My Kingdom for a Corner by Melinda Barron Read Free Book Online

out. You have an hour and a half. I’d watch the clock if I were you.”
    “Fine, look, write. I can handle that.”
    “And have your nose in a corner when I return, specifically one in the dungeon.”
    Her hackles were back up now. “Excuse me? You want me to stand in a corner?”
    “Did you hear me say stand? No, I want you to kneel there, with your nose pressed against the wall. I should think it’s a very self-explanatory order.”
    “I don’t kneel in corners.” The angry timbre of her voice made him smile.
    He stood and ran his hands down his thighs. It was either that or touch her, and now wasn’t the time.
    “As I said before, you’re dangerously close. Think on that before you make statements about not doing something. Have a good hour and a half.”
    Oliver made sure to keep his steps slow and steady as he left the apartment. Behind him she was spitting out words asking him to wait, that she had a question to ask. He knew the corner would be the undoing of her in this activity, well, besides the kneeling.
    This would give her plenty of emotions to feel. The hard part would be picking out just three of them to write down.

 
     
     
     
    Chapter Four
     
     
    “Kneel in a corner, my fat fanny,” Francesca growled as she prowled around Mr. Oliver’s home. “It will be a cold day in hell before I put my nose in a corner.”
    She’d made plenty of subs do it, and they’d always told her it was “exhilarating,” that it helped them to “give over power.”
    The word that came to mind for her was humiliating. Maybe she should write that one down, or maybe it would piss him off. But then again, who cared if it did. He wanted to know how she felt. This wasn’t a test with an answer sheet.
    “Got the first word,” she said out loud, knowing there was nothing but the walls to hear her. So far she’d found two bedrooms, the larger of which was his. She knew it because of the colors. The guest room was in muted shades of rose. The master bedroom was in blues and browns, just like any male, she’d thought. There was only one full bathroom, situated between the rooms. That sort of surprised her until she remembered this was a Victorian house that had been moved here.
    If it were her building, she would have had another bathroom added. She continued to explore, surprised when she found only a kitchen. There was no dungeon. A quick sigh of relief spread through her. No dungeon, no corner, she thought, even though she knew that was wrong. There had to be one here somewhere. But where?
    She stepped into the hallway and glanced in either direction. One way led back to the living room. At the end of the hall was a door. It took her a few minutes of maneuvering, with her hands so close to her body, to turn the knob, but when she opened the door a light came on, illuminating a circular staircase, just like the ones in the main club.
    So he’d built his dungeon upstairs, she thought as she looked at the stairs. At least they were wood, so that her heels wouldn’t get caught in any openings. Still, navigating the climb in these boots, with no hands, would be tricky. She had no idea how much time had elapsed since he’d left, but she was pretty sure it was at least half an hour. That gave her another hour. And she didn’t want to have to make this trip twice.
    She went back to the dining table and looked at the pen and paper. They looked so innocent, and yet they might be at the center of her undoing today. She couldn’t move her hands enough to do something like tuck them into her boots so her hands would be free.
    “I won’t be defeated by something so simple,” she said as she maneuvered her body to pick up the sheet, then bent down to take the pen in her mouth. She hurried back to the stairs as fast as she could, then leaned against the wall as she slowly took them one rung at a time, stopping every few steps to center herself and make sure she didn’t fall backward.
    At the top she felt a surge of