That Laroui had asked him to train the girl was unexpected. Perhaps he had, in a way, been pleased; he could have his fill of the chestnut-haired beauty, take a kind of revenge on her for her betrayal, and then eliminate her from his life as though she had never happened.
Another woman could always be found, and his debt with Laroui would be settled.
But now that he had Carolina here, her skin beneath his, her body responding as he only could have hoped that it might, he was—
He stopped himself from thinking about it further.
It was done, and she was Laroui’s.
Laroui would give her riches and treat her well. He expected obedient women but was nowhere near the disciplinarian that Blackstone was, and all the women of his harem seemed quite content with their lives.
The glass in his hand was in the air before his mind even registered that he had thrown it. Rage filled his veins, this time directed at himself.
He stood up, straightened his collar, and wiped a droplet of sweat that had formed there with a handkerchief. He was a gentleman now, though they might never accept him fully, and he would act the part. Always. Even alone, in his own enormous house.
His fist balled again, and he unclenched it.
Damn Carolina Blanchet.
He was not a man who lost control.
* * *
Her breakfast was brought to her, and she was dressed, hurried along by the efficient maid, who made no overtures to gossip nor to obtain gossip, and who seemed almost mechanically disinclined to care why Lina was there, or where she was going, or why the marriage to Mr. Blackstone had not occurred.
Lina feebly tried to pry the information from her, by surveying the dress the maid had selected for her to wear and inquiring:
“Do tell me, what is the occasion for my visit to Mr. Blackstone?”
The maid’s accent was a northern garble which Lina could barely understand. “Now, Miss, I’m not privy to it, nor am I to speak of it if I should be, which I am not. You are to wear this dress is all I know, and it’s all I’d say if I did know more, which I do not.”
And then she was led to the same room from the night before and abandoned by the escort who brought her there like a package.
She watched him retreat and surveyed the long corridors to her right and her left. The servant had brought her a different way than the one who had escorted her the night before, and she was certain she had been led a different way on the return trip to her room as well. The estate was vast, labyrinthine, and dark, and she would likely lose her way and starve before she escaped if she attempted such a thing now.
She faced the heavy wooden door, and the coolness in her chest slipped into her stomach. The tender skin of her bottom pulsed as though someone had touched it. The maid had, upon dressing her, bluntly stated that she was to wear no drawers beneath the dress, as it was unnecessary, and she would be unable to remove them to relieve herself.
It was not so uncommon, but when Lina opened her mouth to object, the woman stood up and snapped: “It’s my orders and you shall take them off.”
So now, the rough fabric of the skirt rubbed her sore skin, each step in the dress reminding her of Mr. Blackstone’s firm hand the night before.
The terrible wetness threatened to spill over, she could feel it, slowly welling up between her legs. When she knocked on the door, her lady-parts throbbed with an ache.
The door clicked, but did not open fully. No sound came from behind it, so she tentatively pushed it open.
“Mr. Blackstone, sir, I—”
“Enter, Miss Blanchet.”
The voice again performed its extraordinary feat, crawling through her chest like trailed fingertips over skin, sending a chill down her spine that mimicked fear, but was not precisely that.
Mr. Blackstone was, again, standing in the shadows that were created by the lighting of the room, seemingly specifically for that purpose. Again, she longed to see his face: was he a monster, really? She didn’t know why she wanted to see him, only that she did.
“Today we shall begin your training, Miss Blanchet. I remind you that you are to be obedient, or you shall be disciplined.”
“Yes, sir,” Lina said, as clearly as she could. She had dared to imagine herself speaking up, asking Mr. Blackstone if he might listen to her story, so that she could tell him the truth.
Now that she was in his presence, though, she lost her nerve, and it deflated her.
Mr. Blackstone turned to the bookshelf which had, the night before, opened to admit Dr. Doyle. He stepped through it, leaving her alone in the vast room.
“Follow me,” was all he said.
Lina stepped, stomach in knots, in the direction of the bookcase doorway. It opened into a dark corridor, damp and cold. She shivered and hesitated, before taking a few steps. She looked behind her, at the door to the enormous study, filled with light. She wondered if she would ever see it again.
Mr. Blackstone had continued walking, and he did not even slow to say, in his characteristically animal-like growl, “Keep walking, Miss Blanchet, or I shall be given the impression that you are being willful and disobedient.”
She was still for a beat, and then, for reasons she could not explain to herself, and although she feared she would regret it terribly, she began to follow Mr. Blackstone.
They did not travel far: down a curved staircase, but not a full flight, and through another door, and then another.
“This is the room where you will be trained,” Mr. Blackstone announced, in his authoritative voice.
Lina clutched her skirts in her fists to stop herself from opening her mouth to say something, for she very much wanted to ask Mr. Blackstone a question. Her bottom, however, was still very sore from her discipline the day before, and while the thought of being spanked again held a certain, perverse appeal for her, she knew better than to push her luck.
But the curiosity that had burned inside of her all night long was ignited in her chest again. If only she could know what lay in store for her, what it all meant... if only she could decide if she should try to flee, again... or stay.
