She would pay for that attack of bad behavior with her ass. Her poor, poor ass. Zara fr
owned. Her appetite sloped away. She picked at the food on the plate. She prayed Bisma would change her mind and come back, then she could plead for mercy and a little understanding on the part of the nurse. I’m a virgin, she would say. Didn’t Bisma realize how nervous she was about sex?
Unfortunately, Bisma didn’t return and eventually hunger drove Zara to eat the breakfast, although she couldn’t be bothered to get dressed. Who cared about what she wore or what she did locked in a bleak room? The optimism she’d woken up with that morning had vaporized.
The bolt slid back a couple of hours later. Zara sprang to her feet.
Galen wore his judge’s uniform. The golden epaulets on his shoulders caught the light streaming through the open door. Around his collar hung the medallion of his office—a gold token stamped with the imperial crest. The outline of the black cloth accentuated the power he possessed in his arms and chest, and the length of his muscular legs. He planted his booted feet on the floor and pinned Zara down with an angry stare.
Oh, my God, she exclaimed wordlessly. He’d left the courts to deal with her and what he held in his hands caused her legs to shake more than ever. The cursed glass plug in one hand and in the other, a strap, which was coiled around his knuckles leaving one end dangling.
“You know why I am here?” he growled.
“Yes, sir,” she said.
“Then you will know that you are to be spanked. Over the end of the bed. Now!”
She scurried into position. Any idea of resistance vanished instantly at the sound of his voice. He meant business with or without her cooperation. As she bent over the bed, he whipped off the bath wrap and tossed it aside.
“I shall not hear one curse out of your mouth,” he said, taking up position by the foot of the bed. He nudged her feet apart and her back lower. “Maintain this position. Count each one.”
“Yes, sir.” She dug her toes into the floor, hoping they would glue themselves there and not move.
“You are not a guest in my house,” he said sharply. “Do I make myself clear?”
“Yessir,” she wailed. Hot tears filled her eyes. “I’m so sorry. Please say sorry to Bisma.”
“In due course you can do so yourself. Spread your arms out and hold the edge of the bed.”
Spread-eagled, just as he promised when he’d threatened to spank her the previous day.
She screwed her eyes shut and held her breath. The whoosh came before the almighty smack of the strap on her ass. The pain seared across both cheeks.
“One!” she screamed.
Her toes failed in their duties and she kicked her legs up and down.
He waited for her to resume the correct position.
“You are not to speak to my devoted servant like that again!” He unleashed the second strike in time with the last word of his sentence.
“Two!”
Tears fell. The strap left another stripe of raw pain and it radiated like a scorching fire, refusing to be quenched. If anything it worsened in the seconds after the blow.
“You are to obey her, as you would me.” He lectured with that fearsome voice of a judge who refused to be swayed by the weeping woman lying before him.
The next blow crisscrossed the other two and she felt every inch of it as it covered the width of her ass. “Three!”
She head butted the bed. She couldn’t think of how else to respond to the pain. If this was the strap, what would the dreaded whip do to her?
“Please, sir,” she wailed.
“Your call for mercy is noted. However, you are being punished. Discipline requires courage and fortitude. I know you can find it.”
He paused, waiting for her legs to still and her breathing to steady. “That’s better,” he said with a degree of encouragement.
Either she’d suddenly toughened up or the next swing of his strap wasn’t quite so harsh. “Four.”