Transgressions by Carolyn Faulkner (the reading list txt) 📕

so—and she let him, too, even the more intimate parts of her, although he was satisfied to hear a bit of a groan from her as he let the cloth move and his fingers caress her clit amidst all that slippery soap.

It was a sign of life—small, but a sign. He welcomed every one.

Chapter 8

After having been more thoroughly washed than she probably ever had been in her life, Enzo dried her off with a fluffy warm towel—his towel racks warmed any towel that was put over them. She'd only ever seen that at his place and had quickly fallen in love with it. When her hair was shorter, just rubbing it with one of those warm towels would practically dry it completely.

Now that it was longer, it was still a bit damp but dry enough so that it wouldn't make her cold.

Enzo was torn as to whether or not he should tuck her back into her jammies—minus the panties, of course—but then he decided against it and, instead, led her into the bedroom, stopping by the thermostat to bump the heat in the entire place to a temperature he knew would make him hot but keep her comfortable without her pajamas, although in just a few minutes, one particular part of her was going to be plenty warm.

Sometimes, he bent her over things—his desk, the bed, the back of the couch—to punish her, but that position lacked an intimacy that he felt was important to maintain right now. So instead, he sat himself down on the end of the bed and positioned her in front of him, gathering both of her hands in his and kissing the backs of them reverently, then using them to pull her even closer to him, so that she was standing between his legs, her head down dejectedly.

"I know this has been a horrible time for you, and I'm very sorry that you've had to go through it." He'd said the exact same thing to her before in a million different ways, and it hadn't done a blasted thing to help her, but he wanted to say it again before he continued. "But I'm not going to allow you to wallow forever, Allegra."

He saw her toes twitching, and he counted that as a response. It was a measure of just how desperate he was getting for some sign of life from her.

"So we are going to resume the life we've put on hold," he said firmly, reaching down to tip her chin up, forcing her to look him in the eye. "You are mine."

Her seconds of hesitation had his stomach doing back flips, but, after much biting of her lip, she responded, much more tentatively than she used to, or that he preferred, but at least she did respond.

"I am yours."

Enzo smiled down at her and couldn't resist kissing her at that moment. He'd had to do a lot of resisting his impulses the past few weeks, and it felt good not to, for a change. "Yes, you most definitely are, young lady. And I found a pair of unauthorized panties."

She was smiling softly, almost laughing, and he was glad of it, but he wanted to know what had struck her fancy just when he was beginning to lecture her for doing something she knew she oughtn't.

Still smiling slightly, Ally answered, "It just struck me funny. 'Unauthorized panties'. Sounds like the name of a punk rock group or something."

Much as he didn't want to discourage her recovery, he also wanted her to reclaim her submission to him. "Be that as it may, you know you aren't to wear these, don't you?"

She twisted at the waist a bit, a sure sign his scolding was getting to her. "But you let me wear pajamas! They covered me up completely. Panties only cover one particular area."

"Well, you were granted permission to wear your nightclothes because I wanted you to be comfortable, to be soothed by them. I did not give you permission to wear panties, because, as you said yourself, they cover one particular area, and it's an area that I intend to have access to at all times."

Ally opened her mouth to point out the fact that the pants of her pajama set had a crotch that prevented him from having access, too, but as soon as she did, he gave her a raised eyebrow look that had her closing it again without having uttered a syllable. She had learned the hard way that it was much less important to be right than to do everything she could to lessen the punishment that was coming.

And when it did, she learned that she needed to do everything she could to stop herself from ever getting spanked after a shower again, because, for whatever reason, it made each thwack of his hand against her flesh just that much worse. Way, way worse.

"If I had wanted you to wear panties, I would have dressed you in them that night, Allegra Marie Olivia."

If she hadn't been so beside herself from the spanking, she would have grimaced at his use of her full name. As it was, she had another reason entirely to sob, because that didn't bode well for the length of her punishment.

When he finally stopped, he twisted her on his lap and stretched himself out on the bed, rearranging himself so that he was free and burying himself deep within her with one tremendous stroke, then rolling the two of them over so that she was beneath him. "Dear God," he panted, nearly at the point of no return, himself. "I will never again go so long without you."

He hadn't so much as touched himself since the night he'd taken her away from her friends, hadn't even looked at another woman, and he was rock hard from the moment he got home until the moment he left in the morning. As it was, after all that time, he thought his orgasm was going to out and out