“Obey me,” he murmured. “Just obey me, Elisa. This is a reminder of that.”

He said obey, but she wondered if he meant trust. In his mind, of course, the two were interchangeable. She’d obeyed a lot of people in her life—her employers, because she needed her job; Lady Constance, because she educated Elisa for the purpose of serving her daughter; and then Danny. Danny had been the first to win Elisa’s trust such that her obedience was based in love and loyalty. Hearing Malachi speak the word obey in such a manner made her think of that, and wonder if it was possible for him to want such a thing from her. Or, even more disturbing, whether this yearning feeling in her chest was an absurd desire to feel it for him.

“I want you to turn around and put your knees on the edge of the chair. Grip the top of it and balance yourself that way.”

“It will topple.”

“It’s heavy oak. Your weight is unlikely to disturb it.” His eyes were still so close, his mouth feathering heated breath across her lips as he spoke. His hands, gripping her upper arms, burned the flesh beneath. “Before you get on the chair, I want you to reach under your skirt, slide off your panties and hand them to me.”

“I . . . What?”

His gaze gleamed, as feral as a wild cat’s, sending a shard of flame rippling through her lower belly. “I found it annoying at first, but I’ve gotten rather fond of your fixation with calling me sir. So, Yes, sir would be the proper response.” He cocked his head, and his lips brushed her cheekbone, making her shiver.

“Yes, sir,” she whispered. While her own confused reaction was occupying most of her attention, she didn’t miss the fact her breasts were brushing his chest, her upper thighs pressed against the heat of his splayed ones. There had to be only a matter of inches between the shallow valley between her thighs and the heat of his aroused groin.

“Good girl.” He turned her then, helping her get started. Folding her fingers in the fabric of her skirt, she tried to gather it up to find the undergarment beneath. He’d taken her to bed before, made her feel amazing things, so why her hands should begin to shake now, and her mind be assaulted by disturbing images, she didn’t know. Willis’s kisses, gentle and then more urgent, morphing into Victor’s fangs, tearing at her mouth and tongue, then Leonidas, snarling and hitting her in the face . . . Mal, angry with her, such that she thought he was going to send her away. All the emotions that came with those thoughts and images flooded her.

She whimpered, her brow creasing as her eyes shut tight. “I can’t. I just can’t. I want to, but I don’t, and I don’t know why I’m feeling this now. I think I’m going to faint.”

“Shhh . . .” His arm slid over her chest, his large hand gripping the opposite shoulder and dwarfing it as he held her back into the heat of his body. “You wouldn’t faint, fierce little flower, even if Satan himself blew fire and brimstone in your face. What I’m about to do will help with all of it, everything going through your head now. I promise.”

“How? How can it help?”

“Let your mind go and do as I say. Keep going; reach beneath your skirt.”

He loosened his hold enough that she could do as he said, but he was still there, his body lending her the strength behind the demand. When she reached bare flesh, creeping up to find the elastic waist of her panties, he was stroking the side of her throat, tilting her head into his shoulder, letting her close her eyes as she hooked the band and began to ease them off. Her hands were trembling so that when they reached the tapering part of her leg, just above her knee, they slid free and fell, landing around her ankles and onto her canvas sneakers.

Pressing a hand to her back to help her bend, he let that touch drift to her hip to steady her as she freed the panties from her ankles. When she gathered them up into a discreet ball in her hand, she had to quell the sudden compulsion to fold them neatly as she might do with the laundry. However, if she was having trouble merely handing them to him, the logistics of folding were far outside her abilities right now.

His hand came out from under her right arm, the other sliding about her waist, holding her close. When she put the ball of soft, worn fabric in his palm, his fingers closed over it and her slim ones briefly, holding her there before he took the panties and his touch away.

“Up on the chair with you now.” His hand was on her elbow again, urging her forward. She managed it clumsily, needing to adjust her skirt so it wasn’t caught under her knees. Drawing in a breath, she closed her hands on the top of the chair for balance. He adjusted her stance so her knees were on the edge of the wood, digging into her flesh with the reminder of the open space beneath them. She’d kept her knees closer together, but he widened them, to the point the outside of each was pressed against either chair arm. It made her balance feel precarious, vulnerable, such that she tightened her hands on the chair top.

“Stay like this, Elisa.”

“This frightens me.”

