Training Lady Townsend(24)

“Ah, but these spankings have very little to do with whether you’ve been good or bad.”

“What are they to do with, then? Besides your pleasure?” she asked a bit tartly.

“They are to do with making you feel obedient and compliant to my wishes, as any good wife should be. Remove your dressing gown, and your night shift. I enjoy having every inch of your lovely body exposed to me.”

She looked for a moment as if she might argue, but then she stared down at the floor and unknotted the silk tie of her gown, laying it neatly over a chair.

“Remember how I told you to undress,” he said in the silence of the room. “Slowly, with sensuality. Undress as if you take pleasure in revealing yourself to me.”

He thought this was the most difficult task of all in her esteem. She had not been reared to play the temptress, or seduce randy gentlemen. Her slow moves were clumsier than those of a practiced courtesan, and her expression not exactly one of excited pleasure. If she showed any desire, it was the desire to please him, probably in hopes of avoiding a birching.

But she was not to avoid that fate.

When she was naked and trying very hard to stand tall and not cower upon herself, he beckoned her toward the bed. “Yes, beautiful wife. There is no shame in the way God made us.”

She ran a glance down the length of his body. “You are not as God made you. You are fully dressed.”

“Do you wish me to undress?”

She fought with herself a moment; he could tell by the way she shifted and bit her lip. Finally, she looked him over again and answered, “Yes.”

He smiled and began to work at the buttons of his coat. “While I comply with your wishes, wife, pray climb onto the bed beside the birch rod and face the headboard, positioning yourself on your hands and knees.”

She hesitated, and he allowed her a few moments to collect her courage. By the time he started upon the buttons of his waistcoat, she had managed to take a few steps toward the bed.

“You are not resisting, are you?” he said quietly. “There are a great many degrees of birching a woman might receive, from lightly punitive to horrifyingly painful. I am certain you do not wish to experience the latter one.”

That got her moving. She climbed up and knelt where he’d told her to. “Hands and knees,” he repeated. “With your back straight and your bottom in the proper position.”

“What is the proper position?” she asked in a quivering voice.

“Slightly arched and offered for punishment.”

She could not quite accomplish it by the time he finished undressing, at least not to his exacting standards. He went to the bed and made a great to-do of positioning her correctly, stroking and prodding and rearranging her for maximum exposure. He felt a pang of conscience as she trembled under his hands. This must be wretchedly difficult for her, especially with the instrument of her impending torture resting on the bed beside her. Poor thing.

“There,” he said when she was posed to his liking. “Stay exactly like that throughout your birching. Try to take it like a very good girl.”

She murmured something that sounded negative in tone, but that didn’t stop him from lifting his arm and delivering the first, rather mild stroke.

Aurelia collapsed onto her stomach with a great wail of pain. Her hands flew behind her. “Oh, that hurts! It hurts far too much.”

He tsked and raised her up, forcing her into position again.

“I know it hurts, Aurelia. I remember exactly what it feels like. It might not surprise you to learn that I was birched quite frequently as a child.”

“Well, I have never been birched and I don’t believe I deserve to be.”

She was already close to tears. The birch was indeed a daunting implement, as each stroke imparted a fiery explosion of pain. If she could have felt a stroke from one of his tutor’s stout birches, or his father’s...

“I am going to continue now,” he said. But as soon as he raised his arm, she broke her position, shying away and reaching back to cover her bottom.

He put down the birch.

“You must not reach back, or collapse away from the blows, do you understand me?” he scolded. “You must be still until the end of your spanking.”

“I can’t be still. It hurts! I am still hurting from the first stroke.”

He sighed and sat on the bed beside her, and lifted her into his arms. After a moment she released some of the tension stiffening her limbs. He stroked her hair and held her close against his heart.

“Aurelia, my love. I know the things I do to you seem frightening and strange.”

“And painful,” she protested. “And unfair.”

“Fairness is not at issue here. Your cooperation is. You are not permitted to resist me, as you know.”

