“‘BOUT TIME,” SEBASTIAN SAYS, right before he kisses me like he needs to taste me to live.
 
The ring around my finger warms from the heat of my skin, and it already feels like it’s a part of me. My heart stops and starts, writhing and bucking inside my chest. I just agreed to marry Sebastian—but I’m not scared. I know this is exactly where I’m supposed to be.
 
Sebastian pulls away, turning to cage me against the kitchen island. Behind him, the wine stain still mars my wall, broken glass contained with dirty tea towels. The woman who threw that glass is a stranger to me now. I don’t recognize myself in her.
 
She was cowardly, afraid—but I’m not her anymore.
 
“You,” Sebastian says, “are a very bad girl.” His body crowds mine, that big, solid chest pressed up against mine. My breasts feel heavy and sensitive, every inch of me tingling.
 
“Someone needs to teach you a lesson,” he growls, his breath ruffling the hair at my ear. Stuck in a cage of his arms, all I can do is stand here and pant. His hands move to my hips, spinning me around so my back is plastered to his front. He bands a strong arm around my chest, the other clamping over my stomach. I can feel him everywhere. It’s heaven.
 
Sebastian’s lower arm moves down, pinning my hips to his. A whimper escapes my lips when I feel the bulge in his pants pressed up against the curve of my bottom.
 
“You hear me?” His voice is dangerous, quiet.
 
“What kind of lesson?” I mean for it to be a challenge, but it comes out breathy, almost excited. And I am excited. Anytime we’re near, I crave this side of him. I want to give him my power, let him do what he will with it. I trust him with my body…and now, finally, with my heart.
 
“A lesson about what happens when you run away and do something stupid.”
 
“It wasn’t stupid—”
 
“You could’ve talked to me, Georgia.” His arms are steel bars, his chest hard as marble. He shoves his hips forward, like he wishes he were inside me right this moment. “All you had to do was ask me; instead, you ran away. So here’s what you need to know from now on: I’m not leaving you.”
 
I’ve never been so turned on. I close my eyes, leaning my head against his shoulder. “Never?”
 
“Till death, Sweet Peach. So when you get up out of our bed and you run away from me, you have to understand that there are going to be consequences.”
 
My breath staggers. The arm pinned across my hips tightens so I can feel the heat of the bulge at my back. I lean my palms against the cold countertop for balance, the world spinning around me. Sebastian’s words—and the unbreakable vow I hear in them—send me into a tailspin.
 
“No one’s ever handled you the way you need, have they?” Words slide across my skin like velvet, raising gooseflesh everywhere.
 
Sebastian palms my breast in a hard, possessive movement. “No man has ever taken control the way you crave. I sure as hell never did.” His hand kneads my flesh roughly, pinching, palming. It feels so good I want to cry. “I didn’t have a fucking clue the woman I had on my hands.”
 
Every time he squeezes and plumps my breast, my body softens a little bit more. I melt against the strength of his chest, taking his rough treatment of my body, wanting more. I want to give everything to him. I want to feel possessed. This hard knot of control that has wound itself around the core of me is begging for strong, capable hands to tear it to pieces.
 
I ran away from him because I was afraid, but no more. I know I can give him everything, because Sebastian will cherish me the way no other man ever could. And right now, I need him to cherish my body.
 
As if he can sense my desires, Sebastian shifts the hand that’s pinned across my hips. He slides a calloused hand between my legs and palms me there, gripping tight.
 
My jeans and underwear are a thick barrier between us, but the touch feels as intense as if his skin were against mine.
 
“I’m going to give you what you need, Georgia,” he tells me, his breath growing harsher. “What we both need.”
 
Oh, yes.
 
This game between us makes me want to melt—and it also makes me want to play. I know Sebastian loves it when I’m stubborn, when he has to work to make me give in.
 
“You wouldn’t know what I need if it was branded across my forehead, Sebastian,” I say, breathless.
 
The hand between my legs squeezes. I nearly come.
 
“Oh?”
 
“This alpha male routine is getting—getting old.” I gulp.
 
We freeze like that for a moment. Me, pinned to the length of his body. One hand clamped on my breast, another between my legs. The tension in him vibrating like a live wire at my back.
 
Quicker than I can react, Sebastian moves. He spins us both around and lifts me up like I weigh no more than a bag of flour, striding across the room. He plants my feet in front of the dining room table, my eyes facing the big plate windows with the Pacific Ocean beyond.
 
“Bend over,” he says, nothing but pure command in his voice. “Put your cheek on the table.”
 
I comply, my hands wrapping around the edge of the table at my hips. My heart beats so fast I can hardly think. I gulp down great big breaths of air, trying to calm myself down.
 