“Trust me.” Reaching over the desk, he pulled out a drawer. “Eyes front, Elisa. Toward the opposite wall.”

She knew the types of games and sexual . . . tests, for lack of a better word, that vampires played with their servants. And play was definitely the wrong word for it, for there was nothing whimsical or childlike about it. She’d witnessed quite a few of Lady Danny’s dinner parties, but even as a second-mark, she was only dinner help, not part of the floor show the way Dev always was, as Danny’s full servant. She was often sent out of the room before the real post-dinner games began, those limited to the vampires and their full servants. However, on the few occasions she’d had to come back in to retrieve a dish or bring more wine, she’d seen things that had fascinated and mortified her at once, sending her scurrying away quickly, blushing, even though she’d had an equal wish to stay and look longer. That conflict in desires was similar to what she was feeling now. What was he doing?

He’d taken out a handful of short ropes and now he’d cinched each of her knees to the chair arm it paralleled, which would hold her knees out wide. Leaning over her, what was straining against the denim pressing through the skirt, he looped another tether over her hands and bound them to the top slat of the chair.

“Sir . . . Mr. Malachi . . .”

“Hush,” he said quietly. “This is your punishment, Elisa. Obey me as your Master.”

She was still trembling, but at his words, it transformed into something different. When he tied her fast, his touch was gentle, fingers testing the bonds, making sure they weren’t too tight, that they weren’t uncomfortable. Then she heard the metal of his belt clink and her belly flip-flopped again.

“It’ll be fifteen strikes,” he said. “I’m going to do it on your bare ass. You’ll call each one out to me as I do it, and as you count it off, you will say, ‘I will never disobey you again, sir.’ Do you understand?”

The last time she’d been thrashed had been when she was fifteen, for shirking her duties to slip away to a fair in Perth. She’d met a young, lanky lad there who’d given her a flower and tried to steal a kiss, which she’d laughingly escaped, though she’d wondered what that kiss would have felt like. Though the thrashing hurt, she wouldn’t have traded that day for it. She had a feeling Mal’s arm was a trifle stronger than the house mistress at the Collins’ house. It made her stomach quake, but she nodded. “Yes, sir.”

But first he touched that rounded area, his palm fitting to one of the cheeks to knead it through her skirt, his fingertips whispering over her sensitive flesh, so close to other, even more sensitive flesh. When he folded the fabric up, secured it in the slim belted waistline, cool air drifted over her naked, moistening flesh. He had a full, unimpeded view of her there, her legs bound and spread that way. “Count it, Elisa.”

“One.”

She was right. He had a much stronger arm than Mrs. Florence. She almost yelped at the sting, but managed to bite it back. “I will never disobey you again,” she said, her voice breaking. “Two.”

Snap. A quick strike, a reminder, and she bit it out fast. “Sir.”

While it had hurt like the devil, the aftermath . . . didn’t. The tingling as his hand passed over her arse almost made her want another. She didn’t have long to wait.

He didn’t pause much between the next three except for her to get out the words he was requiring her to say. Those hurt more, because he was hitting over the same abused flesh. Her thighs quivered, hands gripping the top of the chair. Bound as she was, she couldn’t do anything to stop him, no twist or jerk out of the way, and yet something more was happening. When he stopped after the third, his knuckles teased their way along the crease between her buttocks, a shocking sensation that made her want to writhe. Before she could do more than draw in a quick breath, he’d passed that area, dropped his fingers and inserted them between the lips of her sex. He slid in so easily, the arousal made an audible sucking sound.

She would have blushed hard at that, but his pleased, feral growl sent another kind of flush across her skin. A harder strike this time, one that shoved that yelp past her teeth. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“I want to hear your cries, Elisa.” There was a wealth of meaning to that. Was his cock harder, straining even more against his jeans from looking at her naked and bound like this? And why did that make her even more aroused, as if they were feeding that part of each other?

Four more this time, and in addition to the pain and arousal, something else surged inside of her as well. An ache in her throat that became tears, though she couldn’t really say what was making her want to cry. She was just sorry for so many things, and it felt like she needed to purge a backlog of feeling. She wanted him to keep going, beyond fifteen strokes, though of course such a thought was crazy. Her arse was already on fire, enough that strikes nine and ten caused genuine cries of pain.

“Say it, Elisa.”

“I will never disobey you again. Sir.”