Chapter 4

Chapter

Four

N oah growled and went back into the main room, grabbing both the dart gun and a regular handgun. The latter was equipped with a silencer; the dart gun didn’t need one. He tried to remember which butt cheek he’d darted the first time, then realized he didn’t much care. If she wasn’t careful, Zara would find he had other ways to make sitting down very uncomfortable for her.

Tucking the tranquilizer gun into his belt, he ran out the door. Glancing at the Range Rover, he grinned—its driver’s side door was open. He’d give her points for having thought to try to start it without a key. She didn’t know there was a high-powered motorcycle equipped for rough terrain hidden in one of the outbuildings. Noah was glad he’d thought to remove the starter relay on the Rover to ensure she couldn’t steal it. It was easily replaced when they needed to go, but in an emergency, the motorcycle would be better and more maneuverable.

As he headed toward the Rover, he glanced at the outbuilding where the bike was hidden. It didn’t appear to be disturbed. Noah figured she’d still be too groggy to get far, so he set an easy running pace past the vehicle, heading to the top of the closest hill to see if he could spot her. When they’d found this place, one of the things they’d liked about it was there were enough hills to keep them inconspicuous but still give them an open field of fire, making it difficult for someone to sneak up on them. He wasn’t sure how she’d avoided the surveillance cameras, but he meant to find out. As soon as he had her back safely in the cottage, he’d review the data. He hoped it was because she’d been up and moving before he’d had a chance to get them fully operational.

Z ara watched Noah from her hiding place behind the pump house. He moved like a large, predatory cat, his movements graceful with tremendous power behind them. There was no question the man had a sexual magnetism that spoke to her and made the places below her belly flutter at the possibilities, but she neither wanted nor needed a man like that in her life. Damian’s dominant streak had been difficult enough, and Noah’s was enormous in comparison.

She wanted him to get far enough away from the cottage she could make her way to the outbuilding he’d glanced at. Why had he looked at it? What was in there? Another means of escape? That would make sense. As he ran, Zara eased toward it. As Noah stood scanning the surrounding area and looking away from the cottage, she slipped inside the outbuilding.

At first glance, there was nothing to see, but as she poked around, she realized this building was a kind of last-stand holdout. There were numerous large-caliber guns and other weaponry hidden within it. As she examined what seemed to be a hay pile, she realized the hay had been artfully affixed to a tarp.

She pulled back the plastic sheeting to reveal what appeared to be an off-road motorcycle on steroids, hooked up to a generator, indicating the bike was fully charged and ready to go. She grinned when she saw the electric starter—no key needed. If this was an emergency getaway vehicle, she’d bet it hadn’t been sabotaged to keep from starting. Take that, Mr. Sexier Than Anyone Has a Right to Be!

Zara bent over the motorcycle to unhook it from the generator, so she could remove it from its hiding place. She never heard him enter the building. The first indication he’d found her was when his large, hard hand connected with her ass, sending pain in radiating rings out from the epicenter, making her fold over the seat of the bike.

“Good girl. You assumed the position without my having to tell you,” he growled, sending shivers down her spine.

Before she could protest or do anything effective in getting away, he pinned her down and landed another three stinging blows to her buttocks.

“You sonofabitch! That hurts!”

“If you think your cute little butt hurts now, wait until I get through with you. I’d have thought you liked pain, seeing as how you seem to be in a hurry to get yourself killed.”

Zara struggled, but Noah had her trapped facedown, ass up over the motorcycle seat. She was in no position to escape his discipline, though God knew, she wasn’t going to honor it by calling it that. He was beating her, she had to remember that. They had no relationship, hadn’t discussed any consensual non-consent, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to submit to this caveman, regardless of how aroused she was becoming.

“Since you and I are going to be spending some time together, I think we need to get a few rules straight,” he continued, landing harsh strikes to what was quickly becoming a very painful bottom.

