Chapter Fourteen
MILDRED HELD HER breath. What did Alastair intend for a punishment? Would it be worse than the spanking she had received? Her backside still smarted from his forceful application, despite the soothing effect of the salve. The wetness between her legs trickled down her inner thighs. He had aroused her with his caresses but left her feeling incomplete and in aggravation. Would he let her spend after the punishment?
She looked down at her breasts and wished he would touch her again, would welcome any manner of touch, gentle or hard. Good heavens. Was she really standing in only her undergarments before her cousin? Was it the port that had dampened her shame? She felt no mortification, only an embarrassment that strangely complimented her ardor.
It was what she had glimpsed in his eyes as he beheld her breasts. He had eyed them with appreciation, if not desire. And that had made the difference. Her cousin was not impervious to her qualities. The prospect excited her greatly, even if it was merely a reflexive response that any man would have toward her sex. He saw her as a woman. Not as Millie. And he had remarked that she had been appealing in her wet gown. Did she dare hope that she could elicit more of a response from him?
“What will the punishment entail, my lord?” she asked, rubbing her thighs together to ease the tension there.
He picked up the crop. “I thought to be done with this implement, but as you had dropped it, we will continue with it a while longer.”
He grazed the tip down the length of an outer thigh, then up the inner thigh to her crotch. He trailed the crop up her torso, around the curve of a breast and up an arm. She giggled when the tip nearly touched the area under her arm. He brushed the crop back down her body. He tapped it to the side of her leg, preparing that part of the body before whipping it with the crop. She cried out, mostly in surprise.
“What is your safety word?” he asked.
“Pearls.”
“Will the words ‘cease,’ ‘desist’ or ‘stop’ compel me to halt?”
“No, my lord. Only ‘pearls’ will bring all to an end.”
“Good.”
He struck her thigh once more. She jumped. He struck her other thigh.
“Thank you, my lord.”
He seemed impressed by her tolerance and rained the crop harder and faster upon the legs. She yelped and began to twist and move her legs so that the crop would only glance against them, glad that he had not bound her ankles to the bottom corners of the cross, but, ultimately, there was no escape.
“Thank you, my lord,” she said during a respite.
He tucked his crop beneath an arm and stepped toward her. She looked to his countenance, wanting their gazes to meet, but he was looking at her breasts. He pulled her stays apart till they hung limp from her shoulders, freeing her breasts of their constraints. Returning to his prior position, he took up the crop once more.
Her legs stung, the moisture from her shift doing little to cool the burn. She desperately wished to ask if he would resume his previous ministrations between her thighs but worried it was not the proper moment to do so.
The tip of the crop bit the side of a breast. It struck the other breast. She preferred her legs as a target, but every nip and smack of the crop delivered a throb to her womanhood. The wetness there had grown. Her body felt on edge, as if the sensations swirling inside of her might burst if she did not find release.
She exclaimed when the crop glanced off a nipple. Had he purposefully aimed there? She hoped he would not intend to strike there again.
But what followed was as bad or worse.
He set aside the crop and took up the clamps from the table. Her pulse quickened.
As she feared, he affixed one to her nipple.
She gasped and squirmed as if she could flee from the pinching. Merciful heavens! She clenched a hand. Her head fell back. The rest of her body did not exist. Only her nipple. Her poor little nipple. Stuck in the claws of a metal clamp.
“Breathe,” she heard Alastair speak.
She did her best to comply. She tried to prolong her ragged breaths. He replaced the clamp a little farther from the tip of her nipple, which reduced the pain.
“Breathe, Millie,” he said.
Gradually, the initial shock settled into a persistent ache and she dared to look down to view the small monster clamped to her.
“You may speak your safety word at any time,” Alastair reminded her.
She nodded. Breathe. Breathe.