The truth is, when I feel one warm palm press down gently on the center of my back, I feel safer and freer than I have in years. When Sebastian tells me to spread my legs, it’s like a gift to let go and comply.
 
“Good girl,” he says, one hand rubbing my hip in smooth, calming strokes. “You’ll get what you need, baby. You know that, right?”
 
I nod, panting so hard my chest heaves against the table.
 
“You trust me with your body,” he says, hand moving in slow strokes. “But I want you to trust me with every single part of you. I want you to run toward me when you’re worried, not away.”
 
Slowly, he uses the hand on my hip to tug my jeans down to my ankles. I kick them away at his request, my heart thumping. Cool air wafts over my thighs and behind, and Sebastian’s hand returns to my hip. His fingers dip under the edge of my bikini-cut panties, lifting one side so it’s wedged between the globes of my ass. His rough, warm palm smooths over the exposed skin, sending shivers through my thighs. Then he does the same to the other side, tugging my underwear until it’s a makeshift thong and my entire bottom is exposed.
 
Every rasp of fabric against my bud, my weeping core, and the dark hole behind makes a dart of pleasure course through my body. The anticipation is almost too much to bear. When Sebastian holds the bunched fabric of my dress and underwear tight in his hands and presses his hard, denim-clad groin against my bare skin, I let out a whimper of need.
 
“You’ll get it, baby,” he tells me in a lust-soaked voice. “But first I’m going to make your ass nice and pink. Would you like that?”
 
Oh, yes. I’d like that. Pinned here against my unused dining room table, with my panties rucked up and my chest heaving, I crave anything he’ll give me. I want to beg and scream and take it. I want to let go, give in.
 
The first slap of his palm against my ass makes us both grunt. It’s an animal noise, feral. His palm immediately returns to my skin, shaping and smoothing over the smarting skin.
 
I let out a breath, hands gripping the edge of the table.
 
“You did so well, Sweet Peach. You took that perfectly. Look—your ass is turning pink already.” A low grunt escapes him as he looks at my bare skin, and I have to close my eyes. That noise—knowing he’s making it because of me—almost undoes me.
 
“Are you okay?” His hand still smooths over my skin in tender movements.
 
I nod. “Yes.”
 
“Do you want me to keep going?”
 
I close my eyes and breathe in through my nose, and nod once.
 
“I need to hear you say it, honey girl.”
 
The last of the shackles fall away, and I let myself ask for what I want. “Yes,” I say, “I want more.”
 
His hand pauses in its movements, and I hear the slow release of breath, like he’s relieved—or trying to control himself.
 
When he spanks me again, and again, and a third time, I can’t help the cry that leaves my lips. Sebastian smooths over the skin with his palm, his voice harsh when he speaks. “That’s how it felt when you slapped my face. That’s how it felt when you walked away from me the first time. And then you went and did it again without a word of explanation.”
 
Another spank on the other cheek, and I buck. The pain sends darts of pleasure racing over my skin, and I can’t breathe, can’t think—
 
Whack. I jump, moaning, my hips bucking clear off the table.
 
“You like being punished, don’t you?” A sharp tug on my panties causes friction in all the right places. “Answer me.”
 
“Yes. Yes, I like it.” And mercy me, it’s the truth. I feel about ready to leave my body. I feel wound up tight and completely relaxed all at once. I want his harsh, deep voice in my ear until I can’t take the ache of it anymore. I want pleasure chasing pain again and again. I want him to shove my panties to the side and drive inside me.
 
“If I reached between those pretty legs of yours, you’d be wet, wouldn’t you?”
 
I grip the edge of the table.
 
Smack. “Wouldn’t you?”
 
“Yes.” I gulp down a breath.
 
“All you needed was for someone to handle you properly,” he says, curving his body over mine. His jeans rasp over my abused flesh, causing fresh, aching sweetness to expand over my backside. “But that could only be me, Georgia. I’m the only one who can make you let go. You’ve been needing me to come back and take care of you for years, but I haven’t been there, have I?” His lips touch the nape of my neck. “I’m so sorry, baby. You needed me and I wasn’t there.” His hands find my hips, pinning them against the table. “But I’m here now, and I’m going to make up for lost time.”
 
I push back into him, mindless with lust. When Sebastian’s fingers wrap around the waistband of my panties and tear them off, I nearly cry out in relief as cool air touches my throbbing flesh. When he wastes no time and plunges two fingers into the wet, aching core of me, I know I’m seconds from orgasm. I let out a whimpering moan, and Sebastian answers by pulling his fingers out of me and finding the hard bud at the apex of my thighs.
 
His breaths are harsh as I writhe and buck. “I wanted to feel your first orgasm around my cock, but you need this one bad, Georgia. I can feel it.” His fingers tease and twirl around my bud until I’m blind, deaf, and dumb.
 
