“You keep forgetting I’m not yours.”
His expression darkened, just a little, just enough that I should have shut up, but I kept talking anyway.
“I’m not one of your men,” I continued. “I’m not some asset you moved behind a wall. I’m not your responsibility just because you decided you wanted the job.”
He stood up slowly. I should not have found that as effective as I did.
“I have forgotten none of that,” he said.
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“Then stop acting like you own the right to make decisions for me.”
He stepped closer. I remained seated for a moment, which felt like losing some kind of invisible war, so I stood too.
“Do you want the professional answer or the honest one?” he asked.
“Both.”
“The professional answer is that you are currently under threat from an organized crime network with the resources and motive to kill you, and you are being reckless.”
“And the honest answer?”
His eyes dropped to my mouth once, then back.
“The honest answer is that if you take one more unnecessary risk because you cannot stand not being the one in charge, I will put you over my knee and make sure you remember the difference between bravery and disobedience.”
The room went silent.
Completely.
My body lit up so fast that I couldn’t even attempt to deny it. I just hoped he wouldn’t notice how much of an effect that had on me.
“You did not just threaten to spank me during a work discussion,” I said.
“I did.”
“You’re insane.”
“Possibly.”
My face was hot. My pulse was fluttering like a hummingbird. Every inch of me felt too aware of him, of the space between us, of his hands, of the memory of his mouth and the fact that he had already stopped once because he was trying to be careful.
I wanted him to stop being careful.
I wanted him to be wrong enough that I could leave.
I wanted him to be right enough that I could stay.
“Daddy issues much?” I snapped.
His gaze darkened with want. The word had slipped out before I could stop it.
Daddy.
Ivan moved closer until the edge of the desk pressed lightly against the back of my thighs.
“Careful, solnyshko,” he said softly.
I knew enough Russian to understand that single word from my research into the Orlovs.
It meant ‘little sun.’
My stomach dropped and my thighs clenched. I hated both reactions.
“I’m not calling you Daddy.”
“No.”
“Good.”
“Not until you mean it.”
I stared at him.
The audacity was beyond what I could actually handle right now. I opened my mouth to tell him exactly where he could put that assumption, and he kissed me again.
His hand slid into my hair, not pulling exactly, but gripping enough to hold my head where he wanted it. I made a sound against his mouth that I would later deny in court, and he swallowed it like he had been waiting for it. My hands went to his shoulders, then his neck, then the front of his shirt.
His mouth left mine.
“Tell me to stop.”
I glared at him. “No.”
His eyes darkened.
“That was not the instruction.”
“I know.”
“Kit.”
“If I want you to stop, I’ll say stop.”
He held my gaze, then nodded once.
“Good girl.”
I kissed him again so I wouldn’t have to answer. His hands were on my waist. Mine in his hair. My back against the desk, one of my legs caught between his, the hard line of his body pressed to mine with just enough restraint to make me understand how much of him he was holding back. He kissed my throat once, right beneath my jaw, and my head tipped before I could stop it.
“You like being handled,” he murmured against my skin.
“I like not being analyzed while I’m being kissed.”
His teeth grazed lightly over my pulse and I shivered.
“You like both.”
“Fuck you.”
“Eventually.”
My breath caught. He lifted his head, and the look in his eyes made every thought I had scatter like startled birds.
Not now, that look said.
But not never.
By the time he stepped back, my mouth was swollen, my sweater had slid off one shoulder, and every sensible part of me had abandoned the apartment in protest. Ivan pulled away first, his expression one of abject reluctance.
“I have a call,” he said, voice rougher than before.
“Very professional.”
“It is to my brother, Sergei.”
“Very terrifying.”
“A little.”
He adjusted his glasses, which should not have been hot, but it was for some insane reason.
“I’ll be in the other room,” he said. “Do not do anything reckless.”
I lifted both brows. He looked back at me, his eyes full of warning. Then he walked away.
I stood very still for five seconds.
Then ten.
Then I looked at the door he had disappeared through.
Then at my bag.
This is where a reasonable woman would have sat down, eaten the rest of her perfect food, obeyed the admittedly sound instruction not to take an unsafe route, and accepted that she was, for the moment, safer in Ivan Morozov’s expensive apartment than she was alone in her own.
But… I had never been especially reasonable.
Also, I needed something from my apartment.
Not needed needed.
Needed in the way a person needed one solid object that belonged entirely to her when everything else in her life had started to feel arranged by a man who knew too much and kissed too well.
