The Billionaire's Pet (9 page)

Struck with the overwhelming realization that she had not just submitted to Daniel, but enjoyed it, Ellie found herself awash with horror. He had treated her like a pony, he had put a tail in her bottom, he had used her body for his pleasure, and she had responded as though finding her true calling.

How could she possibly have enjoyed being treated that way? She should have been outraged, rebellious, vengeful. Instead she had felt calm and peaceful—at least, until she started questioning the feeling.

“No,” she said, looking at herself in the mirror. “You are not that girl, Ellie, you are not. That. Girl.”

Who ‘That Girl’ was, she didn’t know. All she really knew was that the rush of shame following the pleasure was almost too much to bear. Her still heated swollen lower lips seemed like betrayers; her whole body had given her up in pursuit of pleasure.

She ran the cold water tap and splashed a little on her face. “Get a grip, Ellie,” she lectured herself. “It was just sex.”

She didn’t believe the lie for one second, but she had to hold to it, otherwise she was going to have to admit to herself the fact that she wanted nothing more to be curled up at Daniel’s feet, his fingers playing through her hair, his collar around her neck.

* * *

Awash in a maelstrom of emotions, none of which she could understand, Ellie did the one thing that always made things better—she worked, throwing herself into a series of meetings, all of which happened to take place out of the office and away from Daniel.

The ploy worked for a week or so, but eventually he managed to catch her on the phone. She answered it without looking, caught in the middle of a pile of numbers that had stolen her attention and made her easy pickings.

“Hello?”

“Are you hiding from me, pet?” His voice came down the line warm and mellow, but with a hint of seriousness too.

“Of course not,” Ellie said, lying through her teeth. “I’m just very busy right now, Daniel. Unlike some of us, I have to work for my money.”

There was a brief silence, and then a low chuckle. “You need a spanking, don’t you, kitten.”

She squirmed in her seat, glad that he could not see the effect his words were having on her.

“Daniel, I have work to do.”

“I will pick you up at your place, six o’clock tonight,” he said. “Be there, pet.”

He disconnected the call before she could argue.

* * *

That evening, Ellie answered the door in the thickest, tightest pair of jeans she owned. Thick enough to save her from the worst of the sting if Daniel did end up taking her over his knee; tight enough that getting them off her would require her cooperation.

“Hello, kitten,” he said, leaning down to press a kiss to her lips. “Planning a casual evening, were you?”

“Can’t have caviar every night,” she replied. “Are you here to see me, or are you here to get your pound of flesh?”

“And what pounds of flesh you have,” he winked, glancing at her bottom displayed to great advantage in the jeans. “I missed you, kitten,” he said as he closed the door behind him. “You’ve gone into hiding the last few days.”

“I’ve been working,” she said flatly. “Do you want some wine?”

She could feel his eyes following her rear all the way to the kitchen. Being in Daniel’s presence was exciting and invigorating and yes, she had missed him too.

“There’s no need to look so scared, kitten,” he said, smiling as she glanced at him while pouring a glass of wine. “I’m not here to punish you. Unless there’s something you’ve been up to I should know about?”

Ellie bit her lower lip and shook her head. No. There wasn’t anything he should know about. She slid the glass across the counter, keeping the solid object between them as some form of protection.

“You really do seem quite guilty,” he said, ignoring the wine. His gaze swept over her and locked on her eyes, searing into her soul. “Tell me what’s going on with you.”

“Nothing,” she said, taking a long sip of wine. “Just the usual routine.”

“Mm-hmm.” His lips spread in a slow smile. “You are up to something, aren’t you? Are you going to tell me what it is, or would you rather I found out for myself and treated you accordingly?”

A naughty little fizz of excitement lit itself in Ellie’s belly, but she managed to avoid the hip wiggle that would have given her away.

“The latter, I see,” Daniel purred. “Well, I am sure whatever you have in store for me will be interesting.”

“So you’re not here to punish me?”

“I’m here because I wanted to see you,” Daniel said. “You more or less ran away after our last interlude. I’ve been worried about you.”

