“It’s what I do.”

“Along with driving us out of our fucking minds,” Sean growled.

“It wasn’t intended to be a personal affront!” she insisted.

“So we were supposed to shrug that you’d left and move on with our lives. Do you know how worried we’ve been?” her former boss asked.

“Oh my gawd, you both sound like overprotective hens.”

Callie braced for Thorpe’s explosion. Instead, he drew in a bracing breath, nostrils flaring, then with a taut profile and rigidly controlled body, he directed his gaze to the front seat. “Sean, reasoning with her isn’t going to work.”

“Agreed. Go ahead. I need to focus here, but I’ve had more than enough.”

“Excellent. Minus the gloves?”

He sighed. “I doubt anything less will register.”

“I couldn’t agree more. It’s bound to get noisy.”

Sean smiled faintly. “I’ll enjoy that.”

He glanced at her in the mirror at the same time Thorpe regarded her with a frightening smile. Callie felt like an actress who’d forgotten her lines, pinned by a spotlight.

“Apologize, pet.”

It wasn’t a suggestion. But there was no way she was going to say “sorry” for doing what she thought necessary. “I’m sorry if whatever I did upset you.”

“And?” Thorpe’s grip on her arm tightened.

“I’m sorry if I misinterpreted your actions.”

“Anything else?” His voice dropped to a silky baritone that served as its own warning. “Anything you’d like to say to Sean?”

Callie’s belly tightened, but she refused to lie. “No, I think that’s it.”

“Then it’s obvious we need to lay down a few rules and expectations.” Thorpe settled against the backseat, legs braced wide, then grabbed her shoulders and gave a mighty jerk until she tumbled face down across his lap.

“Oh hell, no!” She writhed, trying to twist upright again.

Like that was going to help. He’d dealt with a thousand squirming submissives. There would be no escape. She already knew that from experience.

Expertly, he splayed a hand in the middle of her back, pinning her to his lap. “Hell, yes. It’s past due, pet. You’ve more than earned it. Your attitude needs serious adjusting.”

Thorpe punctuated his assertion by lifting her little skirt, yanking the bills out of her thong and throwing them on the floorboard, then giving her right cheek a quick, blistering swat. Before she’d even finished gasping, he spanked the left. Ouch! Her ass stung. Heat flared. And not for one second did she think that he was done.

“From now on,” he began, “you will keep uppermost in your mind that anything that affects you concerns us. We care. Is that clear?”

Even if she was a little thrilled at the conviction in his words and more than a bit excited at the way he restrained and handled her, Callie wanted to tell him to jump off a bridge. She was about to say something satisfyingly dismissive when he smacked the flat of his hand against each of her cheeks again. A yelp slipped from her mouth.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” A smirk resonated in his voice

Damn him!

“You will never leave our sight without proper permission. If you ever run away again without doing the courtesy of talking to us both, your ass will be a glowing shade of red for a month, I promise.”

Was he serious? “I don’t need babysitters.”

“Since you could have gotten yourself molested in that terrible club or in the fucking alley behind it, if not for us, I’m going to disagree.”

“But I didn’t.”

“I didn’t give you permission to speak.” Thorpe’s voice dropped another octave.

Another few swats to her backside had her flesh stinging again . . . and her pussy weeping. Why did Thorpe’s discipline always turn her on? Why couldn’t she hate him for it and tell him to go to hell?

“And lovely? There will be no drugging anyone, no taking your clothes off for strangers, and absolutely no lying,” Sean insisted from the front seat. His voice held a harsh, authoritarian edge she’d never heard from him before.

“If you remove so much as a shoe in front of another man without our permission, you will feel my wrath.”

And to prove his point, Thorpe rained a series of short, sharp blows down on her backside, one after the other. Callie couldn’t stop the gasps, the moans. Her blood felt like it had caught fire. Her skin burned. Still, Thorpe kept at her ass, pounding one wallop after another on her vulnerable backside until she thought she would melt all over him. She barely reined in the urge to cry out in pleasure.

“Mine, too,” Sean vowed. “You’re likely to feel it as soon as I don’t need to focus on the road, in fact.”

Well, wasn’t that something to look forward to?

“I didn’t give either of you permission to touch me,” she pointed out.

“Lousy attempt, pet,” he tsked at her. “You just keep digging a deeper hole.”

“I gave him permission,” Sean clarified. “And I don’t care if you think you removed your collar. We didn’t talk about it. You decided without consulting me. Last time I checked, you weren’t the Dominant in this relationship.”

“This is ridiculous. I’m not a possession.”

“No, but you’re a submissive in need of a great deal of discipline. I have no problem giving it to you, pet.”

“I have no problem either, Callie. I was too easy on you before. That’s going to change,” Sean promised.

Her heart lurched. They absolutely meant business, and a bit of her really wanted to let them take her under their wing and rely on them for her safety. If she wasn’t Callindra Howe, she might dip her toe in the water. Okay, so she’d probably dive in. But that wasn’t her reality.

“The hell it is! I only managed to stay free for nine years because I never got sentimental. I leave everything and everyone behind and sever all ties once I’m gone. Thorpe, it’s not that I don’t believe you’d do everything possible to keep me safe. But I can’t let you ruin your life. I left because I’m trying to do the right thing so you can get back to normalcy.”

“He didn’t ask you to throw yourself on the sword, lovely.” Sean’s voice softened before it hardened again. “Neither did I. We won’t let you cast either of us aside because you think it’s ‘safer.’ What you’re really doing is being stingy with your trust and protecting your heart. I won’t have it.”

“Nor will I,” Thorpe added. “I might have been your boss and your friend, but you’re lying to me and yourself if you think we weren’t more.”

