Training Lady Townsend

by Joseph, Annabel

  “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.”

  She gave him a tragically beleaguered look, but any protests were muffled by the introduction of his very thick and aching rod into her tiny, prim mouth. It really was slow going. This skill wasn’t developed overnight, especially when the lady in question obviously had severe misgivings about what she was doing. He wasn’t sure if her tears were born of shame, strain, or lack of oxygen.

  “Are you breathing?” he asked. “It’s important to breathe, Aurelia. If you must, take air through your nose.”

  After a few forays into her hot, wet mouth he withdrew and stroked back a bit of her hair. “You’re doing very well. I know you don’t enjoy this...yet...but I assure you I enjoy it very much.” Having let her rest, he widened her lips with his thumbs and eased back into her mouth. She swallowed around the tip of him, a delicious suction that almost brought him off. “There are many ribald names for this act,” he said to distract himself a while longer. “But I suppose the most official one is oral copulation. It may interest you to know that it can also be done to a woman for her pleasure.”

  Her expression spoke of disbelief. In his gratitude, perhaps he would show her what she obviously didn’t understand. Yes, he was certain he would. Why not? But first he gripped his cock and worked it as he pressed shallowly in and out of her mouth. This was a pathetic display of fellatio, but she was submitting to him in a way he never imagined she would. Each evening, each wicked night, he would make her practice until she was skilled enough to bring him to completion. In the meantime...

  He stood back from her and pumped himself to reach his pe
ak. His seed erupted, spurting upward and then pooling down and over the back of his hand. She watched this display, thinking God knew what. That she was trapped in the marriage from hell to a madman, perhaps? He laughed under his breath and went to the basin to wash away the evidence of his climax. That finished, he returned to untie her wrists.

  When she was free she jerked away from him. He caught her and stopped her. “Slowly, my dear. Kneel up slowly and take your time.”

  She wiped a hand over her lip. “I need to wash out my mouth.”

  “Because my cock was in it? I promise you, I keep every part of my body fastidiously clean. But you may certainly do it later, after I’m done with you.”

  She regarded him in dismay. “There’s more to do? But you have already...” She gestured vaguely toward his softening cock.

  “Yes, I have already. But perhaps you would wish to experience oral pleasuring as well?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Well, I wish it,” he said, steering her firmly toward the bed. He pushed her back, pinning her hands over her head. Her curls lay spread out upon his pillow. Ah, she was lovely. He thought it fifty times a day.

  “Leave your hands here,” he said, staring at her very intently. “Do not move them or I shall go for the birch and we’ll begin our entire evening’s activities over again from the start. Would you like that?”

  She shook her head violently.

  “I didn’t think so.” Slowly, he released her hands. She shivered atop his thick linen counterpane as he knelt over her to give her a kiss. When her shivers turned to shudders, he drew away.

  “Why are you so afraid?” he asked. “I promise this won’t hurt.”

  “But what are you going to do to me?”

  “Copulate with you. Orally. Perhaps that sounds too clinical. I am going to kiss and caress your quim and make you feel so good that your hips buck against my mouth.”

  “But you...you can’t,” she said, clearly scandalized.

  “Can’t I?” He arrested her hands before they could push him away, and placed them back over her head.

  She swallowed hard, resisting just a little. “I don’t think it’s at all proper, what you intend to do.”

  He snorted under his breath. “Nothing proper is any fun. I assure you this is wildly improper, and I shall enjoy every moment of it. So will you.”

  He began at her shoulders, kissing, licking, tasting, following the alluring path of her curves. With infinite patience he worked his way down to her full, feminine bosom. He drank in her sighs and the soft catches of breath as he toyed with her nipples and the delicate undersides of her breasts. He used his tongue to delineate the majesty of her hips, and then kissed lower as she pleaded no, no, no.

  He thought to himself, yes, yes, yes. He held her gaze as he spread her legs wider with gentle but inexorable pressure, then he kissed the inside of each trembling thigh. Her feminine scent excited him beyond measure. He’d memorized every note of it by now, knew it as well as he knew his own face. He had made it his business to learn the sophisticated pleasuring of women over countless experiences of his youth, and now Aurelia would benefit...if only she would relax. When she tried to close her legs, he pinned them open with his shoulders, then slid his arms beneath her hips to draw her closer to his mouth.

  The silly woman actually braced as he pressed his lips to her wet, silken folds—but he knew how to deal with resistance in this quarter. He swirled his tongue around her silken center, teasing and exploring until he found the thrusting bit of flesh that made her moan. He worried the nubbin between his teeth and paid it devoted attention. He opened her with his fingers, probing inside her with infinite patience when she whined and pulled away.

  This didn’t hurt her. It only hurt her sensibilities, her prim self-identification. “Let go,” he whispered. “Think only of pleasure, and your animal needs.”

  “I’m not an animal,” she said.

