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“Please what?”
“Please don’t hurt me.”
He drew back the crop and delivered a direct flick to her aching button. “Oh, my mercy,” she gasped, burying her face in her skirts again. “Oh, please, no.” It hurt, of course, but it also felt shockingly good. She was appalled at herself, at her indecent urges and cravings. Don’t stop, she thought secretly. Please don’t stop.
“Oh, please stop,” she cried aloud as he flicked her again, and again. Her world was dark and shameful, her face hidden from view, but she knew he saw everything. He gave a sharp stroke to her left thigh, and her right. She cried out and drew her legs in closer to her body, as if she might close herself up tight.
“No,” he said. “Put them where they were.”
With a sigh, she draped them back over the chair’s arms.
“Scoot forward. Open yourself to me. This is what you need, Josephine. To be disciplined and taught a proper lesson.” He slid the crop’s long leather handle through the tingling folds of her center. “Look how you respond to it. More than anything, that tells me this is what you need.”
She gritted her teeth as he continued to crop her pussy and her inner thighs, sometimes standing before her, and sometimes behind her or at her side. He flicked her until she was frantic, not from the pain of it, although it was sharp and stinging enough, but more from the arousal of feelings. He was her husband, exercising marital rights she’d never imagined existed, and she did nothing to stop it. She hugged herself tight and kept her legs open for his torturous ministrations even when she must strain to do so. How long would this go on? Why did he want this? How could something so terrible feel so exquisite?
And what about the dowagers’ digestion, for God’s sake?
She dreaded being discovered in this ignominious state by the servants, but no servants came, or even knocked. Josephine thought they must know very well what was going on within the lord and lady’s drawing room, from the rhythmic thwacks of the riding crop and her wailing cries. Perhaps they listened at the door, scandalized. Perhaps they busied themselves elsewhere so as not to hear. After Warren spanked her or disciplined her, the servants would never meet her eyes, except for her pale, freckle-faced lady’s maid, who blushed furiously for hours afterward.
“Oh, it hurts,” she whined, wiggling her feet. “I think you’ve stung every inch of me twice over.”
“But you’re not nearly finished,” he said, raising his brows. “Your pussy wanted cropping, but it wants something else too.”
“No, it doesn’t want anything else,” she insisted. “It’s really perfectly content.”
“Is that so?” He held the crop a moment, kneeling before her. She peeked over the tangle of her skirts just as he leaned to touch his lips to her nether folds. “Oh…damn,” she burst out, as he sucked at her swollen button. “Oh, Warren, you must…not…”
He leaned back a bit, enough to swat her thighs again with excruciating firmness, and then he went back to licking and kissing her pussy, flicking his tongue against her in the same way he’d flicked the crop against her. She grasped his hair, transported by his voluptuous talent. The sensation was so intense she could hardly stand it.
“No, no,” she whined, but again, it sounded more like, yes, yes.
“You know what I’m waiting for,” he murmured against her skin. “When you give it to me, I’ll stop.”
Stop what? The licking? Or the hurting? The implement assailed her again, sharp flicks wherever arousal pooled. She kicked her legs, thrashing beneath the crop, or was it his mouth? He hurt her, then soothed her, then hurt her again, while her heightening need threatened to undo her. She balled her skirts in her fists, pressed silken material to her mouth. Oh. Ohhhh. It felt so fine when he licked her there, in that deft and steady way.
She keened through her teeth when the climax overcame her. She felt his hands tighten on her inner thighs as he teased her, on and on, drawing out the pulses until they gentled and let her breathe again. Her thighs and quim stung, but they tingled with ecstasy too.
Warren stood and tore at his buttons, pushing back his coat and waistcoat and opening his breeches. He impaled her roughly, just as she was, legs spread and hooked over either arm of the chair. The position admitted him deep, as he stretched her even wider than she was already stretched. He bucked against her, his scent overtaking her senses, his hot breath against her ear. The pleasure that had already wrung her out began to resonate again, building along with the frenzied pace of his thrusts.
“Oh, Warren, that feels…very…good…”
“You feel very good, my naughty girl. Yes, take all of me. Move your hips for me.”
She clung to his shoulders and his hair, grabbing what she could to bring him closer and deeper inside her. She growled, or perhaps it was him. He went rigid, pressing fast and hard within her in the throes of his completion, and Josephine cried out in a second, shattering release. Somehow, she found the energy to unhook her knees from the chair and wrap them about him instead.
By slow degrees, she became aware of the sun coming in through the parlor curtains, and the vases of flowers, and the tea tray from earlier, still sitting on the table across the room. They were downstairs, in broad daylight, and her husband buried to the hilt within her. She would always be improper, she realized, at least in this.
