Somehow Harmony couldn’t fault the logic in that. “But— But—” He waited for her to collect her thoughts. “But how can it make us feel closer?”
He kissed her again, just a light brush across her lips. “It is easier to show you than explain.”
With those words, he guided her body forward until she was draped across his legs. Harmony did not resist, although she felt exposed and awfully endangered. He smoothed the skirt of her nightgown over her bottom and pulled her flush against his body, so she felt more secure. A little more secure.
“But—”
He paused in arranging her. She looked back at him, wishing this made more sense.
“I am afraid you will hurt me.” She still remembered the spanking in Newcastle. The pain of it had been quite surprising. She wasn’t sure this wedding night activity would result in the closeness he sought.
“This will not hurt much, this spanking,” he assured her. “You are not being punished. You’ll come to know the difference between the two.”
“So you are not at all angry with me?”
“No.” He stroked his palm across her bottom. “Merely enamored. You are my duchess. My wife. Now, put your hands on the floor and keep them there.”
She very nearly said no. She would have said no if he hadn’t asked with such politeness, and if his palm upon her bottom hadn’t felt so pleasantly warm. He began to push up her nightgown, and then she really felt she must stop him. But she didn’t.
He bared her right up to her waist and she let him, keeping her hands on the floor as she’d been told, even though her face burned and her mind was spinning from this new state of affairs. It was her wedding night, but rather than kissing or having marital relations with her, he was arranging her over his knee. He was spanking her simply because he wished to spank her, because he was her husband now and had the right to do it.
This wasn’t what she’d expected at all!
She told herself she would stop him as soon as he began, explain to him that she did not agree with being spanked at his whim, whenever he wished it. The very idea! She let him give her a few light smacks, only because she was trying to think of exactly what to say—but it became increasingly difficult to think. The spanks were not too hard, but hard enough that an excited, hot feeling bloomed in her pelvis where she bent over. Her body began to anticipate the rhythmic blows, to enjoy them, even.
She tensed her buttocks, distracted and confused. Part of her wanted to rebel against this patently unfair treatment, but a larger part of her wanted to continue to submit because the pain felt pleasurable in the strangest way. After a time, he spanked her harder. Not painfully hard, but harder, and still she didn’t resist. She understood the difference, just as he’d told her. He was not smacking her as sharply as he’d done in Newcastle, when she’d felt punished indeed. This was different. The pain was not bitter, but sweet.
She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to feel such pleasure from what he was doing, but she did. She stopped thinking about halting him and protesting this treatment, and gave herself up to experiencing it instead. The sounds of each spank, accompanied by the soft intake of his breath, the size and pressure of his hand against her bare skin… It ought to feel scandalous to her, being naked to his gaze, his hand smacking away at her bottom, but he did not make it seem that way.
I want to begin as I mean for us to go on.
She shifted her hips, but didn’t attempt to get away from him. His large hands heated not only her cheeks but the side of her flanks and the tops of her thighs. Her entire bottom grew throbby and tingly, and she began to feel a restless need for more. Either harder spanking or something else. She moaned, confused, wanting to touch him, wanting him to hold her close and explain these feelings to her.
“What is it?” he asked, pausing.
It is that I cannot tell if you are hurting or pleasing me just now.
This was nothing at all like the spanking he’d given her in Newcastle. Then, she had cried and wished for it to end. Now she only wanted more.
He gave her more. Sharper slaps that heightened the tingling to an aching pain. She threw a glimpse over her shoulder to find him watching her with a dark, assessing gaze. She was aware of his hard thighs beneath her belly and his other hand braced at her waist. She was aware of his brocade dressing gown against the underside of one arm, and her flimsy silk nightgown whispering across her nipples as she shifted. His blows didn’t hurt much in isolation; it was the continued assault that made her feel curiously close to some edge. She wanted to cry, not from pain, but the sheer intensity of their interaction. He had been correct. Spanking could bring them closer. This realization resulted in a small, shocked sob. Upon hearing it, he ceased spanking and caressed her burning bottom.
