The Gilded Cuff Read Online Free

making her clit pulse. How could she refuse?
    “Uh…permission to speak?”
    “You will call me Sir, or Master Emery.”
    “Sir,” Sophie corrected. She wanted to kick herself. She had read enough about this lifestyle that she should have remembered to address him formally, but in all honesty the way he was looking at her—like something he wanted to eat—she couldn’t remain entirely rational.
    “Permission to speak granted.” Emery’s voice dropped into a softer tone, approval warming his hazel eyes.
    “What happens to me, Sir? Only one of you can win.”
    Royce shared a glance with Emery.
    “She’s a smart one, this little sub. Well, Emery? What do you think?”
    Both men focused their intense gazes on her. It took everything in her not to look away.
    “Punishment by the one who loses. But what form? Flogging?” Royce suggested.
    Sophie flinched.
    “No whips,” Emery seemed to conclude, his eyes reading her tiniest reaction.
    Emery ran a palm over his jaw, which was shadowed with night stubble. The look gave him a rugged edge, reminding her of the men back home in Kansas.
    The tension in the crowd seemed to heighten as the subject of punishment continued. Emery continued to stare at her, his eyes seemingly unlocking the puzzle she presented. “She’s new. Why not a spanking?” he murmured softly.
    That caught her attention. Her clit thrummed to life, pulsing in a faint beat along with her heart. The twinge of uncomfortable pain in her knees was temporarily abated by this new distraction. Her eyes immediately settled on Emery’s large, capable hands. She could practically feel the width of his palm striking her bottom…Trouble. She was in so much trouble.
    “Definitely spanking.” Emery smiled. “My favorite form of punishment. It will be a disappointment when you come in my arms, and I shall have to allow Royce the pleasure of laying his palm to your flesh.”
    “Cocky bastard,” Royce retorted. “She might resist you. I bet she’s far less submissive than she looks, and given her clothes, far too self-conscious to come in front of people. When I win, you’ll owe me your best case of bourbon.”
    Her knees were aching, pain flaring like sharp little needles through her skin and deep into her bones. She shifted on them, trying to favor one over the other, and then hastily switched, but it didn’t help. There was no way she was going to make it much longer on her knees.
    Emery’s hazel eyes lit up with the challenge. “Like hell! When she comes, and she will, you’ll owe me your best case of scotch.”
    As the men continued to posture and argue, Sophie sat back on her heels, her knees aching something fierce. Like metal rods were jabbing up between her knees into her nerves.
    Screw this. I’m getting up. Surging to her feet, she breathed a sigh of relief as blood flow pumped through her legs.
    The people gathered around her gasped. Both men stopped arguing and turned to face her, gazes dark with anger. It wasn’t the lethal sort of anger she’d come across before, not like the murderers she’d interviewed for her crime stories. That anger was a terrifying anger, pure hatred. It rolled off those criminals in waves. The kind of anger that truly good people never felt, it was the sort of rage that consumed the soul and blackened the heart until only a killing machine was left its place.
    With Royce and Emery, however, it was merely the anger of a parent or a mentor at a charge who’d clearly disobeyed a direct order. She knew the outcome. Punishment. She could read it on their faces, and it aroused them both. Hell, it aroused her.
    “You weren’t given permission to rise.” Emery spoke slowly, as though trying to decide whether he would give her a chance to apologize or to just skip straight to the punishment.
    Even as she opened her mouth she knew it was a bad idea.
    “My knees hurt. This isn’t carpet; it’s rock. Hard rock.”
    Emery’s jaw dropped. The people around them stepped