Chapter Seven
Ethan
“Get rid of her.” Jack swings his chair toward me the minute Forsyth leads her out of the room.
“What do you mean?” I know exactly what he means, but I want to make him say it. When we started Vipyr in his mother’s basement, we had big dreams. Very big dreams. We’ve achieved most of them, but we’ve paid a price along the way. There’s no such thing as an innocent billionaire. We know what we’ve done. But there are limits, and what he’s talking about is a hard limit of mine.
“I mean find someone who makes people go away, and have them have her go away,” he hisses. “Jesus, Ethan, you could be fucking supermodels. Why the hell are you wasting your time on that ugly…”
“I’m going to stop you right there.” My voice is cold. My hand is clenched. Casey may not be a supermodel, but there is more to a woman than superficial beauty, in my view at least. Not Jack’s. To Jack, the world is nothing but a bunch of barely sentient animated flesh puppets only good for being drained of their dollars. That’s not what I think of him. That’s a direct quote from the man himself.
Casey thinks I’m a sociopath. It’s possible that I am, but even so I have absolutely nothing on Jack. He is the real deal.
He rolls his eyes at me. “Jesus, Ethan. I take one vacation and you’re letting everything go to shit. She’s made you soft.”
“What’s gone to shit, precisely? Our stock is up three points.”
“And what’s it going to do when your fuck doll opens her mouth? I saw the email she sent. I know what she’s threatening us with. She needs to be removed from play.”
I hold back the impulse to get physically aggressive with him for calling her a fuck doll. “She’s not going to do that. I’m dealing with her. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“You’re not dealing with her. You’re fucking her. And when you fuck women, you fall for them. Remember that stripper, freshman year?”
I grit my teeth. “The one you knocked up and forced to get an abortion?”
“Oh, right, that was me,” he smirks. “Well, whatever. My point stands.”
We were both assholes back then. We are both still assholes. But Jack is right in one regard. Casey has had an effect on me. I’ve only known her two days, but seeing myself through her eyes has made me want to be a better man. There’s part of me that wants to be the good guy. Her good guy. I don’t know if I can ever be that man, but I know I want to move toward it.
Jack and I are as rich as any man needs to be, and then some. We don’t need to keep acting like it’s still 1996 and we need to cut throats to get where we want to be. Back then, it was metaphorical violence, but there’s nothing metaphorical about what he wants to do to Casey.
Jack should know better than to talk to me this way, but his ego was always more inflated than mine. In the very early days, he was the driving force behind Vipyr’s rise through the ranks. Now we need a steady hand. Someone who understands power, but isn’t drunk on it. In his more rational moments, Jack knows that. It’s why he spends three quarters of the year on vacation while I run the company. I’m sufficiently ruthless to keep us afloat. At this point, Jack’s methods only hinder us.
“She’s mine,” I say calmly, but firmly. “And I’m handling her. Go to Venice or Monte Carlo or somewhere and stop worrying about it.”
Jack taps his fingers against the dinner table, where the remnants of Casey’s chicken cool on her plate. “I think I’m going to stick around for a bit on this one. Make sure nothing goes wrong.”
I can’t stop him from staying in the city. I don’t actually own San Francisco, as much as some people might say I do. Power is more limited than people imagine it to be. Unless you’re Jack, and you just don’t care.
This company isn’t really big enough for the two of us anymore. Used to be, when it took the both of us working full time just to get our heads above water. Now we’re in maintenance mode. But Jack’s getting bored and it’s starting to show. You can’t go on vacation forever. I’m going to have to find something for him to do, to keep him out of my hair and distract him from his murderous designs on Casey.
“I will tell you something, Jack,” I say, keeping my voice conversational. “If so much as a hair on Casey’s head is hurt, things are going to go very, very wrong, very, very quickly. If you’re worried about what her talking would do to our stock price, it would be nothing to what would happen if something happened to her.”
His brows dip at the threat, but I know he respects displays of strength. He and I have gone toe to toe enough times in the past to know that neither one of us will back down when we mean something.
“Jesus,” he swears under his breath. “You’ve got it bad. This is like that Christian girl in Hawaii.”
“Again, that was you.”
“Ah,” he smirks. “Fine. Keep your girl. Just keep her on a short leash. Literally if you have to.”
“I don’t need your permission, Jack,” I remind him.
“Uh huh.” He stands up. “I’ll be around more often. Help keep an eye on things.”
I really wish he wouldn’t, but I can hardly tell my business partner to fuck off. Jack has as much to lose as I do, and he knows it.
“See you around, Jack.”
He gives me a casual wave and heads back out to where he came from. I go looking for Casey.
