“Let me know if you need anything else, Mistress Violet. We’re here to serve.” He ran a light finger down her arm playfully, but with a deferential sweep of his lashes, to apologize if she took it as an inappropriate gesture.
“Touch her again, and I’ll break that fucking arm,” Mac murmured, never lifting his head.
Mark froze. Conversation around the table stilled, for though the threat had been delivered in a low voice, Mac had enunciated clearly. As Violet suspected he had intended to do.
Never mind that his words, blatantly expressing his desire to be sole provider of her wants and needs, ran frissons of pleasure through her vitals. On more than one occasion, Tyler had pointed out to her that she was more of a one-on-one Mistress 80
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herself, which was another thing that she suspected had attracted her to Mac. Like called to like in the subconscious.
However, his words were a direct challenge she could not leave unanswered. She had known he would go too far, and he had done so early, bringing the issue to a head.
Proof of the point, he had raised his head now and was staring at her, hard, defiant, a clear “what are you going to do about it?” look. His position made it easy for her to follow through on her response. She slapped him across the face, using her full strength, careful to hit his jaw line instead of his eyes or the sensitive area of the ear. The strike was hard, strong, but not painful, and the psychological impact was effective.
Shock was replaced by fury, and something else, something that wrenched at her heart.
She masked her response to that and kept her tone cold. “It is not for you to say who touches me and who doesn’t, Mackenzie.”
“The hell it isn’t.”
She struck him again, opposite direction, using the back of her hand this time. “Put your lips to my foot, and ask for my forgiveness.” He stared at her, five charged seconds. The stillness at the table was palpable, the only sound Leila’s ragged breathing as the vibrator continued to stimulate her with a soft hum. Tyler gestured for more wine, casually, though his eyes were as intent as the other Doms on the struggle, and the nuances of control and trust that were working furiously below its surface.
Her willful sub lowered his head at last, and his shoulders curved forward, his hips rising from his heels, giving Tamara a view of his backside that Violet envied. She waited as he went lower, lower, and then she felt the press of his mouth come to rest on the toe of her shoe. “I won’t say I’m sorry,” he said, his voice muffled. “I want to be the only one who gives you pleasure.”
She couldn’t think of anyone more well-equipped to do a lifetime of that for her, but he wasn’t finished.
“And I will break his arm if he touches you again.” Unexpectedly, she felt herself stifling a smile at the sullen statement. She heard Tamara muffle a chuckle, and appreciated the other Dom’s understanding of the situation. “Stay in that position,” she demanded. “Spread your knees two feet apart, let Mistress Tamara see those oversized balls of yours that are always getting you into this kind of trouble with me.”
He trembled, his hand now curled around the arch of her foot, but he obeyed.
Tamara purred in approval. Violet shifted her attention to the Dom twin. “Mistress, will you do me the honor of paddling this arrogant slave’s ass ten strokes to teach him manners?”
“With pleasure.” Tamara rose, went to the sideboard where an array of floggers and paddles were assembled next to the makings of after dinner coffee. She chose a paddle of one inch thick wood, nine inches long, with holes in it.
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Violet had seen Tamara wield one like it before, knew that the splayed leg position was just to make the sub feel excessively vulnerable. Tamara would not come anywhere near the sensitive sac, but Mac would not know that. Violet laid her hand on his head, stroked his hair back with a deceptively light touch. “Proceed.” She nodded to Tamara.
Leila’s breathing was getting louder, and the room was thick with sexual heat, every eye watching that muscular ass quivering in the air, waiting to take its punishment.
Whack! Wood paddles made a lot of noise and hurt like fire when wielded with strength, and Tamara had a good arm. Mac let out a grunt, his fingers tightening on her shoe.
“Do you apologize?”
“Only for causing you distress, not for my actions.”
“Again,” she nodded. “Three strokes in succession.” Mac might have been under the impression he could handle a spanking from a woman’s arm, but Violet suspected he was rethinking that as his shoulder pressed into her calf with the force of the next three strokes. His buttocks were already turning red.