The worst part, aside from how much his spanking hurt, was the fact she could feel what had been the faint beginnings of attraction to the brute awaken and bloom. Her nipples stiffened, and there was no way he’d miss that when he let her up. She could also feel the dew gathering between her legs and feared if he pulled her sweatpants down, he’d see it glistening as further proof of her arousal at his treatment.

Noah’s hand crashed down again on her bottom, causing her to inhale sharply. He said nothing but landed repeated swats that covered her entire backside. The spanking was intensely painful, especially for someone who hadn’t been spanked in several years. She had no doubt he meant to establish dominance, not inflame her lust. Zara was having trouble focusing on the pain and how he had no right to do this. Instead, her libido had gone into overdrive, and her mind was wildly speculating on all the nasty, dirty things she wanted him to do with her.

Zara kicked her legs and tried to squirm away but failed miserably. Noah peppered her backside until she was quite certain it would be as red as a fire engine when he finished. She’d forgotten how much it hurt to be spanked by a man who knew how. Since Damian, she’d tried to get different lovers to spank her erotically, but the results had been disappointing in the extreme and had left her feeling empty. Noah’s hand seemed not only to inflict pain but fan the flames of her desire, which were threatening to burn out of control.

He didn’t seem particularly angry but rather kept her pinned while he punished her backside. She bit her lip in a desperate attempt to keep from pleading with him to stop or worse—pleading with him to assuage the need his treatment of her was creating. Knowing how much she wanted him to fuck her was utterly humiliating.

“Get it through your pretty little head, you’re stuck with me, and like it or not, you will obey me. If I give you an order, you do it. You don’t question me. You don’t bitch at me. You don’t call me names. You just do it,” Noah said, ratcheting up the searing pain his continued discipline was causing her.

“You can’t do this to me,” she cried.

“Apparently, I’m not doing it hard enough. Perhaps I ought to pull these sweatpants down and spank your bare bottom.”

“No, Noah, please don’t. I’m sorry.”

She hated the fact he chuckled.

“That’s better,” he crooned as he rubbed gentle circles over her painful globes. “You settle down and behave yourself. Do you hear me?”

“You bastard.”

“Naughty girl,” he said and began to spank her again.

She yowled as he landed several more swats with considerably more force.

“Do you hear me, Zara?”

“Yes, Noah, please stop.”

He rested his hand on her painful behind. “Had enough?”

“Yes,” she whispered, on the verge of tears.

“Then tell me you understand me and are going to behave.”

“Fine. I will.”

“Say it,” he ordered in no uncertain terms.

“I hate you.”

“I don’t care. Say it, or I’ll let you up off this bike, go sit on one of those hay bales, pull those sweatpants off you, and blister your ass.”

“All right. I understand you, and I’ll behave… but I still hate you,” she said, tears leaking from her eyes and rolling down her cheeks.

He helped her up and used his handkerchief to wipe away the evidence of her distress.

“Don’t,” she whispered.

He smiled. “Don’t what, sweetheart? Spank you some more? Kiss you? Carry you back to that bed, strip you naked, and take care of your rampant need to be fucked into oblivion and obedience?”

“Just don’t,” she said, trying to back away. “Please.”

How the hell did he know she desperately wanted him to do just that… fuck her into oblivion?

As expected, Noah drew her forward, so she was flush against him. He wasn’t exaggerating. His engorged cock pressing against his fly told her that he was feeling the effect of his having spanked her as well.

He captured her head in his hand with his thumb on one cheek, and the rest of his fingers splayed out over the other side of her face, spanning the area from her jaw down her neck. Holding her in place, he lowered his mouth to hers and took possession. It took every bit of strength and willpower not to surrender to him. The kiss, neither tentative nor brutal, was subtle and sensual, speaking to her of his own need and strength. To try to break the reverie, she did the only thing she could think to do—she sank her teeth into his lower lip as she stomped on his instep.

Zara would have expected him to react violently, either crushing her body to his and punishing her mouth with his, demanding she yield or inflicting further pain on her bruised backside. He did neither. He chuckled as he brought his hand up to force her jaws apart to make her relinquish her hold.

