She’d really done it this time. She’d managed to piss off Rogan, which wasn’t all that hard to do. She often managed to do so without even really trying. The fishermen of the village had come to Angelique to see if she could reason with Rogan, who had shut down the fishery until the impending summer storm had passed.

Unfortunately, she’d forgotten that Rogan’s authority was best challenged in the privacy of their chambers after he’d had his way with her at least once. Instead, having found him gone when she woke, she chose to try and chastise him at breakfast. Rogan had responded with characteristically alpha behavior.

Fisting her hair, he’d practically dragged her from the dining hall to his office where he’d slammed the door behind them.

“Strip,” he ordered.

Angelique hadn’t counted on him being quite this angry. “Rogan…” she started.

“Don’t you ‘Rogan’ me,” he growled. “I said strip.”

“They only wanted…”

“They only wanted to go through you to get to me. I’ve warned you about that and about taking up for others…”

“Well, maybe if their alpha wasn’t such a growly sonofabitch…”

In the blink of an eye, he crossed the space between them and tore the shirt she had on straight down the middle, exposing her favorite lacy bra, before removing it from her body. That had been a mistake. In the instant before it happened, Angelique realized she was about to lose that particular foundation garment. Rogan ripped the bra to shreds, leaving her naked from the waist up.

She tried to draw back but was stopped when Rogan’s fingers latched on to one of her nipples, which were embarrassingly stiff. She sucked in her breath. It was truly annoying that almost a year after he had stepped through the looking glass to bring her into his reality, he still had the power to undo her with such ease.

“Strip now or when I’m through spanking your pretty bottom, I’ll fuck it.”

Now she knew he was really in a foul mood. Rogan knew that anal sex was not her favorite and only indulged himself when he wanted to humble her and remind her who the dominant partner was—as if she could ever forget that. He never failed to make her climax and he never made the act itself feel anything but good, but she just didn’t like it. If he was threatening to do it anywhere outside their chambers, it meant he was really in no mood to be challenged. Angelique realized that there was no avoiding the spanking, which she hated, or the feral lovemaking that would come after it, which she craved, but perhaps she could walk the fine line of mollifying Rogan’s temper and not feeling as though she’d become the submissive mate.

She removed the tattered remains of her bra, holding them up by one finger and saying, “This was my favorite one, you know.”

“What I know, mate, is that you are prevaricating and trying to avoid the discipline you have coming. I’ve noticed the uptick in disobedience over the past few weeks. Perhaps we should return to the weekly maintenance spankings which marked our first few months as a bonded couple.”

“No, Rogan, please. I know I should have told the fishermen to talk to you or one of the ranking pack members directly, but one of the she-wolves approached me first.”

“So, either he is a coward, or she, too, should be put over her mate’s thigh and reminded of her place.”

Angelique knew, as she removed the remainder of her clothes, that he was being provocative by taunting her with a reminder that in their world she-wolves did not have the same rights as their male counterparts. Rogan sat on the leather chesterfield couch he’d moved into his study the first week after their bonding ceremony. She doubted there was a wolf in their pack who didn’t know precisely why he’d chosen that sofa and what he used it for.

Grasping her by the wrist, he dragged her over to him, opening his legs for her to step between. Knowing there was no way to avoid the discipline he thought she was rightfully owed, she accepted her fate and placed herself across his hard, muscular thigh, sighing as his other one closed behind her, trapping her in position.

Coiling his arm around her waist, he briefly caressed her naked ass before bringing his hand down on it, creating the sound of a gunshot reverberating around the room. Angelique bit her lip. She was determined not to cry out and confirm what everyone in the dining hall already knew—that she had stepped out of line and their alpha was taking her to task for it.

Rogan peppered her backside with angry slaps, heating her skin as pain blossomed across it. She would have thought by now, with as many spankings as she’d received, that just a half dozen or so hard smacks to her ass wouldn’t have fazed her much. But she would have been wrong.

The all too familiar and uncomfortable burn was spreading across the whole of her backside with blinding speed and an increasing ache. Last week she and Iris had thought to play a game of hide-and-seek and had kept their mates searching for hours. It had seemed like such a good idea until Rogan and Bryson had responded with a tandem spanking.

Like anal sex, spankings evoked a plethora of sensations and emotions she had never experienced or adequately portrayed in the novels she wrote in her previous reality. Finding oneself face down over an angry mate’s knee getting your bottom spanked left one in a physically and emotionally vulnerable and intimate position.

It was embarrassing to become so aroused that each slap to her bottom seemed to elicit a response from her sex. By the time Rogan was done, her clit would be hard, and he could force a climax from her simply by pushing down on it; her nipples would be pebbled and aching; and her pussy would be wet, ripe, and ready and weeping her need for his dominance and possession.

Over and over, Rogan’s harsh strikes to her backside left her with little doubt as to his displeasure with her, not only in speaking to the fishermen, but in making a direct challenge to his authority in front of their pack. The number and severity of the slaps had turned her buttocks into twin globes of glowing, red pain.

Stoicism had long since gone out the window. Angelique had learned early on that all silence got her was a more severe punishment. Rogan needed to hear her vocalize that he was getting through to her.

***

Rogan watched as Angelique’s resistance faded away and she accepted anew her place as his beloved mate. And that she was, but she knew better than to come between him and those with a grievance. It was hard to remain angry as he knew her heart was in the right place, but too often wolves would use she-wolves to do their dirty work for them.

He watched as her bottom went from ivory to pink to a deepening shade of red as he applied his hand to her naughty backside. She had the most perfect ass—it was firm, high, and round when she was vertical, but when she was bent over something like his thigh, his desk or their bed, it had a lovely jiggle and bounce that was pleasing both to the eye and the hand.

Rogan’s eye was not the only part of his body that found her voluptuous body arousing in the extreme. And while his cock could appreciate his eye’s point of view, all it wanted was back inside her snug sheath, preferably with a formed alpha knot. Rogan considered himself the luckiest of wolves. He had been gifted with a fated mate who had embraced and craved being knotted and tied to him.

His cock throbbed against his fly in perfect rhythm to his hand connecting with her ass. Rogan continued to spank her, not only for discipline but to ramp up her arousal. The question became did he take her here in his study, or did he reinforce the lesson by tossing her over his shoulder to take her to their bed where they could spend the remainder of the day. If he chose the latter, he could knot and tie her, which had an inordinate amount of allure even though he’d only last knotted her the previous evening.

Bed… definitely bed.