“I can’t help it.” She turned her face against his chest. “Please, don’t do this to me. Don’t make me endure it only for your pleasure.”

“You will take this birching,” he said. “But if you wish, I’ll make it easier for you to submit. Come with me.”

He stood her up and marched her over to a lavishly padded and upholstered chaise. He had never spanked a woman here but had imagined, many times, its suitability as a punishment bench.

“Kneel down,” he said, making her face the padded back. When she was in position, he went across the room and retrieved the sturdy silk ribbon that cinched closed the waist of her dressing gown. He carried it back to his wide-eyed wife and told her to hold out her hands. When she did, he contrived to thread the ribbon through the back legs of the chair and tie her hands wrist to wrist. When he pulled the bonds taut, she had no choice but to remain bent over the padded chair back. He finished his handiwork with a neat little bow.

She moaned as he stood back to survey her pose. She squirmed, gloriously naked, at his mercy. As he suspected, the seat back was the perfect height to support her hips, and the bonds holding her wrists would prevent her from reaching back to shield her posterior, as well as prevent her from leaving the chaise until he was quite finished with her.

“Perhaps someday you will not need your hands bound, but at the moment I think it best. Now you will have no choice but to submit to your birching, my naughty little miss.”

“Please, let me go,” she begged.

“Let you go? I’ve half a mind to keep you there forever. You’ve no idea the pretty picture you appear.” He circled her, like a predator sizing up its prey. “Your full hips and buttocks are thrust in the air, waiting to be spanked.” He punctuated the last word with a crisp smack to her behind, then strolled around the front of her. “Your buxom breasts are available to me here in the front, to pinch or tease.” He demonstrated just that as she squirmed on her knees and tugged at the ribbon holding her wrists. “And then there is your wiggling, and your anxious chirping sounds. My lovely grasshopper.” He forced her head up and sidled closer so his cock reared before her face. It was so tempting to thrust into her half-opened mouth.

“But we’ve a birching to see to, haven’t we? Something about lack of gratitude,” he reminded himself out loud. “No more delays.”

He took up the birch and flicked her bottom with it. She cried out as if tortured, but he didn’t let that divert him from his task. It was much, much easier now that she was properly battened down. Another blow, and another, and then quick, smart flicks to bedevil her. He put a hand on her back to still her when she thrashed her legs about and wailed in protest, but there was not much she could do to avert her fate. After eight stingers, her bottom was red and angry with birch marks. He paused, stroking the punished cheeks.

“It’s not so very bad, is it?”

She lifted her head to look at him. “It’s terrible. It stings like a thousand spankings. Please, let me go.”

“Not yet.”

He moved back around to her front and pinched her nipples, reveling in her gasp. “Kiss me with your mouth.” He took his cock in his fist and eased the head toward her. “Kiss it as you did the other day.”

When she gazed up at him in teary-eyed mutiny, he shrugged and took up a place beside the chaise again.

“No, I’ll do it,” she screamed, but she was too late. He drew back the birch rod and landed two more stinging blows.

“When you don’t obey my requests, I assume you wish your punishment to continue.”

“You are awful,” she cried.

He birched her again, thinking how very stubborn she was.

“I’m sorry. Please. I’ll do as you asked. Please, my lord. I—I’ll do it, if only you’ll stop.”

He returned to his stance in front of her, his cock harder and hotter than ever. “Show me then. Kiss me. Lick around the crown. That’s how we begin.”

With a whimper, she complied. He threw his head back, overcome by the teasing sensation of her tentative kisses and the hesitant explorations of her tongue. He supposed a very warm bottom was motivation to do just about anything. After a while, he said, “Open your mouth,” and she obeyed, staring up at him in dread.

“It won’t be awful, my love,” he said soothingly. “This is the first skill a courtesan learns, so I’m certain you can master it too. I’m going to move my cock in and out of your mouth. Your job is to suck and caress it as if you were tasting something very, very good. But no biting,” he added as an afterthought. “Absolutely no teeth.”