She tried to resist as he pulled her to a nearby chair, but he was far stronger, and all too handily she found herself turned over his lap. He pushed her skirts up, exposing her bottom to the cool air. “Oh, please, I’ve said I was sorry.” His thighs felt hard and unforgiving against her stomach. She reached to brace herself against the floor. “Please, I wish you wouldn’t spank me.”
“Last time you disobeyed me, I promised the next time you wouldn’t be able to sit down.”
“But...oh...
oww!
That will mean an awfully long and hard spanking.”
His only answer was a growl.
Minette cried out as his palm rained down on her bottom. She had believed the paddle must hurt more than anything on earth, but she’d been wrong. His hand was large and firm and hard, and he walloped her in such a steady fashion she could barely catch her breath. The pain quickly mounted to an unbearable burn. She squirmed and tried to pull away, but he wrapped an arm about her waist and cinched her against his thighs.
Now she couldn’t move an inch, couldn’t do anything but kick her legs in helpless torment. “Oh, please. Ouch! That hurts! I’m certain you wouldn’t want to leave me bruised.”
“Hush and stop kicking.”
Stop kicking? How was she to do that in the midst of this awful pain? “I did not even enjoy looking at those books,” she wailed. “You’re punishing me for something I’ll definitely never do again.”
“I’m punishing you for being disobedient, and embarrassing me in front of my friends.” The spanks never stopped as he scolded her. He reddened the sides of her buttocks, the center, the bottom curves, over and over until her whole backside felt on fire. “I’m going to tell my brother,” she said in desperation. “If you don’t stop, I’ll tell Warren.”
“Warren is busy blistering Josephine’s bottom right now, just as Townsend is doubtless spanking Aurelia. Because of
you
, I might add. You earned this spanking and you’re damned well going to take it. Now keep your hands down, and if you kick your legs again, I’m going for the paddle and starting over.”
Minette realized she’d dug her fingers into August’s leg. She put her hands back on the floor but it was impossible to lie still as he punished her backside. Her whole arse ached with a stinging, wretched pain, but it wasn’t as bad as the pain of knowing he disapproved of her so thoroughly.
“Please stop. Please, I’ll do anything, if you’ll just stop being angry. I’ll do anything you ask, if you’ll just...”
Love me.
Even in the throes of her pain and panic, she didn’t dare say it. She didn’t dare ask for his love because she was terrified of him saying no. “Ow.
Ohh.
Please
, I want to be a good wife. I can’t bear this. I don’t want you to hate me.”
His hand stopped. The arm at her waist loosened. She bit back a sob, afraid to look up at him while she was in this state. The throb in her bottom seemed to beat along with her racing heart. “I don’t hate you,” he said gruffly. “Why would you say such a thing?”
“I know you didn’t want to marry me. I know you don’t want me for your wife.” She could barely speak through the emotion choking her throat. “I know you wish for a different wife, but if you’ll only tell me what to do, I’ll try to be... I’ll try to be whoever you want. I’ll be whatever you want if you’ll only tell me. Because I don’t know!”
His palm rested heavily across her bottom. Her skin was so heated from the punishment that his hand felt cool. With an abrupt movement, he lifted her and put her on her feet. She was relieved at the respite, but somewhere along the way she had completely lost her composure. She fought for breath, for calm, as she gazed into his eyes. He looked stern and displeased as ever.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I only want everything to be all right between us, and I don’t know what to do. I wish I could be a pleasing wife, so you aren’t always frowning and sending me to my room. That’s why I talked to Esme, and Aurelia and Josephine, and looked at those books. I don’t want you to see me as a child.” Her voice rose in anguish. “I want to be your proper wife.”
His hazel eyes narrowed as he leaned forward in the chair. “You think if you learn lewd sexual acts you’ll be a proper wife?”
“Perhaps.” She rubbed her bottom through her skirts. “I don’t want you to see me as a sister, or some naughty child to spank over your lap. I want to entice you. I don’t want you to go to Esme for...those things.”
“I won’t go to Esme anymore,” he said, leaning back again. “Now that she’s met you, she’s fallen in love with you like everyone else and told me to find my pleasure elsewhere.”