“Naughty girl. Next time you bite me as anything less than a passionate response, I’ll bite you back, and,” he said, bringing his hand up to cup her breast and rub his thumb across her beaded nipple, “I’ll bite something a lot more tender than your lip.” Noah reached down, slipped his hand down the inside of her sweats, patting her backside, grinning when she winced.

“You be a good girl and stay here while I cover the bike back up.”

Zara watched, anchored to the spot where he’d kissed her. She couldn’t seem to make her body move away from him. He ran his hand across the seat of the motorcycle.

“I may never look at this thing again without picturing you lying across it as I spanked you. Your ass felt good under my hand,” he said silkily. “My guess is it will feel even better when there isn’t a pair of sweatpants covering it up… better still when I have hold of it with you on your back, fucking you silly.” He turned back to her and smiled.

“You swine,” she hissed, bring her hand back to slap the arrogant smile off his face.

He caught her hand before it could connect and brought it up to his lips, kissing her fingertips sensuously. Tucking her hand into the crook of his arm and holding it in place, he started toward the cottage, intending to draw her along. At least, thought Zara, her feet still offered token resistance as they remained seemingly rooted to the spot where she was standing.

At her reluctance, he turned back, shook his head, and in one easy maneuver, bent and hoisted her over his shoulder, swatting her bottom and eliciting a yelp.

“You’d best start learning to obey me, Zara. The next time I have to spank you, it won’t be over sweatpants with you pinned over some object. I’ll put you face down over my knee and spank you until you can’t sit or fuck comfortably for a couple of days. You understand me?” he asked, delivering another blow.

How dare he just assume he was going to spank her again, much less have sex with her? And why in God’s name did that idea make every sexual synapse in her body go off like the fireworks at New Year’s? She couldn’t possibly be attracted to a man like Taylor… could she? Certainly, her body had responded to him in a way it never had before. Even Damian had failed to elicit that level of response.

When she said nothing, he struck her again.

“When I ask you a question, Zara, you answer me. Am I making myself clear?”

Zara bit her lip. She’d be damned if she was going to give in. Twice more, his hand connected with her already painful ass.

“Do I need to sit down on that bale of hay and give you a proper, full-on punishment spanking? You looking to compare notes with Finn? I guarantee you, Croft has taken her to task, and she’ll be thinking twice about disobeying him in the future. If I don’t get an answer from you right now, that next spanking will be right here, right now in this barn. Is that what you want?” He punctuated every word of his last question with a harsh swat.

“All right,” she cried. “I understand. But you’d better understand I mean to take your behavior up with your employer.”

Noah surprised her by laughing. “You do that, sweetheart. Can I be there when you do? Trust me, Ethan McDaniel is well aware of how to deal with a headstrong hellion when she won’t behave. I’m not sure you’re going to find a sympathetic audience there, but you go right ahead.”

Still chuckling and refusing to put her down, Noah walked to the cottage, Zara kicking and squirming the whole way. He closed both the front door and the window in the bedroom before returning to the sitting room and dumping her unceremoniously on the sofa.

“Ouch,” she cried. “That hurts, you… you brute.”

He leaned down and kissed her hard, invading her mouth with his tongue, laying claim to it as surely as he had her backside when he’d spanked her. He refused to let up, kissing her until she went soft and yielded to him.

“Good. Now, you sit here and think about why you got spanked and why you don’t want to provoke me into giving you another spanking. I promise the next one will be a lot more painful, and I doubt I’ll forego the pleasure of resolving things between us afterwards.” He went into the kitchen and began to put together lunch.

Zara was torn between bursting into tears and throwing herself in his arms and kissing him with wild abandon. She couldn’t understand why she did neither; she just sat there doing nothing.

N oah watched her surreptitiously. He had no doubt her backside was on fire. He wanted… no, scratch that, he needed her to learn to do what he told her—without question or hesitation. Their lives could depend on it. He had no doubt her ass wasn’t the only thing he’d set on fire. He inhaled deeply. God, she smelled sweet and ripe for the taking, aroused as he was. It had taken a sheer act of will on his part not to lay her back in that bed and follow her down. Her response to the spanking and their first kiss left no doubt in his mind, Zara was in need of being tamed by the right man. He had to hide a smile. He decided that man was him.