  Yes, he knew that. Not a mouse or a grasshopper, but a woman overwrought with need. He would do this for an hour if that’s what it took to fight through her defenses and reduce her to the delectably wanton creature he wished her to be.

  But in the end, it took much less time. He didn’t scold her when her hands left their ordered place above her head and curled into his hair, and pulled it in an urgent signal of need. He hummed against her heated flesh, spreading her wider, and then lapped delicately at her quim. He learned what made her shudder and what made her groan, and what made her buck against his mouth as he’d told her she would do.

  “Please, please,” she begged. “Please.”

  “Yes,” was his only reply. Yes, yes, yes. When he felt her come off, he slipped his fingers deep inside her to feel her inner muscles contract. He was hard again, hard as steel, hard as granite, and he might have pushed his cock inside instead, but he decided not to. This had been about her pleasure, not his. This had been a lesson in gratitude for them both.

  Her fingers loosened in his hair, coming to rest weakly on his shoulders. He kissed back up her belly to the enticing pillow of her breasts, then laid his head there to listen to her wildly beating heart. He lay back and pulled her close, enfolding her in his arms so her head ended up on his shoulder. It was a comfortably pleasing weight.

  “Sleep here tonight,” he said, nuzzling her shoulder. “There’s plenty of room here for the both of us.”

  She didn’t answer for long moments, and he realized his exhausted wife had fallen fast asleep.

  Chapter Eleven: Transcendent

  Aurelia loved the library at Somerton. Her husband had outfitted a long, soaring room filled with books and huge leather chairs that somehow managed to feel cozy. Thick, deep brown carpets softened the floors. Three great branches of candles lit the space, since dinner had come and gone, and the day’s light with it. Townsend sat near the fireplace in a great wingback chair, leafing through some of the London papers as he sipped his port.

  Aurelia had staked out a corner of his grand desk for her writing materials and correspondence, and worked now on a letter to her parents. She was careful not to disturb his papers, as she had come to know him as a fastidious landowner who took great care in all his interests.

  She understood now that she was one of his interests, and that he was doggedly developing her into what he would like, while looking after her with close supervision. As day followed day, she noticed the little things he did to try to make her happy, even as he demanded his own happiness by requiring her to do all manner of licentious things.

  Each day, honestly, she minded it a little less.

  Oh, she didn’t enjoy the spankings. Not the pain part of them, anyway. But there was something in the way he touched her and smiled at her afterward that made the pain and embarrassment seem worth it. His dark looks, which used to repel her, came to seem rather handsome and dashing. His smiles, which used to terrify her, now set up a clamor in her heart. Sometimes she even wondered if he loved her.

  But it could not be so. They’d been married less than a month, and they were so very different in manner and temperament. But if love was caring for someone and making them smile ten times a day... She stared across the room at her husband, at his fine long legs, at his strong shoulders, at the faint frown lines between his brows as he concentrated on his papers and occasionally turned a page. His lips arrested her attention, pursed as they were. She noticed them relax into a faint smile, and then realized he was looking back at her.

  She glanced quickly down at her letter, as if she hadn’t been staring at him, but her pen had long since been put down on the table. She pasted on a thoughtful look as if she had only been considering what to write.

  “How is your letter coming?” her husband asked. She could hear the teasing beneath his tone.

  “I am nearly finished.” She looked down at the rather scattered niceties she’d composed so far.

  “I would like to read it before you post it, as usual.”

  She lost herself a moment in the da
rk depths of his gaze. “If you wish. But, as usual, I have not written anything negative about you.”

  His smiled widened. “A difficult task indeed.”

  She laughed at his teasing expression. Had she ever laughed so much in her life? She was coming to appreciate his dry, often ridiculous humor and enjoy his many jokes.

  “Well, there are certain matters I cannot discuss with them,” she said, attempting her own joke. “And those would be the matters where I could righteously complain of your faults.”

  He rewarded her with a great burst of mirth. The sound rang from the high ceilings and she grinned so wide she covered her mouth in a wave of shyness. She didn’t know if he really found her jokes funny, or only laughed at them because she’d grown brave enough to make the clumsy attempts.

  He looked back at his papers and she bent back over her letter, checking it to be sure she hadn’t said anything remiss about Lord Townsend. From the start he had forbidden her to send any letters without his permission, and without them being read first by him. She supposed it was because she had threatened to tell her father and brother what a monster he was, but she’d never do that now.

  After composing a few more lines of daughterly news and affection, Aurelia put the last flourishing touches to her signature, then sanded the paper dry.

  He looked up as she approached him with the letter, and opened his arms.

  She allowed herself to be drawn into his lap. They used to spend this time after dinner in their separate places, in entirely different areas of the house. She used to hide away from him like the mouse everyone assumed her to be, but she enjoyed this better, being close to him. She leaned back against his chest and nestled her head beneath his chin. He assisted in arranging her skirts, murmuring in a gentlemanly fashion about the prettiness of her gown, and then held up the letter before him.