But she wasn’t sorry, and she was trying very hard not to feel ashamed.
“Goodness, Josie.” Warren took her face between his palms and kissed her nose, her eyes, her cheeks. His talented tongue made a foray up and down her neck, and then back again, to end in a kiss beneath her chin. “My goodness.”
That was all he said for a while, which was more than she could say in her breathless satiety. At length he moved away from her, so she could sit primly again. He dressed, tucking and smoothing and buttoning his many buttons, then knelt and helped her arrange her wrinkled skirts. Little good it did to compose her appearance, when she was still wet and sore underneath.
He put his hands on her knees and squeezed a little, flashing one of his handsome grins. “I don’t know how you’ll ever learn to converse properly when our lessons descend to such depravities. How naughty you are, to distract me so.”
“You suggest this episode is my fault?” she asked hotly. “You’re the one who does lessons with a riding crop in your hand, and my skirts tossed up about my ears.”
“How else are you going to learn? By the way, the answer to any dowager’s complaint about digestion is a delicate and concerned tsk, and a wish that she should be feeling better soon. Do you think you can remember that for next time?” He picked up the crop and flicked it against her ankle, still grinning.
She forgot everything when he smiled at her that way.
*** *** ***
Over the next few weeks, Warren settled into the role of husband and disciplinarian with great contentment. He nurtured Josephine, taking pains to amuse her and squire her about society. No one could have the impression now that he didn’t care for his wife. In point of fact, he lusted after her quite shamelessly, and continued to do coarse and immoral things to her body. He liked that aspect of their marriage quite a lot.
He liked that the pinched, tense lines had mostly disappeared from around her mouth, and that the dark circles had faded from beneath her eyes. He liked that he was used to the sound of her laughter now. He liked that she was trying so hard to behave as his perfect wife, and liked spanking her when she didn’t quite manage it. He liked everything about her.
Perhaps he even loved her.
Was it love that made him draw her closer when they did carnal things together? Was it love that enticed him to spend most nights in her frilly, feminine bed rather than skulking back to his own? Was it love that made him glare at any gentleman who looked at her too long as they strolled in the park? He knew he didn’t want to live away from her. He had promised she might hide away in the country if she couldn’t bear to go on in society, but he wished he hadn’t said s
uch an outrageous thing.
So he took her about town whenever he could, to the theater and the park, and to dinners and social events, to help her grow more comfortable. He danced with her at balls, and flirted with her right in the open, until it became the thing to do. Other gentlemen began to flirt and dance with their wives, causing the frowning matrons to wave their fans and declare it an unseemly display. Such was society—one had to keep a sense of humor about it, or go stark-raving mad.
And he didn’t wish Josephine to go mad. She had endured too much grief and hardship to lose her wits now. He told her so sometimes, when they had raw, whispered conversations about her fears and what she hoped for the future.
God, please let them have a future. He’d come to care for her so much.
“Warren? Are you listening to me?”
Minette tugged at his sleeve. He’d been staring moon-eyed at his wife again, in full view of every dandy in Hyde Park. “Pardon me,” he muttered. “What did you say?”
“I said that Lady Chastity has accepted a marriage proposal from Lord Goss. Isn’t it romantic? They’ve been friends forever, since they were eleven or twelve.”
“That does sound romantic,” he said with a wink at Josephine. He escorted both women on his arm, although the arm with Minette endured considerably more pulling and jostling.
“They won’t have the wedding until next year, although Chastity wished it to be sooner. But she has so many things to order, and so much to plan. They’re to have a big nuptial breakfast at her father’s estate in the country, with flowers and swans.”
“Swans,” Josephine exclaimed, because he had taught her that one must balance conversation, and not stay silent too long. “How pretty that will be.”
Minette launched into a breathless recitation of her own wedding plans, where she might have swans and flowers, and oh, rainbows if the weather could be made to cooperate, and white bunting all over the place. Josephine smiled as Warren tipped his hat to Arlington, who trotted toward them atop his horse.
“Good day to you, Lady Minette, Lady Warren,” he said, greeting them with ducal politeness. “And Warren, well met. I was just about to leave before the midday crush.”
“You’d better go soon, then.” As he said it, a great group of Minette’s friends bore down upon them, trailing prune-faced chaperones. Some of the young ladies looked wistfully upon the “Viking duke,” who was the ton’s most desirable bachelor at present. Arlington, of course, made sure to be well away before the group arrived.
Warren waited with Josephine as the young people crowded around Minette. They had a special invitation to view the Royal Menagerie at the Tower, and they wished for Minette to accompany them. “May I?” she asked, turning to Warren. “Oh, please. How I have wanted to go!”
