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“Yes, sir,” she forced out through the tightness of her throat.
“Dear, you are already flinching. You must not flinch and tense, or you’ll bruise.” He inspected the slim switches that comprised the birch rod. “At some point I may need to make use of a ginger fig.”
She was nearly afraid to ask. “A ginger fig, sir?”
“To prevent you clenching your bottom when I spank or whip it.” He seemed about to explain more, but then shrugged his shoulders. “You’ll learn about it later. The technique is most quickly understood in the course of its use.”
That thought did not soothe her at all. He approached and stood behind her, one hand on her shoulder, and her body felt like one great cringe.
“Bend forward,” he said. “Just a little, that’s right. There will be ten strokes. I would like you to count each one.”
“Yes, sir.” Oh, my. Oh, my!
Harmony leaned forward, clutching the bedpost. He pushed her down a little more until she was posed to his liking—but not hers. She felt too vulnerable, with her backside stuck out and about to be punished. She was not at all sure she liked this game. She shut her eyes tight until she heard the faint sound of the implement swishing through the air. The birch connected with her bottom, bringing a sting but not unbearable pain. If it was only this discomfort, she believed she could bear it. “One,” she said, taking a deep, centering breath.
He rubbed the birch rod along her bottom and she shivered a little. Then it was gone and she braced for the next blow. “Two!” This one was a bit harder. It stung very uncomfortably, like a hundred tiny pricks. The next came before she’d sorted out the effect of the second. “Three!” she cried, gripping the post. He stopped for a moment and she realized that the sting left behind was not lessening, but growing worse. The next blow made her go up on her toes. “Four!”
Five was the hardest yet. Harmony counted, then whimpered softly and shifted from foot to foot. Her husband’s broad hand spread upon her bottom, massaging, caressing.
“We are halfway there,” he said. “As I punish you, you must think about how to be better.”
“Yes, sir. I have been thinking. I think I have…I have already learned my lesson—”
The birch came swishing against her bottom mid-sentence and she cried out “Six!” “Seven!” “Eight!” He paused but a second or two between each one. They were not any harder than the ones that came before, but the pain rose and rose, burning ever hotter. She clenched and twisted and on the eighth she straightened up and turned to him. “Please. You’re hurting me awfully.”
“Awfully?” His eyes were mild, as was his voice. “You are not even crying, so I believe you can survive two more strokes.”
She frowned at him and turned, and pressed her body to the bedpost. Just as during the wedding-night spanking, she felt aroused as much as she felt pained. She wanted to take two more to please him—oh, but it was so hard to bend down and accept them. He was right that it wasn’t really awful. She hadn’t yet felt such agony that she must beg him to stop. It just hurt. He waited, watching her. Finally, she took a deep breath and forced herself to bend and offer her aching bottom for more punishment. He made a soft, pleased sound and she was glad she’d been so brave.
“Only two more,” he reminded her. “Count them aloud.”
The birch whipped against her bottom, erupting in a bloom of pain. “Nine!” she said a bit truculently. Surely he needn’t hit her that hard! Just one more…
The last was the hardest, a stiff, sharp whack that did, finally, bring a haze of tears to her eyes. “Oh…ten! Please! No more!”
His hand smoothed over her sore, stinging cheeks. “There will be no more.”
Harmony fidgeted at his touch. In a way it soothed her, but in another way it made her wish for a different sort of caress. He guided her upright and said, “I’m pleased you were such a good girl during your punishment.”
“Oh, but I wasn’t.” She pressed herself against the bedpost again. Behind her, she could hear him undressing the rest of the way. Boots pulled off, trousers pushed down in a whisper of cloth. “I tried to think about being better…”
“Did you?” His warm body pressed to hers from behind.
“But it didn’t do any good. I am still having those…those wicked thoughts about you.”
He moved closer, pushing his stiff rod right against the heat of her bottom. An answering pulse throbbed between her legs, in that spot where he could make her cry out and yearn for him. “Hmm,” he said. “How intractable you are.”