“You don’t have to worry about me,” Ellie said. “I take care of myself.”

“Take care of yourself by yourself, hmm,” Daniel nodded knowingly. “I would have liked to have given you some proper care. The session isn’t over just because you come.”

“Well, I’m sorry, nobody informed me of the rules of being fucked like an animal,” Ellie replied. She was feeling somewhat lightheaded, though she did not know if it was the wine or Daniel Treville that was more intoxicating.

A broad smile burst across his face. “I suppose I did spring it on you,” he admitted. “But yes, for future reference, it is my habit to take care of my pets.”

“Pets? How many women are you fucking, Daniel?”

“Past tense,” he said.

“Ah, so you’re a serial pervert,” she said, finishing the dregs of her wine and pouring herself another. “You enjoy debasing women.”

“Is that how you felt? Debased?”

She had not felt debased. She had felt wild and free and so fucking horny that just remembering what he’d done to her made her vagina start producing lubrication, but she was not going to tell him that. It was too shameful to admit that being treated like a simple beast turned her on and set her free.

“You didn’t seem debased to me,” he continued when she did not answer his question. “You were hungry for me. You were spirited. You were ecstatic—until you came and realized what you were doing and then all those ideas about who you’re supposed to be and what you’re supposed to like got in the way and made you turn tail and run.”

Ellie stared at him. It was as if someone had handed the man a guidebook to her internal dialog. Was she really that transparent? Or had Daniel simply played this game so many times before that he knew exactly what he was doing?

“That’s ridiculous,” she said, burying herself back in her drink.

“Is it? Is that why you’re jealous at the very idea of me having done that with any woman before you?”

“I’m not jealous,” she lied. “I’m sure you’ve spread yourself far and wide.”

He snorted. “Not quite, Ellie.”

“How many then?”

“How many women have I slept with?”

“How many women have you…?” The question was hard to form, but she asked it between gritted teeth. “…made your pet?”

“You would be the third.”

She hadn’t expected such a straightforward answer.

“And what happened to the other two? Did you send them to the glue factory?”

“Cute,” he said. “Both were when I was in college. It was more of a game back then, nothing like what we have.”

“You had two at the same time?”

“You
are
jealous,” he drawled with that arrogant smile.

“I am not,” she replied quickly. “I don’t care.”

He reached out, took her by the wrist and hauled her close, looking down the length of his nose at her with an intensity that left her momentarily stunned.

“Don’t lie to me, pet,” he drawled softly. “There’s nothing wrong with feeling possessive. I feel possessive of you. It’s only fair you should want to mark your territory too.”

Mark him. Yes. She wanted to mark him. She wanted to see his skin blush the way hers did. The invitation reached out to a part of her he probably did not intend to trigger and she reached up with her palm open and slapped him across the face hard enough to make her fingers sting. A perfect set of fingerprints appeared on his left cheek.

He let out his breath in a hiss, his eyes narrowing as his grip on her other wrist tightened. “That was a mistake, my feral little pet.”

“You said I could mark you.”

“Then let me return the favor, kitten.”

In short order Ellie found herself staring at her rug, dangling face down over Daniel’s thighs as he once more prepared to discipline her for her sins. His hand came down once, twice on her jean-clad rear before he let out a little grunt and tried to take her jeans off. She felt his hand slide under her hips and attempt to release the fly of her jeans. It would not budge, no matter how much he pulled.

“Stand up,” he said, frowning.

She did so with a smirk on her face, enjoying his confusion as he tussled with her jeans.

“What’s going on here?” He muttered the question almost to himself as he became more frustrated at their refusal to comply with the urging of his fingers.

She let out a little giggle, but tried to hide it behind her hand.

“Ellie,” he said in a low timbre. “Have you super glued your jeans shut?”

Ellie’s laugh burst through her fingers.

“You little brat!”

He stood up, bent down and tossed her over his shoulder. Ellie giggled the whole way as he carried her to her kitchen and started looking through the drawers, presumably for a pair of scissors.

“You think this is funny, huh, kitten?” He laid a heavy swat on her seat. “Where are the scissors?”

