FULL NOVELXO Before the Storm: Chapter 17
He’s lost his mind.
That’s the only explanation for the words that just came out of his mouth. I don’t know Storm Saint James well, hell, I only met him last night, but I know for a fact he doesn’t say things like he’s just said lightly. Because he doesn’t claim people. As far as I know from the society section, he’s never even been in a relationship, so what interest does he have in an eighteen-year-old who no one has ever valued?
I open my mouth to respond but close it immediately. There’s nothing I can say that is going to make what he just said make any more sense.
“I can see the doubt in your eyes, Ayvah, but soon you’re going to understand. Soon you’ll understand what it means to be mine, and what’s going to happen if you ever put yourself in the kind of danger you put yourself in today. You will be punished for that by the way.”
“Punished?” I breathe.
“Yes, baby girl, punished.” He smirks. “I’m too angry right now and I don’t want to hurt you but believe me when I tell you the moment my blood stops roaring in my ears, you will find yourself bent over my knee with a red ass.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Oh, but I can, Ayvah. I can do anything I damn well please. That’s one of the perks of being king.”
“I’m not yours,” I whisper. How can I be? He’s the most eligible bachelor in Chicago and I’m a college student who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks and I’ve never so much as had a boyfriend. I’ve only ever been kissed once and he’s talking about punishing me? I don’t think so.
Raw possession flashes in his eyes and takes my breath away. Fuck I’m in so over my head with this man I’m surprised I haven’t drowned yet. “Come again, baby girl,” he rumbles.
“I’m not yours.” I swallow heavily. The weight of his body pressing into mine is stifling. Heat radiates off him and it’s like I’m sitting on a furnace, but I make no move to push him off me. If I’m really honest with myself, I suspect when his body inevitably lifts from mine I’ll feel the loss immediately.
One second my back is pressed into the mattress, and the next he flips me onto my stomach and his weight settles at my back, his hard cock nestled against my ass. His breath whispers against my neck and sends heat to my already aching core. Jesus. I can count the number of times my pussy has tingled like this on one hand, and at least three of those times have been with the man I’ve only known for twenty-four hours.
“I think you’ll find that’s exactly what you are, baby girl. You were mine from the moment I locked eyes on you, and there’s nothing on God’s green earth that can change that, so I suggest you get used to the idea.”
My breath stutters in my chest. People don’t just claim others like this. At least not outside of books and movies. He’s got to have lost his damn mind to think I’m worth claiming, let alone that he should be claiming anyone at all.
“Why me?” The words slip from my mouth before I’m conscious of them, but it’s as good a question as any right now.
He lets out a rough chuckle and I can’t help but melt at the sound. It’s so like the man himself, the one who has captivated me from the moment I opened my eyes and met his for the first time. “Baby girl, I don’t buy into the concept of fate or whatever other bullshit most people do. What I believe in is the feeling I had the moment I saw you. I knew I had to protect you, and I knew, even then, that I would go to the end of the earth to do so. I should have sent you away, sent you someplace safe away from your family, away from the Lounders, but the thought of you being in a different room made me fucking homicidal. So I don’t have some poetic answer about why you, other than that you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life, and you’re all mine.”
Am I dreaming? Surely I’m dreaming. Surely any second now I’m going to wake up in my broken bed, with my too hard mattress, and my family that hates me, and all this would have been a crazy dream. Because that’s the only way any of this can be real. There’s no way my family sold me, the head of the mafia saved me, I was held at gunpoint, and now Storm Saint James is claiming me. There’s just no way any of this is real.
Storm laughs. “Cat got your tongue, baby girl?”
“I-I…” But there are no words, nothing I can say that makes any of this make any more sense. He’s lost his mind. That’s the only explanation I can find for any of this.
His weight shifts above me and a moment later he drags me back until my legs are hanging off the side of the high bed. My toes brush along the carpet, but I can’t gain any traction before a large palm comes down on my ass.
A squeal lodges in my throat, but it doesn’t make it out before another blow lands a moment later. Is he… spanking me? Each slap that lands draws another scream to the surface, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t force them out. I’m grateful for the thin layer of my yoga pants protecting my ass, even if it is only taking a little of the sting out of the spanks.
“You will never put yourself in danger like that again, or a spanking will be the least of your worries,” Storm growls between smacks, but he doesn’t give me a chance to respond before laying out several harder blows in a row.
Tears well in my eyes and immediately spill against my cheeks. This can’t be happening. It’s mortifying, and no matter how much my mind screams at me to fight, I can’t force my body to do it.
“Stop,” I croak when the burning of my ass gets to a point I can’t take it anymore. If he keeps going, I’m not sure I’ll be able to sit for a week. “Please stop.”
“No,” Storm rumbles, landing another three heavy smacks.
“Please, Storm, please stop,” I sob into the black sheets beneath my face. I can barely breathe through the pain and the panic in my lungs. What if he doesn’t stop at spanking? A man like Storm is used to getting what he wants. What if my disobedience pushes him over the edge and his palm turns into a fist. “Please don’t hurt me.” The words hurt as they fill the room, but I don’t expect Storm to stop. He’s crazed in the way he hits me, his anger is barely contained, and there’s no amount of reasoning I can do that’s going to make him stop. Somehow, I have to find a way to make it through this punishment as he calls it, and once he stops, if he stops, I need to find a way out of this estate and out of Chicago.
As if it wasn’t bad enough having your parents sell you, now I have to run from a mafia boss.
Fan-fucking-tastic.