Aurelia silently vowed to never be very, very rebellious, because the idea of being caned on her bottom terrified her. His palm alone caused her considerable pain. If he was trying to frighten her with threats of more severe implements, his plan worked.
He stopped and pressed the tip of a finger into her damp channel, so that she squirmed upon his lap. Then he pressed the same moistened finger against her bottom hole. She gasped at the shocking contact and tried to pull away, but his arm tightened around her waist to hold her still. She shuddered as his finger caressed and probed there. He forced her to endure these scandalous attentions as her cheeks throbbed from the spanking.
“Please,” she whimpered. “It is so improper.”
“Nothing is improper between us, now that we’re married. You must remember that, my love. I’m only thinking about the time when I shall introduce you to the pleasures of a ginger fig in your bottom. I’ve an exquisite crop of ginger grown here just for that purpose.”
“You will put ginger...inside my bottom?” she asked in a mixture of horror and disgust.
He laughed. “That, and other things. You’ll come to love it as I do.”
“I won’t,” she cried, tears gathering again in her eyes. It seemed too monstrous to think about. It was almost a relief when he began to spank her again, the steady, sharp whacks of pain a distraction from all the anxiety roiling in her brain. He spanked her for quite a while, but it wasn’t like the first two spankings, where he’d been angry and rough in his discipline. This was more of a controlled endeavor, and when her entire bottom was hot and throbbing uniformly, he stopped.
“There,” he said, “I think that will do. Stand now, and take off your shift for me, darling.”
She held back the tears, relieved that the spanking was over, at least for today. She fumbled with the ties of her shift as her husband regarded her with frank attention. It embarrassed her to disrobe while he remained dressed, but she did as he asked and inched the garment up over her head.
“No,” he said. “Not like that. Not as if you are reluctant and ashamed.” He pulled it back down to her hips. “Try again. Take it off as if you’re excited to reveal your body to me.”
She stared at him. How on earth was she to do that?
“Or, if you feel you need more spanking first...”
“No,” she said quickly. “I shall try again. It’s only that—”
“No excuses. Do as I ask, Aurelia. Take off your shift without any reluctance or shame. Your body is beautiful, you know. Your curves, your femininity. You should present it as such, with none of this shrinking and blushing.”
No reluctance or shame. What a novel idea, and how impossible. She tried again to do what he asked, lifting the shift more gracefully this time, letting the fabric linger over her hips and breasts before she pulled it off and dropped it, with feigned indifference, to the floor. She tried not to...what had he said? Shrink? She stood straight and tall, and attempted to smile at him. She couldn’t quite manage it. She could barely hold his gaze, intense as it was.
After a moment, he smiled. “Not perfectly done, but better. We’ll practice every day, won’t we? Now turn around and show me your red, spanked bottom, my love.”
Why did he keep calling her his “love”? The only thing he seemed to love was humiliating her, but it was pointless to balk at his instructions. She turned and presented her back to him, wringing her hands at her waist.
“Now bend down very prettily and remove your garters and stockings.”
Aurelia sucked in a breath. Something in his voice, perhaps the low steadiness of it, had the unwilling arousal beating again in that spot between her legs. Dear God, if she bent forward, he might be able to see it, that naughty, throbbing, heated, secret spot that ached for something she couldn’t understand.
“No,” he said sharply when she tried to crouch down instead. “Bend forward at the waist. Roll them all the way down and then hand them back to me.”
Well, there was nothing for it. He was going to insist on her behaving like a lewd woman. She bent forward, fully aware that he would stare at her bottom and nether lips in all their exposed glory. From the approving sound he made, he enjoyed this. She bent forward—twice—to remove her stockings and hand them back to him. When she finished, he made her turn around.
“Let’s see if you can undress me with equal sensuality and grace. Go slowly. Start by unbuttoning my waistcoat.”
Bother. There were two dozen or more buttons, exquisite and small. She fumbled with them, wondering how one unbuttoned one’s waistcoat with sensuality. But then she finished and, with a little of his help, pushed it back off his shoulders. She got the first inkling that undressing a man could indeed be a sensual task. Why, the singular breadth of his chest, and the appealing muscularity of his upper arms...
“I like your expression, Aurelia,” he said quietly. “As if you like what you see. Do you like it?”
She didn’t want to answer. She was embarrassed to answer, but she said, “Yes, my lord.”
“My neckcloth now.” His voice had grown huskier still.
She reached to remove the pearl pin at its center. “Where shall I put this?” she asked.
He regarded her through half-closed lids. “Between your lips.”
He watched as she put the pin in her mouth, pursing her lips around it. His voice, his expression made it seem that she did something erotic. She applied herself to the folds of his cravat for the sake of distraction, but she could feel his gaze on her. Her fingers brushed of necessity against the strong column of his neck, shaded with a hint of stubble. His jaw moved. Tensed. It looked very...masculine.
She hurriedly untied the rest of the knot and drew the linen from his collar. She set to the buttons of his shirt, nearly overwhelmed by the pure, appealing scent of him. When she reached the last button she realized she must untuck his shirt from his breeches to get it off him. He grinned at her.
“You must undo my breeches too, Aurelia.”
Her lips tightened around the pin in her mouth. She bent down to pluck at the buttons of his breeches, unable to avoid the obvious evidence of his arousal pressing against the fabric. She stopped when the waistline was loose enough to untuck his shirt, and tried to push the linen garment up over his head. It became a close type of exertion, because he was so tall, and his arms so long. At last he was obliged to help her do it, whipping it up so she fell against his front.
How solid he was. She knew that, had felt the evidence of it over and above her in their marital bed, but now her hands rested on his chest, and she could see every muscle composing his torso, as well as the rough, curling hair that neatened at his waist into a line that disappeared down to...there.
He stood back and she could see his man’s part bobbing, fully hard, from his opened breeches. He took the pin from her lips and attached it to the collar of his shirt, laying both aside.
“My valet will attend to that later. Kneel down now and remove my boots,” he said.
If he had not used that firm, commanding voice she wasn’t sure she could have done it. Kneeling before him put her in quite close proximity to his outrageously formed sex organs. She bowed her head and pulled at his boots, which were the very devil to get off. When she’d finally accomplished it with his help, she tried to rise.
“No. My breeches.”
With a faint sigh, she tugged them down. There was very little sensuality in her technique, she feared. She tried to slow down. As she drew them lower she contrived to caress her palms against his muscled thighs. That was sensual, wasn’t it? She believed so, because his heavy male member seemed to jerk in response. He stepped out of the breeches. She pushed down his stockings, her face on fire. She thought it must be as scarlet red as her still-warm bottom. That finished, she tried again to stand up.
Again, he stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “Stay where you are.”
She went still, staring up at him. At it. It was impossible to ignore his maleness, th
rust as it was before her face. What was he going to do to her down here? It was so very hard to hold his gaze.
“Do you see how you’ve aroused me?” he asked in a strained voice. “By merely removing my clothes?”
She wanted to ask how she could very well not see, but it seemed pert to do so. Oh, what did he want? This was all so very strange.
“Look at it,” he said. “You’ll become intimately familiar with my manhood in the coming days and weeks. Touch me.”
“T-touch you,” she stammered. “How?”
“Sensually, of course. Stroke me. Explore how it feels.”
How it felt? She knew how it felt from having it inside her body, thrusting and probing and stretching her open. But she obeyed him, reaching out gingerly to stroke his rigid flesh. She ran a fingertip from the base to the oddly shaped, purpling crown.