Keeping Casey on a short leash isn’t easy. And as much as I’ve come to be thoroughly irritated by Jack most of the time, his suggestion of putting her on a literal one isn’t a bad idea. If she keeps her rebellion up, it might just come to that.
Forsyth has managed to get her to her room without issue. As I go up the stairs, I can hear from a distance that Casey is doing what she loves to do: argue.
“In the library,” she’s saying. “With the candlestick.”
Mocking him using Clue references. Nice touch, but I make sure I’m not smiling when I walk into the room.
Forsyth is unimpressed. She took an instant dislike to him the minute she got here and the feeling is probably mutual, though Forsyth has the professional self-control not to show it.
“That’s enough,” I say, intervening. “Stop tormenting the man.”
She shoots one of her ‘aha’ looks at me, the ones she gives me when she thinks she’s realized she has something useful on me. She now thinks she can get leverage by acting out with Forsyth. Time to knock that idea on the head.
“I’ll give the man a cane and let him whip your rear for insolence,” I threaten.
She pales. I’d never let anyone else besides me so much as touch her, but she doesn’t know that, and it’s probably better she doesn’t. As far as pecking order goes in this house, at the moment she’s right at the bottom. Her attempts to bully Forsyth are attempts to get control, because my sweet Casey doesn’t like being low on the totem pole, not at all.
That’s another thing she doesn’t seem to know about herself. She’s a dominant little bitch. She thinks she likes to be independent, but really she just likes being on top. That’s why she takes so much offense to me. Because she’ll never be on top where I’m concerned.
“Do you want a spanking right now?” I let my voice drop into a paternal register. She blushes and starts to squirm.
“No,” she whimpers, her face as red as her ass should be. I should pull her panties down and spank her in front of him. I will if she doesn’t roll over and show me her belly like a good girl.
“Then apologize to Forsyth. And make it a good one.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Forsyth,” she says through gritted teeth, her face getting redder with every passing moment.
“No,” I insist. “That’s not how you apologize. You look him in the eye and you say it nicely, like you mean it.”
“But I don’t,” she mutters under her breath.
I don’t care if she’s sorry or not. I don’t even particularly care if she wants to annoy Forsyth. What I do care about is making her feel, to her core, how very much mine she is. Sometimes I do that by holding her down and fucking her until she drools and begs for mercy. And sometimes I do it like I’m doing now, by not letting her get away with a single thing.
“Casey!” I snap her name. “You are two seconds away from being over my knee. Apologize properly. Now.”
Her face turns a perfect crimson. Then she looks at me, not Forsyth, and seals her butt’s doom.
“No.”
She thinks she’s upset me by defying me. But I can’t stop the smile that spreads on my face, because she’s just given me exactly what I want. I love her defiance and her fire. I love it when she needs me to make a point, show her why she’s such a bad little girl.
I grab her wrist, sit down on the bed, and yank her over one thigh. She tumbles forward with a whine of complaint, her perfect ass high over my knee as she kicks her legs in instinctive protest. Her skirt flips up without my doing a thing, another traitor to her cause, presenting the pristine underwear that is pulled snugly over her bottom. I catch her flailing legs with my other leg, close my thighs around hers like a vise so she’s stuck, palms on the floor, ass up nice and high. Perfect.
Her first night here, she called my home an oversized dollhouse. Now she’s my doll. I dress her up as I please, I play with her when it takes my fancy, and I discipline her when she’s naughty too.
Forsyth knows better than to leave when I’m making a point. He’s standing in the same place he was from the beginning, looking on with what I am sure he would like me to believe is professional disinterest, but if I know the man as well as I think I do, seeing Casey get spanked is a reward he will appreciate.
“You had your chance to avoid this,” I lecture as she squirms against my grip, letting out insolent little whimpers and grumbles. “All you had to do was apologize, but you wanted to play the brat again, and what happens to bratty girls?”
I know she’s not going to answer me. Too much pride. I don’t mind her pride. You can’t have shame without pride, so it suits me perfectly for her to try desperately to save face, even though hers is currently facing the carpet.
I run my hand over the smooth fabric of her panties, and bring it down in a hard, crisp swat that catches both cheeks.
“They get spanked,” I say as she lets out a little gasp of pain. “They get spanked long and hard, don’t they, Casey.”
Without waiting for her to reply, I start spanking her long and hard. My hand meets her perfect, soft ass at least a dozen times before I give her a break. I can already see a little rim of pink around the outside of her panties where I’ve caught the unprotected skin.
“Ready to make a proper apology yet, Casey?”
“No! Fuck you!”
There it is, the defiant stage of the spanking. She’s so embarrassed to be in this position and she thinks if she can just resist it, she might be able to handle it. She’s wrong. I will push her through this phase and long past it, until she’ll say whatever I want her to say, do whatever I want her to do.