“Good girl.” His voice was a caress in itself. She was lifted, righted. She felt loose and floppy, like a doll he manipulated with his great hands. He stood her before him, letting her nightgown fall back down to her ankles. His face looked severe, but not in a cruel way.
She gazed back in a kind of stupor, beyond explaining the way he’d made her feel. The way he still made her feel, just by looking at her that way. “I understand now,” she finally said. “I understand what you meant. About…about the closeness.”
His fingertips strayed over the curves of her heated bottom. “I’m glad.”
She shifted, his desultory caress increasing the taunting ache in her center. “Will you do that to me every night?”
“Spank you? Not likely. The other, perhaps.” His lips widened in a slow smile. “Every night would suit me very well.”
Harmony thought she knew what he meant, but she wasn’t taking anything for granted on this night of such surprises. “What other?”
His smile disappeared as his expression turned intent again. “Lie down and I’ll show you, my love.”
He will not hurt me. He is kind and caring.
Harmony repeated that to herself as he guided her back on the bed and slid under the covers beside her. He shrugged out of his dressing gown, carelessly, impatiently, and Harmony thought he would fall on her and strip her next. She feared roughness and abruptness, but he was gentle. He touched the neckline of her nightgown, traced the delicate ivory ribbon that drew it closed. Only then did he slowly untie it. She stared transfixed at his broad naked chest, his shoulders so different in form and breadth from hers, and his taut stomach below, a compelling ladder of muscles. She wanted to touch them so badly her fingertips ached.
“I— I never thought I would marry,” she whispered as he parted the collar of her gown. “I never really thought much about…what we are to do.”
He leaned close and kissed her just beneath her ear. “Very little thinking is required.”
“Oh.” She sighed as his lips brushed across her neck, followed by more lingering kisses. He plundered her mouth, then licked beneath her chin as his hands came to rest at the base of her throat. With a smooth, easing movement, he brushed his palms down over her breasts. She leaned forward into his hands, needing his touch, his contact. He pressed her back instead and kissed her again. As he did, his hands opened over her nipples. His fingers sought and traced them, and Harmony’s whole body reacted with flaring, racing…desire.
That had to be what this was. Desire, arousal. Wicked cravings. “Oh…” she whispered.
“Oh,” he echoed softly, stroking her again. He was so calm, his touch so deft and practiced. She stared at him in a kind of shock. His manner of touching was like no other touch she’d experienced before. It was gentle and yet so powerful. She didn’t only feel the contact in her nipples, but in the ache of her bottom and the heated throb between her legs. She grasped at his hand, halting him.
“Please…what are you doing to me?” she whispered.
“Pleasuring you, darling.”
It was not a fit enough word. It was more than pleasure she felt, more than mere enjoyment. He teased her nipples until her legs tensed and her hips started to move of their own accord. She wanted to tell him to stop but at the same time she never wanted him to stop. Her gasps turned to groans, wordless pleas for more. Through all of this he watched her with intense concentration. In some way, she knew she pleased him with her reactions, even though his face was rigid with control.
When she thought she couldn’t bear another moment of his teasing caresses, his fingers left her breasts and traced lower, warmly, inexorably toward the place he made her throb. She drew her legs together out of some sense of decorum, but he would not allow that. He eased her thighs apart, stroking her, murmuring soft and reassuring words. She forced herself to open to him.
He will not hurt me. I know he will not hurt me.
He slid her nightgown out of the way, then pulled it up over her head and off to join their dressing gowns on the floor. He turned his attention back to her, cupping her breasts, bringing them to his mouth. When his lips closed over them her pelvis arched in response, and she felt some hot, thick hardness against her front.
She forgot all about the heady sensation of his mouth in the shock of discovery. It was him, his male organ, but swollen to grotesque proportions. She didn’t want to be afraid, to be some silly, shrinking miss, but she felt a moment of pure terror. He paused and took her face in his hands.
“You mustn’t fret,” he said. “It is my body’s natural response to you. Touch me if you like. Explore how I feel.”
