Dear God! Tears pressed against her eyes, and she was glad they were hidden behind the mask.
He paused. She braced herself for another blow, but it did not come. Did he worry that she could not sustain another? But she had not uttered her safety word. Why did he wait? Did he feeling guilty, remorseful, shameful? She feared to relax, but keeping her body tense was tiring.
As if reading her mind, he said, "I am allowing each blow to sink in, that you may appreciate every second of its pain."
The devil.And just as she relaxed, the paddle struck her full in the backside. She cried out, and the crop fell from her.
“Well,” he noted, his footsteps approaching her. She heard him bend down to retrieve the crop from the ground. “Surely you are done now?”
“Not at all…my lord,” she replied, her voice wavering much less than she would have expected.
“Millie, you have nothing to prove to me. You have sustained far more than I would have expected of a novice here.”
“I will let you know when I am done. My lord. Please proceed.”
He sighed but replaced the crop between her lips. “You let fall the crop, and in so doing, contravened my bidding. You have earned your first punishment.”
Punishment? She wondered what a punishment entailed.
He walked back to the other side of the table and smacked the paddle once more against her. It was the most forceful blow thus far. She clenched down on the crop, determined not to disappoint him again by letting it drop.
But she did.
For his hand had grazed her there. Between the thighs. Where wetness had formed. He had made her gasp, and thus she had lost the crop.
He made a tsking sound, but his hand remained where it was, grazing the outer lips of that most intimate space.
She knew not how to breathe. The gentleness of his caress contrasted greatly to the smarting of the paddle. His fingers now nestled themselves in her folds, coaxing a rapturous agony. She quivered and moaned. This other sensation between her legs overtook the ache in her rump.
Until he withdrew his hand and slapped her with the paddle again. She suppressed an unladylike oath. The paddle struck again, even harder, and it seemed the smack seemed to reverberate off the walls. Her ensuing cry might have been heard all the way down the hall.
Had the door even been shut? What had she gotten herself into?
But his hand returned to tease her flesh, and the pain in her buttocks mattered less than the agitation blooming beneath her waist. He rubbed the small, sensitive bud between her folds, coating it with the moisture her body had produced. The discomfort of being bent and pressed over the hard wooden table melted away as he stroked, and stroked, and stroked.
What blissful torture! A happy warmth spread to the tips of her toes and fingers. She wanted it to never end.
Alas, her punishment awaited.