“It’s my favorite instrument. Did you know I started playing when I was three?” I shook my head. “I did. I’m classically trained. I remember my mom sitting behind me on the bench before I was old enough to reach the pedals, trying to teach me.”

How cute would that have been? A pale-skinned little boy with crisp black hair and huge gray eyes? Bah. I kept that to myself and instead asked, "You have any more tattoos?"

"One," he said in a flat voice.

"Where?" I asked him suspiciously.

Pale eyes blinked. "On my ass."

"No way!"

"Yes way."

A second later, I was trying to roll him over to look at his ass cheek, but he grabbed onto my wrists to keep me from doing it. "Let me see it," I begged.

"No."

"Come on."

He shook his head, sternly.

"Why not?"

"It's the first tattoo I ever got," he admitted.

I smirked at him, reveling in the fact that he was still holding my wrists. "It can't be that bad." When he didn't say anything in response, I got a little scared. "Seriously. What is it? As long as it isn't a tribal tattoo, it can't be that horrible."

Sacha looked at me for what felt like a long time. "It's of my dog."

I blinked at him. "Shut up."

"It is," he snorted the answer out, smiling too wide for me to take him seriously.

I tried pulling my hands out of his hold, but I couldn't. "You're a damn liar.”

He pulled me to him, kissing my throat softly. "Okay, I guess you can see," he murmured against me. A moment later, he was flipping over onto his hands and knees, and I was pulling down his shorts and boxer briefs to one side.

There was nothing there.

I pulled down the other side, and there was nothing there either.

"Liar!" I laughed at the same time I slapped the lower half of his butt cheek as hard as I could.

With a yelp, Sacha flipped over, wrapping an arm around my waist to pull me onto the bed beneath him. His long body stretched over mine until we were pelvis to pelvis. He shook his head. "Oh Gaby, Gaby. You want to play the spanking game?"

Chapter Twenty-Four

Sacha got a single good spank in.

I don't know what I'd been thinking hitting him. This was Sacha. I should have known he was going to retaliate somehow. And he did. In the blink of an eye, he flipped me onto my stomach and smacked my butt so hard there was for sure going to be a bruise there tomorrow.

The special thing about my relationship with this guy, the thing that made us and what we were different, was that we were both laughing our asses off the entire time.

Not in a million years could I have ever imagined thinking that getting spanked by another person could be both funny and also pretty damn sexy. I could blame the latter on the fact that I'd seen his tight and cute butt cheeks seconds ago. My Sassy was something special. If there was a fraction of a doubt in my brain that I was crazy for this guy, that I felt a connection with him that trumped any other relationship I'd had in the past by leagues in the sea—it was smashed.

"You bitch!" I screeched against the bed cover, bucking my hips away.

Heavy weight fell over me, his chest pressed against my back, and I could feel his lips on my neck. "Princess,” he said it with a snort.

"That hurt!"

He cracked up harder, kissing me over and over again. "Gaby," he murmured. "I'd say I'm sorry, but I'm not."

I howled in pain until his palm smoothed from my side over my lower back and slowly inched down to cup my still aching ass; I sucked in a rabid breath. That large palm stroked, rubbed and kneaded the flesh gently. What did I do? I arched my freaking back.