The following morning I rose early, walked out to the stream that ran down from the mountains past our village, and dunked my head in it. Partly, this was to cool my hangover, partly, because I had already drunk all the water in the house. I had definitely had one too many the night before. Maybe more than one. Had I behaved badly? Maybe I could have been a bit more sensitive, but the guys had had it coming, courting all those girls’ attentions. They were surely as bad as me – I knew they had as little intention of staying with any of those girls as I had of marrying any of the boys I danced with. This wasn’t my fault, they had had it coming.

As I dried my hair, I glanced up towards the crags and my eye caught a figure, standing on one of the rocks, silhouetted against the blue sky. At first, I thought it must be a bandit and my blood ran cold, but then, as the figure moved, I recognized Luca. Even at this distance, the way the mercenaries moved – like animals on the hunt – had become familiar to me. Now I thought back, I vaguely recalled Taka saying something about posting a watch overnight to ensure the bandits could not creep up on us.

Suddenly, I was overcome with a desire to see Luca, to speak to him, to ask him why he had glared at me so unpleasantly the night before, and to justify his behavior, which I felt had been very rude in the face of the hospitality that my village had offered.

With a purposeful tread, I started up the slope, heading for the crags.

Even as I walked, and as much as I tried to push the thought to the back of my mind, I was aware that my reason for wanting to see Luca was, at best, only half the story. I was as attracted to him as I was to Taka, Rex and Kai, and that attraction was only made sharper by the fact that I had not slept with him and, more strangely, by his distaste for me, which had been evident from the moment we met. Seeing his hatred leveled at me last night, burning from his blue eyes, had ignited something primal inside me that now clamored to be satisfied. I was going to have it out with Luca, but I was also going to get some time alone with him and… It was stupid, because I knew how this would end, with all four of them riding out of my life, but I could not help myself.

It was a long walk from the village up into the crags where I had sighted Luca, but my desire seemed to sharpen the longer it took. When I found him, he was seated in an oval hollow of rock that rose around him.

“Heard you coming a mile off.”

“I wasn’t trying to creep up on you,” I replied, tartly. “What are you doing here?”

Luca indicated the surrounding rock. “It’s a natural sound chamber. If I stand out high on the rocks, then I can see your bandits coming but they can see me, too. Here, I can hear them coming and they don’t know it.”

I nodded. “Do you mind if I sit with you awhile?”

He snorted. “You can do whatever the hell you want. Seems like that’s what you always do.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I saw you with those poor men last night.”

“Poor men?” What the hells? “They were very happy, I can assure you.”

Luca shook his head. “They were happy to dance with you. I doubt they were so happy to see you move on to someone else like you didn’t give two shits about them. You’re a little prick-teaser, aren’t you?”

“And what about you with the girls?” I snapped back.

“What girls?”

That was fair. Luca had been the one who had been on his own. I tried to rally. “Well, it doesn’t matter, because what I do is my own affair and it’s got nothing to do with you.”

He nodded, turning his head away from me. “Very true. You rub up against as many men as you like, it’s no skin off my nose.”

“You’re just jealous.”

His head snapped back. “Jealous?”

“You’ve wanted me since the moment you saw me.” I sidled towards him, swaying my hips provocatively. “That’s why you’ve acted like such a shit towards me. Like a little boy pulling a girl’s hair and running away.”

“I’m the one behaving like a child?” Luca scoffed. “While you’re acting like a hormonal teenager, flirting with anyone with a cock. Batting your eyelashes and running away.”

I know it shouldn’t have, but every insult just made me want him more. My heart was pounding in my ears, blood rushing hotly to my erogenous zones as I sat next to him, looking him in the eyes. “Am I flirting with you Luca? Is that what I’ve been doing? Am I making you uncomfortable?”

I could hear his breathing now, short and hard as he fought against his own desire. I could see it in his eyes. I didn’t know why he was fighting against it, but I knew that he wanted me as much as I desperately wanted him, and he couldn’t fight forever. There was only one way this was going to go.

Lunging forward, I kissed Luca, and for a moment I felt his hands on me, pulling me roughly against him, his mouth opening and his tongue pushing into my mouth. For that moment, my body sang with delight – it was going to happen.

But in the next moment, he pushed me away, as angry at his own desire and his own weakness as he was at me.

“Don’t mistake me for one of the others. You can snow all of them to get your kicks, but not me. Don’t you ever think of anyone but yourself? You grind up against all those guys last night, and this morning you throw yourself at me. You think that’s a nice way to treat men? I’ve known plenty of women like you before and there’s a word for them. It’s not prick-teaser, it’s whore.”