One hand on the small of my back holds me down while the other wreaks havoc between my legs. My own arousal is wet on my thighs, drenching me as I grow frantic.
 
“Georgia, I can’t give you my cock until you come on my hand.” Fingers plunge inside me. “Let me feel it. Milk my fingers, baby. Show me what my cock is going to feel in a minute.”
 
God, he’s crass. And he just spanked me raw. And I’m bent over my dining room table out of my fucking mind.
 
And, incredibly, I get to do this every day for the rest of my life.
 
“Come on my fingers, Georgia.” Command laces his voice, and all I can do is obey. An orgasm crashes into me, obliterating all thoughts. I cry out, gripping the table, listening to the soft urging he whispers in my ear.
 
When I’ve stopped bucking, I’m gathered up in his arms and carried to the next room. I can barely keep track of where my arms and legs are, I’m so limp and boneless.
 
Vaguely, I realize Sebastian sits down on the long sofa in my reading room. He arranges my legs so I’m straddling him, his hand making long, slow sweeps along my spine.
 
His pants are gone. When did that happen? I blink at the feel of his coarse hair and stone-hard thighs beneath me. When I open my eyes, he cups my face with his big hand and kisses me.
 
The kiss feels like coming home. I collapse into him, then feel life being breathed back into my body. My fingers tangle into his hair as our kiss deepens, every emotion from the day poured into the meeting of our lips.
 
I tuck my head into the crook of his neck and inhale the scent of him. He fumbles between us, a package crinkles, and then his hands are sliding up my thighs. Carefully avoiding the red and aching flesh on my backside, he wraps his hands around the backs of my thighs and lifts me onto his cock.
 
My breath catches at the feel of him piercing me. Sebastian’s head falls back onto the sofa, his eyes half-lidded as his chest heaves.
 
“Take your time,” he whispers, hands coasting over my thighs.
 
I wonder how this man could be doling out a punishment a moment ago, then showing me such care and concern now. How he could be both demanding and giving, rough and tender.
 
As I slide onto him, my hands curl into his shirt. We’re both still half-dressed, but beneath my blouse, our bodies are joined. Every inch of him that enters me feels bigger than the last. I spread my thighs and sink down onto him until we’re both panting, gripping each other with white-knuckled hands.
 
“Georgia,” he says. “Fuck.”
 
“In case you haven’t noticed, Seb, that’s exactly what we’re doing.”
 
The little cocky smirk that tugs his lips is the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.
 
His hands move up to my waist, where they squeeze a little bit harder than the gentle, indolent way he’s been touching me since we sat on the couch. “Ride me, Georgia. Show me what a good little wife you’ll be for me.”
 
“You are such an arrogant pig,” I answer, breathless.
 
His palm connects with my aching bottom, causing me to gasp. Pleasure chases pain, and I sink down further onto his throbbing shaft.
 
“That wasn’t very nice, baby,” he growls, his voice laced with amusement.
 
“Good little wife, my ass,” I say between breaths. “If that’s what you want, you’re looking in the wrong place.”
 
His grin is fierce, and the sight of it makes me breathless. “I’m looking in exactly the right place,” he says softly. “I’m looking at the only woman I’ve ever wanted.”
 
He punches his hip up, and I moan. My forehead falls onto his shoulder as we move together, lost in each other. Our movements become frantic as pleasure mounts. Words become too much, so we speak in kisses, in touches, in lingering eye contact while our bodies join.
 
The detonation inside me makes me scream his name as I curl my nails into his broad shoulders. He urges me on, movements becoming jerkier, until he joins me in ecstasy.
 
Collapsed on the sofa on top of him, I let out a long, low moan. Sebastian chuckles, his arms wrapping around me to squeeze me tight.
 
“I love you so much, Georgia, it scares the crap out of me.”
 
“I’m not scared,” I answer, lifting my head to smile at him.
 
“Not even when I smack your ass and say those things to you?”
 
“What, like how you want me to be your good little wife?” I grin.
 
“Exactly like that.” His smile fades, his eyes growing serious. “You know I love you, right? The things we do in the bedroom…it’s only for us. It’s just play.”
 
I nod, suddenly shy. “I like it, Sebastian. A lot. It..it turns me on.”
 
He closes his eyes and groans. “You’re too good to be true. I’m never letting you go.”
 
Butterflies explode inside my stomach. I smile, kissing his neck. “Lucky for you, I’m never letting you go, either.” I run my lips up to his jaw, then I kiss the corner of his lips.
 
Then, just like he did an hour ago, I make a proposal of my own while our bodies are still joined. I’m going to make this man my husband as soon as humanly possible. I love him too much to waste another minute.