He pressed her hands down so she didn’t have a choice. He felt…large. Unyielding and stiff and…very hard.
He will not hurt me. He wouldn’t.
But what if it couldn’t be helped? One of the few things she knew about the marital act was that he had to go inside her, and that it hurt to accomplish it the first time. Her husband was larger in stature than most men. Perhaps that meant he was larger…all over. Why hadn’t anyone warned her of this before?
“What if it doesn’t fit?” she whispered, circling his width with her fingers.
He drew in a halting breath. “It will fit.”
She wasn’t sure she believed him. She moved her hand in a tentative way, up and down his length. He gasped and she let go.
“Did I hurt you?”
He shook his head. “Not in the way you think.”
She tried to figure that out but she couldn’t, not when he resumed kissing and suckling her breasts. He stroked a hand up her thigh, gripping her sore buttocks and kneading them. He set that spot throbbing harder, that tightening, tingling place between her thighs, and then he moved his hand right to the veriest point of the sensation. He parted her and placed the tip of a finger just over that apex. Harmony grasped at his shoulders as he pressed it gently. “Oh, no. Oh,
no.
”
“No?” He chuckled, stroking the delicate place again.
She didn’t mean no, she only meant that it felt too wicked, too deliciously wonderful and frightening to be borne. Now she felt sensation all over her body, in her lips, her breasts, her bottom, and deep within herself, in places she didn’t even think about before now. She tightened her fingers against his skin as he persisted in tormenting her with her body’s reactions. She watched his face, still tight in concentration, then stared at the mat of hair covering his chest. His body was so unlike hers, and yet the things he knew about her… The things he knew to do to her with those agile hands…
“Is this very proper?” she whispered, clinging to him.
“It is proper enough between husband and wife.” He studied her with curiosity. “Have you never touched yourself here? Never in your life?”
She shook her head, letting out another gasp. “No. But I would…I would have…if I had only known what it felt like.”
“You may touch yourself now,” he said against her lips. “Whenever you like, as long as you are in a private place. As long as you think of me while you do it.”
Harmony didn’t think she could touch herself and make it feel the way he did. He amazed her. Could all gentlemen perform this magic? But of course, she realized in a moment of clarity. This was why young ladies were warned not to be alone with a man, ever. Because of
this
.
“All gentlemen can do this,” she said aloud with a kind of shock.
Her husband stiffened above her. “What?”
“This is why…this is why ladies must have a chaperone. Why they must not be alone with men.” Her eyes flew to his. “This is what they all believed we did, at the inn in Newcastle.” She understood now why they had to marry. Once you did this with a person, how could you do any other thing than spend your life together? “It’s amazing that gentlemen can do this thing,” she said.
“For your purposes, only one gentleman can ‘do this thing.’ That gentleman is me.”
She smiled up at him. “Yes, sir.”
“I am serious, Harmony. You will take no other lovers.”
She felt confusion. “Why would I want other lovers? You are exceedingly good at this.”
He made a strangled kind of sound and she began to regret bringing it up in the first place. She wanted him to touch her again, touch her forever. She felt a most pressing need for
more
. “There is more, isn’t there?” she whispered as he teased her nipples again.
“Yes, there is more.” He seemed agitated and pleased at the same time. “This next part is the best part.”
“It cannot possibly be better than this.”
He came over her then, the full, tall bulk of him, and settled between her thighs. He drove her legs wider, sliding his knees between them. His warmth assailed her. His whole body covered her and bore her down, the heavy evidence of his arousal nestling just below her aching, needy spot. There was a humid wetness there that came from her body. She knew what would happen next, that he would drive into her there, where she was hot and wet. She felt another fluttering of fear.
He will not hurt me. He would never hurt me.
“This may hurt a little at first,” he said against her ear. “Hold onto me.”
She put her hands on his shoulders as he nuzzled kisses upon her neck. He moved over her, positioning himself against her down there, and it felt pleasant, not painful. But there was more… He reared back and moved forward in a convulsive movement.