I had a backup drive at home. A real one. On it was Daniel’s old data set, plus some material I had never moved into the active Orlov file. I had left it because I hadn’t planned on being extracted from my apartment like evidence in a federal case. That was a good reason. There was another reason too.
I wanted to know if Ivan would actually make good on his threat.
I packed quietly, taking my laptop, my phone, and my knife. Ivan’s voice drifted faintly from the other room, low and Russian and I slipped through the front door. I took the elevator down, left through the side entrance, and used a rideshare ordered through a burner account that had never touched my legal name. The entire trip to my apartment, I told myself I was doing something rational. I needed the drive. I needed my own system. I needed to confirm a piece of Daniel’s timeline that had been sitting just outside my reach all day.
My apartment was quiet when I got there. I grabbed the hidden drive and pulled one handwritten note from the bottom of Daniel’s file. I spent no more than five minutes inside. When I returned to Ivan’s apartment, the place was quiet.
Too quiet.
He sat at the desk, his hands folded loosely in front of him. My stomach dropped, but it wasn’t because he looked angry. He didn’t, which somehow was worse. He looked calm.
“Productive trip?” he asked.
I shut the door behind me. The lock engaged automatically, which suddenly felt less like security and more like punctuation.
“What trip?” I asked.
Ivan removed his glasses and set them on the desk. My pulse slammed up into my throat at once.
“Kit.”
Just my name. He didn’t yell or raise his voice or anything like that. He just used that low, absolute tone that made my body remember every stupid thing it had thought in the shower, against his desk, under his hand at my jaw. I lifted my chin, feigning defiance that suddenly felt very risky in that moment.
“I went to my apartment.”
“I know you did.”
“I needed a drive,” I said, my mouth going dry.
“You could have told me.”
“You were on a call.”
“You could have waited.”
“I didn’t want to.”
“No,” he said. “You wanted to see if you could leave.”
“You don’t own me,” I said.
“No.”
“You don’t get to punish me for going to my own apartment.”
“I do not get to punish you for going to your apartment.”
I blinked. That was not the answer I expected. Then he stood up.
I held my ground.
“I get to punish you,” he continued, voice quiet, “for lying to me about it while Orlov men are actively looking for you.”
My pulse beat too fast.
“Ivan—”
“No.”
His gaze moved over my face, not missing a single thing. The anger. The defiance. The pulse hammering beneath my skin. The fact that I could have turned toward the door and didn’t.
“You made a choice,” he said. “Now you will deal with the consequences.”
Every part of my mind objected.
Every part of my body listened.
“This is insane,” I said.
“No.”
“You can’t just decide to spank—”
“I can.”
“Why? Because you’re Bratva?”
“No.”
“Because you’re bigger?”
“No.”
“Because you’re my daddy?” I snapped.
The word crackled through the apartment. There was no taking it back. Ivan’s expression changed so subtly I almost missed it. Heat, dark and immediate, moved behind his eyes.
“Yes,” he said.
He stepped closer.
“I am going to spank you, Kit. Not because you went to your apartment. Not because you wanted something that was yours. I’m going to spank you because you were reckless, because you hid it, and because if you are going to put yourself under my protection, you will not lie to me about things that involve your safety.”
I swallowed and I looked at his hands. They were big. Broad. And entirely too capable of probably stinging a lot on my bare backside. My stomach fluttered with nerves when he moved closer. He took my arm firmly enough that I felt the inevitability of it. He led me to the couch, sat, and pulled me over his knee in one smooth motion before my pride found a way to make the logistics worse.
“Oh, fuck,” I blurted.
This was happening.
Really happening.
I was over Ivan Morozov’s lap, my hands braced against the couch cushion, my stomach pressed across his thigh, my legs angled awkwardly toward the floor. His arm came around my waist, solid and impossible, holding me in place without crushing me. My hair fell forward, and the entire world narrowed to the couch fabric beneath my palms, the heat of his body beneath mine, and the humiliating reality that I was about to get the first spanking of my life whether I liked it or not.
“You lied to me and put yourself at risk, didn’t you, little girl?”
My face burned red hot.
Every inch of me burned, actually.
Especially when his fingers went to the waistband of my leggings.
My whole body tensed.
“Yes,” I whispered hoarsely.