Violet caught her fingers in his curls, a painful grip this time, keeping his mouth shoved to her shoe. “You will apologize, Mackenzie.”
“I can’t, Mistress. I want to be the only one who serves you.”
“Perhaps you will, if you learn to submit to me. Stop fighting me, Mac.” She nodded. “Four more.”
This time, his fingers tightened on her before the blow came, and she felt his breath expel sharply against the flesh of her ankle on the second stroke. Violet worried that she had chosen the wrong number, that she’d underestimated Mac’s ability to bear more pain than he should. Given the power Tamara was putting behind her strokes, he should have been screaming.
On the fourth, he let out a hiss. Violet ran a hand down the curve of his back, slick with perspiration. “Ask forgiveness, Mackenzie. You know you stepped across the line.”
Tamara landed strike nine at that moment, when he was unprepared, and he bumped hard against her shins, catching onto them to keep from being thrown to the floor. His breath rasped hard, in time with the rapid rise and fall of his shoulders. Violet bit the inside of her cheek, to let her own pain pull her focus from his. “Mackenzie—”
“I ask your forgiveness, Mistress,” he mumbled, his fingers going around her leg like a manacle, holding her hard, fast, communicating his physical strength at the same moment he capitulated to her emotional power over him. “I spoke out of turn, without your leave, and deserve to be punished. Please do not spare the final blow, and if you think I deserve ten more, I will submit to your pleasure.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Tyler’s lip curl in grudging admiration. Kiera and Tamara looked as if they would have given Violet their Jag in exchange for a 82
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chance to have Mac in their dungeon for one night, testing his resolve against even higher levels of pain.
Fortunately, he was all hers. Stubborn, foolish, hardheaded jackass that he was.
“I think one more should be sufficient,” she said, though she wanted to call an end to it now. “Mistress, if you please.”
“My pleasure again, Mistress.” Tamara ran her long nails down one curve of Mac’s ass, digging into the angry red color, and he gasped. She pulled back and brought the paddle back into play, one loud hard smack to the contour of his buttocks, skillfully just above the joining point of his testicles so the sensation would sing down into them but not harm him.
“Sweet Christ,” Mac muttered, though only Violet heard the whispered expletive.
She wanted to soothe his pain, but that wouldn’t drive the lesson home.
“Now sit up, put your ass against your heels so you feel the burn,” she said. “We wish to proceed with our dinner.” She caught his chin as he straightened, hauled him up the last few inches and was relieved to see the flash of temper in his eyes at her rough handling. “And if I wish to have Mark eat my pussy, and command you to sit there and watch, you’ll hand him a towel to wipe his mouth after I come. Do you understand?”
He was bleeding where he had bitten his tongue. She rubbed her thumb at the corner of his mouth, gently taking the blood away. At the same time she forced her eyes to remain hard, unblinking, though tears threatened behind them. She sensed Tyler’s tension just beyond them, but Mac wouldn’t hurt her. She didn’t know how she knew that, because her beautiful slave looked like he wanted to break her in half, but she knew.
“Answer me, Mackenzie,” she said, in her softest, firmest tone.
“Yes, Mistress.” He sounded like he was strangling on it.
“Yes, what?”
Kiera drew in a breath at her audacity. If she was pushing past the twins’
boundaries, Violet knew she was in dangerous waters, indeed. But the rules be damned.
She wanted him to surrender. To understand what serving a Mistress was, because she wanted him like she’d never wanted anything in her life. She wasn’t backing down.
He’d accept her hand as his Mistress completely, or she’d call the game over. She knew the treasure that awaited them both under all his fear and stubbornness, and she wasn’t taking half.
Mac swallowed, showed his teeth. “If you command it, Mistress, I will hold a towel for Mark to wipe his mouth, after he eats your pussy.” His gaze lifted to hers, and his silver eyes were torn between fury and an aching desire so strong it blasted straight into her heart. “Though I would beg my Mistress’s permission to wipe her pussy first, for a sub should never attend to his needs, or that of another slave, before the needs of his Mistress.”