Forbidden Read online Alta Hensley

Categories Genre: Alpha Male, Romance Tags Authors: Alta Hensley Advertisement

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And I became fully hard right there in the small gallery, in front of God and everyone, so much so that I had to use my coat and try to drape it casually over the front of my pants, and hope no one noticed.

The question that kept throbbing in my mind—and a lot lower—was whether she looked like that just after sex. All relaxed and serene and sated.

I consciously started to touch her more, at first very nonchalantly then much less so, and she hadn’t run away... yet. Although she did manage to look extremely uncomfortable at times, even though she’d never taken me to task for taking any sorts of liberties. She’d never gotten mad, and seemed to melt into my arms when I held her. I had to remember that she was a virgin, a woman who hadn’t yet learned how to communicate her preferences if she even knew what those were. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d dealt with someone so innocent. I tried to be aware of her tender sensibilities and tiptoe gingerly around them as much as possible.

Surprisingly, and much to my enjoyment, the spankings continued. They were getting to be a bit more frequent than I’d expected, but then she would occasionally come up contrary on some things that surprised me. Like the coat. And letting me pay for things. That was the biggest thing. Eventually, it got to the point where all I had to do was give her the look for her to end her protests, but it took several spankings for us to get to that point.

The worst spanking was when I had wanted to take us both down to that museum, especially because I’d gotten to know, after a while, that she loved it so much. I had known her for most of a lifetime, but I’d never known that she was a true artist. I knew she liked to paint, but had always seen it as a hobby or in a much more casual nature. Of course, she’d demurred and tried to denigrate herself and her abilities—for which she got herself another look, but I couldn’t imagine that she could be bad at anything that lit her up so.

She flat out refused to show me any of her paintings, but I was working on that, slowly but surely. Apparently, all of them were in her apartment, and though I often picked her up for our outings, I had yet to be invited inside. But I could be patient when I wanted something.

And I wanted Raychel.

I already loved her platonically, and that had already changed into something I didn’t really recognize any longer. But the change with her was something I welcomed.

We were lazing around my house, watching the Saints play football—which was another thing I liked about Raychel. She not only didn’t get after me for watching football on a Sunday afternoon, she liked it, too, and was more animated while we were watching a game than I’d ever seen her before. She leaned forward and literally screamed at the players worse than any head coach, dancing when they did well and berating them searingly when they didn’t. Considering how calm she was usually, it was amazing to see.

We had a pig-out going, with delivered pizza laden with pepperoni and meatballs, chips, dip, Reese’s peanut butter cups and Ben and Jerry’s. I had been on a stealth mission to fatten her up since I knew how sensitive some women could be about their weight, and had very carefully listened to her tastes, rounding up all of her favorites for that day. A spread of half-eaten food lay before us like wounded soldiers on the battlefield, bleeding mozzarella and caramel chocolate ice cream. My offhand suggestion about us going to Vegas the next weekend was met with the usual resistance, which I had grown used to plowing through.

I didn’t know why she almost always objected to something first, then had to be persuaded to do it, but it was a definite pattern with her. I might have thought that it was a call for attention in another woman, but it seemed very unlikely in Raychel’s case. She tried her best to avoid doing anything that might call attention to her.

Persuasion, though, wasn’t working, and the bone of contention was the usual one—the fact that I had offered to pay for everything, including two rooms at the hotel. I knew that I made probably about a million times what she did—or more. And it didn’t make one bit of difference to me. But then, I could understand her point from the other side of the equation. I couldn’t quite say that, if the roles had been reversed, I wouldn’t be just as stubborn about it. And it was dirty money. I knew she wanted nothing to do with the mafia, and I could only assume that also included money that may or may not cross hands with the mafia.

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