He chuckled and cupped her chin. “It’s possible, I assure you. In the meantime, let’s leave the bulb in your bottom a while longer so you can become accustomed to how it feels.”
His words sounded wonderfully provocative, and his arms were bracing and warm. Sometime soon? Perhaps by then she would regain her senses, or perhaps by then she’d be even more willing to please her wicked husband. She’d survived his ball, hadn’t she?
She looked into his eyes, wondering how far she would go to retain his affections. The way he looked at her this moment, she thought she would go quite a ways, in whatever direction he told her. Into forests full of tigers, or ballrooms full of haughty ladies and gentlemen. Into bedrooms where strange and singular things happened.
He had a way of making her face her deepest fears.
Chapter Fourteen: Lessons
Josephine agreed to order gowns, shoes, hats, fans, and gloves in dozens of colors. She could not imagine why, except that Lord Warren preferred her to be stylish and bright.
When she wore her new clothes about town, to rides in the park, or shopping with Minette, people noticed and smiled at her—an entirely new experience. Many ladies complimented her on the recent ball, thanking her for the invitation and promising to call at Park Street soon. Josephine smiled back at them, even though, inside, she quailed in fear of being discovered as an imposter. The baga lika hiding amidst the quality, disguised in her fashionable gowns.
Perhaps that’s why she’d grown progressively fonder of her husband. He was the one person around whom she could be herself. He knew everything about her, even the most awful secrets no one else knew. He knew she was flawed and afraid, and that she was responsible for such a gross crime as her own parents’ death, although he insisted it wasn’t her fault. Sometimes she almost, almost believed him. At the very least, she considered herself preternaturally unlucky, the type of person who might cause mayhem at any moment if she didn’t exercise the utmost control.
And so she tried to control herself, and she practiced being the wife he wanted. She practiced smiling, she practiced walking, she practiced nodding just the right way, and she practiced holding her head with the proper degree of loftiness. She practiced addressing dukes and earls, and marchionesses and viscountesses, and practiced dining in the most polished manner of refinement.
She practiced conversation too, most often with Minette, who was always pleased to chatter on for an hour or three. They walked in the garden or sat at embroidery together, and Minette conversed so effortlessly, knowing exactly what to say and how to carry herself, and how to address servants in the exact right tone. Josephine marveled at it and did her best to copy it. She wished she was half as easy and carefree as her sister-in-law, to always do everything with such élan.
Lord Warren helped her practice conversation on other days, when Minette was off somewhere with her acquaintances. Her husband always used much more sadistic methods. Today, for instance, he held her upon his lap on a chaise in the smaller drawing room, her back pressed to his front, her skirts pushed up to her waist and out of the way to bare her legs. He twirled a riding crop between his fingers; three pink marks already decorated her thighs.
“What is the proper response when a dowager complains of poor digestion?” he asked.
She gazed warily at the crop’s flicky tip. “One might suggest she avoid fibrous foods and other roughage of that sort. Ouch!” She jumped as the rectangular tip connected with her left outer thigh, leaving a fiery sting.
“The words ‘fibrous’ and ‘roughage’ should be avoided in polite conversation, darling. They’d send most dowagers into a swoon. Try again.”
“Offer her some lemonade? Ouch! Damn!” The word slipped out, because he said damn all the time and she’d picked up the habit. She clapped a hand over her mouth but it was too late.
“Polite women don’t curse,” he said with another flick, this time on her right thigh. She squirmed from the sting but he only tightened his grasp at her waist. “I believe you’re getting worse at this instead of better. Everyone knows lemonade is terrible for digestion. A dowager would only go on about sour stomachs, and where would you be then? I’ll give you one more chance to come up with a reasonable answer.”
“Or what?”
“Or you get the crop on your silly little behind. Think.”
“I’m trying to think,” she said. “But it’s not very easy, with that horrid thing hovering over my kneecaps.”
“I’m not striking anywhere near your kneecaps,” he chided her. “And believe me, there are much worse places I could crop you if I wished to be horrid.”
As he said this, he stroked the tip up the inside of her thighs, to the simmering spot at her center, the spot that always wanted to be touched ever since she’d married him. Oh, please, my God, not there. He stroked her with the edge of the crop, back and forth, as threatening as he pleased.
She flushed, trying to close her legs. He forced them open again. “What have I told you five times already? Leave them apart.”
“Someone will come in. One of the servants will see me like this.”
“No, they won’t. And if they did, they would only understand what I already know. That you are a very poor conversationalist in need of constant correction.”
Her burst of laughter transformed to a yelp as he cropped her very, very near that most sensitive place. “You mustn’t,” she begged. “You really, really mustn’t strike me there.”
“On your pussy? Say it. Please don’t strike me on my pussy, my lord. Put a bit of begging into it.”
More laughter bubbled up in her throat, mingling with fear and surging lust. “Please don’t strike me on my…my pussy, my lord.” Damn was easy to say, but pussy was harder. It was a naughty, ribald word, like calling his thing a cock. Thinking of his cock did nothing to calm the lustful urges blooming inside her. She could feel him stiff and hard within his breeches, pressing against her back. “Please, I’m sure it’s not at all proper to spank me there.”
“On your pussy?” he prompted.
“Yes, on my pussy,” she said, shame-faced.
“I’ll spank you wherever I like, as often as I want.”
Why did it excite her when he said such things? He parted her legs wider, so she felt even more helpless and vulnerable. She moaned, turning her face against his neck.
“What is it?” he said. “Does your pussy need a strict cropping? Is that why you’re so squiggly and squirmy?”
“No.” Her outraged no sounded rather similar to a yes. “You’re supposed to make me feel good ther
e, not bad.”
“We’ve talked about this before. It’s more exciting if I make you feel good and bad at the same time.”
This session was quickly diverting from its original purpose. “What of the dowager and her indigestion problems?” she asked. “Shouldn’t we be focusing on that?”
“Who cares about dowagers and their goddamned digestion? There are other things that need to be taken care of right now, like your naughty pussy.”
“Oh, no. Warren!” She protested as he stood her up and walked her over to a nearby chair with great padded arms. He lifted her skirts and made her sit with her bottom on the upholstery’s rough, embroidered surface. That accomplished, he tugged at her legs, forcing her to drape one knee over each arm of the chair so she was spread wide open.
“Please,” she whimpered. “This is so wicked. I’m afraid of what you’re going to do to me.”
He stood and looked down at her over his straight, aristocratic nose. “Perhaps you ought to be a bit afraid. It’s going to hurt like the devil.”
Josephine made as if to get up but he pressed her back again with the tip of the crop. “Be a brave girl for me, and I’ll reward you afterward. Arrange your legs as I positioned them. Wider.”
She eased her bottom forward so she could hook her legs securely over the chair’s arms as he wished. As a result, her most private core was on flagrant display. “You say I must be proper,” she groused, “and then you make me behave in this manner.”
“For me only,” he replied. “You’re never to behave this way around anyone else.”
As if she would. Her whole body flushed and shook with embarrassment as well as fear. He took up the crop again, trailing it up and down her inner thighs, to the tender juncture between her legs. She gathered up her skirts and buried her face in them. Oh, it was so humiliating, the way he made her feel! The tip slid against her womanly slickness, to that place so sensitive the tiniest contact made her gasp.
She peeked up at him from behind her rumpled skirts and petticoats. “Please. Warren…”