Without another word, he drew my leggings down slowly, not yanking, but not fumbling either. Inch by inch, the fabric slid over my hips, and humiliation flared hot up my spine as cool air touched the backs of my thighs. My panties were still in place. They were black. Simple. Definitely not chosen for this because no sane person chose underwear anticipating a Bratva boss would put her over his knee for lying after she snuck out of his apartment.
Then his fingers hooked into those too and my breath left me.
“Ivan, wait!”
“Yes?”
“Please let me keep them up.”
“No.”
That shut me up so completely it was almost offensive.
He pulled my panties down. It took maybe a second, but it felt like ages as the waistband of my underwear dragged down my cheeks, baring me slowly inch by inch until they were down completely.
My ass was bare over his lap.
The words formed in my head with unbearable clarity.
I was bare over Ivan Morozov’s lap.
Waiting for a spanking.
My first real spanking.
I had made jokes about consequences. I had fantasized under hot water and pretended that was my body being a weird little chemical disaster. I had taunted him with ‘Daddy’ like a weapon. None of that prepared me for the actual vulnerability of this moment: my leggings and underwear pulled down, my face hot, my hands gripping the couch, his palm resting lightly on my bare bottom like he owned the right to put it there and I thought that maybe, just maybe, in this moment, he did.
“This is for leaving without telling me,” he said.
His voice was steady. Mine was not.
“I came back though,” I tried.
“And for thinking coming back erased the risk.”
“I wasn’t gone long.”
“And also for deciding the length of the risk mattered more than the lie.”
“I needed the drive.”
“And finally for using a true statement to avoid the real one.”
His hand lifted and I felt the absence of his touch for a split second before the first smack landed. The sound of it cracked loudly through the apartment.
So did the sting.
His palm was big and firm, and the impact bloomed over my left cheek in a hot, shocking burst that seemed to travel everywhere at once. My whole body jerked, I gasped, and his arm tightened around my waist, keeping me in place.
“Oh, my God,” I said.
“No,” Ivan replied calmly. “Just Daddy.”
The second smack landed on the other cheek, just as hard, just as stinging. Heat flared. My toes curled against the floor. My hands dug into the couch.
This was not like fantasy.
Fantasy had been manageable because fantasy let me control the camera angle. Fantasy let me skip the humiliating logistics, the burning sting, the awkward vulnerability, the terrible awareness that each smack made my body remember exactly why I was there.
His hand fell again.
And again.
Alternating cheeks. Hard enough that the sting built instead of fading. Hard enough that by the six or seventh smack, I started worrying about what was happening.
I was being spanked.
Really spanked.
That thought kept repeating with every crack of his hand against my naked cheeks.
I, Kit Calloway, who treated every system as compromised and every man as potentially useless until proven otherwise, was over Ivan Morozov’s knee getting my bare ass spanked because I had lied to him and put myself at risk.
The humiliation should have eclipsed everything else.
It did not.
Heat gathered low in my body, terrible and insistent, tangled with the sting until I could not separate punishment from arousal, outrage from relief. His hand was so big it seemed to cover an entire cheek with each smack. The sound was loud enough to make me flinch before the sting arrived. He did not rush. He did not let my squirming change his pace.
He just spanked me.
For real.
His hand started coming down harder and I yelped, which was embarrassing.
So was the next one.
And the next.
The spanking shifted from shocking to painful somewhere around the time he focused on the lower curve of my cheeks and then the backs of my thighs, where the sting bit sharper and sank deeper. I kicked once before I could stop myself, and he trapped my legs with one of his, holding me so effortlessly that my struggle became less escape attempt and more proof that escape was not currently on the table.
“I’m sorry,” I snapped, furious that the words had come out at all.
“No, you are angry.”
“I’m both.”
His hand paused and the sudden absence made the sting feel hotter.
“Then say it properly, little girl.”
I breathed hard. The room blurred slightly around the edges. My ass burned under his hand, and my pride was somewhere on the floor, probably taking notes for revenge.
“I’m sorry I left without telling you,” I said through clenched teeth.
“And?”
I glared at the couch cushion while his palm rested on my heated skin.
Waiting.
Patient bastard.
“I’m sorry I lied when you asked.”
“And?”
“There’s more?”
His hand lifted.
“No, wait—” I said, but the next smack landed anyway, low and sharp enough that I squeaked like an idiot.
“Yes,” he said. “There’s more, naughty girl.”
I breathed through the sting.
I was very aware of my bare bottom. Very aware of his thigh under me. Very aware that my eyes had actually gone wet now, which was unacceptable and also maybe the point.