Charlotte’s words ricocheted in her mind: sexually perverse.
Lina did not have any way of knowing what that would mean, and yet her imagination was running wild, stirring her up, clutching her chest with a strangling fear.
“Turn around,” Mr. Blackstone ordered.
Lina did as she was told, and found herself facing a wall of implements of all shapes and sizes, most of which were not recognizable to her, but some which were—whips, of a sort she had never seen before, with many thick leather straps and elaborately carved handles. There were many ivory objects carved into shapes that looked very much like a naughty picture drawn in the courtyard of her building back in France. The picture had caused all the women to laugh, but the children had been forbidden to know what it represented.
The memory made Lina’s cheeks burn, for while she had not known then, and did not know now for certain what these objects mimicked, she suspected very much that it was a man’s “manhood.”
“Disrobe,” Blackstone said.
Lina turned quickly, shocked, her mouth open in protest. Blackstone was no longer standing where he had been just moments before, but had, as was typical of him, disappeared into the shadows.
“Mr. Blackstone, I—”
“For your disobedience now, I shall take my hand to your backside five times, Miss Blanchet. Part of your training, which we simply must make progress in, is that you must understand the role of your master, and your unquestioned obedience to him. I am your master. Face the wall as I requested and disrobe.”
Lina turned back to the wall and closed her eyes to the assortment of objects for a moment as she reached for the laces of her frock. She fumbled for a moment, and tugged at the laces, but with her shaking hands was unable to loosen the tight knots the maid had formed.
She was nearly sweating when she at last gave up.
“Sir,” she wh
ispered. “I wish to obey you, but I...I can...I cannot...”
She heard Blackstone’s movement as he rose, and she turned her chin subtly to the right to catch a glimpse of him.
“Face the wall,” he growled, and she snapped her eyes back on the wall of devices. She could feel his presence behind her, even though she did not know how close he was. Her skin tingled without him even touching her.
His fingers went first to her neck, brushing lightly over her skin and sending a scandalous current of pleasure down her spine. She knew that her skin had turned to goose-flesh and hoped that he did not see it.
He tugged, first pulling hard on the ribbing of the dress so that it squeezed her tightly, before tugging at the laces to loosen the corset.
His fingers brushed over her shoulders, making her tremble, and he slid the dress from them with a soft caress over her skin.
The material slipped down her arms, and then her waist, and her hands flew instinctively to cover herself.
His arms encircled her suddenly, rock-solid and warm through his shirt. She could feel his muscles flex with their coiled strength against her forearms as he encircled her wrists and pulled at her arms, peeling away her futile act of modesty. “You shall keep your arms at your sides, or wherever I command you to place them,” he breathed.
His breath was hot against her neck, right where his fingers had touched. Her eyes felt very heavy, and they closed slowly as she exhaled sharply, trying to contain the sensations bubbling inside her body. He enclosed her wrists, behind her back, with the wiry strength of only one hand, and she could feel that resistance against him would have been as futile as resisting iron chains.
Yet, the primary feeling that moved inside of her was not the one she expected. Even worse, it was a feeling that was decidedly improper. The cool air against her bare breasts was exhilarating, and she could see, with a glance down, that the ache in her nipples must have come from the peculiar change in them: they had hardened into tight knots that were longing, as if they were a separate part of her mind and body, to feel Mr. Blackstone’s fingers brush over them as his breath had done to her neck.
A whimper nearly escaped her throat, but she doused it the best that she could. Still, Mr. Blackstone reacted to the soft sound that hummed in her throat, by squeezing her wrists more tightly, and tugging them down so that she had no choice but to arch her back and tip her neck slightly, thrusting her nipples up even more immodestly.
“I have not begun, Miss Blanchet,” he growled, next to her ear, and her body gave a shudder that was not at all unpleasant.
In an instant, however, she was being turned around, Mr. Blackstone staying behind her with her hands in his fierce grip. Once she faced away from the wall, she could see the rest of the room, largely occupied by a low, leather-upholstered piece of furniture that looked very much like a bed, with four tall posters at each corner. But where a mattress and bedding might have been, there was only the fine leather upholstery.
Ominously, from each of the four posters hung chains with leather cuffs at the ends.
Her mouth opened and a very small gasp escaped her. Perhaps she might have said something at that moment, if only she had been able to think of what to say. Mr. Blackstone pushed her forward, and so she stepped out of the crumpled dress as she moved with his will, until her thighs were against the cool leather of the bed.
“Bend over the bed and place your hands on either side of your head. I will administer your discipline before we begin, so perhaps you may consider giving greater weight to my instructions as we proceed.”
His fingers released her wrists, and they slid limply to her waist as she stared at the mattress. The implications of the bed fluttered about in her mind: a bed was a place where men and women did the very naughty things that only married men and women did, and while no one had ever spoken of such naughtiness, she was certain that she knew something of what was to take place.
Or at least that it was very, very forbidden.
“I—” she began but cut herself off.
She had no choice, she remembered. If she disobeyed Mr. Blackstone, she would only feel more of his unrelenting punishment on the still-burning skin of her bottom, and perhaps worse.
