanting to curl upward to protect me—I can’t help it—and he shakes his head in mock disapproval. It’s perfectly fucking clear that he knew I’d react, and was, in fact, counting on it.

“Oh, dear,” he breathes. “Looks like you’re gonna get punished now.” He grips hold of the clamp in his hand and a charge of intense sensation smashes into me as I try and move away from him. I instantly still, realizing that if I move, the clamp gets tugged. With one arm, Zeth scoops me up from the bed underneath my stomach and turns to sit, pulling me into his lap. I instinctively wrap my arms around his neck to maintain my balance. His face is an inch away from mine, the heated skin of his chest burning into me, and the hardness of his erection prodding into me when he says, “You want the belt or my hand?”

“What?”

He gives me a look that tells me not to bother with any theatrics. “Belt or hand, Sloane? Your choice.” He reaches between my legs, fingers finding the place where the metal meets my clit. He rubs softly, massaging the connection, gifting me with more pleasure than pain this time. He smirks wickedly when he lifts his fingers up for me to see that they’re slick with the evidence that I’m not hating this as much as I’m pretending. Not for the first time, he slips his fingers into his mouth and sucks them clean, his breathing fast and labored.

“Make up your mind or I’ll choose for you,” he advises through his rough voice.

“Hand,” I whisper. “Use your hand.” Maybe if he punishes me with that then he’ll go a little easier on me, I reason. It will hurt him, too. In the blink of an eye he spins me over on his lap so I’m facing the floor, bent over his knees, my butt sticking up in the air. He seems to like that very much; his hand cups my ass cheek, squeezing and stroking across the smooth skin.

“Perfect,” he informs me. He takes hold of the clamp’s handles between my legs and gives it a gentle tug. More of a suggestion of what can be done than anything else. Fire pools in my belly, teasing a low moan out of my throat. It feels…it feels amazing. And scary. And painful. And so many other things all at once that I can’t bend my mind around the sensations flooding through me.

But then everything goes blank as his hand comes down on my bare buttocks with a resounding crack! I’ve never really understood the term seeing stars until this moment. This moment when Zeth lays his huge, powerful hand to the tender skin of my bottom and means it. Yes, it must sting his hand, too, but that doesn’t stop him. He gives me four more painful slaps, each time holding his breath. I’m too stunned to move, or even react at first. He tempers the tingling sting by sliding his fingers between my legs and running them up and down my pussy, stroking over my clit and easing them farther back, so that my wetness saturates my ass as well. He kneads me slowly, whispering encouragement.

“There’s my brave girl. Such a brave girl. Are you going to be good now? Have you learned your lesson?”

The whole act is humiliating. I’m on the brink of tears, but also so ferociously desperate for him that I can barely stop myself from pivoting around and launching at him. I make a rasping sound at the back of my throat and Zeth lifts me in his arms and places me back down on the bed.

“That was five,” he says, like the pain may have addled my ability to count. “Next time it’ll be ten. You ready?”

I swallow, still not sure how the hell to react. And then I nod. Zeth strokes a hand down the inside of my leg in a soothing motion, almost apologetically. “Good girl.” He bends down and nestles in between my legs, propping himself up on one elbow as he ducks his head down and finally sweeps his warm, almost unbearably hot tongue between my pussy lips, pausing to tease the tip of it over my hypersensitive clit. A juddering roll of pleasure powers upward from my legs, settling on my chest, making my nipples ache.