She let out a shuddery breath, staring at the fine knot in her husband’s cravat. “I could give you pleasure if you’d let me. If you could bear to...” She couldn’t look him in the face. “I’m sorry it’s me you had to marry. But maybe, if you closed your eyes...”
“Minette, please.” His voice sounded so tortured and miserable that tears filled her eyes.
“I’m not a child,” she said through the blurry haze. Desperation made her bold. She thought of the drawings she’d looked at, the voluptuous women and the thrusting men. There had been spanking in the books too, with whips and birch rods. Was her husband one of the men who became aroused by such things? She’d take any arousal she could get. She put her fingers on the buttons of August’s breeches, and he didn’t stay her hand. Beneath the fabric, she could see the burgeoning outline of his manhood.
She said a silent prayer to the god of well-meaning wives, and freed the first button from its loop.
*** *** ***
August felt curiously out of breath. Not from the spanking. He could have spanked her another hour, and probably should have, but then she had begun to sob, and speak of him hating her.
God, he’d made Minette believe he hated her. It was a horrible thing.
He hadn’t been paying attention. He’d been so caught up in his own crises and misgivings that he hadn’t considered how his actions would seem through her eyes. She thought he
hated her.
Now she was leaning over him, undoing his breeches, and he felt too guilty to make her stop.
Oh, but she ought to stop. She opened one button, then another. Her fingers brushed his skin through the thin linen of his shirt. His cock awakened with a vengeance, not understanding this was not the time, nor the place. “Minette,” he said softly.
But he didn’t tell her to stop, and so she unbuttoned his breeches completely, allowing him to jut out in full and flagrant arousal beneath the curtain of his shirt’s hem.
“You don’t have to do this,” he said, and it sounded like a plea. Why was he pleading with her? He could button himself back up, stand, and leave the room, but for some reason he didn’t do this. She got down on her knees in front of him and he stifled a groan.
No, no, no.
Not
no
that she would do it, but
no
that he wanted it with a desire like fire. He wasn’t made of steel.
It excited him to see her on her knees.
He let out a long breath of self-loathing even as he reached to touch her hair. So soft, so fine. So blonde. So innocent. He screwed his eyes shut.
Don’t think about that.
She was the one who told him to close his eyes, and he determined to keep them closed as she drew away the tails of his shirt and exposed his pulsing length. She stroked his cock gingerly, with light fingertips, but the contact almost had him bowing off the chair. His thighs tightened.
“What did you learn in those books, before you were interrupted?” His voice sounded rough. Uncivilized.
“A lot of things. More than you think.”
“Show me,” he said through gritted teeth, resting his hands upon his knees. Minette bent over him. He heard the rustle of her skirts, then felt the tip of her warm tongue trace a trail around and about his cock’s head. If only he wasn’t so damned sensitive, so overwrought from lack of release. She began to lick him like a sugar cake, with a maddening, tentative delicacy. He didn’t want this—he
didn’t
—but he couldn’t stop her. It had been an endlessly frustrating day, and he was weak and hungry with need.
He felt her fingers grip him, not firmly, the way an experienced lady might handle a man, but with hesitant pressure. “Move it now,” he said. “Move your hand along my cock.”
She obliged him. “Like this?”
“Yes,” he said with another groan. “You needn’t be so gentle. Stroke it firmly up and down as you caress me with your mouth.”
She tried, but like any beginner, did not do exceedingly well. He didn’t care. He ached to be touched and caressed. The fact that it was Minette was an upsetting detail, but he didn’t stop her, because her mouth was warm and her tongue was surprisingly deft. All that chatter, he supposed. Silly Minette and her chattering. Minette, who was stroking and licking his throbbing cock.
He sat straighter. He meant to stop her then but she sighed and tilted her head, and licked lower, to the base of his shaft. She made a tentative swipe at his balls. They drew up at the thrill, the heady pleasure.
Don’t do such things
, he thought. “Yes,” he said aloud. “That feels good. Don’t stop.”
She bent her head and attended to him, stroking, licking, kissing, a clumsy mishmash of erotic attempts that contributed to a marvelous whole. She was making him so hot he could feel the flush of pleasure in his cheeks and his chest. He moved on the chair, biting back a growl as she opened her mouth and slid her lips down his length as far as she could go. He gripped his hands in his hair, only so he wouldn’t bury them in her hair and impale her mouth with his cock. One didn’t do such things to one’s wife. One didn’t do such things to a young woman one considered a sister.
