A few weeks ago, she would have tried to dissuade him, made excuses, begged for pity, but by now she knew it was pointless to waste her breath.
“Come,” he said. “Get dressed. Wait in your room for dinner. After dinner, we’ll settle this matter.”
Oh, no. It was so much worse to have to wait for it, to know it was coming and that it wasn’t going to feel good. But she knew it was pointless to try to escape it. She would have to prepare herself for the pain. She thought the swim had been worth it though. With a sigh, she climbed up out of the water and picked her way across the pebbles and rocks on the shore under the stern caress of his gaze.
He shielded her from the direction of the practice field with his tall, broad body while she dressed. She would have rather lain down on the warm, soft grass and let the sun dry her first. She thought that she would have liked to lie down with him, and felt his mouth and hands on her skin. She slid him a look, and she thought he was thinking the same thing from the intent, direct way he was looking at her.
“Dress now. I must return to work.”
“Someday, might we come swimming here? Alone? You and I? If I wear my shift to cover myself?”
He frowned. “Perhaps.”
“I would like to swim with you, Duncan. And then lie down next to you on the shore and let the sun dry our bodies—”
“Dress, Cait.” He seemed frightfully agitated all of a sudden. Well, she didn’t know why he should be the one all upset. She was the one who was going to worry all day about the punishment to come.
* * * * *
Duncan urged her back towards the keep with a firm hand at the small of her back. What he really wanted to do was lead her deeper into the woods, spank her silly, and thrust inside every part of her body that could take him, all in succession, again and again. When he’d seen her come dripping up out of the water like some forest nymph, bare as the day she was born, it had been all he could do not to take her down on the shore.
Sinful. Her body was sinful. He was not a religious man, but her body was sending him to hell every hour of every day. Worst of all, he still wanted, still ached for that which he did not dare enjoy, that welcoming, warm, slick passage that he would not have to take by force. That she was still a virgin didn’t escape his thoughts, not for a moment. He wanted to possess her there so ferociously it hurt. But it hurt more, much more, to imagine losing her, and so he held himself in check and availed himself of what he could.
She didn’t mind it, didn’t even fathom that the ways he used her weren’t completely natural. Perhaps they were, in fact, natural and good—they both enjoyed them very much, of that he was certain.
She didn’t even balk at his many punishments even though they were, more often than not, trumped up for the smallest, most insignificant offenses, small lapses like being late to dinner or too slow to undress. In this unfairness, she seemed to indulge him. Actually he had a feeling the little sauce enjoyed some of the less severe spankings every bit as well as he.
Then she gave him the occasional opportunity like the present one—an infraction that really called for strict discipline. It had been naughty and downright dangerous for her to go swimming naked in the lake. At the same time, there was something endearing about the antics she got up to. A part of him hoped that never changed. If she was perfectly obedient at all times, well, a great part of his enjoyment of life would be taken away.
Somehow he doubted that would ever happen.
He delivered her to her room with a stern reminder to think over her transgression and what she’d do differently next time. As always, he had to squelch the urge to shepherd her inside, lock the door, and rip off all her clothes.
Duties, duties, he reminded himself. He had things to do, places to be, people he had made promises to. Later, at dinner, he felt that same urge to drag her off and have his way with her. He supposed that controlling himself around her was almost as exciting as controlling her. He fixed her with a stare as she skulked across the hall to her place beside him.
“It’s a good thing you’re not late.”
“Why? I’m already to be punished, aren’t I?”
He pinched the inside of her arm.
“Little Caitlyn. Do not be too brave.”
Not too brave, but brave enough. Brave enough to walk with him down the hall to his room after dinner, but not so brave that she didn’t tremble and lag behind. By the time he closed the door behind them she was already awash in tears.
The tears...he loved them and hated them. He watched her undress while they streamed down her face. He thought that it wasn’t good for her to be so agitated, that he ought to soothe her. If he was a better man, he would. At the same time, he loved those tears. They showed how anxious she was to please him, to do what he required of her, even though it was going to hurt. Upset, frightened, guilty, ashamed, no matter, she still stood before him and offered her body without pause.