Was he finally admitting there was something between them? Callie closed her eyes. What crappy timing . . .

“So?” she tossed back. “You ignored it yourself for years.”

“I did,” he admitted. “And I’m done.”

Her heated ass throbbed in the cool night, and she felt Thorpe’s stare on her bare skin. The yearning nearly choked her, but this wasn’t just about her. She couldn’t stand to see them get sucked into the morass her life had become.

Callie figured she could play this one of two ways: either keep fighting tooth and nail and get her ass beat more for her defiance or give in until they let their guard down. Then she’d run again. Sean hadn’t asked her to throw herself on the sword, and well . . . she hadn’t asked him for that either. If he really had been protecting her and was here against his orders, she couldn’t let him jeopardize his job any more than she could risk being involved with an FBI agent. And she refused to gamble her heart on Thorpe, one of the most emotionally unavailable men she’d ever met. No good would come from that.

“Yes, Sirs.”

Above her, Thorpe stilled. “I don’t know whether to praise your breakthrough or wail on your ass again for lying.”

“I think I know,” Sean quipped.

“I think I do, too. But time will tell. Just for good measure . . .” Thorpe palmed the burning flesh of her backside, then spanked her again with unyielding discipline before jerking her skirt down and sitting her on the long seat beside him. “Behave, pet.”

She fidgeted from the stinging burn making her skin tingle and couldn’t sit still.

“Thorpe, is the naughty girl’s pussy wet?”

He zipped his gaze up toward Sean, who met it in the rearview mirror. No words were exchanged, but Thorpe must have seen what he wanted because he nodded and sat back with a little smile playing at the corners of his lips before he turned to her.

Callie’s eyes widened. In what alternate universe was Sean going to let her former boss even think about her girl parts? Punishment was one thing, especially while he was driving, but . . . The thought of Thorpe’s hand right where she ached for him most made her clit swell and sizzle. He turned and pinned her with a feral stare.

She shook her head, knowing she looked more than a tad panicked. “No.”

If he got near her, he’d know she had just lied to him again. There would be more punishment. But the truth was too embarrassing.

“Spread your legs and let me feel for myself, pet.”

Oh hell. She flipped her stare up to the rearview mirror, hoping to catch’s Sean’s disapproving scowl. Despite the spanking and his question, he wouldn’t really let Thorpe touch her there, would he?

She did snag Sean’s gaze, but he merely looked at her expectantly. “We’re waiting.”

“And not patiently,” Thorpe drawled.

Callie’s heart started beating harder. Her silky thong was already beyond damp and wasn’t going to absorb any of the excess moisture. Even in the darkened backseat, Thorpe would see if she tried to use her skirt to wipe away the evidence.

She pressed her lips together and frowned. “All right, I am.”

“So you lied?” Damn, that Dom voice of his went straight to her clit. The ache coiled up.

A few possible responses ran through her head, but she’d seen Thorpe operate enough to know that excuses wouldn’t work. Compounding things with another lie would only make her eventual punishment—and there would be one—worse. So she settled on the only thing that might persuade him to show a little bit of mercy.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m confused. I was . . . ashamed.”

He grabbed her chin. “Explain.”

Shouldn’t it be obvious? “You haven’t touched me in two years, except the night after Sean and I, um . . .”

“Made love,” he supplied from the front seat oh so helpfully.

“That was the night you came under my tongue and fingers.” Thorpe stared into her eyes, forcing her to remember the way she’d writhed for him and screamed his name.

Mortification froze Callie. Would Sean be mad? Or would this weird alternate universe where he and Thorpe were having some bizarre bromance continue and lead Sean to do something once incomprehensible, like high-five the Dungeon Master?

She cleared her throat. “Other than that, you’ve shown almost no sexual interest in me for so long. It’s kind of embarrassing that your spanking, um . . . aroused me.”

Thorpe looked like he wanted to say something, but he didn’t. After a long pause, he simply glanced at her thighs. “Spread them. I won’t ask again.”

“You’re really going to check?” She blinked at him, then back up at Sean in the mirror.

“I asked him to, lovely.”

“So yes,” Thorpe provided, then looked at her impatiently.

Her heart chugged like a herd of wild horses. It had been one thing to spread her legs for Thorpe when she thought it had been good-bye, when she thought she’d never have to see the knowing gleam in his eyes again or worry that he thought her a silly, inexperienced girl for being so easily excited by him. Now . . . she got the feeling that he intended to plow his fingers through her feminine folds and enjoy the hell out of her response. For her hesitation, he’d only want to arouse her more, bask in her helpless reaction to him.

Would she rather have more punishment or more embarrassment? The former would only lead to more of the latter, so she might as well get this shit over with. It wasn’t like she had any way of preventing him from tying her down and doing whatever he wanted to her pussy the minute they made it out of this car and found a flat surface.

Slowly, Callie parted her thighs until her knees were as wide as her hips. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him, and realized that every hang-up about sex she’d ever had was coming back to haunt her.

Her father had never talked about the taboo subject. Holden may have been her first, but the fumbling in his backyard that early fall evening hadn’t taught her a lot except that losing her virginity hurt. She’d tried casual sex once over the years with Xander. She’d wanted Thorpe so badly and hadn’t known how else to get his attention. Thirty seconds and one fake orgasm later, she’d called it off, knowing that she couldn’t bring herself to fuck one man when she wanted another. Xander had been fine with ending it, too, leaving her to wonder if she lacked sex appeal altogether. Then came Sean. He’d given her a pleasure so excruciating, Callie still caught her breath just thinking about it. She hadn’t ever known such ecstasy existed. And she’d craved him since. But Thorpe? Gawd, she was almost afraid to discover all the ways he could turn her body inside out.