He returned to the couch with two plates heaped with fish, fresh sautéed vegetables, and quinoa, offering her one. When she didn’t readily take it, he set it on the coffee table and sat next to her. She tried to scooch away from him.

“No. You get your ass back over here and eat your lunch. You can tell Mac I spanked you if you want, but you are not going to tell him I didn’t feed you properly.”

“I’m not hungry,” she said, not moving from where he had halted her trying to put physical distance between them.

“I didn’t ask if you were hungry, I told you to eat your lunch. I also told you to get your ass back over here, and I meant both.”

“No,” she said quietly.

Noah took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, fighting back the rising annoyance being fed by his rampant arousal. God, his dick was killing him.

“Zara, if I have to make you do every single thing I tell you to do, you may never be able to sit or fuck comfortably again. I’m warning you, sweetheart, your bottom being painful won’t keep from fucking it or your pussy. If I get my lunch finished before you even start yours, I’ll put you over my knee and spank you until you decide eating cold fish, veggies, and grains is better than the alternative.”

She started to scooch away as she reached for the plate. He swept his arm over her lap and pulled her back hard against him.

“You stay where I put you and eat your lunch,” he growled.

“I know I’ve said it already, but I really do hate you.”

He chuckled. “No, you don’t, but you’d like to. Fair warning, you keep saying that to me, and I’ll make you take it back before I let you come.”

He wasn’t all that surprised when she shot up off the couch and threw her plate in his face. In fact, if he was completely honest, he wondered if he hadn’t been deliberately provoking an outburst from her. He really wanted to get his hands on her naked ass, both to spank and to hold her still while he rutted between her thighs.

He had no doubt by the time they spoke with the team, Zara would be well on her way to deciding she would be far better off ensuring his desire to pleasure her exceeded his need to discipline her.

She stared down at him, her breath coming in shallow pants. Noah took his napkin and slowly wiped his face. Carefully placing his own plate on the table in front of him, he stood. He had to admire that she didn’t take a step back or even flinch. He had a good six to seven inches in height and a solid sixty pounds of muscle on her.

“I ought to make you get down on your hands and knees and eat that off the floor, but humiliating women has never been my thing. However, I’m not above humbling one.”

He grasped her luxurious dark mane in his fist. Zara tried to dislodge his hand, which only resulted in him strengthening his grip. He’d light up her scalp before he lit up her backside. Noah marched her into the bedroom, then pulled her sports bra off her shoulders and rolled it down her torso. Stripping her of both it and her sweatpants, he sat on the bed and pulled a now naked Zara over his lap. Tilting her forward until her feet lifted off the floor, he removed the last of her clothing. A fresh surge of arousal shot through him and his cock pushed against the crotch of his jeans.

“No,” she wailed, starting to truly struggle.

Noah angled her so her upper body could rest on the mattress, then pressed her down, trapping her legs between his. He grinned. He knew he shouldn’t be looking forward to what was about to happen, but he was. He couldn’t wait to feel her naked bottom bounce underneath his hand. What made it even more arousing was her nipples were hard as rocks, and the nectar from her pussy was leaking out to coat her labia and the very tops of her thighs. Noah had plans for how to handle that as well.

“You settle down and take your spanking like a good girl, and maybe I’ll only spank you as hard as I did when you were bent over the motorbike.”

“It will still hurt more, and we both know it,” she said through gritted teeth.

He smiled. It seemed he’d been right about Damian and Zara’s relationship. Good. He didn’t have to worry about scaring her, and she knew what to expect. That was the last time he would think of Damian when he had Zara naked… and he planned to have Zara naked a lot.

“That’s true. Maybe you should have thought of that before throwing that little tantrum. The men who came before me might have put up with that shit, but I won’t. I’m going to put enough sting in your tail, you decide to behave.”