“I’m sorry I used the drive as an excuse because I wanted to prove I could leave. I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you. I’m just sorry.”
His hand settled again.
“Say it properly, little girl,” he said again.
I stalled for a moment. I knew what he wanted, but I didn’t want to say it. I also knew that my spanking would probably continue if I didn’t give him what he wanted and my bottom was already burning like I had sat down on a hot frying pan. I swallowed hard and opened my mouth two or three times before the words came out.
“I’m sorry… Daddy,” I finally whispered in a voice so low that it was hardly audible.
“Good girl,” he said.
My breath hitched.
Damn him.
Damn him for the words, for his firm hand, for the fact that some part of me had been waiting for this exact thing without ever admitting it.
“Now that we’ve reached an understanding, little girl, Daddy is going to finish the punishment you’ve earned.”
“Wait!”
He didn’t wait.
He just started spanking me again.
Much harder than before.
He didn’t stop for a long time, not until my eyes were hot and my backside was hotter, I was breathing hard and tears were streaming down my face, and I was one very, very sorry little girl.
Finally, he rested his palm against my left cheek.
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” I said again, this time with a pitiful sniffle as a tear trailed down my cheek. I tried not to think about that fact that calling him Daddy came much more easily this time.
“I know, solnyshko,” he said.
His hand moved down, just glancing against my inner thighs. I sucked in a breath.
“You took your spanking like such a good girl. Now, though, you’re going to come for Daddy.”
His fingers found the wet heat between my legs, and I made a sound that would have been deeply embarrassing in any other universe.
“Daddy—”
“Hush,” he said, and his voice had dropped with that specific firm quality that would make my knees unreliable for weeks.
His fingers moved, slowly at first.
I dug my fingers into the couch cushion and told myself very firmly that this was part of the punishment, or maybe it was a reward, and then I stopped telling myself anything because the pads of his fingers pressed exactly where they needed to and the argument fell apart completely.
He was thorough.
Very thorough.
So thorough that I was on the edge of orgasm in an embarrassingly short amount of time.
He didn’t let me come. Not right away. Ivan did nothing carelessly, and this was no exception. He read me with the same attention he brought to everything in his life. He paid attention to the small sounds I couldn’t stop making, the shift of my hips, the way my breathing broke apart when he found the right angle, and he adjusted without theater or self-congratulation. It was just the work of a man who had decided my pleasure was a thing he was going to get right every time.
“Please—please, please, Daddy,” I moaned, and I was going to be furious about using that word when his fingers were stroking my clit later, but right now, I just wanted more.
I wanted to come.
“Good girl,” he said softly. “Now let go and come for Daddy. Unless you need Daddy to take his belt to your cute little ass first.”
And that was it.
The orgasm hit me like a tsunami, rolling through me in waves that started somewhere very deep and kept going past every boundary I had tried to draw between my body and my current situation. I pressed my face into the cushion and shook and screamed and moaned. I did not manage to be quiet about it.
He held me through it. All of it.
I came so much harder than any of the times in the shower. Heat rolled through me as my inner walls fluttered over and over again, until the pleasure finally crested and started to ebb. My breath pulled in and out of my lungs in frantic gasps as one aftershock after another tore through me.
When my orgasm finally ended, his hand stilled, gentle now, and his other hand rested warm and steady on my back. I lay there for a moment, breathing hard, my ass stinging fiercely, my face hot, my body confused enough to deserve its own incident report. I expected him to let me up right away.
He didn’t.
He just held me there, my vulnerable red ass still in the air.
I tried very hard not to think about how hard I’d come after getting my bare bottom spanked like a naughty little girl.
I also tried not to think about him taking his belt to my ass too.
I failed on both accounts.
His palm rested on my lower back, warm and steady, while the other drew my panties and leggings back up with more care than I was prepared to survive emotionally. The fabric brushing over my punished skin made me hiss. He did not apologize, but I hadn’t expected him to.
Eventually, he helped me sit up. I moved too fast and immediately regretted it because my bottom protested with a hot, stinging reminder of what had just happened. For a few seconds, we sat too close on his expensive couch while my eyes dried, my ass burned, and my entire understanding of myself tried to quietly leave town under an assumed name.
“You actually spanked me,” I pouted.
He looked at me.
“Yes. But you and I both know you earned it, didn’t you, little girl?”
“Yes,” I pouted.
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, Daddy,” I whispered, biting my lip nervously.
“There’s my good girl.”