Without another word, I start spanking her again. Long and hard, my palm whipping against her insolent cheeks until her toes drum against the carpet and she lets out a wail that tells me she’s very close to crying. Spanking her is some of the most fun I’ve had in a long time, the way her hot little ass absorbs the swats, jiggling under my palm, her softness totally at the mercy of my hard hand.
It’s even more enjoyable because she needs it. Deserves it. She went out of her way to earn herself this punishment. She knows better than to taunt Forsyth, and she knows a darn sight better than to defy me. But she did both, and she doubled down, and now her sweet little ass is mine to make as hot and pink as I can.
“You ready to say sorry now, Casey?”
I hear a little gasping whimper, and feel the answer in the softness of her body before I hear it.
“…yes.”
Too quiet.
“What was that, Casey?”
I rub my hand over her bottom, feel the heat coming off her cheeks. When I peel these panties down, I know there’s going to be quite a sight beneath them.
“I’m sorry,” she whimpers. I almost feel sorry for her. The transformation from utterly defiant little madam to subdued, almost submissive young lady is quite dramatic, and it comes at the cost of the comfort of her ass.
“A proper apology,” I insist. “Tell Forsyth you’re sorry you were rude, and you’ll be more polite in the future.”
She lets out a little plaintive whimper, but begins to haltingly mumble her way through the apology. Still not good enough, I’m afraid.
A sold smack to her bottom makes her yelp.
“Again, Casey. And properly this time.”
“I’m sorry for being rude, Mr. Forsyth,” she says, her voice cracking with tears.
“Quite alright, young lady,” he says, accepting her apology. It’s not as good as I personally would have liked. I’m sure we could do better, but he seems satisfied and I am done with him for this portion of her punishment.
“Thank you, Forsyth,” I say. “You can get on with your duties.”
He nods and glides from the room, leaving me and my miscreant alone together. She has no choice but to stay nicely in place as he leaves, and I’m certainly not letting her up yet. We are not done.
There’s a tell-tale patch, a little sliver where the red material is starting to darken along the line of her slit. She’s aroused. She can’t help it. Her pride leads to her shame, and her shame leads her to arousal. I don’t think she understands her reactions at all, which only makes it more delicious to casually sweep a finger along that little slit of hers, feel the tremor of desire run through her body, and hear the moan she tries to swallow unsuccessfully before it escapes her mouth
“Was it so hard to say sorry?” I murmur the question, playing my finger lightly over that silky slit of hers.
“Yes,” she whimpers. She’s still crying, but her hips are also trying to rise to my finger. As sorry as she’s feeling for herself right now—and I’m sure that’s the only kind of sorry she’s feeling at all—she can’t help how horny she is.
Casey was made for a man like me. She’s smart enough not to bore me, spirited enough to keep me interested, defiant enough to give me something to do, and she responds to all my twisted traits that would ruin another woman by converting them to raw desire.
She’s perfect, and I am more in love with her than I have ever been with any woman. But she doesn’t love me. Not yet, at least. And maybe she never will. Maybe the scorn she has for me will outweigh the desire forever. Right now though, in this moment, she wants me. And that is enough.
I tease her, using those silk panties like a toy as I pinch the gusset just above her clit and roll her lips gently between my fingers, feeling how soft and puffy they are. She started getting wet the second I so much as mentioned the word spanking, and now she’s soaked.
Slowly, the tears stop and her hips start to roll. Instead of whimpers, I hear moans, which become more guttural as her desire grows. I’m doing nothing but teasing her, sliding my fingers down the length of her slit, rubbing over the silk. It’s not enough to make her come, or even get her close, but it’s more than enough to make her crave my cock.
I’ve come to be very intimate with her cues, the little sighs, the sinuous motions she makes when she wants me. But she’s not going to get me. Not yet. I want to keep her on the edge until she begs. I want it to come from her.
Her panties are nice and slippery, the wetness spreading into a much wider, darker patch. I work my fingers over her sex in tantalizing motions, letting the pad of a finger slip down and run a slow circle around her clit.
“Do you want me to fuck you, Casey?”
I purr the question down at her, already knowing the answer.
“Yes,” she moans.
“Well,” I say, rubbing her little bud a few last times. “Next time, be a good girl.”
Her wail as I slide her off my lap and onto the bed makes me smile. She wanted my cock. I could probably have her beg for it if I wanted to toy with her even more, but she has been fucked enough for one day, and I have business to attend to now that Jack is around.
“You fucking asshole,” she grumbles as I step away. I know she’s going to be pushing her hand between her thighs as soon as I’m gone, rubbing herself to the climax I’m not going to reward her bad behavior with.
“Good night, Casey. Sleep tight.”