I slapped him before I had even thought about it. Harder than I had ever slapped anyone. Perhaps I didn’t know my own strength, or perhaps it was anger that made me strong, but I smacked Luca’s face hard enough to make his head turn, hard enough to leave a sharp red mark.

Luca met my angry gaze. “Fucking village girls. You’re all the same.”

“What do you…” Before I could get the words out, he had grabbed me and pulled me down over his lap, dragging my skirt up out of his way.

Luca’s hand came down sharply on my right butt cheek and, before I could gasp, it came back up, catching the left from underneath, hard enough to leave a handprint.

I let out a howl but that did nothing to stop him.

Pinning my arm firmly behind my back, Luca set about giving me a spanking I would not soon forget, lecturing me as his hand rose and fell.

“This,” whack, “is for every boy,” whack, “you’ve led on, fooled around with, and ignored the next day.” Whack. “For every time you’ve played,” whack, “the prick-teaser.” whack. “Boys,” whack, “have,” whack, “feelings,” whack, “too.”

He had already passed the thirteen strokes I had gotten from Taka, and showed no sign of stopping. And that was not the only way he differed. While Taka had been holding back, Luca was using every bit of his impressive strength to turn my ass cheeks into a ball of stinging pain.

Taka had applied his hand to the same spot, at the same rate, and the same velocity, which meant that spot hurt like hell, but at least made it predictable. Luca’s blows landed all over my backside; on the higher slopes where I could more or less bear it, or as far south as my thighs, making me yip with shock. He spanked round the sides as well, to my hips, though his sweet spot was the tenderest area where buttock meets thigh, which he had quickly worked up to a blazing heat. Likewise, his pace was variable, sometimes landing three or four smacks in quick succession so I could barely breathe, other times leaving a long gap so he could wind up and really wallop my poor bum. The force varied a little with speed and accuracy, but my overriding impression was that Luca was going as hard as he could.

But the big difference was his mood. Taka had been all calmness, simply administering a well-deserved punishment. Luca was angry. He was angry at me, he was angry at himself, and he was angry at something else, the source of which I did not know – and now was not the time to ask – but all that pent-up fury came crashing down on the small oval of fleshy real estate known as my ass. With all that loathing concentrated on my guilty backside, there was nothing I could do to stop my mouth. I squeaked, I squealed, I ‘oohed’, ‘aahed’ and ‘owed’, I wailed and whooped, I made noises I had only heard from bears during the mating season.

Of course, the other big difference was that Luca didn’t stop. I hadn’t thought to count, but we had to be up past twenty now and if he was taking pity on me, there was no sign of it. It seemed that he would only stop when he became tired or his hand – which surely had to smart almost as much as my bottom – hurt too much, and since he was a mercenary, used to hard labor and with a high tolerance for pain, I could guess he wasn’t stopping anytime soon.

And I didn’t want him to.

Well… that wasn’t entirely true. My bottom very much wanted him to stop, it felt like every inch of ass cheek was on fire, as if it could get no hotter, and then with every merciless smack, it did. But as it had with Taka, the pain came with a sharp edge of pleasure, and if the pain was the price I had to pay for that wicked thrill, then bring it on, more and harder. From the first crack of Luca’s hand on my defenseless behind, my body had been awash with ecstatic juices bubbling inside me.

The sensation of his firm, masculine hand disciplining my soft cheeks set my nerves tingling with excitement. My pussy was running with moisture, as hot as my ass, and I wriggled eagerly against my punisher, delighting in the friction. The spanking hurt – damn how it hurt! – but it was a good hurt. I deserved it, I wanted it, I needed it, and as my body churned with excitement, I wondered if I might come through spanking alone. If ever I was going to, then this was the time. Luca’s hand cracked noisily down on my bum again, making me writhe against him. He showed no sign of stopping.

Until he did.

I craned back to look over my shoulder, struggling to get my breath back, and saw Luca, hand in the air, poised to unleash more delicious hell on my bright red ass cheeks, but his face was clearly somewhere else.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, perhaps sounding a little disappointed.

Luca shoved me unceremoniously off his lap. “Hoofbeats.”

“Bandits?”

“Come on.”

He led the way, but I noticed that as he moved, he readjusted the front of his tunic, attempting to hide the impressive erection he had developed while disciplining me. For my part, now that the lovely feel of Luca’s hand on me was gone, my whaled backside just hurt. Worse than that, was the churning feeling of unfulfillment that roiled inside of me. I was so turned on that a kiss from Luca probably would have sent me over the top.

But I shook such thoughts from my heat-clouded mind. None of that mattered – not even I was that selfish. The bandits were coming, and one way or another, the next hour was going to be a pivotal one in the history of my village.