“So many tears, Cait,” he said, stroking her cheek. “You would not be in this situation if you’d thought more carefully about your decision to go swimming alone, without permission. Without clothes,” he added archly.
“I wasn’t alone.”
“This is not a good time to contradict me, is it, love? Nor a good time to remind me that your guard was there and you elected to bare yourself anyway. It was disgraceful behavior for a modest wife.”
“Yes, sir,” she agreed, sniffling. As he’d taught her, her hands stayed at her side, although he could see she wanted to cover herself.
“You have a beautiful body, Cait. Do you know that? It’s far too beautiful to risk showing off where anyone can see it, where any man could be tempted by it. You displeased me greatly.”
“I wasn’t showing off.”
“Enough,” he snapped. “If I want to lecture my errant wife without being contradicted every other sentence, I think that’s something I have every right to do. Don’t you?”
“Yes.” She stole a look at him. “I just don’t want to be punished. It hurts.”
“Well, correction hurts. It has to, or it teaches you nothing. I don’t want to punish you severely, but I do what I must. I do it because I love you and I value your safety. You understand that, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
She understood but she still pouted and fidgeted with a resigned innocence that drove him wild with lust. But there was an agenda here, and fucking her came second. Making her very, very sorry for what she’d done came first.
“Stand against the wall, Caitlyn. Let’s get this over with.”
She moved to the wall, facing it. He pushed her shoulders gently.
“Turn around all the way. Present yourself properly. You know very well by now how to do this.”
With a sob, she arched her back and stuck her lovely bottom out. Agenda, punishment, duty, he reminded himself. Fucking, in a little while. First things first, damn it. Her pert little upturned bottom was difficult to resist.
“Your hands,” he said.
She placed them in fists against the wall beside her head.
“You are not to move them, you remember.”
Her only response was a soft moan. He picked up the special tool he’d secreted up to the room a short while before dinner, the whippy little leather-clad horse crop. He wanted this punishment to be particularly memorable. Not just because he thought she would be ready to take more pain now, and that he wanted her to take more pain than he’d thus far subjected her to. That was only part of it. The other part was that it really had alarmed him to find her stark naked in that pond. His men often went to swim there on warm days. What a scene that would have been.
He tapped the forbidding implement lightly next to her face, against the hard stone wall. God, her thrilling little whimpers made his cock ache. Perhaps he was a sadist after all. But a sadist, if he wanted to, could scar her with a riding crop, break her skin, cripple her, make her bleed, and the very idea of that made him sick. So no, he wasn’t an inveterate sadist, just a
bit of a scoundrel in his sexual tastes. Fortunately for him, he possessed a wife who indulged him.
Earlier, when he’d decided to use the crop on her, he had swung it against his own thigh and marked exactly which degree of force brought discomfort, which degree brought pain, and which degree brought welts.
“Count, Caitlyn, to twenty.”
It was harsh, but he was certain she could take twenty if he started off properly, not panicking her right away by laying them on too hard and too fast. By making her count, he could go by her breath. Her breath would tell him when she was ready for the next blow, and her voice would tell him when it was too hard or not hard enough. He laid the first one just under her left buttock.
She jumped and yelped. “One.”
She was crying already, but she was all right.
“Two,” she moaned when he caught the other cheek. Three, four, and five made her jump and fidget, and six, the first real blow he gave her, made her break her stance, reaching behind to shield herself.
“Cait, don’t be naughty. I haven’t been overly strict so far. If you’re going to misbehave even now when you’re being punished, I’ll have no choice but to tie you down and really discipline you severely.”
“No.” She sobbed and shook her head, shifting from one foot to the other before resuming the correct posture. “I promise I’ll be good.”
“We’ll start again at six, but if you move your hands off the wall, we’ll go back to one. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.” Her hands clenched and unclenched next to her ears.
He began again, and she counted. She danced around on her toes and moaned too.
“Breathe through the blows. I know it hurts, but this is to teach you a lesson.”
“I know, but it’s so hard. Ten! Eleven!” she cried.
She was really having trouble, and he’d only raised a few light welts.