But bending over seemed obscene.
Surely it was?
The thought of such obscenity, of her naked body on full display for Mr. Blackstone as she bent at the waist and obeyed him, again caused the finger of pleasurable humiliation to snake through her naughtiest places. Deep and low in her belly, almost to—that place—an ache, much like the craving to be touched that still held her nipples in tight balls, cried out and pulsed as if an animal lived inside of her.
It only grew as she placed her hands on the bed, obeying, and the cool leather grazed her nipples. Her breath was coming in ragged, shallow gulps, and Mr. Blackstone did nothing for several moments, only intensifying her fear, pleasure—and though she was loathe to admit it to herself—her curiosity.
She jumped when his fingers touched her ear and then raked through her hair, pulling her face to one side. Gently, he applied pressure to her head until her cheek was against the leather. Propped this way, her bare chest and head were against the mattress, but her bottom was elevated slightly.
The warm liquid that had welled up between her legs the night before was returning. She could feel it as she shifted her weight, making her thighs slippery, and the place between them even slipperier. She could not understand why this happened, and her cheeks burned with humiliation. What might Mr. Blackstone think?
She waited, her stomach coiling into knots, in the silence that followed. It seemed eternally long, though she knew it was not. It was long enough for her to think of the sensation of his hand smacking against the skin of her bottom, and with that thought, for a feverish shiver to travel through her.
She could not help the gasp that escaped her when the next unexpected sensation reached her mind: a tickling, slightly rough, limp something, like a many-fingered animal, or the tassels of a pillow, grazed her backside. It moved over the lowest part of her back, tickling, from side to side, several times. She strained her eyes to see what it was without disobeying Mr. Blackstone, but this only caused her a headache, and she could see only that he was behind her, dangling something over her bottom.
The something, then, dipped between her legs, where its many limp fingers slid through the strange wetness there, and some of them grazed her most intimate places, places that screamed to be touched, all while her mind told her how very naughty it was to even think about those places. The fingers traveled up, between her buttocks, across her other hole, and she squeezed her eyes closed against the pleasure and the humiliation.
“I am going to whip you soundly with this device, Miss Blanchet, to discipline you for your disobedience earlier. When you feel the pain of each stroke, you are to meditate deeply upon your disobedience, and the pleasure it gives you to be punished. You will then thank me for your discipline and beg me to give you another.”
As he spoke, the “device” made circles over her skin, driving her insides to wild convulsions she did not understand. “You will practice the words and actions of submission, and also the thoughts, until such time as they become your reality. We begin.”
The heat of the strap, and its many, many fingers, flashed over her right buttock not a breath after this utterance, and so quite unexpectedly. She cried out, more in surprise than in pain; for while it stung, and radiated in many directions, biting into her flesh in smaller and more concentrated strips than the flogger had, the pain was secondary to something else inside of her. The naughty feeling roared between her legs.
She exhaled all of the air in her chest and stared at her hand. As the wave of heat rolled across her skin, she forgot all else, including Mr. Blackstone’s instructions.
“Miss Blanchet.”
“Sir,” she said quickly. “I... I... I... I have quite forgotten what...wh...wh...what I am to do...” she stuttered.
Th
e pain preceded the sound of the strap, that of limp noodles slapped on a table, this time across her other buttock. “You are to do nothing. You are to think of the pleasure of your discipline, and the pleasure of your submission. And then, you are to thank me, and beg me to give you more of it.”
She could not suffocate the whimper that trembled in her voice as she scrambled to speak: “Thank you, sir. Th...tha...thank you. I... I... ask that you... discipline me again.”
The very pronouncement of the words struck her almost as forcefully as the next strap across her bottom. The ache in her knotted stomach spread to her chest. “Thank you, sir... m...master... I... please, will you discipline me again...” she said in a hoarse whisper.
Tears overflowed in her already wet eyes as Mr. Blackstone whipped her again, and her voice was a whisper as she begged him again for more. Her skin was burning now, like it had the night before, and the wetness from between her thighs was making its way, in a cooling trickle, down her left leg.
That was five, and as she whispered her gratefulness, she wondered if she should ask him for more: did he intend to ever stop, or would he flog her all morning until she could not walk?
But her lips formed the words as he had instructed her, for she knew that it was not her place to tell him that he had numbered her whipping at five, no more.
Instead of another smack of the whip, however, he placed a hand on her bottom, pressing the sharp heat deeper into her skin. “I suspect you will require a great deal more discipline, Miss Blanchet,” he said. “And we have much to accomplish today. Now,” his voice was slightly more distant, and she realized that he was returning to the wall of objects. “Leave your hands and your head as they are and place your knees on the edge of the bed.”
Lina tried to look back at him and was grateful that he was turned away and did not see her. “Sss...sir...?”
“Do as I say, Miss Blanchet. Lift one knee to the edge of the bed, and then the other. You are correct if you have concluded that this will place you in a most submissive, sexual position. But it is not your place to wonder, only to obey. It is I who mandates.”
Theirs to Train: A Victorian Menage Romance Page 9