And yet some tension was growing inside him, some ebbing of control. Misgivings were grinding against bodily needs, and reason was giving way to unruly fantasies. He had taken her once, his birthday night. Why not take her again? He wanted to be inside her so badly, fucking her, pounding into her. He could always push her skirts up over her face so he couldn’t see who he was violating. He could picture it. He could feel it. Rather than the tease of her lips, he could be enjoying the hot caress of her tight, wet pussy. He pictured her legs splayed out, and imagined tearing her bodice so her breasts spilled free—
Abhorrent fantasies. Violent lust.
“No.” He was telling himself no, that he mustn’t entertain such thoughts about Minette. She paused a moment in her oral exertions and looked up at him in question. He stared at her dumbly, too stricken to speak.
She bowed her head to caress him again. “No,” he said more loudly. He put his hands on her shoulders. “No, no more.”
No more, or I can’t be responsible...
“I don’t mind it,” she said. “I admit I was puzzled when I saw the ladies doing this in those books, but if it feels good to you, then I enjoy doing it too. There’s something about, oh, I don’t know, the lazy, wet, sensual abandon of it all.”
“No, Minette. I have to go.” He felt close to breaking down, like he might erupt into a frenzy of emotion even worse than the frenzy of lust pounding in his brain. She looked devastated. “You did exceedingly well,” he said to reassure her, “but I think... I...”
I think I want to throw you on the bed and ravish you. And I shouldn’t feel that. I don’t want to feel that, not toward you.
He had to leave. He shoved his aching cock into his breeches and buttoned his flaps with frantic speed as he strode across her sitting room and fumbled his way out the door.
*** *** ***
They did not take dinner together that evening. His mother was ill with worry, and August felt too guilty to face his wife. Minette’s maid said she was asleep, and would perhaps like a dinner tray later. August couldn’t imagine how Minette had felt when he fled during her attempts to behave as a “proper wife.” He couldn’t bear to think about it. He drank a regrettable amount of brandy and went to bed.
Now, hours later, a servant was nudging him awake. “My lord, forgive me. It’s the countess again.”
He sat up, wiping the sleep from his eyes. “Where?”
The servant brought his robe. “In the ballroom, at the piano. She won’t be led away.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
He accepted a candle from the manservant and made his way into the hallway. The house was quiet, still, a little threatening in the darkness. He’d been afraid of the dark as a child, afraid of so many things. He was afraid of Minette coming to harm in her nightly wanderings. She might sail off a balcony or fall down the stairs, or bed down too close to a fireplace when she finally came to rest. One more thing to fret about on top of everything else.
The footman shadowed him as he made his way to the ballroom. August heard Minette before he saw her, faint sobs and jarring notes on the pianoforte. He gestured to dismiss the servant before he passed through the door. His wife was scarcely dressed, wearing only a woolen night shift. The maid in the shadows must have wrapped the blanket around her. He dismissed her too and sat beside Minette on the bench.
“A-B-D and G,” she whispered, taking no notice of him. “A-C-G and, oh. Bother. I can’t even reach the keys.”
She tried again, playing a raw, dissonant chord.
“Your hands are too small for Telemann.” He laid his fingers over hers to still them. “It’s all right. Don’t cry.”
She wiped her cheeks and then sat still with her hands in her lap. He wrapped the blanket closer around her in the chilly room. It felt oppressively dim, lit only by the moon and a single candle left by the servants. He leaned down to catch her gaze. “Dearest, are you awake or asleep now?”
“I came here to practice,” she said, which didn’t answer his question.
“It’s very late to practice,” he pointed out. “You ought to play in the daytime. You should be sleeping in your bed.” She reached to play again and he stilled her hand. “It’s too late to play, and you’ve chosen too difficult a piece, at any rate.”
She resisted, fighting to move her hand. Groggy tears gave way to blinking awareness and finally, wakefulness. She rubbed her eyes, then sagged against his side. “I wanted to practice for tomorrow’s lesson,” she said. “I thought it was a dream.”