She shuddered as he pressed a palm against the heat at her center, then nipped at the curve of her neck. Harmony leaned back against him. “I am intractable,” she sighed, “because I don’t think I can make those thoughts stop.”
He didn’t answer but started to work at the piece of linen that bound her hands. He pressed his cheek against hers as he tugged the knot apart, although he didn’t release her wrists yet, just the bit that held her to the bed. His nearness felt hot and branding against her skin. “God help me,” he said. “I cannot punish you without wanting to possess you afterward.”
She closed her eyes at the raw longing in his voice. “Is it not supposed to work that way?”
“It can work any way that pleases us.”
Oh, she felt very pleased at the moment. He turned her to face him and wrapped his fingers around her wrists. Her hands were still bound together and she had the feeling they were going to stay that way a while longer. She clasped them to the front of her chest as he leaned to kiss her. His grip tightened on her wrists and she felt a breathless excitement at his passion, his ungentlemanly force.
She whimpered with longing as he let go of her wrists to brush his hands down her hips. He grasped her bottom, not cruelly, but very firmly, and drew her hips forward against his jutting length. The sting and soreness of the spanking still hadn’t gone away, so she felt the double sensations of discomfort and desire. His rod was so grand, so very thick and hot. He called it a “cock” when he whispered licentious things to her in the midst of their play. He had taught her many naughty things in the course of one week, and she wondered what she would know by a month or a year hence. She would be a complete wanton!
She wasn’t sure if that was a good thing, but she didn’t care so long as it pleased him. When Court walked her nearer to the bed, pushed her back on it and came over her, she reached out for him with her tethered hands. He took them in his and pinned them over her head and told her she was not to shift them away.
“What shall I do with you now?” he said, gazing down at her. “My helpless wife, with her naughty, unladylike thoughts?”
She arched her hips and brushed boldly against his hard length poised at her most private place. It was an invitation to do what she wanted.
But he did not, not right away. He drew back, making her lay as she was so she was bared to him, hands still trapped and stretched over her head. He traced his fingertips over her body, over her breasts and nipples in a clever touch, then more firmly at her belly and waist. “I think I’ll take some time to admire yo
u first. You know, I had my own wicked thoughts, staring at you across Lady Darlington’s drawing room.”
Her mouth fell open. “I don’t believe you. You didn’t.”
His hands slid lower, parting her thighs. “I most certainly did. I thought your hair was so shiny and soft looking, and your body so beautifully voluptuous. I thought how lovely you must be beneath your dress.”
“Oh, no.” This was a shock to her. She remembered him staring at her that evening, but she never would have believed… “You thought about me with my dress off?”
He looked up at her, his thumbs poised at either side of her quim. “Oh yes, my sweet. I thought about how lovely you must be down here. I wanted you.”
With those words, his thumbs parted her sex and quested to the tiny, aching button he called her pearl. “Oh, my word,” she whispered. “I can’t believe it.”
He neglected to answer with words, only caressed and explored her until she shivered in pleasure. A moment later he dipped his head to her center and stroked her with his tongue. Her hands came flying down to stop him from this scandalous course, but he pushed them up again.
“Let me do as I please.” Spoken like a true and imperious duke of the realm. Harmony lay back and closed her eyes. So carnal, so corrupt. So…astonishing. He was doing with his mouth what he normally did with his fingers, teasing and drawing shivery pulses of pleasure from that sensitive place. His breath was hot against her skin, his hands nudging her legs open when she clenched them closed against the sensation that devastated her. “Oh, Court…this is wicked. And wonderful!”
He hummed against her as if to agree. She writhed upon the soft, fragrant sheets, gazing up at the pleated canopy above her as her ecstasy climbed to a higher and higher peak. She longed for completion, but he kept it just out of reach, making her burn and crave all the more. If she could only touch him. If he would only come inside her and move in her and drive her down into the bed, she knew she could reach that place of unbounded pleasure.
“Please,” she cried out. “You will kill me like this.”