“I’m not telling you!” she laughed.

“Alright, well, this will do instead, I guess.”

A second later, a blazing heat shot through her bottom, accompanied by a sound like a pistol crack. Ellie let out a squeal and craned her head around to see that he had a wooden spoon in his hand.

“That’s not fair!”

“It’s about to get a lot less fair too,” Daniel warned as he put the wooden spoon down and picked up a knife that Ellie had ordered off late-night television, having been sold on its ability to cut through shoes. She’d yet to actually cut through a shoe, but she was pretty certain it would make short work of her jeans.

Daniel carried her back to her lounge and tossed her on the couch. “Stay still,” he said grimly, going onto a knee next to her. Ellie froze in place as he slid the blade between the fabric and her skin, keeping pressure on the denim that melted away from the razor-sharp edge with little to no resistance.

He put the knife to the side and tugged her pants down her thighs. Ellie let out a little groan of sorrow, realizing how much trouble she was in now that she was only wearing seven pairs of panties and little else.

“Really, Ellie?” He reached out and snapped the waistband of her uppermost pair of panties. “How many of these do you have on?”

“Enough,” she said, trying for a smirk, which faded under his stern glare.

“Take them off. Now.”

“Daniel…”

“Now!” He barked the order with enough intensity to make her obey. Shoving her fingers underneath the lowest layer of panties, she peeled down the thick multilayers of fabric. They rolled up over her butt cheeks and slid down her legs in one solid chunk of lingerie.

Bare bottomed and vulnerable, Ellie tried to hide her rump, but was unsuccessful. Daniel wasted no time in wrapping an arm around her waist and hauling her back over his thighs. This time it wasn’t his hand meeting her butt; instead it was the infernal wooden spoon blazing across her cheeks with a hot sting that made her wail at the top of her lungs with each and every stroke.

“Quit it! Daniel! It hurts! Stop! Ow! Jesus! Daniel!”

He ignored her pleas and no saviors came to her aid. Ellie had her bottom spanked very long and very hard with an implement that left her cheeks hot and swollen and welted from the first stroke to the last.

She was sobbing by the time he put the spoon down, tears running all over her face thanks to her inverted position. She had squirmed so much and so hard that she was half hanging off the couch, her butt the highest part of her body, two round red peaks that still ached although the spanking had stopped.

“Now,” Daniel said firmly. “You’ve been a little brat over the past week, hiding from me and then trying to avoid what would have been nothing more than a nice little butt warming. Defiance will not serve you, Ellie, nor will testing the boundaries. Do you understand me?”

“I hate you,” she sniffed at the carpet.

“Well, you can hate me, pet,” he said quite calmly. “But you’re going to obey me one way or another. Sitting, or not able to sit. I hope you don’t have any long meetings planned tomorrow.”

Fuck. She did have a meeting—and with the board no less. But at least she would be giving the presentation, which meant she could stand up.

“Are you going to apologize for being a brat, Ellie?”

“No,” she sniffed. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“You did everything wrong,” he corrected, running his palm over her heated bottom. “And you know it. Is this relationship going to devolve into you misbehaving and me spanking your ass?”

“No,” she snarked. “It’s going to devolve into you treating me like an animal. Oh, wait, that already happened.”

“And it’s about to happen again,” he said grimly, gently easing her from his lap to the floor where she ended up kneeling in front of him, just barely keeping her hot naked ass from contacting the backs of her calves. “Look at me, Ellie.”

She shot him a resentful, rebellious glare.

“This doesn’t have to be this hard,” he said gently. “And it doesn’t have to hurt this much either. All you have to do is settle down and stop trying to find ways to get around me.”

Maybe he was right, but Ellie wasn’t ready to surrender yet. Her butt might be bright red, but her spirit was still intact.

Daniel sighed softly and sat back on the couch, shaking his head down at her. He looked incredibly handsome in that moment, if not a little tired. His jacket was slightly askew from his exertions, the buttons on his shirt pulling open here and there to reveal the hard plane of his abdomen. He was lucky he was hot. It was enough of a distraction for Ellie to keep her behavior in check