Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 96720 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 484(@200wpm)___ 387(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96720 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 484(@200wpm)___ 387(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
“Is it about a princess?” she asked.
“No talking.” I smoothed my hand over her skin, skated my fingers down the cleft of her ass. “But yes. It’s about a princess. A beautiful princess, watched over in her tower by the dragon who loved her very much. But one day, the princess ran away. And although she returned to the dragon, he was still hurt and… afraid.”
That was the right word. Afraid.
“He had never been so frightened in his entire life as he was the moment he thought he’d lost the princess forever. So, when she returned to the tower, the dragon was angry. He was grateful to have her back, more than he could ever express in words. The only way he could make her understand was by punishing her.”
I spanked her hard.
She let out a whoop of surprise.
“And into this punishment, he poured all of his frustration—”
I gave her another, equally hard smack.
“—all of his fear—”
The next two landed in quick succession on her already red cheeks and she shouted.
“—and all of his love into every lash.”
Four more, one after another, and this time when she cried, she cried. But she didn’t use her safe word. She didn’t beg for “mercy.”
“And when her punishment was over, the dragon made her a promise.” I leaned down and placed a kiss on her burning skin. “That he would give her whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted, if only she never ran away from him again.”
“She won’t,” Charlotte whimpered.
I helped her sit up. She winced when I situated her in my lap.
“What does my princess want?” I wiped a tear from her face.
Her tongue darted out to wet her bottom lip and she wound her arms around my neck. “I want my dragon to fuck me until I don’t remember leaving here in the first place.”
“I think the dragon can accommodate that request.”
CHAPTER TWO
(Charlotte)
Finally, I got to kiss him.
He had been right, we had needed to talk, to clear the air before we jumped into bed together. And the spanking grounded me; somehow, it was easier to obey him when we were playing out our roles.
Maybe Charlotte could run from Matt, but the princess would never run from her dragon again.
So, I kissed him, and it already felt like I’d never left.
But at the same time, it felt like I’d been away for a lifetime. Somehow, in twenty-four hours, I forgot the taste of his mouth. The heat of his body. All of those things came back to me in a rush when he pulled me to straddle his lap, but it alarmed me that I’d forgotten at all.
Maybe I’d done it on purpose. Maybe I’d… let him go.
When I’d left yesterday, it had been final. I hadn’t been honest with myself, or him, about that. He was right. I had run from him, with every intention of it being an end. It would have been a slow death, of late-night phone sex and occasional cross-country visits, but I would have been forcing every bit of playful banter, every smile. I would have been forcing myself to tell him that I loved him, because I would have known, even if I never had admitted it, that pain would be on the way.
And that’s why I’d run, in the first place. I was so afraid to let myself love him, out of fear of future pain.
I lifted my mouth from his. “I have to tell you something.”
He waited for me to continue.
“I love you. But I don’t think I was letting myself love you all the way. I was guarding myself because I was afraid.”
“I know,” he said softly.
“But I’m ready now. I’m ready to be in love with you and not be afraid of what’s going to happen in the future.” I caught a strange combination of a laugh and a sob at the back of my throat. “I’m ready to believe that whatever my future is, it includes you.”
“It does.” He put a hand behind my head and drew me down to catch my lips again, and I melted against him like I could seep into his skin somehow. Like we could fuse our cells and guarantee that nothing would ever separate us.
But I was the only danger to us where separation was concerned. I was the one who’d called it off, but didn’t have the guts to call it off.
There was no amount of spanking or groveling that could make up for the pain and worry I’d caused him. It was time to grow the fuck up, take responsibility for my emotions, and not run from them the second things got hard.
I rose up taller on my knees, and Matt’s mouth moved down my throat. He held me with his hands at the small of my back, steadying me so he could find access to every available inch of my skin. He made a trail of sucking kisses that would definitely leave hickeys. I giggled at the ticklish intensity, squeezed my thighs together as much as I could with him between them. Was he was leaving those marks on purpose, so that there would be some physical stamp of ownership there? Despite his sensibilities toward sex, there was a thread of possessiveness that ran through Matt. I wasn’t sure he even knew it was there, but I saw it. And I loved it.