“Fucking…Rafe!” She flexed her hands, stiffened her legs, but God help her—she didn’t dare clench her ass. “I’m sorry!”

“Sorry for what?” I trailed the strap over her reddened cheeks, enjoying how her legs quivered.

“For taking your gun.”

“And?”

“For pulling it on Jax. I won’t do it again.”

I dropped the belt on the bed, and when I laid my palms on her warm bottom, she jumped again, letting out a hiss of pain between gritted teeth. But when I slipped a finger into her cunt, I found it soaked. Her body mystified me, entranced me, owned me right to the tip of my cock.

“You don’t have to stick around for this,” I told Jax, sensing him lingering from the corner of my eye.

He shifted, gaining my attention, and leaned against the wall with his shoulders slumped. “Mind if I watch?”

I grasped my belt once more and shuffled back a few steps. “Go ahead.” But would he mind? Would watching me with Alex be too much for him? I didn’t want to ask, and I didn’t want to make things worse by implying he leave either.

“You’re getting twenty more,” I told Alex. “And you’re gonna count them.” Jax had gone easy on her. I wouldn’t, not after the hell she’d put me through yesterday. He’d left her ass a beautiful shade, using nothing more than the angry palm of his hand. But I planned to leave welts—the kind of reminder that she was mine. As I brought down that belt for real this time, my bicep bulging in delivering a brutal crack, I probably hated myself more than she did, because her cry of agony rushed through my blood in a deplorable way.

“Count.”

“One!” she shouted, fury drenching that single word. Even though her cunt was dripping, she still had the mind to be furious with me.

Hell, I loved her even more for it. Her fire, her spitting-nails spirit—she was the strap of leather that kept me in line. I tempered the beast inside me, and for the next few minutes, the world faded; it was just her, me, and the strikes of my belt that captured us in a bubble no force on Earth could penetrate. I was so caught up in the way she responded, transfixed by the lines crisscrossing her bottom, I almost forgot Jax was in the room with us, standing just outside our bubble.

I let loose another whack, but she failed to count. I rounded the bed and found her staring, unseeing, eyes glazed. Nearly unreachable. I lapped at her tears, running a palm over her hair, and gently grounded her. She sucked in a deep breath, sudden alertness widening her watery eyes.